I love the cleaning ladies

I just sneaked out to get a look at the bathroom (which they are finished with) and discovered that they folded the end of our toilet paper roll into a little rosette! I am disproportionately delighted by such things.

They're here

It is noon on Saturday and I've been cooped up in my bedroom for an hour and a half. Jeff is out cold in the bed. He was awake from 4 am to 9 am, surfing the internet, playing computer games, and trying to get a solidly-asleep-me to talk to him. For the past three hours, however, he's been out cold with the help of one of those funny eye covers that they give you on airplanes and a pair ear plugs. Normally I would be poking him, jumping on the bed, and trying to get him to entertain me on this sunny afternoon, but for now we can't leave the bedroom, so I figure asleep is a good way for him to be.

We can't leave the bedroom because they're here -- the cleaning ladies are here. They're cleaning like I have never seen anyone clean before: attacking all surfaces, nooks, and crannies at an astounding pace. I'd never thought to scrub the moldings at the top of our walls before, though they are shockingly dirty. They cleaned out our fridge and freezer and asked me if I wanted them to organize and wash the insides of all of our cupboards. I can hear them scrubbing the grout in the bathroom now, and one of them said something about washing the windows in the living room. Who knew that money could buy this kind of heaven?

The path to retaining the services of cleaners was a long, emotional road. I'll admit there was initially a lot of guilt on my part. I felt like I should be able to clean up after myself (though there has been no time in my life when I have successfully been able to do that). Paying someone to clean up after me somehow felt like taking advantage -- transforming me into The Man. Then I realized I'm getting an MBA and I am The Man, so I should get over it.

I also realized that it's not taking advantage, it's a fair exchange -- money for a valued service. Their services aren't cheap. The cleaning ladies are compensated well for their time. Thankfully, my roommates and I have an ideal situation, since we can split the cost three ways. It's a good deal for us, women who tend to be so busy that we never do anything more than superficial cleaning.

I also feel like I've been pretty responsible in my choice of cleaners. I didn't go through a commercial cleaning service, such as those listed in the phone book, because I know that though you're paying a lot the workers only get minimum wage. The woman I hired has a legal work permit (she's Brazilian) and has been doing this for years. She's not underage and she's very professional. Her fees aren't the cheapest out there, and by doing the math I know that she can make a decent living doing this. I feel like the compensation is fair to her, which was important to me.

And another thing...

Who came up with the name "fantasy" football? It sounds so silly. The word "fantasy" connotes either porn, or something involving winged horses and magical gnomes. I can't believe that the larger football community has adopted something that sounds so decidedly not-tough.

Fantasy football is dumb

For those of you who might be blessed enough to not have encountered the fantasy football phenomenon, let me try to explain it. A bunch of football fanatics get together in a league. Each person gets to draft his or her own team and then all the teams compete for the duration of the real-life football season. As far as I can figure out, scoring systems vary depending on how your league has set things up, but most are based on the real-life performance of players in the real-life games that they play for their real-life teams. Most games are set up through websites that do all the scoring automatically once you've registered the players that are on each team.

It appears to me that the primary purpose of fantasy football is to provide subject matter for shit-talking between dudes. It's also customary to wager a fair amount of money on the success of your team, so maybe a secondary purpose could be to win a little money? The dudes I know, one dude in particular, has only lost money on fantasy football, so I'm not sure I can legitimately list that as a perk of the game.

I can't help but view fantasy football in the same way I see those fantasy-based, interactive video games where techie geeks spend entire weekends battling for magical armor. Why spend so much time on pretend armor, or pretend football, when there's an entire world going on out here that's real! You could be playing a real game of football with all of your friends in the park. Then you could go get real beers and talk to each other about real current events. There are real hikes to go on, real classes to take, real books to read...

You may even have a real girlfriend sitting next to you and your laptop, who would love for you to pay some real attention to her.

Update on the jeans project

After finally reading the actual assignment handout for the pricing project, I realized that my group would not only have to be able to access information about the wholesale price of whichever brand of designer jeans we might choose, but also information regarding the actual cost of their production for the company. Obviously, none of the designer denim labels are willing to discuss this sort of thing. They don't want it to get out that you're paying $185 for a pair of jeans it costs them $10 to make.

To complicate matters, the assignment handout includes this paragraph:

"In part, this project is a test of your resourcefulness and skill inobtaining information. To keep the problem manageable, you must, however,limit your data search to materials contained in the U.C. Berkeley library system or which are freely available via the Internet."

That sentence might imply that contacting a company directly and interviewing them is off limits, which makes the project a whole hell of a lot more difficult. If it's true, we would be better off focusing on a product made by a large public company -- one that has been the focus of many articles and reports (like the new hybrid SUV by Toyota?). We're currently trying to confirm the exact limits on our research techniques.

The funny part is, that the guys in our group are still totally dedicated to the designer jeans concept. I have never seen straight men so enthusiastic about jeans that cost over $100. Their enthusiasm blossomed right after Jenny (the other female group member) explained to them that the placement of the pockets on 7 jeans is supposed to have an ass-lifting effect, making women's butts appear tighter.

Confession

I ordered a subscription to Us Weekly for our apartment. We are now so up on the details of Jude Law's nanny sex and what toys Angelina bought Zahara that it is embarrassing. A new magazine comes every weekend and they're basically crack in print. I think that the year's worth of Us Weekly might be an even better use of seventy bucks than the paper shredder. I am 100% serious, people.

