Um, thanks?

To: Sassy
From: OkCupid! Summer Interns

Subject: We have data on your attractiveness!


We are very pleased to report that you are in the top half of OkCupid's most attractive users. The scales recently tipped in your favor, and we thought you'd like to know.

How can we say this with confidence? We've tracked click-thrus on your photo and analyzed other people's reactions to you in QuickMatch and Quiver.
. . .

Your new elite status comes with one important privilege:
You will now see more attractive people in your match results.

This new status won't affect your actual match percentages, which are still based purely on your answers and desired match's answers. But the people we recommend will be more attractive. Also! You'll be shown to more attractive people in their match results.
. . .

Suddenly, the world is your oyster. Login now and reap the rewards. And, no, we didn't just send this email to everyone on OkCupid. Go ask an ugly friend and see.

OKCupid, you never fail to remind me about why I started this blog. *cringe*

Space is Limited. Home is Infinite.

Yay, Apartment Therapy's Small Cool 2010 Contest is completed!

It's got lots of pretty home design pics, if that's what you're into. I am, and it went into crazy overdrive when I was home shopping in late 2008. Apartment Therapy is a good overall blog for that, although when I was reading it a year ago it was drifting from "apartment" to "general home things that don't fit in apartments." Maybe they're better now.

This contest was the awesome exception, a celebration of tiny spaces that people make livable and gorgeous.

My co-op apartment is less than 400 square feet, including the balcony and closets. Now that I'm settled in, maybe I will submit to this contest next year :-D Which gives me about 10 months to finish the kitchen reno (CRINGE), de-clutter, clean, and borrow a tripod to take some bitchin' photos.

So far, no matter how I angle the camera my home still looks way more cluttered than it is.

Lol, j/k ;-) This was moving week.

Lessons!

Things I've learned about food lately:

*Peanut butter is awesome. I have greatly underestimated pb sammiches.

*Refridgerating store bought bread helps it last longer.

*After years of hating fried eggs, I tried it myself using bacon fat instead of butter, and they were wonderful. Tried again with butter, yuck.

*Still haven't mastered bacon, luckily I like it slightly burnt too. Bacon-stix!

*Its really hard keeping non-stick kitchen equipment non-greasy :-P

*I don't like baking cookies, muffins, or anything else that has to be shaped or portioned before baking. I like breads and brownies, things you bake all together and cut later.

*Most improv people don't like brownies. They whinge about having to keep their weight down for acting, and then wander over to the bar for their customary five beers.

*Cupcakes are supposed to look better than they taste. Not that they can't taste good, but they have become more of a visual artform.

*Celery sticks squeak uncomfortably against my teeth. Eeeek.

*I hate washing dishes more than I hate myself for using paper plates at home all the time.

*I love honey, but baking with it can cause interesting and unexpected moisture-absorbing results.

Friday Linkages!

Alt Text: The Nice Guy's Guide to Realizing You're Not That Nice. From Wired: Guys, you’re not “too nice.” That’s like saying you can’t get seated at an L.A. restaurant because you’re too famous.

Also true of "Nice Girls" ;-) Don't feel bad, I'm a recovered Nice Girl myself!


2010 College Grad Financial Survival Guide, from Budgets are Sexy. Filed under "Things I wish I'd thought about at the time."



After a Breakup: Handling Sentimental Clutter, from Unclutterer. I didn't have such a hard time with sentimentalizing the jewelry after my last breakup. I'm not sure if this is ironic or not, because I am a jewelry designer.



How to Enjoy Solitude, from Think Simple Now: I’m not suggesting solitude is better than being with people. Simply that it’s impossible to completely avoid aloneness in life, so it’s worth having a strategy to find joy in those moments. Enjoying solitude can also give you an independence that makes you less desperate with friends and less likely to cling onto lousy relationships.

Yay! Tho to be honest, it's a lot harder to feel lonely if you've ever studied puppetry. I'll let you ponder that for a bit...


Cats Can Tweet With New Liveblogging Device, from Mashable. So if I ever do achieve my goal of becoming a crazy cat lady, I can still work outside of my home. Awesomesauce.


Health Care Law's Massive Hidden Tax Change, from CNN. Yikes. That's a lot of paperwork.


