Remember the sham company Allerca? Well now they're called Lifestyle Pets. I guess word got around that their CEO, Simon Brodie, is a con man so they re-invented their name and image. The new "image" of Lifestyle Pets sounds and makes it look like the cats will accessorize your modern furniture nicely. How thoughtful of them. Now when my cat expels hairballs and sheds on my furniture it can match in an elegant and classy way!
Still pushing their supposed hypoallergenic cats (that, still, no one has seen) at an elevated price of $5k (and upwards of $130k), you can now supposedly buy exotic mini-leopard looking 25 lb. cats (called the ASHERA) that are also hypoallergenic. I'm sure they'll be coming out soon with another genetically modified cat that doesn't even poop!
They've also shed that "San Diego-based company" area code, which either means that Simon Brodie moved Delaware (the new area code location) or someone got a cell phone plan there and brought it back to SD.
I've e-mailed them again to see if Simon Brodie is still affiliated. Updates forthcoming when I receive a response.
Our health insurance provider (United Healthcare), like many others, offers the "convenience" of a physician search who applies to your policy. However my experience this afternoon has become relatively typical when trying to simply make *just an appointment* to see someone. Here's what happened with my calls to doctors' offices:
"This number has been disconnected."
Appointments weren't available till June. That doesn't help this painful second head that's growing out of my face NOW.
Busy signal. Why are doctors offices the only places left on earth that don't have a second line?
"This number has been disconnected."
"This number has been disconnected."
Wrong number
4:30 p.m. is after hours which is convenient since most of us work past that.
I was transferred 3 times until I finally reached the appointment setters. I didn't, however, have a medical record #. I had to call another place to just be assigned a medical record number and then call them back--and I didn't have their number since I was transferred 3 times.
"This number has been disconnected."
After hours.
I gave up after call #10. Hopefully I don't have skin cancer. If I do it was nice knowing you all. I would have liked to have hung around a little bit longer.
My friend, Erin, has defined a new eating disorder on one of her recent blog posts. It's certainly well thought out and an interesting read probably because I know quite a few folks with this. precise. condition. I like to be healthy too, but sometimes these people just suck all of the joy out of eating even if the meal at hand IS healthy because you spend all your time examining/talking about the benefits of the food instead of just enjoying the taste.
Part of the battle of eating healthy, for me, has been learning to appreciate the taste of fresh fruits and vegetables after having been raised on Skyline Chili. And turns out they really taste good! Your body even starts to crave the sugar in fruits instead of the sugar in chocolate. This has been a more effective way for me to err on the healthier side of food choices (though don't look at what I've been eating in my Twitter lately). So for all you Orthorexics out there, keep eating healthy, but JESUS. Rediscover the joy in food.
When I ran my first and only marathon in 2002, I remember being exhilarated at having finished--7 months of training paid off, and I was able to get through it all injury free. Finishing is undoubtedly a big accomplishment. But there's also a part of you that can't help paying attention to your time. During the course of training, you get to know your body so well, that it's relatively easy to predict how you're going to perform. Based on my unshakable and steady pace, I had an ETA of about 4hrs. 30mins., but didn't actually get in until 5hrs. 11mins. This is where people get hooked on marathons because there's still a part of me that wants to beat that...just getting to the time that I expected to finish. That said, I like to keep up with marathon stories, and of late there have been no shortage:
Stories like this and this remind me that a marathon is a grueling activity and remind me to just be glad I finished. I mean, if Lance Armstrong was like, Whoah. That was really hard, I feel a little validated.
An impending trip back to the Nasty this week gave reason to go wallet shopping today to replace the crap that was my Kate Spade wallet (perhaps her trademark gazillion dollar nylon products are better...NEVER buy or accept Kate Spade leather). And wallet shopping gave reason to sanitize all the contents of my wallet with a good alcohol swabbing. Credit cards. IDs. Maybe even my loose change. Which maybe even led to my cell phone. And keys. For the heck of it I took the Q-tips to the scissors as well.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't playing the scenario out in my head: I walk in the airport entrance, searching for my ticket counter when an investigative news report team stops me and asks to swab my aforementioned items for germs. You know these guys--the ones with the local news teasers in commercial breaks warning, "You THINK you are smart because you do/eat/buy ________, but you will not BELIEVE how we've uncovered how dumb and wrong you are. Tonight at 11." So they're swabbing, thinking they're going to uncover how I'm actually a non-glove-wearing proctologist for Satan, but then their special, speedy petri dishes reveal not one. single. microbe or bacterium. And they're all like, "Unbelievable! We've tested 9 billion people and you're the only one with these results!" And then I'm all like, "That's right. I'm CLEAN."
