The return of ‘my shows’ and my appreciation for online critics

Fall is here and in addition to being able to wear my cozy sweaters and jeans, with the return of my shows (Dexter, Glee, House, Sons of Anarchy, continued new episodes of Mad Men, Weeds, and the guilty Dawson’s Creek throwback CW show, Life Unexpected), my DVR is fully loaded. Put that work laptop to bed by 8PM, because now I get to fast-forward through the commercials and act as couch-critic and self-proclaimed screenwriting expert as I watch the plot twists unfold. According to my husband, who watches sports and HD science documentaries only, I’m entranced when my shows are flickering on-screen. To my friends who might not be able to get a word in edgewise–I can and do listen, just see how well I pay attention and hang on every word of my TV dramedies.

But, I have to admit, it is not really the shows I love, it is the recaps. I love me a good online review. This has always been my post-movie watching ritual: quick IMDB review, salon.com review, scan of the headlines from http://www.rottentomatoes.com/ and http://www.metacritic.com/, etc. A movie is a 3-5 hour investment by the time I have read the obligatory 8-10 reviews in my après film activity. Now, my TV show guilty pleasure of the past two TV seasons has been to devour The Onion’s AV Club “TV club” recaps. So good! AV Club never disappoints with their movie reviews, but the deep extent of TV recaps should leave other online review sites with webvny. I’m a fan because the writing is damn good in the reviews, 90% of the time I think about the show in a new way, and maybe a small part of the experience reminds me of how exciting it was to get the new TV Guide with Fall lineup sneak peeks when I was a kid.

http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/

Strangers seem nicer when you have a dog and other observations from my walking hiatus

This summer my poor dog sprained her ankle (ouch!)  and after $800+ in vet bills to ensure she didn’t have joint disease and four weeks of swimming exercise only –we’re finally back on track with daily walks. Here are some things I noticed during my walking hiatus:

1) I walk a heck of a lot faster and with more purpose without my dog, but I have less occasion to walk very far.

2) I think my relationship with my husband is better when we walk in the mornings, perhaps conversation flows more freely with fresh air. I missed making plans for the day and week while trading who picked up the Newfie land mines.

3) Walking to get an Americano from Zoka with my dog and husband feels earned, while driving to Starbucks on the way to work for one, is well, excessive.

4) My neighborhood feels more like a welcoming community with friendly strangers when I have my 125 lbs. Newfoundland in tow. Here are my most common scenarios:

• There is the obligatory dog meet/greet as other seemingly friendly dogs and owners approach, and in some cases (more appropriate for weekend walks) you carry on full dog-themed conversations to establish age, gender, personality traits of each owner’s dog.
• My personal favorite would be when parents carrying or pushing a stroller  with a toddler point out my large dog and the child points and stares mouth agape in shock, “look at the big DOG.”
• Random smiles from people on the street, with comments like, “What a beautiful dog,” and “Is that a bear?”

Now that daily walks are back on, I realize how nice it is that my dog  can warm the mood of a passerby from stranger status to amiable neighbor, bring dinner plans and sharing top of mind for me and my husband, and even justify morning my coffee purchases.

Costco is the other woman …

My husband has a mistress.  She is unpredictable and surprising. He plans to meet her days in advance, or just stops by with no warning at all. She’s into culinary arts, home decor, and even tech toys. But I’m not jealous. Why you say?  Well, you see, she is a large, bulk-commodity, membership-only, discount warehouse. Her name is Costco. And I know where I stack up in this comparison–and why bother trying to compete.

Let me share an exchange from a few years back which unequivocally demonstrates my husband’s future obsession with buying in bulk. Yes, there were signs, even then.

 For a few years I worked for a company that required a formal dress code (suit or blazer, hosiery, no open-toed shoes, etc.).  This meant that outside of having a pretty boring weekend wardrobe (because all purchases were vetted against the “can I wear this to work” criteria, thereby sorting out anything fashionable), I also suffered from ridiculous dry-cleaning bills and the additional expense of women’s hosiery (pretty much a biweekly purchases of nylons). One day, after glimpsing the cost of a recent Walgreens splurge, my husband confusingly stared at me and innocently asked, “Gosh, do you think they sell those at Costco?” 

 To my knowledge neither on that day in 2003, nor currently are you able to buy bulk hosiery at Costco. Now, he and I have had several conversations about our Costco membership and best things to buy there. But, once you have uttered the words: “No honey, they don’t sell nylons in bulk at Costco,” you can be pretty well-sure that your significant other has a bulk-purchase addiction.

