$63 for THAT?!?!? (a tale of two swimsuits)

Those of you who know me well already know that I'm a total bargain hunter, most of the time. Ok, 95% of the time. Maybe because I used to live on about $900 a month as a grad student teaching English 101 at ASU, but that's another story.

This story is about 16 inches of synthetic fabric. I have been looking at the above swimsuit for two years and waiting for Venus.com to put it on sale. I just refuse to pay $53 (their alleged "sale" price) for 16 inches of fabric. Not to mention the Highway Robbery shipping and handling of $9.95 for goods that probably weigh less than a can of soda. Now, I will concede that the price of this fetching garment has inched down about $10 since 2008, but COME ON!!! Hello! Old Navy clearanced their stuff for $5 per piece with two months of swim season left! So I got an essentially equivalent resource for $10 that day. Still, the Venus design haunts me.

Somewhere in the dark recesses of my MBA memory, I'm pretty sure there was something about minimizing inventory time for greater ROI. If these have been sitting on the shelf since 2007, there has to be some depreciation, riiiiiiiiight? OR maybe Venus swimwear doesn't have financial accountants on staff?! Maybe I'm overthinking this . . .

Also, I'm not kidding myself, it's not going to look quite like that on me, since I haven't had a tan since 1987, but compared to their poor man's Rebecca Romijn (yes that IS how it's spelled), I'll take my chances -- if the price ever approaches reasonable. Like about $30 for the whole thing and $4.95 s&h. Then: it's ON!

WAHM (Work At Home Mom) - WAJ (what a joke)

This photo with the Good Work-At-Home job "story" on yahoo! should totally be illegal. That kid on the right is happily engaged in some activity that allows her mom to work on a computer and possibly, actually take professional business phone calls without crying, fighting, and kid noise in the background. Moms out there, let me hear you say, "What a joke!" It's particularly ironic to see "mom" smiling with her fingers in the proper ASDF HJKL position we were supposed to have learned in typing class. WHATEV! Also, the kid is neatly dressed, not smeared in breakfast foods, and her hair is done . . .

If your house or children are anything like mine, you would KNOW this is impossible without the intervention of prescription medication(s). At my house, if I donned my headset, this is just a sampling of what would ensue:

Son: MOM, can I get on legodotcom? (he actually says "dot")
Daughter: Can I watch Dora, just a tiny bit? (she holds her fingers up by her cheek to show how tiny a bit she is requesting, then starts trying to shove me off my computer chair)
Mom: Kids, I'm trying to work, can you two play Candyland? (yeah, right...)
Son: No we want to play Sorry.
Mom: Great let me get it down from the highest shelf of my closet where I hid it because you were fighting over it last time.
Daughter: Hoooray!
Once the game is out, the kids immediately start squabbling over how to play, who gets what color, the deck, who lost the 4th red piece. The usual.
Mom (under breath): Who's sorry now?!?!?
Mom breaks out the ibuprofen (ok, so OTC medications are a good start...).

Meanwhile, Mom has missed like 4 calls from the call center and lost her perfect ASDF HJKL hand position on the keyboard. You get the picture. Someone should outlaw the yahoo! picture...

Self Service!!

From downstairs . . . "Mom! Laney's in the pantry! She's in the food!" What's the big deal, I'm thinking. Go downstairs and investigate, she's gotten her own spoon -- literally, the drawer is still open. She's pushed a chair over there, and is still enjoying some tasty peanut butter and raisins. All right! Almost 3 and making her own meals! Not only that, but only one spoon dirtied! Yes!! My work here is done . . .

Jet Lag Math

I'm sorry . . . how long IS that? After 17 hours of flying and layovers, it's a good thing I didn't have a vehicle to park in this lot because it took me a painfully long time to make sense of this NZ mall area time limit. Do YOU shop in minutes?
A quick stop at the McDonald's fountain helped my brain start working again . . . mmmm Diet Coke(R), the international drink of choice . . .

Falls and Falling

We had many opportunities to look at waterfalls in the Australian tablelands. In the rain, and on a plain, in a bus, not from a train. Below: Barron Falls, Millaa Millaa Falls, Zillie Falls (I'm pretty sure that's right), and the "no duh" sign at the Zillie outlook. Two weeks earlier there was about twice that much water going over Barron. At Millaa Millaa, the rain was pouring buckets. There were people on the "falls circuit" who just wouldn't get out of the picture -- maybe the shirtless guy, still following me from Kaikoura?!?! At least tuneless girl and her guitar didn't show up as well...

NZ Kaikoura - A Weird Bus Stop

That's the ocean view from a town where our bus stopped for a lunch break -- Kaikura, South Island, NZ. We had ice cream (yum!) and got bread, cheese, and fruit to snack on. And batteries for mom's camera. It was eating batteries like nobody's business!

The two weird things were this random shirtless dude who insinuated himself into BOTH of my photos (far right) and a tuneless girl attempting to play her guitar for money, but she didn't know any songs, and seemed to be practicing a random and very limited assortment of chords, so, who would give money for that?!?! Maybe for her to stop? Anyway, before long, it was time to get on the bus and be gone so we did. No performance ever commenced from tuneless girl ... but it's noteworthy that they do whale and swim with dolphins kinds of tours from Kaikoura -- it looked nice. I'd go back.

What is frugivorous?

Everyone (well, more accurately, perhaps many people) asked for an update on the NZ/Australia trip. Unfortunately, I don't know where to start. When I reappeared in my jetlaggish state on Monday 3/9, people at work politely queried "How was your trip?" To which I answered, in my pedantic and unswervingly honest way: "too long and too short, exhausting and exhilarating, amazing and wonderful, all at the same time."

Anyway, I was doing something online today, and I found the word "frugivore", which was a link, so I clicked on it and found the wikipedia entry which stated: "A frugivore is a type of herbivore (plant-eating animal) that eats a substantial portion of fruit."

Which reminded me of our amazing and wonderful (see first paragraph) hosts, Guy, Francesca, and Jasmine Carpenter, who ARE vegetarians AND took us to see a Tablelands fruit bat rescue facility where Australia's flying foxes are sheltered and rehabilitated. Before you get all ishy about the bats, let me say that their wings looked like really soft black leather -- so soft! While we visited with our hosts later, Guy mentioned that once he had met a group of "fruitarians" who said they just needed amino acids to get by in life...hmmmmm.... so man CAN live by fruit alone?

LoSpace readers, feel free to look into that!