iceblog

Lots of people tell me, "Marisa, you blog so much." This is true. I do blog a lot. But what you don't realize unless you've already had this conversation with me is that I actually post about half of the blog thoughts that I have, and that now, after two months of training myself to blog every day, my brain works like a blog.

This isn't entirely true. My brain likes to work like I'm a character in a novel - it likes to have rational thoughts, it likes to motivate me in rational ways and it likes for all of my brain processes to be explainable to an invisible audience. I think this is because I am actually really weird (for actuals) and because I like to write so I've kind of always thought like this. But now I have a specific name for it - rather than thinking like a writer or thinking like a character, I'm thinking like a blogger.

Anyway, I have lots of half-written posts, in various stages of production, some of which will never ever be published and some of which may be later combined or finished or deleted. This is because I want to produce the best blog possible and also because I have more than one profound thought each day, so sometimes I start a post and then realize that I have a way better one so I'll save the first as a draft and then write the second awesome one but then realize that I actually like the first one better. Or something like that.

So if the posts that you see comprise the tip of the iceberg of my blog (hereafter known as my iceblog), the submerged part looks something like this:

• evolution and why I think that this is a kind of silly debate
• things that I would tweet if I caved and got a twitter
• how I accidentally became a math major (this one will be written if I ever do declare a math major)
• the statistics of my blog
• best non-titular characters of all time, a list
• why I don't like sarcasm
• coffee thoughts (as suggested by Medina)
• my favorite misheard lyrics

So you can see that these are interesting topics in their own right but I can't blog more than once a day or everyone would be convinced that I don't have a life (you should now be starting to get the idea that my summer actually is comprised of tv, books and blogging and I have not been exaggerating about that). I even have a note on my phone so I can jot down blog ideas and not forget them throughout the course of the day.

My (ice)blog is ever growing. Some people wonder if I will continue blogging once summer ends because I will get super busy, and I don't know, because I have terrible follow-through once I remember how much I love procrastinating before studying, but I do know that even if I'm not posting them my brain will be drafting blog topics for years to come. Or in other words I will continue to have extraordinarily weird and interesting and mundane and slightly irrational thoughts for as long as I possibly can.

my computer

As much as I like the technology of computers, I actually hate using them. My first experience with computers was as a child when I "played" a "game" by which I mean that I played with color levels (rgb) to make cool colors. My favorite to make was lavender because it was so tricky to figure out how to make purple (blue + red) but also make it light (I don't remember how I accomplished this). Then I learned how to type without looking at the keyboard then I got my own computer then I got an email address (apparently I have had one of my yahoo accounts in continuous use for 8 years which is a really long time in my short life). Then I started to hate computers.

One of the first things I learned about computers was how to use Windows Task Manager. I am very good at killing processes that are using extraordinary amounts of CPU. I have dealt with more printer drama than most people see in a lifetime. I am proficient at changing the format of word documents from .odt to .doc (changing their readability from OpenOffice to Microsoft Word, because I grew up without Word). I have dealt numerous times with not being able to open spreadsheets because they were in Excel. I was enabled in all of these instances to figure out computer bugginess both by my own curious nature and my dad's good instructions.

My desktop computer now runs Linux and seems to be moderately reasonable in terms of doing what I want, which is mostly using Google when my two-year-old laptop is incapacitated. Back in the day it would shut down while I was using PaintShop because apparently this was too difficult for it. But this is nothing compared to my laptop. Because for my laptop, iTunes is a stressful application.

I don't know why it is, but if I listen to music for more than an hour and don't use my computer (whose name is the Crimson Dell because it's red and a Dell and it's a play on the Crim Dell) for other purposes, once the screensaver starts I know I'm done for. I can't get my screen to come back for like five minutes and then it will, but iTunes will say that the wrong song is playing and no other application on my computer will respond, so literally my only course of action is to press the power button (I was raised to fear such situations and shy away from damaging my computer by not restarting properly, but sometimes it's necessary).