"Vanity" Press Goes Digital, from The Wall Street Journal. WSJ is a bit behind the knowledge of fandom communities on this, but it is having interesting effects on the publishing industry. Maybe blogs, too?


Courting Song for Selkies, a poem by Amal El-Mohtar & Jessica P. Wick on Ideomancer. This is one sense of what I mean when I say "Mythpunk" ;-)


Suit Up, by Catherynne Valente. A reflection on how suits are hawt. I am also a sucker for a man in a suit, but I don't think any man since my last bf has ever tried to take advantage of that.


Diana Comet Presents...75 Years of Fabulous Writers. A periodic table of 117 writers in 3 minutes.

The Credit Card Monster

I think most Americans have one. And like the monsters we used to have under the bed or in the closet, it has the power to keep us from sleeping peacefully at night.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I have a pretty good idea where mine came from:

• Ooooo, stuff is on sale!
• Buying jewelry supplies is no problem! I'll just resell it later, right? And high vendor fees are totally worth all of the press if I only break even!
• I'm going to put EVERYTHING on my cards for now, to stockpile extra cash for the co-op purchase! Then I can just pay it all back later.

The first habit I mostly squished a few years ago, as I became Discardian. The second was trickier, but I've put a moratorium on all my business related spending. I still have plenty of unused supplies, and this is forcing me to finally use all of them in unexpected ways.

The third was the worst in the long run, because I didn't notice for a long time what a terrible habit I'd developed. And it's not just what you're spending on the cards, its also what the bank is charging you in interest on purchases. One of my cards doesn't even come with any extra customer benefits due to a SNAFU with the bank. No matter how aggressively I tried to pay them down, they kept building up with new expenses and interest.


My live is fairly uncomplicated, financially speaking, so its a good time to go monster hunting ;-)

Rule one, stop feeding the monster. I haven't frozen my cards into a block of ice, but I have stopped using them all together. Its either cash or debit, and I don't like using my debit card.

Rule two, begin the hack'n'slash! I already have some savings, so I'm devoting everything that would go to debt reduction and savings to just debt reduction. The interest on my credit cards is a lot higher than the interest on my savings account (thanx BoA).

Fixing Finances

I hate the stereotype that women are incompetent at tracking their finances. Based on the state of the national economy, *everybody* is bad with finance. It looks like part of the latest incarnation of the American dream is to live outside one's means.

But I've been doing my own taxes for years, both business and personal. I didn't need to be rescued from numbers, and I like to know where my results come from in case I'm audited. It's tedious but people blow the difficulties out of proportion. Managing my personal finances holds about the same amount of tedium, but smaller bits spread out over the year.

First I just tracked my spending for four months, starting in January. I was almost always in the red, but always for different reasons (medical, business trip, week of parties, etc). For that reason I put off making a proper budget because I wanted to see what a "normal" month was like. Until the *headdesk* moment when I realized there is no such thing. At the beginning of May I worked something out that I think affords me some room for errors, as I slowly learn to stop making them.

I also realized that I can't keep track of a personal budget on a once-a-month budget. My bills can be tracked that way, usually all paid on the first of the month, but not my groceries or discretionary spending habits. So its once-a-week checks for food and random stuff.

Like the grocery changes, I think this will be OK. Breaking habits is difficult, but some sources indicate that its better to exchange one habit for another.

Internet Bounty

How To Clean Stuff dot Net. Thank goodness, because I am a spaz.


5 Minute Chocolate Cake. Baked in a coffee mug, in a microwave. This is a dangerous thing for me to find, so I'm sharing the peril.


Six Months of Rules. From "Premise," For the last six months of my twenties, I am going to follow "the Rules" of dating (or my best interpretation of them) and write about it.

Just reading the first few pages... Madam, you have way more patience for this than I would. Good luck with your project :-)


Are You Eating Yourself Into Debt? From Man Vs. Debt.

I definitely was.


Welcome to the Institute for Beyonce-related Cultural Studies. . . A despicable charade where so much is demanded of women, so much compliance and poking and prodding, so much effort to make ourselves beautiful and radiant and perfect, so much forcing of square pegs into round holes, just so we could meet it all, do it all, get close to the apex of perfection and still be worth nothing.

The Beyonce song reminds me of some back-foot humor. "How is a girl like you still single?" How are you dumb enough to ask me that question?