Modelling our Big Agnes Copper Spur 3-man tent... Photo by R M R McIver

Go on, admit it: one of the best things about finding a new passion is all that acquisition. I don’t just mean acquiring knowledge and expertise (and there’s nothing like stretching an under-used brain to make you feel alive). I’m talking about suddenly ‘needing’ to buy loads of new stuff.

Just learned to cook? You’ll spend hours in kitchen stores lovingly fingering heat-proof tongs, and justifying Le Creuset because of all the noxious gases released by non-stick pans.

Just got a pet? Even if you adopt from a shelter, like we did, you could easily find yourself spending cumulatively vast sums on vet bills, toys and all that food. Our little monsters have already cost us well over a thousand bucks, maybe even two, and we haven’t even had them a year.

Our latest passion? Camping – we just got back from a two-week, 1,300 mile road trip around Yosemite, Tahoe and the rest of Northern California. But camping is supposed to be cheap, right?

Well, it can be. But once you start researching tents, you swiftly realise that spending less is a false economy because you’re going to be living in it, and in the long run, it’s better to go for quality. So I bought a $500 tent, the Big Agnes Copper Spur 3. It’s clearly worth the money: super-light, goes up and packs down inside 5 minutes, and if it’s warm enough to not put up the fly, the inside part is largely mesh so you can see the stars from your bed, but not so exposing that you don’t have a bit of privacy. (I actually got it from Eastern Mountain Sports, who have a 20% sale on right now, so get in there sharpish.)

But it doesn’t end there. There are tons of other essentials. You need decent puncture-proof air-mattresses, sleeping bags, headlamps, cooking equipment… the list goes on. And we didn’t even have half the stuff our fellow campers had – sail shades, picnic chairs, or a proper stove for whipping up nouvelle cuisine like one set of French neighbours.

Of course, we’re already planning to upgrade. We want a double (OK, queen) air mattress because single ones just get annoying after a while. I need a warmer sleeping bag, even for Northern California in July. And that super-lightweight, super-tricked-out, super-expensive tent? It apparently needs its own accessory, a special Copper Spur footprint to protect that super-scientific fabric (don’t you think ‘footprint’ makes it sound that bit more serious than ‘ground sheet’? Like you can’t just buy a tarp and be done with it).

This is how it all starts… and it’s why that spiral of buying ever more stuff will never, ever end.

Fun, though, right?

Chicago City Hall's green roof, which reduces the surface temperature by up to 80°F compared to normal buildings

Last month, I had one of those moments that makes you realise that how much you’ve changed without even noticing. I was talking to a London-based friend who was worried about how much worse the summer would make her baby’s sleep habits (or lack thereof). I suggested they get a window air con unit – the kind that cools pretty much every apartment in NYC that doesn’t already have central air. “We could never get one of them,” she said, almost shocked. Her reason? Not money, or the fact that you hardly see them in the UK, or worries that the wooden frame sash window wouldn’t hold the weight. No: because they’re bad for the environment.

And she’s right. Today, temperatures have officially topped 100°F (nearly 38°C), and the power companies are worried about blackouts as everyone cranks up the AC. I try not to have it on too much (unlike when my other half is home, who insists he is a heat-making machine and I just don’t understand what it’s like, etc). When I do have it on overnight, I set it to 77 or 78°F (25°C), which is cool enough for me to get to sleep under a sheet, and still a hell of a lot warmer than whatever bone-chilling temperature most offices and stores are set to here.

But there are some less energy-demanding things you can do to reduce your environmental impact (and your electricity bills). For one, you could buy some of these hardcore light blocking blinds, which the lovely people at Home Depot cut to size for nothing, as they’ll be doing for me tomorrow afternoon. Want to go further? Paint your roof white to reflect heat, as Obama’s Nobel-winning energy secretary has suggested. Even better: turning your roof green with a roof garden, or even just a hardy kind of moss, will not just keep your home cooler in summer but also insulate in winter. As with so many eco-innovations, the Germans are already at it in droves. Yet another thing they’ve beat us at.

A body to die for, before...

...and after some dodgy airbrushing

A few years ago when I was working on a fashion magazine, I got forwarded an email. It was two images of the same TV actress, before and after airbrushing. They’d changed everything: from the colour of her skin and bikini to the size and shape of her breasts. Most strikingly, they’d totally changed her body, from fairly slim but quite normal to model-thin and super toned. The person who’d emailed the picture was, it turned out, a staffer on a lads mag, who had sent it to a few friends. I forwarded it on to a few of mine, to show that they shouldn’t always believe what they see in magazines. By the end of the day, everyone in the industry had seen it, and, apparently, the person who originally sent it had been fired.

