Dawn Xiana Moon: Melodic folk pop infused with passion and honesty. From Chicago.

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Monday, September 29, 2003

Pour mes amis

I've been blessed with incredible guy friends. They're willing to call me out when they see something wrong, insistent that I borrow their only blankets and pillows if I crash at their house, adamant in their generosity whether raising support for church work in Paris or other situations, unrelenting in their belief in me. To that handful, I want to say thanks.

Now if only I could make them stop with the fake misogyny... (you'd think they'd learn after receiving a few bruises).

^ Top | 6:46 PM | | |

Tuesday, September 23, 2003

Just when you thought I was exaggerating...

People from Redford (Deadford), Michigan tend to be rather--how shall I put this?--bizarre. I went to the local everything-cellular store on Beech Daly on my way home from work today since my phone's been unhappy (translation: I dropped it one too many times). When I walked in, the only person working at the counter was a thugish Adam Sandler look-alike dressed in a baggy sports jersey; he swaggered to the woman he was helping and called her "honey" and "babe" at least once a sentence (sometimes more). She didn't seem in the least bit perturbed so I assumed that they knew each other. I may have been wrong. When he addressed me, it was "babe" and "honey" all over again. But that doesn't necessarily say anything, right?

Heh. He apparently didn't know what he was talking about either. When I described the problem and showed him my phone, he was puzzled and asked if I'd gotten the back plate on it changed. I said no, so he asked where on earth I could have gotten it--which was directly from Sprint. So he pulled out another phone from a box and told me that mine should have the same color. But it was a totally different model. When he realized his mistake, he told me that my phone had been discontinued three years ago. Now, my phone is a little old--almost two years now--but I'd gotten it new; it's a popular model and I got mine just before people started buying them en masse. "Yeah, I worked for Sprint for five years. I know what I'm talking about." Right.

^ Top | 6:44 PM | | |

Wednesday, September 17, 2003

More Landlord Woes

Just when you thought it was finally over… actually, we’d been anticipating this ever since we moved in to 530 S. Fourth Ave. last August, and even more so in the last few weeks. My roommates and I moved out from the epitome of the phrase “student ghetto” during the third and fourth weeks of this August, and we knew our landlady, Jun Zhang, was going to have a field day with our security deposit. Nevermind that she didn’t actually clean the house before we moved in and my room stank of cat urine, she barely fixed anything, her husband removed the bedroom door from Evan and Joe's room during Spring Break and never replaced it because the room was in violation of fire codes, and the “furnished” house contained mostly unusable furniture (for example, what passed as a dresser in my room was a little cardboard 3-tier drawer) that was promptly relocated to the basement (also scary, and when the laundry machine didn’t work when we moved in she actually wanted to charge us a monthly fee to replace it). She tried to charge us $440 for a late fee on a check that bounced—not only illegal because late fees cannot be punitive, but ridiculous because according to the Ann Arbor Tenants Union an exorbitant late fee runs around $60—even though she was warned by Elise that the check was going to bounce before she’d caught the problem herself.

So the latest: she took $800 out of our security deposit. Unbelievable. And for what? Half was for the late fee she’s still illegally trying to collect, the rest (we're assuming, since the charges were listed but not itemized with prices) for damages resulting from the normal wear and tear of crappy (literally, Elise sat on her bed and it broke, and she put her foot on the footrest and it broke) furniture that was older than old. After putting up with so much, especially in the condition of the house when we moved in, I can’t believe she’s pulling this on us now. Why doesn’t anyone do anything about Ann Arbor landlords? Elise is heading (again) to Student Legal Services—who’d originally laughed at the thought of someone trying to charge a $440 late fee—so I’ll close this blog with a quote from Joe Sievers: “And how many hundreds of dollars does it take to Lysol a mattress? That's like saying ‘someone left an old slice of pizza in the fridge. I'm charging you $200 because I had to throw it away. Oh, and the toilets had been crapped in and the floor had been walked on.’”

