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For the past couple of weeks, the weather in my area has been so beautiful during the daytime, but super chilly in the evenings. I am really, really, really enjoying this kind of weather (warm in the day, cold at night). One of my favorite aspects of this weather is when I get to step into a relaxing, hot shower while it’s icy cold outside. Then, while I’m in the shower, I take that alone time to let all of my innermost thoughts flow out of my mind. It feels like a therapeutic release, letting all of my bottled up thoughts of that day just flow out.
Sometimes I get really deep into my thoughts, talking to myself internally about family drama or about personal doubts. Other times I’ll just talk out loud to myself, ranting about unimportant things, like some moronic thing I heard a vapid, air head say on a dumb reality TV show. Last night, while taking a late night shower, I had some really random thoughts swirling around in my mind.
There are times when I’ll share the bathroom with Jian, & we’ll both catch each other humming or singing a song one of us will recognize. One of us will just jump right in & sing right along with the other person. Usually I’m the one who catches him singing or humming a song in the shower, & I’ll often times recognize the song, sneak into the bathroom as quietly as I possibly can, & then surprise him by loudly singing along with him. There are other times when Jian will catch me off guard & try to sing along with me, which causes us to break in to a fit of laughter.
Let me just include a tiny little disclaimer here by saying: neither Jian nor I have great singing capabilities. We are not the best singers. We’re not going to audition for American Idol at any time in our lives. Not gonna happen, ever. However, we do enjoy singing with our friends at karaoke bars, & I’d say we’re pretty decent at it. I mean, at least we can carry a tune, & neither of us are tone deaf…so I think either one of us singing in the shower is not a crime.
I, myself, love singing along to my favorite songs. I’ve always got my Spotify playlists playing when I’m working at my computer station at home, & I’m always singing along to all of the songs on my playlists. I also sing along to the radio whenever I’m driving in my car. Although I won’t really sing along to the car radio if I’ve got other passengers in my car other than Jian. I’ve also sung open mic karaoke at multiple dive bars…sober. However, usually my friends & I like to sing at private room karaoke lounges (’cause we get the mic all to ourselves & get to pick our own songs). Perhaps all that singing in the shower has prepared me for karaoke. LOL!
I sometimes complain to Jian about this, but I really don’t enjoy the “perks” of being a woman, especially a woman who takes care in keeping up a presentable, decent appearance. I will lament to Jian that I sometimes wish I could be more like a man. Then I wouldn’t have to spend a frivolous amount of time in the shower shaving body parts, using fancy smelling soaps & shampoos, & doing all of this frou-frou stuff to make my hair soft, shiny & pretty. On top of that, once I step out of the shower, I have to rub special lotion all over my body, apply all kinds of creams & anti-wrinkle & anti-blemish, blah, blah, blah on my face.
For guys, all they have to do is use a generic soap & shampoo, scrub up, rinse off, & towel themselves dry. That’s basically all there is to it for a no-frills kind of guy like Jian. Well, I will admit that I got Jian to use a facial moisturizer to hydrate his super dry, flaky skin, but that’s pretty much the only extra step he has in his nightly shower routine. I on the other hand, have 20 more steps to take before I can throw on my pj’s & climb into bed. Ugh! Why can’t I just have a three-step nightly routine, like Jian…a dude? It’s annoying sometimes.
My final thought blurb is about that time right when you finish washing & you turn off your shower. Yes, that does sound weirdly specific…but I swear this is going somewhere. As I had mentioned earlier on in this meaningless blog post, it’s been super cold at night where I live, & there’s nothing better on a cold night than taking a hot shower…or bath. (I’m an equal opportunity bather.) However, the one part I absolutely loath the most about showering is those five to ten seconds right after you turn off that glorious, hot water & reach out to grab your towel.
