The earth is slowly falling apart, or so we thought before the whole scandal of “Climate Gate.” However, I still feel it is up to me to do something… to do anything! I don’t drink a lot of soda, so recycling was not for me, and I once heard that manufacturing a hybrid uses more energy and emits more crap into the Earth. So, what is a girl to do who wants to shrink the size of her carbon footprint?
It has been said that I make a lot of decisions without thinking them through. My massive “Smile Now, Cry Later” tattoo on my back acknowledges this fact. This is me. So, when I set out to decrease my carbon emissions, the fact that it was winter did not weigh in on my decision to purchase a 2009 Honda Metropolitan scooter.
Despite a revolving case of windburn, my bronchitis and presently scared memories of driving through ice daggers of rain, I think I made a great decision. Not only am I participating in the whole “green” thing, the economy is looking great at 100 mpg!
I work part time as a black jack dealer for a company who does parties, usually around Christmas and usually for corporations who hold employee appreciation events at the end of the year.
So for this soiree, I went all the way to Fort Worth. It was an incredibly long drive, which made me think who would want to live out here? What is there to do in Hurst and all the other towns in between? But once I got to Sundance Square, which is all lit up for Christmas, I remembered the charm Fort Worth has to offer.
It has a feel of New York about it, which is totally strange, seeing as the architecture is nothing like what one would see in Manhattan. But everything felt accessible. There was no need for a car, parking is free after 5p.m. and aside from shopping, there were clubs and bars everywhere and all sorts of music to be heard. The buildings are all antique in design but new and modern in the vibe, I had the best fish I’ve ever had at Reata Steakhouse.
And even though there were as many homeless on the streets as one sees in Dallas, I didn’t feel nearly as in danger as I do when the sun goes down in Downtown D.
Now that leads me to the big D.
Deep Ellum is on life support, there is a huge fear factor there. I constantly check the shadows with my mace clutched in my hand to see if someone is going to jump me. Parking is crap, and walking from the West End to Deep Ellum is too far and there is nothing but Ghetto in between, so one still needs a car to get from point A to point B.
Then we have Uptown, which is the McKinney Ave area. Which is quite upscale and there is a lot to do there, but again even with the M street trolley it is not a feasible or enjoyable walk.
If it weren’t for the long drive, and the even longer public transit ride and sporadic train schedule, I would spend a lot more weekends in Fort Worth. With the Stockyards and Sundance Square, I haven’t found anything in Dallas to compete.
Do you remember the first time you got a flat tire?
For me it wasn’t too long ago… It was a day when I didn’t want to go anywhere. I really didn’t want to go to school, but I hate cutting class for any reason other than illness or emergency. (Isn’t that just sickening?) So I go off, I made it to school without a hitch, but once I got to school there was some sort of calamity happening, got that dealt with and now it’s time to head home. I decided to stop and get some movies and that’s when it happened. I’m in my lane, calm and at ease when a purified water delivery truck took the curve in the lane a little too wide and came into my lane; I scooted over to avoid him, scooted over to far and swiped the curb with my tire.
There is no other sound than a tire busting and the way it feels when the tire goes flat. I knew immediately what it meant, but I prayed that it was something simple and that the tire wasn’t gone. I pulled over into a neighborhood, got out and saw a huge gash in the side of the tire.
I knew I was done for, never having changed a tire in my life, and all alone.
None-the-less I decided I could do this. I was a capable person and if common sense couldn’t get me through this then there is something seriously defunct in me, or common sense.
So I pulled out all the paraphernalia required and get to work. I take a look at the jack, which is a crank, not a pump one. And it is in two parts… Minor panic, I call my mum. After she calms me down she tells me, did you put on the parking break? “Wait, I was supposed to do that?” Moments of silence and now a panicky driver and mum.
I finally decided to knock on a door and ask for some help. A very nice man named Manuel came to my rescue. Between the two of us we got the spare on, and off I went, back home for a much needed strong drink. But while I watched him try to jack the car up with that crank, I thought to myself, I don’t have the strength to be able to do it if this ever happens again.
Guess that means some time spent in the gym… I don’t want to have to rely on another stranger or the expense of a tow truck.
I just returned from a weekend trip to New York City. I’ll admit before leaving I had my trepidations. I was traveling with a friend of mine and I had visions of us two girls getting mugged. Then about a week before our trip I heard about bomb threats, not only in NY in which the subways were targeted. But also here in Dallas.
