I might have a problem....

While we were in The Boy's hometown, he was getting a haircut. I was supposed to be getting some jeans tailored while this was happening, but the tailor was on vacation, so I tagged along. While I was waiting, I picked up a magazine. In the magazine, I read about Birchbox. (If you click this link and buy stuff, I get credits for free stuff, so please do)

I tried getting a subscription, but they are currently full and I am on the waiting list. When I decided to read more about it, I stumbled on some very bad news for my Discover card balance over at The Girly Enthusiast. Apparently there are approximately 8,576,903,275 of these monthly sample subscription things. I spent the day signing up for them/other wait lists. As I get them in the mail, I'll review them on here and maybe cancel as needed. Currently I'm paying for them all myself, but if someone out there (all these companies, I'm talking to you!) wants to pay for my subscriptions (or at least take me off the waiting list!) I am ALL FOR IT. Because I am a poor, poor graduate student. And I love me some cheap stuff (free is better!)

Subscribed:
Sample Society
Referral Code:JENK2635
They will be shipping my first order on August 1. The referral code does not get me points, but does give money to charity, so definitely use this one. Share the love.
This is the one of my 2 actual subscriptions that I am most excited about. Hopefully, they won't disappoint. Also, bonus, I get a free 1 year subscription to Allure magazine that doesn't auto-renew, so I won't have to worry about remembering to cancel it. Unfortunately, this one costs $15/month, unlike all of the others which are only $10. 

The Look Bag
No Referral Code =/
They didn't exactly specify my shipping date. It kinda said today, but considering I placed my order after 3 PM EST, I'm guessing not today.
I haven't heard of as many of the brands on this site, so it may be cancelled after one month. Or, I might love it. We shall see. 

They have cancelled the service because they've been having issues. They may rehaul and relaunch, but no word on that yet. They say that they will be sending July bags to people who have already paid for them (which I have), and that they've been shipping all week, but from what I can find on the internet, no one has actually gotten one and everyone is pissed. If I get one (I'm not exactly holding my breath--but if I don't I want my frigging $10 back) I'll post a review. My bag came today, I'll try out the products this weekend and post the reviews.

Waitlisted:
Birchbox
(Again, the link itself is the referral code)
I'm kind of annoyed that they let themselves be featured in a national magazine (Glamour? I think? or Redbook?), but then limit the amount of people that they allow to sign up. I feel like you need to be willing to accommodate MILLIONS if you're going to do that. I also don't like that they don't tell you how many millions of women are ahead of you on the waitlist (they also have a men's line that I thought about getting for The Boy (he has expensive tastes), but I decided against it. He can look if he wants). Work on that, Birchbox. That's strike one. If they send me awesome stuff or pull me off the waitlist soon, I'll be much happier. Also, points to them for allowing you to review stuff for points which can be used toward future purchases. Boo that they have to be used in 100 point (=$10) increments (e.g. a purchase of $16.99 would require 200 points/$20 reward dollars). It should only require 170 points. Don't scam. I know you're Harvard B-School grads, but I also know what you're up to.


My Glam Bag
This one looks like it has some pretty cool stuff, but they make you put your credit card in when you reserve a spot on the waitlist, and will automatically charge it when your turn comes. I don't like that, because my situation might change and I might completely forget about this in a few months. You can opt out of the waitlist at any point before you're called, but I don't like that they can just charge me at will. I feel like they should do what Birchbox does and say "Oh, hey, it's your turn, go order your box" instead. 


CraveBox
No referral code
I'm not gonna lie--I think this one might be the most all-around awesome box, because they come up with themes and include all sorts of products (including food and gender neutral items) that are all good-sized and seemingly awesome. I am allergic to a lot of skincare and makeup, so having samples of other things would be pretty cool. Hopefully they open up soon.


But for reals, y'all, I need to not be dropping $55/month on samples. If I get pulled off some waitlists, other things are gonna have to go. Probably. Maybe. I don't know. I guess it depends on the type of haul I end up getting. $55/month is worth it if I'm getting decent- to full-sized products that retail for more than $55. If not though... things will be getting the axe. And I will be doing reviews.


Now I need to actually get something productive done for today/this week. Oy.

Birthday Week Shenanigans

As most of you who read this already know, my birthday was last month.

It. Was. Awesome.

It was on a Monday (which kinda sucks), and I had to work (which kinda sucked), but our Project Coordinator brought in doughnuts!

