I used to love Slurpees. My girlfriend got me hooked on them, actually. I’d liked them as a kid, but when I was in college and she drove me home after every weekend, we’d get Slurpees on the way. When I started my diet, I realized I couldn’t have Slurpees anymore. So more than a year ago, I wondered about the nutritional information of Slurpees. Then within the past several months, 7-Eleven introduced a few Crystal Light flavors into their Slurpee rotation, with a sign posted announcing they were 4 calories per ounce. Sure, that was an improvement, but I like the 22-ounce Slurpees and that comes out to 88 calories - two Weight Watchers points! I could have them as a treat, but not regularly. Until now! Today I had my very first Diet Pepsi Slurpee. It has no calories, and it tastes just like the Coca-Cola Slurpees they’ve had forever.

A dyed my hair for me last night because I can’t dye it myself. The one time I tried was to surprise her when she was coming home from a business trip, and it came out streaky and funny-looking! So whenever I want to dye my hair, she does it for me. I always go for reddish auburn, and my favorite brand is Clairol’s Natural Instincts line. They keep changing what colors are available, but the last time I dyed my hair I used #84, Rio Red Ginger, and was pleased with the result. Unfortunately, this time around they were all out of any good reds from Natural Instincts, but Garnier Nutrisse was available and on sale, so A picked out #66, Pomegranate. I was a bit leery because it was a Level 3 color, which is “permanent” - I usually get Level 2, which washes out after about a month and a half.

The coloring itself went just fine, though we discovered one bottle isn’t enough because my hair is so long. After rinsing my hair (which took longer than usual), I went to bed. When I got up this morning we found that the result was kind of purpley-red and not as intense as I’d been hoping, but I’m happy with it. One of the boys I worked with at the middle school today commented that my hair was red - I was amazed that he noticed! - but then started saying something about a shadow and black, and that being bad. I finally remembered that he likes comic books and superhero characters, and I made the association - he was talking about The Shadow! I was quite amused by this.

I initially heard about the gender-detecting program from Dan, and it’s now available to the public via Gender Genie. I used one of my own entries and was correctly pegged as a woman, but Dan’s own initial post about the algorithm was incorrectly guessed as female. Supposedly it should be right 80% of the time, but the actual results from the Gender Genie show a 50-50 split between right and wrong. Then again this isn’t a particularly scientific test - anybody can claim right or wrong without actually proving the author’s gender to the software. Still, it’s fun to play with.

I had a little chat with warhol yesterday about diet cola. Here’s what he had to say:

I’d rather have empty calories than artificial sweeteners. [...] I’d rather have something the body was designed to process, albeit in abudance, than exotic chemical compounds. If you’re going to consume equal quantities of both, I’d rather have good old fashioned sugar than some bizarre lab concocted compound whose long term effects are unknown.

I also said “I find it is usually guys who claim diet soda is nasty and insist they prefer regular soda; girls seem to have more sense and understand that regular soda is as bad for you as eating a Big Mac every day.” Somebody else threw in “thats because guys don’t need to convince themselfs that it taste nice” to which my response was “Apparently because guys don’t care about their weight.” Perhaps the wisest comment on the issue was someone else’s suggestion of “beer-flavored diet soda. That’s the ticket!”

But I really don’t get why people would drink regular soda unless they have a legitimate health concern about the artificial sweeteners. There are literally no benefits to drinking regular soda - meaning that there are only negatives! Why drink all that sugar? I can drink as much diet soda as I want and it never hurts my diet. Before I realized regular soda was fattening, I used to get it when I was hungry at work - and it did help with the hunger! But there was no nutritional benefit to it. I just don’t understand why people would knowingly put that much empty calories into their body if they didn’t have to. I have plenty of choices with diet soda - the only ones I’ve missed out on so far are Pepsi Blue, Dr. Pepper Red Fusion, Tropical Sprite Remix (I tried a bit of the regular and didn’t like it anyway), and Mountain Dew Livewire. Any other soda I could possibly want, I can get in diet. (Yes, it was a while between the release of Vanilla Coke and Diet Vanilla Coke, but I survived - and it was worth the wait!) It just doesn’t make sense to me why somebody would choose regular soda.

Added 15 December 2004: I’m closing comments. I’m tired of people babbling on about this in my comments without any citations. Sorry.

I decided to do some of the LiveJournal memes (you hush, Mom!) that are floating around. Apparently we’ve all gotten lazy, because most of them just require you to input your username.
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I didn’t get to post anything yesterday because our power went out in the afternoon as a result of the large thunderstorm that whacked the whole area and downed a lot of trees. The only one I saw down was a big branch of the tree in my front yard, which is technically on the neighbors’ property and therefore I don’t need to worry about it. We were luckier than some people in that our power was only out for four or five hours - there are some in Maryland who have been told they won’t get power back until Friday - but it was long enough for me to get tired of reading and go to bed early. Some schools in the region closed because of the power outage, but I was still able to go to work at the middle school today.

For now I have parked myself in a computer lab at my community college. Class doesn’t start until 6:30, but I can easily kill four hours with a high-speed connection. I need to find a birthday present for A, whose birthday is on the 10th.

Here are this week’s entries for Unconscious Mutterings.

1. Bay :: Chesapeake
2. Boarding school :: sleep-away camp
3. Riddle :: Thomas (Harry Potter reference)
4. Hunger :: thirst
5. Allergy :: flowers
6. Sponsored :: charity
7. Spin :: doctor
8. Interest :: fascination
9. Scrabble :: word game
10. Mold :: food

As I mentioned, I bought an entire new outfit for Audrey Hepbunny yesterday. She now has a biker jacket, leather skirt, and Audrey the Leather Mama! (I had also bought a full hula outfit for her around Memorial Day, for our annual party - I never took a picture, but I’ll try to take and post one soon.)

I just wanted to make a post for today even though I’ve got to leave for work within the next half-hour. The job last night was awful…the guy was really demanding of both me and the poor nurses - he kept asking me to do really stupid menial things like moving a cup from his tray table to a shelf and filling a cup with water so he could put his dentures in. I dozed off a few times in my hard chair (the ward’s lone reclining chair had already been taken by somebody’s wife who was spending the night) before a kind nurse brought me a blanket and a pillow. I dozed off a few more times before moving to sleep on the really hard floor. I only slept for a few hours total and it wasn’t good sleep. At one point this morning the patient said “gee, you look tired, having to run all around the room like that - but that’s your job!” I was so exasperated that I finally said “uh, no, that’s not my job. My job is interpreting, that’s it.” He looked kind of surprised and said “oh, you’re here to interpret for me? Oh.” He mostly left me alone after that, but I’m not looking forward to going back tonight. I know he’d never been in the hospital before, but did he seriously think every patient had a little servant with them all the time? Fucking hell.

Today A and I went to the mall and saw Pirates of the Caribbean. I’ll post more about today’s activity - including the outfit I got at Build-A-Bear - tomorrow.

If I had known this was going to happen, I wouldn’t have stayed up so late last night. But now it turns out I’m working at the hospital in Baltimore from 10pm to 8am, and I’ve slept the vast majority of today. We did have dinner out Friday night (well, I got carryout from Sunflower, which at $22 was way more than I should have spent) and planned to go see a movie today but I decided to sleep instead and I didn’t have to twist A’s arm. Hopefully we’ll still get to go tomorrow, even though I’m working again tomorrow night. I’m hoping I’ll be able to get some sleep tonight, though if not I do have the latest Harry Potter book! (I picked it up from the library this morning.) But I’m going to miss watching MadTV with A and falling asleep with her…this was supposed to be a fun weekend, dammit. I’m disappointed.