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At Long Last…We Meet! And other Weekend Highlights.

15 Sunday Jul 2012

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I was reminded threefold – yes THREEFOLD – this weekend about how much I adore time with old and new friends enjoying great food, drink and conversation together!  It just doesn’t get any better than THAT!  Anytime year ’round is wonderful, but there’s something about the laid back summer vibe that makes it even more special. Even without a lot of summer vacation (at least for me; as a consultant I’m paid for hours worked so paid vacations are non-existent), this was just the triple dose I needed to make it FEEL like a vacation, AND to catapult me into this (short) workweek and my upcoming trip to Kansas City, MO later this week.  That trip still seems like a dream to me as it’s been in the planning for several months.  Now it’s just a few “sleeps” away!

It kicked off Friday night with my dear friend T.  We toasted the end of the workweek and a rather tough summer so far on her part (her Grandmother’s passing and all involved with arrangements before and after and travel back and forth and all that) at Wildfin, a casual spot we’ve enjoyed in the past for lunch. Friday night was sunny so that meant sitting outside…ahhh…dinner al fresco!

Saturday was a fantastic BBQ at P’s house.  P is a former co-worker I worked with – loosely at the same company – 4-5 years ago, for barely one year (my entire business unit got dissolved, long story, so I went as quickly as I arrived pretty much).  She’s one of those rare, treasured former co-workers who has become a great friend, for far longer than any time we even worked together at the same company!  I credit her for igniting my passion for running (which is sadly dormant right now but will re-awaken), photography and travel!  She’s off to Ecuador and the Galapagos in just a few weeks with another mutual friend of ours!  Her menu was delicious halibut steaks fresh from Alaska, sautéed sliced potatoes, fresh salsas for dipping chips and veggies, an incredible ceviche mirrored after one she enjoyed on one of her recent trips to Belize, and some hard-core Sangria provided by a few of her other guests who are quite the connoisseurs – love it! And numerous other yummy munchies and drinks.  Oh, and did I mention the desserts?  After a slice of tiramisu and some raspberry frozen yogurt I was beyond full.  YUM.

It was one of those afternoons you just never wanted to end.  Laughing, eating, drinking, watching the dogs run around and play in the yard…and wondering what the weather is going to do next (this is Seattle-area summer, after all).  Thankfully the weather was terrific.  And P’s house is just perfect for entertaining.

I barely slept that night, despite a full belly of great food and some butt-kicking Sangria that required me to pop a Motrin before going to bed, ha ha.

Today (Sunday) I drove down to Lacey, WA, just a short hour or so from my house.  I met up with a friend I’ve been chatting with online for years but have never met in person.  And oh man, this is a long story so buckle up.

A little over 6 years ago I was bored at work and did a random online search about a handbag I was considering purchasing.  What popped up was a myriad of results…a little overwhelming.  And then, one of them caught my eye – it was a link to an online discussion forum..about purses and handbags!

I clicked on that link and my life has not been the same since. Since May 2006.  Seriously.  What I’d clicked on, unbeknownst to me at the time, was how this online discussion forum was designed. I’d never seen one before in my life. And…it was all about – mostly – handbag shopping!  What people liked and didn’t like!  Sorted by handbag designer!  With pictures!  I was immediately hooked and became obsessed.

What’s also spun out of this online forum are other subforums devoted to just about any other lifestyle issue:  tv shows, movies, makeup, other shopping, relationship issues, family issues, celebrity style, raising kids, jewelry…and on and on.  And behold…a HOCKEY subforum too!

That’s right…there’s a subforum on that site that’s devoted to hockey chitchat…what a delicious slice of the universe this is!  Well, at least for me – and a few other thousand women – it is.  Where else can I browse for pictures of fabulous handbags, shoes and sunglass, read about the latest makeup trends and immediately shift over into chitchat about the NHL draft, for example?  Or the playoffs? 

