Ten Tips You Probably Already Know About Keeping Clean

Some hygiene tips I've come across over the years:

1.  Wash hair every other day.  Will need a couple of weeks for hair to adjust but is ultimately better.

2.  Fold your underwear.  Wrinkled ones show more under tight pants.

3.  Combing conditioner through your hair leaves you with less tangles.

4.  Every cup left overnight needs to be washed, even if it just had water in it.  You'd be surprised how much dust you end up drinking if you don't.

5.  Don't put bar soap directly on your loofah or bath flower.  Lather your skin first and then exfoliate to avoid a scummy mess.

6.  Wait at least one hour after eating to brush your teeth.  The acid in your food weakens your enamel.

7.  If your face feels dry after you wash it, your facewash is too harsh.

8.  Only use cotton swabs on the outside of your ears.  Contrary to popular belief, ears are self-cleaning and only require a quick immersion in water whenever you bathe or shower.  Make sure you get all the water out (through shaking yoru head, plugging your nose) to avoid infection.

9.  Don't leave your toothbrush in the bathroom.  Do you really want to brush your teeth with the same bacteria crawling all over it as in the toilet?

10.  Be careful with whom you share your toothpaste with.  Quickest way to get mono.  Seriously.

Chances are you've heard these all before.  But just in case you didn't, there you are.  Enjoy.

"There is No City that Does Not Dream" by Anne Michaels

There is no city that does not dream
from its foundations. The lost lake
crumbling in the hands of the brickmakers,
the floor of the ravine where light lies broken
with the memory of rivers. All the winters
stored in that geologic
garden. Dinosaurs sleep in the subway
at Bloor and Shaw, a bed of bones
under the rumbling track. The storm
that lit the city with the voltage
of spring, when we were eighteen
on the clean earth. The ferry ride in the rain,
wind wet with wedding music and everything that
sings in the carbon of stone and bone
like a page of love, wind-lost from a hand, unread.

First truly beautiful day today.  Warm, sunny, with just the right amount of breeze.  Took the bus to stroll along Westdale.  Browsed shops.  Tasted shwarmas and yogurt ice cream.  Talked about cards, comics, and bicycles.  Bought candy.  Sat on benches with chilled lates and mixed berry shakes.  So naturally this poem just seemed to fit with this moment.  Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

"You Won't Be Able To Be Sad" by The Break and Repair Method

I waited for too long

Just to knock at the door

And it's always been love songs

That pick me up off the floor

Then you said "I don't want you"

And you won't be able to be sad

If you want it you got it 

Written over your face 

Could you pay me a listen 

I could pay you a gaze 

Then you said "Now's not a good time" 

And you won't be able to be sad 

You don't get it 

No, you don't don't get it 

We're coming up quickly 

To the end of the race 

You're trying to figure out 

How many ways you got to win 

I'm waiting around while you're working it out 

So you won't be able to be sad 

You don't get it 

No, you don't don't get it

Lovers Die, Lovers Lost, and Hope Lives On

Three interesting articles that caught my eye and touched my heart today:

Lovers die, arms entwined

Esposito's stunned aunts said the 24-year-old didn't normally sleep in the dorm. He had gone there Sunday night, though, to comfort Angela, 23. She had been frightened by several smaller earthquakes that had preceded the 6.3-magnitude temblor that partially collapsed the building, they said.

Love lost, labour for sale

He dreamed too big, ran too hard. Now Guillaume Mercier must find his way back to a smaller life. So his stone-and-timber castle on Garth Street is for sale.

President of Liberia speaks out

I think that any woman who speaks out about intimate partner violence, in a world where such violence is still so heavily stigmatized and regularly blamed on women, is immensely brave. I think this is especially the case when the woman in question is a powerful head of state — and not even past, but present — and likely to be even more heavily criticized as a result.

Top Virtual Notebooks

Although I've been swearing by MS OneNote for quite a while and nothing will replace the program in my heart, I am surprised and pleased to announce something that actually is closely on par with the  program.

 

[If you have not heard of OneNote before, quickly refer to Lifehacker's and Macinsider's reviews.  Trust me, it is definitely worth the while.]

 

 

Springnote is very similar to OneNote, complete with the optional ruled template (which I love love love).  Complete with notebook tree sidebar, auto save, formatting, various media supports, and even plugins, for a free application it certainly does the job.  There's no drag and drop boxes for texts however and there is no drawing tool, but what sold me on the product was the "insert equation" feature.  Type in your equation into the box and it is automatically converted for you.  Something essential that is definitely lacking in OneNote!  Did I mention that Springnote also has MSN bot, Twitter, and iPod support?

So if you don't want to shell out the hefty tag for Microsoft Office (and are uncomfortable with pirating), Springnote is fine replacement for your barbaric, tree-killing paper notebooks.

Assholes.

Ringing, Revelry, and Wrinkled Rants

I just got really confused wondering why the phone was ringing when we don't even have a house phone.  And then I realized that I had turned the T.V. on way too loud and had left after the Leonard Cohen show.

What else is going on in my life?  Feeling sick and Final Fantasy III on Mike’s DS.  Oh, Mike and Jesse finally finished Tales of Symphonia 2 and saved Ratatosk’s core, ergo the world (whew!).  It was one of those games where you watch it expecting the story to get better and really, it stays on par with how it began (pretty corny) but the guys loved it and I guess that’s the most important thing.  They’re restarting from the beginning to go to all the secret dungeons and things that they missed so they can get the “ultra ending”.  I thought levelling Pokémon and Final Fantasy characters were tedious… these guys will grind for hours upon hours and think nothing of it.  I swear they should be getting money for this or something.  I definitely feel like I should be getting paid.

Signed up for summer courses today.  Basically all electives because there’s no Gerontology offered for the summer.  Still debating whether or not to stay in.  Program restructuring sucks.  It usually means that there’s no money being pumped into the program so they want to change it in order to make it more cost-efficient (aka < lame).  Hence why Gerontology will most likely be merged with Health Studies, something that anyone who knows anything about the field are protesting.  You know, over-medicalization of aging and all that.  Honestly, I expected more from this university.  Don’t they even listen to what they teach? 

So yeah.  That’s what has been going on.  Notice the alliteration in the title?  Good for you.  Harder to come up with than you think.  Go ahead and try it for yourself.  In other words, update your freaking blog.