My first laptop, finally.

Two years ago I wanted a laptop. I thought my life would easier if I could write during my 50-minute bus rides to the University of Washington.

But then I examined the potential purchase the way I examined all others:

  • Can I really justify the expense vs. the payoff?
  • If I got it, would my life be significantly improved?
  • If I didn’t, would my life by substantially diminished?

No, no and no. Buying the laptop would have meant dipping into my nascent emergency fund. It also would have meant one more thing to carry – and a backpack jammed with textbooks and my daily brown-bag lunch already had me feeling that I was toting my house on my back.

In other words, it would have amounted to a very expensive shoulder ache.

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Jam jars and laminate flooring: Why Freecycle rocks.

You can get rid of anything on Freecycle, and I can prove it: A woman came to my house the other day to pick up five empty 42-ounce oatmeal boxes.

Bonus: The lady is a Yup’ik Eskimo so while we chatted on the phone I had a chance to use one of the approximately three Yup’ik words I know: “Akleng,” or “I’m sorry,” when her toddler daughter woke up crying from a nap.

I wasn’t sorry to be giving her the boxes, though, because it gave them one more use before they hit the recycle bin.

I also wasn’t sorry about having five empty oatmeal boxes. I kept them because I figured someone would want them. And someone did.

 

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It’s the “Tania necklace” now, baby.

We have a winner! Two of them, in fact. The “Carrie necklace” goes to Tania, whose name comes in well under the allotted 12 letters. She’ll be the envy of all the other girls (and not a few of the boys) if she wears it to “Sex and the City 2.”

The confectionery consolation prize winner is Catseye. As we all know, confections have a stupendous capacity to console. In this case, that’s a bag of Godiva milk chocolate strawberries and two Godiva bars (milk chocolate with almond, dark chocolate with extra-dark ganache filling).

Congratulations to both, and as for the rest of you: Suck it up. I wasn’t even eligible to win and you don’t hear me whining, do you?

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Minor celebrityhood: What’s YOUR dubious claim to fame?

I miss the Fly By Night Club, a proudly sleazy Alaskan bar that served up Spam and satire in equal doses. Nine months a year the club presented “The Whale Fat Follies,” a musical revue that skewered local and national politics, Martha Stewart, wildlife management policies, the Neiman-Marcus catalog, the official state fossil (that’s the woolly mammoth, not Sen. Ted Stevens), money-grubbing evangelical ministers, opera, squid, Bill Clinton and just about anything else that club owner Mr. Whitekeys figured could get a laugh.

The slide shows usually included at least one naked backside. The male cast members enjoyed the cross-dressing skits just a little too much. Some shows featured the world’s first tap-dancing outhouse, a performer introduced as “the happy tapper in the snappy crapper.”

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A few good reads, and saving your smile.

The good news is that I don’t have any cavities. The bad news is that I need a crown replaced. The worst news? No dental insurance.

What I do have, however, is a dental-hygienist sister who will X-ray and clean my teeth for free, and an emergency fund to help pay for the crown. Not that I’m thrilled about dipping into the EF, mind you, but at least I won’t go into debt fixing my face.

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Friday giveaway: Necks and the city.

“Sex and the City 2” opens May 27, and I’m happy to be hosting the Blog & Save giveaway of the script necklace — aka the  “Carrie necklace” — made famous in the TV series.

You don’t have to be named Carrie to win it, though. The necklace, from Limoges Jewelry, will spell out your name as long as it has fewer than 12 letters.

Normally this necklace it would cost $69.99 – but if you win, it won’t cost you a dime.

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