Mattresses are for lie-rs.

Two weeks ago I went mattress shopping with a friend. It is important to note that there are no mattress stores in our town. I guess the urban planners of Chevy Chase figure a Mattress Discounters would look out of place sandwiched between Dior and Barney's. A few towns down on a main shopping strip of a road, we hit mattress purchaser heaven. I swear, there must have been at least seven mattress stores within a single mile of road. Mattress Discounters, Mattress Warehouse, Mattress Warehouse Outlet, Sleepy's, Serta, etc. etc. etc. As with all stores that sell very specialized, once-in-awhile-purchase type items (others include furniture stores, carpet stores, and stores that sell blinds for your windows), I wonder how mattress stores make enough money to stay open. I did some research and learned that the average life of a mattress is 10-15 years. So, assuming people only buy mattresses every 10-15 years, how much business do stores like this really get? How do they pay their rent? Especially because the average cost of mattresses seems to be $800-$3000 (the highest we layed on was $6000). We went into three or four stores in all before she found one she liked. We were the only customers in each of them. I'm also pretty sure most of the mattress salesmen thought we were lesbians. Hmmm...

(p.s. Tempurpedic mattresses are awful. I absolutely hated them and don't get what all the hype is about. Sorry, Swedes.)

Old and Busted | New Hotness

Old and Busted: Elizabethan Collars


New Hotness: Anthropologie's Battement Necklace

Old and Busted: Magic the Gathering Cards

New Hotness: New Humanist's God Trumps game, a "cut-out-and-keep metaphysical card game for all the family."

Old and Busted: Gloves with Polartec

New Hotness: Gloves that use a flexible polymer film that automatically regulates its own temperature (!) (unfortunately, look and style of the gloves = big negative)

Have you been to the DC metro aquarium?

On my way to lunch with Maureen at the (in)famous Kramerbooks today (where I am going to have these week's special of broiled Naragansett lobster stuffed with crab meat!!!! I skipped breakfast in delicious anticipation.) I realized what the sounds heard while riding the long elevator down to the metro tunnel at Friendship Heights mimic: whales. You know those nature shows where they film underwater and describe different whale sounds as "mating" or "locating," etc.? Sounds exactly like that. Weird. Can't they just grease the elevators not to squeak? Everyone knows they take them apart for repairs when they break, like, every week anyway. Grease them then. I'm off to lunch! Mmmm...
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Power Outage!!

It's around 6:45am. I woke up to use the bathroom (which is odd, but not entirely out of the ordinary for me) and quickly realized that the power's out! Waking up to a power outage can be quite disorienting. It's pouring down rain, so the outage must be due to the storm. Also, it must have JUST gone out (computer battery was at 95%), so I'm presuming the loss of electricity is what woke me up! I'm the only one sleeping in our house tonight, so I played grownup, lit some candles (I have dozens. I'm part Danish so I tend to hoard candles in the drug addict-like pursuit of hygge), and checked the fuse box. It looks okay. All the switches are on and flipped in the same direction, so I know the outage is external. Must be the whole neighborhood that's out. I wish it weren't pouring, I'd go for a walk. Luckily I can blog from my phone instead. This is totally the modern-day version of reading a book while the power is out! I'm off to read a book, go back to sleep, or eat the earliest Saturday morning breakfast I've had in ages.
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Tabbed browsing and the blackberry browser + being a loser insomniac

I can't sleep right now. Nothing new, I frequently have insomnia, especially when I'm stressed, which I currently am. Increasingly. Instead of doing something I feel would risk keeping me up for hours, like watching TV, surfing the net on my computer, or, worse, indulging in a 2am snack of orange chicken and shrimp fried rice leftover from tonight's dinner, I am browsing the net from my effin' blackberry. That's right. And, instead of wondering what the hell is wrong with me to surf a plethora of sites with non-blackberry friendly interface and email petty gossip to friends in darkness, broken only by the focused light of my pda screen, I think, "Man, I wish the blackberry browser had tabbed browsing." Tragically pathetic.

I'm off to read a guilty pleasure book. No, not a smutty, too-risque-to-even-take-to-the-beach romance novel. It's the second in a series for teenage girls, which will remain unnamed.

Night.
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Bike on the Metro

Reminds me of Denmark. I miss the S-tog... And my bike.
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We have a poltergeist in our house.

Specifically, our poltergeist lives in the laundry room... and I think it hates my roommate, Michele. I say this because I did a load and a half of laundry yesterday, no problems at all. Today, Michele and I were doing laundry together (I had a load in the dryer and Michele had a load in the washer - we have one of those standard attached washer/dryer units). I heard the dryer buzz so I went in to take my clothes out. To my shock and amazement, the washer/dryer unit had moved a good foot and a half out of the corner it was previously wedged in. It must have moved in some kind of rocking motion because our striped laundry room rug was now firmly wedged under the front right side of it. I have absolutely no idea how it moved that much. I tried to push it back, but it was REALLY REALLY heavy and I had to call in Michele and Sarah (my other roommate) to help me. I don't know why it would have moved today and not yesterday when I was doing laundry... or last week when Sarah was doing laundry. The only "rational" explanation I can come up with is that we have a poltergeist. :) Freaky. Maybe he is mad because I didn't use dryer sheets. Or, the more likely explanation (IMHO), because he hates Michele. Plain and simple.

