Appreciate the Little Things in Life

Did You Know?

I am horribly petrified of getting salmonella or food poisoning. But only when I cook food for myself. Any piece of chicken you have at my house will be on the dry side. Don’t even bother to ask for a rare steak. It won’t happen. And every piece of meat will have cut marks to make sure it’s not still raw. I even smell the milk every time before I use it. Why am I so worried I’ll get a big swig of sour lumpy, milk?? I mean, it takes weeks for milk to go that bad, right?

The funny thing is I don’t know why I have this fear. I have never been sick by any type of food. And if anyone else cooks it, from a stranger in a restaurant to my own mother, I don’t worry. Yes I look at my food but after that I don’t give it another thought.

Weird, I know.

It's That Time of Year Again!

Hello everyone,

Five years ago I began fundraising/walking with my mentor Karen Watt after her battle with Stage 1 Breast Cancer ended in victory on 5/5/05. Together we started our Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk with the American Cancer society. This will mark our sixth year of apple walks together! Together we have risen over $97,000 towards finding a cure!!

Now, our Sixth annual Making Strides walk is right around the corner! Please join us on October 17th at Watt Farms Country Market as we walk the apple orchards in support of finding a cure. I look forward to anyone who can participate, as this is a cause very dear to my heart.

I hope you will support my efforts by making a donation using my personal online fundraising page. It's safe and simple. All you have to do is click the link below and follow the few easy steps.

Hope starts one dollar at a time. Hope starts with me. And hope can start with you. Thank you in advance for any support you may be able to offer.

Click here to visit my personal page.

Feeling Pretty Lucky

Today I feel very fortunate. Not only do I feel lucky every. single. day. to have my new job and to be a part of these life changing experiences, but I am also feel very lucky for certain "perks" that have come my way. Yesterday all of us newbies were given brand new SKM laptop bags... personalized with our initials!!


Then today we were given brand new, HUGE flat screens! Which is a huge upgrade from a small laptop screen!

I'm so thankful and can't believe how it makes me smile! I hope this feeling lasts f.o.r.e.v.e.r.

World Gym Pictures

I totally forgot I took pictures of my new gym the other day! Silly me!!

This one shows the red aerobics room/basketball court all the way on the back wall. The red wall to the right is the spinning room, and to the right of the ladder (not shown) is a private women's workout room!

Inside the blue walls are most of the free weights. You can see the floor is covered with machines. To the right of where I'm standing taking the photo are the locker rooms and another room with tanning beds.

In this photo you can see some of the cardio equipment, however the AMT's are not shown. Note the little TV's on the wall for just the front row to use! The larger TV's are for everyone else.


You can see from the photos they are still finishing up the last of the preparation process to open next week. A professional cleaner is coming this weekend to spruce everything up and then it will be go time!!!

White After Labor Day?

This year I bought myself a (cheap) white watch. I love it and want to wear it all season long! However, being an old soul at heart, I have struggled with wearing it after Labor Day. Convinced accessories don't apply to the rule, I went on a Google hunt to find the truth! I stumbled upon this article that I think you may find interesting on how the whole white dilemma came about. Enjoy!

The post–Labor Day moratorium on white clothing and accessories has long ranked among etiquette hard-liners' most sacred rules. As punishment for breaking it in the 1994 movie Serial Mom, for instance, Patty Hearst's character was murdered by a punctilious psychopath. But ask your average etiquette expert how that rule came to be, and chances are that even she couldn't explain it. So why aren't we supposed to wear white after Labor Day?
One common explanation is practical. For centuries, wearing white in the summer was simply a way to stay cool — like changing your dinner menu or putting slipcovers on the furniture. "Not only was there no air-conditioning, but people did not go around in T shirts and halter tops. They wore what we would now consider fairly formal clothes," says Judith Martin, better known as etiquette columnist Miss Manners. "And white is of a lighter weight."

But beating the heat became fashionable in the early to mid-20th century, says Charlie Scheips, author of American Fashion. "All the magazines and tastemakers were centered in big cities, usually in northern climates that had seasons," he notes. In the hot summer months, white clothing kept New York fashion editors cool. But facing, say, heavy fall rain, they might not have been inclined to risk sullying white ensembles with mud — and that sensibility was reflected in the glossy pages of Harper's Bazaar and Vogue, which set the tone for the country.
This is all sound logic, to be sure — but that's exactly why it may be wrong. "Very rarely is there actually a functional reason for a fashion rule," notes Valerie Steele, director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. True enough: it's hard to think of a workaday downside to pairing your black shoes with a brown belt.

Instead, other historians speculate, the origin of the no-white-after–Labor Day rule may be symbolic. In the early 20th century, white was the uniform of choice for Americans well-to-do enough to decamp from their city digs to warmer climes for months at a time: light summer clothing provided a pleasing contrast to drabber urban life. "If you look at any photograph of any city in America in the 1930s, you'll see people in dark clothes," says Scheips, many scurrying to their jobs. By contrast, he adds, the white linen suits and Panama hats at snooty resorts were "a look of leisure."
Labor Day, celebrated in the U.S. on the first Monday of September, marked the traditional end of summer; the well-heeled vacationers would stow their summer duds and dust off their heavier, darker-colored fall clothing. "There used to be a much clearer sense of re-entry," says Steele. "You're back in the city, back at school, back doing whatever you're doing in the fall — and so you have a new wardrobe."

By the 1950s, as the middle class expanded, the custom had calcified into a hard-and-fast rule. Along with a slew of commands about salad plates and fish forks, the no-whites dictum provided old-money élites with a bulwark against the upwardly mobile. But such mores were propagated by aspirants too: those savvy enough to learn all the rules increased their odds of earning a ticket into polite society. "It [was] insiders trying to keep other people out," says Steele, "and outsiders trying to climb in by proving they know the rules."