No matter what you do, you will feel that initial gust of cold wind hit your body, & it’s just “bad news bears” all around. It feels like you’ve just jumped in to the deepest waters of Antarctica, naked. Sometimes I’ll try to just poke my hand around a small sliver opening in my shower curtain, & try to stealthily pull my towel in to avoid letting the hot steam escape, but I always end up letting in a frosty gust of wind into my hot, steamy cocoon. It annoys the hell out of me. I was actually thinking this yesterday as I was just about to finish my shower. I kept saying to myself that I wish I could just stand under the hot water for ten more minutes before I have to MacGuyver my towel into my steamy shower cocoon behind my shower curtain. I nearly froze my nips off trying to pull my fluffy towel behind the curtain, but I managed to not freeze my body too much.
The struggle is real, folks. A real steamy struggle. I am so sorry for this stupid post about taking showers. I wish I had more engaging content to write about this week, but my brain is on strike. Until next time, cheers & stay soapy friends…
Today’s song of the day:
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When it comes to my stationery shopping or collection gathering, I am no longer going to make any solid promises. I am not going to say (yet again) that this will be the last purchase or anything like that. I just keep proving every time that I can’t stick to any of these ridiculous declarations. I will never stop collecting the things I love. So, now we’ve come to yet another blog post about my stationery/office supply (sort of) hoarding. Instead of making a bunch of little, meaningless posts each time I get something, I am just going to throw everything I’ve gotten so far this year into one medium-sized post… because this is getting a little out of hand, & I am happily spinning out of control.
I might have mentioned a long time ago that I’ve got a quirky collection of nearly 300+ postcards that I’ve been keeping since I was a young teenager. I recently purchased a few more postcards that I’m planning on not keeping for my collection, & will actually be using them to write messages to friends & family. Not all of these postcards are the kind I’d like to keep for myself. Some of them are formal enough for me to be able to turn them into greeting cards for friends.
Jian is not happy about this, but I keep filling my pen case, Leroy, with more writing tools. Yes, I have way too many pens, but I actually use them more often than not. I use all of my writing tools. I don’t collect them for no reason; that would be a terrible, frivolous waste that I would never condone. I use all of my writing tools on a day-to-day basis, making To Do lists, marking appointments on my home calendar, making craft projects, writing everyday sticky note reminders, etc..
Then, when I find a brand of writing tools that I really love, one that writes well & does not ruin your paper, I will truly invest in it…which means I’ll buy the same pen in all of my favorite ink colors. Very rarely will I buy any pens in an ink color that is not useful in an everyday scenario (i.e. white, gray, lime green, powder blue, or anything metallic). I like to choose colors that are vibrant & will be easy to read when writing. The ease of use is also important when selecting a good pen. I like pens that are smooth when writing & don’t skip, bleed, or scratch the paper.
This is why I’ve recently chosen to invest in the Pilot brand’s series of FriXion writing tools. I have a full set of their felt tip colored markers. I keep a pair of their retractable ball knock gel ink pens in my purse, & now I’ve gone on to invest in their series of color pencil-like pens. I haven’t purchased all of the colors in this pen series, & I don’t think I plan to do so either. (I really do not need 4 different shades of orange pens.) However, I did get all of the colors that I think will be useful in my everyday writing.
My photography skills are horrible. This photo does not properly show the pens’ true colors.
I have a Japanese masking tape hoarding problem. It’s gotten so bad that I’ve gone on to start a second storage box to contain all of my washi tape rolls. I keep on telling myself that I don’t need any more decorative masking tapes, but it’s so hard to stick to my own words when Japanese office product companies continue to make the most cute/adorable/eye-catching products that draw customers in every time.
Of course, I don’t just collect these tape rolls for the hell of it. I do actually use these tapes in my everyday life. I put decorative masking tape on all of my travel luggage, so I can easily identify my suitcases whenever I travel abroad. I also use these tapes to make labels for basic household items like spice jars & miscellaneous kitchen containers. I have also used these masking tapes to decorate my wireless Apple Airpod earphones (so I can identify which is the left ear & the right ear).
