Iced Coffee

I live in a hot climate, so I tend to prefer cold beverages. I'm also a caffeine addict, so that beverage is usually coffee.

Everyday I have an intense dilemma to face. Do I buy iced coffee, which is cool, but will be watered down AND will be proportionately less coffee per cup than hot coffee because of the ice, or do I buy hot coffee, increasing the amount of coffee I get, but subsequently having to wait until it is cool?

More often than not, I tend to prefer hot coffee. Maybe I'm just more used to it. Maybe the smell is what I'm really after, and let's face it, iced coffee just doesn't have that 'wake-up-and-face-the-day' sort of scent. I know for sure hot coffee has more coffee. But I have read that iced coffee has more caffeine, so who knows?

But without fail, I will have this entire argument with myself.

Every.

Single.

Day.

Grocery Shopping

Recently I read an article about the psychology of grocery stores and how they market products to get you to spend more money. Now it included fairly harmless things like grouping items that go together (chips near salsa, for instance), and craftier tricks such as placing more expensive items at eye level and cheaper items on bottom shelves where it's harder to reach and see, and strategically placing essential food items (bread, milk, and eggs) far apart from one another so that shoppers have to walk through the entire store to get to them.

Sometimes stores play slow music, which humans respond to by slowing down, and therefore spending more time in the store. Sometimes stores put smaller tiles into aisles with more expensive products to make you feel like you're going faster, so that you'll slow down in that aisle. Sometimes the 10 for $10 marks an item UP instead of down. Sometimes they will change the pricing tags to red (because traditionally red indicates a sale) and the item will NOT be on sale.

I have, at different times, fallen for all of these tricks.

From now on, I'm making a grocery list before I leave the house, and I am not deviating. No longer will I trust anything marked with red. No longer will I trust 10 for $10 sales. The grocery store is a house of lies.

I did some research of my own, and not only are there a lot of articles on these tricks, and how to avoid getting sucked into them, but some of the more ridiculous ones (like the smaller tiles on the floors of more expensive aisles) turned out to be true in some stores, and false in others, so not everyone is out to get us (at least it was false in the Safeway where I measured with a tape measure, I looked crazy, but I found the truth people).

Articles on this marketing craziness:
Supermarket Tricks

How Grocery Stores Trick You

Supermarket Mind Games

Daytime Television

My roommate currently is an elderly lady, who loves dateline and Dr. Oz and daytime soap operas and all of that stuff.

And if you like those things, more power to you. I do not, and I'm forced to stay away from the house on the weekends when I don't work because I cannot stand anything about the TV shows she watches. I'm introverted, and my job is fairly stressful (which is what everyone thinks about their own job, I'll admit) but I cannot relax in the house on the weekend because she watches those awful shows, and she has the volume up loud because she's old.

For the sake of my rooming situation, I let her.

And to be honest, when I'm desperate for a day on the weekends to relax and lounge about in my pajamas without Dr. Oz lecturing me about miracle vitamins and my colon and all manner of things I don't need, I change the input source on the TV so that she thinks the TV is broken, and then I "fix" it at the end of the day.

Yes, I'm aware, I'm a horrible person.

Also, for those of you frustrated with the TV choices of your friends, this is an easy way to solve that problem (provided your friends have absolutely no knowledge on how TVs work)

Mammals

To be clear, I love animals. I want to be a vet. I love fuzzy creatures, I have serious impulse control when I find animals in need (my house is a halfway house for wounded creatures, which my mother, god bless her, can typically find a home for).

I'm also ferociously allergic to animals. It's so bad that sometimes my face swells up. It triggers my asthma, so I have to constantly use my inhaler. I have to vacuum my house everyday if I have a furred critter residing there.

Asthmatics Unite!

Because of this, I tend to keep most of my rescues outside, for my sanity. Typically they stay in the garage, because it's sheltered, and yet not in the house. Now most people are understanding about that.

What people are less understanding about is when they are on the street with their cute pet and I refuse to go near it (either because I lack an asthma inhaler or because I don't want my face to swell up because I actually have to look professional on that day or whatever). And I can understand how these people would take offense to me treating their animal like it had the plague. But I can't help it.

The only animal that is safe for me to own is a reptile, for various reasons that all have to do with fur and dander. For this reason, the only permanent resident at my house is a Sulcata Tortoise. He's my baby and he doesn't make my face swell or my throat close up. Hurrah for reptiles.

So this is not my tortoise, but this is what he looks like (the big one)

and the little ones are what he looked like when I got him...

Credit to scienceblogs

So, yeah. I struggle with pets. They're so cute, but they're also trying to kill me.

Washing My Car

Environmentally, there is a very strong argument for me to conserve water where I live right now. This is allowing my natural laziness to appear to be ecological awareness. In reality I consider washing the windows of my car when I go to the gas station to be adequate.

The problem is that lately with work I've been driving to some dusty areas, so my car is bad enough that strangers write 'wash me,' messages nearly constantly. It needs a wash. And yet my entire family insists that I go to a commercial car wash (apparently they can reuse the water). I'm totally okay with doing this, but I haven't had the time yet. Or inclination.

So my car looks like trash right now... but I'm being environmentally responsible, dammit!

Dating Someone Who Works Where I Shop

Is that cute guy/girl really worth giving up your favorite coffee shop for? I mean if it ends amicably, fine. Good on you, way to end things like a mature adult (we all strive for this ending). But you run the risk that your romantic partner is crazy, and the relationship will end like a train wreck, with lots of rubble and repair to be done, and during that time it will be awkward for you to shop at that location.

Recently a friend of mine dated a guy and ended things very poorly. She's aware that it's her fault things are awkward, and now she avoids Trader Joe's like the plague.

So the moral of this post is either learn how to break up with someone like a mature adult, date the person you're attracted to and find a new store once things end, or never date that person in the first place.

It's your choice.

Working Out

To those who exercise, I salute you. 

Some people say that it's easier to exercise with other people, but I don't particularly like the idea of a crowd observing me wheezing my way around a gym. Exercising with people is essentially asking people you have to see again to look and see you at your worse.

Now don't get me wrong. I eat right. And I do jog even though I think asking me to don spandex and parade about the track, gym, or local park is asking too much. 

However I'm skeptical of people who say there's "a barrier" that you just have to get across, and once you cross that barrier, you'll love exercise. You know those people. They're typically celebrities. They get fit with the help of some trainer who they paid to force them to exercise. They pay a person to make them exercise, and they claim to love exercise.

Those people.

I don't struggle with working out. Not at all. I struggle with the people who like it. What are they!? Aliens!? What is wrong with them!?

Current Struggle: knitting

Being a bit of a financial failure right now, I've tried to be thrifty. Yarn is fairly cheap, and you can make it into all sorts of fairly expensive looking presents. A while ago, I decided that because I was a girl scout I should be able to recall the skill bestowed upon me an relearn how to knit so as to be able to make gifts for people instead of buying them. But I never really learned in the first place. Unfortunately, I'm not crafty. Knit, purl, yarn over? It's all French to me.

Above: what my yarn looks like

Below: what the pattern should turn out to be

photo credit to nwkinterati, etsystatic

Intro Post

I'm creating this blog to practice blogging (I'm working part time as a personal assistant while I'm in school, and she blogs, and I definitely need to be more familiar with it).

So I called it "iStruggle," because if I'm being honest, I have unreasonable difficulty with everything.

And we're just gonna see where this leads.