judyonthenet

Originally, I was going to post about how incredibly lame this season’s gimmick is, which is where every contestant is 5′7″ or under. My original opinion was that there is even less of a market for petite models than plus-sized model, and after ALL these past seasons of sticking plus-sized models with regular girls because of Tyra’s own ridiculous insecurity of her increasingly large booty, she opted out of having a season of ONLY plus-sized models. I was gonna bitch about how stupid this season is going to be, and how petite girls have no place in the modeling industry.

But then I watched the first three episodes of Cycle 13, and I’ve decided I was wrong. While I still think it’s going to be rough going for these girls, I’m really enjoying their attempts to look taller than they actually are. I’m curious to how successful they can be outside of doing beauty shots, but so far their photos have been decent to the point where they’re not noticeably shorter. And I hate to encourage Tyra’s desperate need to be as inspirational as Oprah, but this season is actually making me feel okay about being 5′4″ish. (I shouldn’t really feel bad; the average height of the American woman is around there.) So, okay, I’m sold on the gimmick now. However, I still think the winner is going to be one of the 5′6″ or 5′7″ girls and that anyone shorter is Tyra’s attempt at making the show “feel-good” again.

On to my initial impressions of the girls. And by “initial”, I mean after the first three (or four, if you count the two hour premiere as two episodes) episodes because that’s what I’ve seen so far. So if you don’t want spoilers for the first three episodes, you probably shouldn’t read this.

Amber 5′6″

So, this girl was supposed to be a finalist, but ended up dropping out by the first real episode for “personal reasons”. This was really too bad, because she was the hypocritical uber-religious girl that everyone hates for this season. I feel like she was faking it, but it would have still been entertaining. Other than that, pretty useless model-wise.

Ashley 5′6″

Discovered by Tyra’s hairstylist at one of her shows. Good face structure and proportions, so I can see why they picked her. Too bad her photos so far have been meh, and she’s being edited as the bitch of the house.

Bianca 5′7″

The girl I originally thought would be a “the black bitch” for the season, but then she has a sob story to follow up her craziness (raped by ex-boyfriend), so I guess she isn’t really. She’s just mental. I still don’t dig her look though; she looks like Nnenna from Cycle 6, except not as pretty and more crazy.

Brittany 5′5″

Who? I couldn’t remember who this girl was until the third episode when we’re reminded that she’s the girl who’s into math and goes to Santa Clara University. Completely forgettable.

Courtney 5′4″

I don’t have much opinion of her because we’ve mostly seen her with her leg in a cast, and she wasn’t on for very long. She looks… kinda buff which I don’t think does her proportions any favors.

Erin 5′6″

Very cute/pretty and great proportions. One of my favorites so far. She reminds me of someone else, probably a past contestant, but I can’t remember who I’m thinking of. I thought she looked better before her bleached-to-death makeover, but whatever.

Jennifer 5′5″

One thing I was disappointed about this season is that there aren’t more Asian girls. Tyra does a petite season and there’s only ONE Asian girl?! Lame! I wasn’t impressed with Jennifer either, especially as the ONLY Asian girl, but she’s growing on me. I didn’t like the asymmetry of her face (which is apparently due to some muscle defect called ptosis), but I like that it’s become another challenge for her to overcome.

Kara 5′7″

I’m not getting her. She looks like a man with bad hair to me.

Laura 5′6″

At first I thought she wasn’t pretty enough, but how can you not love her country girl charm? I don’t know if the editors are giving her an awesome edit or something, but I find her positivity and down-to-earth personality combined with her farmgirl accent INCREDIBLY ADORABLE.

Lisa 5′5″

When they called out the last girl for the final 14, I remember thinking this girl, who didn’t get called, seemed more model-looking than some of the ones chosen. When Amber was a no-show, Lisa was brought back, which I thought was great! Except she’s an idiot who can’t take direction, so now she’s out again. What a waste of a spot.

Lulu 5′7″

I really didn’t like her butch look, but her makeover did WONDERS for her. She spent too much time being Ashley’s bitchy sidekick and not practicing her modeling, so her pictures failed and she got kicked. I don’t miss her.

Nicole 5′7″

Love her. I like her look (I’m partial to redheads), and her proportions make her seem taller than she is. The anti-social weird girls are always interesting and often perform well, like Allison of Cycle 12 and Heather of Cycle 9.

Rachel 5′5″

Her bug eyes scare me (and aren’t cute like Allison’s of Cycle 12), and her proportions make her look shorter. That said, her removal during the second episode was quite shocking to me. We didn’t have much chance to see her do anything, so who knows? Maybe if given a chance, her scary bug eyes might have ended up being cute, too. (Unlikely.)

