oh vanity, how i've not missed you!

My friend LT and I decided to have a walkabout the city for the day, we had nothing better to do around town. It was a fun day of shopping and exploring parts of Chinatown I haven't been to before (and of course my usual hangouts at Canton & the Bakery). There was this quaint little shop just past St. Mary's, towards the right, it's really peaceful and there's so much little trinkets to browse. From figurines, to charms, to jewelry, there's just a load for you to ponder over spending on. I don't recall the name of the shop, but when I'm at the city again next week, I'll make sure to find out. First stop of the mini-trip is to the Bakery. It's always jam-packed with people, the place itself isn't big to say the least, but the line is mad. There's usually bout 15 people in line, when it's slow, and pushing 30 when it's busy. Like I said, jam-packed. They have the best dan ta's in the city, shoot, within a 25 mile radius! Impressive moon cakes and pastries, too. But it's always the dan ta's that make a load of people come back to this joint. By the bye, dan ta's are egg tarts. If you've never tried these little gems, I suggest you find a good place to buy some. Or if you're in the San Francisco area, head on over to Chinatown. It's a 10-15 minute walk from the main entrance. It's well worth the hike for them! As for the other places we explored, not much going on, a load of tourists though. I only bought a flashlight/lighter from the Canton Bazaar.

So after a total of 2 hours, we left Chinatown and headed for Castro for lunch. We were rushing so we can make it before 2pm to Mission and the row of thrift stores, a pre-summer retail therapy for us; refer to previous post. I picked lunch, and chose my favorite sandwich place: Ike's! Their subs are seriously out of this world. I'm not even exaggerating here. They are delicious and I savor every bite. The best part is, they have a menu that works for everyone; carnivores, vegetarians, pescatarians (me!), and vegans. Also, their dirty sauce, which is not dirty contrary to the name, is just plain good. They also have a location in Redwood Shores, so if you're around, drop in! If in the city, it doesn't matter if you're in North Beach, Visitacion, Richmond, Sunset, etc. You must go. You don't know what you're missing, and that's a shame.

On to the thrifting! We spend bout 5 hours total thrifting, half in the Mission and Castro, the other in Haight. We are thankful to announce that we only spent half of out budget for the day. Which is around $75 each, including food. We both got a pair of shoes each, some shirts, leggings, skirts, pants. There's nothing else to say, other than we're very happy with the day's success. We were home by 9pm and now we're having our mystery marathon for the rest of the night, well into the early hours of the morning. Great day! Repeats of it in the summer. Only instead of mostly thrifting, we're hitting up the beach and not going home. Beach bums, take 2.

spring cleaning: part un

It's that time of year again, the weather is having sudden bursts of warmth and sun, it's a sign of Spring Cleaning! There are only two things in my room that's accumulated in a craze, and those would be my book collection ("The Library" as my friends refer to it) and clothing. Every summer, I tend to go on a reckless shopping spree. What can I say? Retail therapy is amazing, even though I have no reason to need the therapeutic part. It's just this bad habit, whenever I pass by a thrift store, I must pop in for a second. That second lasts for at least half an hour, and I rarely leave empty handed. If I don't go in, the thought will just keep nagging at me for the rest of the day, until in the end, I surrender and go back anyway.

Back to my anecdote. By the end of summer, after galavanting through thrift stores, garage/yard sales, discount stores, and the occasional mall, I have amassed a small Everest of items that takes over half of my floor space. I know I have to stop, I'm working on that. Bit by bit, I'm weaning off. This summer, my goal is to only spend, at the absolute most, $200. Including back to school clothing. As for food, school fees, gas, car insurance, bills; basic necessities, that's a completely different matter. But I refuse to spend more than $50 a month when eating out, not including groceries. As for school materials, there's WalMart and Office Depot and their sales. I'm definitely signing up early to rent texts from the school bookstore for the Fall. From now on, I'm not treating friends, until I have a steady income coming in, and all my financial needs are met.

Here's a photo of my pile of novels I got rid of, and donating. Count: 50. Left: around 300. I have a very long way to go from here. Good luck to me!

the killings at badger's drift

I just finished the pilot for the Midsomer Murders, and I must say, it's got me positively hooked! I couldn't wait to return it so I could check out the whole of the first series. I didn't have time to watch it until after I came home, which was around 2 hours ago. I rushed so I could have this up as today's post. I'm really swamped with things to do for classes and I'll be too busy for the rest of the month because Spring Break is the first full week of April and midterms in 2 weeks. That said, I'll be having off days when I don't have a post, otherwise, I'll do what I did last month and try to just put a poem up, either my own or a favorite with my thoughts alongside it. Peace out!

