Nebulous Mooch

I put my glasses back on last night. I decided that even though everything tends to look better in soft focus–here soft focus really means blurry–being able to see is a bit more practical than not being able to see. I think my insistance on not wearing my glasses was getting on my family’s nerves anyway.

They were getting tired of my need to stand directly in front of the television in order to see anything that was happening on screen. My husband was also getting tired of hearing me say, “I can’t drive because I’m not wearing my glasses.”

Lifetime movies are much easier to figure out if you can actually see the various characters and make out what they are doing. Apparently, being able to see the screen is an important aspect of movie watching…surprise, surprise.

Even though my grandmother has had success using eye exercises to have good vision in her nineties, my vision is already shot. It’s probably too late for me. I’ve decided to put my sights on more obtainable goals like building a robotic housekeeper that cooks delicious ethnic food and cleans the bathroom–not at the same time of course. My robotic housekeeper would clean the other rooms in the house too of course, but the bathroom is the room I hate cleaning the most.

We’re looking for a new place to rent and decided to look beyond the Watford area. So we went to look at a house in North Mymms the other day and it raised a lot of questions in my mind.

Firstly, I wonder why North Mymms is spelled with a Y but South Mimms is spelled with an I.

Secondly, I wonder who in the world would want to live in North Mymms. Talk about a depressing place. It was ugly and flat and somehow unfinished looking. It seemed like we weren’t even in England, but instead in some horrible place populated by people who looked like they were at one time very heavy drinkers. Even their dogs were quite unfortunate looking. North Mymms was a bit like one of those gray scale cards you use in photography when you set your white balance. It was a neutral gray place with no charm.

I don’t mean to insult North Mymms or the people living there. I’m sure that if you have a particular love for the color gray and if you have a bulbous red nose you’d love it. You would especially love it if you have an English bull terrier. Actually this picture is a pretty good representation of North Mymms to me.

Here’s an example of the countryside.

Lovely, isn’t it?

Despite all these details real estate in North Mymms is a hot commodity. The place we went there to see was taken by the people who saw it before us. The real estate agent said that as soon as things become available there they are snatched up. Property is booming in North Mymms. I guess there are a lot of red faced, bulbous nosed bull terrier owners who are missing the facial muscles that are used when you smile looking for a place to live.

Now I really can’t move to North Mymms because I’ve probably made a lot of enemies. I heard that  bull terriers can easily tear off a human arm so I won’t be moving there.

Pictures by katesheets and satguru.

Did you know that there is a miracle product residing in your kitchen cupboard? I kind of knew, but was only truly convinced of the baking soda miracle this week when I used it to clean my oven.

When I was in college I took a Spanish class taught by a very interesting teacher. Though I managed not to learn a word Spanish in the class, I did learn about the many uses for baking soda. The teacher spent an entire lesson droning on and on about the uses of baking soda once. The baking soda class and the class he spent explaining how to shrink a human head were the two most memorable classes. At the end of the head shrinking class, he warned us against trying to shrink heads ourselves by saying, “But in some countries there are laws.” Fortunately, there are no laws about the use of baking soda. Here’s a list of things you can do with baking soda.

Note: Baking soda is different from baking powder but the same as bicarbonate soda.

Clean Your Oven: Make a paste with baking soda and water. Put the paste on the dirty bits in your over and let it set over night. In the morning use a wet sponge to wipe it away. If your oven is crazy dirty you’ll have to put some elbow grease into it.

Deodorant: On one of my trips to Florida I forgot to pack deodorant. I put some baking soda under my arms in the morning to keep me smelling fresh when I went to the store to get deodorant. The baking soda worked so well that I never bought deodorant again. Now I feel like deodorant is a scam.

Freshen Your Carpet: Sprinkle some baking soda on you stinky carpet, let it sit for 20 minutes, and then vacuum it up.

Brighten Up Your Wash: Add a cup of baking soda to your laundry to brighten up you wash.

Cool Science Projects: Make a spectacular eruption for your model volcano by mixing baking soda and water.

Are you convinced yet?

Photo by [F]oxymoron

I’m obsessed with checking my email. I get up in the morning and check my email. Then 5 minutes later, I check my email again. It will continue like that throughout the day. I must check it more than 100 times.