Other signs of said addiction:

• Unwilling to buy items at local grocery story without seeking co-dependant check-ins to bulk-retailer stock
• Slight paranoia of buying wine anywhere else, for fear of overpayment
• Stacked shelves of energy bars and flat-bread wraps overloading your pantry
• Large rectangular containers full of spinach overtaking your refrigerator

Now, there may be many more cues to give off such an affair, if you will, with the warehouse retailer—but this will get you started on looking for the signs.

This week, however, I have to say I’m a bit spoiled. You see Copper River Salmon is available and only $11/pound at Costco, making it the ultimate, limited-time best buy. I also have to admit that the Alaskan King crab legs we purchased for New Year’s Eve were pretty damn good.

I guess this is one extramarital relationship that I’m comfortable living with, at least for now …

Aggregated identity … and other creepy things

I just was doing a little lunch-hour MSN browsing and came across an interesting article (People Search Engines: They Know Your Dark Secrets … and Tell Anyone) profiling the eerie reality of social search and online identity. As a professional working in online search and advertising, I certainly see the value of  using deeply contextual and meaningful search and social data to serve users relevant content–both editorial and advertisement-based. However, I’d have to say that this is the first that I’ve heard of companies out there which, for a fee, will complete data and identity lookups across deep web-content. Sort of like modern techno private investigators, these companies can profile individuals across multiple website, social media, and blog activity and report out to any interested party.

As someone who had their bank account information stolen and had to go through the identity theft experience of changing credit cards and other accounts a few years back–this certainly makes me think twice before posting my Saturday morning ritual of walking the dog on Facebook for all to see.

Between Live Messenger, Facebook, Linked In, Classmates.com, Twitter, Flickr, etc. I can hardly keep my passwords straight. Now, add to the mix a little fear of corporate marketing induced online stalking, yikes!  But I think the benefits of the social media communications revolution far outweigh the risks. At least for now, I’m comfortable keeping my blog identify ambiguous (first name, geographic region, marital status, dog owner, etc.), using good judgment when posting to my online accounts, and imploring proper discretion when engaging on any website as a community or social experience.

However, it is just a friendly reminder to be cautious with your online social identifies in the same way that you protect your credit card info!

Time to enjoy a little teen vampire romance, again

I’m a bit embarrassed to admit this, but Twilight is available on Fios on demand starting this Saturday. Guess what I’m going to be doing on my lazy morning?

We all have our vices.

Besides, one can’t be faulted for wanting to watch the tale of star-crossed human-vampire lovers Edward and Bella unfold. It’s so dramatic, so artificial, so incredibly seductively distracting from real life. That is why you read novels and go to movies right, to forget about that deadline at work.

But, my concern is not over the sweet indulgence of a little cotton-candy, adolescent romance movie. I’m more interested in trying to understand what exactly compels me to pre-determine several days in advance, that I am going to pay, yet again, to watch this movie. Mind you, I already joined the ranks of 10-millinon plus readers toward the end of last year, and devoured the full series (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn), and also paid $12 to see the film the week after it released. I don’t need to be shy here, I can divulge that I may have also read the Midnight Sun manuscript on Stephanie Meyer’s website.

Heck, living in Washington state, it was hard to avoid the Twilight hype. Given that the book takes place in Forks, WA… I did get a few e-mails and phone calls from mid west and east coast family and friends wanting to plan trips to visit and maybe drive by Forks. Mind you the small community (for which the bulk of the movie was not even filmed in) fully embraces this, see their tourism website spouting the connection to the book.

As a professional in online marketing, I’ve been impressed by the wide-variety of techniques and web promotion activities employed for Twilight, although I cannot say those are causing me to open my wallet in these harsh economic times for movie viewing take two.

What is particularly fascinating to me is that I can simultaneously enjoy the vivid fictional world of Twilight and be deeply irritated and envious at the prowess of the authoress in charge of the teen-vampire empire. I have to admit, although some of the writing drove me a little nutty (if I read “his crooked smile” one more time I might have thrown the book out), the books were for the most part, real page-turners. And, there is some evidence that the series has even encouraged sales of classics like Wuthering Heights. As a creative writing and English major in college, I cannot complain about that impact on popular culture and literature sales.

Maybe it is my inner writer who is secretly jealous of Meyer’s success. Perhaps my subconscious wants to watch the film again to try to un-code how she came up with this highly marketable and extremely successful franchise. That way, someday soon when I awake from a mesmerizing dream in the middle of the night, I am motivated to grab a bedside notebook and capture the potential cryptic scenes of the next world-wide fiction bestseller.

