Finish line fail (but a Tour and Maggiano's)
Monday, August 31, 2009 at 11:57AM Today is the last day of the August NaBloPoMo... AND I DIDN'T GET TO POST YESTERDAY!!! I missed the penultimate day. AUGH!
This is what happens when life happens. We left the house at 8am yesterday and didn't get home until after midnight.
Source: bedzine.com
Oh well. Can't win 'em all.
Augh, it's so painful for me to say that. I always want to win.
As a consolation, however, I can list TWO completed 101 in 1001 items!
33. Get a smartphone.
I am a fan of Verizon's service (meaning I never have lost or dropped calls - their customer service can lack at times) and so I've been with them for years and my most recent "New Every Two" was up this past Saturday. So, Saturday afternoon, I strolled into my local VZ store and upgraded to the Blackberry Tour.
So this, of course, means that I could have posted to my blog from Mike & Tracy's house yesterday... but here's the thing - I HATE when people use their cellphones or smartphones when they're hanging out with their friends. It drives me absolutely bonkers. Okay, so maybe your phone goes off and you get a text so you check it. Fine. Maybe you even take 10 seconds to respond to the text. Fine, I'll give you that. But it seems to me that a lot of people just take the phone out without any sort of notification, just to make sure they haven't missed something anyway. Or they carry on lengthy text conversations over the course of a dinner or other similar time with friends. Or they sit and web surf or play with apps, which to me screams, "Hi, you all aren't entertaining or interesting enough for me so I'm just going to keep to myself over here, thanks." I find it super insulting. (So you can imagine the discussions when the hubby, whose family has no cell phone dinner policy, wants to keep his phone on the table when we're eating, at home or out. Ugh.)
So far I love this phone a lot but am just wrestling with the notifications. I ONLY want the phone to buzz or beep/ring when 1 - I get a phone call or 2 - I get a text or picture message. THAT'S IT. Right now it's also buzzing/beeping when I get email or Facebook updates, both of which I have set to NO notifications. But for some reason, these notifications go both to the email/FB folders AND to some catch-all messages folder that sees them as texts and then cheerily notifies me that they've arrived.
IT ... IS ... DRIVING ... ME ... BONKERS! I have not yet had time today to research how to fix it, but am hoping to have time to do so tonight.
Then there's...
96. Try five new restaurants. (4/5)
For Danielle's birthday, we went to Maggiano's Little Italy. I am always wary of chain restaurants and tend to be extra critical of them because I have this thing about mass-produced/replicated food and recipes. (Don't you?) But I LOVE me some Italian food, so I wasn't worried so much this time - and I wasn't disappointed.
The hubby and I split their bruschetta as an appetizer and hoooolyyyy YUM! I currently have a web page open where I am researching how to make that myself.
Next to me right now I have my leftover Chicken Pesto Linguine. MMmmm... I LOVE pesto and was really in the mood for chicken, so this hit the spot. It has just the right touch of pesto and the pesto is oil based, not cream based like I've seen in other places (ewww, gag). The portion I got was definitely enough for two meals (and it was the half portion - they do family style there), maybe even three if I had a nice salad to go with it today (I wish).
For Danielle (of course), we got a birthday dessert sampler with cheesecake, pound cake, and creme brulee that was super yum and totally devoured in five minutes (among nine of us, mind you).
Overall, it was a pricey meal but tasty. The service was good and so was the sangria. The next time we go, though, I definitely want to do the family style thing and all choose just a few dishes between us and share.
So, on a scale of 1 to 10:
Food: 8.5
Service: 8
Decor: 9
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my phone HAS GONE OFF A DOZEN TIMES WHILE I COMPOSED THIS POST. Oh lordy, I need to get this straightened out before I lose my mind.
Reader Comments (2)
I LOVE Maggiano's!! I wish there was one closer to where we live :(
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