I absolutely hate the word “blog”

My God, there are some weird and fascinating trends here:

Shiny puffer jackets with fur-trimmed hoods — mostly guys, but some girls. I might actually buy one.
Rabbit fur scarves, accessories & trim — people don’t seem the least bit bothered by real fur here. I confess I did buy some furry earmuffs.
Shorts with tights and boots — Guess that’s popular stateside too, but even more so here. Damn these skinny short Japanese legs. I can’t fit into any of the awesome legwear or boots here. But my lace-up sheepskin boots are all the Tokyo rage. Take that, haters!
Jackets with complicated toggle closures. I saw one gal with a single toggle undone and it looked like total fashion suicide. People are so well-kept here.
Crazy inventive fake eyelashes — way more adventurous than what you’d see stateside. And the fake lashes here are made for wider eyes, so they actually fit me!

I wish I could provide pics of some of the crazy fashion, but it’s too rude to snap shots of strangers. There are countless more weird things than I could even state here, but in a nutshell, EVERYBODY is putting on a show. Being in Toyko totally undoes any preconceptions about homogenous Japanese culture, like those shots you get of a million suit-and-tie-clad office workers — even if the uniform is, well, uniform, the dudes here mix it up with Bowie hair and crazy glasses and whatnot. So incredibly cool to see!

Dear Bank of America Website: You should not default the radio button to having ‘Yes, remember this computer in the future’ selected. The default should either be nothing or NOT remembering it. SECURITY, PEOPLE.

Dear Google: You should not implement a feature that hides Labels that don’t have any useful content for me, but then have the hidden labels contain unread messages that then never get displayed. If you decide to implement such a ‘feature’ you should allow me to adjust settings to opt out of it.

Dear Shazam: Twitter integration only works if you allow users to modify the default tweet text, or if you make the default tweet text sufficiently un-douchey. But really you should just make it modifiable, come on.

Dear Chipotle iPhone App: You should tell me BEFORE I go to all the trouble of ordering via my iPhone that a) I cannot pay for my order via my iPhone at the location I have selected, and b) my order will never, ever, EVER get made before I arrive, thereby making iPhone ordering totally pointless.

TECHNOLOGY, YOU HAVE FAILED ME!

Q: What the heck do you use to muddle sliced fruit into a giant pitcher of sangría, whose surface area is too large for any standard mojito muddler?
Read the rest…

Courtesy of Gizmodo (via imgur via Digg).

Less than one minute into my work day, my right sandal fell apart. Specifically, the two industrial staples and two deep nail/rivet things popped right out of the wooden footbed, leaving nothing to hold down the leather strap keeping my foot in the sandal. GRR!

However, no task is too daunting for this handy lass. I MacGyvered my shoe back together using my dexterity, the original two staples and one of the nails (the other had gone missing), plus a few more Swingline staples and some Scotch tape from a coworker’s desk. (He also loaned me a screwdriver, so I could stop using my CamelBak water bottle to hammer everything together.)

So far, so good! I may not exactly build my own furniture, but don’t ever say I ain’t handy!

Okay, so technically they’re called mohop. But The Infinity Sandal is a damn good nickname!  Normally, I consider the blurbs from Seattle Picks to be a tad too recycled and wordy (I know, I know, soooo ironic) for my taste. But this one really looks like a gem.  And in case you haven’t realized, that shoe pictured to the left is ALL THE SAME SHOE.  Just different ribbons strapping it onto the foot!

They come in three different heel heights, as well as different toe shapes, and they come with a set of five different ribbons of your choosing, and you can purchase additional ribbons or just use your own, presumably.  And of course, they have really detailed tying instructions, plus a printable sizing chart, and a gallery of all the ideas other customers have come up with — what a refreshingly complete and helpful website!

I think I’m in love!  Problem is, I tend to destroy wooden-soled shoes like you wouldn’t (woodent?) believe — I scuff them, I crack or chip off bits of them, etc.  And with cheaper shoes that are stained or painted, this means that the exposed chip or crack is a different color.  BUT, since these babies appear to be made of solid maple, cherry and walnut, in theory I wouldn’t have that problem.  And how great is that?  Plus, I bet I could send them back for touching up, or just have my carpenter dad do it for me!  Totally going on my wish list.

A bunch of my coworkers have been sick lately, and I started to feel like I was coming down with something last Thursday and Friday. I was very determined not to let myself fall ill yet again this year, as I had had quite enough illness with that bout of mono that caused me to temporarily lose my job, thankyouverymuch. So I went on an Immunity Quest.

I had Grant buy me FOUR shots of wheatgrass juice from Jamba Juice on Friday afternoon, and then I got myself another four shots on Saturday and another four shots again today. And guess what? No sicky!

So I suppose our kitty is not the only wheatgrass fanatic in our household, after all. Maybe we’ll fight over it.

I had a weird little flashback to childhood the other day, when I came across an odd button in the elevator at my doctor’s office. The button, instead of reading “STOP” or “Emergency”, read RUN STOP, kind of like the old Commodore 64 keyboards.  I don’t think I’ve seen that command (outside of the fake keyboards programmed into some Virtual Console games) in 20+ years.

Holy crap, has HOBO International failed us this time. I literally did a triple take a few weeks ago when I stumbled upon this display at Nordstrom — trust me, the photo doesn’t do it justice, because these bags will SCAR YOUR RETINAE.

The colors are the same fluorescent neons of my 80s childhood, and are NOT WELCOME BACK IN MY LIFE. I don’t know what dried-up marketing exec came up with this ploy, but curse them!  This brand is known for being sleek, clean and above all else, BASIC and NEUTRAL.  I will cry if neon really is the new black.

To be fair, Jen bought a bright but pale blue wallet from this collection that looks lovely — so not all is lost.  But the pinks, oranges, chartreuse yellows and chartreuse greens can go back in the vault, please.  It’s not retro until it no longer hurts to look at it.

We just spotted this little vehicle when we were at brunch this weekend. I normally don’t love cars that are totally 100% decked out in marketing hype — too flashy for my taste.

However, Grant spotted this nifty little detail on the side: a built-in card holder! Kinda cool, different, and WAY more welcome than finding unsolicited fliers stuck to my windshield.

I actually grabbed a card to see how well it worked.  (Mildly damp, but still totally functional and no leaky/streaky ink problems.)  And I called the business to see if they would give me the name of the vendor who set up this little card thingy — I just might try and fanagle one for my biz, too!

ETA: They cost $10 if you hunt for a deal, and I just affixed a red one to my car this afternoon. :)