For some reason last year, the hockey subforum chat group got a little snarky.  I don’t remember all the details, but some wackaloon came in during the playoffs and pretty much shit on everything we’d all been discussing for ages.  OK, I realize there are fair weather fans out there, but puhleeze.  There is an etiquette out there for online chit chatting, for real, which said person clearly had no clue about.  And there were 82 games in the regular NHL season prior to the Stanley Cup playoffs, hello???  So don’t come in a-poo pooing in on things.  Just saying.

Anyway, after one too many shittings-upon, one of the women in the group posted a rant (maybe on Facebook, can’t remember), saying something like “haters are hatin’ on my Happy Hockey Island.”

What a stroke of genius!  Within a day or so we had a spin-off online chat forum with invitation-only access set up just for the 10 or so of us who were frequent posters in that hockey subforum. Something completely separate and different. Thankfully we had a resident expert/guru who knew how to do this!

And…the rest is history.  NOW we have our own little separate subforum of goodness!  I still post and chat occasionally on the original forum, but the core of my online viewing and posting has now shifted to this happy hockey island.  I love these girls so much I can’t even stand it.  They’ve been with me through hell and back and me for them as well.

And after all these many years, I finally got to meet one of the women from this spinoff group this afternoon!  What a thrill it is to meet someone online and just see how much the same they are in real life as compared to their online ‘presence’ and ‘voice.’  I LOVE that.  After years of online chatting and posting and whatnot…to be greeted with a huge HUG in real life is priceless!

We had an amazing lunch at the Budd Bay Cafe in Olympia, WA.  Wonderful clam chowder and salads, plus a nice boardwalk area overlooking the port, the farmer’s market and the state capitol just a few blocks away.  As a lifelong Washington State resident this was even more special for me, as I’d not spent much time in Olympia or Lacey.

After lunch we walked long the boardwalk – Percival Landing, all endlessly fascinating to me as a tourist in my somewhat-local region!  Typically the Olympia/Lacey area is what I blast through on the freeway on my way out to the Washington State Coast.  This was a rare, delicious opportunity to experience it close up, with my dear online friend and her husband.

I’m so touched and happy at how wonderful that meetup was.  And yet not surprised either. K was exactly in real life as she is online, and meeting her husband and Mom was just a fantastic bonus.  I smile and know this is not the last time we will all meet up again.

Behold, the power of the internet!

Exciting Changes

29 Sunday Jan 2012

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I felt compelled to put my (likely) last Blogspot post over here on fivenineteen.org too.  Continuity and all I guess.   Here it is!  (Ummm, OK so the date shows this was posted on Jan 29th but it is Jan 28th right now so we did a leap into the future looks like.  Actually that was my bad; I had the wrong time zone selected on the back end here.  Learning, learning.  All other posts should have an accurate date stamp!)

Know that feeling when you’re right on the brink of pulling the trigger on something new?  You may or may not have it all planned out but you probably have an idea of how you want things to look whenever “it” is done?

I’m not quite there yet, but I’m on my way.  And (but) the train is rolling, so no turning back.

What’s going on here?  Well, Dearest Followers and Readers, I’ve purchased a tiny piece of the Internet.  Fivenineteen.org.  Nope, no hyphens (yay!).

What this means is that this is likely one of the last new posts I will do on Blogspot.  I’ll continue weekly postings here on fivenineteen.org. 

Whew!  I’ve ported over all of my posts here from Day One over to the new site as well – thankfully much easier than I thought.  Please, please, check out my new work in progress here on fivenineteen.org!  And please pardon the dust as well, as I am learning the ropes on how to lay out this new site, choose graphics and get everything looking the way I want it.  The post pictures are kind of jacked up right now (all squooshed to the side), but I’ll get it straightened out eventually. 

Want to know a little secret?  One of my favorite parts of the Blogspot site is the side bar showing where hits come from.  It’s absolutely fascinating to me!  From countless places around the States to the UK, China, Australia, Maldives, Malta, Romania and Brazil – and so many other countries too.  I just love it.  And I hope I can replicate something similar here too – stay tuned. 

