I could've sworn that my Physics teacher informed the class last Friday of the upcoming three day Labor Day weekend. Talk about wishful thinking! See, it was a crrrrrrraaaazy weekend and I was seriously looking forward to a class-free Monday. I even slept in an extra 30 minutes this morning and took my time getting out of bed and even made the bed! I lazied my way into the kitchen and washed a mountain of dishes. I started to boil some water for our morning French-pressed coffee and then sat down to check my email.

I casually sent an email to my boss telling him that I'd be able to run some extra errands for work today since it's a holiday and all. I thought that he was really out of it when he responded with 2 words: "What holiday?". I looked at my calendar and was flabbergasted. Turns out, I'm really out of it. I didn't see the words I expected to see in the box labeled August 25th. But Labor Day is supposed to be today... isn't it? I mean, Doug and I just went to REI's Labor Day Sale yesterday... but then wait... I turned the calendar page to September. Hooooooooooly Shiiiiiiit!

I went into full-fledged panic as I read "Labor Day" marked for September 1. Right on time, just as the panic set it in, the steam kettle blew its whistle. Shit! I only had an hour to brush my teeth, wash my face, change into something civilized, burn the roof of my mouth with scalding coffee, wolf down some breakfast, drive to school, look for parking and speed walk to class.

Well, I made it to class on time. How in the world did I do that? I prioritized and didn't brush my teeth. Nor did I wash my face nor comb my hair, nor drink coffee nor eat breakfast. I threw on a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and a sweater and slipped into my Crocs. I kissed Doug and the canine kids goodbye and grabbed my backpack as I fled out the door. I made it to school on time, thank god, even with a few minutes to spare. I felt like a crazy woman with morning breath and serious bed head, but I did it.

Okay, completely off topic: In the world of cute shoes, I have some news that I'm excited to share with you. I scored two pairs of shoes last weekend, one of them for 19 bucks (thanks to a tip from Chez Shoes)! I will post with pictures, sooner than later, I hope. Oh, I'd much rather blog than study. Sniff...

This is not Super Bad the film. Despite rave reviews, I thought the movie was terribly bad and so cliché and regretted paying the $4.00 I sacrificed to rent it from Blockbuster Video.

Superbad.com is not related to that movie at all. Instead, SuperBad.com is Internet art, total free association -- dreamy and ephemeral. Are you bored? If so, it's quite amusing. Go check it out!

I'm obsessed with Trader Joe's Rice Crispy Bars. Oooh... I'm salivating just thinking about it. Okay... must concentrate.

We are loyal Trader Joe customers. We love the quality and the prices of their food. All our staple items are from TJ's: frozen fruit, snack bars, shredded wheat cereal, cornflakes, milk, canned beans, tofu, salad, etc. etc. etc. We buy the same staple items every other week and as you can imagine, we can get pretty bored if we don't mix it up once in a while.

So, we started experimenting with a wide variety of Trader Joe snacks. Yes, the Rice Crispy Bars were a hit! At least with me, anyway. I can tell you this: I can make a pretty wicked batch of rice crispy treats, but they don't even come close. The TJ Rice Crispy Bars are perfectly buttery and sweet and ever so soft and gooey. I can finish an entire bag all to myself -- it's that good! One bar a day for 8 days. Well, I just ran out and I'm seriously jonesing for a TJ Rice Crispy Bar. Mmmmm.... Truly a MUST TRY.

I get to slack a little bit. This first week of school has been a light load. Our physics teacher is very considerate of our administrative obligations, so both days of class have been pretty science-and-stress free. We even got to skip lab this week. Since my brain cells aren't yet being utilized for much left-brain thinking, how about using some of the right? Here's a peppy outfit I created from my virtual closet that is Urban Outfitters. I originally intended to use Polyvore, but apparently, this dress, originally part of their Urban Renewal line, is no longer being sold on their website (thank god I saved a screen shot last week).

