Author: heather

Books

The Hunger Games

heather

On the recommendation of a countless number of people, I read The Hunger Games.  I just finished it up on Sunday, and I’m still trying to figure out what I think of it.  Please note – spoilers will follow, so don’t read this if you want the entire book to be a surprise.

The book reminded me of Harry Potter and Twilight, in that it’s a quick, engrossing read.  You don’t want to put the book down until you find out what happens.  The language is easy to follow and fairly simplistic.  The concepts are more complicated however, as the book is about a gruesome fight-to-the-death and 1984-like government oppression.  It’s very gruesome, in point of fact.  One of the participants in the “Hunger Games” gets attacked and eaten by a pack of wild dogs that are really resurrected former Games players.  Dark.

The true thread of the story though, is the story of Katniss, the girl hunter who wows the crowd and makes everyone fall in love with her, including the fellow tribute from her home district, District 12.  This boy, Peeta, has been in love with Katniss since the age of 5, a fact that the organizers of the games choose to exploit for viewership and interest.

Despite the history and actions of Peeta over the course of the 10 years they’ve known each other, Katniss prefers to assume that he is just “acting” in order to win the games.  I can’t believe that a 16-year-old girl would be that dense.  She is conflicted by another sort of love interest, her hunting partner, Gale.  They never were anything but friends, but the faux romance with Peeta (for the benefit of the games) makes her contemplate her relationship with  Gale.

A movie is being made of the book.  I read a review/preview, and the writer was lamenting that it seems as if the love triangle (ala Team Jacob/Team Edward) was going to play center stage.  In my mind, however, that IS center stage.  The relationship between Peeta & Katniss is the main motivating force of the story.  Without that, it’s just a death match.

Which brings me to my point, that this is really a love story, which is not what I thought it was going to be.  Not that there is anything wrong with that.  I love a good love story.  But, this one annoyed me.

Katniss is so mean to Peeta.  She is cold, and he is sweet and caring and self-sacrificing.  Sure, Katniss puts herself on the line to save Peeta, but it seems as if the ONLY reason she is doing it, is to survive the games.  The Gamemakers make a rule-change stating that unlike past years, this year two tributes can “win” the games, as long as they are from the same district.  Once that announcement is made, Katniss is all for playing up the romance with Peeta and taking advantage of all that means.

I really did not like Katniss very much.  Of course she will do anything for her family – she volunteered to be tribute in lieu of her sister, in fact.  However, she seems narrow-minded and harsh – disingenuous even.  And she hurts Peeta in the end.

I haven’t read books 2 or 3, so maybe things turn out all right, but I don’t seee how they can, if Katniss remains true to the character developed in the first book.

All-in-all, the book is good, especially for a young adult book.  The theme is very timely – oppression by the government and the desire to remain true to oneself in the face of that.  Those concepts are good.  I just was not a fan of Katniss, which is unfortunate, since she is the main character.  It is nice to see a strong, female lead – a girl who can take care of herself and others in her life, however.

Read it, and tell me what you think!

Health & Fitness

Turmeric Terror

heather

I read somewhere, I don’t quite recall where, that you can make a refreshing face mask out of yogurt mixed with the spice turmeric.  Well, I was cleaning out the fridge today and found an expired container of Fage.  I scrounged around and found some turmeric from who knows when, mixed the two of them together, and presto!  Cheapo face mask.

I slathered my face in the orange paste and let it harden into the consistency of sunbaked clay over the course of 20 minutes. Then I washed my face.  Or attempted to wash my face.  The mask was pasted on.  After a lot of scrubbing, I brought my face up to the mirror, hoping, nay expecting, to see baby-soft, glowing skin.

Instead I saw screaming, angry red blotches all over my face.  In fact, there was a clear line of demarcation on my forehead where the mask stopped and the unassaulted flesh began.

My face, everywhere the mask had been, was bright, sensitive red.  Oh my god, what had I done?!

I rubbed lotion all over my face to no avail.  The heat, my God the heat!

I doused a washcloth with milk and rested it over my skin, dabbing at the injured flesh.  The milk cooled it down, but the redness was only slightly reduced.

I started thinking of reasons to call in sick to work tomorrow.  I can’t very well tell my boss, “I seared my flesh with a witch’s brew of yogurt and decades old turmeric.”

Eventually, however, the tightness and redness started to simmer down.  And now, 5 hours later, the only traces of my brush with a Phantom of the Opera-like visage, is baby soft, glowing skin.  It just took awhile.

So, lessons learned?

1.  Maybe don’t experiment with home remedies on the most obvious part of  your body.

2.  Maybe don’t leave a mask on your face to the point where you almost need a jackhammer to get it off.

3.  Eat yogurt.  Don’t put it on your face.

Product Reviews

Home Haircolor Woes

heather

I’ve dyed my hair at home a countless number of times.  Each time I do it, I swear I am not going to do it again.  Then I get my hair colored at the salon and lament being $85 – $100 poorer. Then I resort to coloring my hair at home again.