The Boy was instructed to surprise me--I didn't care what he did or got me, but I wanted him to put effort into it. I wanted the time capital. When I told The Boy and Superman that I had asked my parents for a massage and even sent them a link for a Groupon that magically appeared in my inbox minutes later, Superman accused me of being unnecessarily harsh by instructing The Boy to come up with something special. I told them that my parents had already come up with plenty of special ideas for my birthdays past. The Boy said, somewhat grudgingly, "Dude, it's a test." I don't like to think of it that way, but whatever, if it was, he passed.

He picked me up (major points, I usually meet him at his apartment and we carpool from there because it's on the way to wherever we're going 95% of the time, and mine would be in the opposite direction, which it was in this instance). He took me to dinner at a nice restaurant downtown. We had a really nice time and I was very pleased.

Then, the real kicker--he had gotten us tickets to see the live stream of "One Man, Two Guvnors" from the London National Theatre (featuring the original, Tony-winning cast) that was playing at a local theatre. He took the time to find something that was so me that I would really enjoy. The show started out a little rough--we weren't sure it was going to be good for the first 5-10 minutes, but it picked up pretty quickly. It ended up being hilarious, and we were really glad we got to see it. He did so well, and everyone was so impressed that he did such a good job planning something that worked so well for me.

The day after my birthday, Bestie came and spent almost a whole week with me! It was awesome, and I was so glad she did. She and Superman had planned a sunset hiking adventure for me that was so beautiful (even if I almost died...twice) and included a lovely (if illegal?) swim and a picnic with margaritas. They took me to this lake that was so pretty, but had gates around the main beachy part, so we just decided to take a little detour through the woods and get in on the "wilder" side. After that, we hiked up to this beautiful observation tower that gave us the most amazing, breathtaking views of the mountain and nearby town, and the last vestiges of sunset. We would have seen more of sunset if I wasn't SUUUUUUPER out of shape and if it wasn't a mile and a half of stairs straight up the mountain (and maaaaybe I have sports-induced asthma. I don't know because I don't do enough sports to really notice, but all I know is that when I do a lot of cardio, I feel like I'm breathing through one of those tiny coffee straws, even for a while after I stop doing cardio). On the way down, Bestie, The Boy and I all walked within less than a YARD of a baby rattle snake and completely missed him. Could have stepped right on him and not even noticed. We were all shocked when Superman stopped us to point him out. It could have been disastrous because 1) We had all left our phones in the car, assuming that someone else had one 2) We were at the very top of the mountain (and let's face it--I certainly couldn't have carried any of them down) 3) It was very quickly getting dark, and 4) It was a baby, and if it hadn't just eaten, it would have dispensed a whole crapton of poison into whomever it might have bitten. BUT! We were all fine.

After we finally made it off the mountain (just as it got too dark to really see), we tried to leave the campsite where we may have been parking illegally. I say "illegal" in the loosest sense of the word, because, really, it was just frowned upon. Unfortunately for us, they had locked up the campsite before we had made it down the mountain, meaning we were locked in. Right as we were getting out of the car to see if we could somehow bust out, some hic state trooper pulls up behind us and gives us this big lecture about reading the signs. We read the signs, Mr. State Trooper, we just chose to ignore them. It was ridiculous. 

Bestie threw me a birthday party the next night, which was awesome and included delicious salsa (mine and Ms. Congeniality's*), delicious hamburgers (courtesy of The Boy and Superman), and delicious, if inappropriate, Funfetti cake, ala Bestie. I may have had too much tequila. Maybe.


The next night, Bestie and I met her mom in Myrtle Beach for her high school reunion. She went to school in Germany, because her dad was in the Air Force, and all of the Military Brats that went there have these annual reunions, which seem to me to just be a weekend of drunken debauchery and older people feeling like they're 18 again. Bestie's Mormon mother didn't drink, nor did she engage in the debauchery, but she did shake it on the dance floor and sing Hot in Here (which was HYSTERICAL).

I got to see/swim in the Atlantic for the first time, which was pretty cool. Also, the Atlantic is approximately 80 degrees warmer than the Pacific. I do not know how this is possible, but it is. It was lovely.

I had a great birthday week, and I really appreciate all of my family and friends who made it so great!

*The nicest girl in our program. Who may rank among the nicest people in the world.

More subscription madness

Hey y'all...