I recently got more of these decroative washi tape rolls, but out of the vast selection of tapes they had at my favorite store in my local Japantown, I tried to be very selective in my purchases, choosing styles that I would use often & did not look too kitschy. Of course when I saw the fox themed tape roll, I did a little happy dance in my head. Also, I just could not resist the sexy nurse lingerie themed tape. It’s super duper cheesy, but I have a thing for frilly, lacy, racy lingerie. As for the food themed tapes, well, I really enjoy eating Japanese snack foods & pub/grilled food. Lastly, I am trying to branch out & play more with glittery/metallic craft products. I didn’t like to use them in the past because glitterized crafting supplies tend to be very messy (as in the glitter gets all over everything & is hard to clean up), & metallic items (like masking tapes & stickers) don’t adhere well to one’s crafting projects.
I’m going to continue with this subject, but switching to a sub-topic…masking tape accessories, more specifically, tape cutters. So far, I have been using the old fashioned traditional route & using a pair of generic scissors to cut my decorative tapes. I’ve got a lot of cute washi tape dispensers saved on my Etsy favorites list, but I have never actually pulled the trigger, so to speak, & bought any of them.
I am not much of a fan of traditional tape dispensers. In my opinon, they are bulky, clunky, & they take up too much space if you want to neatly store them away. I don’t like having too much clutter on my work desk, even though my desk is cluttered right now, & I don’t like having too many office tools sitting on top of my desk. So, this is why I have invested in a few rather discreet tape cutters. I bought two types, & they both easily fit in my craft supplies storage box, Trevor. One of them is by the Japanese brand Kanmido, called the Maco tape cutting pen. The other is a Karu-cut tape cutter clip by another Japanese brand called Kokuyo.
The Kokuyo brand tape cutter clip is the most convenient & easiest to use crafting tool I have ever used. It’s very clear & obvious to see that you clip the cutter on to any roll of decorative masking tape (I’m pretty sure you can use this on other forms of adhesive tapes as well). There are two sizes (& various colors) to choose from, & I chose the larger of the two sizes since I have a few odd sized rolls of decorative tape that are not standard sizes. The larger tape cutter allows me to cut any of my rolls of tape without me having to buy different tools for one type of usage.
The Kanmido tape cutting pen, however, is more complicated to use. I will admit that this was a completely impulsive purchase. I saw it & instantly thought it was so cute. I barely skimmed over the information written on the front of the packaging. I took one look at the name of the product on the front of the package & threw it into my shopping basket straight away. It wasn’t until I got home & thoroughly read the packaging & instructions when I found out there’s more to this product than simply cutting masking tape. There’s some work involved in using this tape cutting pen.
I am calling this product a pen because it has a pen-like shape, & it is a compact product meant for office workers & students to be able to throw into their pen pouches in their breifcases or school book bags. How it works, & this is where the more complicated part comes into play, is that this tape cutter is only meant for you to cut small amounts of tape. It’s designed so you don’t have to carry whole rolls of masking tape in your bag, you can carry a small sample of your favorite masking tapes all in this one pen-like device, & you can also carry multiple sample rolls of different tapes. It’s kind of a hassle to have to make your own sample roll of washi tape to put inside this device, but this will be a lot easier to carry in your bag than a whole roll of tape, & you can easily switch your tape rolls if you buy extra roller guides, so you can have a variety of tape designs at your disposal.
Ok, I am now going to blame Jian just a little bit for what I’m about to say next because he encouraged me to do this. Yes, I said it. Jian encouraged me to buy more pins to add to my fast-growing pin collection. I didn’t go hog wild on pin shopping like I did when I went to Las Vegas for the LV Comic Con, but I did get a few cool pins along with one iron-on patch (to decorate my colorful backpack with). I also purchased a minimalist storage box from my new favorite office goods shop in Downtown Los Angeles called Hightide Store (not to be confused with the L.A. bar & café called High Tide), & of course I had to give this new storage box a name, just like I do with all of my other inanimate objects. I named this little white box Franklin. I think ‘Franklin’ is a fun name.
