freddy y joel's muy cupcakery

there's a recession....economic hardtimes....poor economy....blah blah blah. i'm tired of hearing about it. i'm tired of thinking about it. and i'm tired of it constantly affecting everyone's thought processes. it's so narcissistic. what about everyone else? all we think about it ourselves. how selfish. so i propose we quit worrying about our own economy and start helping out someone else's. hey, what goes around comes around, right?

so joel stein writes a column for time magazine every week. if i could i would post a link to last weeks column, but it's just impossible, so i'll summarize it. there's this nonprofit website, kiva.org, where you can give small loans to third world entrepreneurs. so stein donates $25 to a baker in nicaragua. now for a normal person, this would pretty much be the end of the deal. but stein decides he has some suggestions for this baker to help his business. he calls kiva and has a volunteer go down to the 'little mango bakery' and translate for him via cellphone. stein suggests a name change for the bakery, to be named after stein himself and that freddy (the baker) should focus on cupcakes over empanadas. freddy is amazingly cooperative and accepts the name change but includes his own name. he even agrees to try selling cupcakes. freddy even suggests they try selling the cupcakes to the local grocery stores. stein also discovers that the cupcakes will be transported by bicycle because freddy can't afford a car. he has to pay for a new floor and roof for his bakery. so they get off the phone and this is where i think the story gets interesting. stein still isn't done. he has more ideas for his new baker friend. he calls a woman who co-owns a famous cupcake business in california. he tells her all about freddy's bakery and asks if she's thought about taking her business global. she tells him that in the future they would be excited about opening their cupcake stores worldwide, but that it's a more likely to happen in the very distant future seeing as they don't yet have six stores in the states. but this woman apparently decides to humor him, or is really just a kind soul. to quote stein, "so sprinkles (this woman's cupcake store) agreed to give Freddy y Joel's $750 and a strawberry-cupcake recipe in exchange for regular reports on sales of that cupcake as well as a list of our three best-selling flavors. We agreed not to open a Freddy y Joel's in California, and in return Sprinkles would stay out of our section of Managua".

now i admit that the tone of this article is humorous and many elements to this story could be fictional. but i think that the basic story is true. it is, after all, time magazine. freddy now has a lot more money for his business and all it cost joel was $25 and one phone call. anyway, i think that's pretty impressive. if you're interested in reading the actual article let me know and i'll send it to you. in the meantime, check out kiva.org, and see what you can do to reach out and help someone else's economy. you never know, you just might end up helping yourself too.

beating sarah to the punch

this last week sarah flew in from utah to visit me. yay!! it was a pretty awesome week, if i may say so myself. and i'd like to tell you all about it. but that would take way too long, so i'll just briefly describe it. on wednesday sarah, a couple friends and i went up to st. paul to the science museum. we spent the day getting exhausted and touching surfaces that children had spit and snotted on. a plus side to it being winter is the fact that i always have my gloves with me. i was pretty successful at not touching anything without them. the only problem was that the touch computer screens didn't register my gloved hand. i tried to steer clear of those as best i could. we also watched the omnitheater movie which is the least fun one i've seen to date. it was about the effort to restore the lake sturgeon (very endangered and horribly ugly) to the great lakes. my favorite part of the film was when they "egged" (in relation to "milking" a cow) a 120 year old fish. i never knew that one fish could have so many eggs in it. totally gross. why do people eat caviar again? yeah. it was a really fun day and i think everyone learned something new. but i think the highlight of the day was the subway restaurant. we left the museum with the idea of getting food somewhere on the drive home. we had completely forgotten however that it was new year's eve and that even 24-hour mcdonalds had closed at 6pm. so after stopping a few places and discovering this problem we headed home even though we were starving. halfway back we drove through this dinky town which happened to have a subway with a huge OPEN sign on it. we pulled up thinking they must have forgotten to turn off their sign, but no, they were actually open. food, glorious food. i do believe it was the best subway i have ever eaten.

on thursday we went to lisa's house across the mississippi river and sat in her hot tub. it was quite lovely, except when the wind blew (i don't think sarah believed us when we told her that if your hair freezes it can break off) and also when we had to run from the hot tub back to her house. but luckily that wasn't too often and the run inside was only like 20 seconds. on friday my older sister gave us a tour of the Mayo Clinic which was actually pretty interesting. she showed us the labs where all the tests are done. it was pretty cool because it was somewhere that i had never really visualized before. we also had to walk several miles and i think we were all pretty exhausted. we went extreme bowling that night. while i scored less than 50 points in the first game, my 13 year old sister got 4 strikes in a row. i must have missed out on the good bowling gene.