If you go to Julep and use the code COLOR2012, you get the first month of your subscription for A PENNY. DOOOO IT! You know you want to.

The Future is So Bright, He has to Wear Shades

Or some such cliched, inspirational nonsense.

Brother graduated from high school this year. It makes me feel old, having a baby brother who will be starting college in the fall.

He wants to major in Special Ed and minor in ASL, because he wants to work with the happiest kids on campus. I feel like this makes him a pretty good (if naive) person. I admire him a lot.

He's been working like a boss lately--he just got a job installing fire alarms in local schools and he has been doing such a great job that he got promoted after like a week. He's one of the hardest workers on the team and consistently gets the most done. He seems to really like it and I'm really proud of him.

I think he's going to do well. I think I will try to convince him to not live with Mom and Dad all 4 years, like I did, because I think I missed out on a lot of the "college experience" that I hope he gets. I want to convince him to do a study abroad, because I didn't, and everyone I know who did, said that it was the best thing they ever tried. I hope he grows. I hope he learns, and doesn't just get an education. I hope that he meets people who will challenge him and change him. I hope that if he meets a girl, that I will like her (don't judge--you all know you want to like your in-laws, too). I hope he will find something that he's looking for. I hope he remembers who he is, even through all of the changes. I hope he has to work hard, but that he finds joy in that. I hope he loves it.  

To Have and to Hold

Although Summer has barely begun, I have already had several adventures, and I have been remiss in documenting them. This is the first of several posts about my recent trip home.

Cupcake recently wed Mr. Cupcake on the beach in sunny Oceanside, CA. It was a lovely ceremony with about 25 people, short, sweet, and beautiful. I think that they are going to be so happy together. They compliment each other well, as Cupcake noted in her vows, and I think that they both have the strong level of commitment necessary to make a marriage work. When they were taking me to the airport after the wedding weekend was over, they were telling me that they had agreed to never mention divorce until and unless every other option had been exhausted.

I think that that is an important agreement to make when you choose to marry someone--you make a vow to your spouse and God and yourself, and you don't break it. Things get hard, life gets messy, but you commit to Making It Work, even when you don't want to, or the dopamine has worn off, or you are so busy that you have to schedule sex (which, you know what, shouldn't be such a bad thing. Anticipation and all that), or when they're being a jerk, or when you're being a jerk. You just do it.

In my role as MOH, I took a minute before we started getting ready to ask Cupcake if she was sure--it was close to wedding time, but there was still more than enough time to bail. She didn't have to do it, but once she said "I Do" there would be no turning back. She looked at me and said "I never had a moment of doubt." Their ceremony was beautiful, despite the fact that the groom was "near death" (his words, not mine--he woke up with quite the cold and Cupcake and I debated taking him to Urgent Care instead of their wedding dinner after taking pictures on the freezing cold beach).

Mr. Cupcake's dad was hysterical and inappropriate. Like a lot. One morning he asked me and a few of the other young people staying in the beach house if we ever "cyber." (As in cyber sex, which he thought was when your brain has sex with someone else's brain over the internet). 

Their reception in our hometown was also great--we got to dance and drink and laugh. The Boy let me dress him up in bunny ears, giant sunglasses, and a lei for the guestbook photobooth and danced with me all night, even though he hates dancing, because I love it. He also spent the better part of 2 days helping us to set up for the wedding and didn't even complain. We ate s'mores and drank margaritas until 1 in the morning.

Things that would be more fun than appyling to PhD programs...Again

Readers, this fall will be my third round of PhD. applications. The first time, I was trying to graduate a full year early and had a letter of recommendation from a woman who was going through somewhat of a breakdown that I understand was not very favorable. I did not get any interviews or acceptances. The second time, I had more experience and a new letter and I got 2 interviews (both eventual rejections off the waitlist) and 2 acceptances. One acceptance was to a PhD program, but I ultimately felt that it wasn't the best fit for me. The other was to a Master's program that was perfect for my research interests, which is where I ended up. Unfortunately for me, that means that in order for me to get that ever-elusive "Dr", I need to apply again, so here I sit, with The Boy, researching programs. He is still not quite certain about what he wants to study within clinical psychology and is looking for a heuristic to narrow the field. He asked me, "Is it wrong to judge people based on their pictures? Some of these people look like assholes and bitches." My response, "It's probably bad to do that, yes." His response, "What if they're just hideous and I don't want to look at them every day?" Me: "Yeah, that's probably bad, too. Although, I have occasionally thought to myself, 'These pictures are open for the whole world to see. Couldn't you have used a brush?'" As you can see, we aren't enjoying ourselves.

