barbie liberation organization

Has anyone ever heard of the Barbie Liberation Organization (BLO)? It was founded in 1989 when I was, uh, 4 so I hadn't heard of it until a co-worker told me the other day. Their mission: to wipe out gender stereotypes by replacing the voice-boxes of Barbie dolls with G.I. Joe voice-boxes, and vice versa.

Apparently Mattel came out with a Barbie that said some stuff that people thought was sexist:

Over the years the original "Math class is tough...Party dresses are fun!" morphed into "Math is hard, let's go shopping!" Don't you just love that history is basically one giant game of telephone?

So, my co-worker is telling me about this and I'm laughing out loud because that is the coolest saying ever and essentially my motto in life. I immediately decided to, well, go shopping and started searching for products online with that slogan. Unfortunately there weren't any...but fortunately you can pretty much get anything you want from someone on the internet so I contacted an Etsy seller who specializes in the classic Keep Calm & Carry On posters and asked her if she would consider a custom order.

End result:

Rock. On.

Also, check out this video of the Barbie Liberation Organization from an old Current Affair segment...it wouldn't let me embed it but it's awesome nonetheless.

social amnesia

There's this woman who I run into frequently on my walks with Tater Tot that has major social amnesia issues. I'm not poking fun, since I think it's a genuine health problem, but it is so strange to see her 3-4 times a week and have the EXACT. SAME. CONVERSATION.

And not like in the "Oh how's your day? Weather has been nice lately...hope it doesn't rain again" sort of way, like an exact transcript of introductions and questions. It's as if I'm a character in Memento or something. Very bizarre feeling.

It goes something like this, my answers usually vary slightly, but hers are identical every time I see her, which is the strangest part to me. She remembers enough to ask the exact same questions...but doesn't remember that she's asked them before:

Oh is that a pomeranian?

Yes it is.

I love pomeranians, they're such cute dogs. Is that a boy or girl?

He's a boy.

Oh, how nice. How old?

He's going to be 8 in June.

8?? He seems so young! What a nice dog. Can I pet him?

Sure, he loves being pet.

Awww, what a friendly guy.

That's weird, right? I mean that's a pretty lengthy conversation...and I've had it with her about 15 times now.

random story about ernest hemingway

In true Hemingway style, I'll keep this post short and sweet.

Today I stumbled upon a story about Hemingway that made me love him more than I already did (sidenote: I chose him as the subject of my final presentation for University of the Pacific's Pacific Seminar III).


Anyway, Hemingway was once challenged by some of his drinking buddies that he couldn't write a complete short story in under 10 words. Bro showed them what's what and wrote it in only six:

For sale: Babies shoes. Never worn.

Brillz, right? Now go read The Sun Also Rises and drink a Jack Rose. I happen to own two copies of the novel: one I bought for myself at the famous used bookstore Shakespeare & company in Paris and the other is a hard cover copy my mom got for me as a gift. She always writes dedications in all the books she gives me. I like that.

best movie trailer ever

PASSIONATE PLEA....whispered repetition.



I've definitely seen this movie at least 10 times in the past year.

happy earth day!

Hooray for Earth Day! My office is great because it has a recycle bin for paper/cardboard, plastic, and cans all in the break room so it's very easy to recycle. At home, recycling is awesome because you get $$$ for it! Ok maybe more like $ for it, but still, every dollar counts, right?

Plus, if this friggin' pug can do it, you can too.



Because trust me, as much as I love pugs (we have one that is almost 17), they are stupid, stupid dogs.

Angela at Oh She Glows talked about 10 actions to reduce your impact on the environment which I liked a lot. The thing is, a lot of things that are good for the environment are also good for your pocketbook (because you'll be spending less money and/or saving cash!) so it's seriously a win-win situation. Some of these include: using less water (I'm charged for water usage), turning off lights when you leave a room, not leaving your computer on all day, eating LESS MEAT, yes, you carnivores out there, eating less meat is good for the earth and will have you spending less at the grocery store.

how to make a french memory board

There's a huge wall in my bedroom that has been bare for the past three months because I haven't been able to decide what the heck to put there. After seeing a coworkers cute French memo board (that she bought at Target) I thought, "Hey, I could TOTALLY make that for my room!" So I went to Michael's and Jo Ann Fabrics, bought a couple things, and in less than an hour had myself an awesome one-of-a-kind custom French memory board.

