Monthly Archives: April 2010

April 19, 2010 · 9:38 pm

Time to Cry Tuesday – No tears today #140conf!

Ok, kiddies, I know you all love a good tear-jerker from me on Tuesdays but this week I would not dream of it. How could I possibly think of shedding a tear when I am off to a geek girls heaven sort of a day.

Yes, my friends, out of the basement and off to the Twitter conference better known as  the 140 characters conference, or as we tweetgeeks call it: #140conf.

For those who are not twitter savvy but are afraid to ask, 140 refers to the amount of characters a tweet is limited to, hence the name.

By the time most of you read this post I will be way gone and sitting my geeky (not so) little ass in a seat at the 92nd Street Y listening to the rock stars of twitter spout the many uses for the platform. (does this tweet make my ass look fat?)

For all you early adopters, this is so very yesterday. You are out there with all your location based apps like Foursquare rolling your eyes at how twitter is so over. (um, doubt that) But for most of my readers, you are finally believing me that twitter IS a big deal and I am NOT nuts. Well I am nuts, but not about this.

Nonetheless, a day out of the basement is a rare treat for this chick so I will thank you very much for indulging me a tearless tuesday.

If you follow me on twitter I will be live tweeting with the #140conf hashtag and will try my best to give those of you who could not make (@lizscherer and @wendyscherer, I am crying a little that you will not be joining) a better first-hand look at what is happening than trying to follow the unreliable stop start video on ustream.

This all makes being there at 8AM less ungodly. If you are at the conference stop by and say hello.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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April 17, 2010 · 9:47 pm

Warning: Florida can cause manopause in teenage boys

Me: Danny, what’s wrong.

Danny: First it is so hot in this house, then it’s freezing. Then it’s hot again. I feel like a menopausal woman!

I love that boy!

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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April 15, 2010 · 10:51 pm

A Big Florida Welcome

Yes, I am back in the Sunshine State, and I use that term loosely this season.

This is a billboard as you get out of the airport towards I95. Nothing like making the tourists feel at home as soon as they arrive.

Stay tuned for more stories.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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April 15, 2010 · 1:01 am

The Bulgarian Bar

The Bulgarian Bar is NOT upstairs.

I, for one, was quite relieved by this signage.

Apparently they have a problem with thirsty Bulgarians.

What was upstairs was a fabulous, tragically hip (which we are not) asian fusion tapas (any other groovy name you can think of to describe it) restaurant called Kuma Inn. (113 Ludlow Str, NYC)

Great food, great service, reasonable prices and lovely bathroom with lots of candles.

And SO not a Bulgarian Bar.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visitLeaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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April 13, 2010 · 10:28 pm

Lilly Pulitzer Animal Crackers?

I kid you not. This box is not a package comp, this is an actual box that I found at the supermarket down the block. (Uncle Guiseppes for those who live in town).

Lilly Pulitizer Edition animal crackers. Yeh, well I can see why these would be popular. You know, because little kids are heavily into designers. Especially terminally preppy designers.

I would have just taken a picture and not bought the box but they are supporting the WWF (no, not the World Wrestling Foundation, the World Wildlife Fund, but yes, it is funny that they have the same initials). And for just this reason I will stop making fun of this project  – showing quite a bit of restraint, I might add. So it appears that Lilly is working with Kraft Foods and Nabisco’s Barnum’s Animal Crackers. In honor of 2010, the Year of the Tiger, Lilly Pulitzer redesigned their box and Nabisco will donate $100,000 to support the WWF worldwide conservation efforts, include tiger conservation. (to learn more visit lillypulitzer.com and worldwildlife.org/tigers) Cool!

I told my mother-in-law about this and she asked me if the cookies were all bright colored and plaid. It had never occurred to me but I thought, wow, that would be cool. I opened the box to find that they were just ordinary animal crackers.

And then I proceeded to eat the whole damn box. (thanks Ruthie, for getting me to open it).

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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April 12, 2010 · 11:58 pm

Time to Cry Tuesday- onemillionactsofkindness.com

If you follow me on facebook you have seen this already, so humor me. If you don’t, let me tell you a little bit about this picture. Parked on the streets of Delray Beach, Florida a few weeks ago was this throwback to the ’60s of a school bus. This vehicle houses ‘one guy (Bob) and his dog (Bogart) traveling to campuses across the country to promote kindness.’

Well, of course this caught my attention. And the more I walked around that bus the more intrigued I became. As I was wondering what this was all about, I came across this panel that says it all.

I was not sure if this guy was for real so checked out onemillionactsofkindness.com and I urge you to do the same. In the spirit of Pay it Forward and with the energy and belief in a cause that you can’t help but support, this guy took action and built a life(style) around the simple premise of teaching kindness.

Not a bad mission. Not a bad mission at all.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visitLeaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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April 11, 2010 · 9:32 pm

1 in 499

Today I bring you a little story about the absurdity of the area in which I live. Some of you may know of it as the Gold Coast, made famous by the Nelson Demille book of the same name. Don’t be fooled, the entire area is not like this, there are plenty of normal neighborhoods and the community I live in was a great place to raise a family.

But!  Part of raising a family here is to keep them grounded in the midst of some crazy money. Silly money really. Silly money sitting next to regular families like ours. My friend Twentyfour at Heart writes about the LA version of this life and she refers to it as moneytown. Well, 24, you will love this story!

Enter the story of the red Ferraris. We were in a shopping center nearby – buying sneakers of all glamorous things – and we ran into some friends we have not seen in a long time. We started to chat in the parking lot when we saw a red Ferrari F430 16M Scuderia Spider parked with the license plate 1 in 499 (yes, I am miserable that I did not get a shot of that). Wow, a little research tells me that sucker sells for around $220,000 and in fact only 499 of them were produced.