Also, when looking at US News rankings of the best programs in the country, we discovered that almost all of the schools that we want to apply to are in the top 20. Awesome.

While I'm looking Boston College, he says to me, "Baby, Boston is cold as fuck. You should hear Boss* talk about it. He says it's cold as fuck. It's really, really cold."

Me to him: "Can we just go be beach bums in Hawaii, instead?" His response: "We could be drug dealers. We're probably smarter than most drug dealers."

Him to me: "[Your undergrad, in your hometown] has a really good clinical program." Me: "Yes, I know." Him: "They're nice, but we aren't living with your parents." Me: "Definitely not."

Here is a list of things I would like more than doing this again:

-Being a Vampire and silvering myself a la TrueBlood (season 4--I just watched it. It's the one with the witches)
-Eating habenero peppers straight
-Running
-Zombie Apocalypse (I'm getting to be a pretty good shot)
-Chinese bamboo torture
-Chinese water torture (the Chinese are a cruel folk)
-Watching Golf
-Eating nothing but broccoli for a week
-Drinking black coffee
-Camping

I'm kind of just hoping that my advisor will know someone and they'll just take me. That would be nice. And they they would also just take The Boy, too. And that they give good stipends. And are in one of the three states that we agreed that we want to live in. A girl can dream, right?

*His childhood best friend.

Raising our standards

Recently, the Switcher* lost her boyfriend suddenly, tragically, and oh-so-unexpectedly. When I called to offer my condolences, she told me about what a great guy he was, and how he treated her so well, yada, yada.I realize this sounds very blase, but it isn't. I'm really sorry and sad for her and I hope that she's getting through this tough time as well as can be expected.

The things she was telling me were the things that, realistically, shouldn't have been all that special. He did things like actually taking her on dates and calling when he said he would and telling her how much she meant to him.

These things started making me think about The Boy and why I am so fond of him and how well he treats me. Because he does things like picking me up from the airport and refilling my glass without being asked and cooking me dinner and giving me a crapton of music when I want new stuff.

And then I started to think: are The Boy and The Switcher's Boy really that awesome, or have our standards just gotten incredibly low based on our past experiences and the experiences of our friends? (My conclusion: Yes for The Boy and undecided for Switcher's boy, because I never met him). I mean, Bestie's ex, He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, pretty much never did things like that. When she came to visit me, instead of taking her to the airport, he made her take the subway and like 2 bus transfers. Because that was the kind of shitty boyfriend behavior that I had vicariously (and somewhat from my own previous shitty boyfriends and boyfriend-like-things) become accustomed to, when The Boy took me to and picked me up from the airport for Cupcake's bachelorette party, I gushed my thanks. Repeatedly. It was actually pretty ridiculous. Granted, he did have to come get me at midnight, and he had to leave a lab meeting early to take me to the airport, but it wasn't that big a deal, objectively. After the 500th time I told him thank you, he said to me, "I really need you to stop thanking me. It's making me feel like you didn't expect me to do this for you." But to me, it wasn't a small thing. It was a big deal that he wasn't selfish. It was a big deal that he was willing to use his gas to come get me in the middle of the night so that I didn't have to pay for parking and drive home after spending 7+ hours traveling.

But also, I think our standards have just gotten really low.  I think it's important to be grateful for and acknowledge when our SOs do selfless things, no matter how small or insignificant, but at the same time, I think that we all need to start expecting a certain degree of selflessness from our partners. I'm not saying that we should all take advantage of the people we're dating or that we should subjugate ourselves, but I think some courtesy on both people's parts is pretty important. It shouldn't be surprising that my boyfriend is willing to pick me up and drop me off, because my boyfriend and all of my friend's boyfriends should just do those sorts of things. And if they don't do those sorts of things, we should kick them to the curb, because their selfish asses do not deserve the lovely, selfless people that we are, and  I think that tolerating that sort of behavior not only harms us personally, but harms relationships everywhere. If my boyfriend's friends all treat their girlfriends like crap, and their girlfriends don't leave them, for whatever reasons that girls have for not leaving their shitty boyfriends, eventually my boyfriend might learn that that sort of crap is acceptable, and it so isn't!

/end rant.


*Best friend from Middle School