Archive for the 'top five' Category

My apartment is great and awful

Published
by
ashley
on November 10, 2008
in apartment, friends and top five
. 0 Comments

Top five things that annoyed me about my apartment this weekend:

1.  I hate when the weather outside is a brisk 58 degrees and then I walk into my 70 degree apartment and my glasses fog up and I immediately get hot and annoyed at the temperature, so I turn the thermostat down or off to compensate for temperature differences and then thirty minutes later, I am shivering.

2.  I had to wait for the dishwasher to finish its hour-long rinse cycle (okay, it’s not really an hour long, but it felt like it) before I could take a shower because I was concerned my apartment would run out of water.  I don’t know if that would happen, but it’s a concern of mine that I will be in the shower washing my hair and then the water runs out and I have shampoo-head.

3.  Although I generally don’t really mind my 30 minute commute into downtown, this weekend we contemplated going somewhere, but the thought of having to sit on the metro for 30 minutes was like torture in my head.  During weekdays, I like my commute because it gives me a chance to actually physically wake up.  I am not what you call a morning person - I don’t even have to be at work until like noon (journalism clearly still the best career path for me) and I still struggle with that.  I usually wake up at the last possible minute, then rush into the shower, throw some clothes on, eat a bowl of cereal while checking the weather online, put my shoes on, grab my bag and start walking to the metro.  Thirty minutes from bed to door, less if I skip some things like eating or socks.  Then once I get to the metro and get on the train, I can pop my earphones in, read the paper, take a nap and get myself ready for the day.  But on the weekends when everything is in slow-motion, I can’t bear to think about spending 30 minutes+ on the train.  No thank you.  I will just stay here and do some laundry.

4.  This morning I woke up very groggy and grumpy.  I looked around our bedroom and immediately decided it was un-feng-shui-ish so I hopped online to look up basic principles of feng shui.  Our bedroom fails in every inch of the word of failing.  I promptly sketched out a plan in my head for furniture placement but was quickly foiled by the lack of cable outlets.  Unless I want to watch television while lying on my side, or unless I want to spend the next 8 months tripping over a stray cable cord running the length of our room, our bedroom has to continue… failing.

5.  There are two aspects to our apartment that are, quite frankly, ginormous.  We have a ginormous pantry and we have a ginormous bathroom.  However, we do not have a linen closet.  When I have a monster laundry marathon day and do all the laundry I can find, when I try to put towels up on the rickety ladder shelf we bought from Ikea specifically for towels and other beauty products I don’t use (see number 3 and my streamlined thirty-minute mornings), they don’t fit.  We also have another rickety shelf in our tiny washer/dryer room that holds our sheets and blankets that is also quite full.  I don’t understand why the designers of this apartment could not have made the pantry smaller and added a linen closet, or why instead of the monstrous open area in the middle of the bathroom, they couldn’t have added some sort of storage system.  But it is annoying.

I realize that complaining about these things (dishwasher!  giant bathroom!  pantry!  laundry area!) makes me sound like a horrible person.  Here are the top five things I like about my apartment:

1.  The dishwasher is clearly necessary.  Marques and I spent a year and a half in an apartment without a dishwasher.  We never fought as much or as hard as when we fought over who had to do the dishes.  He usually lost.  I am also thankful for the counter space I have, which is good when I enter baking mode and feel the need to ice 48 sugar cookies.

2.  The washer and dryer are also important - if there is not a washer and dryer in close proximity, we have a tendency to let the clothes pile up into Laundry Mountain, and then we get so overwhelmed by Laundry Mountain that we start febrezing everything and create piles of clothing based on dirtiness.  We don’t do that anymore.

3.  I am within walking distance of a Target and Old Navy.  I’m very close driving-wise to a Trader Joe’s.  Twenty minutes to Wegman’s and Ikea.  I don’t understand how we can be in a recession when it seems like I do is spend money at these fine establishments.  If you look at my bank statement, it pretty much goes like this:

TARGET - 11/06
TRADER JOES - 11/06
WEGMANS - 11/07
TARGET - 11/08
IKEA - 11/08
TRADER JOES - 11/09
TARGET - 11/09
OLD NAVY - 11/09

Throw in rent, student loans, exorbitant cable bill and you’ve got my spending down pat.  Also yes, I really do go to Target that much.  Don’t judge me.