on saturday we went up the the mall of america. we first went to the aquarium underneath the mall. the coolest part was petting the stingray (plural) and sharks. we stayed for quite awhile trying to touch all the sharks so i think everyone really enjoyed it. then we went shopping. and shopping. and shopping. it took us much longer than we had predicted to shop the entire mall. we were more than exhausted but i also discovered one of my new favorite stores: Martin & Osa. it's named for a very famous and adventurous couple in the early part of the 20th century. i might just read their book. i also learned that abercrombie has five different stores under four different names. they all have the same clothes, strong cologne smell, and excessively loud music though, so i'm not sure of the need for such stores, but i guess teenagers will buy anything. we also learned that the girls who work at hollister aren't allowed to wear makeup, which sounds sexist to me, although i can't quite specify how exactly. after we FINALLY finished shopping we rode the rides in the amusement park located in the middle of the mall. it was fun and all, but one of the rides was extremely painful. it also made me crazy dizzy and i don't like being reminded of how old i am getting. i really think the highlight for everyone was petting the sharks. it sounds strange but it was really relaxing and enjoyable. i have also decided that i would like an arabian bamboo shark for a pet. they were quite friendly and they really enjoyed being petted. i'm going to have to find out if regular people are allowed to own one of them.

on sunday we went to church, watched a couple movies and then sarah flew away, back to warm weathered utah. fortunately and unfortunately it was really warm while sarah was here, usually between -10 and 10 above. she didn't get to experience the insane cold that we oftentimes get to feel. oh well, maybe next time.

christmas shopping

congratulate me, i am done with my christmas shopping. my original goal was to be finished shopping by dec 1. of course this goal was not met. i once again practiced a fun pastime i learned on the mission: making goals that are so outlandish they will never be reached. but i just got online to buy my very last gift. i've been following the price for more than a month now and i finally bought it. i am done done done with my christmas shopping. by dec 21. excellent. actually, this is something i need to work on in real life. because it's for christmas and it's for other people, i kept working on my goal until it was finished. however with normal goals, if i don't make them by my deadline, i completely give up and drop that goal. i don't know why this is exactly. i guess i'm just a give-upper. next year i plan on putting a lot less time and effort into buying gifts because the gifts i've given so far this year (after TONS of thoughtful contemplation by the way) have not been very appreciated. so i guess i'm giving up on that too. sad isn't it?

i have only two life goals, neither of which are completed. they are as follows:
1) own all the seasons of The Cosby Show on dvd.
2) have my own apartment.

i am actually pretty close to accomplishing this first one. not because of any effort on my part though. last year for christmas my sister and my parents bought me season 1-6. only 2 seasons to go. sweet! and since i'm currently living with my parents, i am not even close to my second goal. and really, i'm not actively working on either of these goals. hmm. it's probably better that i don't own all eight seasons, because if i did i would have accomplished one of my life goals and feel validated and end up living with my parents till i'm 40.

3) don't live with my parents until i'm 40.

black friday

i always wondered how shopko stays in business. i really did. it seemed like no one ever went there. but now i understand. shopko makes ALL their money on black friday.

so on thanksgiving i scoured the ads that came in the paper to see if there were any good sales that i wanted to get in on. i was already planning on going to the mall because one of the stores had an AMAZING deal on one of the things my older sister wants for christmas. i also needed ideas because my dad is impossible to shop for. when asked what he wants for christmas (or his birthday as they are both in december which makes shopping for him twice as difficult) he says nothing. nothing. after pressing him for weeks he finally said, "well...you could get some food storage." lame. lame lame lame lame LAME. food storage as a gift? get real. [on a side and completely unrelated note: another really lame gift that i've seen some people give is cigarettes. i mean, come on. it's like giving someone a little box of cancer.] so anyway, we saw something that might work for my dad at menards which opened at 5am. this is not as early as a lot of other stores that opened at 4am and so my older sister, my youngest sister and i agreed to wake up and leave the house at 5am.

now i have never EVER gone shopping on black friday before. i never thought it was worth it at all. if something normally costs thirty bucks and is on sale for fifteen, i'd rather pay the fifteen more dollars than get up at 4am. i also always thought that the people who did get up were crazy. crazy like insane, not crazy like funny. but this year i am hoping to spend a record low amount on christmas gifts. not because i'm cheap...because i'm poor. actually those might be the same thing. but also i'm not really doing anything else, so why not? we woke up, got in the car and left at 5:15am. it was still pitch black outside but the roads were busy. very busy. theres a road here that has target, shopko, menards, kohl's, and walmart (in that order) with some other stores in between them. it was CRAZY. there were no parking in the shopko parking lot AT ALL. people were parking and walking quite aways to get there. so we were surprised when menard's parking lot was pretty empty. there was also a really long line of crazies waiting to get into the store. it was bitterly cold outside and this is something i can say i will never do, no matter how good the deal. it's not worth frostbite. i looked at the ad again and realized that menards didn't actually open until six. oops. so we drove to the mall and shopped there before returning to menards.

menards was insane. the lines went all the way to the very back of their HUGE warehouse. no one would let us pass, it took us ten minutes just to get OUT of the store, and we didn't even get what we wanted. it was there, but it wasn't worth it. by the looks of it, shopko and walmart were the same way. however, the mall was totally cool. there were hundreds of people there, but there was still decent parking and the lines moved fast. the longest we had to wait in line was 5 minutes. the people weren't acting like psychos and everyone was polite and decent. and i saved a lot of money. i'd figure out how much i saved but that would require effort. i think the people at the mall were really there because they thought the craziness of shopping on black friday was fun. there were people wearing black friday t-shirts and everything. and people were actually smiling.