Some of my pins & patches were purchased at my favorite coffee roaster’s shop, Verve Coffe Roasters, when the two of us set out to satisfy our caffeine craving. First of all, Jian & I are coffee addicts. Well, I am a bigger coffee addict than Jian is. He can go without coffee from time-to-time, but if I skip even one day of drinking coffee, I will experience the usual withdrawl symptoms… mild headache, yawning all day long, etc.. We both enjoy a high quality coffee bean roaster, especially if they hail from the Bay Area region of California (our home region), & Verve Coffee is originally from the city of Santa Cruz (not near, yet not far to where we live).
We love visiting one of Verve’s coffee shops whenever we’re down in Los Angeles, since L.A. doesn’t really have any coffee roasting companies of their own. I picked up one of Verve’s Tokyo pins as an homage to both of my familial backgrounds. I have roots both in California & in Japan, & I love the fact that one of my all-time favorite coffee roasting companies has branched out to my dad’s home country.
You didn’t expect me to post a stationery haul without my sticker purchase, did you? Well I kind of cheated a little & had bought these stickers over the Christmas holiday time, around the time when I bought my new calendars for 2019 (which I’ve chosen not to include in to this post). If you can zoom-in to the inserted photo below, you can see that I’ve already started using these stickers. I couldn’t resist.
Most of these stickers I bought for the specific purpose of making & decorating birthday cards. I have got a lot of extended family members & friends who have birthdays pretty early on in the year, so I’ve already been making greeting cards & sending them out.
I don’t really have much to say about these stickers. They are pretty generic everyday stickers like candies, hearts, & “Happy Birthday” banners. When I was shopping at my all-time favorite online Japanese retailer, I had a hard time whittling my shopping cart list down to just a few select sticker themes that I knew I would be able to use in a multi-purpose format. I wanted to grab all of the stickers, but after a long, internal debate, ended up choosing the ones you see in this photo below.
We have finally reached the end of my haul post & my final purchase, which I believe is a very practical office product. I got myself a folding metal book rest. I’ve been looking for one like the one I just purchased on the internet recently. I have recently been doing more paperwork at my job which requires me to copy a lot of documents & templates onto the computer, & having a book rest to prop up my papers is very handy. I also like the fact that my mom can borrow my book rest (any time she wants) so she can use it to hold her super thicc, large piano book. She’s been looking for a book stand for a very long time that can sit atop her baby grand piano, & also prop up her heavy piano book without the bottom lip of the stand to cover the bottom half of the sheet music. The book rest I got has skinny arms that can easily hold the pages in place without covering up a lot of the book’s pages. It’s also sturdy enough to hold the weight of my mom’s heavy piano book. Ilike this book rest as well because I can also use it to prop up my tablet when I am following a cooking recipe, or if I’m watching a movie while taking a bath. This book rest was a little more expensive than some of the other cute ones I found on Etsy (& definitely better looking aesthetically than the ones you’ll find at the big box office supply chains like Office Mad & Staples), but it is worth every penny. I am definitely going to be getting a lot of good use out of this product from now on.
Well, this is officially the end of my blog post. I am running out of things to say. Oh, wait. I have one more thing to say, but I am not going into detail about it until my next blog post, which will be posted very soon. I’ll just give you a teaser of this new annoucement. I got an eary birthday present from Jian over this past weekend. My birthday isn’t until the end of next month, but since we’ll both be extremely busy within the next couple of weeks, Jian decided to gift me my birthday present early. In fact, I am using it right now as I am typing this blog post to you. I will end by saying I am completely in love with this new item, & I am so incredibly grateful to Jian for such a generous gift. It’s very over-the-top, but since I’m already using it, I guess it’s also quite practical. So, until the next post, cheers!