4.  My bathtub is awesome.  It is rotund and giant.  I will miss this bathtub when we move out of this place.  This bathtub is the kind of bathtub that little girls can swim in and pretend they are mermaids.

5.  Lots of cabinet space - there’s a whole set of cabinets I haven’t even USED yet.

So there.  Pros and cons of my apartment, based solely on this weekend.

Also, happy birthday, Ruth Ann!  I’m going to mentally dedicate my morning commute playlist to you tomorrow and jam it full of Iron Maiden, Queen, and Slayer.  Nothing says getting ready for work like some metal.  I miss your face.

Thanks suffrage movement!

Published
by
ashley
on October 19, 2008
in i am ridiculous, marques and top five
. 0 Comments

On Saturday, I finally received my voter’s registration card for Virginia.  This prompted the following reactions:

1.  Relief.  Marques and I were very much voter-registration-slackers, which was uncalled for considering there were about 8 registration tables set up at my metro stop everyday.  And I would just whistle and pass by until one day, someone called out “Only a week left to register!” and I was like fuuuuuuuck.  Part of me hoped to commit a bit of voter fraud and vote absentee in West Virginia, but realized that since I had procrastinated this long to send my voter registration form in, one could only guess when I would get around to sending in an absentee ballot.  Also, I hate the post office.  Why can’t these things be done online?

2.  Elation.  Yay voting.

3.  Immediate concern about not knowing how to get to my polling place without the use of Google Maps. In 2004, I had to drive 45 minutes to vote because I didn’t change my address and thus, had to drive alllll the way to Charleston after I got off work.  I arrived 15 minutes before the polls closed, and then I had to turn around and drive all the way back to Huntington because we had to put a newspaper out that night.  John Kerry still lost.  (sidenote:  Google Maps has this really cool feature that tells you your polling place, so even though I had to resort to using it, at least I know where to go)

4.  Annoyance.  The Virginia voters cards are like a origami nightmare, with folding and more folding.  West Virginia voter registration cards look old and vintage which is probably due to West Virginia being one of the poorest states in the nation.  They’re printed on thin-thin dirty yellow cardboard that I once accidentally tore in half and had to tape back together.  Virginia cards are bright white with fancy folding.  It reminds me of old Mad Magazines, where you fold the page to point A to B and a secret HILARIOUS message appears.  I was sort of hoping that my secret hilarious voting message would be “FAKE VIRGINIA FOR MCCAIN” but alas, no.

5.  Vindication.  Marques got his voter registration card on Friday, which sent me into a jealous rage a la The Incredible Hulk.  I went a little HULKSMASH on voter’s rights and the Virginia board of voter registration for their oversight in sending me my card.  Marques taunted me quite a bit about it too, as everything that we do is a competition.  I like to think that Virginia was just saving the best for last.

(Other things we did this weekend include walking in nature and not seeing snakes, eating our weight in fried cheese and pasta, too much Will Bailey, our first real attempt at utilizing a treadmill, eating our weight in honey-wheat pancakes, discovering pumpkin butter at Trader Joe’s, eating my weight in pumpkin butter, watching too many baseball games)

Alas, Circuit City, we hardly knew ye

Published
by
ashley
on September 30, 2008
in i am ridiculous and top five
. 2 Comments

In today’s current economic climate, with stores and banks closing left and right (well, maybe), I find myself wondering: What stores would I miss the least?

Here are my top five stores that I wouldn’t miss if they had to close their doors due to the massive economic failure:

1. Linens-N-Things/Bed, Bath, and Beyond

I don’t understand the appeal of these stores. Certainly, you can purchase items for your bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen at these stores, but at ridiculously inflated prices. Their one saving grace is that they have a large selection of bedding and shower curtains. However, with the internet and all, what’s stopping consumers from finding that Ralph Lauren polka dot set on Amazon or eBay? At a cheaper price?

