outdoor showers

the past few days i have had the wonderful pleasure of showering in the afternoon when the sun is nice and bright thanks to my paid time off, and it made me remember how much i love outdoor showers. at the end of last fall, my parents had a sky light put in the hallway bathroom that my sister and i use, and when the sun happens to be shining brightly while i take a shower, it is much like an outdoor shower and this is very enjoyable.

my love for outdoor showers first started when we trekked out to linda lee's beach house on lbi and i got to use the outdoor shower in their shed-like thing in the backyard. i was hesitant at first because she said there were bugs, but i quickly realized that showering outdoors is the only way to really enjoy a shower. i dont know if it is because it is extra bright, or not as humid, or just not closed in, but outdoor showers are glorious. if you have never experienced an outdoor shower, i pity you.

so now i kinda have an indoor outdoor shower of my very own. which leads me to a slight problem: i am going to need a similar setup when i eventually move out because i have been spoiled. let's face it, i have been spoiled with everything in this house from the new luxury kitchen to the heat-pumping pellet stove to the pretty new washer and dryer and huge laundry room for hanging of millions of loads of laundry. my parents have set me up for a huge disappointment.

i am one salty snob

so it seems that i suck at updating you all on what nonsense i have been up to. sorry. but it hasn't been all that much, so don't get all worried that i'm out doing insanely fun things while you keep checking my blog and it keeps saying may 1 (actually i am doing out insanely fun things i just dont feel like turning on my parents computer and typing about it because both of my computers can't get internet right now, isn't that nice?). i'm looking into getting wireless adapters for the computers in my house dont already have wireless so i can just buy a wireless router and happily rejoin the lifestyle of having access to internet on my own computers and updating my blog every other day about how i went to borders and sat on the floor with my list of books that i need to invest in for a half hour weighing out the decision of whether to get dave eggers latest or a book on the history of salt (because i am addicted. i decided not to get either, actually, and instead finished out my david sedaris collection. i was happy with it. and then i got to the register and the girl was like oh, this was so funny! and i was happy that she didn't seem like a total idiot and was reading his books (although she did say that was the first of his that she read, and me, being the snob that i am, had an attitude that she didn't start with his earlier ones first. and then she said something like, oh have you read anything by his cousin? or is it his sister? she is hilarious! and then i was done with her because if you had read the book at all i'm sure you would know that she is his sister and not his cousin (although i'm not entirely sure since i haven't read dress your family yet. not to mention that i shouldn't have snubbed her anyway for not knowing this because that was the only one of his books that she had read. which actually made things worse again, so i took my change and left. and then snobbily said she should have known it was his sister and not his cousin, to which nick rightfully told me i was a book snob for the millionth time in five years. i guess it's too much to ask that people who work at chain bookstores have impecible taste in books and are knowledgable about them. i dont think it's too much to ask! ok i'm done with this snob-fest of a rant)).

last night nick and i went to barnes and noble so i could spent my $25 gift certificate from christmas before they start taking money off. i went straight to the bargain books and did not leave until an hour later when i had acquired the following for amazing prices:

-the rainbow - dh lawrence (5.98)
-in her shoes - jennifer weiner(5.98) yes i know this was made into a movie, but i also thought that the book would be much more interesting than the movie, it looked too boring
-black, white, and jewish - rebecca walker (4.98) written by alice walker’s daughter
-experience - martin amis (1.00) from the craziness that wrote london fields
-on writing - stephen king (1.00)
-family business - allen and louis ginsberg (3.98) (letters written between louis and allen ginsberg between 1944 and 1967. brilliant.

so i’m excited, but now my “to read” shelf is looking much too large, stuffed, in fact, that i cannot go to another bookstore anytime soon until i start reading like a maniac (although i REALLY want to go to the harvest book outlet in fort washington because they have a ton of books that are on my books to invest in list for really cheap. And very few things in life are more exciting than cheap books. lots of them). which is fine, because i do that anyway. just got my latest kitchen sink magazine (they requested that if you read it, you write that in your blog, the entire name, so there it is! you should subscribe, btw) and it has been excellent so far. I think my subscription to the new yorker might have run out, so i’ll def have to get on top of re-subscribing. i got something in the mail that is a two year subscription and it turns out to be like .85 per issue. yes!

just finished the best nonrequired reading of 2005 and it was superb like the 2004 edition. i now have all of the nonrequired reading anthologies on my books to invest in list, which i will be getting at harvest (hopefully). a review is soon to come.

i can, will, and have gone home again

it's quite sad how excited i got when i first saw commercials for coke blak because i have been ranting for years how much i loved pepsi kona and it's short run somewhere around the time when i was in 5th grade (which just happened to be prior to my addiction to caffeine, so loving the coke with coffee aftertaste was not a result of needing caffeine in my veins to keep the blood running through my brain so that i might not get a migraine (this does not work all of the time, sadly)). then they stopped running commercials for blak so i forgot about it until the other weekend when nick told me he found one in some convenience store and bought it for me but forgot it. the anticipation was building until yesterday at around 5:00pm when my taste buds experienced the coke then coffee taste after an approximate 10 year absense.

after chowing down on some white rice and lo mein leftovers, nick reminded me of the blak that was waiting for me in the fridge, and i must admit i was slightly nervous to actually drink it. i was nervous because i knew deep down that it was going to be slightly disgusting and i would only drink 4 sips of it before offering it up to his sister, who loves coffee just a little less than me (and i just remembered i left my chocolate covered espresso beans that she gave me on the coffee table over there! AAHHHH!). the first sip wasn't too bad, it was kinda good, but then it went downhill from there. by the fourth sip it tasted like cough syrup and i was done.

it reminded me of the time when i was about 8 and it was just my dad and me for dinner one saturday night and he said we could go to the store and get anything for dinner and i desperately wanted spam (this may seem disgusting to you, but it is much like the pepsi kona thing. apparently we used to have spam every now and then when i was really little when my mom still ate meat and didn't really care about the quality of our food, and my 8 year old mind truly believed that i loved spam). so we went to the store and i carried the spam around like it was gold, shaking it and all like the maniacle child i was (we have videos. they are not pretty). we got home, cooked it up (or whatever you do with spam) and we realized that it was absolutely repulsive. it was a sad time. i think my dad finished up the can though (because he eats anything). i guess it just supports the "you can't go home again" saying, which i currently am defying (not because i want to but because i can afford nowhere else). i wonder what other great childhood memories the food companies will ruin for me next.