I tell this story because the pictures attached here won’t be that shocking to anyone who’s worked in the industry, except that it hasn’t actually been done that well. Her left arm looks like it was cut out with blunt scissors, the waist is a little wonky and her right leg appears to be slightly dislocated. To me, the photo on the left is far sexier – what little flesh there is on her bones looks real and touchable, unlike the plastic mannequin on the right.

Even so, plaudits to Debenhams (and you could do a lot worse than shop the swimwear genius Melissa Odabash’s range there) for their efforts in showing that even a perfectly gorgeous girl might still be airbrushed to absurdity in the adverts and fashion shoots you see. But it’s not only about airbrushing.

Who hasn’t felt inadequate in comparison to the models in the Victoria’s Secrets catalogue: how many women are there, really, who are simultaneously that skinny and well-endowed? Well, as it turns out, not that many – and it’s not entirely Photoshop’s doing. Rosie Huntington Whiteley has admitted using good old fashioned chicken fillets to make herself look bustier. That’s the kind of technological advance I can get behind.

Charge up your phone with your sweaty feet, via the Orange Power Wellies

Yet another in my mini-theme of multi-tasking fabulousness: wellies that charge your mobile. Not solar powered these – instead, they convert the sticky heat of your feet in rubber boots in the summer time into electricity. 12 hours of walking around converts to an hour of battery time, but the hotter your tootsies get, the more juice you’ll create. In more senses than one.

Obviously, there are a couple of flaws in this genius idea. Firstly, the online shop on the site that picture takes you to appears to have crashed under the stress of it all, so I can’t tell you how much they cost. It also seems that these wellies only charge Orange phones, and even though you can now get an iPhone on Orange in the UK, it doesn’t seem that iPhones are included.

I could be wrong. But of course, I’m taking it all far too seriously. This is really just a little PR stunt, because everyone knows that the whole country has probably sold out of every brand of wellies by now, and everyone who needs a pair for festival season has already bought one anyway. Glastonbury is this weekend, and as tradition demands, the forecast isn’t looking great. Now if they could only invent a clever solution for that climate issue…

Spotted this today on The Cut (which is an excellent blog, you really should subscribe if you don’t already):

Cheap Monday's convertible Jenna dress, worn loose...

... and fitted to the body. Just $65 bucks at Ssense.com, but selling out fast

And then I remembered that last Tuesday, my extremely stylish friend Bibi was dancing around her apartment in her (many times more) convertible dress, a long version of one of Butter By Nadia‘s famous concoctions. Not quite as Williamsburg, but hey, neither of us is 23 any more. It’s proper gorgeous, and a great way to make your hard-earned pennies go further:

Butter By Nadia's $254 Dara Wrap Gown, worn as a halter...

... and with shoulders, for those who like to wear a bra. Unlike this young lady.

But what does Target have to offer me? Plastic, plastic, and more plastic. And some cloth-lined baskets made of plastic. Call me a hippie, but plastic messes with my zen. In terms of environmental impact, it’s the worst thing you can make storage containers out of apart from the skins of endangered seal pups. Which would be waterproof and biodegradable, but Target was all out.

Even Ikea, which being Swedish, is obviously a lot lower down the corporate evil scale, comes up short. Loooads more plastic, plus infinite variations on flatpack cardboard boxes, which will be worse than useless when a bottle of self-tan leaks.

And then, just as I was about to give up and further destroy independent bookstores by cutting through the CD section to buy Eclipse, the third volume of the Twilight series (“You know why I have to say no,” he murmured. “You know that I want you too.” “Do you?” I whispered, my voice full of doubt.), I saw them.

Bathroom storage loveliness, photographed quite uninspiringly at the Target online store

Wicker. Or rather, rattan. Apparently intended to store CDs, at $17.99 a pop for a medium basket, they’re not quite as cheap as plastic but worth it when you realise that you won’t go to hell when they tally up how much landfill you personally filled. They’re not quite as spill-proof as plastic but much more so than cardboard. They also come in a darker version. And they’re also quite grown up, in a way that neither of their competitors are.

Genius, even if I say so myself.

And then there’s all the stuff you suddenly realise you need, not to mention all the excess junk it makes you realise you’ve been hoarding… but more on that in another post.

In answer to the question in the headline up there, yes, there is a cheaper way to move house. I got quotes from (count ‘em) six moving companies, none of them supposedly outrageously expensive, and none was less than $800. And really, with only two bedrooms and hardly any books or CDs that aren’t already in storage somewhere, we don’t have that much stuff. At least, I really didn’t think we had until I saw all 37 boxes piled up. Three companies quoted us nearly $1,400 – and then you’ve got to add hundreds in tips.

We thought our hands were tied – our new building requires that you fax them a COI (certificate of insurance) from a moving company before they let you move in. Turns out you can get one of those from U-Haul for about $20, but if that isn’t enough for your building manager, you can also take out a policy with movinginsurance.com for somewhere between $50 and $100, depending on how much coverage you want. (Word of advice: if you’re worried they won’t accept it, do things sooner rather than later. Or take the risk, but don’t come crying to me if it all goes pear-shaped.)

And here’s the really genius thing: even if you get a U-Haul truck, you don’t have to do all the work yourself. We hired a couple of fantastic guys through MovingHelp.com – when I dig out their names from under all this chaos, I’ll post their details here.

Another tech post today, because in two weeks, I’m taking what I once would have considered to me a drastic step: I’m cancelling cable TV.

Today, though, it’s an easy decision. Because for the price of one month’s charges (currently about $60, which includes premium channels like BBC America), we can watch pretty much anything we want for a whole year.

Here’s how:

Step one: Buy a cable (a literal cable, that is), which will connect up your laptop to your TV. Monoprice (recommended by a nice man in the Apple store) sells loads of these. If you don’t know which one you need, use their brilliant customer service live chat to get their very good advice. We’ve got an HD TV and I’m typing this on a MacBook, so I bought a mini displayport adaptor and an HDMI cable. The sound didn’t come through initially, but once the I’d enabled USB output in the System Preferences panel, it worked a treat.

Step two: Get a Netflix account. Oh wait, you’ve already got one. The particularly relevant bit here is that now you have your snazzy cables, you can watch the instant watch films and TV shows on your TV – in very decent quality, by non-AV geek standards anyway.

Step three: Fall in love with Hulu, the genius television streaming aggregator site that lets you watch pretty much anything that’s been on TV in the last week, and often much longer. Very sadly, last week Hulu reportedly gave up on their plans to launch in the UK, after talks fell through with a couple of the bigger networks. But hey, at least you have BBC iPlayer – I’m not any way near geeky enough to be able to use proxy servers to make it work from here, so don’t complain too much.

The pros? You’ll save a lot of money. And you’ll also see a lot less advertising – Hulu only puts one ad in each ad break, thereby lessening my boyfriend’s out-of-control ad rage. You also don’t have to watch things when they’re on – I have no idea when most of my favourite shows broadcast. Is it even worth mentioning that this is all legal, too?

The cons? Rolling news is near impossible to find, but you’ll find streaming broadcasts on the likes of Britain’s Channel 4, and quite frankly, I’ve still never come to terms with US TV news’s often patronising, partisan, overly excited style. The other problem I haven’t yet solved: how to save stuff for later, as you could with Sky+ or Tivo, or for that matter, how to set up some kind of series link style reminder, which would tell me when things are about to be deleted. Any ideas, people?

Monogrammed bliss for your iPad or just another excuse to spend money? (Photo courtesy GQ.com)

Further proof if it was needed that every new acquisition begets another… or at least has the potential to. This little logoed number will cost you £240 (roughly $370) when it launches next year. Until then, you’ll have to make do with having spent $499 on the iPad itself – and maybe something unfashionably cheap like this $18 cover (below), which cleverly disguises your iPad as a book.

A vintage book jacket for your 21st century book reader - fits iPads and Kindles. (Click pic to find out more.)

So far, I’ve resisted the Kindle, that Barnes and Noble reader thingy and the iPad. And I have to confess, I didn’t really believe they’d really take off for anyone except true gadget obsessives. I stand corrected – they’re supposedly selling out in the US (UPDATE: they sold a million in a month), and three times in the past 24 hours some surprisingly anti-tech people have told me they’re getting one. One even told me that her company is switching her team to them from netbooks.

Is resistance futile? Will we all have one of these within a couple of years? I’m going to stick my neck out and say no… but I wouldn’t exactly complain if someone bought me one in the meantime.

OMG, break out the tweets: Vogue India puts Asian girls on its cover...

The first time I went to Asia – to Kuala Lumpur, to be precise – I did what I do everywhere. I visited a local pharmacy, because you never know what excitings you’ll find.

In Kuala Lumpur, like much of Asia, the pharmacy shelves were full of skin-whitening creams, and according to this report on Vogue.co.uk, sales are growing at a shocking rate: 18 per cent last year, 25 per cent forecast for next year. This is not a thing of the past, it’s ongoing. Most shocking of all was that some of the biggest names in beauty, including L’Oreal, are cashing in.

It’s a chicken and egg debate, I’m sure, but it’s depressing that Vogue India makes headlines for putting (relatively) darker skinned Asian models on its cover.

This is not like Italian Vogue putting black girls on its cover – in Italy, the black (mainly African-origin) community counts for less than 2 per cent. Great (although token) as that gesture was, it’s not the same thing. India’s population is, you know, Asian.

Like I said, depressing. And I’d love this not to be a token effort. Because while all these companies are making a mint from potentially harmful skin-whitening creams, they also perpetuate a not very subtle kind of racism, which tells women that their skin is so undesirable, they should permanently alter its colour. Or do you think that this is inverse racism? That these creams are just the flipside to tanning and self-tan creams?