I Have Decided That:

"Better Than" by John Butler Trio is the official song of my summer.

It shall be played at all outdoor events and in the car with windows down and system up on all sunny days.

No arguments. It's not a discussion.

That is all.

What I Learned This Weekend

• CherryRide is so my monkey boy. DANCE MONKEY BOY DANCE!
• The White Horse in Post Alley is super awesome, even if they don't have a single drink on tap.
• I have little teeth. Or maybe I don't.
• The parking fairy is always with Kjersti.
• If you yell out "BOSTON BITCHES!!" in a bar in Seattle, someone will always holler back.
• Three girls can drink a lot more wine in a single day than they thought they could. In fact, they can drink a ridic amount.
• "Ridic" is the new ReckenRoll word of the summer. As is "bitches."
• I thought I had been wine tasting in Yakima but apparently I had really been wine tasting in Zillah.
• Always bring your Rattlesnake Trail passport. It never expires!
• Brea + Jo = Good times. Good times.
• The Yellow Church in Ellensburg serves up some tasty vittles at a very right price.
• The Tav NEVER lets you down.

SPOTTED IN SEATTLE

The CherryRide.

Mothers, LOCK UP YOUR SONS!!!

Biting the Bullet

Well, kids, after months of thinking, debating, and weighing my commitment levels today I took a big step.

I bit the bullet and copped out an outrageous amount of money to enroll in a GMAT prep course.
That's right - the ReckenRoll is heading back to school.**

Class starts next Tuesday and I am actually excited to go (which surprised me). In anticipation, I took some practice questions online and wow. Let me just say, I need as much help as I can get.

Shocking, I know.

I mean, I consider myself to be relatively competent with the written word and when it comes to math, I am usually the one who sorts out the bill in a group dinner situation. But these test questions reminded me just how far I've slipped since my hay days of the 11th grade.

Do you know how to figure out surface area of a cube if the volume is 27? I didn't. I guessed. I was wrong. It's weird to me that the problems all involve math that I KNOW I should know...like we all learned it somewhere, once, about a million years ago but haven't seen since the 8th grade. Seriously. When was the last time you used math beyond basic percentages? It's kinda like when you watch Jeopardy and there are those questions that you KNOW you studied in school but now have no idea.

It's clearly time for a brush up.

And hey, who knows, maybe there will be some cute pre-MBA future millionaire type who needs a study buddy. Who am I to fight fate?

So wish me luck kids. In the tradition of CherryRide working his way through medical miracles, I'll keep you all well posted on progress!

**Actually, the GMAT score will determine if she's heading back to school or not.

What I Learned This Weekend

• When the Barefoot Contessa says to bake the cookies on parchment paper, you REALLY SHOULD bake the cookies on parchment paper.
• Mangled coconut macaroons still taste awesome.
• I am an excellent cook. Seriously.
• I can still rally to leave the house after 10 pm on weekend night...but I will still be home in bed about 2 hours later.
• I spend a lot of time with my own demographic. Go figure.
• Free beer always tastes better.
• It can snow in Seattle in April . What happened to global warming?

What I Learned on Monday After Reading My Weekend List:

• I had a damn boring weekend.

Friday Moment of Zen

Sticking with the little decisions theme, I gotta say, this guy made a bad one. But the thing I love is the professionalism. The fact that he closes the piece and signs off is, in a word, AWESOME.

Happy Friday Kids!!

It's the Little Things

You've already made hundreds of decisions today.

Starting with deciding to get out of bed to how long you're going to brush your teeth to whether to drive 25 or 28 mph in your neighborhood. The decision about what way to go to work, the decision about how many cups of coffee, the decision about whether to keep working on that spreadsheet or to read this blog.

We all make a lot of decisions - sometimes without even knowing it.

This morning, my decisions had me leaving the house at 9 am. My upstairs neighbor Michelle, and her 2 kids did the same. It's not unusual for us to walk out around the same time, but it doesn't always happen. As I was crossing the street to get into my car, I had to lean in to my driver side door to let a mercedes squeeze past. I had made the decision to cross in front and make him wait for me to cross. It's an urban residential neighborhood - houses with yards, not apartments - but not many people have driveways so we all park on the street and when both sides have parked cars, only one car at a time can get through.

I get in my car, check the rearview mirror and see the exact moment of impact between the mercedes and a motorcycle that was crossing the intersection.

I see the motorcycle driver fly through the air.

I am in shock. Did I just see that?

I look at Michelle, who has her 3 year old and 10 year old girls in tow, and in shock ourselves, we silently agree on the decision to be made. She grabs her phone and stays put and I run down half a block in heels to the scene where the motorcycle driver is (thank god) alive and standing there in a daze.