Whatever. On the bright side of owning a laptop, aside from giving it a great name I have also given it great stickers so that everyone knows what to think of me based on the back of my screen! I'm still in the market for lolzy stickers to fill about a quarter of it, but for now I have plenty of pride in Hufflepuff, Sleeperstar, my ability to vote, thinking green, my support of the milk industry (despite my inability to drink it) and, of course, Justin Bieber.

driving challenges

I really like long drives much in the same way that I like long trips to the rec center: I see them as a challenge to cover as much ground in as little time as possible. I don't mean this in an extremely dangerous way, and I have my limits on both driving and running, but I do mean it in a very literal mathematical way. I spend like 90% of a run calculating how fast I'm going and how far I could go if I just pushed for a given distance by a certain time (like, get to 5 miles in one hour, then subtract the amount of time and distance I've already gone and subdivide my distance so that I know exactly what fraction of a mile I need to run in one minute and further how fast I should be at a 30 second mark...I am crazy). But this is good because I hate running and by thinking about this all the time I'm thinking way less about why I'm actually running and I can feel good about something other than the calories I'm burning (because I know I'm getting a smoothie when I'm done).

So when I drive long distances, I do the same thing. I take my arrival time and attempt to shave minutes off of it slowly but surely by driving a little bit faster than the speed limit, but sometimes I also pick an arbitrary goal (like Savannah) and say that I have to be there in 30 minutes which is only possible if I average 70 for the next half hour, and then whenever I get there I calculate what my average actually was (which is kind of difficult because it's not an easy clean number but like 72.83 or something). This will give me math to do for a solid half hour and it's super fun. (Also, I think cruise control is really boring and a cop-out and it would make me way less concentrated on driving and it wouldn't even challenge me to get somewhere at an arbitrary but specific time.)

This summer has given me an intense appreciation of driving by myself for a long time, because I don't have to talk to anyone for several hours and I can entertain myself in a variety of non-reading/watching activities, and thinking about the car in front of me is not very interesting but thinking about my life and identity is what I do when I'm not driving so it can get very tiring to do this all day. As much as I like driving and talking to people, it can get awkward when, after an hour, you've run out of things you want to talk about and then you just listen to music but then you worry that they don't like it or you're really cold but you can tell they're hot or they're distracting you when you need to merge. So for long trips I don't worry about environmental friendliness and I instead think about preserving my sanity. Anyway, thanks to Orlando and Williamsburg, I have some new fun driving habits/games!

• Cloud-gazing. I literally saw like fifteen mice in the clouds as we left Disney World, some of which looked like Mickey and some of which looked like real life mice.
• Counting Waffle House signs. I counted 17 between Florida and Nova but I was asleep for part of the ride. The only light-up sign I saw without burnt-out letters was the one in Fredericksburg.
• Calculating gas mileage. This takes more patience because it's best when you let the tank run all the way down, in my case over 320 miles, but it gives you something fun to do once you stop at the gas station aside from worrying about bathroom cleanliness!
• Listening to CDs. Usually I just listen to the radio, but after hearing The Edge of Glory, TGIF and Rolling in the Deep like fifty thousand times this summer, I have grown grumpy toward all radio stations. I have since discovered that Codes and Keys is perfect for the drive from campus to 295 or vice versa (45 minutes) and that basically any other CD is acceptable for the rest of my drive (though the 500 Days of Summer soundtrack is pretty fun to sing to AND chill to). If I get my timing down to a good science (allowing for some traffic), next time I could figure out a CD of the perfect length for the entirety of 95 or perhaps two CDs with a fun switching point like the James Monroe museum.
• The alphabet game on road signs only, though I gave up after five minutes of looking for a J. Whatever, I'm sure I saw all of the other letters like ten times each.

Also, the drive to Williamsburg is now no longer a long drive. It can still be terrible in traffic, but when I get home it doesn't really feel like I drove all day (since I didn't) so that's a good thing. It's actually really fun to see the same signs and think the same thoughts every time (I counted the number of times I have driven/been driven to the burg and it is now 19). Here is my thought process (shortened for your convenience).