{ Clothes from UrbanOutfitters.com. }

My blogger cards finally arrived today and I'm very pleased with them. They turned out grrrreat! Their arrival totally offset the negative emotional effects brought on by the dreaded first day of class. Whooohoo!

For anyone, really... A friend sent me this email, which she received from someone else, who received it from another, and so on. You guys have probably seen this already. It's kinda like spam, but really much too interesting and useful (to me at least) to be called as such. For the sake of boxing and labeling, I'm going to call it InfoSpam. Also, I don't know who the author is, so if any of you know who originally wrote this, please send me a note so that I can properly credit that individual. Anyhoo, do you know...

1. Peel a banana from the bottom and you won't have to pick the little 'stringy things' off of it. That's how the primates do it.
2. Take your bananas apart when you get home from the store. If you leave them connected at the stem, they ripen faster.
3. Store your opened chunks of cheese in aluminum foil. It will stay fresh much longer and not mold!
4. Peppers with 3 bumps on the bottom are sweeter and better for eating. Peppers with 4 bumps on the bottom are firmer and better for cooking.
5. Add a teaspoon of water when frying ground beef. It will help pull the grease away from the meat while cooking.
6. To really make rich scrambled eggs or omelets, add a couple of spoonfuls of sour cream, cream cheese, or heavy cream in and then beat them up.
7. For a cool brownie treat, make brownies as directed. Melt Andes mints in a double broiler and pour over the warm brownies. Let it set for a wonderful minty frosting.
8. Add garlic immediately to a recipe if you want a light taste of garlic and at the end of the recipe if your want a stronger taste of garlic.
9. Leftover Snicker bars from Halloween make a delicious dessert. Simply chop them up with the food chopper. Peel, core and slice a few apples. Place them in a baking dish and sprinkle the chopped candy bars over the apples. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes!!! Serve alone or with vanilla ice cream. Yummm!
10. Reheat Pizza. Heat up leftover pizza in a nonstick skillet on top of the stove, set heat to med-low and heat till warm. This keeps the crust crispy. No soggy micro pizza. I saw this on the cooking channel and it really works.
11. Easy Deviled Eggs. Put cooked egg yolks in a Ziplock bag. Seal, mash till they are all broken up. Add the remainder of ingredients, reseal, keep mashing it up mixing thoroughly, cut the tip of the baggy, squeeze mixture into egg. Just throw bag away when done easy clean up.
12. Expanding Frosting. When you buy a container of cake frosting from the store, whip it with your mixer for a few minutes. You can double it in size. You get to frost more cake/cupcakes with the same amount. You also eat less sugar and calories per serving.
13. Reheating refrigerated bread. To warm biscuits, pancakes, or muffins that were refrigerated, place them in a microwave with a cup of water. The increased moisture will keep the food moist and help it reheat faster.
14. Newspaper weeds away. Start putting newspapers in your plants to work the nutrients in your soil. Wet the newspapers, put layers around the plants, overlapping as you go. Cover with mulch and for- get about weeds. Weeds will get through some gardening plastic they will not get through wet newspapers.
15. Broken Glass. Use a wet cotton ball or Q-tip to pick up the small shards of glass you can't see easily.
16. No More Mosquitoes. Place a dryer sheet in your pocket. It will keep the mosquitoes away.
17. Squirrel Away! To keep squirrels from eating your plants, sprinkle your plants with cayenne pepper. The cayenne pepper doesn't hurt the plant and the squirrels won't come near it.
18. Flexible vacuum. To get something out of a heat register or under the fridge add an empty paper towel roll or empty gift wrap roll to your vacuum. It can be bent or flattened to get in narrow openings.
19. Reducing Static Cling. Pin a small safety pin to the seam of your slip and you will not have a clingy skirt or dress. Same thing works with slacks that cling when wearing panty hose. Place pin in seam of slacks and ... ta da! .. static is gone.