Whatever the case, I’ll be waking up at 10 AM this Saturday, and pressing the “Buy Now” button to purchase a $4.99 on demand movie. Across the country, I’ll be joined by teens and moms alike turning to their TV sets to watch adoringly as Edward and Bella (meaning Rob Pattison and Kristen Stewart) bring the pages of Meyer’s saga to life.

Dreams of drinking chocolate in London

Last September, right before the financial downward cycle, I was on a business trip with my manager in London, when I spent about 7 pounds (yes, about $14 U.S. dollars out of my own pocket) on a 4 oz. cup of dark drinking chocolate. It might have been the single most memorable chocolate consumption experience of my nearly 30-years of existence.

I found a great NW blog post from Luna Café detailing the distinctions between hot chocolate, hot cocoa, and drinking chocolate. Essentially, drinking chocolate is literally melted high quality chocolate with cream and cocoa butter, making a very rich and decadent beverage. You might recall Starbucks a few years back tried to market a drinking chocolate, Chantico (which was my first exposure to this delicacy), but they pulled the product after the first season much to my dismay.

But back to my London drinking chocolate memories …

I have to set up the experience that surrounded this gourmet endeavor. Because, for the most part, the discovery of the Chocolate Bar and indulgent purchase of said drinking chocolate was completely spontaneous. First, we spent the Saturday morning before flying home to Seattle wandering the city by foot–both agreeing that the best way to see and enjoy any new city is to explore organically and not pay for predictable tours.

So we meandered with little agenda nor timetable from our hotel in SoHo to Buckingham Palace, Victoria, Knightsbridge, through Hyde Park, down Piccadilly, through the Theatre District and Covent Garden–the whole journey relaxing and lively, taking something like four hours.

It was somewhere between Knightsbridge and Hyde Park that we entered the Harrods department store. I have to note, though my second trip to London, this was my first time in Harrods, which I can only describe for those who have never been as the combination of Bloomingdales, Dean and Deluca, and a Vegas casino. You could eat sushi, buy an expensive steak, visit a Princess Di memorial, gander at 2,000 pound painting for sale, listen to live opera music, and buy a designer gown all in the span of 45 minutes. We opted to explore the many floors and ran into a mention of a chocolate bar on a sign. Knowing my love of all things chocolate, my manager was kind enough to attempt to find this location within the massive Harrods retail extravaganza.

As soon as we came upon the Chocolate Bar, my heart skipped a beat (I’m not actually kidding, here, my knees probably swooned a little too!).

Chocolate Bar at Harrods

 I was smart enough to take some photos of the before and after-I do recommend making this a must-see and taste activity for anyone in London. Each warm, intense sip only more deeply affirmed my passionate love affair with chocolate. Screw the calories or fat count-this stuff is supposed to have health benefits or something. The cup was served with a metal spoon that doubled as a straw. Yum.

Before

After

It is fairly obvious from the state of the “after” cup that I enjoyed my beverage thoroughly. Pictures are worth a thousand words, are they not?

So, I digress. Something about the recent March cold weather and intensity of the depressing headlines has reignited this memory and grown into a full bodied craving. Last night, in Kent, WA before going to the minor league T-birds hockey game with my husband, I ordered a extra dark Dutched chocolate at Dilettante mocha café  with little success. The $3 overly milky crud was served in a paper cup with plastic lid and honestly it was not worth the words to describe disappointment.

But, a few web-searches while compiling this post resulted in some potential Seattle locations to get my chocolate fix: http://www.chocolopolis.com/  and http://www.sschocolatebox.com/. I’ll be exploring these in the coming weeks to see if I can recreate my London experience. I may even shell out a few bucks for the ingredients and attempt to concoct the recipe in my own kitchen. Until then, I only have my pictures and dreams of the Chocolate Bar to satisfy my taste buds.

I guess I’m of a certain age where this is just going to happen–but does that mean I have to put up with it?

Have you noticed that it is apparently no longer taboo to ask coworkers when they are planning to get pregnant?

At least six times in the past two months, a random assortment of peers and the like have asked when I plan to have a baby.  At least two of those times, I walked into a meeting with the comment “I have good news” and before I can go on to share some process improvement or communications metric, someone blurts out, “Oooh, are you pregnant?” To which I quip “no” with a somewhat shocked glance back in their direction. Awkward silence. Chuckle. Start meeting agenda.

Now I can interpret this recent pattern of events in three initial ways*: 

1. I’ve suddenly started to look pregnant.
2.  I’m too excited when delivering professional updates and business results.
3.  Women of the 30-ish, married persuasion are expected to not only know when they want children but feel compelled to broadly share these private details with colleagues.

