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So Ryan has supposedly been ‘exercising’ his, ah, ‘charitable fitness’… (see more details here.) Essentially, he proposed an experiment (gosh, this should have just put up red flags everywhere… an IT guy conducting and experiment?!!) Anyway. His goal? Hand out $1 (up to $10 total, we’re talking BIG bux here guys…) every time he sees anyone homeless/panhandling, and see if he feels any better about charitable giving after he’s done. I don’t think he’s gotten very far. Maybe $3. Actually let’s recap , so we can fully appreciate the generosity of Ryan:

#1. Downtown Berkeley. Gave zip. Explanation? Didn’t have any $1 bills. Only a $5. Couldn’t exactly ask for change, could I?

#2. Mountain View. Gave $1.

#3. 5th St. Offramp. Gave $1.

#4. Oakland. Gave $1.

#5. 5th St. Offramp. Gave zip. (Different guy from #3, btw) Excuse? Apparently, he’s not giving money out of cars anymore. WHAT? WHAT?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am so mad. I swear to you that I was arguing with him in the car for the duration of the red light, even reaching for his wallet and he blocked me. On THANKSGIVING!!! AAAAAAAARGGGH.

Hm… so let’s see. Since October 26, almost a whole month ago, he’s given a grand total of $3. And seen at least 5 people. (That I know of, anyway!) We’re talking a 60% efficiency here people.

I think he exercises his generosity much like he exercises at the gym…. kinda half-a**ed. We’ll be doing the elliptical, right? Well, I’m here puffing along, and I look over and see him staring at the TV, moving. very. slowly. I do almost *double* the number of steps in the same amount of time!!

Did I mention he just spent $60 on Mass Effect? (the new xbox RPG, for those of you who don’t know.)

Sigh.

Gosh, there are so many things I am thankful for this year. My parents, Ryan, actually my whole family, and of course friends and…. most important… fooooood. We celebrated Thanksgiving today at Nathan’s new house… a brand spanking new townhouse in Oakland! The spread:

Me contemplating how we’re going to eat all these mashed potatoes…

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!

Gosh if you had asked me if I would ever be this interested in donuts I would have looked incredulously at you and denied it. BUT. Everyone who has come by my place has seen them and asked me about my donuts… so I thought I better fill everyone else in just in case you were feeling left out.

These are my donuts:

They’re blind boxed donut keychains designed by the wonderful and fabulous Heidi Kenney of mypapercrane.com fame. (Don’t click on the link if you are allergic to cuteness. And WHEN is she going to come back to the bay area??? WHEN?!!!! Argh.)

Anyway, the best thing about these donuts are they’re totally calorie free. YES!!!! Can you guys guess which one I have is the ‘chase’???? Come on… I know you remember from last weeks lesson… Did I mention that they all have names too? I think my fav is Babycake (pink with the choc frosting. Either that or Mister Blue (blue frosting). Two of them are my own customization…. the metallic hot pink and blue ones… I didn’t have a full set (missing one chase and a very very rare glow in the dark one that was only given out at the release party) so I had to fill in somehow!! heeh.

On a related note, I saw an ad in the paper last weekend for Krispy Kreme’s new holiday snowman donut. It looked supercute.

In fact, it inspired me to pick up a dozen for lab meeting the next morning… so I made my merry way to Krispy Kreme and used my handy dandy free dozen donut card and got two dozen donuts for $7.49. Not bad if you ask me. I came home and didn’t even look at the snowmen. Then Ryan asked me about them and I finally took a look. This is what I saw:

Hrm… not quite what I had envisioned. Esp this one:

It made me think that perhaps something terrible had happened to him…. something like this for example:

(Black pool of ink is donut blood, duh!)

First of all, the Bad:

Brand spanking new radiator on my car: $783

Target: $120

Dinner: $23

I’m down $900+ in one day. Not counting the stock market. Boo.

Moving on to the Good:   I just got a few more spider baby booms in from a recent trade…. I almost have a complete collection except for two rare ones… but anyway I have all the ones in the pic below.

What ARE these things you ask? Well, they’re the newest blind box series from Sun Min Kim, also known as one of the co-creators of the toy sensation Uglydolls. (Don’t tell me you haven’t heard of Uglydolls. Seriously, have you been under a rock? Oh, alright, it’s okay if you’ve been under a rock. But let’s just say they’re dolls. That are Ugly.) Anyway, back to the Spider Boom blind boxes. They’re 2 inch vinyl toys, made in China, retail $4.99 each. Also ugly but also cute. Not anatomically correct spiders, btw, they’ve only got three eyes and 6 legs. But who’s counting? Waiiiitttt a minute you say… what are blind boxes? Blind boxes are, IMO, the best marketing tool ever invented. They sell these toys ‘blind’ in boxes, you see…. as in, you don’t know which one you’re getting…. and if you’re anything like me, you just HAVE to get all of them to have a complete set, because you have mild OCD. So you have to buy more than you actually ‘need’ to get all the ones you want. (Or, you can trade them with other collectors!) AND they have upped the ante even more. They have special ‘chase’ toys in each set, ones that are much more rare and harder to pull…. you literally ‘chase’ after these special guys, who usually are kinda cool, for ex. there are FOUR chase for these spiders (I swear they are trying to kill me here): glow in the dark, clear, smokey clear, and black flocked. (What is flocked, you ask? it means fuzzy. cute and fuzzy.)

And that is my vocabulary lesson on vinyl toys for today. Now, let’s review. Please define the following: (1) Spider Baby Boom, (2) Sun Min Kim, (3) Uglydoll, (4) blind box, (5) chase, (6) flocked.

There. Now you can’t say you didn’t learn something today. I know you’re thanking me.