August 2, 2008 at 12:15 pm · Filed under Food, Friends, Moi
Went to dinner with the gang at Michael Mina last night. It’s located in the same hotel where BlogHer was hosted and the Clock Bar I mentioned in the last post is basically an extension of the restaurant. Anyway, when we were up there a couple weeks ago, Brenda and I sort of abstractly talked about how we should go to Michael Mina and rock star that she is, she up and made reservations for us. So, Chris, Kristi, Mayank, Brenda and I headed up for an evening of cocktails and tasty foods. In the grand scheme of Bay Area Michelin-starred restaurants, I’d say Michael Mina < Gary Danko and Chez TJ. I was especially unimpressed with the wine selections, which was a bummer because I do love a wine pairing. However, the evening with friends was lovely (I heart those guys) and experiencing the food and atmopshere with other people is half the fun of a dinner like that, so, in the end, I’ve no complaints about the night…though it does make me want to eat at Gary Danko again.
July 27, 2008 at 6:08 pm · Filed under Moi, Work
Holy cow it’s been a busy past two weeks! Last week we were finishing up our big Back-to-School program at work and it was all sorts of stressful and busy. I’ve never seen us all so on edge and quick to irritation before. I seriously thought someone was going to wind up fork-stabbed by the end of the week. Luckily, we all survived without any tine-wounds.
At the end of that week I and our trusty intern ventured to the BlogHer conference in San Francisco. The conference sessions weren’t applicable to work, but it was nice to attend a couple from the mindset of a personal blogger. On Sunday, Kaboodle sponsored the UnConference, an “open space” day where the hardcore bloggers, who wanted to stay for an extra day and discuss various things, could set their own agenda and all that. We got to man a little Kaboodle demo table and tell bloggers about the greatness that is Kaboodle. By the end of the day I sounded like an old smoker from talking so much and just wanted to sit and have a drink.
And that we did at the Clock Bar in the lobby of the St. Francis. We’d popped in on Saturday for a few minutes and it’s pretty nice. The service, at least at the bar, is a little slow, but the menu is all classic cocktails and they’re really tasty. Drink a Week has a nice review. We met that dude, who was friends with the lovely and rad Anne from Elastic Waist, whom we also met there. Popping in to the bar instead of going to the Dooce keynote turned out to be a good idea. I think we need to head up there on a Friday after work and drink lots of tasty cocktails.
We had a brief respite from all the work on Tuesday when the powers that be at Kaboodle celebrated the launch of the BTS program with some champagne, cake, the gift of iPods, and an afternoon trip to go see The Dark Knight. Now, it’s not all about the iPods and the champagne, but it sure as hell is nice to work for a company who truly appreciates the work we all do and values its employees. I never want to take that, and my lovely co-workers, for granted. I get up every day happy to go to work, even when I have a ton to do and am all stressed, and I know how lucky I am to be able to say that.
After Batman, it was back to work, prepping for the annual TechCrunch event. Kaboodle was a top-tier sponsor and we brought more than half our team (!!) to the event to work the various stations. This TechCrunch meetup has turned into the networking event out here and it was great for Kaboodle to be a part. It was funny to see how impressed people were every time I mentioned we were acquired by Hearst last year. But, no one was as impressed as they were when Hammer turned up.
That’s right. MC Hammer. He’s an investor in a site called DanceJam, and shows up at tech events to get the word out. I’m not sure if anyone cared about DanceJam in the end, but they sure as hell got excited about Hammer. Sadly, I decided it was time to walk around the event and get demos from various booths at exactly the time Hammer showed up and kicked it with the Kaboodle crew. Chris was texting and calling my phone but, unfortunately, I’d left my phone at our booth. So, while there are some fun pictures of the gang with Hammer, the only photo of me with He Who is 2 Legit 2 Quit is with some random dudes. They were so unimpressed that I insisted on crashing their photo with him. Ha, ha! Sorry, guys.
Somewhere during the week I managed to catch the death-flu that’s been spreading through our office. See, when you work with people with kids, they’re going to get sick and then you’re going to get sick. All in all I have a pretty mild case, but now that I finally have a moment to rest, I’m feeling sicker than I was the past several days. I think I need to keep going and doing stuff to distract myself from feeling crappy.