Rae 5′6″

Ah, “the mother who’s leaving her child behind” of this season. I’m meh on her proportions, and her face is plain to me. Makeup seems to do wonders for her, as her face vastly improves with makeup and good photography. I’m not sure if she’s a contender tho.

Sundai 5′3″

Why??? Not only is this girl tiny, she has TERRIBLE proportions. With her tiny body and giant head, she looks like a pre-teen! Everything about her looks small. I know people shorter than her who look taller than her. She doesn’t even look exceptionally pretty or interesting to make up for her crappy height and proportions. And her voice is totally grating. Fail fail fail.

My favorites are Nicole and Erin. I felt like Ashley was getting preferential treatment from Tyra, but with her photos and mean girl editing, I don’t think she’s going to win. If Sundai makes it to final three, I’ll be 100% convinced that Tyra has given up looking for real models.

New thing I learned today: Allison Harvard, a contestant for Cycle 12, was an internet meme years before she was a contestant on America’s Next Top Model. She was known as “Creepy Chan” for posting creepy pictures of her bug-eyed self on the internet.

This video from Know Your Meme explains her background pretty well. (Cycle 12 spoilers!)

Kelvin unplugged and replugged some cables last night, and now my computer is okay again. I’m not sure what the deal was yesterday, but I think I’m going to start backing up my files…

During a game of TF2, my computer crashed big time. I couldn’t alt-tab or ctrl-alt-del out, so I pushed the power button. Now it won’t boot into Windows! I suspect hard drive and/or memory issue, tho right now it even struggles through the Windows setup disc. I’m pretty sure all my files are still okay; I haven’t heard any scary sounds, and the BIOS still recognizes the HD. I’m going to have to get another HD ASAP and reinstall Windows. Blogging with an iPhone is painful, and what am I going to do without TF2???

New thing I learned today: The map command in the Windows recovery console shows what letters your drives are assigned to.

Right now, map says my HD is assigned to “?”.

I watched the Project Runway season premiere last month with my friends/ex-coworkers Robin and April at Robin’s apartment. They’re both subscribed to Farm Fresh to You, an organic foods delivery service in the Bay Area. Robin heard about it from April, who heard about it from a friend in her hockey league. Every 1-4 weeks, depending on your desired frequency, Farm Fresh to You delivers a box of mixed fresh produce. They have different sizes and box types, but all the produce depends on season so you get a variety of fruits and veggies all year. The website allows your choose and change your services and frequencies, and you can even list exclusions (like the absolutely repulsive mushroom) which they’ll substitute for something else. It seemed easy, so I figured I’d give it a shot. I’ve been trying to eat out less, both for health and financial reasons, and I have a lot more time to figure out what to do with things, so why not?

I had some troubles with the first box I got, but nothing completely surprised me after reading through all the Yelp reviews. They talked about misdeliveries, overripe or crushed produce, bugs… I got all of those in my first box!

Since I’m not working, I waited at home all day on a Friday (our area’s delivery day), eagerly awaiting my box of goodies. It never came, but I read in the Yelp reviews that deliveries can come in the middle of the night. I went out to dinner with Kelvin, and when we got back, Kelvin noticed a box on our downstair’s neighbor’s porch. I went to check it out, and it was indeed a Farm Fresh to You box. It was also the type I ordered, a small fast fruit & veggies box. There’s no address or name of the box, so if my neighbor happened to have to the exact same delivery as me, I was about to unknowningly steal their goods. I checked online to see that my address was correct, and the explicit instructions I left describing my apartment’s location was completely ignored. Who knows how long the box had been sitting there, and I’m lucky the apartment resident didn’t claim the unaddressed box.

Opening the box, I was a little disappointed to find the strawberries had been crushed. They were also very ripe, so I immediately washed them and munched on them. They were very sweet and yummy outside of the mushed parts. Everything else in the box seemed to be in acceptable condition.

I’m not used to preparing any fruits and veggies, let alone organic ones. A lot of the box ended up getting wasted because of my poor planning (for some reason, there were a lot of get-togethers with meals first two weeks of September) and paranoia of stuff going bad. It’s quite embarrassing (please don’t tell my mother), but I’m hoping I’ll get better as I get used to this.

