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when you are flying and the airport security takes away your mousse, you can just use the body lotion left in your hotel room. A generous application, worked in thoroughly will give body to the hair while leaving it silky smooth. Good two days in a row, though the third day it gets a bit sketchy.

-the beast

I will share a guilty pleasure I have…. cooking blogs. I have never in my life made a recipe from one, but I love to look at them and see the ideas and dream of owning a kitchen one day. How can you not with recipie’s like THIS!

oh pickypalate.blogspot.com how I love thee.

so the other day a buddy calls me up and we decide to go grab some dinner. We go cruising …. TO DISNEYLAND. That’s right, people here all have passes and stuff, so we just cruise into Disneyland, the magical kingdom of america, and eat some gumbo in a breadbowl, ride a few rides, watch the big show, then roll home, just a few hours you know. Who does that? Seriously, who goes to disneyland for dinner. That’s like going to the moon for a sale on sneaks. Very entertaining, but still. :)

So a few years ago, shoot like seven years ago, a friend of mine while in Ukraine had recommended to me a book called Coming out of the Ice that he had read and said it was inspiring and thought provoking, and yada yada yada. Well at the time I didn’t think much of the recommendation, but as I came to respect this friend more, the book he mentioned stuck with me and I decided I would give it a read someday. Well, seven years later, I finally got around to it. The book is “Coming out of the Ice - An unexpected life by Victor Herman” which I picked up from amazon for around 50 bones (it’s out of print) and went to work.

After charging through this book in a matter of about a weeks worth of evenings I can say it is one of the most perspective changing books I’ve ever read. Well actually, I’m not sure if perspective is the right word, maybe inspiring, maybe gratitude inducing, I don’t know exactly what role it played in me these last few days, but I find myself oddly moved by this mans true story. He tells of struggles he faced in Russian prisons, wrongfully charged and committed and the story is how he lasted through an ungodly amount of time under these circumstances, and how he found his resolve to go on. It caused me to look at the struggles I face and realize how terribly easy it should be for me to just persever, to just suck it up and power through. It makes me much more grateful for the opportunities I have and life and freedoms I’ve enjoyed. I don’t know exactly why it stuck with me so, perhaps its the Russian politics, mentality, and mannerisms that he describes that can only really be understood through experience, or the fact that it’s just a good man book to read, but it is very profound to me.

Honestly I read a ton of books each year, many good ones, but I can’t tell you when I last read a book that gave such insight and actually moved me. I hope you all get the chance to read it at some point. Be forewarned though, it deals with issues that are a bit unsettling some of them, and theres about a dozen swearwords to watch out for through the course of his story, just so you know. But I would recommend this to anyone.

I don’t know why I’m on a review spree either, it won’t last, but enjoy it while you can. :)

Since I’ve been going through a spree of purchases lately, I thought I’d let you in on the experience a bit and ‘review’ if that’s the only word for it, some of my experiences. And since today was all about the car finishing up, lets start there.

So I bought my car recently from carmax as it was recommended to me by a good friend out here as a decent place to try. So I started by doing my online research, and honestly, everything online feels expensive, and since I’m used to the ole town country style of barter and haggle to get the price down to what we’d think is reasonable, carmax’s one price policy made me a bit apprehensive about the experience. I searched online and found a car that looked good, had a decent asking price, and low miles. The deal looked really good, and carmax has this great policy that says if you don’t like the car for any reason, you can return it within 5 days and the deal is dissolved, no questions asked, you get out of the sale quick. Which in California is very generous because the state has dissolved the 3 day cold feet law that most states still have in place. So with plans to take a monster road trip back to Missouri and back, I figured I would go get the car if I liked it, and take it through the mountains, through the desert, through the hills and back again, and try and load test it, cause if something were going to break I wanted it to break within that 5 day window.

So I went in and the guys there were great. No pressure, a couple of “have you been helped yet”s that stopped with a “yup” and away they went. I test drove the car, liked it, wanted to take it home. I’d lived here for 22 hours, and hadn’t yet started the job that was promising to provide money to make the payments, but they ran a credit check, pulled some strings to get me through the residence drama, and I signed away. They took care of all the checks and registration stuff for me, and I was outta there with plates on the car and then drove it 4000 miles in a week. The car was great, I really like it, a few quirks that I would do differently, but I wanted something modest and comfortable that didn’t run 20k+ to get. This was it.

Knowing that I was going to keep the car, I let the 5 day window close, and fell back on the 30 day “we’ll fix anything” warranty that came stock with the purchase. So after 4,000 miles, and a few potholes, the alignment was off, not bad, but it pulled to the right a bit, and my passenger side window wasn’t going up and down like it should. So I called them and they said they could fix it, just bring it in sometime before 6pm, well I countered with I work all day every day, what else you got, to which they countered bring it in anytime before 9pm, get a loaner, and we’ll fix it and get it back to you. Sweet! I cruised in, picked up a granny impala on saturday morning with the promise that my car would be taken care of first thing Monday morning. Monday came and I got about 4 calls from Ephraim, the mechanic, letting me know how the car was doing, that they ran into a bad part, and were reordering, but Tuesday it’d be ready he guessed. Well, it wasn’t fixed till today (wednesday) but it wasn’t too big of a deal, I had a car still, and they gave it to me with a full tank of gas and no obligation to refill it before I returned it, but it was a bit of an inconvenience.

So I went in today, returned the loaner, again with no questions or problems, and picked up my car. The window worked perfect, they balanced and rotated the tires and fixed the alignment. Great. They also refilled my gas tank (which was on empty) and washed the car (which after the road trip was noticable) and I drove outta there a day later than I wanted, but a huge fan of carmax. Seriously, with the extra 60 bones to fill the gas tank and 30 minutes to wash the outside and vacuum the inside of my car, they bought me for good. Best experience buying a car ever. It’s nice to buy something of that magnitude and be worry free. If somethings wrong, they’ll fix it, if somethings not just there, they take care of it. I love it. So sorry if this sounds testimonial ish, but the experience of buying has made the car. wtg carmax.