What the heck am I expecting to find in my inbox?  Maybe I’m looking for an email offering me an incredible financial opportunity…wait, I get that email almost everyday. That mustn’t be it. Maybe I’m looking for help getting my website to the top of the search engines. No, I get that email about three times a day.

Just because I spend so much time poking around my inbox doesn’t mean that I do anything productive while I’m there. I haven’t made any effort of organize it. On average I have about 205 emails in my box at a time. Some have been read, but most haven’t. Deleting, reading and answering emails isn’t what I want to do. I just want to see what’s there.

While writing this post I checked my email about 5 times. I even checked my email in new tabs so I have three tabs open with my email on them. Imagine how much I would be checking my email if I joined the rest of society and actually bought a smart phone. I feel like I should join Emails Anonymous. 

Hi, I’m Lovelyn and I’m an obsessive email checker.

I don’t really need anything like that. I can stop any time.

Now that I’m officially British I have the right to do a bit of complaining about the weather. My favorite season is summer because I get to wear summer dresses and sandals and sit out in the sun. At least, in other places I get to do that. Here I get to sit inside and carry an umbrella whenever I go out.

Why is August always delivered wrapped in gray clouds? Granted, we had a lovely September and October stayed warm longer than it should’ve, but it doesn’t make up for the missing summer. When the sun is out it’s beautiful here, but it just isn’t out enough for me.

Some people might say that I’m trying to have my cake and eat it too. Okay, nobody would say that, but I wrote it because I just started thinking about cake.

Yum…

Anyway, we turned our heat on a few days ago and I’ve accepted the fact that I’ve seen the last of the warm weather until next year. As I look out at the cloudy sky I just can’t help but long for summer…and cake.

Photo by Aih.

Facebook is a giant time waster that some how keeps drawing me in. It’s like an addiction that I just can’t seem to pull myself away from. I do a few useful things and then I spend a few minutes checking Facebook. I can’t even write an entire paragraph without stopping to check Facebook mid sentence… See, I did it just then.

The thing is that I’m checking it all the time whilst complaining about it. Something annoying is always happening on Facebook. Why do they change the layout all the time? And what’s with this new scrolling feed on the right side now?

Christine from Happy Slip posted this video about Facebook. I thought it was funny so I’m sharing it, because that’s just the kind of thing I like to do.

I get a lot of crazy emails. Most of them are from SEO companies promising to get my site to the top of the search engines, but yesterday I got one that was kind of unique that I thought I’d post.

Hi there,

I’m contacting you as I’m sure many have in the past. After checking out your site at http://nebulousmooch.com/, I have a joint venture proposition for you and I’m pretty sure you’ll find it as exciting as I do.

It’s called the ‘Hair Loss Blueprint’ and it’s just been launched on the Clickbank marketplace. It’s a product type that is a proven money maker and a product brand that is solely unique. Promoting the ‘Hair Loss Blueprint’ is a great opportunity for you, for 5 HUGE reasons:

After checking this blog, he decided this would be a great business opportunity for me? I’m not sure how he decided that. Maybe he saw some pictures of my husband’s questionable hairline.

1. The ‘Hair Loss Blueprint’ is a dream product for those desperate to stop their receding hairline and to even boost hair growth for bald men. Using a mixture of traditional and modern techniques, this truly is an affordable, yet cutting-edge product which makes it stand out in the market. With this distinction, the ‘Hair Loss Blueprint’ is undeniably the best. And when was the last time you promoted a product that went literally uncontested?

2. We offer a downright sexy commission program. You’re going to earn 75% on each sale. That means a minimum of $20 in your pocket every single time someone orders through your affiliate link. Plus… with an unbeatable OTO offered that pays you 75% on top of that, you can very realistically earn up to $40+ per referral!

This poor fellow seems to think that commission programs are sexy. To get a good understanding of what sexy is exactly maybe he should look at that picture again. This time concentrate less on the questionable hairline and more on the sexy.

Now that’s sexy!! 

Reasons 3, 4, and 5 aren’t that interesting so I won’t make you read them. (Like I can make you do anything;) But, check out the closing of the email.

Rooting For You,

I love that. It’s always good to have people rooting for you.