• I have no idea how to get to Williamsburg, what on earth, there are so many highway options, oh no, I'll just take Stringfellow because I don't even count 123 as a highway.
• Fairfax County Parkway connects to 123?! Oh yeah I thought that last time. I still don't know which one is north and which one is south though: I just know that if I turn left I can get to Reston and if I turn right I can get to...the other direction. So I guess I'll skip that shortcut.
• Braddock is always way longer than I remember it being.
• Burke Lake is so pretty, why don't I go there?
• Blu Steel Way...is that the way that Zoolander spells it?
• Lorton...Lorton prison...Lauren Medina lives around here, and she would make a very funny criminal. She would definitely explain her motivations in a monologue if she were a villain.
• Occoquan is so cute, why don't I go there too?
• IKEA - 500 DAYS OF SUMMER - WANT.
• Dumfries is a strange name for a road but I'm ok with it because I've seen it so many times, but Jamie thinks it's really silly. I wonder what else we think is silly just because we're unfamiliar with it (or what we think is normal because we're used to it).
• Quantico...shoot why didn't I start the alphabet game earlier, when else will I see so many choices of Q's?
• THERE'S A JAMES MONROE MUSEUM?
• Carmax - this would be a long way to drive for a car, but it doesn't feel that far away from home.
• Fredericksburg - there is that freaky Waffle House with all of its letters.
• Oh so that's where Lake Anna is!
• Is it Carmel Church, Bowling Green or Carmel Bowling, Church Green?
• I don't know what Stafford is but it seems to be everywhere you could possibly want to exit.
• Bass Pro Shops - this means that I'm getting close to my exit.
• Atlee/Elmont...Clement Attlee much? (British PM nbd)
• Mechanicsville...now I'm picturing Kris Kusnerik conducting a train. I wonder how mechanics advertise there.
• These road signs that say I should drive 65 mph have weird spinny orange things on them...do they move on their own or is it the force of air being moved by a constant stream of cars or what?
• New Kent CH/Providence Forge - this is clearly a sign meant for Kennis Forte, I mean really, they have the first three letters right for both her first and last names!
• Croaker/Norge/Toano - there are too many places with O's in their names.
• Oh my gosh, going 45 is like crawling down the road instead of driving on it.
• Richmond Road has to be safe enough for faster than 35!
• SNO TO GO.
• Nooooo not 25, I'll never be able to drive at a normal speed again!
• WAWA. MONROE. I'M HOME.
• Parking services grump grump grump.

Now my goal is to memorize all of the exits in order and figure out which one is the exact midpoint between my house and my dorm - this should only take a year or so, since I have so many already down. My next goal will be to find someone willing to put in $5 for an investigative tour of this James Monroe Museum.

comic book movies

I love comic book movies because I love superheroes...because I love fantasy. Fantasy allows us to examine society, human nature, love, courage and strength in ways that normal stories just can't do. When I hear the word fantasy I usually immediately jump to an image from Kingdom Hearts or Final Fantasy or something (I don't really understand these things). But when you think about it, what isn't fantasy? Rotten tomatoes tells us that Toy Story is fantasy, and of course we have Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Batman, and basically everything that is awesome. So when I say that a movie has to have quirky characters to be of any interest to me, I generally mean that a non-fantasy movie MUST have quirky characters but a fantasy movie has to have good characters and an imaginative backdrop for those characters, be they quirky or not.

Anyway, the only comic books I ever read growing up were of Tintin, a Belgian reporter who is pretty awesome - but I literally have no idea if anyone I know has ever heard of him because these were popular European comics and I'm not sure at all how they found their way into my basement/life. This too is becoming a major motion picture, though the adaptation remains to be judged by me as good or not.

So I never read any of the superhero comics, but I really really like them in movie form. Obviously this post was inspired by my viewing of Captain America, a film that I would recommend to anyone else who's similarly enthralled by comic book movies. The thing about these movies is that they're adaptations of comic books, so there's a) a lot of material to work with and b) really weird-looking villains. That sort of comes with the territory. So I was ok with that aspect of Cap Amurika. Whenever I watch one of these movies and subsequently feel like immersing myself in Marvel-land, my immediate recourse is to go to wikipedia and learn as much as I can about their histories and characters and so on without having to do real work. Naturally this included researching The Avengers and the greatest villains of all time and of course the casting choices for The Dark Knight Rises (which will again include a lot of IMAX, score!). Anyway, now I just have to watch Thor to be caught up - which is weird because you'd think that I would have already watched a movie about a Nordic superhero, but unless I catch something the first week it's out I'm much more inclined to wait until I can watch it for free, and I was very busy studying when it came out. Actually I went to a concert and the beach that weekend, but after that I was too busy studying for finals. But actually I only had micro left, so I just spent my free time packing properly, but I would call that a good investment of time despite what others may think.