Good lord. I need to update this damn blog more often so the posts aren’t a million miles long. Anyway, I’ll leave you with a photo of some of the Kaboodle team and Hammer.
June 28, 2008 at 6:55 pm · Filed under Moi
Sometimes you’ve got to fall
Just to remember how far from the bottom you are
\Denounced\ by The Frames
June 7, 2008 at 10:07 pm · Filed under Apartment, Moi
Today was an OK day. I actually accomplished some stuff this Saturday, as opposed to the last few I can remember where I just sort of sat around my apartment feeling like crap.
So, I bought a grill the other day and assembled it and cleaned my patio. The patio had sort of gathered a bit of crap over the past few months and I’d been putting off cleaning it and reorganizing my storage space, etc. Anyway, I bought the grill and it forced me to clean up a bit. I swept everything, sorted stuff out, took multiple trips down to the garbage and recycling bins, and assembled my grill. I felt very adult buying the grill. Somehow I felt like buying a gas grill for my house conferred upon me Grown Up status. I bought some wine glasses a month or so ago and felt similarly, but the grill really did it.
It’s strange to me - I got married at 25, moved across the country with my (now ex-)husband, away from my family and my hometown where I was born and raised, got divorced, moved back home, got my first real job all on my own, I pay my bills… But it sort of takes buying wine glasses and a grill to make me sit back, think, and say to myself, “Geez, Cristina. You’re a big girl now.” And I am. Getting married and living away from my mother never made me feel like an adult. Even getting divorced and turning 30 didn’t really do it. It’s ridiculous little things like buying a damn grill that make me feel grown up. It’s really weird.
Maybe it has something to do with life not really changing much, despite how much it changes. (If that makes any sense.) What I mean is - When you’re younger you sort of figure you’ll grow up and stop having to deal with relationship issues and insecurity and other drama-type stuff. You think you’ll be an adult with a great life and you’ll sit around and talk about interesting things and that you’ll be so clever and everything will be great. Then you start growing up and realise that life is pretty much the same. Sure you can drink and you don’t live with your parents anymore, but you’re still pretty much the same person you were before. You still worry about the same stuff. Relationships are still hard and complicated. Bad things happen and make us feel crappy a lot of the time.
But then I buy a grill and start to think about how, sure, life is still hard and things aren’t perfect, but, damn it, I have a job I like, friends and family I love, a nice car, a great apartment, I just went on a two-week European vacation, I bought some damn wine glasses, a swanky plastic stump, and a gas grill - Life isn’t half bad. And, you know, this is all there is. All I can do is try to surround myself with good people whom I care about, stuff I like, and experience new things that make me happy and hope to make the best of it.
In that spirit, I think I’m going to have a little party at my house soon and break in my new grill with people I like.
May 21, 2008 at 11:15 pm · Filed under Work
Again, I can’t win anything, but, you know, I have to support my company. And the contest is lots of fun. So many super-adorable girls have entered. It’s great.
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Vote On My Photo!
Party Time
by cristina
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May 20, 2008 at 11:27 pm · Filed under Moi, TMI, The Ladies
As you can tell by the title and photo, this post is going to be about birth control, so bail out now if you don’t want to read about it.
So, I’ve been something of a moody bitch for the past five days or so (apologies all around, truly). What do I have to blame for this? “The Pill,” methinks.
Now, of course, the ideal is to find a pill (or whatever else, but I’m going to talk about the pill because that’s where my personal experience lies) that gives you little to no side effects. However, getting to that point is tough. Over the years I’ve tried, with varying levels of success and side effects, four different brands of pills with four different combinations and types of hormones. Tomorrow I take the final active pill of the first pack of brand number four (Trivora, the generic of Triphasil). Up until the past few days I was thinking this might be the brand for me. I’ve been a little sleepy and slightly hungrier since I started taking them, but none of the other side effects were present up until recently. About halfway into the last set of pills in the pack, which last for 10 of the 21 days, I started to notice the emotional impact. It’s not that I’m crying at the drop of a hat (as I did with other pills), but small things that might ordinarily bother me a little bit seem to be hitting me harder than they should, causing me to be a little moody. So, not fun for me or anyone else, but, it’s absolutely a good thing to be aware of.
