Natalie Dee-lightful

I found this site, and I don't know who it is, but the cartoons on it are ridiculous! Let me know which ones are your favorite!

Health by Chocolate

I read about this Health by Chocolate in a magazine at the gym. The Instant Beauty Bliss Bar is suppose to improve your skin. It also seems that they made a vitamin out of a chocolate bar.

This is great news.

Whipped Cream & Other Delights

I bought Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass' Whipped Cream & Other Delights a few weeks ago and it finally came in the mail this weekend.

Oh my gosh! This is my new favorite CD! I've been listening to it nonstop for DAYS! I first heard of it when a member from Ozo mentioned that they were performing one of the songs in the remake of this CD (Whipped Cream & Other Delights Rewhipped).

The remastered version of this 1965 album makes the music seem so fresh and they are so ON POINT that it's sick!

I have not bought the Rewhipped album yet. I want to let this one soak in for a few days/weeks...

On a related note:

Ozo is playing with Herb Alpert next Friday March 31st on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.

They'll be performing Love Potion #9 in support of Herb's new remix album "Whipped Cream & Other Delights, ReWhipped."

Late Friday Night March 31st, 12:35pm, CBS

Set your Tivo, VCRs and reminders.

Apparently they just recently played on Leno. How on earth did that get by me?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE:
This performance got cancelled! Noo!

Quest for the Best Pancakes EVAR

If there is anything I like about New Jersey it's that there are many diners and if you look hard enough, you may just find the one that has the best pancakes you've ever tasted. For me, that place is the Metro Diner in Ringoes, NJ. This diner is near my old apartment in Neshanic Station.

They have, probably hands down, the best pancakes EVAR!

Our old neighbors once claimed though that the Spinning Wheel Diner in Whitehouse Station had the best pancakes. So, in order to confirm these allegations we did indeed make a trip out (different trip, different day) to Whitehouse Station, made a left after the field of Buffalos, and found our way to the Spinning Wheel diner.

I tried their pancakes, and while it's pretty hard to mess up breakfast food (the Midtown Diner in Hoboken made an art out of messing up breakfast foods before they "caught" fire), theirs was not as toothsome as Metro's. Sorry Spinning Wheel!

Another plus about Metro is that they give you your own pot of coffee so that you never really have to wait for a refill. All coffee lovers are able to appreciate this. If you live in in that area, I would recommend driving yourself out there and trying the pancakes out in this place. If you know of any noteworthy diners closer to the Hudson County area, let me know. Another plus about diners is that, although they're pretty quick with their orders, you don't feel AS rushed to come and go as a just-as-popular place in the city makes you feel.

Another weekend highlight was our Saturday Night retreat to Comedy Village. Comedy Village is formerly known as the Boston Comedy Club, but for some reason unknown to me, they changed the name as well as a number of other things (aka people). The headliner was Judah Friedlander, the World Champion of the World. No matter what answer you would give him to a question, he would have something to say to beat you or outsmart you.

He is truly the world champion.

judah: What do you do?
student: Programmer.
judah: me too.

judah: What do YOU do?
man: I work for the government.
judah: me too.

judah: How long have you guys been dating?
Ivan: Two and a half years.
judah: Three and a half.

so sick

This weekend I got so sick for the first time since maybe the 6th grade. I think it was a virus.

I saw the documentary Corporation. Has anyone seen this? I can believe that a company illegalized the collection of rain water in a 3rd world country. Is nothing sacred anymore? I also made me want to stick to "Organic" Milk.

chilling at sea world

This weekend I saw March of the Penguins. Growing up with fun PBS channels (all 2 of them: 13 and 21 - Woo hoo! Go Marty Stauffer!!) and watching a lot of National Geographic, this was a great movie but I am surprised that it got so much hype. It's no less great a film than so many National Geographic films out there.

So are nature programs going to go main stream now that this was such a hit?

That may not be such a bad idea, considering all the work, especially the years of filming, watching, and studying/noticing patterns and making sense of what's really going on (especially in such harsh temperatures). This may be the perfect opportunity to get the public interested in actually learning something other than blowing up stuffing, learning how to be drama kings and queens, and finding new actors/actresses with lives to be nosy about (no offense).

Maybe this is the perfect opportunity for geologists/scientists to make it big and raise money for more research. Maybe this is the perfect opportunity to get kids out there interested in other fields. That would certainly help the country's declining number of smart people.

If you haven't seen this movie, you may want to see it first before reading the rest of this post.

