Went to ‘Foot Massage at the Village’ (U-village) on Saturday. I’d previously been to Imperial Foot Massage down in the ID, and had kinda  mixed experience there, but FMATV was better, and you REALLY cannot beat 25$ for an HOUR of massage (Imperial and FMATV are both that rate more or less).

These foot massage places are both run by mainland Chinese, and they’re quite a bit different from your typical massage experience. They’re way grungier, and they gloss over most of the relaxing new age bullshit in western establishments. Like, Imperial has a fucking HDTV that all the massage chairs are pointed at (chairs in a common area) running the NEWS. You hear other people, talking, cell phone conversations, etc etc. Relax to that! Though actually I don’t give a shit about any of that and have no problem relaxing in general, the HDTV was a bit much, as I could see it flashing in front of me even when my eyes are closed. I probably shoulda just watched it.

Also, instructions. The masseuse’s english is typically pretty limited, so the instructions just don’t come through right. I should have taken off my shirt and pants for the back-massage portion of my Imperial massage, but the lady doing it couldn’t quite communicate that to me, so it didn’t happen, and a massage through clothes is pretty weak sauce.

Overall the Imperial massage was quite satisfying though. Lots of pressure, lots of pain. HOWEVER, I had lingering pain even afterword, which was bad.

Foot Massage at the Village was much better though!!! Smaller, and although it has a lot of street noise (people accelerating up the hill to the U district), they blasted the old-timey Chinese music loud enough to cover it mostly. No ridiculous TV. The women working there were polite and straightforward. There are male massage folk also. And extra bonus, I felt great after the massage, and no pain the next day. I’ll definitely be back to soak my feet in tea and have some mash my pressure points for an hour.

FMATV is CASH ONLY.

Jules finally got her own kid bed! After a bit of pining for the good old days of sleeping in the old bed (on our part mostly), she’s pretty comfortable sleeping there. Of course, it makes it WAY harder for us to put her down to sleep. We lasted about 4 days, and then basically told her that she needs to fall asleep herself. Marian let her cry herself down for a nap once (took about 5 minutes!). Then last night I eased her into it a bit (read outside her room and wiped her tears off a couple of times). She protested pretty hard, but she fell asleep within 30 minutes! Saved me 45 minutes of time putting her down. Then, today, she actually ASKED Marian to ‘go downstairs’ instead of helping her sleep. WTF child, holy crap. I have a feeling this time is for real.

No Ferberizing, no nothing. Just co-sleeping until she was old enough to really *understand* that she needed to sleep alone and was confident enough to do it. Utterly painless (well, putting her down to sleep the last 2000 (yup, about 2000) times wasn’t painless, but it wasn’t all bad either, some of it was pretty great). Totally awesome.

Lame! Tonight my laptop battery light started flashing yellow and orange, the dreaded ‘dead battery’ light. For the last couple months the charge has been slowly getting worse. I took, a peek at when I bought this battery. Jan 29, 2009. Today’s date? Jan 30, 2010. Warranty duration? 1 year! One day over. Surely no big deal, right? I called up dell support and waited for like 20 minutes eating time on my cell phone. The support guy I talked to was nice enough, but their policy is to have NO grace period at all! He did try to offer it to me without tax or shipping, but that’s still $140! I paid 170 for this one that just broke… there’s just no way on earth I’m blowing 140 dollars a year on a battery. Plus, that policy is just absurd. There absolutely should be a grace period. Plus that was the ship date. I didn’t even receive it until a week into it’s ‘warranty’.

You guys have always known me as the guy who recommends Dell by default (esp for laptops). I no longer really recommend them. If they can’t be even a tiny bit flexible, what’s the point? Sadness.

OMFG @ the tech! And yes, the tech itself is basic as fuck, but omgomg. Linky here

Update: I removed the embed, it had audio. Stupid people… audio does NOT belong online.

Please please please let them do this. It would be, like, actually fixing somthing! The horrors!!!! Of course we know that it won’t be allowed to happen if it will actually fix things. But, ohpleaseohpleaseohplease maybe just this once?