Mishmash Musings

I’m in my early thirties now and am just beginning to realize how important it is to take care of my skin. When I was younger, my skin care regimen basically consisted of cleansing, moisturizing, and using sunscreen whenever I ventured outdoors in the summer. Beyond those basics, I didn’t really bother with any specialty products because I didn’t need to.

But now that I’m getting older, I’m definitely interested in doing everything I can to help my skin stay as healthy and radiant as possible — which is one of the reasons I’m very intrigued by a product called R.G. Skin Revitalizer.

R.G. Skin Revitalizer is a dietary supplement that rejuvenates your skin from the inside out. It is made from oils extracted from red gac, a native Vietnamese fruit renowned for its abundance of antioxidants. Red gac supplements helps bolster the body’s natural defenses against free radicals and other harmful agents, thus promoting healthier, more beautiful skin.

R.G. Skin Revitalizer is not meant to be taken alone. Rather, it works as a complement to your existing skin care regimen as well as your diet to deliver the results you’re looking for.

Like I said, I’m definitely interested in trying R.G. Skin Revitalizer for myself. I have sensitive skin to begin with, and most new products only succeed in causing my face to become red and irritated. That’s not going to happen with a supplement, so this could be just the product I’ve been waiting for!

My husband and I have been talking about taking another international vacation soon, which got me thinking of which countries I do (and don’t want to visit). It’s kind of fun to consider the entire globe in that sense! Here’s what I came up with.

Foreign countries I’m least interested in visiting
India absolutely tops my list here. I don’t know if it’s just my own perception or if my image of the country has been shaped by the media, but I immediately think of poverty, filth, and disease when the name India comes up. I’m sure there are urbanized areas that look just like any U.S. city, but I still wouldn’t want to travel there. Plus, I don’t like Indian food at all, so there’s really no reason for me to go!

Another country I have no desire to visit is Thailand. So many people talk about how beautiful it is there, what kind of awesome beaches they have, and how cheap the country is for foreign travelers. But none of those things are compelling reasons for me to want to travel there.

Also making my list are a few Central American countries as well as most of the Middle East.

Foreign countries I’m most interested in visiting
On the flip side are the countries I’m most interested in visiting. At the top of my list is Egypt, because I’d love to see the pyramids someday. Unfortunately, I know I wouldn’t really feel safe traveling there, so I probably won’t be going anytime soon.

I would also like to go to Kenya for a (photographic) safari. I think it would be amazing to see animals in the wild like that! If it wasn’t such a hassle to get inoculations and so forth in order to travel to Africa, I’d definitely head there in a heartbeat!

Other countries on my list of places to go are Australia, Germany, China, and Cuba. (I can say that without getting in trouble, right? Hemingway spent a lot of time there; that’s why I have an interest in going.  Maybe once Castro is gone, the U.S. will lift travel restrictions. Who knows.)

I just got done checking my fantasy football scores for today’s games. As usual, I made a ton of mistakes, as most of the players on my bench racked up decent points while my active starters earned me some big, fat goose eggs. Sigh. It seems that I never make the right decisions when it comes to filling out a roster.

Hey, at least I don’t have Chicago QB Rex Grossman on my team this year. Last year I got stuck with him after I missed the live draft. The computer first selected Aaron Brooks for me, then when he went down with an injury, I had to pick up Grossman from the waiver wire. After watching him for a couple of years, I can definitely say that he’s one of the most inconsistent starters I’ve ever seen in my time as a football fan.

But do you think Grossman evaluates himself the same way that the fans and the media do? It would be interesting to see what he’d write down on an employee self evaluation survey. He probably thinks that as long as he’s getting the job done and the team is winning, there’s no cause for concern.

Yeah, well just ask Kyle Orton if “getting the job done” is sufficient. Remember, Orton was 9-4 as a starter in 2005, but that wasn’t good enough for the Bears, who pulled him in favor of Grossman in the 14th game of the season.

So come on, Rex, please work on your mechanics and start making sound decisions on the field. The Bears won’t win a Super Bowl if you don’t improve!

And by the same token, I know I have to start making smarter decisions as a fantasy football manager or I won’t win any games at all this year. But at least my games don’t really count for anything other than fun!

