An open letter to Joe’s Crab Shack

Dear Joe,

I am so excited to see that you are building a new location near me!! I love your restaurant and the kitschy way you decorate. I love your food and how it’s served to me by the bucket full. (I can’t get enough of your seafood!) But please, don’t make everything stop every hour on the hour so that my African-American waiter can sing “Cotton Eyed Joe” to me. Or prance the lovely woman celebrating her 60th birthday around your restaurant with a grass skirt on. Don’t get me wrong, I love your place. I just prefer not to watch people being humiliated in the name of “fun” while I try to suck the meat out of my crab legs.

Thank you.

I scream for ice cream

Does anybody remember Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlours? My parents used to take us to one in Flint, Michigan years and years ago. (I’m talking the late 1970’s.) I loved that place. Of course I loved the old fashioned goodness you felt when you walked in- old fashioned candy for sale, lots of dark hand carved wood on the walls, the waiters even dressed up as barbershop singers. Well, I was watching “Top 5” on the Food Network and they started talking about Farrell’s! I was shocked! I had no idea they even existed anymore. Apparently they never completely went away. To read what’s been going on with them- click here. I can’t wait for them to build one near me!! I’m convinced that this beautiful, magical place is what started my life long love of the creamy goodness.

kudos fro kreativity

First there was Google. Then there was Froogle. Now there is Booble, a search engine for adult websites. I want to make it very clear that I don’t condone lurking around adult websites on the internet, but this is hilarious. Plus you’ve got to give the person kudos for being so creative with the name.

Guess who called me last night to share this information with me? My father. Yes my friends, my father has a sick, funny sense of humor. It must be where I got it from.

flower vs. flour

I found a super cool project on Craftster that I want to try to make. It’s a flower cake! I’m racking my brain to think of an occasion coming up that I can make this for. Of course I find this right after the holiday season. Oddly enough, I’m always my craftiest right after Christmas. You’d think it’d be the other way around.

Home Sweet Home

Why do I live in Michigan again? Someone please remind me. Wednesday we got dumped with over 8 inches of snow. It took me 2.5 hours to get home from work. Today I was supposed to go see my parents but as you can tell I am stuck at home with another few inches being dropped as I type. Don't get me wrong, snow is really beautiful until you have to go somewhere. Then it can be life threatening.

Lime Diet Coke

Coca Cola has announced they will start distributing Diet Coke with Lime this week. I will definately have to try it. At first I really liked the Diet Coke with Lemon but that wore off very quickly. (After about 3 of them I said never again.) Diet Vanilla Coke is great but for the first time in my life I perfered the Pepsi version. (I apologize to my family, true Coke enthusiasts.) I almost forgot Diet Cherry Coke! It's not bad but is sometimes hard to find. Can you tell I love my Diet Coke? I went carb free one time and had to immediately switch to diet pop which was extremely hard to do. I've never gone back because regular pop seems too sweet for me now. It literally can make my teeth hurt. I'm working on being free of all drinks but tea, milk and water. Those three drinks are my favorites and pretty healthy for you, too!

my kind of store

In my latest issue of Lucky Magazine, there is a small blurb about a boutique in Austin, Texas that sells nothing but black items. Blackmail Boutique is right up my alley. Black clothes, black accessories, you name it and they have it in black. They even showed some black soap in the article.

I’ve always worn black. It’s slimming and boy, do I need it! It looks elegant and it matches everything. Of course I started wearing black in high school during my punk/new wave days, but I’ve always stuck with black as my basic core color. I’d venture to guess that 90% of my wardrobe can go with (or is) black. Sigh…..just another reason to go to Austin…….

P.S. The quote above came from the store's web page. Anybody who quotes Coco Chanel is good in my book!

I think it’s time to fly again

Every six months or so I get the urge to give the FlyLady another chance. I think it’s a great program and easy to follow but not really geared towards the working lady. For instance, I get all of these e-mails at work telling me to go shine my sink when in all actuality I’m 30 miles away from my sink and would give anything to be home shining it. How sad is that? You see, I have all the good intentions but not the energy to be doing it every night. So I think I’m going to take all of her “lists” and change them to fit me better. Like, take “getting dressed to the shoes” off the morning list because I have no choice in the matter because I have to go to work. I’m also not going to sign up for her e-mails because they filled up my inbox almost everyday!

I think a part of me wanting to join FlyLady again is the organizational surge I have had since we started our Clean Sweep of the house after the honeymoon. My new best friend is my label maker, my parents have supplied us with numerous plastic tubs over the holidays to store things in and things are looking much nicer! We may even be able to actually hang our winter coats in the closet now! Woo Hoo!!!

Another part of my purging and organizing was deciding if continuing to sell books on half.com was worth the money or not. I assumed it wasn’t and was about ready to take all of the books I haven’t sold to the used book store. Something made me think to look at my account to see how much money I’d made. Can you believe with hardly any effort at all I made $300 in 13 months? And I wasn’t really trying! You better believe I’m going to continue to sell, and actually put a little effort into it this time!!!

If anyone is interested, here are the books I’m selling on half.com- click here.

Rescue Magazine

I picked up a new magazine at Borders this weekend called Rescue Magazine. I'm not really sure what to think of it. I might have to buy the next issue to make my final decision.

Intriguing...

I saw a preview for this when I went to see Cold Mountain with my parents last week. Great visuals, fabulous music (ELO), interesting concept, etc. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is definately going on my list of must-see's. Due out in March...... Oh yeah, Cold Mountain was really good. I think I'll try reading the book now.

music to mellow your nerves

I have downloaded a Hawaiian music radio station from Honolulu at work to keep me in an Aloha state of mind. It definately mellows me out and helps to make the day go by a little bit easier. Especially when the wind chill is below zero. Here's a funny link to how us Michiganders feel about snow- click here.

So...what did Santa bring you?

We tried to stay low key about Christmas this year due to the fact we that we just went through a wedding and an amazing honeymoon. Aaron got me a tanzanite ring knowing my new interest in the gem. I'm not an expensive jewelry type of gal, but I can't get over the gorgeous blue/lavander combination of the stone. My other newly acquired prized possession Christmas gift is the ukulele my friend got me. I'd been planning on getting one but she is lucky enough to live in Las Vegas where abc stores are a plenty. I can't wait to get started!

My Christmas gift to everyone this year was a "movie night" gift basket. (It was easy and low key. they included a popcorn bowl, matching cups, popcorn, boxed movie candy, gift cards for movie rentals, gift cards for pizza, pop, and strips of tickets for decoration. Everyone seemed to love them and one of these days I plan on setting up a page where you might be ably to view some of my creations.

Happy New Year!