We just had a lengthy conversation in the kitchen, over cookies and milk, about what Britney and K-Fed's options are once they run out of money. Perhaps K-Fed's career as a rap star will take off? More likely Madonna will take them in.

That conversation was followed with conjecture about what it is that Nicole Richie does when she's not having her photo taken to be printed in Us Weekly. Does her existence serve any other purpose?

Last, but not least, it was argued that Brad and Angelina likely paid Jude Law to sleep with his frumpy nanny, simply in order to get the tabloids off their backs for a little while.

No one is engaging me in this sort of back and forth about the Wall Street Journal articles I've been reading.

You guys know your jeans

Thanks for all the brand suggestions. We decided we wanted to focus on 7 jeans (they've been around for more than five years now and their prices have had some time to fluctuate as the brand popularity grows), but the professor says we have to be able to find out the wholesale price that 7 sells the jeans to retailers for, as opposed to the price you or I might pay. After being flat out denied by the saleslady I called at the 7 showroom today ("I'm sorry, I can't divulge that information even if you are a student."), we're brainstorming ways we might be able to access this info.

Ideas? Anyone know people in retail who would be willing to help some starving MBA students?

Name your brand

Tonight's theme at RBlog is reader participation.

One of my group projects for micro econ is going to be about designer jeans. The project focuses specificially on pricing.

Anyhoo, I need to come up with a good list of brand-name designer jeans. I'm not really interested in general clothing designers that might also offer jeans, but more on companies that have built their business around jeans. Think over $100 per pair. I'll get you started:

7 jeans
Citizens of Humanity
Joe's Jeans
Paige Premium Denim...

What others are there?

Beat around the hedge?

Posting my random questions has been working so well for me that I think I'm going to stick with it for awhile.

Tonight in class, I learned what hedging is (like when airlines buy hedges on jet fuel costs).

Here's my question: Does this use of the word "hedge" have anything to do with the "hedge funds" that are the topic of so many a Wall Street Journal article? What is a hedge fund?

Please note, I have entered "hedge fund" in Google and tried to come up with an explanation on my own. I didn't have much luck. I need an explanation in very basic terms.

Poll time

Okay, RBlog readers -- I need your opinions. What color of shoes is best to wear with a navy blue suit? If it impacts your answer at all, the suit in question has pin-stripes.

If your answer to this question is not black or brown, then the second part of the question is this: Is it ever acceptable to wear black or brown shoes with a navy suit?

Shread head

It occurred to me that some of you might be wondering why I'm so excited about the new shredder, or perhaps you're wondering how it is that a single girl in her twenties has had personal relationships with more than one paper shredder?

I get tons of junk mail. TONS. The majority of it is pre-approved credit card applications (most of which are already filled out with my identification information and only require a signature), but there are also all sorts of magazine subscription forms, catalogs, letters from charities wanting donations, and other such crap.

Most of it I just recycle, but anything with personal info on it -- including all of the pre-approved forms, I shred. Sometimes the forms are for pre-approved loans, not credit cards. They just come in the form of blank checks. I hate those most of all. How tough would it be for someone to pull one of those out of the recycling bin, write it to him or herself, and cash it? Not hard.

For awhile I tried calling the companies to get them to stop sending the blank checks. With as much talk as there is about identity theft lately, it seems like an obvious liability. But calling didn't work; they keep coming.

In the last two weeks I was able to fill up an entire grocery sack with junk mail to be shredded.

e again!

If you've read, heard, or watched any news in the last 16 hours, you probably know that Google has decided to sell off 14.2 million shares of stock, which will be worth about $4 billion.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the exact number of shares they plan to sell is 14,159,265. The digits in that number are the same digits that follow the decimal point in the value of pi. It seems the corporate culture down at Google must be a little quirky, and have a heavy math geek influence. During the company's IPO, they stated in the official paperwork that they wanted to raise $2,718,281,828. Those digits are the digits in the value for the magical number e (e is equal to around 2.718281828), from calculus.

It was exciting to find another instance of my old friend e, albeit not a naturally occuring one.

Another question

Does anyone know how Google makes money? What services or products do they provide that they charge for?

The best $65 I've spent all month

Today, while I was dealing with stack of junk mail, I permanently jammed my paper shredder. I broke it -- it was an extremely sad event. The shredder and I had been together for several years now. It wasn't powerful or fancy, but we had history. My little shredder was originally a Valentine's gift from Jeff and had a lot of sentimental value.

I consoled myself by immediately running down to the neighborhood Radio Shack and buying the most deluxe shredder I could get my hands on. It worked! I haven't gotten such a charge out of shredding since the first days I had my little blue Valentine's shredder.



My new Royal Crosscut Paper Shredder can shred up to ten sheets of paper simultaneously, and it shreds credit cards! Ooooh. No job is too tough for the power of the Crosscut. It reduces eveything I feed it into confetti-like bits, instead of the standard strips. It also has wheels and makes a loud motor noise (an intimidating purr, if you will) while it's working.

Shredding is magical again.

Can anyone explain this?

Last night in class, my OB* professor said, "The problem with oil companies is that they're often making too much money." He then went on to describe the different measures they have to take to "hide" money with somewhat creative accounting.

I don't understand how a company could make too much money. Can anyone out there provide an explanation?

*If you're wondering what OB is, it's an abbreviation for Organizational Behavior. We're currently studying motivation and things along the lines of how you get people to do what you want them to.