Radio Slaves

I got this crazy, weird, new job for Christmas break.  I'm working in a warehouse unpacking hundreds of crates and boxes so that a photographer can take pictures of each item, and then we pack everything back up.  It reminds me a lot about when we learned about Marxism in my social theory class.

Anyway, the photographers have a bag labeled "radio slaves," which are, if I understand correctly, devices for a camera that make the flash go off wirelessly.  I thought that the name of the object was so interesting.  Even though my thoughts about this name aren't related to cameras, I started to think how we are all slaves to the radio.  Who chooses what music goes on the radio, anyway?  I think that top hits are played based on popularity, but what makes those tracks so popular?  I thought about how media determines pop culture.  I think it takes a conscious effort for listeners to resist popular culture and to find their own path.

I have quite a few friends who I really respect for rejecting what's played on the radio and instead choose their own tunes.  For them, choice in music is a representation of who they are.

Sometimes it is just so easy to turn on the radio and give up the freedom of choice, to allow pop culture to dictate what we listen to.  But I think it makes us radio slaves.

A Lesson I Learned in College: Accountability

One thing that I realized I have learned from being a college student is responsibility and accountability.  Those might be pretty obvious things, and maybe I'm a bit late in finally adopting them as personality traits, or maybe I'm early.  All I know is that, in life, opportunities are handed to you, and you need to be able to say yes, and mean it, or you need to say no.

When your fellow students have to survey or interview or experiment on their peers (it's not that scary) for their Capstone, step up and take a slot.  Help a peer out and participate in their study.  And then when you sign up for a time, show up for it.  As my professor said, "It's good karma."  Those peers will likely help you out when you're in an academic bind.

When your adviser asks you to pick up his children after school every single day, and you say yes, you have to be there, waiting outside the building at 3:10 with all the parents, every single day.

When your sorority asks you to step up and become a philanthropy chair, and you don't think that you can make that commitment, don't take the job.  You'll just end up stressed about how much of your time it takes, or worse - you'll start slacking on your responsibilities.  It's better to be realistic and respectfully decline than to disappoint the entire group.

When your friend needs you, your homework can wait.  If she really needs you, you can lose an hour or two of sleep to help her out.  Be a friend someone can count on.  Show them support.  Show up to their senior chapel, cheer them on if they're in a parade, or simply congratulate them on their recent accomplishments.  Stay in tune with what's going on with them.

GO TO CLASS!!!  Anyone that is attending college should thank their lucky stars for aligning and getting them into higher education.  It's such a magnificent, and expensive, blessing.  Go to class and learn things.  It's that simple.  That's what you're there for.  That's what you're paying for.  And hey, it's always cool to be smarter than you were yesterday.

Taking on a bit of extra responsibility helps you learn how to prioritize, how to prune your schedule, and all about time management.  It makes you a well-rounded individual.  It helps you to develop who you are, to cultivate your interests and passions, and to make solid relationships all the way.  Really, it just teaches you to grow up and become a pretty cool adult.

On Mexican Time

The first month of my summer has thus far been fair.  I would describe it as busy boredom for the most part.  I'm pretty good at entertaining myself when I have nothing to do: my job doesn't start until this Friday, so I've had an entire month to myself, trying to keep myself busy.  My online summer classes are a lot of work, but aren't much fun.  They're time-consuming, hindering my pleasure reading considerably. 

So far, I've read J.K. Rowlings' A Casual Vacancy, a depressing but very well-written book, interesting for the sociologist's mind.  Now I'm past half-way through a book titled, On Mexican Time by Tony Cohan.  What it lacks in plot it makes up for in rich cultural descriptions.  For a lover of all things Hispanic, I eat it up, mentally planning my own trip to San Miguel de Allende, a quaint town a ways out of D.F.  The writer's style is dramatically poetic, and some of his literary habits irk me (he intentionally skips conjunctions, ignoring the 'and' necessary for a series of nouns), but I can't help but love the familiar conscious appreciation for a country's beautiful culture.  It's a good time to read this book, having returned to the States almost exactly 6 months ago.

