Three short thoughts about hair.

On November 27, 2016November 26, 2016 By StevenIn Life At Home1 Comment

Sometimes, a string of semi-random thoughts sits in my draft folder for so long that I give up on the idea that they’re part of a longer post and just use them as-is. This is one of those times. Just roll with it. Longer posts resume tomorrow!

1) Sometimes, I use Amelie’s shampoo instead of my own. I just like the smell of it. I’ve also learned over time that I really like the smell of coconut in hair products, but I can’t stand shaved coconut on pastries.

2) I hate shaving with the fire of a thousand suns, but I hate being unshaven, too. I thought about laser hair removal for my face a bit. I know someone who had that done and he only has to shave about once a month now. I always have other things to spend my money on, though. Besides, you never know when you’ll have to go on the run and will need to grow a disguise-beard.

3) Speaking of shaving, I think I have shaving gnomes. There’s a large-ish bald spot on my left shin, close to my ankle. It’s on the front of the leg, and it’s super smooth. Logic dictates that it’s probably from the way I cross my legs at work, but I’ve spent lots of time crossing my legs in various comfortable ways to try to duplicate that rubbing, and none of them contact my shin on top of the bald spot. I have not been able to figure out exactly how I’m rubbing my shin at the point of baldness. So: gnomes! Gnomes with Nair!

I usually try to end my posts with a question, but I honestly can’t think of one for this topic that wouldn’t be patently ridiculous.

Editor’s Note: I’m attempting to blog every day in November with CheerPeppers. I don’t expect to succeed because life be crazy, but any blogging in excess of my previous post-free month is a win, right?

The Best Of.

On November 26, 2016November 26, 2016 By StevenIn Life At Home

Watching blog statistics is an infurating hobby. I’ve been writing here now for just over five years, and no matter what I do, the same two posts are always at the top of my stats.

1) ICE, ICE, Baby! (A Beginner’s Guide To The Deutsche Bahn) – Written in early 2013, almost halfway through my time in Germany, this is a fairly detailed how-to styled post about how to use the rail system in Germany. I took a lot of time to write this one, and gathered a ton of photographs from my own travels. I left the comments open for the first couple of years, and I would routinely get comments from people about to go on their first German rail adventure, seeking advice. I still get the occasional question through normal e-mail about this one, and it is always, always, always at the top of my stats for the most visits on any given day.

2) Germany’s Most Dangerous Export: Kinder Surprise Eggs – This post from late 2013 is the second busiest post on my entire blog. These little chocolate eggs are illegal to import into the United States, with a very steep fine per-egg if you get caught bringing one through customs. I see them for sale from time to time in places like Sawgrass Mills, and I haven’t the foggiest idea how they got them through customs. Rumors persist that the ban has been lifted, but I haven’t seen anything official to confirm that and I guess regular google searches about Kinder Eggs bring up my post.

The third place for top post is usually the most recent thing I’ve posted. There are a few older posts that I really enjoyed putting together, though. Sometimes I wish some of these would be in the top stats instead.

1) Grokking Expatriates in Sci-Fi – This is another post from early 2013, and it’s one of the few posts where I got really geeky. I went through an insanely long list of television, movie, comic, and literary characters out of the sci-fi genre who could be considered expatriates, and I grouped them into categories I made up. This post was so much fun that it’s the first and only time that I’ve ever been Freshly Pressed. (Thanks again for the nomination, Rara!)

2) Last Looks – I wrote this in late 2014, as I was preparing to move back to the United States. It’s a long list of things that I thought I would miss about Germany, and things that I wouldn’t miss. I also mentioned a lot of stuff that I was looking forward to about being back in the US, and I was right about everything except the cell phone signal. That still sucks.

3) – Hunting Krampus in Berchtesgaden – Besides being a fascinating look into holiday traditions that are a little bit less tame than modern Santa, this post is a very fun look at the time in late 2013 that I went on a Krampus hunt with a friend from work.

4) Any of my travel posts. I’ve written up many fantastic trips, with lots of great photos. For some of my favorite examples, check out Cairo, Budapest, or Reykjavik. I’m immensely proud of some of the posts I’ve written up about my travels.

What gets the most traffic from your blog?

With perfect clarity, I suddenly realize.

On November 25, 2016November 25, 2016 By StevenIn Life At Home4 Comments

I have a memory of camping, when I was a pre-teen Boy Scout.

It was the summer of 1984, and I was eleven years old. I was exiled to a week at the Camp Tanah Keeta’s summer camp for Boy Scouts in Jupiter, Florida. I say exiled because I really don’t think I wanted to go. Both of my brothers were Boy Scouts as well. They each attained the rank of Eagle Scout, and Jonathan also reached Order of the Arrow. Where my brothers saw community and fun, I saw something that kept me from television. I would much rather have been home watching new episodes of Automan than going to meetings.

This particular run at summer camp was during the summer of 1984. I know this because when we went to the mess hall to get dinner one night, someone was playing the brand new Ghostbusters soundtrack on a portable boom box near the dinner line. Music is always memorable to me, and to eleven-year-old me, the original red plastic cassette box of delight that Arista used for the Ghostbusters soundtrack was like catnip.

This is also the summer that I nearly got lost in Jonathan Dickinson State Park, but that’s a story for another time. Besides which, Jonathan Dickinson is only a few miles wide. No matter how immense it seemed at the time, I wouldn’t have been lost for very long.

Back to the camping. A few lucky souls had cabins, and some of the cabins even had air conditioners. I was not so lucky- my camping area contained pre-set canvas tents set on wooden slabs. There were cots. On the bright side, I did not have to pitch my own tent or sleep on the ground. I was still sleeping in a tent, though, and it was open to nature.

A recent post by Controlled Chaos recounts a time that she was sleeping in a tent and was terrorized by a small (and probably adorable) wild animal getting into their stuff. That post made me remember a similar experience from Tanah Keeta. During that week of summer camp, I had a box of Entenmann’s chocolate chip cookies zipped into my duffel bag. One day I came back from the day’s activities to find the cookies gone. A tiny rip in the side of the duffel bag suggested that a raccoon had gotten into my bag and had made off with my cookies clenched in tiny paws.

Except I’m no longer convinced that it really was a furry masked bandito. The post by Controlled Chaos mentions “tiny little nibble holes,” but the rip in my bag didn’t have that shape. It looked like two straight-line rips. The box that had previously contained the cookies wasn’t nibbled through or torn either, and there was no cookie dust around the scene of the crime.

With perfect clarity, I realize now, more than thirty years later, that some kid ate my cookies and staged a crime scene to frame the local wildlife. What a dick!

Have you ever realized after many years that your perception of a past event was incorrect?

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

On November 24, 2016November 23, 2016 By StevenIn Life At Home

At least a third of my readers are in countries that don’t celebrate American Thanksgiving, but that’s happening today in the US and it’s going to keep me pretty busy. Because of that, I’m going to cheat a little bit on today’s post by sharing a selection of my favorite Thanksgiving joke images. Enjoy, and I’ll see you here tomorrow with more actual words!

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

Khaaaaaaaaaan!

On November 23, 2016November 25, 2016 By StevenIn Life At Home

Sometimes, when I’m looking for specific information on the Internet, I stumble across truly ridiculous and hilarious memes. We all know the double rainbow guy and nyan cat, because they’re everywhere now. But my favorites are the ones that surprise me, and the ones that make me laugh out loud.

This is the most recent video to make me laugh so hard that I couldn’t help but share it with others. The little Spock-dance at 22 seconds in is one of the funniest edits I’ve ever seen.