I hope you get to do all of your very favorite things this weekend.

One of my favorite blogs, Frolic, has a new sponsor called oktak, and I’m smitten by the pretty bright colors of their coin purses and clutches. They also offer eye glass cases and handbags. I’m not a clutch girl usually, but these might convert me, especially for carrying to a Sunday spring brunch with my bestest ladies. They have TONS of colors and patterns. For my collage above I picked out six that were “so very Amber”. I kind of want them all.

I first heard of Lijit when Rob came home from a conference with one of their tee shirts, which was cozy and soft with a really cute little logo printed on it. I quickly declared it “Mine all mine.” He lamented publicly about the pilfering of his tee shirt, and Lijit offered to send me one of my very own. This should mean that Rob and I have matching tee shirts, but what it really means is that now I have two. And let me tell you, they are GREAT shirts.

I also dig the company, and no, they aren’t paying me to write this, nor did the free tee shirt in any way sway me to extol their virtues (although, seriously? so cozy!), I just dig their search feature. You can see it if you’re reading this on my blog’s home page and not via a reader, right over there, on the right. —>

It functions like a normal search feature, with the added bonus of letting me see what terms people are hunting for on my blog, where people are coming from, and what phrases people are searching the internet for that bring folks to my page. (I’m sorry to the person who was searching for “callous treatments for dogs”. My dogs are horribly behind on their pedicures, so I really couldn’t help you there.)

To be honest to goodness, I’m not maxing out the full potential of this software. There’s a lot more it can do, and I’ve been putting off writing this review because I don’t know everything about it, yet, and I wanted to before I talked about it. But for now, whatever, I know why I like it: because it breaks down all of my stats into easily readable pie charts and graphs, and that makes it seem so official and business like. Then it makes a neat email out of them and sends it to me every Monday morning.

As you can see, this makes me happy.

Last night Rob and I walked up and down Carmine Street after a meeting, looking for dinner. We ducked into The Grey Dog for food, and it was wonderful. Cheap (at least, by NYC standards) and tasty and very, very cozy. They even have draft beer which totally made it perfect. There was a small array of yummy looking desserts, and it’s a coffee shop, really, so I’m guessing they know their way around a steam wand, but we only had supper.

I got a tuna melt. Rob had a burger. We left full and happy.

March 2, 2009, 12:01 pm EST – CLOSED! Thank you to everyone who participated in making this my biggest blog post to date! I am so excited. The winner will be announced at 5:00 pm EST today.

-Amber

The folks over at Oh! Nuts have offered to sponsor a giveaway that will give one my readers a Purim basket!

For the unfamiliar: Purim is a Jewish holiday that celebrates the story of Esther’s bravery, and will be celebrated this year on March 10. It’s a little like Halloween in that it’s considered primarily a childrens’ holiday and there’s a lot of goofy fun stuff that goes along with it. I think Purim baskets (like giving gifts at Hanukkah) are the Jewish answer to the Easter basket so that in the spring you don’t have to leave out the little Jewish kids… and the big ones, too; Rob’s mom gave us basket last year, and we were pretty excited to paw through it.

The best part of this giveaway is that you can pick whichever basket you want (up to a $30 value). Tell me which Purim basket you would like in the comments, and if you win, that will be the one that you get. I’m drawing the winner March 2.

This is the link for all of their Purim baskets $30 and under on their website. Good luck! Oh, and Twitter this around, too! I’d appreciate it.

These instructions for making a “bed cave” were proposed on ohdeedoh as a way to give kids who share bedrooms some privacy, but I want one for me! It looks so cozy, and reminiscent of the 1700′s New England beds, where people didn’t have heat and needed to curtain their beds for warmth. I used to want one when I was a kid after touring the Mark Twain house one too many times (ah, homeschooling).

This is the only part of my bikini-clad body I will post on the internet!

I have to figure out an exercise I like, because, for reals, I need to whip my bod into shape. I hate working out. Hate. It’s not like there is one redeeming thing about working out that I can focus on, like in almost every other unpleasant task I have to do. It’s just hatred all the way down. I hate exercise clothes. I hate sports bras that do NOTHING to keep the girls from bouncing everywhere. When the tag on your bra reads “36F”, you can’t just walk into Target and pick up a $15 special with the dog food. I hate the beginning, middle and end of exercising. That whole, “hitting your stride” thing that is supposed to happen after a few minutes does not happen to me. Having my heart pound scares the shit out of me. I’m allergic to my sweat. I hate not breathing properly; my nasal passages are freakishly narrow (I’m not making this up: a doctor told me so!) so getting winded makes it so hard to breathe. Even at the end, when you’re supposed to feel good, I don’t. I derive exactly zero joy from working out. And I loose weight SO. SLOWLY! It’s a loose-loose-loose-loose-looser situation. But I really want to get in shape because I want to live longer, and not ache when I wake up, and not worry about what fits and what doesn’t, and I want to have as healthy a pregnancy as possible when the time comes, so I can be a good mom.

