here's my blog about me
I just heard on the local news that Oklahoma is set to pass a bill tomorrow, July 1st that BANS eyeball tattoos.
Why is this considered noteworthy news?
Then, they followed the story with the Oklahoma state legislature is also going to pass a measure tomorrow to lower the sales tax on groceries by close to 1 cent. Although that’s not a lot of dough, it definitely seems more important that leading with the story about the ban on eye tattoos!
Today I helped host a going away party for our good friends Scott and Cheryl and their girls Cayden and Payton! They are moving to Houston in just a couple of weeks – Scott got a wonderful job offer that they could not pass up.
The theme of the party of course was “Western Chic” complete with cowboy hats and boots and lots of BLING. I always need an excuse to wear my cowboy boots and a dress, and this was IT – probably for the year… There was a kid corral for ALL the children, pretty sure MZ and I were the only ones without children but that’s totally fine.
I think it was a great way to send them off and it seemed like everyone really enjoyed the party. I will miss Cheryl a lot, she is such a great friend and is always a creative inspiration and fabulous to host parties with, so I’m losing my hostess buddy – we’ll have to have online parties or install a webcam to any parties going forward so she can still participate!
Last night I hosted book club for our group, we read Pretty Little Mistakes by Heather McElahtton. It’s a choose your own adventure book, a genre I’ve never heard of, but apparently it’s a tween thing to do. I’ve already been asked if we’re going to read Dungeons and Dragons next = no! It was a good book nonetheless and I think everyone had a great time reading it.
For dinner I made a veggie lasagna using the Cooking Light recipe, a watermelon arugula salad, pita pesto chips and a peanut butter cup chocolate cake. I must say, for my first lasagna, it was pretty good. The salad was AMAZING! Check it out for sure!
So I’m going to try a new experiment, online food journaling. I’ve created a little tab – look at the top right side of this page, go ahead and click on it now.
I’m going to keep track of my daily food intake with pictures and stats and maybe even a review or two.
Saturday night MZ cashed in on his birthday present which was tickets to MacHomer at the Walton Arts Center. First we went to dinner at Doe’s with the tailgating crowd and had always delicious steak and potatoes and tamales. Doe’s is great because you can split a gigantic steak between two people and it’s normally the perfect portion!
Full of steak and wine (and beer) we headed across the street to the show. MacHomer is a one man show that consists of the story of MacBeth personified by Simpsons characters. One guy does the entire show and acts out all the characters voices. He was fantastic. It was a great show for the two of us because I took a whole semester that was about nothing but MacBeth and wrote many a paper on the subject and I’m pretty sure MZ has watched the Simpsons religiously since their inception in December of 1989.
We both truly enjoyed the show. It was original and witty and drew a crowd that wanted to be there instead of thinking they were fulfilling some type of artsy obligation. You can check out the info here: www.machomer.com
After the show, we met back up with everyone at 21st Amendment then headed to Theo’s to begin B’s birthday celebration with Champagne. I’m sad we took NO pictures!!!
Last night MZ and I went to see RAIN, the Beatles cover band. It was really good. It was a totally different crowd for the Arts Center, lots of hippies and people that don’t typically go to the theater.
The show consisted of Beatles songs through the years, starting with the Ed Sullivan event and going all the way through to the end.
Today we had a media tour for Wright Brand Bacon and Aaron McCargo. We filmed on a rooftop in Chinatown in NYC. It was a great set, it looked really urban outdoors. The theme was, of course, Bacon along with summer time grilling. Aaron made some of his great recipes like a Bacon Burger Hotdog and an awesome bacon chicken sandwich – you can find all the recipes and more info at http://www.wrightbrand.com!
How I love thee, every other week, let me count the ways.
I actually really do love the flights to New York. It’s always filled with fabulously snarky people ready to get the F out of Northwest Arkansas as they are all think they are too damn good for this place – lest they forget, THEY came here because THEIR biggest client is here {that’s Walmart fools}. I am only part of the mass exodus from NWA because my business lies in New York – now is the appropriate time to feel sorry for me! This time I am headed up for what they call in the business a “desk side tour.” As we are launching new products, we are escorting one our spokespeople, to all the big shot magazines so that she can help to sell our product. I’ve never been on a desk side tour… I’m intrigued… glad the agency is here for sure. Therefore, I’m “blogging in air” thanks Word because I’m pretty sure there are no wifi flights leaving Arkansas any time soon… I’m also blogging and listening to my fabulous mix on le iPhone… shall I be worried that at THE EXACT moment Rehab by the oh so lovely Amy Winehouse started playing I was presented with my second mini bottle of gin courtesy of our super awesomely snarky flight attendant – he needs to explain the exact meaning of Cran-Apple and the equation will be complete. I do have to say though, the guy gave me another bottle of gin… I gave him a dollar tip… ROCK gt!