First box minus strawberries

Box #1, small fast fruits & veggies 09/04:
Strawberries – Read above.
Heirloom tomatoes – I’ve never seen tomatoes outside of the typical red ones you see in the market. These tomatoes were huge and scary looking. However, they were also quite flavorful. I managed to use two of the three tomatoes, but one of the large ones got mushy before we found time to cook it. Kelvin used one of the large ones in his spaghetti sauce, and he was freaked out by the weird shape when cutting it. It tasted pretty decent tho.
Fresh basil – Strangely, their basil was a purple color. We used half of the bunch in Kelvin’s spaghetti sauce. The other half got wasted.
Green leaf lettuce – A giant head of lettuce I had no idea what to do with. I thought about sandwiches, but sandwiches only use like one or two leaf out of a bazillion. I attempted a salad with much of the lettuce and the smallest of the heirloom tomatoes. It was a total fail. The lettuce was really bitter, and I had a hard time eating it. Also, when I washed it the lettuce, I kept find small bugs in between the leaves, which annoyed me. (Are pesticides really that bad?) The rest of the lettuce was eventually tossed since I had no idea what to do with it.
Cherry tomatoes – I washed and snack on these. They were quite flavorful and good.
Green grapes – I forget exactly what type of grapes these were. I finally found time to wash them, but there were these disgusting webs all over the stems. I kept removing large sections of grapes, but I kept finding more webs! I couldn’t find a large enough section of non-webbed parts (and I didn’t want to look that closely in case I found something even nastier), so I ended up tossing the bunch :( This was wasteful, and I’m sad I was so lame. Next time I’m going to have Kelvin take a look and clean it, since I’m such a wuss at these things.
Cucumber – I waited too long to use this. By the time I figured out what to do with it (Korean cucumber salad), it had become all shriveled. It was a nice looking cucumber, too :(

Okay, first box was tragic, I know. I expected stuff to go bad since organic goods have less junk on them and go bad faster, but I was hoping to do better than this. I emailed customer service about the incorrect delivery, which they acknowledged and apologized for. I originally signed up for monthly, but I changed it to be every other week on the website so I can try this more often. The interface is a little weird, and I didn’t notice that it defaulted to the small standard fruits and veggies box instead other small fast fruit and veggies box. So I didn’t get what I wanted in the second box, which was delivered to the correct location this time ~5PM. However, I’m glad I ended up with the standard box, as everything held up pretty well, and we’ve managed to use (or are going to use) all of it.

Box #2, small standard fruits & veggies 09/18:
.5 lb Bosc Pear from Sacramento – I cut one up last night, but apparently they’re not quite ripe yet. Even still, it was very sweet, and it reminded me more of apple than pear. That’s nice because I’m not biggest fan of pears. I look forward to eating the rest when they’re riper.
1 cnt Honeydew, green Melon, musk from FFTY farm – I shared this with my mother, as Kelvin hates melons. I’m not a fan either, but I’ll eat anything sweet that’s cut up in front of me. What’s weird about this honeydew is that the inside was orange like a cantaloupe, when it’s usually a light green. The melon was only just okay; I’ve had sweeter melons.
1 pnt Mixed Medley Tomato, cherry from FFTY farm – These were yummy, except for the weird looking yellow ones. I was surprised because the weird looking yellow regular tomatoes from last box were quite flavorful.
1 lb Bunched Leek from Watsonville – I saw this and I was like, WTF am I going to do with this? I’ve never seen leek before in person unprepared, and I didn’t realize it was so huge. I found a random stir-fry recipe online that used up both the leek and peppers. We used most of the leek, tho I’m sure we wasted some in preparation. Despite appearance and texture issues with the sauce and meat (watery, brown sauce on tough meat), the stir-fry was actually quite good.
.5 lb Mixed, sweet Pepper from FFTY farm – One of the peppers looked like a red miniature pumpkin. Weird! We used them in the stir-fry with the leeks.
1 lb Yukon Gold Potato from Bridges – I haven’t decided what to do with them, but I’m glad they can sit for a while. I can imagine seasoning them with herbs and baking them… they look so yummy!
1 lb Sweet Potato from Fresno – Haven’t done anything with these yet, but will probably bake them.

We did much better with the second box! I’m going to keep trying this out, even though it’s not the cheapest thing. At $23 a small box, it’s comparable to buying your own organic goods at Whole Foods, though produce is closer to what you’d find at your local farmer’s market. I understand why people would prefer going to the farmer’s market instead of using this service: you can pick out your own produce, and all the produce you buy is actually what you want. For me, the idea of getting up in the morning on a weekend to pick out vegetables and fruit is absolutely appalling. I also like the randomness of the boxes, as it forces me to try new things and be creative. Hopefully, I get more deliveries more like the second box than the first box.

btw, I used a referral coupon to try out the service. You get $5 off your first delivery, and the person you refer gets a free delivery. If anybody wants to try it out, the coupon code is 6164 and mention the person who referred you (preferably me, lol). I dunno when/if it expires, but you can use it online or over the phone.

New thing I learned today: CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. This means the community helps support local farms and in return, they get a share of the local crops. Buying locally means less travel distances, which encourages fresher produce and less pollution from transportation.

I’ve always been fine with regular supermarket stuff; the whole CSA and organic trends still feel a little snobby to me. Despite that, I felt the variety and convenience makes it cool enough to try.