afterwards we came home and turned on While You Were Sleeping and fell asleep on the couch. it actually turned out to be a pretty fun day. next year i might even go back to the mall. but i'm staying away from anyplace else. those other places just aren't worth it. i guess nothing's really worth it if you're not having fun.

me and my bad example

this sunday in Relief Society (it's a family ward) I was sitting on the edge of an aisle. this little girl kept walking in circles around and around the set of chairs. she was probably somewhere between one and two years old, a guess i'm basing solely on the fact that she couldn't walk very well. every time she went around the group of chairs she would pass her mother sitting in the front row paying no attention whatsoever to her kid and then she would pass me. over and over and over again. her hands were covered in mushed up nasty gram crackers and each time she stumbled by she would reach her hand towards me to touch me. this of course bothered me, not only because i was wearing a nice dry-clean only dress but because...gross. i would scoot away from her each time in an effort to avoid getting gooed. the woman who was teaching the lesson had been sitting across the aisle from me and her sans-zipper purse was sticking out a little from under her chair. there happened to be a box of colored-pencils in there and when the kid discovered this she clumsily pulled the purse out and removed the pencils. when i glanced up, all the women on the other side of the room were shaking their heads at me, implying that i should stop her from destoying the purse. or the pencils, i don't know. so i took the pencils and put them back in the purse and told the kid that they were not hers. now, anyone who's ever had an interaction with a toddler will know that this was definitly not the end of it. she pulled them out of the purse again, and i replaced them again. then she started kicking the purse, which of course is made of a fragile straw-like material. to get her attention to make her stop i had to touch her. i tapped her on the shoulder and she turned around, looked up at me, and started laughing hysterically. i know, i know, i'm supposed to smile and think 'how cute.' but let's face it, i'm not exactly what you would call a 'good sport'. i just looked at her and said "don't do that," which she obviously didn't understand because she doesn't speak English, and she went back to kicking the purse. to top all of this off, i kept getting rude looks from other women, as though she were my child or something. what am i supposed to do? pick her up? not gonna happen.

so after relief society ended my mom was telling two women about how funny it was when i moved away each time the kid tryed to touch me. they all thought it was funny too and in my defense i told them that i was wearing a nice dress and didn't want to get mushed crackers on it. and then one of them said "well, it's just a part of motherhood."

just a part of motherhood? when did i have kids? oh wait, i DIDN'T. i haven't chosen to get married and pop out babies, which is why i can still buy and wear nice dresses and other clothes with the expectation that i won't get gram-crackered, drooled on, spit up on, or otherwise slimed. this is one of the privledges of being single. let me enjoy it and quit expecting me to take over your role as parent. you're the one who's supposed to get barfed on. not me.

and come on, is it really expecting too much to think that a person should pay a little bit of attention to their kid? or at least clean their kid up before letting it wander around bothering other people and stealing their things? i don't think so, but apparently i'm wrong.

hmm...what else has happened at church lately? oh yes, i was used as a bad example in a talk at stake conference by guess who...a member of the seventy! yes, you read correctly, elder someoneorother came to our stake conference and told everyone that he'd seen a girl on her cell phone right before the meeting he'd attended earlier that morning. he said that when we attend a meeting we should arrive early and sit silently and reflect on the music and the spirit and all that.

so what happened was that he'd spoken at a meeting for just the single adults in the stake, a meeting i attended only because i would get to see lisa and which took place in the relief society room because there are only like 20 single adults in the stake. when we got there we sat in the front row, so we were probably about five feet away from this general authority. also, lisa was no where to be seen. so i texted her. to make sure she was coming. and he saw this. and told everyone about my bad example.

oh come on. yes, maybe it was rude to be texting (before the meeting even started) but isn't it kind of rude for him to assume that what i was doing wasn't important. i mean, what if lisa was inactive? wouldn't it be a GOOD thing that i was making sure she was coming? and let me tell you, when i was a missionary, we were never sitting in the meeting room reflecting on the music and whatnot because we were always on the phone making sure someone was coming to church like they promised they would. so technically, this is a pattern i learned on my mission. aren't those things we're supposed to keep? i thought so.

so you're not supposed to follow my bad example. quit texting at church. and what about me? i'm going to continue texting during meetings, because if i didn't you wouldn't have a bad example to not follow. :)

so i'm starting a blog that i'll actually let people read. i keep my other blog completely anonymous and secret. (1000 points to you if you can find it) but i thought there might be somebody out there who would actually want to read this. probably not, but you never know. someone could actually get THAT bored. since i have no life i'm pretty sure i won't be posting very much very often, but i guess you never know when something completely awesome will happen and i'll suddenly have tons of interesting posts to write. don't hold your breath.