(I found this montage of the pilot on Google. Pretty much says it all without giving anything away. Don't worry, no spoilers here.)

boredom

When boredom consumes me, I tend to change my appearance or living space drastically. Just because subtlety isn't going to cut it for me. Sometimes, I just can't focus on reading one of the many historical fictions I currently own. Maybe it's because I need to move around every now and then, if I had a book plastered on my immediate vision, I'd probably make a mess of my whole apartment. Which reminds me, I need to stop buying books. I should just make one day in the week for me to spend the whole day in Barnes & Noble to read. Sure, the option to buy from thrift stores or garage sales are there, even online scans of novels, but I just like having the material rather than through technology. Either way, I should just cut down on constantly shopping for books. Used or new. I'm in college, I need to conserve my money for tuition, textbooks, and materials. Unfortunately for me, those textbooks are bout as interesting as watching paint dry.

So what I've caught myself doing lately is slowly changing my physical appearance. Yes, slowly, though in not-too-subtle-ways. So far, I've gotten a haircut (3 inches); shorter fringes, more layers, and a bit of light ash blonde under at the back as well as a bit of under my fringes. Oh, I have natural black hair. Not dark, dark brown or brownish black or blue black. Just black. Really, really, really black. Not even any undertones. In the past few years, I've been dyeing and bleaching my hair though, so it's been through a lot. Now, it's back to normal, color-wise. I'm bored of it now, so back to multi-colored hair! It's been a few months since I've had colors on my hair, the last was natural red and honey blonde. I've some purple hair dye just in the wait, incase I feel spontaneous again, I'll add it into my current state.

I won't be going over the topic of my hair until there's yet another change to it. Though other changes are happening as I've mentioned. Including are: clearing out most of my 1000-something books, 2 medium-sized closets of clothing, and loads of papers from goodness knows where. Not to forget my room itself, I'm...redecorating. Taking down the wall posters, though keeping the door ones. I've been searching like crazy for black and white photos at thrift stores all over, but I've only had luck finding one fitting the look I'm going for. More shops to visit!

6 words

Music: A gate. An excuse not to listen to the world, yet the world is music in itself. Nothing but absolute quiet could compare. Though, in my opinion, the Scottish highlands provide the best kind of music this world could provide to us lucky saps who deign to exist here.

Dreams: What our subconscious minds want as reality, yet it seemingly is unreachable. Thought what's lurking in the back of our minds could escape into our dreams. For dreams are a way for us to live that fantasy, even for just the night our minds could be free to explore.

Books: Escape to another world completely your own. Of course you share it with other readers, but that's the beauty of your "own world"; it exists for you and if you wish, others you would like to make knowledgeable of it's existence.

Hidden: Everything. Every little, insignificant, important, obvious, unscrupulous thing should be hidden.

Silence: Solitude is always the way to go. Never speak if the words aren't in tune to your thoughts. It would be pointless and your meaning isn't as convincing as it would come across were it be true.

Emotion: Heartless. Though is that befitting anyone of this world? We all feel emotion. No matter what science tells us or directs our thoughts to believe, we all feel some kind of emotion. Whether it be on a high level, or very subtle one.

march to dos - film

Films are one of my favorite escapes from the drudgery of what we call life. I might not be so in love with driving or taking the train to certian libraries when they're more than half an hour away, but if the movie's really interesting, then I'm definitely there without second thought.

For March, I wanted to do a murder mystery marathon. One was suggested to me by my British friend who discovered it when he went back to England. It's a long-running series called Midsomer Murders. Based on the novels by Caroline Graham, which is also known as the Inspector Barnaby mysteries. And lucky me, my favorite library just happens to have most of the series! There's not much I can say bout them other than they must be really good to be in running for the past thirteen years. Actually, the pilot aired on 23rd March 1997, so the thirteen year anniversary of the series is in a little over 3 weeks. That's amazing, this has got to be the only series (I've heard of anyway) that's lasted for more than 10 years. I can't wait to start watching! Here's a list of the episodes (in chronological order) that I'm going to try to fit into this month:

- The Killings at Badger's Drift (pilot)

Series One

- Written in Blood

- Death of a Hollow Man

- Faithful unto Death

- Death in Disguise

Series Two

- Death's Shadow

- Strangler's Wood

- Dead Man's Eleven

- Blood Will Out

Series Three

- Death of a Stranger

- Blue Herrings

- Judgement Day

- Beyond the Grave

As you can see, the series aren't as long as most American seasons. But I think a version is around 100 minutes, so each series is over 6 hours long. Well this should keep me out of trouble and at home for a long, long time. I'm actually looking forward to shutting myself in for the month (excluding school, work, and weekly dinners with my best friend). As for the rest of the show, I'll draw up a new to-do for April; I might have to postpone the 'old movies' list that I was thinking of setting up for the next month. There's always May!