See, the thing is, despite all the stupid commercials for various pills we have to sit through, and in spite of the fact that 11.6 million women in the US alone (that’s 19% of women 15-44) are on hormonal birth control, people don’t really talk about the subject. I think because the pill truly is a wonderful thing, that so many of us are grateful to have the option of taking, there’s the idea that we should just sort of suck it up and deal with the side effects. There’s also the idea that to talk about the pill openly is to talk about sex. Scandalous!
I also think because this is something women alone have to deal with (at least insofar as we’re the ones who have to take the hormones and deal first-hand with all that entails) it’s marginalized. … I had a short Feminist rant here, but, as valid as I think it is, it’s not really what I want this entry to be about, so I’m leaving it out.
So, back to me. Now, all things considered, Trivora is going well for me. “They” say to give a pill 1-3 months to see how your body reacts and adjusts to the hormones. Some pills have made me feel so dreadful that I gave up on them before a month was even over. Despite the craptastic last few days, I’m going to keep going with them. I mean, it’s not ideal as it stands, but five days or so of being a little moody each month isn’t terrible. I think some B-vitamins could help with the sleepiness, as the pill can interfere with B-vitamin absorption, so I’m going to try that too and hope things do level out after a couple months. If I’m still dealing with some moodiness, then I’ll decide whether it’s an acceptable side effect for me, all other things considered, I guess.
I think the thing is to be aware of how the pills affect you. I’ve tried to be really cognizant about how each combination of hormones has impacted me the past few weeks (as the brand name suggests, the levels change three times throughout the month). It’s something millions of us have to deal with, and our doctors are (at least they should) be there to help us find the medicine that works best for us, but we’re the only ones who know our own bodies and what is and isn’t normal for us. Annoyingly, it’s basically a trial and error thing and no one pill is going to affect all women in the same way. If only it were that easy, right?
April 30, 2008 at 9:17 pm · Filed under Work
I can’t win because I work for the company, but check out our rockin’ spring dress contest.
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Vote On My Photo!
Ruffled Dress
by cristina
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April 2, 2008 at 9:25 pm · Filed under Moi, The Ladies, Travel
So, for all the talk in the world about the ladies needing to be young to be hot and all that crap, I’ve been feeling especially foxy lately. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I’m probably the happiest with my physical appearance that I’ve ever been. I swear I’m way better looking today, at the advanced age of 30, than I was five or ten years ago. I’ve never thought I was super-good-looking and I still don’t, I guess. I’ve always considered myself fairly average - The high end of average, I suppose, but average…which I probably am (and that’s fine). There are things about my body and face I don’t love, but, on the whole, things sort of all work together. Anyway, I don’t know what it is. If it’s just a matter of greater acceptance of myself because I’m older and more sensible about these matters or if I’ve actually gotten hotter (or maybe both - ha!), but it’s nice. Other than thinking, “Damn, I look hot today,” I don’t really spend time thinking about how I look. No time spent beating myself up for not being ______ enough or wishing I had a different ______. So, go me! Heh.
On a related-in-my-mind note, I’ve had kind of a crappy past six months or so, but I’m feeling pretty good these days. I think my vacation really helped me. I can’t exactly pinpoint what changed for me during those two weeks (and the month since I’ve been back) but I feel differently than I did before I left. I don’t know…I just feel comfortable in my own skin and all sorts of other good things…like a general contentedness with my life (and you sure as hell can’t beat that, even if things aren’t exactly as you wish them to be).
Maybe turning 30 is like magic.
March 23, 2008 at 2:14 pm · Filed under Moi, Travel
I know, I know. I haven’t updated in a million years. That’s how it tends to go with me and blogs. I always start up with the best intentions but then I start realising my life is fairly uninteresting. That and laziness.