Also, side note: Rehab was followed with Brandy Alexander by Feist… you make your own conclusions… and GO! I referenced “this time” because I’m going to NYC every other week until July – at least that’s as far as I have scheduled out. Again, if you didn’t observe before – now is yet another appropriate time to feel super sorry for me. We have two satellite media tours and another desk side tour coming up. I’ll be sure to post the exact Media schedule for the satellite tours so that y’all can tune in.
Song update: now on “The Ride” by David Allen Coe… it’s a long walk to Nashville… and apparently New York too!
The actual reason we were in NYC was for Milo’s baptism. Milo is MZ’s nephew and now Godson. He’s quite the charmer and I must say a brilliant child, of course he has brilliant parents so the expectations are high. Saturday was the literal blessed event. We walked down to the apartment but had to stop at the Peas and Pickles and pick up some beer because, really what Catholic baptism isn’t complete without beer. The baptism was absolutely lovely. The priest was so delightful. SO much so, that I even said if we had a priest like that at home, I might actually go to mass. He referred to God as a She – I kinda think that was just to see who was actually listening to the sermon, but nonetheless… a She God was…
After the ceremony we headed back to TP and KZ’s apartment to celebrate. Their friends were great and all very supportive. It was really cool to see such a long standing group of friends together, all raising their children together, all being overly successful together – really cool!
Again that afternoon, I got the chance to play tour guide! We rode the subway into Midtown and we came up right at Penn Station. I love love LOVE the hustle and bustle of NYC and ALL the people and busy and crazy. MZ, not so much. We made it to Central Park and had a nice little rest on the green grass. It was packed, it was an absolutely perfect weekend in NYC weather wise and everything else-wise as well. So we hung out in the park for a bit and then we walked down Mecca, I mean 5th Ave for a while, back toward Times Square with the theory of hitting Penn Station again and going “home.” We of course had to stop and mack on some Magnolia Cupcakes…..we hopped on the subway and made our way safely home, yay! I was a bit worried I had no clue where we were going… surely he thought I was right? RIGHT?
That night we went to Noodle Pudding, which sounds really really strange but was on the post Grimaldi’s tour from Friday so we trusted Todd’s opinion… it was a quaint little Brooklyn Italian place that you could tell was good because there were some of them real I-talians eatin’ all up in that place. Seriously, I figure that is a good sign if families of Italian origin eat there… They apparently had just opened their sidewalk seating for the season and I secrectly wished for an outside table. My wish was granted! We had the most wonderful table that faced a park and you could see the lights of the Brooklyn Bridge as well! It was a great meal and I was happy to just have time to sit by ourselves and talk.
Friday night, after our more than 3 hour tour of lower Manhattan, we were famished and thirsty = beer and pizza. We were super excited to have real NY pizza… so Todd told us about a world famous Pizza Place – Grimaldi’s in Brooklyn, brick oven, talk of ages, pizza made of real history – so – we must try right? Off to Grimalidi’s we go to stand in line, as we were informed there IS A LINE, it cares not who you are or what you want, you wait in line you pay only in cash. You lika youra pizza… hmmmmmmmmm we only wanted take out, 2 pizzas, ok – we wait, it’s a beautiful night, we felt local, we could hang…. 45 minutes later…. We get to order. Then we wait. At least then we got chairs which was good because after all that wakling MZ’s knee could take no more. So down we sat to wait some more. We got our pizza, paid our cash and head back the ½ mile to the apartment. Along the way TP pointed out some of their fave local eateries. We were so hungry we could have eaten at each and every one of them In the same sitting. We got home and broke out the wine and unwrapped the pizzas, they looked super tasty. However, even as starving as we were, they were not that great. We still prefer Tims in Fayetteville or Giordano’s in Chicago… yeah that’s right, I compared pizza in Arkansas to pizza in Chicago… The evening was great, we sat around and ate pizza and drank way too much wine and disuccessed all the crazy buzzwords we’ve heard in random presentations, then proceeded to make up our own. That WILL be it’s own blog posting, but for a spoiler, the winner is…. We’re gonna go Brazilian on that….
graciefabulous 