Boo!

Halloween plans? I want to go to Faneuil Hall to giggle at the pet costume contest, but we might not have time because we need to put the finishing touches on our costumes. In the evening we'll spike some cider (fresh from the farm) at our place, then venture out into the world of ghosts and goblins for some Boston frights. And by frights I mean mild be-costumed fun bouncing around the city, because I really don't like to be scared.

A few weeks ago I accidentally clicked on one of those stupid YouTube videos where it's supposed to be a normal video (in this case it was a baby supposed to be doing something funny) but instead the baby's face turns into a MONSTER and it SCREAMS at you. Boyfriends find this sort of thing funny. Girlfriends do not. That's my empirical study and I'm sticking to it.

Oh - our costumes. Originally we were gonna go as Fox Newscasters. But wearing a suit on a weekend would just be blah . So I'm gonna be a Dust Bunny (inspired by my lack of domesticity) and my lovely date has agreed to wear a bald cap and will go as Mr. Clean. Teehee!

Wreally Wrentham

Outlet shopping is hard work, man. This is why I shop a little bit all the time. Because otherwise you end up with (or maybe your boyfriend ends up with) a big long list of boring things to buy (aka things that aren't for you). Also, I do my part for the local economy, instead of schlepping all the way out to Wrentham. In the rain. Up hill both ways. By camel.

Just kidding, we took the Sonata.

I abandoned my post as Helpful Assistant Girlfriend Who Tells You Each & Every Item You Pick Up In Each & Every Store Looks Just Fantastic On You after the very first shop. Then I went a wee bit crazy at Theory but that's okay because I now have four beautiful glamorous pieces that I will never throw out or consign. Now I need somewhere to wear them because now I'm chickening out and think if I wore them to work it would look like I was trying to seduce the Starbucks guys into giving me freebie Pumpkin Spice lattes. Or someone might confuse me for one of the Phoenix staff ladies who look like they're going out for martinis, not crunching numbers in Excel.


And for fun, a new list! This was inspired by the specials board outside the aforementioned Starbucks...

Today's Neuroses:
* Non-stick pans. Is the coating super deadly? Probably. Am I too cheap to buy all new stainless steel cooking gear? Definitely.
* Will anyone be able to identify my Halloween costume? (Dust bunny)

Fall Harvest

We've been cooking lots at home lately - I made fish chowder, Mr. Man made potato and dill soup with chicken sausage, and we've both rustled up some stir-fries/pastas/curries together. Oh, and the calzones. The CALZONES I tell you! Delicious, all of it! Best of all: leftovers for lunch at work = a happy wallet. We're working on balancing who makes dinner since I almost always get home first, so it makes sense for me to start dinner. Mr. Thoughtful had a stroke of genius and chopped up all the produce in the fridge on Sunday night, making dinners infinitely easier this week.

I know there are a lot of convenience options out there, but they're rarely nutritious, involve lots of excess packaging, and taste so bland. Also, they aren't that cost effective. I see lines out the door at Trader Joe's every day and wonder what the heck people are feeding themselves - Lord knows you can't get good produce there, so it must be pre-made stuff. Frozen, canned or boxed. Whyyy?

Guess I can't judge, I'd eat at Indian restaurants every single day if I could, and cheap Thai take-out is my Achille's heel. Not exactly health food, and all that styrofoam is bad news. As I think about the Sig O's upcoming business trips, I alternately pout and fantasize about how I'm going to feed myself. There certainly will be takeout. Perhaps, no, definitely ice cream for dinner during a Mamma Mia sing-along.

So I take objection to this interpretation of the food pyramid. Why attribute fridge-raiding antics and culinary laziness to the men folk alone? Why is it a woman who is assumed to reign in the kitchen?

Cranky. I need lunch.

Drum roll please

Hm. More like a drum stick. We made Buffalo chicken calzones TWICE this week - with "imported" Anchor Bar wing sauce....mmm! Oh right, I was gonna talk about my phone.

Ready for my review of my first Smart phone - the Blackberry Storm?

Well, I'm not.

You see, it kept freezing on me. I was using all the wonderful applications - from the browser (so fast!) to Twitterberry (Yo I'm eating a sandwich right now and Glee is on tonight woot!), and then wondering why I couldn't take a blasted picture when I called up the camera. It completely froze on me at least three times in one week, and I was all ready to march into the Verizon store and demand they replace my phone.

Before taking drastic action I decided to do a little googling - you know, to be a good, well-informed consumer as well as to obey my cautionary instinct as a young woman to avoid the "talk-down" experience at a tech store. Anyhow, the interwebs say the Storm is easily hampered by low memory - not rocket science. But what would cause that on a brand new phone? Too many apps open. So guess what? Nearly every app I've played with since I got the darned machine was...still open. It's deceptively simple to shift back and forth between your browser and maps and camera and back again to your messages just by tapping the red "end call" key to pick and choose from the home page. But that keeps the app running in the background: good for easy multi-tasking - bad for memory.

I closed all but the essentials and already the response is better. I'm re-training myself on how I'm using the phone, taking one extra step to enter a menu to close non-essential apps, and hopefully things will improve further. I feel a little foolish and kind of miss the simplicity of my old phone (RIP, Flippy) but come on - a red button intuitively signals "Abort!"

The fact that I got a bit panicky when the phone was freezing is a good indication of my increasing affection for it - and my dependency on it. So now that I've (hopefully) resolved this hiccup, I can focus on the good stuff:

Speed - When it's fast, it's fast. My gmail even shows up on my Storm faster than on my computer (not that I'm, um, checking both at once). And pictures load up so quickly too! Why, yes, I can INDEED has cheezburger! Which brings me to...

Photos - The Storm takes pictures that - in my humble opinion - are totally rad! I have this neurosis (ha, like there's only one) where I stress about what I would do if I ran into a famous person on the street. Would I ask for their autograph? I don't schlep my library/DVDs around, so they wouldn't have anything appropriate for them to sign! I mean, unless I ran into Kenneth Cole, then he could sign my purse. And could I take a photo with them? With my old phone, everyone looks like the grainy people on Cops who don't sign the release forms. With the Storm - CRYSTAL CLEAR EVIDENCE OF FANDOM!

Appearance - I like the Blackberry interface and enjoy the touch screen. The device as a whole has a nice heft to it, it feels good in my hand and I can find it easily in my purse (thanks to my mom for pointing out the bright pink case would suit just that purpose). I would say that the device seems a bit too sensitive in recognizing orientation, in that a slight tilt will send the whole screen horizontal instead of vertical, and then I kind of have to prod it back to the way I want it.

That's all I can think of right now... when I get a bit more comfortable using music on it I'll write about that too.

This weekend we're off to PumpkinFest in Keene - can't believe it's that time of year again! If I had time I'd whip up one of these costumes, but somehow I just keep getting busier...

Crackberry

It'll be a while before I can give a full review of my new Blackberry Storm, but so far so good!

I've got an awesome bright pink silicone case for it that seems to be doing a good job of protecting my new precious, but I have been looking around for something to change it up a little. You know, maybe to go from Day to Evening.

Perhaps I could go classy:

Or get it personalized

(via Etsy seller dunkerlink)

Or I could show my love of cats:

(via Etsy seller AmericaDistributions)

(via Etsy seller stitchntyme, and the current frontrunner)

How will I ever decide?!

Someday

Someday, when I'm hopping into my Mini Cooper with my pug - Mr. Banana Frankencake - to go pick up the Persian octuplets at the pet spa from their monthly dye, I won't have to worry about hemming pants. Because I will wear only dresses that match Mr. Banana Frankencake's sweaters.

Until that day arrives, I am hemming my pants with bobby pins.

Love that dirty water

Funny how it takes an out of town visitor for a resident (of over 5 years!) to see the sights in her own city.

My parents came to Boston on Friday (I'd been counting the days for a month!) and boy oh boy did we do it up. Let me explain that my dad is a sports buff - something that has only dawned on me in recent years. I mean, I knew he LOVED sports - he's a season ticket holder for the Bills and the Sabres and that takes some perseverance as a fan - but doesn't everybody's dad love sports? I'd assumed it was just a requisite thing for fathers. However, this guy can rattle off stats or tell you about a season over 20 years ago like a Twi-hard spouting trivia about sparkle vampires. But it isn't fanaticism. It's just like some kind of hidden talent. Names, numbers, ages, home state/country, draft picks, playoff lineups, last season's all stars, NEXT seasons all stars... It's a little daunting. Maybe I never picked it up because of all them sceery numbers . But he knows his stuff.

Anyhow... we'd planned to see a Sox game Friday night and I should've known better when I asked where we'd be sitting. My dad said "Up high." Liar. We were in the front row of section 112 of the loge seating - right behind first base. The best part was when my mom said "Oh look they've got messages up on the big screen" and right then it said "Happy 23rd Birthday Kate, Love Mom and Dad!" I kind of froze up and was like, wait, that's me! My amazing mom set it up and said they gave her no indication of when they'd show the message so it was completely fortuitous that we were all seated (not on a run for beer or fries) and looking at the screen! I will grin whenever I think of that :-D And the best part (besides the "chowdah" guys carrying cups of Legal Chowder through the stands...) was that we won!

Saturday we had brunch at the ever-delicious Zaftig's in Coolidge followed by a trip to the Verizon store for a much anticipated phone update - BLACKBERRY STORM BABY (more to come on that later though I can tell you I love it and hold it and call it George).

We wandered around Harvard later on and my mom and I did a quick trip around the Harvard Art Museum's exhibition "Re-View" - a special display of assorted pieces from the Fogg Museum, Busch-Reisinger Museum, and Arthur M. Sackler Museum while they renovate and await their new Renzo Piano building. Deja vu much?

Then we headed to the next sporting event - Bruins vs. Hurricanes. Again, Dad faked me out about the tickets and we were sitting..... on the ice. Yes. Front row. My mom and I nearly jumped out of our seats the first time a player was checked into the glass (note to self: hang on to your beer...), and the shock of the frequent impacts didn't really lessen over the course of the game. Loved it. We had the BEST seats for the massive fight that broke out too - if you look at the video on this page, about 40 seconds in they show the pile up. That's us standing up right over the Ford sign Yup, that's me banging on the glass in my blue scarf. I'm such a hooligan.

By the way, I'm 100% aware that these games were once-in-a-lifetime seats and die-hard fans were probably rolling their eyes at me (hey, look, a dancing bear! Ew, that dude just spit). But I had FUN darnit, and anyway fan-dom has to start somewhere. Might as well be the front row.

So after lots (but not enough) of Mommy and Kate time and lovely meals and marveling at my dad's encyclopediac sports knowledge, my parents headed home to Buffalo. Sigh. Wish I could turn 23 every week.