^ Top | 4:01 PM | | |

Thursday, September 11, 2003

C'est difficile d'être canadien.

My mom's magazines are usually floating around the house, and when I picked up one (Redbook or Better Homes and Gardens, I think) the other day and leafed through it I noticed a rather interesting legal note in the fine print of one of their contests. (My brother and I got a good laugh out of this.) The randomly-chosen winner of the contest would receive $5000--not bad, right? Ah, but there's a catch. An American winner would get the money scot-free, but a Canadian? No way. In the event the winner was a Canadian, she would have to answer a trivia question in a limited time frame without consulting other people or resources. Good luck.

^ Top | 3:42 PM | | |

Monday, September 08, 2003

Mais je pensais que ce serait facile!

How to make painting a room difficult:

1. Decide to paint in order to cover hideous wallpaper but think that you can take shortcuts.
2. Paint 2-3 coats of white paint directly on top of the offending wallpaper.
3. Decide that white is a boring color and go to Home Depot to pick out colors to sponge-paint over the entire room. Choose midnight blue and silver grey.
4. After sponge-painting over the wallpaper wall, realize that the two colors, which work well next to each other on the samples, don't work at all sponge-painted on the wall.
5. Decide to paint two walls grey and two walls blue instead. Commence.
6. Think that it'd be easier to sand the sponge-painted wall down and paint directly on top of it rather than peel off the wallpaper. Begin sanding.
7. Realize while sanding that the paint never stuck well to the wallpaper to begin with. Peel off wallpaper.
8. Discover another layer of (Disney character) wallpaper underneath the hideous one. Realize that the layer is suctioned incredibly well to the wall.
9. After 3-4 hours of peeling wallpaper with mother's help, look excited at seeing clean drywall.
10. Sand wall.
11. Buy white primer and apply 2 coats to offending wall.
12. Paint multiple coats of blue and grey on walls, still mixing paint with the faux glaze the salesperson at Home Depot recommended.
13. Realize that faux glaze was meant to be used when sponge-painting. That's why after 3 coats the walls still aren't done.
14. Buy more paint and apply it directly to walls without adding faux glaze.
15. After 3 coats, realize blue is a difficult color to paint with.
16. Buy ready-made white trim to cover border mistakes and spot paint over mistakes.
17. Enjoy finished room.
18. Point out mother's mistake in a dinnertime conversation: she'd mixed some of the leftover blue with what she thought was white paint to get a softer color. Unfortunately, it didn't work because she mixed with the remaining faux glaze, not white latex paint. Around 7 coats later....

^ Top | 6:37 PM | | |

Wednesday, September 03, 2003

Les phrases

Yeah, I know--I've been a slacker about updating lately. Between New Student Outreach with InterVarsity, commuting to Ann Arbor constantly, swing dancing, helping people move/dealing with land(slum)lords, redecorating/painting/organizing/moving into my room, and work, life’s been crazy. But on to more interesting topics. Today's feature: marketing catch phrases and terms that mean nothing.

Our first offender comes from an ad for a model airplane receiver: “It’s a well-known fact: Futaba’s 9Z WC2 systems represent the absolute finest in radio control.” Really. I didn’t know that was a fact. Actually, I thought it was an opinion. Didn’t anyone ever teach the writer the difference when they were in school? But of course, it sounds terribly impressive.

Other culprits: “Freshly-squeezed,” which never is, at least in most people’s sense of the word, “new and improved,” which is a contradiction in terms, and “Everfresh,” the name of a juice company that defies feasibility (not to mention that when you actually look at the numbers, they use less fruit juice in their drinks than many of the other brands). And at Red Lobster you can’t order lobster or crab legs with your meal but you can add “delicious lobster” and “sweet crab legs.” Ah, this is what makes the world go ‘round.

^ Top | 2:33 PM | | |