Yeh, that’s not nuts. I mean, shouldn’t it come with 3 bedrooms and some major appliances for that price? Ok, so wow. This guy is really loaded. Or he is in a lot of debt. Or he wants us to think he has a really big dick (most likely).

So, we chat,chat, chat a bit more and then my friend says, “Oh boy, Mr. 1 in 499 is going to be really pissed off, here comes another car just like his.” Yep, that’s right. There we were in a parking lot with not one but TWO of these cars. As we wondered where the other 497 of them were residing you would never believe this but a THIRD one drove into the lot.

Ok, that is just crazy. Funny money. There we were in the midst of $660,000 worth of red Ferraris revving their engines trying to get their 3 dicks to be as big as they were when they left their driveways that morning.

And you know what? I was still just happy to have a new pair of kicks.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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April 9, 2010 · 7:50 pm

Recovery Agent

I love this picture. I love how the yellow type on his shirt matches the wall. I love the coral and turquoise accents. I love the chrome furniture that doesn’t really belong in the tropical setting. And I really love the big cup of fries on the table next to this super-sized guy (note the ankles – they are the size of my neck!).

But what I love the most is the type on his shirt.

Recovery Agent.

What the hell is a Recovery Agent? One source I found in a google search told me that a Recovery Agent is a person who is issued a public key certificate for the purpose of recovering user data that is encrypted with Encrypting File System (EFS). Um, ok. Probably not this guy.

Then I found the The Fugitive Recovery Network website. Now let me tell you, I’m not sure how I have lived without knowing about this stuff all these years. These guys ‘provide national professional services to Bail Enforcement, Fugitive Apprehension, Bail Bondsman, Bounty Hunters, Fugitive Recovery, Private Investigators, Surety Companies, and Skip Tracer Agencies or Agents.’

Fugitive Apprehension?! Bounty Hunters?! Skip Tracer (WTF) Agents?! Man these are some exciting job titles.

But somehow I think this guy bought this at a souvenir shop like the NYPD shirts you can buy in Times Square.

Hey, a guy can dream.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visitLeaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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April 8, 2010 · 9:33 pm

Spotted What? (you may want to see a doc)

Once again, a happy reader sent me a photo I could not resist. That makes 3 in the last week. Hmmm, I think this trend is catching on. If there were ever a mission statement for this blog it would be: Carry a camera and notice the amusing things around you in everyday life. Except if it were a mission statement it would be a ridiculously long run-on sentence that would have been belabored around a conference table for months on end (yes I have sat in meetings like that and am having a big kill me now flashback thinking about it).

Gary calls my readers my private blog satanic worshipper friends (nice, huh?). Well, this one I can vouch for because I actually used to walk to elementary school with her and recently reconnected. So, thanks Fran, love that you thought of me in the Wegmans in Ithaca.

On to the post. This, my friends, would be a 10oz can of some tantilizing Spotted Dick. Yeh, I know, sometimes you just wake up in the morning and think, ‘what the hell am I going to do to satiate this mad craving for some Spotted Dick.’ Or maybe you wake up and say, ‘Damn, I better get some cream for this Spotted Dick’ if you are a man. And if you are a woman you would be saying, ‘Was I really that drunk or did that guy have a Spotted Dick? I better see a doctor!’

Ok, now that I have gotten that infantile behavior out of the way, let me share with you all what canned Spotted Dick actually is when you find it in Wegmans in Ithaca in the UK aisle. The UK aisle? What the hell? Do you have one of those in your supermarket? Ok, well according to Wikipedia (what did we do before the Wiki?) Spotted Dick is not actual a polka dotted penis at all. Nope, as the can says, it is ‘sponge pudding’ with currents or other dried fruit (being the spotted part) and the word dick being a contraction or slang of sorts for  ‘pudding’ (huh?) or ‘thick’ (makes more sense) because the pudding is thickened.

Yeh. K. I get it. And I am sure my friends who are in the UK like Janet from Facebook think I am a pathetic dweeby American but really folks, you have to admit you are all thinking you might need a can or two of this on your shelf just for the laughs when you go into the cabinet. It would make a lovely addition to any gift basket as well. Just giving you some ideas for how to bring a little Spotted Dick into your life. Think of me as the Martha Stewart for the Absurd (Neal that would be the MSFTA).

I like to stay consistent with the childlike behavior if you don’t mind.

Gotta go, have to spoon up some Spotted Dick for Gary when he gets home from tennis. We’ll see who has satanic worshipping friends…

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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April 7, 2010 · 8:42 pm

Paul Giamatti and the broken trackball

Today was a lemons to lemonade day. I woke all cranky about the broken trackball on my blackberry that would go sideways and up but would not go down (please, hold the jewish girl references here). If you are a blackberry user you know that down is key. Without down you can’t read your emails, you can’t turn on your bluetooth and you can’t change your settings to vibrate so your phone bings all night long with emails. Ok, so I could have shut it off for the night but let’s not forget I have a daughter overseas and without the blackberry we have severed-comm (yes, I have been watching too much 24 – copy that).

So, on this unseasonably beautiful April day I was not all that sorry to take the convertible out to the Verizon store to get it fixed. Happily it was only a $20 replacement part. And while I was there I had a nice lively debate on the worth of the iPad with my favorite guy there.

But, the biggest treat of all was that today a film was shooting at our town’s train station. And who was there, but Paul Giamatti (who I called Giamotta on Facebook today and am still a little embarrassed that I have a photo album there with that name in the title).

Poor Paul. There he was in a wool cap and this heavy jacket and it was near 90 degrees at high noon. I am guessing this was not exactly lemonade for him.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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