Right now I am debating whether to add my Twitter feed here, but I’m not sure I want it there.  And don’t laugh, because in adding Twitter I realized just how seldom I tweet.  So that might change too.  Follow me @five19 and see what happens.  Huge thanks to my dear friend P, who shared a bunch of great tips on site layout, adding pictures and replicating what I have here over on fivenineteen.org.  I’ve got a great to-do list for sure thanks to her.

And in other Change News, I’ve got yet another list – thanks to my guy BFF L – of a whole bunch of home improvement projects he is going to help me with.  First things first, a run (or two?) to the Dump.  This all starts tomorrow, which is why I’m blogging today on a Saturday instead of my usual Sunday (yes, I know it says Sunday; wrong time zone issue which is now fixed).  I have no idea how crazy tomorrow is going to be but I know once we get started I’m going to be really excited and on a roll.  It’s always that first step that’s the hardest, don’t you think?  Having great friends willing to help and provide ideas is the grease in my gears.  Sometimes my lists get so long I lose the prioritizing skill and PLOP.  Nothing gets done.  I get wiggy and overwhelmed.  And I’ve forewarned L I likely will along the way.  He has great ideas, and (but) he and I have very different tastes in decorating.  So this is going to be amusing and interesting.  But he knows whose name is on the title to the townhouse here, so we’re all good there.  (Meaning, mine).

So the Man Help is on the way tomorrow, and meanwhile I’ve got a ton to do to prepare today, plus get stuff for the tacos we’re going to make.  And I have a super late hockey game tomorrow night too.  Can I get a second or third wind to skate hard?

Lots more to come – and probably pictures too – as the home projects get underway.  Remember, check out fivenineteen.org here for more posts.  And if you follow me at Blogspot, why not follow me on my new site here too?  I’d be most grateful.  Yeah, I don’t care for self-promotion but there ya go – I said it outloud and most humbly.

Holy Grail Hair Care

13 Sunday Nov 2011

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OK, it’s been awhile since I did some product reviews, so here we go.

I love the changing seasons here in the Northwest, but the rain does a number on my hair.  I joke that my hair is a human barometer…a little humidity or drizzle outside and POOF.  Frizz. 

Hair is emotional for a lot of us.  Let’s face it, we wear our hair everyday so it’s always on display and out there. If I’m having a bad hair day it ruins my mood.  I’m sure I’m the only one who notices, but still.

Back in the 1980s when big hair ruled, I was right there.  Mousse, curling irons, hair spray – I did it all.  And my “helmet hair” looked pretty damn good even if it didn’t move much.  Neither did anyone else’s!  Some of our sorority pictures from the late 1980s have resurfaced in Facebook Land thanks to scanners.  Damn that was a LOT of big hair!  We pretty much worshipped Paul Mitchell products…or Aqua Net as a super cheap (but super stinky) alternative.

Hair trends change (that’s a good thing, plus it makes for funny memories looking back).  Somewhere into the early 1990s big hair went away.  Ah, now I remember. It was the Jennifer Aniston shag cut (from the Friends TV show) that pretty much launched a new era of hair style.  Long, choppy layers…and straight, not curly.

Hard to believe that was over 15 years ago!  But hair is still worn much more loose and natural, not in the stiff, shellac’d and crunchy curled 1980s way.  And that’s fine by me…I haven’t used hair spray in years and my bangs are no longer 2″ above my head.  I still have a curling iron but it’s slept dormant in a bathroom drawer for eons.  My profile pic is pretty accurate, save for the bangs which I’ve grown out a little longer (full on bangs are too high maintenance for me I discovered in a brief interlude c. 2009.  But they did hide the forehead crinkles which was nice).

All these cool, long layered styles are fabulous, but for me a problem.  My hair is pretty thick and wavy…if left to dry on its own without a hair dryer it morphs into wildly-varying forms of waves and curls.  A tad freakish.  It’s funny how back in the big hair days I spent so much time every morning getting my hair all curled and sprayed.  Now fast forward a couple decades and I spend time daily…smoothing it out.  Which is a chore.  And every day it behaves a little differently.