Today’s song of the day:
I just had a very random thought sometime last night while I was getting ready to take a bath. I was thinking about Jian & how accepting & tolerating he is regarding my obsession with drag queens. Yes, you read that correctly. I am talking about drag queens, professional cross-dressers who do uncomfortable things to hide their male anatomy for the sake of looking more feminine than the average female.
When I first met Jian, I never told him about my intense fascination with drag queens. Then as our relationship progressed into a more “let it all hang out” comfortable stage, I let him in on my fascination with drag queens. He couldn’t understand it at first. He thought my interest in drag queens was weird & dumb, but then one night in our apartment, he caught me watching the TV show Ru Paul’s Drag Race. For the first five minutes or so of the show Jian thought it was stupid, but as I kept up with the weekly episodes, Jian got more & more invested in watching the show as well. He would ask me questions about the drag queens, like what their names were & if I have heard of any of them before the show. Then, he got really into watching the show with me to see who the winner of that season would be (it was Sharon Needles, by the way). That was the major turning point where I knew Jian was more accepting of my intense interest in the drag queen culture.
I don’t even know how I ever learned about drag queens in the first place, but since I live so close to San Francisco, I guess I was bound to stumble upon these glorious peoples in one way or another. I saw drag queen comedians on television, but I never really understood that culture or what kind of impression it would leave on my life. I remember one time in high school when I traveled to San Francisco on the weekend with my friends & we were hanging out around the Haight-Ashbury district. I walked into a gift shop selling a bunch of random knick knacks & novelty souvenirs, & I happened to be browsing their rotating postcards rack when I noticed one funny postcard with two drag queens right on the front. From that point on I was hooked. Seeing that postcard photo of two men, with scruffy facial hair & a full face of makeup, wearing over-the-top wigs & womens clothes…it really spoke to me. It grabbed my attention so hard & shook me to the core.
Ever since then, I’ve just been so drawn to the crazy, glitzy, fast-paced, foul-mouthed world of drag queens. A part of my obsession with drag queens stems from jealousy. Yes, I am jealous of drag queens. Not that I wish to be a man wearing womens clothes, but I often fill myself with self-doubt, & critique my body build/shape. I look at myself in the mirror sometimes & feel like I have a non-descript, semi-tomboy body shape. Ok, that’s a kind of an exaggeration, but I do feel like I’m neither tomboy-ish, nor am I girly/feminine. Then I look at drag queens, dudes who wear womens clothes & impossibly high-heeled uncomfortable shoes, & I think to myself: “Damn, that dude looks more feminine in a dress than I do.” Well, a lot of drag queens look more feminine than a lot of actual women on this planet, so… it’s not uncommon.
I love drag queens. I love their over-exaggerated personalities, their costumes & fashion, their ability to wear uncomfortable womens pumps, their quick-witted humor, & their potty mouths that would make a salty sailor blush. Everything about the drag queen culture is fast-paced & extreme glitter. Although, I’m not sure I’d be into wearing 15 pounds of thicc makeup. I’m not a makeup wearing person. ((I’m a skincare kind of gal, so I don’t have to wear makeup on a daily basis.)
Every time we come across a drag queen on TV or on a billboard advert, Jian will point that entertainer out to me with excitement. He will ask me whether I know that particular entertainer or not, & we have a fun time talking about it. I feel kind of bad though that I haven’t been keeping up with the newer seasons of Ru Paul’s TV competition show, but I still keep up with all of the drama on social media as I do follow one of my favorite ‘queens’ on Instagram & YouTube. I would one day love to see a drag queen performance live, but Jian isn’t at that point where he feels comfortable enough to go with me to watch a live show. He is making progress though, like now he likes to use the popular drag phrase “yaaasss kween”, & that is just about all I have to say on this so-called thought barf. I’m heading to Los Angeles this weekend to celebrate my female cousin’s birthday. I can’t believe she’s turning the big 4-0hhhhhh. I’m glad the weather is not going to be warm this weekend. Until next time, cheers!
Today’s song of the day:
