Fever!!

The World Cup is coming to an end. The USA is out and there are fewer teams that I care about still in the tournament. Oh wait, did I say teams? I meant hot Europeans. The only one that I know of still playing is Torres from Spain. I guess I could try and do some research about the others still in it to win it, but, like I said, my interest is beginning to dwindle.

I think World Cup Fever is breaking now. For the first few weeks I was streaming the games all day on one of my computers, now I may catch a bit here or there. Often, I forget the games are even on. I think part of my disinterest is related to those damn horns.

The fever that I am still suffering from is an affliction that many a tween girls are painfully dealing with. Yes, Bieber Fever.

If you are scoffing at that statement, well, I dare you to watch/listen to Baby and not want to move around.



Ok, I have to admit this song sounds much better when I am playing flip cup at the bar after my kickball game. Nothing beats a Bieber dance party, except of course a Lady Gaga or Beyonce one. :)

Pretty Pretty Pictures

A friend stumbled upon a great blog that pretty much consists of a bunch of pretty pretty pictures. It is titled {this is glamorous} and they named the blog well. I think I could scroll through this blog all day, and would probably finish off the afternoon doing just that if the phones could just stop ringing.

Below is one of my favorite items featured today. And, of course, it contains the essence of a tutu :)

True Blood is Back!

Vampires are hot. Duh.

• (See Twilight, Vampire Diaries, and the adult series True Blood.)

True Blood started up again on HBO early in June and I have been holding off watching the new episodes mainly because I wanted to make sure I could give these characters and the plot my undivided attention. The secondary reason is that I have been sucked into the drama known as LOST.

True Blood is amazingly well done. The show is set in the small town of Bon Temps where there are many human and vampire residents. Sookie Stackhouse is a human, who is able to read peoples' thoughts for some unexplained reason, and during the first season we see her fall in love with Bill, a vampire. The show does give vampire lovers a break from the likes of Twilight with some intense fighting and sex scenes. I highly encourage you to catch up if you are out of the loop on this one. Below, for your enjoyment, are some of my favorite quotes from the last two episodes...

Eric - Do you know how to use one of these?

Sookie - I am not that blonde

Eric - "Well I'm not leaving. You are going to invite me in so I can protect you or have passionate primal sex with you. How about both?"
Sookie - "You are not going to distract me by talking nasty"

Terry - 10 reasons why you can trust me with your kids
1. I'm a nurturer. I found a baby armadillo by the side of the road, and I nursed it, and now it sleeps under my bed. And it's name is Felix.
2. I have a diploma from anger management where I learned that talking about your feelings is the manly thing to do

Russell - It's like Armageddon every time someone chips a dessert plate.

Werewolf - Johnson's my best god damn man
Russell - They are all dumber than a box of rocks
Werewolf - Sir that is unfair
Talbot - To boxes? Maybe. or rocks?

And yes, in case you couldn't tell by the last quote, season three has added a pack of vampired blood loving werewolves into the mix! This season should be good!
conor from ugly betty

Bacon Anonymous Confession

Prior to today, I had never cooked bacon.

I said it. I feel better. Sometimes, you just have to come clean.

I didn't even realize that I was a bacon cooking virgin until I got ready to make the Bacon Pasta Salad for an afternoon BBQ. As I grabbed the product out of the fridge I paused.

What did I do last time? Wait - was there a last time? Oh My God! I have never made bacon!!!

Of course, my first response was to call my dad. He is in charge of bacon for any big breakfast in our household. His first response to me asking what to do - laugh. Then ask, "you really never made bacon before?"

I get it! This is a ridiculous situation to be in at 26 years old without bacon experience, but is it my fault I have been surrounding myself with prize bacon fryers? No. Clearly I keep good company and now I can proudly say I make some really good crispy bacon.

If anyone is unsure what to do, I'll give you the secret. Just put bacon in a frying pan and don't turn the heat up too high. Easiest recipe ever. Please remember to have a grease jar ready once the pan cools down as you don't want to pour that down the drain!

And yes, the pasta salad was a big hit!

Sometimes you just need a beer and a cookie

Work sucked. Then I had an appointment after work which did not go smoothly. Simply put, words were said, I wasn't the most ladylike, but in the end I was right. Sometimes you just have to say your mind even if it won't help your cause.

After hopping in my car I was still pumped up with some serious anger. I had to call a friend who had recently left for the summer. A quick conversation with someone who almost never has a bad day, put me back into a very good mood. I then relived the events again for friends who were making me dinner. Got myself all worked up all over again, so to sooth me this time I was given a Gansett beer and a cookie. In case you are ever angry, please, take my word for it, a cookie and a beer makes the world right.

Maybe the only thing better would be a beer shaped cookie?

Shoes for WOmen

I need more shoes. Of course the world knows this and had Piperlime send me an email to remind me I can find great stuff with free shipping. Part of me thinks the following shoes are amazing. The rest of me knows they are pretty much over designed and slightly tacky - but that is about par for the course when it comes to Betsy Johnston.


A moment or so later I decided to browse through the site to see what is new in the world of shoes. My mood quickly went from happy/dreamy to depressed/soured. See one of the top trend was "Boyfriend Inspired" and what we get from this is really ugly old man shoes.

I don't mind crossing gender lines when it comes to clothes. Every now and then I go ahead and wear an over sized button down shirt or go with some baggy jeans and a men's t-shirt. But when it comes to shoes, please don't make me look like a grandpa from the ankles down...

Short Fuse

Working in customer services has its ups and downs. One of the ups is if no one has a question at any particular moment, you get to blog at work. The big down is, if everyone has a question, you end up talking for 7 hours straight, forget to use the bathroom, and begin to hate all of mankind for being so freaking stupid.

I wrote that paragraph on Friday and could not return to this post until today (Tuesday). Oye! Yeah, I know, I shouldn't complain that I have to work non-stop with no breaks, but sometimes you just want a little breathing room. Fortunately today isn't too bad, so I anticipate that this post should be up in the early afternoon. I would try to finish it during lunch, but we have our hour lunches cut down today - barely enough time to eat and grab a breath of fresh air!

Back to the point of this post:

I saw a gchat status message of a friend of mine which was simply a link to Sneaky Spiral of Hate. (You may have seen it earlier this year if you frequent Hyperbole and a Half.) This is the first time I have been to the site, for a moment I was confused and thought I was within the oatmeal website, but nope, just similar drawing styles.

The Spiral of Hate is pretty spot on and the illustrations made me laugh out loud, for reals (which is why I didn't say lol). It made me think about my typical days, all my hate and how true this spiral is.

As I reflected about how frustration builds, I began looking through the site. My spiral of hate started going full force as I noticed she can live off her blog and I cannot -grrrrr. I mean I understand that my blog really has no focus other than me, and I have no idea what kind of merchandise I could then create...but let's go back to explaining the other aspects of my spiral.

The start of the spiral was waking up hot (as my a/c is still on the floor of my bedroom rather than in my window), stupid ass drivers on the commute in (oh I forgot that you should be in the left hand lane to make a right turn), a huge number of asinine questions ("I wanted to be sure I should follow the directions in the email you sent me"), and a phone altercation with a local government office. Yes, I might have yelled at some innocent bystander in that office, but I feel absolutely no remorse about it. If she had been nice to me, I would have felt bad about projecting my frustration with the office onto her, but she just proved that they could care less about the service they provide the community. I need to stop this post now, because just thinking about this is revving up the hate and I need to be as pleasant as possible as we have a lot of visitors today.

This photo was taken from
the Spiral of Hate Post

Time for a dose of cute

This is a little teacup pig in galoshes. Need I say more? I thought not.

Sometimes You Just Got to Wear a Tiara

I woke up tired, and slightly cranky. While I did have a great first part of the evening with some gal pals watching New Moon and eating cupcakes, the end of the night consisted of me sitting on my couch in disbelief as the Celtics got pounded. I needed Wednesday to be, in a word, awesome.

Work did not help, except for my lunch hour nap. I have taken to napping during my lunch as I find it to be the best use of that time. This time, not only did it give me the extra zzzz's I needed but also boosted up my energy so that I could go to my kickball game at 8:15 pm.

Normally, I wear my pink tutu to the games. Yes, I know I now play on the purple team, but this bit of happy tulle is just too hard to give up. The tutu brings me, and pretty much everyone that sees me, joy. I had this nagging feeling that maybe the tutu wouldn't cut it this time, so I went to look through my costume closet. As soon as I opened the door, I saw it.

My tiara.

I bought it for last year's Halloween costume (Holly Golightly) and I don't know if I have touched it since. The tiara was quickly nestled into my updo and off I went, skipping down the hill.

Even though it is smaller and less colorful than my tutu, it received just as much attention and caused just as many smiles. I have interacted with a number of people on my short walk to kickball these last few weeks because of my choice in clothing, and this week was no different. Everyone seems to enjoy seeing a bit of misplaced flair.

I think I will have to pull out the tiara more often. My mother honors Tiara Tuesdays and wears one in her classroom each week. If I could get away with it, I think I would do the same. Sadly, I don't think my office would approve. At least I have outlets like kickball that allow for some flair in my life!

I think the words you are looking for are Fizzy Juice

Burger King came out with a new breakfast menu a few months ago. I am sure that you have either seen the ads on tv or heard them on the radio. One of the new items that is getting highlighted is their Mimosa.

When I first heard the ad, I said to myself "whaaaaaaaaaaaaa?". Since when can you get an alcoholic drink to go? Well, at the end of the ad there is a disclaimer that says, BK Mimosa does not contain alcohol.

Last time I checked there were two ingredients needed to great this breakfast treat - orange juice and champagne (or sparkling wine). I assumed that they just were adding soda to the juice so that it would have the carbonation. After a quick trip to Google, I found out that I was right on the money. This "mimosa" is no more than orange juice and sprite. I do love this combination, my church back home uses this exact recipe to make a punch for children whenever there is a post-mass reception. To this day, I would opt for the punch over the wine, but I still would not consider this a mimosa in any way shape or form.

Please, Burger King, don't just throw mimosa around like it doesn't mean something. There is nothing worse than getting fizzy juice when you are expecting to have your B.A.C. increased.

Summer with USA

All of the regular season shows are over. The only program still wrapping up right now would be my dirty indulgence of The Real Housewives of NYC. Bravo realizes how much of a train-wreck these seven women are and has decided to stretch the finale into 3 episodes. At this point, there is just one left to go and I can't imagine there is much more to talk about. Personally, I was curious to see what Kelly Bensimon would say, and well, she is just as incoherent as ever.

Most channels seem to give up on tv during the summer season, which makes sense. I have very little time in my day now that I am willing to devote to watching shows. If it is nice out, I want to be outside. The one channel that I do get excited for, and keeps my DVR in shape, is USA. Both Royal Pains and Burn Notice are starting up again, and I am quite pleased with both.

If you have not given these shows a chance, and are looking for something to watch on Thursdays, I would suggest becoming a fan. You could easily jump into either without backtracking through previous seasons.

Burn Notice is about Michael Weston, a burned spy in Miami, who uses his spy knowledge to help people out of sticky situations. With the help of his girlfriend and friend, very intricate plans get put together, usually ending with something blowing up. His mom is a great character that you see for just a few minutes here and there, always with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth.

Royal Pains focuses on Dr. Hank who used to be a top surgeon in NYC but gets sued for negligence. He goes into depression until his CPA brother drags him out to the Hamptons. After sneaking into a super swanky party, there is a medical emergency, which Hank deals with, and thus his life as a concierge doctor begins.

I'm excited for the summer to kick off, and while I like to get the most of the good weather, I do like that at least one network is giving me something to watch if I just want to be a lazy bum.

Gooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaallllllll!

Soccer is a sport that I will not even pretend I had any interest in 3 weeks ago. Now that the World Cup is here, I have the bug. It is hard not to get excited for a sporting event that occurs once every four years. I mean, who really cares about the Winter Olympics? The US playing the UK in the first week has been hyped up to be THE event. I had to work during the game, but did dvr it. The best part was the following promo:



I just don't get how one can be excited about a game that gets to end in a tie. I have been reassured that this will no longer be allowed as the whole thing progresses into the next section/round.

In case you aren't sure why you should start yelling Gooooooaaaallllll! with the rest of the world, I will give you four easy reasons:



1. Fernando Torres (Spain)






















2. Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal)






















3. Carlos Bocanegra (USA)





























4. Benny Feilhaber (USA)
























Trust me, there are tons more reasons. These were the first four I could think of!

New Responsibilities!

I now have two new roommates. Fred and Benny. They are my new succulent plants. Fred is a Sovereign Blue (left) and Freddy is a Variegata (right).














Benny was named after my original kickball team, as he has pink edging along each leaf. Fred gets his name from the fact that I like naming objects Fred. :) These pictures were taken from the Proven Selections website (same company that makes the little stick thingy that is in the pots to tell you what kind of plant you are looking at). My Fred has a tall stalk that has a funny pink flower at the top. I would include a picture but my camera is being a bit finicky right now.

I have been told that succulents are pretty easy plants to keep. They do not need a ton of attention, but I did just think about that fact that I really should get around to watering them. It has been over a week. Ooops. They are also still in their original pots, and I have been informed that I should re-pot them into something else. Which will mean that I have to go out and purchase a new home for these guys. Good thing there is a nursery right down the street!

Side Braids, Who knew?

In the past I have dabbled in various forms of braiding and understand what works for me and what doesn't. To start, french braids just look stupid on me. No question about it. Pigtail braids work better for me and are my go to look if I have a sporting event to attend or physical labor to complete. The problem the pigtails is that they never look the same, they just don't match, and I find this irritating. In college, I sported cornrows here and there. These were my favorite, but just take a good hour to get down, given the amount of hair I have.

Now, none of these styles were something I would ever consider to be fashionable, and assumed they were simply never going to be considered glamorous, which was fine by me.

Well, clearly, I was wrong. This past spring magazines and blogs have been pumping up the new side braid. At first I was skeptical. This was a style for swimsuit advertisements, not the runway or the red carpet, yep wrong again. These side braids give the appearance of loose effortless tresses getting pulled into bulky braids. Ugh, there was no way my fine hair was going to stay put put in such an unstructured style. Boooo.

Now flash forward to a early June, I was invited to a beach theme party. I wanted to give my hair a beach feel and bought Surf Hair, a Garnier Fructis Style product, at the local Rite Aid for less than $5. The label says that it is a textured paste that would give my locks the appearance that I spent the afternoon swimming in the ocean. As I was working the product through, I realized that with this texture, the side braid could be feasible, so why not try.

It worked! The added texture allowed for my hair to keep some volume rather than hang along like a limp sad braid. The secret is to braid the side braid as you would normally do, but then tighten the braid down towards the base so that the upper portion can look loose and free. I now have every intention to cruise the streets of Boston with this do the rest of the summer. The only down side is all the weight of my hair pulls my head to one side. now, I guess it is time to work on my neck muscles? Oh what one endures in the name of fashion....

Seize the Bad Romance

Someone out there in the great interwebs had the genius to match up Lady Gaga's Bad Romance with a the dance sequence to the Seize the Day (Chorale) from Newsies. If you are unfamiliar with Newsies, shame on you. Go out and rent it. It was quite the movie back in 1992 and features a young Christian Bale!

Here is the video:



Additional clips, the original music with this dance.



And you may find that you do in fact know the music from this movie when you hear Seize the Day. I just love a group of men singing and dancing in formation.

$6 for a free makeup bag? Sign me up!

I know, I know, how can something be free and cost $6? Well, I will explain. My subscription to Teen Vogue is coming to an end and they have been diligently sending me mailers letting me know that yet again, it is my FINAL chance to reup. This notice that let me know not only can I get all 10 issues for $6, but they will also throw in a free car and truck themed make-up bag.

Sold.

I have needed a make-up bag for a while and refused to pay for it. I hope this bag is everything I am wishing for and more. Additionally, this is reminding me that I have a stack of fashion mags that are just dying for some QT with me and my couch.

Frozen Concoction Maker?

Do you mean blender?

I just saw a commercial made by Margaritaville Cargo for Frozen Concoction Makers. I really have no words for this one. I can't imagine this turbo blender a) works well or b) is worth its price.

Yeah...just clicked on shop online and this baby is running at $229.00. I would rather go traditional blender, or if I want the fancy shaved ice they are advertising, I would simply pick up a Snoopy Sno-Cone maker

I Scream, You Scream, Boston Screams

For the Celtics win in game 2 of the NBA Finals and, of course, ice cream. Game 1 was miserable on Thursday, it was an embarrassment. Game 2, however, was intense, amazing, and ended with a well earned win for C's. I wanted to celebrate the win. Since I decided last week to limit my weekly alcohol intake, ice cream was the next logical option.

Normally, I stay away from the stuff (being an ice cream scooper in high school turned me off of it) but ever so often I fall back in love. I recently found the best black raspberry ice cream that can be purchased from the grocery. It is by Hood, and called "Martha's Vineyard Black Raspberry". The part that seals the deal is that it has swirls of raspberry sauce - sooooo good. I highly suggest it to anyone who likes fruity flavors.

I bet you were afraid this post was going to be about sports, don't worry, I wouldn't do that to you.

Emotional Shredding

Emotional Shredding is a term that I created over Memorial Day weekend. I have been living up here in the Boston area since graduation, but when I left my parents' house I didn't exactly clean out my room completely. There were still pictures hanging on the walls, books in the shelves, and some emergency clothes stashed in the drawers. Now that my parents are planning on renovating their bedroom, having my sister move from her room to mine, and turning her old space into a real guest room, they needed "the shrine", as they like to call it, cleaned out.

My mom and I slowly tackled the bureau, night stand, shelves, drawers and closet. I was able to let go of a number of nick-nacks, papers, and the like. Every so often there were moments that my mom had to urge me a little harder to let go and for the most part, I would let her win. It was hard, but it was time.

RIP - phone bank from my 5th birthday party and jewelry box with small brown bear with bow tie that twirled while song played.

Part of the reason she won on these items was that the momentum to throw away was so strong. I received positive feedback when trashing items, as I have a habit of saving objects that contain memories. I became a junkie and even though I wasn't really ready to let go, I did because it felt good to purge. During the drive home, I felt pretty awful that some of those items were heading to the dump shortly. Thankfully my mom realized that there were some things she shouldn't have pushed on and took them out of the piles. Yay, the phone bank and jewelry box were saved!!

I have found that I have to be careful when I clean, I become an emotional shredder when I am in the mood to really clean house. One time I destroyed a journal from high school, I immediately regretted trashing my personal thoughts like that. Now, whenever I am in the mood to purge out my possessions, I hold off before bringing the items to GoodWill and keep the items in a pile for a week or so. This strategy has worked wonderfully for me.

My next big project will be dealing with the filing cabinet that I brought back with me from home. It needs to be gone through, but I am just not ready to deal with the papers that I have been holding onto and would rather give myself some time to process exactly what is trash, and what is treasure. While I know old credit card and utility bills can be shredded without a second glance, I don't want to accidentally destroy financial docs that need to be kept because I get in the zone. Maybe the next big rainy day will be set aside for this project.

Important Holiday!!!

Happy National Doughnut (or Donut if you will) Day!!!

I was going to try and finish the posts I had started earlier this week, but realized I need to be sure to give one of my favorite holidays a shout out. Go to your nearest DD and get a free doughnut with purchase of a beverage!!

Bustiers are Classy

You. Are. Welcome.