So in all this rambling you can probably guess I’ve tried tons of products out there to keep my hair smooth.  Not to get it poker straight, but straight enough…and it’s got to stay that way all day which is the problem.  Yeah, there are things out there like Brazilian blowouts and other semi-permanent straightenings but they scare me.  I stick with getting my highlights touched up and don’t really want to add any more chemicals into my hair, even if they say those treatments are OK for color-treated hair. 

After going through several flat irons – frustrated – I discovered the GHD Styler thanks to some nice online discussion/enabling and raving about it.  Gulp…$240??  That’s what I plunked down for it a few years ago (I see it’s come down in price slightly in that link).  But you know what?  4 years of near daily use and this thing is a champ.  It heats up super quickly, shuts itself off, and has curved edges so you can do waves or even curls with it too (it comes with a DVD to show you how).  And it doesn’t dry out or damage my hair…it just smooths it out and makes it look nice and shiny!

And speaking of shiny…this hair journey wouldn’t be complete without talking about some of my favorite shampoos, conditioners and styling products.  Step into my shower and you’ll find a good 6 or 7 shampoos, conditioners and a couple of cleansers and body washes.  Yeah, I have no brand loyalty in this department either (just like makeup) and love rotating products daily.  Even the smell of shampoo is wonderful to savor in a hot shower, and helps me wake up and get energized.

I tend to be a hair product snob.  I’m pretty good at mixing cheaper makeup products in with the spendier ones, but with shampoo and conditioner I’ve always gone more high end.  Brands like Kerastase, Alterna and Arbonne.  No shame here in plunking down $25-$30 for a bottle of shampoo.  After all, it’s fabulous quality, smells amazing and lasts a long time.  And it’s for HAIR!  There used to be a fantastic beauty supply store right on my commute home which was like kryptonite or crack to me.  Maybe it’s a good thing it’s closed down.  But then that cool thing called the internet?  With items marked down and/or free shipping?  I’m a sucker…sign me up.

Then one day in the grocery store I passed by the shampoo aisle and they had some tiny samples of Garnier’s Sleek & Shine shampoo and conditioner.  I thought hell, for $1 each, why not?  I opened the bottle and wow…a very happy green apple fragrance too.  Sold.  If I didn’t like it, no worries, I’m just out $2.

I am truly, truly impressed with these Garnier products.  And now the proud owner of two large bottles of shampoo and conditioner.  Each was around $5 apiece, a fraction of what I usually pay.  And this stuff WORKS.  And it does what it says it will do.  I am amazed how great my hair looks…no midday poofing or curling.  We have not had a lot of rainstorms here – yet – so that will be the true test.  I bet it’s going to work out wonderfully.

Garnier also has a cream in a tube to use on towel-dried hair prior to blow drying.  Got it at the grocery store for all of $3 and it is amazing.  So long to my pricier Tigi after she’s used up.

OK, now I have also fallen in love with a pricier brand, so this journey is still hard on my wallet.  Moroccan Oil.  There is a small group of shops and restaurants a short walk from my office building, and there is a salon on the main floor.  I stopped in once on my way to grab lunch and had a great chat with the girls there.  They had a Moroccan Oil product display and I asked if any of it would work on my hair.  They suggested a bottle of the treatment oil – it comes in a formula for light colored hair too!  I dab a little on my ends occasionally to keep them weighed down.  Love it!  I also am now a huge fan of their shampoo, conditioner and glimmer spray.  The spray just adds a little shine, not hold like a hair spray.

So between Garnier and Moroccan Oil I’m smiling big through the season that normally wreacks havoc on my hair.

And, major gear shifting here…next week I am going to start the first of a 4-part review of a book I’ve recently purchased and have just started to read.  Just putting that out there to keep myself accountable.  Wish me luck!