Some etiquette buffs don't buy this explanation, however. "There are always people who want to attribute everything in etiquette to snobbery," protests Martin. "There were many little rules that people did dream up in order to annoy those from whom they wished to disassociate themselves. But I do not believe this is one of them."

Whatever its origin, the Labor Day rule has perennially met with resistance from high-fashion quarters. As far back as the 1920s, Coco Chanel made white a year-round staple. "It was a permanent part of her wardrobe," says Bronwyn Cosgrave, author of The Complete History of Costume & Fashion: From Ancient Egypt to the Present Day. The trend is embraced with equal vigor by today's fashion élites, Cosgrave notes — from Marion Cotillard accepting her 2008 Academy Award in a mermaid-inspired cream dress to Michelle Obama dancing the inaugural balls away in a snowy floor-length gown. Fashion rules are meant to be broken by those who can pull it off, notes Cosgrave, and white "looks really fresh when people aren't expecting it."

PS - I'm pretty sure I will be wearing my watch this winter as it's not exactly white pants or a white dress. To me accessories are exception to the rule!

Sometimes all it Takes is a Change of Scenery

Lately I cannot get myself motivated to go to the gym. There once was a time when I would go every day, for two hours, without fail. Now, I can barely make myself go a few times a week. And even that is usually followed by a hiatus of some sort. It’s a constant internal battle.

Yesterday I took a new step towards breaking out of this routine: I enrolled at the brand new World Gym in Cheektowaga. It’s so new the doors aren’t even open to the public until next week! Closer to my work than my current gym, I think it will be easier to stay committed. And I signed up with my girlfriend! New gym buddies are always a plus!

I’m really pumped to get in there and start working out. They have a huge layout of cardio equipment including the new Adaptive Motion Trainer (AMT)!! This machine is made to move more with your natural body movement than a restricted back and forth motion. It’s an Elliptical, Treadmill and Stairmaster all in it! And I’m pretty sure each piece has its own built in TV as well as multiple TVs on the walls.

I can’t wait until they open their doors next week to try everything out! Another new perk is their spinning classes! I have never tried one before and it’s at the top of my list! There is a basketball court that doubles as the aerobics room and I hope they will have all my favorites! OH, and the sales guy made sure to point out their complimentary shampoo and body wash in their lockers rooms as well. SCORE!

Sometimes all it takes is a change of scenery to get you excited and motivated. There will be new faces, new classes, and new routines. Bring on the sweat!!!

Happiness Instead

Tonight I wrote a very long blog for you that did not save. Instead of cursing up a storm, I will go to bed and try to recreate it tomorrow...

Instead I leave you with this...


And speaking of happiness, please don't forget to check out my little girl as happy as can be with her "first kill."

Happy Labor Day!

Fall Preview

At work yesterday we all gathered in the psycho deli (our kitchen for those of you who work at boring places lol) and were privileged to watch the fall lineup for channels ABC, CBS, NBS, FOX & CW. Here are my top recommendations of shows I will definitely watch the first few episodes.

CBS:
$#*! My Dad Says: Based off the Twitter sensation and starring William Shatner as the dad. It seems like verbal spew will just be coming out of his mouth 24/7! Funny!

The Defenders: with Jerry O’Connell and Jim Belushi – another lawyer drama set in Las Vegas, but Jerry and Jim looked to be quite funny together!

ABC:
Better Together – I don’t remember much about this one but circled it to watch the first few episodes! LOL I believe a couple breaks up at the altar but then still have all the same friends and continually run into one another.

My Generation - "My Generation" is a faux-documentary about a group of high school students and where they are in their lives 10 years after they graduated”

No Ordinary Family – A family of 5 survives a plane crash in some unordinary water that they realize later has given them special powers.

Mr. Sunshine – Matthew Perry stars as the manager of a second rate San Diego sports arena, under his highly erratic boss

NBC:
The Event – “The American Conspiracy Thriller” The Event follows Sean Walker, a man who, while investigating the mysterious disappearance of his fiancée, ends up unraveling the biggest cover-up in U.S. history; a cover-up which shapes the very core of mankind as a whole, whose implications are life changing.

Undercovers: This one reminded me of True Lies. A married couple turned civilians, are recruited back to their previous lives as agents. It seems to have great potential to thrill and excite, and I even hope they go a little “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” on each other! LOL

Outsourced – This show looked HYSTERICAL!! Kind of your next Office of Modern Family series. When a call center is outsourced to Inda, an American manager must go manage this group of misfits. C’mon, who doesn’t love comedies with India accents and jokes!?

School Pride – An Extreme Home Makeover type of show but instead they are renovating and building schools. The preview made me tear up so it will definitely be a tear-jerker just like Extreme Home Makeover!

We all did ballots to see which show would get cancelled first, which show would be the best rated drama and which would be the best rated Comedy. I picked Detroit 1-8-7 for first to get cancelled, The Event for Best Drama and Outsourced for Best Comedy! :o) We shall see!

Other we watched that I was either unimpressed or uninterested by included: Mike & Molly, Hawaii 5-0, Blue Bloods (except I do think it has Donnie Wahlberg in it!), Detroit 17, The Whole Truth, Chase, Law & Order: LA, Outlaw, Raising Hope, Running Wilde (although it does star Keri Russell). I was iffy on Hellcats and Nikita, both on the CW. We’ll have to see about those two.

Fall is coming soon if we’re talking about new show premiers!!