Ta da!

Seriously the entire process was super easy. The thing I love most about this project is the size of the memo board is completely up to you!

Things you'll need:

cork board (Target has a great selection of cheap ones)

staple gun

ribbon

fabric

upholstery tacks (regular thumb tacks will be too small for this project)

batting

Optional:

pomeranian

There's a nice, quick video that explains how to make a French memo board using something other than a cork board, but in my opinion a cork board is the fastest and easiest material for this project.

Steps:

1. Place batting on the cork board and wrap it along the back, fastening it to the back of cork board using the staple gun. Cut off any excess.

2. Place fabric over the batting and wrap it along the back as above, fastening it with the staple gun. Also cut off any excess.

3. This is the most tedious step. Take your ribbon and cut two long strips that will godiagonallyacross the board (one strip for each diagonal) making sure to leave about 2-3 inches excess. Arrange them on your board in an X shape. From here, cut strips of ribbon and continue in each direction. This is maybe where the video explains the process better.

4. After you have all your ribbon strips, clear your board and take one of the diagonal ribbons and place it from corner to corner. Staple the ribbon with the staple gun to the back of the cork board, making sure to pull taut. Continue placing and stapling ribbon in one direction only. I measured between each of the ribbons to make sure everything was even.

5. Repeat the process going the other direction. For fun you can alternate an under and over pattern with the ribbon which I did, but it's not necessary.

6. Take the upholstery tacks and push them through each little X made by the strips of ribbon. You might want to use a hammer for this depending on how thick your cork board is.

7. Decide what you want to display on your board. Obviously the options are limitless, but I chose to put up all my favorite retro pictures of my parents.

8. Sit back and admire your hard work!

Here are a few close-ups taken with my iPhone of my favorite pictures from my memo board:

Mom had a pomeranian, too!

Nice shorts, Dad.

sex and the city 2: the NEW trailer

OMG, the weekend of May 28th is going to RULE. It's my mom's birthday on the 27th and we're celebrating it Saturday the 29th at The Melting Pot which is one of my favorite restaurants everrr. I love interactive dining experiences.

AND I get to see sexy, sexy Aidan the day before in Sex and the City 2. I hope they hook up. Big is so boring.



Someone at work today randomly asked me "Hey, have you seen Sex and the City?" to which I responded "...am I girl?" Like, DUH I've seen it! I only have the entire series on DVD and watch it in its entirety at least once a year, buddy.

update on the tot's health

I woke up to this Sunday morning:

Tater Tot was up and ready for a walk bright and early, despite Saturday night's puppy health scare. Even though he was acting normal later Saturday night I was still really worried that something might happen and couldn't get my anxiety level to decrease despite many Zen efforts, so I took a Xanax which actually ended up being an Ambien (note to self: stop putting pills in pill boxes and leave them in their original RX bottles) which was probably the best thing for me anyway because I probably wouldn't have been able to sleep otherwise.

After a nice walk with Tater Sunday morning I tried to relax a bit at my apartment before meeting my mom for a day of shopping at The Great Mall, but Tater kept sleeping like this:

which is completely normal for him, but I'm still totally on edge so I kept waking him up every 30 seconds to make sure he was alive (and continued to do so last night). Good news: he's alive and he's perfectly healthy though probably very, very annoyed with me, but y'know what? That's what you effing get for scaring me half to death, you turd. Lovvvveeee youuuuu.

for the love of tater

I just had a heart attack. Seriously, I think I was very close to having my heart explode.

I was watching Moon on Netflix "watch instantly" and Tater Tot had been alternating between laying next to me on the couch and sleeping on the floor during the movie so when it was almost over so I called him to come back and sit with me on the couch so I could take him for a walk right after the movie ended. He got up on the couch and I went to start petting him and he sort of clamped up. Have you ever had a bad leg cramp and you can't flex your muscles out? It was sort of like that.