The bike is trashed. There is windshield glass and car parts everywhere. Some fluid is leaking and smoke. He is in socks - his shoes have been knocked clean off - one of theme is 1/2 up the street the other direction. He's holding his arm which is either broken or dislocated or both and when he takes off his helmet (before I can suggest that he doesnt) there is blood on his face from a small cut.

THANK GOD for helmets.

He walks towards me and I make him stop and sit down. Then I have to make him keep sitting down. I yell to Michelle, we need a medic too - not just the police. He wants to make phone calls but his phone is broken. He was just test driving the motorcycle. Can I call them for him? Another neighbor who just arrived says she'll call. I'm afraid to leave him alone, he'll get up again.

The driver of the mercedes comes walking up the street on his mobile phone. He seems fine. He's also calling 911. He was driving his daughter and her friend to school. They were in the backseat where the impact happened. The motorcycle T-boned their car. There is no stop sign. He made the decision to go. The motorcycle made the decision to trust there was a stop the other way.

The car passengers all appear to be fine but the girls have glass from the windshield in their hair. The girls (also about 10 yrs old) know Michelle's daughter. The dad asks if Michelle can take them to school. The girls are worried about being late.

Clearly no one involved in this accident is thinking clearly.

The police and medics arrived within 3-5 minutes (it was pretty amazing actually). The cycle driver was taken away on a board with a neck brace. I overheard the medic telling the dad he was going to HAVE TO to take the girls with him to get checked out at the hospital. Specifically, the one that was on the impact side.

And all I could think about on the way to work afterwards was the decisions that everyone involved had made that day...that life...to be in that spot at that moment. If I hadn't made the mercedes slow down to pass me, he would have been safely through that intersection. If some city planner had ever decided to put a stop sign at that intersection, one of the drivers would have stopped. If the dad had the girls out of the house 2 minutes earlier. If the cycle driver had been 30 seconds later. You can extrapolate back for generations of decisions if you try - all leading up to that moment of impact.

It's the little decisions we make that make the big ones happen, kids. The little ones.

Sadcakes - it's totally famous!

So I was googling myself today (don't judge - you've all done it) and a link took me to a blog I have never read, to a person I have never met, who is using Sadcakes (actually there were 2 cases of this) and it's getting credited back to me thanks to Julie Gong.

I love the Internets!!!

This totally made my day!

What I Learned This Weekend

• It is possible to sit on the couch and play Packrat for 6 hours on a Friday night. I would think this made me a loser, but Cherry was blogging and reading blogs at 8 pm on Saturday night, so I don't feel so bad.
• It is also possible to walk Green Lake twice in one day - especially when it's sunny out - which it rarely has been in Seattle. You've got to get your Vitamin D when you can.
• Washing your car at one of those drive in bays, instead of going through the car wash, counts as a workout (Yes, I am super out of shape, thanks for asking). My car is real pretty when it's clean.
• The kind of lame book, "The Memory Keepers Daughter" made for a kind of lame movie as well. Yes, it was on Oxygen but it had big stars so I gave it a shot. Meh.
• From this point forward, I will always call a Subaru a Lesbaru. That is just too funny.
• If I hit my scary age, Gancer is willing to donate DNA to father my children (and I think any other single female out there). I have not yet decided if this is good news or not but it's oddly reassuring.
• Even 9er will eventually bend to the all mighty power of Facebook.
• And finally, even when you are mutually agreed and there are no hard feelings and people are still friendly, it sucks being single again. The very idea makes me tired.

Friday Clip of the Week

And now for your viewing pleasure, your weekly moment of Zen...

Am I Getting Old?

Actual conversation had this weekend in the car :

ME: "You know, I've found that I am listening to The Mountain and JACK a lot more often these days. They've been playing really good music lately."

K: "Um, no, they are playing the same music we're just getting old and don't like the younger stations anymore"

ME: "No we're NOT! I still have KISS programmed in..........but it does drive me crazy that all they play is Chris Brown and Rhianna over and over and over and over. I can't take it."

K: "They're dating you know and they sing that song together."

ME: "Yeah, that makes it even more annoying. It's like every song is by them and SO damn repetitive. Oh, and I what I really hate is that Love in the Club* song! Ugh. I have to flip."

K: "Yeah, you're old."

(My attempt at Perez Hilton style blogging)

* yes, I know Love in the Club is by Usher but they still play it on KISS a lot and it still annoys the crap out of me,

Paris Je T'aime

"Sitting there, alone in a foreign country, far from my job and everyone I know, a feeling came over me. It was like remembering something I'd never known before or had always been waiting for, but I didn't know what. Maybe it was something I'd forgotten or something I've been missing all my life. All I can say is that I felt, at the same time, joy and sadness. But not too much sadness, because I felt alive. Yes, alive. That was the moment I fell in love with Paris. And I felt Paris fall in love with me."

