Things Notre Dame Students Link. Pretty good!
Month: June 2010 (page 4 of 9)
Knitted Taxidermy. Isn’t that cool? I wonder if my Dad has a spare deer head I could cover with recycled sweaters. (Link courtesy of 1FunkyKnitWit’s Funky Inspiration Friday.)
Embroidered Dog Animation. That is super cool. And jeez, talk about labor-intensive!
Week 24
Apologies for missing last week’s update. It’s just kinda depressing, you know? My distance is only half what it should be, and my foot is still bothering me. That said, I am loving my weekly run with the Snook. It makes me happy that he’s getting some exercise, and I like that we get to spend that time together outdoors.
June 12: 5.31km
June 14: 6.79km
Total this week: 12.1km (7.5mi)
Total in 2010: 461.45km (288.4mi)
To meet my goal of running 1000km in 2010, I should be at 461.5km. Folks, that’s pretty much exactly where I am. My entire cushion is gone. Unless I can pick up my mileage, I’m going to start falling behind. *sigh* It may be time to start putting in some long walks if that’s the best I can do…
Shared today on Google Reader:
- Capy Trio Rocks Chessington Zoo
- “Girl stuff” in Free Software | Geek Feminism Blog – I can’t favorite this any harder. Like x 1000. This. Exactly this.
- From comments: being lady-tracked – The bit about the “girl stuff” dilemma at the end is exactly how I feel sometimes. I wish I were in a more hands-on technical role, even though I don’t actually enjoy it much.
- Hey Ladies, What Is It About The VW Beetle That You Love So Much? – Totally agree. My dream car since I was a kid was a red convertible classic VW Beetle.
- Bacon In Different Hues
- Buying Things You Wish You Had Time For – This is a bad habit I have too.
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Hip Stretches from Sara and Ryan Hall. These are exactly the type of hip and glute stretches I do for my stiff right hip. (Well, it’s the type I do when I remember to do them.) (Link courtesy of Running to Disney.)
Geek Girl Runner Episode 008
Here it is! My long-awaited EPIC next episode. Hey, only 2.5 weeks between shows! I think that’s some sort of record. This is also probably the longest show I’ve done so far. This episode features: what’s been keeping me busy lately (both running and otherwise); a training update; emails, comments, and shout-outs; and a weighty (HAR HAR) discussion on the topic of sports bras. Thank you especially to all of the women who gave me interviews at WWKIP Day and to those who contributed to the online discussion. I hope you like the episode!
Show links:
World Wide Knit in Public Day
Elkhart County Fair 5K Road Run
You Don’t Have to Run Alone – blog and podcast of Ted
Blackmore’s Half-Marathon – part of Sydney Running Festival
Kelly in Motion – blog of Kelly
Marathon Woman Returns! – blog of Elma
Wikipedia entry on Sports Bras
7 Rules of Sports Bras
Sports bras: the lowdown
Australian Institute of Sport: Berlei sports bra testing results
Biomechanics of Breast Health
Thanks as usual to Nick Arthur for the use of his song “Little Donut Party”!
Shared today on Google Reader:
- Help a BA! How do I build a business analyst career development plan?
- Not Just the World Cup: The Vuvuzela Ruins Lord of the Rings
- Lacking Nicolas Cage In Your Netflix? There's A Hack For That
- How to be a Guerilla Artist
- Amigurumi Hayabusa Spacecraft
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Someone stole Chippo’s new banana tree two days after it was planted. That person SUCKS.
Our new appliances
[A bit premature since we don’t actually have them yet, but Emily wants to know what we got. So here’s the story…]
We’ve been planning to get a new cooktop and oven for a while not, but we didn’t actually mean to buy them last weekend. We went to a birthday lunch in Chatswood on Sunday and thought we’d do some window shopping while we were there. We went into the Harvey Norman in Chatswood Chase and ended up spending a while talking to the guy about
cooktops and ovens. We walked out of there pretty convinced that the Blanco 3-zone induction cooktop was our favorite and the Ariston OpenSpace 99 was our Dream Oven. (You can divide it and cook two things at separate temperatures! The top bit can hit 200C in, like, four minutes! It’s the biggest volume inside you can get without going wider/taller!) We did some googling and Internet research Sunday night. The prices at HN were pretty high, so we weren’t really thinking of buying from them. (They quoted us $1999 RRP for the Blanco, but Appliances Online had it for $1699, for example.)Monday was a public holiday, so we thought we’d go over to Alexandria as Prestige Appliances are meant to have a showroom there. They have some very different brands listed on their site and we wanted to have a look. Turns out their showroom isn’t open yet though. So we decided to check the Harvey Norman there to see if they had the Ariston oven installed. (The Chatswood store didn’t actually have one on display yet.) Turns out they did. While we were playing with it, a salesman came over and we started talking. Half an hour later, he’d done us a deal. The Alexandria store had the Blanco listed at $1697, and he knocked a bit more off since we were getting the combo. He also knocked a fair bit off the oven, and threw in free delivery and an extra bit off for cash. We felt pretty good about it, so we went for it. Put down a deposit with the rest to be paid upon delivery in 5-7 business days.
Lessons learned:
- The location of a retail shop makes a huge difference to the prices they post. The Harvey Norman in Chatswood Chase is in a big upscale shopping mall, and all the prices they showed were a couple hundred dollars more than what we saw at Alexandria. The salesman in Alexandria told us that his store has to compete with Winnings and the Good Guys, so they have more of an incentive to show lower prices.
- Know what you should be paying and don’t be afraid to tell the salesman what alternatives you’re considering. (I showed him a Samsung oven on Prestige’s site that was $1000 less, but he was also to prove to us that it’s a discontinued model of lesser quality.)
- Be prepared to haggle. I even pulled out the “Can you do any better if we pay cash?” line.
- Don’t assume that online is always cheaper. I was really surprised that HN matched Appliances Online’s price (and that was before he gave us our package discount). I also feel better about having a bricks-and-mortar to ring up if we ever have any problems.
We were both really happy with the service at Harvey Norman Alexandria. Arthur the salesman was great, even advising us against an extended warranty rather than going for the hard sell. They also had a “home economist” in the showroom who offered to let us demo the cooktop. (We told her we’d already tried it out.) All in all, we’re really happy. I can’t wait to get them installed!