20. Measuring Cups. Before you pour sticky substances into a measuring cup, fill it with hot water. Dump out the hot water, but don't dry cup. Next, add your ingredient, such as peanut butter, and watch how easily it comes right out.
21. Foggy Windshield? Hate foggy windshields? Buy a chalkboard eraser and keep it in the glove box of your car . When the window gets foggy, rub with the eraser! Works better than cloth!
22. Reopening envelopes. If you seal an envelope and then realize you forgot to include something inside, just place your sealed envelope in the freezer for an hour or two. Viola! It unseals easily.
23. Conditioner. Use your hair conditioner to shave your legs. It's cheaper than shaving cream and leaves your legs really smooth. It's also a great way to use up the conditioner you bought but didn't like when you tried it in your hair.
24. Goodbye Fruit Flies. To get rid of pesky fruit flies, take a small glass, fill it 1/2' with Apple Cider Vinegar and 2 drops of dish washing liquid; mix well. You will find those flies drawn to the cup and gone forever!
25. Get Rid of Ants Put small piles of cornmeal where you see ants. They eat it, take it 'home,' can't digest it so it kills them. It may take a week or so, especially if it rains, but it works and you don't have the worry about pets or small children being harmed!
26. INFO ABOUT CLOTHES DRYERS. The heating unit went out on my dryer! The gentleman that fixes things around the house for us told us that he wanted to show us something and he went over to the dryer and pulled out the lint filter. It was clean. (I always clean the lint from the fil- ter after every load clothes.) He told us that he wanted to show us something; he took the filter over to the sink and ran hot water over it. The lint filter is made of a mesh material ... I'm sure you know what your dryer's lint filter looks like. Well ... the hot water just sat on top of the mesh! It didn't go through it at all! He told us that dryer sheets cause a film over that mesh that's what burns out the heating unit. You can't SEE the film, but it's there. It's what is in the dryer sheets to make your clothes soft and static free ... that nice fragrance too. You know how they can feel waxy when you take them out of the box ... well this stuff builds up on your clothes and on your lint screen. This is also what causes dryer units to potentially burn your house down with it! He said the best way to keep your dryer working for a very long time (and to keep your electric bill lower) is to take that filter out and wash it with hot soapy water and an old toothbrush (or other brush) at least every six months. He said that makes the life of the dryer at least twice as long! How about that!?! Learn something new everyday! I certainly didn't know dryer sheets would do that. So, I thought I'd share! Note: I went to my dryer and tested my screen by running water on it. The water ran through a little bit but mostly collected all the water in the mesh screen. I washed it with warm soapy water and a nylon brush and I had it done in 30 seconds. Then when I rinsed it ... the water ran right thru the screen! There wasn't any puddling at all! T hat repairman knew what he was talking about!

{ Picture of Patty and Selma courtesy of Supafly.com. }

Do you know what's strange about this purchase? I dislike guns. And, except for Jack Skellington, I hate skulls with a passion. But, so much for strange attractions. I visited these earrings like a million times at Pulp Sushi's Etsy shop before buying them. I'm glad I got them -- I love these earrings to death.

The gun earrings are called "Love Gun" and the skull earrings are called "Dia de Los Muertos" -- or Day of the Dead. Both are made by the lovely Marilyn at Pulp Sushi.

Pulp Sushi @ Etsy → http://pulpsushi.etsy.com
Pulp Sushi Blog → http://pulpsushi.typepad.com

Wow. That was fun. A LOT of fun. The above collage is my entry to Solestruck's Polyvore Contest. Go to Solevoice and check out the official deets!

Inspired by Whitney's rounded corners blogger cards, I ordered some of my very own. She recommended Overnightprints.com and so that's where I ordered mine from. The front/back pictures above are just the low resolution previews and hence the sharp corners and muted colors. I can't wait to get them, sometime this week, I hope.

UPDATE:
I received my cards and they look great! Thanks, OvernightPrints! There are more reasons to use OvernightPrints.com for your printing needs. Read more about it at Farm Fresh Creative.