This morning, I made a pretty pink smoothie in my old-skool blender

So. I bought a juicer. Do you have one? Do you use it? Or is it sitting in a cupboard/pantry gathering dust? I'm guessing the latter, because oh sweet Lord, how much effort should a half-cup of frothy baby poop colored* juice actually require? (Answer: NOT THAT MUCH.)

We are talking serious amounts of cleanup**. The disassembly and the soapy water and the wiping and the scrubbing and the scrubbing and the scrubbing and the rinsing and the reassembly. (Rule of thumb from here on out: If it comes with its own cleaning brushes, do not buy it.)

Also, it's loud. Very loud.

One more thing. In the manual, there's an entire section entitled "Using the Pulp." All but one of the manufacturer's suggestions involve ingesting it in one way or another. Call me crazy, but I'm thinking if you're going to 1) drink the juice and 2) ingest the pulp, why don't you just EAT THE FUCKING VEGETABLE?

In summary: Loads of effort, minimal result. We are not impressed.

I'm going to give it one more shot this afternoon; I'm going to juice tomatoes, carrots, corn, spinach, and jalepeno. If things do not go considerably better than they went yesterday, the juicer is going back.

* Combining apples, oranges, and bananas somehow produces brown juice. How? Oh, and PS: If you don't keep the fruit in the fridge, your juice will be warm. I have a hard time putting things that are warm+frothy+the color of diarrhea in my mouth.

** Granted, there would have been a bit less cleanup if I'd put a cup under the juice spout. In my defense, however, I was under the impression that the pulp bin was a juice container, and since the juice spout is on the back of the machine, my mistake was not immediately apparent.

Owned

Sitting at the light at Central and Camelback, watching some tool in a silver Boxster preen in his rear view.

As he checks around to see if anyone's as impressed with him as he is with himself, a white-haired gentleman in a silver Bentley Continental GT pulls up beside him.

I can see Boxster Boy's face fall from a full 10 yards away.

Shop until everybody drops

"... market research shows that people who overspend usually do it to feel good or to feel in control, not because they need the items they buy."

In the past couple of weeks working retail, I have learned all about compulsive shoppers.

And I'm not talking "the latest handbag," as referenced in that article. I'm talking about piles of the latest handbags. And sunglasses. And jeans. And bath towels and dresses and pajamas and toss pillows and silk flower arrangements and wallets and perfume and shorts and swimsuits and picture frames and scarves and shoes and shoes and more shoes and cookware and luxury linens and underwear.

Twenty or 30 or 40 (or more) items in each shopping trip. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of stuff.

And the next day? It all comes back. Usually accompanied by three or four more bags full of stuff purchased that same day at another of our stores. So I spend 20 minutes returning everything on two or three looooong receipts, and once I've credited back those hundreds of dollars? It's right back out to the sales floor. To shop for tons of crap they'll return tomorrow.

This is not one or two women I'm talking about, either. I've experienced a couple dozen of these loons in the short time I've been working retail.

It's like shopping bulemia (BUYLEMIA!). I find myself wondering if they ever even take the bags out of the car. What do you think?

Wanna know a secret?

I finally burned out completely and bailed on my career.

Interactive advertising has always been long hours and high stress, but in this economy, the sense of entitlement among employers is simply mind-boggling.

Don't get me wrong. I've always been dedicated and driven and more than willing to go above and beyond, but I believe fundamentally (and deeply) that our employers rent, rather than own, us and that we deserve, and have a right to expect, balance between our work and personal lives.

Not only that, but my health is in the freaking toilet right now, and I cannot do 60-70 stressful hours every week. Plainly. Simply. I can't.

And quite frankly? I was not enjoying the direction interactive marketing is taking. I've always been extremely focused on UX, and nothing is about the user any more.

So. Right now, I'm working retail (if you'd like to know where, just shoot me an email), while I figure out what I want to do and how I want to go about getting there.

And sweet tapdancing Jesus, do I have some stories for you.

;)

Why?

Because sometimes, you need more than 140 characters.

Not too long ago, I bought SinPantalones.com, and I was going to install/configure Moveable Type or WordPress there and begin blogging again, and then ... well, that seemed like an AWFUL lot of work, and these days, when it comes to personal web stuff, I'm just really lazy.

A few days ago, I stumbled across Squarespace and decided it might fulfill my needs. I'm still figuring out how to modify look and feel, navigation, etc., but I don't have a lot of time to devote to that right now, so bear with me.

Anyway. Welcome. More to come. :)