I’ve bought exactly 4 things from Linens-N-Things, and that was in 2004 - I bought four towels during a Labor Day sidewalk sale for $2.49 apiece. I’ve never bought anything from Bed, Bath, and Beyond mainly due to my Ikea duvet addiction and the fact that I’ve had the same shower curtain since November 2004 (yes, that’s true, and partially gross).  Regardless, I view Linens-N-Things and Bed, Bath and Beyond as potentially worthless stores, and there are no tears streaming down my face if they fold.

2.  Circuit City

I hate to say this because I worked at a Circuit City for almost two years when I was in college, and they were nothing but nice to me and it was actually a job I didn’t hate that much. Unfortunately, Circuit City, Best Buy has you beat. Best Buy is like your younger cousin - way hipper and cooler (and snottier). Circuit City, with your worn-out red floors and threadbare gray carpets, it’s time for you to shut your doors and move on. The fact that you’ve fired your best and most seasoned employees twice doesn’t do so much for employee relations either. Also, stop making your employees wear red - red looks good on nobody.  Me, I looked like a giant tomato.

3.  K-Mart

You lost when Wal-Mart started nosing its way into your territories. That, and you get a bad rap. Unfortunately, even though I hate Wal-Mart, I would still choose to stop at Wal-Mart before I shop at you. Your stores are filled with dated, cheap merchandise that doesn’t even pretend that it’s well-made (Target, I’m looking at you) and your business model was chewed up and spit out by Sam Walton. K-Mart, you had your day in the sun, but Wal-Mart has eclipsed you - face the facts. The only reason people still shop at you is because they don’t want to drive the extra 3 or 4 miles to Wal-Mart or Target.

4.  Edible Arrangements

I do not understand what it is about this store that infuriates me. Perhaps it is the fact that their logo sucks - I stand by my statement that the typeface Papyrus should not be used EVER (okay, maybe for some Egyptian World museum exhibit). Perhaps it is the fact that these people are charging 60 dollars for 10 dollars worth of fruit. I understand the appeal - you don’t want to send flowers so you send a vase of fruit that looks like flowers and the recipient gets to eat his or her gift. But come on. For 60 bucks, you can’t buy someone something they might actually want or need?

When my grandfather died last year, my mom’s company sent an Edible Arrangement to my grandmother’s house. It arrived in a ceramic vase covered in playing cards - hearts, clubs, spades, diamonds. It was very strange. But I feel almost that Edible Arrangements is not a very eco-friendly company - aside from the high carbon cost of shipping out-of-season fruits to the U.S., their containers aren’t very good for re-use. What’s someone supposed to do with a playing-card designed container? Or a Spongebob container? If it was me, that shit goes to Goodwill or in the trash.  Edible Arrangements, we’ve reached a period in our history where it is no longer considered charming to drop 80 bucks on a bouquet of fruit. Belts are tightening and well, we just want to cut up our own fruit, thank you. Repeat after me: there’s nothing wrong with a fruit platter.

5.  Books-A-Million

Look. We have three national book chains in this country. We don’t need all of these bookstores. Perhaps you haven’t read that America doesn’t like to read anymore. No? Well, we don’t. Well, I do. But I don’t like to read at full-price.

BAM is the ugly ducking of the three. Barnes & Noble, because it has an ampersand and the word “noble” in its name, is clearly the ‘high-class’ one of the three. Borders is in the middle - you can usually pick up a good 3-for-2 sale at Borders, but the bathrooms are sometimes unclean.  BAM, however, is just the worst. So of the three unnecessary bookstores in our country (come on, Amazon has them all beat) BAM is definitely the one I would miss the least.

Honorary mentions: any sort of music store in the mall (come on, don’t charge 19.99 for a cd people), Williams-Sonoma (who pays 129.99 for a copper ladle?), Toys-R-Us (I think you might have outgrown your brand, Geoffrey) and (dare I say it?) The Gap (nobody likes the middle child).

Top five stores I would cry for days and days if they closed?

1.  Target
2.  Trader Joe’s
3.  Ikea
4.  Amazon.com
5.  Wegman’s