I freaked out because I thought something was wrong so I jumped up and turned on the lights and put him on the floor and tried to get him to walk but he couldn't.

Then I go into panic mode which is not a good mode for me to be in. I've heard that some people get an adrenaline rush from panic and can move cars and shit. Not me. I'm just a deer in headlights. A crying, screaming deer in headlights.

So my heart feels like it's going to pound right out of my chest and I'm trying to figure out what is going on with Tater because he's sort of walking now but his hind legs are dragging and not really moving. I literally had no clue what to do. My first instinct was to call my parents which makes no logical sense since they are 100 miles away from me. Then I called 411 on my cell phone but the automated system couldn't understand "vet emergency" probably because I was crying so much. At this point Tater is starting to act more like himself (maybe two-three minutes have elapsed) but I'm still scared as hell and finally gain a bit of composure and have the presence of mind to look up emergency vets on the Yellowpages website.

By the time I actually get the information I need--which is now taped on my fridge AND stored in my cell phone--Tater Tot is totally fine and looking at me like, "WTF is your problem I thought we were going for a walk?"

Then he ran over to his tennis ball and started playing with it and I had a complete nervous break down. I have never been able to handle extreme stress well but after the incident with Twin's puppy I especially cannot effing deal with an animal scare.

Little Man is totally fine now and I'm on my way to calming down but my heart is still pumping like crazy.

cute stamps from the US postal service

I send a LOT of correspondence through the United States postal service. Like, an abnormally large amount. I'm pretty sure I'm single-handedly keeping the Belmont post office from closing its doors or laying off employees (as seems to be a trend with anything paper media related, these days).

Because of this I buy an embarrassingly large amount of stationery and always have a ton of stamps on hand. Sadly, the US postal service doesn't really give a crap that I want, no, NEED cute stamps to accompany my adorable personalized stationery and the closest I've been able to come in months to "cute" stamps is TV Land stamps.

Meh. Not cute. Except for Mr. Ed, he's ok.

Imagine my excitement when I logged on to the USPS website (to check to see where the closest drop-off box was to my office, of course) and saw that they're releasing a whole new set of pet design stamps!!! Animals?! ON STAMPS?? This brings cute to a whole new level for the post office.

Boom.

I pre-ordered four sheets of 20 each. I'm not even kidding. I gotta stock up on these puppies (haha, literally) while the gettin' is good!

If you want to purchase these adorable dog and cat stamps, head on over to Stamps to the Rescue.

vanity plates galore!

I haven't been writing about myself too much on Strawberry Says recently because I'm currently gainfully employed (HOLLA!) and sorta working on my thesis (emphasis on sorta), so my personal life is pretty effing boring as of late.

For the time being, I'll continue to post about random awesome crap.

I have this thing for vanity license plates which I'm pretty sure I inherited from my dad, who has been the past owner of such vanity plate gems as IHUG and WHYW8T. When I turned 16 and got my Jeep, my primary focus was picking out a sweet, sweet personalized license plate that perfectly complemented my sweet, sweet ride. I remember actually polling my friends at the time (via LIVEJOURNAL, ha, old school) and the top two contenders were 2XDEFUN and PLYTHNG, I went with PLYTHNG which was a good choice since my parents insistence that the Jeep would have to be shared between my twin sister and myself--hence the "2x" the fun--lasted only about three months until they caved and bought her a car, too.

Sometimes people ask me what I mean by "play thing" which is such a stupid question to me. What do you think I mean? It's a friggin' vanity license plate, it doesn't need to make sense, douche. Over the past couple of months I've been documenting as many vanity plates as I safely can, since I mostly see them while I'm driving and um, taking pictures and keeping your eyes on the road = not easy to do. There's actually an entire blog devoted to personalized license plates, if you want to check out even more.

WEHEARTBOWL - And I love you for loving bowling. Say it loud and proud, bro.

