Things I've Learned Recently:

1. Red chili peppers have a weird sort of potency. I cut one (from our garden!) up for our dinner yesterday and was careful to wash my hands afterwards. About fifteen minutes later my nose started to burn like I'd been blowing it raw for the past week because of a cold. Then sections of my fingers started to overheat. I had to hold an icecube to the bottom of my nose just to make it through dinner. Three hours after that, my fingers were still on and off again feeling inflamed. Five hours after I cut it up, I licked something off my thumb and tasted HOT CHILI! During the whole evening I must have washed my hands ten - twenty times. The next morning, despite having taken the precaution of using my pinkies (they seemed to be the least affected) to take out and put in my contacts, my eyes still stung strangely and I had to wash them out with contact solution. Then, a full 18 hours after my initial contact with the pepper, my fingers still were heating up and stinging everytime I got them wet. Good grief. Those suckers can just be decorative for all I care - either that, or I'm wearing plastic gloves the next time I attempt to use them for cooking.

2. If you'd like to pinpoint any ounce of fat you may have on some part of your body, simply ride an old bus down a road filled with gutters and potholes - I suggest the number 17 that goes down Jefferson St. to downtown. It really is a weird sensation to be jiggling and bouncing around. I almost started giggling on the bus but was able to keep my cool.

3. If you'd like your whole body to feel as though it cannot breathe and do not have access to fresh red chili peppers, try jogging at about 11 am on a sunny, hot, and extremely humid day. Results may take twenty minutes to fully activate - but boy, by the end, you'll be wondering if you're going to make it home or if you'll simply be found hours later passed out somewhere along the road, still red in the face and drenched in sweat.

4. Lying is a lot easier than I thought. How quickly an emphatic "yes" comes out of my mouth when I'm asked if I have a boyfriend by the guy sitting next to me on the bus. Not that everyone riding the bus deserves such dismissal ... I guess this is the attitude that has earned me the title of "ice princess" from one bus rider.

5. Finally, this isn't a recent discovery, but it pertains to today. If you'd like to save a couple bucks, find a friend or roommate who has always had the desire to cut hair but never the opportunity to enact such a desire and a pair of sharp scissors .... And voila! a beautiful haircut for free! (Thanks, Emily!)