To share, this passage speaks to me as it rings true to the pleasant nature of my experiences south-of-the-border:

"Crossing the jardín beneath a canopy of bells, I set off upon a round of errands.  Some I could have done in California but find so much more pleasurable here.  Crazy, I suppose, to buy a watchband from the pitiable selection at Emilio's tiny relojería on Insurgentes: but the walk to get there, Emilio's warm "Feliz Año" as he pushes back his eyepiece and smiles, and the cartoon jokes in Spanish pinned on the walls, beat a featureless trip to some gold-soaked California watch emporium.  I could have re-heeled my shoes at a high-tech L.A. shoe boutique, but Jaime's dim, aromatic shoe shop behind the covered market lies at the end of a sensual adventures.  Subjecting my boots to the unlabeled pastes and waxes, glops and creams the shoeshine boys in the jardín use may not do the leather any good, but I get the best seat in town and great gossip.  At Eréndira's Unisex Salon, I squeeze in among Mexican matrons reading scandal magazines beneath bubble-headed hair dryers and let Eréndira shear me before a cracked mirror for the peso equivalent of three dollars.  And no matter how I look when she's done, Eréndira always stands back and coos, "Ay muy guapo," as if she really means I look that good."

Natural Beauty: DIY Wine Tie-Dye

One of my softest tees also happened to be off-white, and at some point, it gained a most unfortunate stain.  If the shirt had been any other color, the stain would have gone unnoticed. 
 
I decided to take action and dye the shirt... but I wanted to do it with materials that I already had, and in a more natural way.  It seems only appropriate that I decided to tie-dye my tee-shirt with a bottle of Merlot.


***Enjoy the alpaca sweater images***
 
 
 
WHAT YOU'LL NEED:

• a white shirt (or off-white, or cream, or not a shirt... the options are limitless)
• about a cup and a half of wine, or more if you're thirsty! (red wines will work best for dying; I used a Merlot)
• a glass to hold the wine
• rubber bands
• a zip-lock bag big enough to hold the clothing
• a bowl to contain your mess!
• a baster (not necessary, but helpful)

 


1. Like any tie-dye project, I began by choosing a style of fold: I did an accordion fold and tied off small bunches with rubber bands, but of course, any style would work.
 

 
 
If you've ever tie-dyed before, that part is easy.  If you haven't, it's simple: fold the shirt back and forth on top of itself, and then tightly rubber band sections, like shown in the pictures.  Especially for this project, since I only used one color, one might argue that what I did above wasn't even quite necessary, but the finished product does show some subtle lines and gradient, so I would recommend including that step.
 
2. Next, I used a big bowl to contain my mess, because red wine stains (that's the whole idea, anyway!).  I used a baster to suck up the wine and insert it further into the creases of the shirt.  Careful with the baster - hold it sideways when transferring from glass to bowl to avoid spills! 

Personally, I wanted the wine to soak into every part of the shirt; I didn't want white to remain.  After basting, I poured a bit of excess across the whole thing, just to give it a bit more to soak up.  I probably used about a cup and a half of wine total.

***NOTE: It is almost essential to sip as you dye your shirt.  Red wine is good for you!***
 

 

 

 

3. Once I was satisfied with the amount of dye in the tee-shirt (that is, I couldn't see any speck of white, even between folds), I sopped up the remaining wine in the bowl and put the shirt into a zip-lock bag. 

 

4. Typically, I think that you are supposed to wait 12-24 hours; the longer you wait, the darker the product will be.  I left my shirt soak for about 20 hours, removed it from the bag (with a big whiff of Merlot), and rinsed it with cold water until the runoff water was clear - that way, you remove the excess dye from the shirt before wash or wear.

 

 

The finished product!  I'll upload a picture of me wearing it... when it's not wet anymore!