Woe is me. I remember reading about this company two years ago, and now more and more interviews keep popping up with them so I guess they're legit. This place is the answer to me getting a cat while co-habitating with an allergic lover and damn! do I want one! If you got far enough in the video or on the Web site to hear that they're roughly $4000, you'll understand why I'm undertaking "Campaign Kitty: Get Kell a Cat." Donations can be made through PayPal at right.
Sniffle.
Update: Allerca is a scam! See comments for further info. Update #2: Allerca is now Lifestyle Pets. Same sham. Different name.
I don't know if I believe in all that marriage stuff where they say, "When you find the right person you just KNOW." But I do believe it applies to lip balm.
Much like every other adolescent, I noticed a "change" in my body...my lips became chapped and it was time to get yet another product in stick form for yet another part of my body. And what do you know then? I thought chapstick was chapstick so I didn't pay much attention to my choices. What was a generic Kroger brand cherry stick one weekend and a Carmex jar, the next? Take care of your needs, right? Well, it wasn't until a random flirtation with a friend's medicated Blistex that I realized that maybe all lip balms weren't the same. In retrospect I realized that Kroger chapstick wasn't a stretch from using a taper candlestick. It was that waxy. Plus it seemed to have a weird curdling reaction in really cold weather. And the Carmex jar? Despite its being "For-Cold-Sores" I was lucky I came out of that experience without the herp considering how many people's fingers dipped into that jar. Ilikedthe way Blistex made my lips feel. They tingled for minutes after I parted ways with it.
Anyhow, time passed. And even though I settled on an old ChapStick SPF 4 for a while, I still experimented with others here and there in search of my Blistex. Burt's Beeswax came close to fulfilling that void. But oh! the fantasies I'd have about bringing the medicated Blistex to my lips instead of the flavor of the week...Why didn't I just go out and get the Blistex? You know how it is: balms come and go. One turns up in an old coat, another when you're cleaning out the car, and another in your laundry. Or your Avon-selling aunt won't stop gifting Avon chapsticks with mini calendars on them for every damn holiday there ever was. So now, you see, this surplus of lip care doesn't justify going out and getting a new one. These half-used ones need to be finished. They need closure. And I became afraid that I over-idealized my first experience with Blistex.
Several moves later I suppose I dumped all my old chapsticks, though I suspect that I may have stored them away in a squirrelly fashion, to be refound at a later date. All I know is I ended up co-habitating with the owner of a Blistex. And I was happy. Content. A peacefulness in my lip care washed over me. We brought Blistex to Germany and lost it from time to time, but with holidays came more Avon mini calendar sticks to create the surplus problem again. Right about the time when our American friend's recent Labello purchase caught my eye...ipod-ish with its sleek design and curves, and Italian-sounding name, I was curious. But I didn't dare buy it. Again, not a fan of wasting.
But with our impending move to San Diego, I broke down and got one. I cheated, I guess you could say, but the Blistex was always at Ryan's work and I couldn't handling the blandness of the Avon mini calendar stick. If nothing else it just reminded me how long I had gone without lip love. And I'm glad I broke down because aside from the stick design and name, the lip care formula, itself, turns out to be amazing. This is what lip care should feel like. Too many other formulas feel like they're simply smothering your lips with wax and you develop a dependency on them, but this feels like natural moisture and I like that I don't need the tingle thing to feel that. It helps my lips be what they naturally are without the dependency. And while the Avon mini calendar attempts to be a neutral flavor/aroma unisex lip balm product, theirs is just gross and smells like plastic in wax form going on your lips. Labello isn't scent-free, but is a vanilla or aloe-vera scent at best. Nothing dramatic, which I like as well.
Turns out, others agree. And while I'm happy to see it's available on Amazon, the slightly different label makes me wonder if it's a slightly different formula in the States much like Coca-Cola isn't quite the same in Europe as it is in the States. It's certainly cheaper in Europe...
no one has seen) at an elevated price of $5k (and upwards of $130k), you can now supposedly buy exotic mini-leopard looking 25 lb. cats (called the ASHERA) that are also hypoallergenic. I'm sure they'll be coming out soon with another genetically modified cat that doesn't even poop!