At the recommendation of a coworker, I rented Paris Je T'aime last weekend.

Eighteen directors (like the Cohen Brothers, Wes Craven, Gus van Zant, and Olivier Assayas) were each assigned on of the 18 Arrondissements (neighborhoods) of Paris. They had 5 minute of film time to tell a story about love in that neighborhood. Some stories are in English, some stories are in French, some stories need no words. Cast members include Gena Rowlands, Bob Hoskins, Elijah Wood, Natalie Portman, Juliet Binoche, Maggie Gyllenhaall, Nick Nolte, Willem Dafoe, Natalie Richardson, Emily Mortimer...it goes on and on.

The trailer doesn't do it justice but when you do rent it, I highly suggest you watch the behind the scenes bits about the making of the movie and the experiences they all had. If you've ever been to Paris, it's like a journey back to the places you saw and experienced and you'll fall in love with Paris all over again.

Going Green: I hate plastic bags.

Ever since I started learning about how bad they are for the environment, plastic bags have become my number one source of urban yuppie guilt. More than driving my non-hybrid car. More than drinking bottled water...it's plastic bags that irk me. Some facts:

• It takes 1000 years for plastic bags to break down. As polyethylene breaks down, toxic substances leach into the soil and enter the food chain
• Americans throw away approximately 100 billion plastic bags per year.
• Approximately 1 billion seabirds and mammals die per year by ingesting plastic bags
• In addition, 100,000 marine mammals die yearly by eating plastic bags because plastic bags are often mistaken as food by marine mammals. These animals suffer a painful death, the plastic wraps around their intestines or they choke to death
• Plastic bags are carried by the wind into forests, ponds, rivers, and lakes.
• I am sick of looking at them everywhere - aren't you?

ONE THOUSAND YEARS people!!! That means that EVERY plastic bag you have EVER USED in your ENTIRE LIFE is still out there somewhere (even if some poor seal or sea turtle already choked to death on it, it's STILL out there. The body just decomposes around it. Yuck.) Every time you took an extra bag, or took 2 bags when you really only needed one, you potentially killed Flipper.

Think about THAT.

Being the lazy mooch that I am, I started out small, insisting I didn't need a bag for my pack of gum. Most store clerks looked at my like I was from Mars. "No bag? Are you sure?" When I got up to not taking a bag for up to 4 or 5 items (you're just going to your car, you can carry 4 items people!), I thought they might call the nuthouse. "Um, Steve, we got a gal on checkout 5 who isn't taking a bag for her handful of items." "Is she sober? I dunno."

And when I did have lots of items, I would insist on all in one bag and I never allowed for the dreadful double bag. I mean seriously, what is up with the grocery stores insisting on giving you like 30 bags for your 2 items? "Let me double bag those 2 apples and cheese for you, Miss, wouldn't want the apples to get bruised."

But for some reason, I was resisting buying one of those reusable bags. I don't know why. Maybe I was afraid I would be mistaken for an unshaven hippy toting my canvas bags, buying organic veg, and drinking my Fairtrade coffee out of my reusable ceramic mug. I was guilty, yes, but at least I wasn't INCONVENIENCED. Remembering that bag would be hard. Who needs that kind of trouble?

That is, until yesterday, when I broke down and spent the $.99 to buy a reusable bag. Let me tell you, I slept like a baby that night. The weight of the world was lifted from my shoulders. And so far, it's easier than you think. Take the groceries into the house, put bag by door, put bag back into car for next time.

Easy peezy.

I was also pleasantly surprised to see in the PI the next day that Seattle could impose a 20-cent-per-bag "green fee" and outlaw foam food containers next year. Yeah! I mean, shoot, if even China is doing it...

So Go Green people! If for no other reason than so that you don't have to keep that ever growing collection of plastic bags under the sink anymore.

Call Me a Spoil Sport

But I seriously am not a fan of April Fool's Day.

For one thing, as a PR person in the tech industry, every year we have to deal with all kinds of bogus requests thanks to "funny" press releases...and until someone remembers the date, it can cause a lot of wasted time and effort trying to figure out what was going on. But the tech guys like to take it to new levels (see Google today). It's answering one bogus question after another all day, "No, no, it's really not true - just look at the calendar date."

For another, it's really a day about trying to make someone feel stupid. "I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU FELL FOR THAT!! HAHAHAHA!"

That's just mean!

So, on that note, what's the best April Fool's you had today? :-)