Not to mention one of the highlight on our to-do lists was to go to the Statue of Liberty. It just recently opened back up for tourists and I had visions of getting there and getting blown up. (Watching X-Men didn’t really help either, I know how stupid it sounds, but when you have nightmares about mutants destroying the Statue while trying to destroy each other, one wakes up in a rather irrational frame of mind.)
So with these cheerful thoughts, and the worries of friends on top of my own. My friend and I hopped on the plane and plunged into the heart of the city.
The first thing we did was the Statue, and we survived! We saw Times Square, stood in line to buy Broadway tickets (2 hours!) and walked… Boy did we walk. I want to say the average daily hike for the three days we were in Manhattan was 100 blocks… … Anyone care to convert that into miles? Where is a pedometer when you need one?
This was Friday night, with our tickets in hand and three hours to kill before the show starts we intrepid travelers head to Koreatown to eat. We were meeting up with a friend of mine, so we were in a time crunch.
And then it happened, the absolute last thing I thought would happen. A very sweet young woman approaches us and asks if she could ask us a question. (Didn’t she just do that?) We say “NO! We’re in a rush” She exclaims, “Its not a survey I promise!” “Are you ladies from NY?” We respond in the negative and we paused, which is all she needed. She then proceeds to sell us a beauty package that is being offered by a local salon. And what a deal! This package has everything, shampoo massage, deep condition, precision cut, style and blow out, color gloss, six foil highlight or lowlight, shoulder and neck massage, AND a manicure! All valued at $300.
Now this sounds to good to be true, but I actually have some insider’s knowledge about beauty salon’s methods of drawing in business. A friend of mine owns her own salon and offers packages like this all the time. Of course I know how good she is, and she is worth every penny. So I trust that this is going to be no different.
The package price is $60, which is really cheap, but to two college students watching every dime, it is a lot of money (and time) to spend on “spa stuff”. So of course we hesitate and then this girl, whose name is Louise, starts to put on the charm. Her speech was worthy of an Oscar. She flattered and cajoled all in the space of 10 minutes, finally ending in me turning to my friend and saying, “why not?” “We’re in NY let’s do something radical, something we wouldn’t do in Dallas.” Still unsure because of the price, Louise throws in the fix. “I’m going to do something special for you girls. For every 5 packages I sell, I can give away one for free, so I’ll take $10 off the price and my commission and give you both a package for $50 total, that $25 a piece.” Well that seemed like too good a deal to pass up. Plus I felt good for bargaining her down like that.
So with a wink at my friend I hand the money over, book the appointment for the next day and we walk off to dinner. We start chattering excitedly about what we are going to get done, what everyone at home is going to say, and how fabulous we are going to look after it all.
When we told the people we were staying with (more friends of mine, and older and wiser) they immediately said, you got scammed. I of course rush to the defend our actions, but the seed of doubt was planted. The only thing I thought about was, what if this place is a real dive, and what if the hairdressers are incompetent?
None the less, we head for our appointment. The salon is uptown, East 83rd St between 2nd and 3rd Ave. Which is a really nice area. Beautiful brownstone buildings, trees, quiet streets, all very comforting. So I start to feel better. We walk in, sit down. When the lady comes to talk to us, she asks for the $20 fee. … … .. I beg your pardon? What fee. Turns out the not-so-fine print on our little brochure included a one time fee of $20. Which we of course were not told about, and I honestly thought was part of the price we paid. I freaked out, I was not going to spend another 20 bucks and neither was my friend, so as we have a little confab, a girl who had paid the $20 and got the whole thing done, was sitting next to us getting her massage, she looks at us with the most horrified look on her face and mouths “DO NOT LET THEM TOUCH YOU!” She then tells us how she asked for a trim and some bangs and they hacked off 4 inches of hair and cropped her bangs in 2 minutes! (So much for ‘precision’ haircut) Well that does it!
I demanded our money back, I have to shout over the Persian music wailing in the background, the salon owner then starts throwing a hissy fit and getting mad at us and my temper more or less exploded. I’ll cut the story short here because it just gets to tedious. We never got our money back, even after waiting 2 hours to meet with “Louise” so she can give us the money back.
The morale of the story is pretty clear, and its a $25 lesson that I am sharing with you for free. No matter where you are, be it NYC or Dallas. If its too good to be true, walk away. My friend and I will both think twice before trusting anyone selling something on the street.
Anything of interest to community college students; please blog with care and common sense. Pretend your teachers are reading this - they probably are!
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