*The fourth and only forgivable reason to ask this is if the questioner themselves has recently returned from or is about to go on a maternity or paternity leave for having a baby. In this case pregnancy is  top-of-mind for them and only to be expected as a topic of casual conversation.

None of the three aforementioned causes for this recent phenomenon are particularly comforting to me. Either  my News Year’s diet is not working, I’m way too overly interested in my job, or I’m missing a key desire to broadcast my fertility status in public.

 I honestly don’t mind answering the question, but I’m just surprised this has entered the realm of generic office chit-chat. I thought this was reserved for one-on-one conversations with friendly coworkers or happy-hour, two-drink deep conversations (hopefully, the person suspected of pregnancy would not actually be drinking at the time of the conversation).

While you can easily do a web search to find office etiquette tips replete with guidelines for all sorts of routine interactions (which I find mildly comical in their own right), I see no mention of navigating the appropriateness of asking family planning questions at work.

In the meantime, I guess I better eat some more salad, tone down the corporate Kool-Aid rhetoric at the start of meetings, and plan a personal family planning elevator speech. At this rate, who knows what my peers will ask me next week.

January gloom fogs my mood

I’m not sure if it is the steady diet of reading and watching journalists exploit the current economic crisis or just the normal gray skies, rare sun exposure, and rain of winter in the Pacific Northwest, but this has been one depressing January thus far.

 It is always a little sad to say good bye to the cheer and indulgence that surround holiday celebrations. But this somber mood is disappointing on so many levels, because like many voters seeking CHANGE, January 2009 was supposed to be the happiest moment of the decade. Last year for months, I day-dreamed and night-dreamed about a new direction for this country, filled with optimism for a fresh start. But, regardless of the new oath of office about to transpire–I cannot shake this cosmic doubt that change is not yet ripe for the taking. I wonder, do we have enough to influence the world to meet change half-way. Some part of me fears it may just linger our of our grasp for the next several years.

Headlines about the struggles in Iraq, Mumbai attacks, war in Gaza, layoffs, and recession fill papers and the 24-hour news cycle. Contrast these with the silliness of headlines about the Golden Globes and  newest film about to hit the theaters and you have a surreal mix of mental stimuli. I cannot open my hotmail inbox without seeing dozens of huge blowout sales and clearance e-mail marketing offers from assorted retailers-another reminder of the economic meltdown.

So I follow a wise quote:

“Today, give a stranger one of your smiles.  It might be the only sunshine he sees all day. ”    ~Quoted in P.S. I Love You, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Then we  can only hope that February shines with a bright spot of optimism that is just temporarily hidden under the layers of gloomy fog.

Remodel project catharsis

I’m three months deep into a remodel project on my house. I’m about to enter the almost done stage, but I don’t trust it. I won’t get my hopes up, not yet at least. 

You always hear stories of how people begin a project, expecting to spend a few weekends and weeknights to get it done–then six months and one special contractor later they actually complete the job. But, if you are overly arrogant like me, then you ignore the advice of wiser friends and begin your 600 square foot remodel with stupefying over optimism.

Ripping up baseboards, tearing our carpet, patching holes, spreading thin set mortar, laying tiles, cutting tiles to fit, repainting, grouting…sure sounds like a lot of work. But, because of my delusional eagerness after visiting Home Depot, reading DIY websites, and watching HGTV flip this house shows–I imagined the project going so much faster. Enter reality from stage left.

People who produce DIY shows and content should really feel bad about themselves. The 30-day project reduced to a 30-minute montage clip-show with sassy hosts wearing cute clothes sets unreal expectations for what you can really, truly, and actually do-yourself. A few hours too-many watching these faux-reality DIY shows gave me confidence that shrunk daily at each point where I had to lever tac-strips out of concrete with crow bars, or sit on my hands and knees and violently scrape vinyl-on-vinyl-on-vinyl 45-year old flooring up to make way for the new tile.

Not only can you not wear cute clothes while working on home-remodeling projects, but you also are tired, cranky, and have no social or entertainment life anymore.

I should point out that I’m not completely disappointed in the fruits of my labor-the cost-savings from DIY alone might be enough to justify the extra months the project has lagged on. Here is what I won’t miss when I’m finally done:

• Seemingly simple trips to Home Depot that result in $200-$300 cost
• Smell of dust and debris in my house
• Constant sweeping and vacuuming of aforementioned dust/debris
• Perfectly good PJ pants-turned-work-pants ruined with paint and tiling gunk
• Sore arm, neck, and knees

I’ll have to repost later with what I like about my remodel project-because right now, I’m a little sick of thinking about it….

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