money

It seems I disposed of all my tax and paycheck records from before 2002 in one of my past purges. I wish I had at least kept the last paycheck for each year... it surprises me that I can't find them... why didn't I at least keep those? I've got this desire to calculate how much I've saved and spent each year since I started working, but I'm missing a lot of the numbers for the first half of that time. So I can only determine rough estimates. It's annoying. I'm obsessed with numbers sometimes. Maybe I'll still find them. Surely I didn't get rid of *all* of.... gah.

(no subject)

I dyed my hair with Special Effects deep purple hair color, without bleaching first. I read that this might make the hair look dark/black with purplish highlights. And it did turn out that way! The color is subtle but cool. I'm not sure if a photo would capture the purplishness. Hopefully it will last a while.

money and software

Now I'm thinking I should read up on how to create equations in Excel - I've managed to hardly ever need them to use so far, except for a few times when someone else had already set up the spreadsheet - and move the financial info I'm looking up and calculating onto an Excel sheet. It would make the calculations easier and more accurate if they were automatic.

I already keep track of all the money I spend; I could start putting entries into a spreadsheet instead of only in my paper notebook. Then I could do neat things like categorizing each entry, and getting an automatic tally of how much I've spent on each category during the year. Oooh. Sweet. How have I managed to get by without doing that for so long?

Or maybe I'll use an open-source spreadsheet program instead of Excel. That's one of the reasons I've never much gotten into using Excel - because it's proprietary and expensive. I happen to have it on my current computer, but there may come a time when I no longer do. My text editor of choice has been Notepad for the same reason. At work I occasionally use UltraEdit because of its column-editing mode and macro functionality. But UltraEdit isn't free - I had to originally request a work order from my supervisor to get a license to download and use it. That was several years ago. Just yesterday I finally looked up the features of free text-editors, and decided to install Notepad++ on my laptop. I might try out CrimsonEditor too since Notepad++'s column-editing mode is non-intuitive for me, unlike what I got used to in UltraEdit.

dyes and memories

My hands got stained purple while I was rinsing out the hair dye in the shower. I had to scrub them to get most of the color off. Next time I should remember to keep gloves on until most of the color has been rinsed out. And to put a lot of vaseline on my entire neck before the whole process.

But it made me wonder if I could dye my fingernails a dark color using hair dye. If the hair-dye is non-toxic, anyway.

In the middle-school I attended in Wiesbaden, there was a fad one year amongst the kids to paint on their fingernails and hands using a certain brand of permanent markers... it was a thick ink, possibly metallic. I thought it was a neat thing to do, even though I never did it myself. I wonder if that was a popular fad in the states too? It didn't last for very long, as eventually the school officials and/or parents got worried about the toxic chemicals which might get absorbed into the students' bodies from the permanent marker ink.

Nikinje Jones. Tammy Ruda. Shauna and Shelly Acker(man?). Mrs. Barr. I still remember some names from back then. I wonder what I'll find if I look them up on the internet.

The science courses were split into 2 tracks in that school. The physical sciences were taught in a hands-on, small-teams, doing experiments, at-your-own-pace kind of way, while the life sciences were taught in a formal/regular teacher-led way. I have the impression that the "smart" kids were "supposed" to choose the physical science classes, because my teachers were surprised when, after the first year in the physical science class, I was insistent on wanting to transfer over to the life science class instead.

My problem with the physical science class wasn't the subject nor even that I was forced to work together with a team of 3 or 4 other students while doing the experiments. (Students who would waste time chatting about non-science topics and painting their nails with permanent markers instead of doing the class-work, and at least one of whom who pestered me until I finally let them take my workbook home with them so that they could copy all my answers and get credit for the material).

My problem was that after each section in the workbook, you were supposed to have the teacher check and grade your answers. But the teacher was always busy with other students, and there was no set way to get a turn with her. So I'd end up completing the work in 5 or 10 minutes, and then spending the rest of the class period agonizing over when to get up and approach the teacher; you weren't supposed to stand next to the teacher's desk waiting, as that could take ages, and you'd feel silly and awkward while doing so, and there was no process for indicating to the teacher that you were ready, other than possibly yelling out across the classroom which I was not wont to do, or sitting there with your hand raised for what seemed like eons. I hated it. I eventually stopped waiting for the teacher to check my work, and went on ahead and finished the whole workbook on my own. Then I got transferred to the life science class where it felt nice and homey, where the teacher had nice chats while all the students listened, and where my only problem was with being embarrassed by the growth of outward-projecting blobs on my chest.

vegan chocolates

http://sjaaks.com/categories/show/Vegan+Chocolates

http://www.indulgeinchocolate.com/gourmetveganchocolate.html

http://frenchbroadchocolates.com/buddha-collection/

http://www.rosecitychocolates.com/vegan-valentines-chocolates.html

Koppers Chocolate makes various chocolate "cordials" which seem to be vegan - these are round chocolate balls filled with liquid centers. This page indicates which of the varieties are non-dairy (need to scroll down to the section for Kopper's). The 2nd website listed above sells some of these varieties with free shipping. The chocolates can be found for cheaper on certain other websites, but the shipping charges need to be taken into account.