Ah…the smell of new pencils, my Dawson’s Creek trapper keeper and my trusty Paula Abdul lunch box – going back to school in September didn’t get much better than that! Until now of course…

These days, Paula is tired (Straight up now, lemme tell you!) and Dawson has been replaced by the newest and fastest laptops you can find. If you are like me, once you get over the MAC/PC thing, the choices on the PC side become truly dizzying.

Truth is, it comes down to what’s inside (at least that is what Oprah says). But as a computer shopper, I want to pick what’s inside! If I can’t do it with men, then I sure as hell want to have control over my electronics. And while I may not know much about all that stuff inside the computer, I know want small and fast (er…uh…don’t quote me on that) !

Companies like Dell have made their fortune off of allowing customers to choose exactly what they want in their computers. Amazingly, it took a while for it to catch on, but now ALL the best computers out there are fully configurable through online stores. Case in point, and one of our faves, HP. The HP Pavilion dv6z series, which you can build to your own unique specifications, is the bomb.com. AND, even better, it’s on sale for the next 48 hours. Yes, you can get your own sick laptop starting at $579.99.

The option to make something all your own (especially if you can make it all your own on the cheap) doesn’t come along often, so don’t miss this opportunity. Just think of all that money you’ll have left over come the fall….

It is pretty much mid-August already, and for you lucky bastards heading back to school in the fall, it is time for the back-to-school insanity: Back-to-school sales. Back-to-school packing. Back-to-school planning. Back-to-school countdowns.

For me, however – a newly anointed adult – mid August means nothing more than insanely hot days where I don’t want to leave the house because I am so depressed that I am not going back to school in two weeks. No welcome week to look forward to. No reuniting with friends after 3 months apart. No dollar pitchers on a Wednesday night.

Nope, just another fucking day to get up at 5:30, go to the gym and head into my office where I have no windows and no contact to the outside world only to return home to my (fabulous) apartment and do even more work before going to bed and starting it all again. Hell, if it weren’t for the JC Penny back-to-school ads that show up in movie theaters, I wouldn’t even know it was mid-August to begin with!

Without a school year to look forward to, days blend into weeks, which blend into months and before I knew it, the summer is gone and I still look like (a well-dressed) Casper the Ghost. Read More »