Anyway, these poor penguins go for months without food in the freezing cold with the seasonal goal of walking 70 miles away to procreate. Many of them die and "fade away" from the harsh weather or starvation. So, with all these dead penguins lying on the ice, where do they "fade away" to? I'm thinking that they freeze and just get snowed over.

So if the ice caps were to melt, would these penguins "unfade" and litter the earth? Probably not - sea creatures would feast before it got to that point.

So, anyway, these penguins walk forever to reach the water to eat for the first time in 4-6 months and bring food back to their significant others and babies. Sometimes they don't make it. As they take turns doing this with their partners, I can't help but think, "Man, what a life."

Penguins at Sea World must be chilling!

Not only do they have nice weather, but they don't have to worry about being eaten while swimming, having their eggs/babies frozen, sending off their significant others to the corner store for food with the chance that they may not make it back, and having freezing sub-zero wind blowing on you ALL THE TIME!! The penguins at Sea World [most likely] get fed everyday, have an easier time taking care of their eggs/babies, enjoy the weather... If you tried to place that penguin back in its natural habitat, it would probably commit suicide.

Anyway, go see this movie! Penguins are SO CUTE! Look at them snuggle!!! SO NICE!

Bronx Zoo anybody?

This is my favorite movie about penguins now...more like the only movie I've ever seen about penguins. On an un-related note, my favorite movie about monekys is People of the Forest: The Chimps of Gombe. I LOVE that one!

SUCH A GOOD DOCUMENTARY!

Update: I have another question about the penguins. They showed a part of the movie where one accidentally killed their unborn child (the egg froze) and the penguin tried to steal another's egg but the other penguins wouldn't allow it and butted in (talk about morals). Do you think she tried to steal the egg because she was having separation issues or was it that she didn't want to get in trouble by the father? Afterall, the father went on a dangerous journey and all she had to do was stand there nursing the egg while starving.

Oh! And I also went to see Chicago! I loved the movie and the play, although had minor differences and went about some of the character/relationship development a little differently, was still excellent!!!

level101halloffame

Oh, I meant to post this a while ago, but I had the SS in my other computer: we made it to the level 101 hall of fame in 2 weekends - one of them being that snowed-in weekend!

Loren, I found your name in there too! =)

What's [Gross] in My Cup: wrongodongo & cataldi madonna

Today, wrongodongo was discovered to be on its way out.

It was actually pretty good while it lasted. What do you think that's suppose to be on that cartoon's head?

That's rediculous.

This one from Italy was really good but was way on its way out the next day...forgot to cork it. I blame the director of suspicious activity for not mitigating this risk of gross intoxication.

He reportedly was "way too busy" with operation power failure.

Noel-hari

Here are the final results of the Noel-harri. The Noel-hari Window is a challenging version of the Nohari Window, only it was answered by Noel alone. By describing my failings from a fixed list of adjectives, then having Noel describe me from the same list, a grid of perceived and unrecognised weaknesses can be explored as well as broken friendships.

Arena (known to self and others) childish

Blind Spot (known only to others) selfish, chaotic, panicky, smug

Façade (known only to self) timid, loud, self-satisfied, passive

Unknown (known to nobody) incompetent, intolerant, inflexible, cowardly, violent, aloof, glum, stupid, simple, insecure, irresponsible, vulgar, lethargic, withdrawn, hostile, unhappy, unhelpful, cynical, needy, unimaginative, inane, brash, cruel, ignorant, irrational, distant, boastful, blasé, imperceptive, impatient, weak, embarrassed, vacuous, unethical, insensitive, rash, dispassionate, overdramatic, dull, predictable, callous, inattentive, unreliable, cold, foolish, humourless

Dominant Traits

100% of Noel think that Shaman8933 is selfish
100% of Noel agree that Shaman8933 is childish
100% of Noel think that Shaman8933 is chaotic
100% of Noel think that Shaman8933 is panicky
100% of Noel think that Shaman8933 is smug

