Jared and I close on the house Thursday. The seller installs the new water heater and range tomorrow. We have to buy a fridge. I think we're going with this one: Hotpoint HSS22GFT. It scored 2nd best on Consumer Reports and was half the price of the #1. We chose our range from Consumer Reports too, Hotpoint RGB745WEH. They're both black. We're thinking Daffodil for the living room and Celestial for the dining/kitchen/hallway. Jared wants a bright white for the bedroom but I'm leaning toward a white mint. We'll see.
We found a nice tile that picks up some of the light, light brown colors in the limestone of the fireplace.
We'd like to remove the popcorn from the ceiling, but I hear that it's a real bitch so we may delay it a bit.
We certainly need to think about painting the cabinets as they're pretty lame, but again, not as high a priority!
We're also putting in a tub with fancy-pants jets! It's gonna be standard size since we don't want to do a full remodel, but it'll be deeper and rad.
More updates to come...
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Monday, July 7, 2008
My Birthday
I'll be 30 in less than a month which means I'll be undeniable adult and no one can fuck with me! Happy birthday me!
Additionally, it seems this is an opportune time for re-invention of self. Here are some options:
Hippie Kristy: buy more patchwork clothing and use Jared's crystal deodorant.
Academic Kristy: give up on working and just self-stem on campus.
Stimulant Kristy: athletic and lithe, stimulant Kristy can disco till dawn.
90's Kristy: Prozac and a black mani.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
House shopping
We've been looking at houses recently so I thought I'd share some cute pix of Jared on the hunt.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Serotonin Levels Determine Sense of Fairnes
People who have low serotonin are more apt to think that they were being given unfair treatment in an economic game.
By Ed Edelson
HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, June 5 (HealthDay News) -- Levels of a brain chemical known as serotonin govern the way people react to unfair offers when they play the game of life, a new study indicates.
Serotonin, which carries messages between neurons, is involved in emotional control. One recent study found that the expression of anger in women was affected by variations in a gene governing the receptors for serotonin in brain cells.
The new study, reported in the June 5 issue of Science, had people play what is called the Ultimate Game, which is being used widely in psychological and neurological studies. The game has one player proposing a way to split a pot of money. If the offer is accepted by the other player, both get paid. If it is refused, neither gets a payment.
The researchers had some players make deliberately unfair offers: "I get 80 percent, you get 20 percent." They found that players given a chemical that lowered serotonin levels were more likely to reject an unfair offer.
Serotonin levels have that effect, because the chemical is involved in the activity of the prefrontal region of the brain, explained study author Molly J. Crockett, a doctoral student at the University of Cambridge in England.
"One recent study on the Ultimate Game showed that when an unfair offer is accepted, you see activity in the prefrontal cortex," Crockett said. "Down-rating the emotional response makes it more unlikely that an unfair offer will be accepted."
In other words, lower serotonin levels also meant a higher level of resentment, so that an offer that wasn't as good as it might be would be turned down. Conversely, higher serotonin levels would make it easier to live in an imperfect world.
It's hard to apply that knowledge directly, Crockett said.
"What we did was have people fast overnight," she said. "On some days of the study, they took either a pill with all amino acids or a placebo. On the experiment day, they took a pill with all the amino acids but tryptophan. Over the course of several hours, that would have been converted to serotonin."
Knowledge about the role of serotonin in the emotions already is being put to use, sometimes legally and sometimes not, said research team member Matthew D. Lieberman, an associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Prescription medications such as antidepressants are known to affect serotonin levels, and the same is true of MDMA, the psychedelic drug whose street name is Ecstasy, Lieberman said. It is, he said, "a quick serotonin enhancer."
One everyday implication of the study is that brain chemistry "is going to affect how we judge other people and are treated by other people," Lieberman said.
A proposed experiment would have people play the Ultimate Game inside a magnetic resonance imaging machine that would produce images of brain activity, Lieberman said. "We could see, as we change serotonin levels, how the brain responds in an imaging study to fair and unfair offers," he said.
By Ed Edelson
HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, June 5 (HealthDay News) -- Levels of a brain chemical known as serotonin govern the way people react to unfair offers when they play the game of life, a new study indicates.
Serotonin, which carries messages between neurons, is involved in emotional control. One recent study found that the expression of anger in women was affected by variations in a gene governing the receptors for serotonin in brain cells.
The new study, reported in the June 5 issue of Science, had people play what is called the Ultimate Game, which is being used widely in psychological and neurological studies. The game has one player proposing a way to split a pot of money. If the offer is accepted by the other player, both get paid. If it is refused, neither gets a payment.
The researchers had some players make deliberately unfair offers: "I get 80 percent, you get 20 percent." They found that players given a chemical that lowered serotonin levels were more likely to reject an unfair offer.
Serotonin levels have that effect, because the chemical is involved in the activity of the prefrontal region of the brain, explained study author Molly J. Crockett, a doctoral student at the University of Cambridge in England.
"One recent study on the Ultimate Game showed that when an unfair offer is accepted, you see activity in the prefrontal cortex," Crockett said. "Down-rating the emotional response makes it more unlikely that an unfair offer will be accepted."
In other words, lower serotonin levels also meant a higher level of resentment, so that an offer that wasn't as good as it might be would be turned down. Conversely, higher serotonin levels would make it easier to live in an imperfect world.
It's hard to apply that knowledge directly, Crockett said.
"What we did was have people fast overnight," she said. "On some days of the study, they took either a pill with all amino acids or a placebo. On the experiment day, they took a pill with all the amino acids but tryptophan. Over the course of several hours, that would have been converted to serotonin."
Knowledge about the role of serotonin in the emotions already is being put to use, sometimes legally and sometimes not, said research team member Matthew D. Lieberman, an associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Prescription medications such as antidepressants are known to affect serotonin levels, and the same is true of MDMA, the psychedelic drug whose street name is Ecstasy, Lieberman said. It is, he said, "a quick serotonin enhancer."
One everyday implication of the study is that brain chemistry "is going to affect how we judge other people and are treated by other people," Lieberman said.
A proposed experiment would have people play the Ultimate Game inside a magnetic resonance imaging machine that would produce images of brain activity, Lieberman said. "We could see, as we change serotonin levels, how the brain responds in an imaging study to fair and unfair offers," he said.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)