I was going through some of my old books yesterday trying to decide which ones to donate to the library for their annual book fair, when I came across a couple of my Latin texts from high school. Latin was my best subject (by far) and I actually considered majoring in classical studies in college. Of course, it would have helped if I’d attended a school that offered that major, but that’s besides the point now !

Anyway, I cracked open one of the books on a whim, and ended up becoming lost in the pages for nearly two hours! It was one of Cicero’s orations against Catiline. I wouldn’t be able to translate it very well, but I could still read it and I was surprised that I remembered enough to get a sense of what was being said.

Plus, I still remembered all the famous quotes from the speech that we had to memorize for our tests, including my favorite:

Ad hanc te amentiam natura peperit, voluntas exercuit, fortuna servavit.

I really miss Latin sometimes — to the point where I’m thinking about taking classes again. The University of Georgia offers an online Latin sequence consisting of six courses. It would be so cool to take those, but I just don’t have the time right now.

I’ve got web-browsing capabilities on my cell phone, so a few months ago I spent some time tracking down and bookmarking the mobile versions of some popular websites that I use frequently. One of these was http://mobile.yahoo.com/. I swear that URL has worked for me for months, but today when I tried loading the URL, I got an error message saying the address was not found. WTH?

So I checked the URL on my regular Internet connection after I got home and it seems that everything is fine. But Mobile Yahoo still isn’t working on my phone. (It’s T-Mobile, BTW).

I wonder what’s going on? This is pretty inconvenient for me because I loved being able to browse from my cell phone when I was stuck waiting in line or something.

Have any of you been having this problem with Mobile Yahoo? Any suggestions for how to fix it?

It’s hard to believe it’s been six years already. Like everyone else, I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing the day the whole world changed. And, like everyone else, I will never forget the victims and the terrible circumstances under which they perished.

Do a good deed today to honor the memories of those who lost their lives on 9/11/01.

As you know by now, my husband and I are in the process of fixing up our kitchen. We want to change just about everything, including the tiling, flooring, appliances, fixtures, and even the sink. Then, once we get all that stuff done, we’re hoping that we’ll use the room more than we do right now.

Our kitchen isn’t huge or anything like that, but it is pretty spacious. What I like best about it is that we have an island in the middle. Other people would probably use this area for food preparation, but the meals I cook aren’t all that elaborate, so I hardly ever need the island for that reason. Really, all we do is throw our mail and car keys on it, which is a big waste.

What I’m thinking is that we should buy some bar stools so we can actually sit down and use the island as a kitchen table. We probably wouldn’t be able to eat dinner there because it’s just not big enough, but breakfast would definitely work, as would after-school snacks and light lunches.

We’re still a long way off from having a cozy, functional kitchen that I can be proud of, but we’ll get there eventually!

I once had a whole list of regular blogging memes that I wanted to participate in consistently, but I have a hard time remembering to actually follow through with my posts. I was doing Manic Monday for a while several months back, but see that I haven’t participated since the beginning of July. So, I figured this would be a good time to get back into the whole meme scene.

I wasn’t really interested in the Manic Monday questions for today, so I chose the ones from last week. Anyway, here they are:

What is one thing that you wanted to do this summer but didn’t?
I wanted to take my son to a couple of baseball games at Wrigley or U.S. Cellular Field, but never got around to it. Once the Cubs started coming on strong, it became impossible to get tickets to Wrigley. I usually get free tickets to the White Sox one way or another each and every season, but it didn’t happen this year. So we ended up not going. Next year for sure!

If you lived a hundred years ago, what job would you’ve had?
If I had been working in 1907, I’m pretty sure I would have been a factory hand earning slave wages. Back then, that was one of the easiest jobs for women to get (well, if Theodore Dreiser’s novels are to be believed), so I likely would have gone that route.

What are some of the most persistent and challenging obstacles in your everyday life?
I’m probably my own biggest obstacle. I know that’s such a cliché and I’m wincing as I type it, but it’s true. I could get so much more done if I didn’t allow myself to become sidetracked by video games, aimless Internet surfing, phone calls, extended lunches with friends, and general procrastination. I’m working on improving my productivity, so hopefully this whole situation will change soon!