I’m kind of stumped, though, as to how to go about this. Someone told me I had “the perfect body for belly dancing.” I was all, “Aren’t belly dancers supposed to be skinny?!” and she said only in Hollywood. Real belly dancers are, um, fuller. So there’s a possibility, although I swear I can’t think of anything more awkward and embarrassing for me than first day in belly dancing class. I’m getting hives thinking about it. Another possibility that was suggested to me is Bikram Yoga, which is yoga you do in a really warm room. I love being warm; I think it would be a good fit for me. I’m into low-impact and non bouncy for two painfully obvious reasons, and a handful of others, too: my back hurts, my knees hurt, my shoulders hurt, my neck hurts.  All the time.  Every day.  It really sucks.

The biggest obstacle, though, will be making the transition from being the type of person who goes about ignoring everything from my neck down to paying attention to my body. I’m a completely cerebral person. I don’t just mean the fact that I’m good at maintaining my brain by constantly reading and learning new things, either. It’s physical, too. My daily skin care regimen is strict, and I keep my eyebrows neat and tidy. I love doing my makeup, and I really like when my hair is cute. I tend to regard my body as something to carry my head around on, and I don’t give it too much thought… and now I’m going to shift gears and give try. Weird.

I’m really scared, actually!

P.S. This is so oversharey of me. I know. I kind of can’t help myself these days. Look at me! Letting loose! Woo!

For those of you that haven’t heard, Domino Magazine has gone under. If you have a current subscription, they are going to default you to Architectural Digest if you don’t request some other Conde Nast subscription instead. I know! Bleh!

Here is a questionably accurate list of others you can switch to, questionably accurate because it still lists Home & Garden which went under a while ago. Damn you, Recession!

Thank you to Apartment Therapy for a heads up!

Seriously? SERIOUSLY? There is a gigantic hole in my bedroom ceiling. Last night it was a steady drip-drip-drip of water through the plaster, which I discovered in one of those unpleasant “Oh, FUCK!” moments where the unbelievability of a situation grips you and you can’t quite believe what you’re seeing. We sprang into action, getting pots and pans to catch the drips like we were on the set of the Honeymooners, and then I called my landlord and my super, neither of whom got back to me until this morning (of course!). The water even managed to work its way down behind the paint on the walls, so there are blue “Midwest Spring” colored bubbles of icky water suspended in the middle of the wall. There goes my paint job. They’re kind of fun to play with, though; like small, cold boobs.

I went upstairs and knocked on my neighbors door, hoping they would stop doing whatever it was that was turning my bedroom into a swamp. There was an Eddie Murphy-esq “WHO IS IT?!” behind the door (we are in Bed Stuy, after all, and this is how you answer the door in MY neighborhood!), and when they finally opened they had no idea what I was talking about. They were also less than thrilled to be bothered at 10:30 in the evening by my, “Hey, you’re flooding my apartment, can you quit what you’re doing?” request, but whatever. I was less than thrilled to have their stanky bathwater splashing on my bookcase, so we’re even.

Thankfully it was only the walls and some laundry that got hit with the ick. Nothing got on my bed, which would have been so trauma inducing after the week I’ve had that I would have had to be committed. The super and landlord are taking care of it now. I got one glimpse of the gigantic hole they’d sawed in the ceiling and the black, gooey stuff that was coming out of it and decided to hide out downstairs for the rest of the day with the dogs.

Update: The neighbor’s tub has been plugged for months, and instead of alerting the landlord, they just let it be. The result was the pipe burst and leaked all over my bedroom. Awesome.

I miss owning my own house.

And now for something completely different.  Politics.

On November 5, Carissa and I tried to get people’s opinions on what had happened the night before; we were hoping to generate an Obama-lovefest on video. The problem was that no one wanted to talk about it. We got a lot of “yeah, I’m way too tired, I need a break from thinking about it.” Even people who confessed they were “really excited” about him winning were just too weary, and I feel like that is the general feeling of a lot of people, even now.

However, folks, it’s time to pay attention. Four years from now the Republicans are going to come up and go “tappity-tappity-tappity-tappity-TAP! CHALLENGE!”* and it’s important that Obama supporters (regardless of what side of the aisle they sit on) are preparecd to say, “Give this guy four more years.” Or not. He might be a huge fuck up, and not deserve it. My point is that if you don’t follow along with what’s going on, you’ll never know for sure.

I’ve found this website called What is Obama Doing? So far been the easiest way to keep up with this presidency for me. Full disclosure, they seem to be biased towards a pro-Obama stance, which I don’t appreciate from a news source, but it’s really only a blog that posts other news sources, so I deal. Just a heads up. If you come across anything similar, especially one with a more critical view of the current administration, I’d appreciate knowing about it.

—

* I am referring to one of the greatest scenes in the history of the Cosby’s on television. It features the late great Howard “Sandman” Sims tapping his heart out. He used to challenge tap dancers all over the US to dance offs, even in his 70′s and 80′s, and the legend goes that he never lost. I’m pretty sure you can blame my father for my love of this clip (the black one, that is. I have two. I have to clarify.)