Anyway, as I mentioned I was going to do in my last post, I went to Ireland. It was fantastic. I also spent three-and-a-half days in Paris. My original plan was to travel around most of Ireland but I ended up basically just staying in Dublin. Long story short, a trip in February, while nice for the cheap flight, isn’t ideal for small-town visiting. Also, if you go to Paris in February, many places will be closed for renovations or be covered in scaffolding, etc.
Anyway, Dublin is grand. I’m not sure why I liked it so much. I mean, it’s just a city. … I think part of it is me realising I miss living in a city where you can walk about, not have to drive, where places are open past 10pm, and so on. That and Dublin just has a really nice vibe to it. That’s the bit that’s indescribable but what really makes it appealing. So, you’ll just have to trust me - Dublin is really nice. I need to find out if Hearst has a Dublin office and would love to have me work there. Can’t we set up a Dublin branch of Kaboodle? I’m only half-kidding. :)
Anyway, my trip was wonderful. I met some lovely people, saw some incredible sights (I’m generally not fazed by that sort of thing, but I really did have a couple of, “Holy crap, I’m in Paris!” moments, even though I wasn’t overly fond of Paris on the whole), had a whole lot of booze, and just felt really good and happy and Cristina-tastic for two weeks. Now I’m dying to go on vacation again. Sadly, I burned through my two weeks of vacation on this trip so I have to wait until next year.
That being said, as much as I’d love to visit Moscow and Petersburg next, I discovered very quickly in Paris that being somewhere where you can’t speak the language is very isolating. I hadn’t really heard of that particular potential side-effect of travel. It hit me pretty quickly and was really tough, even though I was only in Paris for three days. I mean, it was simple enough to figure out train tickets and platforms and all that (I think having lived in NYC and being accustomed to navigating subways and maps was a huge help on that front) and I know enough super-duper basic French to order a croissant and cup of coffee, but it’s just a strange feeling. The most amusing/embarrassing part to me was when I’d go in places and say, “Bonjour,” and then shopkeepers would start speaking French to me. They were met with a deer-in-the-headlights stare and, like a reflex, “Sorry…” would come out of my mouth. So, lesson learned - My French accent when I say, “Bonjour,” is pretty good. When I said anything else, people started speaking English to me. Heh. So, next time I think I’ll get some Rosetta Stone discs and try to learn more of the language before I go on holiday.
Also, I really miss Irish accents. I think that’s part of the reason I’ve been listening to The Frames so much lately. Ha, ha!
Anyway, I took a ton of photos (all of which can be seen here), but here are some of my favourites…
January 13, 2008 at 10:26 pm · Filed under Hockey, Moi, Travel
So, I’m going to Ireland in a month. Other than a dinner reservation at Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant at the Ritz-Carlton outside of Dublin, I have no firms plans as of yet. I’m not even sure I’m going to stay in Ireland the whole two weeks. My Rick Steves books should be coming tomorrow so I guess I’ll start firming things up a bit more. Not too much, though, I suspect. It’s the off-season so I doubt I’ll have trouble finding a place to stay, so I’m not too worried.
Other than my brief trips to the Great White North, I’ve never been outside the US. And I’ve certainly never traveled for two weeks by myself. I’m looking forward to it, though. I have no issues with doing things by myself and I’ve wanted to visit Ireland for ages, so I’m rather looking forward. I’m a little nervous about making my first big trip solo, but it’s an English-speaking country so I don’t imagine I’ll have any trouble.
I do sort of wonder if I’ll get lonely at any point…and I wonder how much I’ll miss the interweb. I do plan on stopping in to use it when I can, though. As much as I’d like to say I’d be fine without access for two weeks (and I’m sure I would be), I think I’ll miss having at least occasional contact with my friends and family. So, everyone be sure to still send me silly e-mails and things.
I’m taking the trip in February in particular because the Sharks are going on a two-week road trip. Ha! Planning my vacation around my season tickets. I’m bummed I’m going to miss all the games on telly, though. See, another reason I have to get online when I can. I need to make sure my boys are doing well on their road trip. Heh. I’m also taking this trip, the more I think about it, as a 30th birthday present to myself. I’m coming home six days before The Big 3-0. I’m looking forward to the birthday more and more, actually. I need to plan out some fun birthday weekend stuff too. Woo!
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