1ROBOTC - Trasnsformers...robots...in..disguise.

ZR8DERZ - You are a rehtard.

IHEARTQUOTA - Not sure if it's possible to get any nerdier than having a financial vanity plate.

MOHEARTPHIL - This dude lives in Modesto (my hometown) and is named Phil...but I know a guy whose nickname is "Moustache Phil" so I like to pretend this license plate is about him.

JEEP4JK - A Wrangler owned by someone with the initials J.K., or possibly it's a Jeep for joke.

HALLABAC - Holla back shorty, woot woot.

GREKLDY - There's a huge Greek population in Belmont so I'd be willing to bet there's hellza women jealous of this Ford.

FRYZEIT - Ok, this plate could have one of three meanings: 1. "Freeze it" as in a cop shouting at someone to "Freeze it, buddy!" 2. "Freeze it" as in fro yo as in my one true love 3. "Fries it" as in French fries as in the second best thing after fro yo.

stuff white people like

I'm hoping ya'll have read the blog Stuff White People Like because it effing rules. During some down time in our Korean vacation me & Romy went through the full list of stuff white people like and checked off each one that was true for us, tallied our results, then compared them to see who was whiter. I won, obviously. (Ain't nobody whiter than me, yo.)

The staff over at SWPL must be mind-readers and know that I've been looking for a poster or two for my bedroom because they now sell Stuff White People Like posters featuring some of the best posts from their blog.

The top white people stuff I like include: breakfast places, dogs, and San Francisco.


In terms of color-scheme, the SF poster makes the most sense. Plus, I live in the bay area so it's like, relevant to my living situation and whatever.

delicious spring recipe round-up

My family started a new tradition for Easter this year and will (hopefully) be celebrating the holiday in my uncle's barn from here on out. My cousin had a barn wedding reception last fall so my uncle fixed up the old barn on his property and now that it's all fancy-schmancy it's the perfect place to hold a party.

We seriously had SO many desserts it was out of control: Sprinkles cupcakes (from yours truly), chocolate chip cookies, lemon sugar cookies, mint chip ice cream cake, wine cake, chocolate Texas sheet cake (not sure what that really means but Grandma Kitty kept calling it that), chocolate torte, cheesecake, chocolate covered strawberries, and fruit salad.

Sadly, I was "being good" so I only ate fruit salad. I spent the rest of the evening thinking about all the delicious desserts I could have consumed, and thought I would do a nice little round-up of some incredible looking desserts I've found recently.

1. Strawberry cream cake from The Busty Baker. Obviously I needed to start out with a strawberry dessert.


2. Heaven and Hell cake from All Cake's considered via Project Foodie. I'm not a huge angel food cake fan, but this combination sounds delicious.


3. White fudge-dipped oreos by Picky Palate. Oreos pwn all cookies.


4. Errr...except maybe these: Chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes from Annie's Eats.


5. Vegan coconut banana cream pie from Kirsten's Kitchen. I'm not a strict vegan, but I hate eggs (barf) and don't drink milk, plus I LOVE banana cream pie so this recipe = amazing.


6. Sweet wild blueberry baskets with almond mascarpone cream from Fresh New England. These would be so sweet for a tea party!


7. Butterscotch bunny tarts from My Recession Kitchen. Another vegan recipe, yummm! As is these are pretty Easter-specific, but you could use any shape cookie-cutter (like a snail cookie cutter, to be random and hilarious).


GET IN MY BELLY!

on the fritz

Not to be confused with being on the ritz which would be a bomb thing. My blogger app is all kinds of whack and isn't letting me post any of the entries I just made, wahhhhhh.

ATTENTION BLOGGERS

A couple of things:

1. if you don't have a "contact me" section or post with your e-mail GO MAKE ONE RIGHT NOW. In a perfect world everyone would just comment on your posts, but trust me your readers want to be able to e-mail you privately to ask you questions.