Why is coloring one’s hair at home a bad idea, you ask?  Well, I’ve never had a colortastrophe – ended up with green hair or anything crazy.  It’s just, well, a very messy process.  I usually end up ruining at least one shirt and one towel and dying various spots around the bathroom orange – the toilet handle, random spots on the floor, maybe a even a spot or two on the ceiling.  How does this happen?  Who knows?!  I am always super careful.  But I ALWAYS make a mess, and our bathroom is not the same after as it was before.

Anyway, despite my best advice, I colored my hair at home a few weeks ago.  I decided to use a semi-permanent color, in the hopes that the outgrowth would be more natural.  Specifically, I used Clairol Natural Instincts #28 Dark Brown, aka “Nutmeg.”  The color started out almost black, which I am OK with, quickly faded to a perfect shade of cinnamony brown, and then my lighter roots started to peep out.

Fortunately, Clairol was thinking ahead and provided a “Week 2 Color Fresh!” packet (exclamation theirs).  It’s essentially dye mixed with conditioner.  Two weeks after you initially color, you are supposed to wash your hair and then douse your head with this gross looking brown pudding for 5-10 minutes to “refresh” your color.

It didn’t so much refresh my color as refresh the bathroom with a whole new array of orange stains.  They are everywhere – shower curtain, towel, shower walls, shower drain, my hands, and my scalp skin.  Or should I just say scalp?  Do I have to specify “skin” when talking about my scalp?  Who knows.  Who cares, I guess.  Anyway, the refresh packet dyed pretty much everything within a 3 foot radius orange.  My head looks a little weird.  I’m hoping that a good hair washing will return it to a fair normal.

Needless to say, while I might use Natural Instincts again, I will toss the Color Fresh! packet.  Oh, I almost forgot.  It also makes your hair smell a little funny – almost as funny as when I rinsed my hair with apple cider vinegar and didn’t wash it afterwards.  My hair did not smell good.  At all. It smelled a little…spoiled.  And not spoiled like pampered, spoiled like gone bad.

I’ll probably resort to getting my hair professionally colored next time.  I want to get some super dark purple lowlights – just a few random, almost imperceptible pieces.  I can’t do that at home, so I best go to a professional.  I work for a bank holding company, so I can’t do anything too crazy, but I want to do something that breaks up the monochromatic brown-ness of my head.

 

Product Reviews

HTC Rhyme vs iPhone 4s

heather

I recently decided to bite the bullet and get a smart phone.  For the past 2 years I’ve been making do with my Samsung Intensity (dumb phone) and my iPod touch.  But, I was getting tired of carrying around a phone, an iPod touch, and a camera everywhere.  Plus, I just really wanted a smart phone.

So after weeks of reading every review I could find and all the user reviews on Verizon (fyi – everyone either loves or hates their phone), I narrowed it down to the Samsung Charge, HTC Incredible or the Droid X2.  But then, not a day after I purchased a new Hobo International plum colored wallet, Verizon announced the release of the plum colored HTC Rhyme. It was fate.

From what I read, it sounded perfect – smaller form factor (for my dainty woman hands), cool docking station/speaker, better battery life, smooth interface, etc. etc. etc.  So the day after it came out, I got it.

At first I loved it – it was very snappy, call quality was great, I had access to tons of cool apps, It was super easy to use and very, very customizable.  But there were a few things I didn’t like.

The phone came with a light up charm – a rope-type thing that plugs into the phone, which you can thread to hang out your purse.  The charm lights up when you receive a call or text.  I never used it.  It also came with plum colored, no-tangle headphones.  Those suckers were huge, though.  No matter what size covers I put on them, I couldn’t get them to stay in my ears.  Then there was the issue with the mail app.  The native mail app does not recognize when emails are opened on a different device.  Emails you open on your laptop still show as unread on the phone.  It drove me nuts, so I switched to the Gmail app, but it didn’t integrate as well with the other features of the phone (like the notification bar).

All off this I could have lived with, but then I started playing with the camera.  As I mentioned at the outset, a main reason I wanted a smart phone was so I would always have a good camera on me.  Well, the Rhyme’s camera was excellent in every way except for color quality.  All the pictures had a reddish tint to them.  No matter how I adjusted the white balance, I couldn’t get colors to appear true.  See this web album for sample shots.

As I was lamenting the bad color quality, Apple announced the release of the iPhone 4s.  Everyone I know that has an iPhone loves it and loves the camera.  I knew it would be a sure thing from a photo quality perspective, and I was already familiar with the setup and features from my iPod Touch (which I loved).