Whatever. Aside from Thor, then, here's my ranking of the superhero movies based on comic books that I have seen (obviously influenced by major film reviewers, personal movie-going experience, etc. etc.):

1. The Dark Knight - this was not only an epic story and amazing in IMAX, but it also made you feel bad for the millionaire hero who should have everything he could ever want. Also it posed some great ethical dilemmas, and there's nothing that I love better than a good moral debate in my action movies.
2. Spider-Man 2 - all of the Spider-Man movies were well made and Tobey Maguire remains the best casting choice for any superhero (except maybe Hugh Jackman as Wolverine), and it's hard for me to say that this was better than its predecessor but then again it has the best villain, Harry's revenge, MJ's engagement and plenty of reasons for Spider-Man to hang up his spandex and call it a day. But of course that wouldn't make for a good role model.
3. X-Men: First Class - ok, I'll admit that I like all of the X-Men movies and I feel like they're very good for escapism and imagination, but this one blew their oddly-shaped socks off. Excellent casting, actually pretty funny, and even though I knew what had to be coming I was still thrilled to see it.
4. Iron Man - I had pretty low expectations going to see this for the first time, but I was surprised at how funny, smart and kind of cute it was. And it looks super clean and shiny while still being dirty, if that makes sense?
5. Captain America: The First Avenger - I would call this better than any of the second-best in any of these series, but not as good as the best offerings of each. It's kind of like a mash-up of Spider-Man's personality and story and Iron Man's technology, with the only major change being that it's in the 1940s, and along with that comes some nice perks: it feels nice and classic and we get to have Nazis (sort of). Also, though fairly predictable now that I've seen so many of these movies, it was still enjoyable and Steve Rogers is a nice contrast to Tony Stark in that he's actually likable (same goes for Peter Parker, but hey, we haven't seen him on the big screen in four years...good thing that's about to change).
6. X2 - now I'm tired of explaining my rankings.
7. Spider-Man
8. X-Men
9. Batman Begins
10. Iron Man 2
11. X-Men Origins: Wolverine - though there was a significant lack of other characters to care about, Wolverine was still more than enough to keep me interested, and I really enjoyed getting to focus on one character, since the rest of the series is about all the big action/plot sort of things that don't leave room for character analysis or emotions.
12. Spider-Man 3 - lots of people hated this movie, but I thought it was really funny and I wasn't confused by how many villains there were (like, how realistic would it be if only one bad guy tried to attack New York at once?).
13. Watchmen - I actually did like this movie a lot, but its characters didn't have a lot of depth and none of the lines were really memorable which is why it's below these other films. If I had time I would love to read the book/series, which is supposed to be epic.
14. X-Men: The Last Stand - again, I liked this movie more than most people, but I still agree that the others in the series were way better.
15. Fantastic Four - I was entertained but I didn't walk away thinking about anything important (just how inconvenient their superpowers would be).
16. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer - I didn't really like it?
17. Superman Returns - I really didn't like it.

Aside from Thor and the previews for The Avengers, The Amazing Spider-Man and The Dark Knight Rises, I have really had enough of superhero movies for quite some time. And I expect that it will actually be a long time until they can make a Superman or Hulk movie that looks interesting to me.

quirks

I am the first person to call myself strange (no, not of all time - I mean I am the quickest to admit it regarding me specifically). But I really like to think of myself as quirky, in a Luna Lovegood sort of way. And since I know myself so much better than I know anyone else, I assume that I am the quirkiest person alive. I'm definitely up there on the awkward scale and I would say that I am gathering personality quirks as I age.

So when I watch a movie, I of course think about how I would rate it on both a star and a grading scale given the dialog, performances, music, tone, originality, title, themes, etc. - but the most important part to me is the believable quirks of the characters. If they aren't awkward, lonely and weird then I just don't know what to think of them, because to me those are the most human characteristics there are. The movies that stand out in my mind as the greatest movies ever made aren't necessarily the ones that won Oscars (though they're generally pretty great movies), but are necessarily the ones that introduce memorable characters, people who I can relate to and who get woven into my unconscious mind so that when I meet a person in real life who is similar to them I feel at once an ease of familiarity.

Maybe my standards are high, but I stand by them. I'm sure that not everyone in the world is quirky and some people are quite perfectly normal, but that's pretty boring to me and I don't care to watch movies about boring people. Unless that's the whole point of their quirk (like Harold Crick in Stranger than Fiction). But I really can't stand romantic comedies about boring people, which is why I don't really like Notting Hill (his roommate is ok but a little bit too gross to qualify as truly interesting), Titanic, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (funny but ultimately just a popcorn flick), and basically any other popular romcom. I will, however, defend The Notebook because Noah is incredibly weird (Ryan Gosling gives off really awkward vibes which make me think that he might be a psychopath or he might just be quirky).

Anyway, as quirky as I'm pretty sure that I am, soon that will not be enough: my aspiration is now to become eccentric. This definitely denotes someone who only makes sense to themselves but is awesome in a Dumbledore/Bill the Pokemon Researcher sort of way - an academic with odd collections and a very silly sense of humor. That could easily be me in like thirty years. Hollywood of course tells me I can reach this much sooner through such eccentric characters as Amelie and Holly (Breakfast at Tiffany's), who take opposite approaches to life: one keeps to herself and meddles with people's lives from behind a metaphorical curtain and the other keeps her identity to herself but doesn't seem to care for anyone else, though she's happy to surround herself with perfect strangers.

Ironically, two very talented and classy Audreys.

There's a lot more to their characters to analyze and digging further could tell us a lot about our society, but my brain's already went there and back and I don't really want to walk through all the steps again. Despite their depth, there are many exceptions to the well-crafted character, and most characters who you might immediately think of as "eccentric" are merely caricatures of real human weirdness, exaggerated for comedic effect. I think movies handle quirky much better than they do eccentric. Regardless, I suppose my ambition is to intrigue people as well as the best characters do...and again I'm explaining myself and taking away part of my mystery, but I guess moderately long blog posts about my personality are just one of my many quirks, and this blog hasn't even begun to scratch the surface of my weirdness.

commonly confused

In my mind there are a lot of random associations that I have which are probably really, really silly.

• Lincoln Lawyer and The Conspirator...they both include a Lincoln and are dramatic films recently released in theaters but I'm pretty sure they are about very, very different subjects
• Wind in the Willows and Wuthering Heights...I'm sure that these are completely separate books but I can't hear one without thinking of the other and then thinking, should I be picturing a toad or a Bronte? (insert English major joke here)
• Root beer and gum...ok, I don't confuse these but every time I drink root beer I think of gum and sometimes of gumby simply because I'm thinking of gum, but this only happens when I first drink root beer, I know I'm weird (more like my neural pathways are weird)
• Goldfish and sunday school, or more accurately Goldfish and glitter glue and play-doh
• The name Erin and the color green, though Katie and I discovered this was because of Beanie Babies
• Backstreet Boys and N*Sync, I know one was supposed to be way better but I honestly don't know the difference
• Disney World and Disney Land, it took me years to learn that there was a difference
• Hayes, Garfield, Arthur and Cleveland...I'm pretty sure that I learned nothing about reconstruction except that there were something called carpetbaggers who I imagine as Neville Longbottom's grandmother with a gentleman wearing carpenter pants and carrying around a big, moth-infested bag
• Arnold in Magic School Bus and Kris with a K, oh wait...
• Gregory Peck and Charlie Sheen, but admittedly this was only when I was growing up and now I know the difference (you want to know the real difference between us? I have class and you don't...yes, that's a Parent Trap quote, and yes the difference is GP is infinitely classier than the Sheen)
• Eating slices of bread before bed and Bart Simpson being a brat
• The Fantastic Mr. Fox and half of the guys I know
• Comic Sans and Mr. Demek, my history teacher who required all of our assignments to be turned in with this font (much to my horror)
• Gummy worms and tape worms (it's quite unfortunate)
• Mankey and Machop...like obviously I know the difference but I can't think of one without thinking of the other

There are like hundreds more but these were, for some reason, on the top of my mind. I lead a very thoughtful life, I guess.

the power of free

It is incredible what I will do for free things. Even though I can get free soft serve ice cream in Sadler any day, I am still willing to buy a Colonial Williamsburg mug every year partially because I get free ice cream in it (and also because I get free cider). Even though I have way too many t-shirts, I can be convinced to participate in all kinds of things if I am only promised a free shirt (like pay to do campus golf...and gain a FREE SHIRT!).

Ok, these are things that I have to pay for and actually get a bonus thrown in. But there are some things that you don't have to pay anything for, like free getting free food for your birthday. All you have to do is be born, or have a friend who was born on a given day if that friend is generous and crazy like Isabel, and you're set. Right? Sure. But this can be taken to excess and you might not realize all of the consequences - you can run around all day, have to print out coupons, have to pay for transportation, have to get a ton of annoying emails forever, and probably other things. Oh, you might overeat. Maybe you really don't want a free burrito from Chipotle, but if you don't get it you're passing up on free food and that would obviously be foolish. So maybe you eat more than you should which doesn't really have any impact on the restaurant and is only hurting yourself. The same thing goes at all you can eat buffets - I am always tempted to get another plate, because hey, there's no extra cost so it's really like lowering the marginal cost of each plate...but it's not like eating more at one meal makes me any less hungry for the next meal, it just delays it a little bit.

But sometimes the promise of a free thing actually motivates me to be insane. Katie, Jamie and I wanted to get some Georgetown Cupcakes because they're basically amazing and I'm always up for them, but we ended up not having enough time on Friday to make this happen (we got froyo which was fine by me). So we decided to go to Georgetown Saturday morning - they open at 10, and Katie had to be at Union Station at 11:25, so we figured we would have plenty of time to get cupcakes and get there. Of course, the lines are just as famous as the cupcakes, so when we got to Georgetown at 9:50 there was already a long line. But it was going to be ok - we just needed to get on the Metro which would take us right to Union Station by 10:53, and the line clearly wouldn't take an hour. So we waited in line and were clever enough to look up the free flavor of the day on twitter, which went to the first 100 people who requested it. We each paid for a $3 cupcake and got another one for free and were given our cupcakes by 10:38. Then we had a decision to make. Power walk to the nearest Metro stop (a mile away), drive to the Metro and have to pay for parking twice, or drive all the way to Union Station, though I haven't ever really driven in DC before? We decided to power walk, Katie dragging her suitcase behind her and none of us even having time to look inside our cupcake boxes. After all, we could totally do a 15-minute mile, right?

We followed the walking directions on my phone. We power walked the first 10 or so minutes, saw a bus, considered getting on it, but continued on, not knowing how much the bus cost or how long it would take to get where we needed to go. We picked up our pace, holding our boxes of cupcakes, dripping in sweat, weaving in and out of people, beginning to run when we saw the Metro signs ahead of us, our flip-flops flapping against the pavement - we ran down the escalator and hurried to get Metro tickets, Katie went ahead to the platform and I hastened to give her instructions to switch to the red line, Jamie and I hurried to get $7 each on fare cards which was way more than we needed, we ran down the next escalator, and found Katie standing on the platform having just missed the train we needed. We could wait for the next one but then the next red line would get us to Union Station just after her train was set to depart. So we learned that the next alternative was the bus, the very same one we had passed before. We hurried upstairs and walked another few blocks for the bus, and it turned out to cost like $1, which is less than the Metro for sure. We still got to the train station late (like 11:40), but thankfully, there was another train at 12:25. We dreaded going up to the ticket office because it would cost another $40, and the first train ticket would have been all lost money. But the ladies only charged her $3 and then chastised us (you just had to get those cupcakes, didn't you?), so we sat and ate our cupcakes and contemplated the fact that we had each received a free cupcake of a $3 value, but had spent an extra $3 to each get there (between the Metro charging us just to go through the gate and back and the bus) and then Katie had to spend an extra $3 for the later train. And we had experienced a hot and stressful hour of running around and worrying.

Oh free cupcakes.

People can also manipulate you by giving "free" gifts. It can be unintentional, of course, but companies certainly are intentional in trying to win your favor and make you feel obligated to buy something once you've had a free sample, or make you want to buy more in order to get a free gift. These gifts are usually somewhat appealing but something you wouldn't actually spend money on, like a miniature gift basket, and this is surprisingly similar to the overeating example. At Downtown Disney, if you buy something you can get a better price on a towel or something - but this has hidden costs to it. In addition to having to still pay for the extra good, you also have to transport it, which may or may not be difficult on vacation, and it probably is still a bad deal compared to the price of a similar thing at home, but it seems like a good idea because it's on sale.

While on this subject, I'll talk about smart shopping. I was raised by an expert couponer slash bargain-finder slash yard sale buyer, and I've also studied price bundling (an economic idea of selling more than one product together OR larger products, like how a 12 ounce soda is not exactly half the price of a 24 ounce soda), AND I get very impatient with long shopping excursions so I feel pretty confident on this subject. So, for example, beware of buy one get one free...this really means half off everything, but you have to buy more than one thing, so it's actually a worse (trickier) deal. If you're going to buy something anyway, then sure, it's fine, but you shouldn't be convinced to buy something because of a sale like this. So basically, think about why this particular price or deal is being offered and about how much you would be willing to pay or want to buy without knowing the price.

Speaking of willingness to pay, this is something I am constantly considering. There are some things that I would be willing to spend inordinate amounts of money on, so when I buy them I feel like I just saved myself a bunch of money and also got a great product/experience. The classic example I visit in my head is when I went to Atlanta with my econ challenge team (yes, dorky moment, but free trip to Atlanta and like two days off from school, nbd). After we lost we had some time to kill, and I really wanted to go to the Coca-Cola factory but the rest of my team wanted to go to the aquarium. This turned out to be very expensive so we decided to walk to the Coke factory anyway, and on the way we discussed our willingness to buy, because of course we are all huge econ nerds (but actually). I was pretty much willing to spend all of the money I had with me, though I knew I still needed lunch and a souvenir, but basically I was set to spend up to $50 for this experience. When else would I be in Atlanta? The other guys varied between no amount of money making it worth it up to $10, so when it cost $15 to get in they were all kind of bummed but I felt like I had found quite a bargain (our teacher had said he would be willing to pay exactly $15, so he was actually indifferent about the whole thing). So I guess my advice is, when you know you have to pay for something anyway you might as well convince yourself that it's going to be worth way more than its likely cost.

But when I don't feel this way, I generally just won't buy anything. I shopped for three hours at Disney stores without finding anything that seemed like a good enough deal to me...there were plenty of nice things, but nice doesn't really cut it - I would have been willing to spend about $7 on a picture frame so when all of them were like $15, I couldn't make myself buy them. They just didn't seem awesome enough to warrant being that expensive. And the ones that only cost $6.95 seemed terribly small and cheap and worth at most $4 to me, so I didn't get them. But then panic set in. What if I couldn't find anything I wanted enough to part with my money...what if I left with no souvenirs? Or worse, what if I was forced to buy something terrible and that I didn't like just because I had to get something? I left the shopping trip empty-handed but determined to find something to buy the next day at Magic Kingdom. It took me another couple of hours of scattered shopping and mulling over potential purchases before I found the perfect item and decided that I would have to get it, no matter the price. It was a little bit more than I would have paid on my first day at Disney, but since this was my last chance, I went for it...the whole point of money is to get rid of it, after all, and I decided that I was tired of being controlled by price tags.

And then when I got home I realized that it broke.

Oh what you do Mickey, do Mickey, don't break my heart Mickeyyyy.

Oh well, glue to the rescue, right? So far none of my mom's many craft glues have been any good at repairing my perfect souvenir, but I still think it was a good purchase since it can hold not one but three pictures and commemorates all four Disney parks. Of course, now we have to go buy superglue...but I'm sure there will be a coupon for that.