2. never EVER EVER change your blog domain. I know it's super tempting and I did it back when I first started this blog (I used to be ThePinkReview.com, remember?) but that's because I really had no idea how Google/the internet/blogs work. If you keep changing your blog from domain to domain then Google won't be able to keep up with the changes and you'll lose a lot of ranking (this is important because you want people to read your blog right?). If you feel the need to make a change, just give your blog a new layout or change your header title (mine is currently "The Sparkling Cider of Blogs" but it used to be "The (Mis)Adventures of a Redhead in China."

3. make a favicon and take the Blogger banner off your page. Two very simple things that will make your blog look more polished and professional.

happy easter! love candy-focused holidays

Went shopping at Target this weekend. How freaking legit is that store? I cannot emphasize enough how much I LOVE Tar-Jay. It's one of the main things I missed about the United States when I was in China (they had Walmart and other American stores like Best Buy...but no Target).

I managed to find a super cute outfit for Easter within 20 minutes even though I spent a good TWO HOURS scouring the mall in San Mateo and couldn't even find something decent to wear that wasn't triple digits. I also found these crazy cute carrot Reese's pieces:


They're shaped like a vegetable...so that makes them healthy, right?


Bah, peanut butter is my arch nemesis. So, so good...and yet not incredibly good for you (especially if you eat an entire jar in one sitting, which has never happened but I believe I'd be capable of it).

RIDDLE ME THIS

The answer to my riddle the other day (what do my Chinese name "Miao Miao," an Asian lucky cat figurine, and a tattoo station all have in common?) is:


BOOM.

I got this kitty over Christmas break, in fact Santa hooked it up with a gift certificate for part of him (kitty's a boy). He's not completely finished yet, the artist still needs to fill him in with white and do lots of super sweet shading, but he's practically done.

Here are a couple "progress" pictures. I got all the outline and black shading done first, then next came the color details that I have now.


The artist surprised me with the collar design, I LOVE IT SO BAD!!! I didn't really have anything specific I wanted so I told him to design it himself ...couldn't help sneaking a peek with my iPhone:


Instead of the traditional text that goes in the lucky cat coin, I had Earl (my tattoo artist) put my Chinese name because it's the bomb.

Meow.

vroom vroom

How sexy is this car?

I spotted this vintage corvette outside the San Mateo Trader Joe's (awesome things tend to occur at this location, btw) and just HAD to take a picture even though I thought it was sort of creepy of me. Later, I creeped it up even more by telling the owner he "probably hears this a lot, but you have an absolutely beautiful car."

Ya. I said those. exact. words. I've never used a pick-up line in my life, but apparently they get stored away in some part of your brain, ready to attack at a moment's notice.

I got really embarassed and started blushing because I swear the words just came out of my mouth without me even making the conscious decision to speak! Whatever. Old Man was flattered. But his wife gave me the stink eye.

Next time I'll stick with a Ferris Bueller reference and tell him his car is "so choice."

the cat's pajamas

First off, that expression is totally weird.

Secondly, what do my Chinese name Miao Miao:


An Asian lucky cat (this one was a birthday gift from my BFF):


And this tattoo work station:


Have in common?

And finally, The Daily Tater was seriously the best idea I've ever had.

the daily tater

Haha. Ok. Before I go any further I'm gonna go ahead and admit that I'm very much NOT normal, and I accept that. It makes life more interesting.

I was talking to my boss about blogging the other day and was saying how I wanted to buy Tater Tot a domain name so he could blog (it was understood by all parties that I meant I could blog "as" Tater...I'm normal enough that I recognize my dog can't actually blog).

Anyway, my boss is all, "Would he even have something to post every day?" to which I was all, "You clearly are not my friend on Facebook or you would know that there's a plethora of Tater Tot posts to be made on the daily." and then he was all...actually he didn't say anything he just gave me a weird look, I just wanted to say "was all" one more time.

And so, The Daily Tater was born. It's a work in progress, notably the header image which will eventually not look so pixel-y once I get my hands on the Photoshop CD I left at my parents house.


I figure I'm already taking a ton of Tater Tot pics every day...might as well have a formal outlet for sharing them with the world!