I traded in my Rhyme and pre-ordered the iPhone.  And I love it.  The pictures are beautiful, the mail app works as it should, the battery life has been great, I love Siri (when she works), and the phone just feels good to hold – nice and solid.  Of course, it lacks the customization of an Android device, and getting pictures and music on and off the phone is more complicated – no more simple drag and drop.   We are primarily a Linux household, but my husband has my laptop dual-booted, so I can boot into Windows if I have to, and for the iPhone, I have to, which is unfortunate as my laptop has something wrong with it and likes to overheat when I have it in Windows.  Besides that, though, it’s great.  Here’s a sample pic for you.

Overall, I’m really happy with the iPhone 4s.  The HTC Rhyme would have been almost perfect, however, if not for the camera issue.  If you are trying to decide between the two and have any questions, ask away in the comments!

 

Books

Crucial Conversations

heather

So…I’ve been trying to read this book.  It’s been sitting on my nightstand for nigh on 4 months, just staring at me, saying “Heather, you really know you should read me.  Put down all that interesting science fiction and read a nice, important, New York Times bestselling book.  Come on, you know you should…”  I finally caved and started to read it.  The book is Crucial Conversations: Tools for talking when stakes are high.  I won it in a sort of lottery at a business seminar I went to.  The speaker said it was a good book. Since I finished business school over two years ago, I haven’t picked up one of those suckers, and I felt it was time to get back in the loop of business speak.  That was until I got to page 23 and this quote, “The Pool of Shared Meaning is the birthplace of synergy.”  That sentence just sucked away my will to live and all desire to finish the book.  Sure, sprinkled among the jargon may be some good points about how to have those conversations that no one likes to have, but I just cannot force myself to read one more sentence about synergistic pools of meaning.  Man.

I’ll go back to my Ursula K. LeQuin and sentences like this, “Sacrifice might be demanded of the individual, but never compromise: for though only the society could give security and stability, only the individual, the person, had the power of moral choice – the power of change, the essential function of life.  The Odonian society was conceieved as a permanent revolution, and revolution begins in the thinking mind.” (Quoted from The Dispossessed).

They are both getting to the same thought – that you have to speak your mind and stand up for what you see as truth to get anything accomplished.  I just much prefer Ms. LeQuin’s way of saying it.

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness

Back in Bidness

heather

As is my custom, I have gotten out of the custom of writing in my blog.  Again.  I’m not sure why.  We’ve had quite a bit of “action” lately.  The Beentz was here for a visit, Tim’s mom was here for a visit, I took a watercolor class at the Figge, I agonized over getting a smart phone and finally broke down and got one and then traded it in for the iPhone 4s, my mom bought me an awesome $15 standup desk from Salvation Army, we ran a 5K.  What else?  Hmm…  I found another school program I am interested in – Human Computer Interaction at Iowa State University.  Maybe I’ll do it?  That’s about the past month or two real quick-like.

On to the present, today we are cooking!  This morning I tried a roasted chickpea recipe from Fitness Magazine.  They probably would have turned out deliciously if I hadn’t over cooked them by at least 5 minutes.  The chickpeas that were not reduced to ash were actually pretty tasty.  I’ll have to try that recipe again.

Right now we are cooking up some delicious minestrone and acorn squash.  I made the absolute best chocolate chip cookies on Thursday, and I froze half the dough, so I might bake up some of those up tonight too.  Once the cold, windy weather sets in, I’m all for keeping the oven on all day.

Tim and I played a game of Carcassone, ate some Buffalo Wild Wings, and listened to some great music this afternoon.  Did some laundry, kissed Lucent on the head lots, dyed my hair dark brown.  Overall, it’s been a pretty excellent Sunday.  Here’s to me getting back on track with blogging and with healthy eating & exercise habits (which have been absolutely disgusting lately).

Take care, and don’t forget to the watch the Simpsons Halloween special tonight!!

Uncategorized

It’s finally finished

heather

Back in April, one of my co-workers found out that I dabble in calligraphy, and he asked me to do “Dance like nobody’s watching” in calligraphy on a small sheet of paper, so he could give it to his wife.  I assured him that I am no good as a calligrapher, but told him that I could probably convince my mom to do the piece, as she is an excellent scribe.

I never caught her in the right moment; however, so I resolved to do it myself.  I did 4 or 5 pieces that I was very dissatisfied with.  Then I decided to do it on watercolor paper on top of a nice watercolor wash.  I finally completed one that I was fairly happy with only to realize that I had written “Dance like nobody’s wathing.”  According to the Urban Dictionary, wathing is “Stalkerishly watching someone or something bathe.”  I think the most disturbing part of that definition is the part about watching “something” bathe in a stalkerish manner.  Shiver.

Anyway, missing the “C” changed the meaning of the phrase resolutely.  So I had to start over.  Again.