Three weeks have passed since I quit, but I still haven’t figured anything out or produced anything. Everyone tells me I’m on vacation because I cashed out 3.5 weeks of vacation when I left, but I’ve had a hard thinking of it that way. I sort of wish I had just not thought about doing anything for the first 3.5 weeks, but I’m too neurotic of a person to do that. Especially when everyone and their mom/coworker/friend is constantly reminding me how I need to find a job. Most of the time they’re giving me leads, which I appreciate; I guess I’m just not in the right mindset at the moment. Kelvin claims I seem happier; I don’t know if that’s true, but I feel a lot less stressed, that’s for sure.

I’ve been trying post more here, but as you can see, I can only come up with menial crap to talk about since my life is pretty uneventful these days. I’ve also made more of an attempt to be an apartmentwife, though I’m still failing at that. I’ve cleaned up the kitchen a bit, but it always seems to get dirty again. Laundry is never ending as always, and the apartment is still a mess. I’ve recently started a grocery delivery service to get into eating more veggies and fruits; I go into more detail about that another day.

Also, for some reason, there’s been a bunch of lunches and get-togethers I’ve had to go to the first couple weeks after I quit (most of which I didn’t take pictures of). I kind of wished I had quit a couple weeks later so I could have gotten another paid holiday with Labor Day, but oh wells.

Cryptic Studios launched their new game, Champions Online, at the beginning of September. Several of my friends are playing it, but I can’t really get into it. MMORPGs might not be my thing. Cryptic threw a launch party at the 300, a local, snazzy bowling alley. Bowling is another thing I don’t get. I don’t think it’s particularly fun, and my shoulder was really sore for a couple days after.

We used our Steam handles because we are dorks

Kelvin right before bowling a strike, which is a rare occurrence

I also went to a local meetup of folks who play on the Team Fortress 2 server I play. It’s interesting to place faces with some of the players, most of which are apparently Asian. I was amused to find the creepily silent person on the server is also a creepily silent person in person. We met up at Cryptic Studios and then had dinner at CB Hannegans.

Meeting up at the game room in Cryptic

Avery toasts Brian, provider of inflatable Dragon Age swords

We’ve seen our nieces a couple times, including yesterday when there was a family dinner for Naomi’s 4th birthday. Kelvin gave Naomi Zubbles, which are colored bubbles that don’t stain. Apparently, some toy maker had this vision of creating colored bubbles and spent 14+ years trying to make his vision a reality. His colored bubbles finally went for sale this summer, and Kelvin bought a set for Naomi to support the inventor.

This guy lived the American Dream!

Colored bubbles don’t sound all that amazing, but it apparently was technically difficult, and the final product is really fun! It looks scarily dark, so every time you spill or drip the liquid on you, it looks like someone opened an ink pen on you. However, the product dissipates away after a few minutes. It stays a little longer on clothing, but most of it fades away, and it will completely wash out as it’s water soluble. Along with cool looking bubbles, you can make a terrible mess that completely disappears.

Hana and Naomi happily get their dresses messy. Later on they started
deliberately putting it on their face, calling it “makeup”.

Totally fun stuff, if a bit on the pricey side (~$20 bucks for two bottles shipped). While I half expected the kids to spill the bottles, I was slightly horrified when Naomi started pouring some of it into the lawn, but she only got 1/5th through the bottle before adults began panicking and yelling at her to stop.

Naomi and Hana playing with Zubbles

After bubbles, we had dinner, cake, and then presents! Greer made this decadent bowl of chocolate mush, consisting of chocolate cake, chocolate pudding, Skor bars, and Cool Whip.

Naomi with her bowl of chocolate mush

I grabbed a couple Barbie things from Toys’R'Us to go with the less-permanent Zubbles Kelvin got. I gave her a Barbie outfit (to which I got a wonderfully lukewarm response of “Barbie clothes? I don’t need any Barbie clothes.”) and a gaudy Barbie tiara-mask thingy (to which I got a surprisingly ecstatic reaction where she immediately put it on and wouldn’t take it off all night).

Naomi wears both her mask AND her crown

It rained a couple weekends ago. I love the rain, especially when I don’t have to go anywhere. The air feels moist and fresh, and the first rains of autumn, with the wet streets and leaves all over the ground, make me think of the holidays since we don’t get snow here. Unfortunately, Mother Nature realized it’s still summer, so it’s gotten freaking hot again. Tomorrow is the first day of fall, so hopefully there were be some cooler weather so I don’t steam to death in my apartment. (I’ve getting a lot of napping done because it’s easy to sleep through the heat.)

New thing I learned today: Zubbles was named “Innovation of the Year” by Popular Science in 2005. They didn’t go for sale until this summer because of production complications.