If you are bald, I’m sorry but no $37 ebook is going help you grow your hair back. Instead of wasting money on products like that or this…

accept and embrace your baldness. Some of my favorite people are bald…

If this post made you laugh, share it.

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Because I look up to my little sister so much, I’ve started taking lots of pictures of myself. Most of the time my sister’s camera is full of pictures of herself taken at arm’s length.

Have you ever had a favorite article of clothing that you thought you looked really good in until you saw a picture of yourself wearing it? Let’s just say that my newest hobby has taught me some interesting things about my wardrobe.  The jeans that I thought looked great on me sag oddly in the crotch region. My favorite short-sleeved sweater makes me look like I have a giant stomach. There goes my plans of starting a style blog.

When I confronted my husband for not telling me about the abomination that is my wardrobe he claimed to not have noticed. I’ll give him a break because he isn’t exactly the epitome of style. I won’t give him a break for not telling me that I had a booger hanging out of my nose before I went to my passport interview though.

Here’s a picture I took of myself the other day in the questionable sweater. I had to twist around to get rid of the appearance of a giant stomach.

Sometimes I look at these pictures and swear I have a lazy eye.

We get mail that was intended for someone else all the time here. When a letter for Sharon Pain or Mike Jones or some other such strange person comes through our mail slot, we write wrong address return to sender on it and pop it in the mailbox when we’re out for a walk. Even though I am tempted at times, I never open the envelop to find out what’s inside.

When emails come to the wrong address it’s a different story though. I kind of have to open it. I got this email not too long ago.

To Whom It May Concern,

I’m Denise Yeung representative of Vroyal Pte.Ltd. We are considering the purchase of the following product

Product Name : Garmin GPSMAP 696
Manufacturer Part Number: 010-00667-40
Quantity : 5 units

Please refer to this order as “Purchase Order #CH/06/11″. If this order cannot be processed as requested, please contact me at this email at your earliest convenience.

Please send the quotation by email with complete details of specification, terms & condition, warranty/guarantee.
May feel free to contact on E-mail.

Best regards,
Denise Yeung

I would love to be able to fill Denise’s order for the Garmin GPSMAP 696, but I’m not a warehouse and I have no idea what she is talking about. I emailed her to let her know that she contacted the wrong person and I got this email in return.

I’m Sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you but I’ve been on
holiday and just returned to the office today. I would like to change
my orders with 20 units
of Garmin zumo® 660 (Part Number: 010-00727-00). Please let me know
the grand total includes freight via Fedex International priority. I
already to arrange
the payment today after you give quote for 20 gps units. I’m waiting
your reply soon.

With best regards,
Denise Yeung

Wow, the order has gone up from 5 units to 20. I wonder how much I could make from this transaction. Too bad I’m not selling GPS systems (that’s sat navs for my British friends). I do have a stepson who likes maps and is pretty good at giving directions though. I wonder if she would accept one of 17 year old boy instead of 20 GPS systems. As an added bonus he could name all of the world’s state leaders for her. Hmm…maybe I should write her back to find out how much she’s willing to pay.

I hate the self-checkout at the grocery store because that computerized cashier is way to suspicious. Every item I bag weighs too much and the live person supervising self-checkout always has to check my bags. It takes me 1,000 times longer (that’s no exaggeration) to get through self-checkout then it does to see a real cashier. Though the computerized cashier cheerily thanks me for shopping after I pay the bill, she isn’t much for small talk.

I usually go to the basket line in the store to avoid the empty accusations of the self-checkout computerized cashier. The other day while waiting in the basket line an elderly woman got in line behind me. She had a shopping cart (trolley for my British friends) and clearly shouldn’t be in the basket line, but I was minding my own business that day so I didn’t say anything. When she got to the counter she took a basket from beneath it, sat it on the belt, and started unloading the contents of her cart into it. There was a lot on stuff in her cart and she had to carefully balance the pile of groceries in the basket.

She kept her cart with her. She probably needed it to put the grocery bags in after she paid. She had taken care of the basket requirement for the line though.

That’s the good thing about being old. You can do something like that and no one will say anything to you about it–no one except the computerized cashier over at self-checkout. She would accuse you of stealing whether you’re 18 or 85.