I was working on painting an ocean scene, so my palette was already loaded with purples, greens, and blues, so I got the paper soaking wet and washed those colors over it.  I then peppered the paper with kosher salt.  When it was all dry, it had a neat, almost tie-dyed, effect.  I drew guidelines on and went at it with a teal calligraphy pen.

Man, I really need to start taking better pictures of my stuff.  Anyway,  it’s not awesome, and the calligraphy  needs a lot of work, but I gave it to my friend yesterday, and he was really happy with it.  As long as the (non-paying) customer is happy, I am happy. It only took me 6 months to complete it!  Now I just need to finish my Mom (from Futurama) painting, and I’ll have a totally clean slate.

To get me off on the right foot, this morning I spent half-an-hour typing up an inventory of all our (“our” being Mom and me) watercolor paints.  It seems that for every class I take, I have to spend $40 on paints, even though I already have 3 baggies full of them.  Somehow I never have the exact right shade of cadmium yellow (the teacher requires deep and I have light, etc.).  To save time, I created a spreadsheet with columns for Main Color, Color Name, and Brand.  Now I can easily sort to see all the various reds or greens that I have.  It’s pretty awesome.  I kinda want to sign up for a class right this minute, so I can tell in 60 seconds whether I already have the appropriate colors in stock.  Ah, blessed spreadsheets…

On that note, Go Hawks!  Weeeuuwww!
Uncategorized

Home Sick Today

heather

I came down with a nasty cold yesterday – the kind of cold where you always need to have a tissue on hand because at any second, liquid snot will just start pouring out of your nose.  I mean pouring – like water pouring out of a faucet.  All the moisture from my nose vacated, so during the night I had to get up and put a moist washcloth over it to protect the fragile, exposed cartilage.  I need some mucus back up in there.

I went to work this morning because my nose seemed better and because at our office we have Paid Time Off (PTO) which means we don’t get sick days.  We just get days to use for whatever.  I, of course, have all of mine allocated to fun stuff like Benny & Nate visits, trips and what not.  But I had to break down and use some of my precious time today.  I took a brief 10-minute stroll with a co-worker this morning, and when I got back to my chair, the aches set in – all in my legs, my hands, my head.  In the span of 10 minutes I went from feeling poorly to feeling horrible.  So home I went.

After a nappy-poo I watched the first Firefly episode, then I tried to read The Dispossessed.  It’s a great book, but my fever-addled brain could make no sense of the words on the page, so I put it down and watched Good Will Hunting.

There is nothing like laying around all day, doing nothing, and then watching a movie about a genius to make one feel inadequate and as if one is not living up to one’s full potential.  I’m not sure it was the best movie to watch in my state.

But tomorrow is another day.  Hopefully I will be feeling better and will be able to accomplish something of use.

Books

Memoirs of a Geisha

heather

I just finished Memoirs of a Geisha this week.  I have to say, I don’t know what all the fuss was about. Learning about the training of a geisha and their lifestyle was interesting, but the main charactor, Sayuri, annoyed the heck out of me.  She described everything using metaphors.  I think the author was trying to make her appear poetic and deep, but they were so overused that it seemed forced.  Here is an exaple,

“But now I know that our world is no more permanent than a wave rising on the ocean. Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however, we suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper.“

She uses two separate metaphors to describe the same thing!  Enough already!!

Geishas are also supposed to be clever conversationalists.  Her examples of “clever” conversation all involved a geisha talking about being naked with her skin exposed to breezes or what not.  That didn’t strike me as “clever.” One does not need to be very clever to arouse drunk males.  I didn’t read one example of clever conversation in the whole damn book.

Perhaps it’s a cultural thing, but I just don’t understand the whole geisha thing.  They aren’t “prostitutes,” but they do sleep with men for money.  Kinda sounds like a prostitute to  me; albeit an expensive, high-class prostitute.  Watch Mal’s take on “Companions” in Firefly, and that’s pretty much my impression of geishas.

The main story thread also aggravated me.  *SPOILER ALERT*  Sayuri encounters this man, The Chairman, one day as she is crying by the river.  He speaks a few kind words to her, gives her money to buy shaved ice, and a hankie to dry her tears.  Of course, she immediately falls in love with him in that instant and spends the next 15-20 years yearning for him.  Eventually, after a series of unfortunate events, he ends up becoming her “danna” and paying her Okiya for the pleasure of sleeping with her a few times a week.  How romantic.  Oh, and he’s married and has a family.  I just don’t get it.  I understand that she was essentially sold into the lifestyle and had very few options, especially in those times (the book takes place during the Great Depression/World War 2), but still.

I did enjoy reading about the culture and the kimonos, however.   In my opinion, if the book had been written about a truly clever Geisha, it would have been much better.