Europe Is Finally, Totally, Awesomely Jealous

Discovered via G-chat link from my friend, Justin (who is a fabulous interior architect living in Brooklyn, NY. If you would like your space designed with flair (and can afford a hefty retainer fee!), contact me for his email). Reprinted without permission but with a citation and a link from New York Magazine:
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/11/obama_paves_the_way_for_future.html

It's like we went away for the summer and lost all the weight and got contacts! And also a tan.
Photo: Getty Images

For as long as we can remember, we have been Europe's fat, awkward friend, the friend that it didn't really like but had to hang around with because of circumstance. Europe disapproved of our flashy, loud, aggressive parents and was disgusted by what they perceived as our own flaccid response to them. And no matter how hard we tried with Europe, despite the fact that we let them raid our closets (and our clothes always looked better on them than us), and were bend-over-backward nice and flattering and totally self-deprecating, in the end they'd always just look at us like, "Do you really want to eat those fries?" But now, finally, we have done something to impress Europe. Last night, it choked on its cigarette and spit up its wine — that's how impressed it was. And this morning, it was all aflutter: The headline on Germany's Bild said, "Good Morning Mr. President — Make the World Better!" and Le Figaro led with "The World Salutes Obama's Victory."

"At a time when we must face huge challenges together, your election has raised enormous hope in France, in Europe and beyond," French fox-in-chief Nicolas Sarkozy said.

But the best part was that they are not just impressed, they're jealous.

"Cross-race values in politics is not something that is happening here yet," Bertrand Deprez, a consultant for the Centre, an E.U.-affairs lobbying firm, told the Journal, which also quotes a passage from Minorities.org, a blog devoted to European minority politics:

"Thanks to [Obama], minority politicians in Europe are looking at themselves as future Obamas … They're congratulating him, but they're also looking at their own future. They're thinking 'I can become mayor of Brussels."

Now, America. We have to remember not to gloat too hard when we see statements such as the above. We can't be like, Oh, yeah, if you try really hard, maybe you can achieve what we achieved in our massive country in your city of one million. We cannot etch, "Suck it, Eurotrash," in our cornfields. We must remember the most important lesson that transformational teen movies, perhaps our greatest cultural legacy, have taught us: Despite the fact that we are now a shining beacon of awesomeness and basically prom queen, we can never forget the fat, ugly unpopular kid that we used to be and are still inside. We have to treat everyone like they're just as unique and awesome and cool as us. Even France.


AWESOME.

Explanation

Dear readers,

I apologize for yesterday's short and relatively profane blog post, and for not posting in ages. To clarify/explain a few things, including my absence:

1. Jeff, in response to your email: My post had nothing to do with wanting or not wanting Obama to win. I just think the electoral college is stupid and antiquated, like I said. It does not reflect democracy and, in accordance to what Tanya and Marc mentioned in the comments section, I, too, feel that it is unnecessary in our modern technology age. I also feel that being elected as a governmental representative should require one to give up their individual vote. I think it is appalling when representatives do not vote in a way to reflect the majority opinion of their constituency. I think this should be required, and if it means having to put their personal opinion "on the back burner" for the duration of their term, so be it. ... But that's another post entirely.

2. That being said, I don't think I have expressed my political opinions on the American election one way or another in this blog and I plan to keep it that way. I will give a few clues, though: a) I'm a registered voter, but I cannot vote in the primary election. b) I have lived in Denmark for a total of a year and a half of my adult life and have great respect for the Socialist system. c) I'm always interested in social issues - primarily healthcare. I think it is appalling that the United States is the only first world country that lacks health coverage for everyone. d) I also think we should try to be self sustaining as far as energy goes. I don't understand why we don't have windmill farms and I don't understand why people in our country are so resistant to nuclear power, esp. because it's working overseas. e) I believe domestic policy should be in order before we parade overseas to act as an American Hegemonic Superhero.

3. To explain my absence, I've had a lot going on. I recently moved from my parents house in Annapolis, Maryland, where I'd been living since returning from Denmark, to a house with two friends in Chevy Chase ("The Rodeo Drive of the East"), Maryland - I live about two blocks from the Washington, D.C. border. Our new house is still a complete disaster area and it's coming along slowly. We have boxes all over the place, most of my sweaters and long sleeved t-shirts are still in the force flex trash bags I used to transport them, we've been eating our meals on folding card tables in front of the TV (no dining room table yet), there is a "beer fridge" (mini fridge, for all y'all that have been out of college forever/only drink hard liquor) in the middle of said dining room... Just an absolute disaster zone. Oh, and I've spent an inordinate amount of time on the phone with Comcast, Montgomery County parking and transportation office, etc.

4. I've also been looking for a job, and there has been a lot of heartache and turn around with that. Honestly, I think I've had the worst luck ever during my job search. I've had interviews, I've had offers, but still no job. :( I don't feel like posting about it, because some stupid superstitious bone inside me is telling me not to, but I'm hoping it will get better soon. If nothing else, I'm just really, really bored. It's hard to go from a really great full time job (in Denmark) to nothing, zero, zippo, zilch.

I'm hoping to come back to my blog now. I really enjoy blogging and I've missed it. I often think of things to blog about during random times and then never get around to blogging about them. For example, the other day I was thinking about what a weird pagan tradition carving pumpkins seems to be. I wanted to look it up and blog about it, but I never got around to it. I'll try to post more regularly. Writing is and always has been cathartic for me. Unfortunately, sometimes I feel I'm limited in what I can write about in this blog, because I'm not really sure who reads it... We'll see, though. Keep alert for more frequent posts coming soon. I really enjoy getting all your comments and emails. If you have any ideas for a post, or something you're dying to know what I think about, let me know!

Sarah

The Electoral College

... is fucking stupid.

Antiquated bullshit.