 

 

Be careful your first time washing it!!  Consider hand-washing for the first time, or else the wine might spread to the rest of the load in the washer.

 

My next idea for house-hold, natural dye:  a black or green tea! 

 

Be natural.

 

 

Late Update!

Bad blogger here.  I haven't posted in two months, so I'll just have you know that I took a trip to Virginia/Washington DC in January, and went down to Tennessee in early March.


January: VA/DC
Tony, Jake, Kacie, and I headed down to Virginia to visit a friend of the Hamorskys.  Phil is teaching math there, and lives in an apartment by himself, so we paid him a visit to keep him company.  While Phil was working during the day, we checked out the Smithsonian Museums (Space and Air, and Natural History).  We stopped to see the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument as well.  The food was insanely expensive, but it balanced out because the museums were free.  When we got back to Phil's apartment, we all cooked up some burgers and fries, played cards and watched the Avengers.  The next day, he didn't have to work, so together we went to the Holocaust Museum and visited some more monuments, including the Reflecting Pool and the Lincoln Memorial.  We had a good time, but there was so much more that we wanted to see, so hopefully we'll go back to visit Phil this summer!


(Two months later...)


March: TN
Tony, his parents, and I started off our spring break by road-tripping to eastern Tennessee.  We visited wedding venues in Gatlinburg, Maryville, and Sevierville, and we stayed with Uncle Ed and Aunt Patty in Knoxville.  We got a pretty good tour of the entire area during our many hours in the car.  It was fun to think about and actually start really planning our dream day, and we got to visit family in the meantime.  Aunt Lynda and Uncle Bob had us for dinner one night in Maryville, and they cooked up some awesome steaks and asparagus, and the most enormous baked potatoes probably in existence.  The next day, Uncle Ed and Aunt Patty took us out to dinner at a barbeque joint, and I got messy with my BBQ ribs.  Again, it was a long way to go for a short time - we spent a long weekend there, but the nine hour drive is killer.  Next time, I look forward to bringing my parents to see what we're scheming up for our mountainous wedding :-)

A smattering of ayurveda

Winter break's almost over.  I've got to tell ya, six weeks at home without a job is a long time.  The holidays were wonderful, and it felt so comfortable to see family after such a long time away.  I think that Christmas break is the best time to come back from study abroad.  It makes you feel like you're supposed to come back; and it gives you a nice, easy transition period.

That said, I'm so ready to go back to school.  The sorority girl in me admits her excitement for formal recruitment, and I'm pumped to be living with my two best friends this semester.  More than that, though, I think I'm ready to get back into a routine with classes and whatnot.

So far, I've been battling my rare spouts of boredom with a few scattered methods.  First, I've been doing my family's laundry while they're at work.  But that's not much to talk about.

I want to become an expert in something.  Wouldn't that be nice?  I really feel a pull towards yoga, but I first need to work on my focus (of course by practicing more yoga), and maybe pick up some Sanskrit phrases.  Also, my month package Prima Yoga has left me somewhat disenchanted; I feel like that yoga studio is more like a boot camp than a meditation space.

As many know, I do love my tea.  I got a book for Christmas (muchas gracias, mama Hamorsky) called Culinary Tea, and not only does it provide a myriad of recipes using tea leaves (how cool!), but it details a brief history of tea, flavor profiles, how tea is made, etc.  Did you know that every type of tea -- black, white, green, oolong -- comes from the same exact leaves on one species of plant?  The only difference between these types are the way that they're harvested and prepped!


Other than reading and learning, I'm getting my bridal excitement on.  Of course, the wedding seems forever away now, but the facts have finally sunk into my brain:  engagemed means soon-to-be-wed!  (Is it silly that it took me a few days for that idea to strike me as a reality?)  I must say, I'm glad I've got a while because I don't know the first thing about planning a wedding.  I love every color, so how am I supposed to just pick one?

I'll post soon about my weekend trip to the capital city, as soon as I find my pesky camera.  I know it's lurking around here somewhere...