All Percentages

incompetent (0%) intolerant (0%) inflexible (0%) timid (0%) cowardly (0%) violent (0%) aloof (0%) glum (0%) stupid (0%) simple (0%) insecure (0%) irresponsible (0%) vulgar (0%) lethargic (0%) withdrawn (0%) hostile (0%) selfish (100%) unhappy (0%) unhelpful (0%) cynical (0%) needy (0%) unimaginative (0%) inane (0%) brash (0%) cruel (0%) ignorant (0%) irrational (0%) distant (0%) childish (100%) boastful (0%) blasé (0%) imperceptive (0%) chaotic (100%) impatient (0%) weak (0%) embarrassed (0%) loud (0%) vacuous (0%) panicky (100%) unethical (0%) insensitive (0%) self-satisfied (0%) passive (0%) smug (100%) rash (0%) dispassionate (0%) overdramatic (0%) dull (0%) predictable (0%) callous (0%) inattentive (0%) unreliable (0%) cold (0%) foolish (0%) humourless (0%)

Created by the Noel-hari Window on 8.3.2006, using data from 1 respondent, Noel.
You can make your own Noel-hari Window, or view Shaman8933's full data.

Johari/Nohari

Arena (known to self and others) silly, witty

Blind Spot (known only to others) caring, cheerful, clever, friendly, happy, independent, intelligent, kind, organised, trustworthy, warm

Façade (known only to self) calm, logical, reflective, spontaneous

Unknown (known to nobody) able, accepting, adaptable, bold, brave, complex, confident, dependable, dignified, energetic, extroverted, giving, helpful, idealistic, ingenious, introverted, knowledgeable, loving, mature, modest, nervous, observant, patient, powerful, proud, quiet, relaxed, religious, responsive, searching, self-assertive, self-conscious, sensible, sentimental, shy, sympathetic, tense, wise

Dominant Traits

100% of people think that Shaman8933 is cheerful
66% of people think that Shaman8933 is happy
66% of people agree that Shaman8933 is silly

All Percentages

able (0%) accepting (0%) adaptable (0%) bold (0%) brave (0%) calm (0%) caring (33%) cheerful (100%) clever (33%) complex (0%) confident (0%) dependable (0%) dignified (0%) energetic (0%) extroverted (0%) friendly (33%) giving (0%) happy (66%) helpful (0%) idealistic (0%) independent (33%) ingenious (0%) intelligent (33%) introverted (0%) kind (33%) knowledgeable (0%) logical (0%) loving (0%) mature (0%) modest (0%) nervous (0%) observant (0%) organised (33%) patient (0%) powerful (0%) proud (0%) quiet (0%) reflective (0%) relaxed (0%) religious (0%) responsive (0%) searching (0%) self-assertive (0%) self-conscious (0%) sensible (0%) sentimental (0%) shy (0%) silly (66%) spontaneous (0%) sympathetic (0%) tense (0%) trustworthy (33%) warm (33%) wise (0%) witty (33%)

Created by the Interactive Johari Window on 6.3.2006, using data from 3 respondents.
You can make your own Johari Window, or view Shaman8933's full data.

My NOHARI

What's in My Cup: Luzon Verde 2004

It seems that a majority of the online population alway posts what they're "currently listening to"...while I have stong feelings about music, I am going to put a new spin on things. Instead of telling you what I'm currently listening to, I'm going to tell you what I'm currently drinking.

The most recent drink is a red wine from Spain by Luzon Verde 2004 called Jumilla.

How Evil Am I?

Loren did the weight one but I found this one funny. =P Is this accurate people?

You Are 26% Evil

A bit of evil lurks in your heart, but you hide it well. In some ways, you are the most dangerous kind of evil.

How Evil Are You?

You hear that? I'm the most dangerous kind of evil! So exciting!

Also, please feel free to judge me my clicking on the following link: http://kevan.org/johari?name=Shaman8933

Disclaimer: Please note that most of the things I write here are mostly drawn out jokes...so if things start to not make sense, just imagine that, even when other people are involved, I'm just joking around all the time. I can't help it.

FUN FUN FUN

Sometimes after a busy weekend, I can't quite remember everything I did. However, my neighbor did say,

Every time I pass by your door, all I hear is hysterical laughing.

So at least whatever it was I was doing, I was having a good time.

We took out our birthday celebrant on Friday to Illuzion, a new Japanese Fusion Sushi place in town.

The food there was actually really really good. I'm very skeptical of places that look as if they're targeting the "hipster" crowd...as many of those places have mediocre food, often more on the lower end, but the food here was surprisingly excellent. It was obvious that the owner was a Beatles fan because there were Special rolls such as Yellow Submarine and Helter Skelter.

I had the Angry Dragon and I highly recommend it. I think the celebrant had a good time and enjoyed the food, so it was nice! ;)

Back on the home front, while the neighbor was out, we promoted him to our newly-created position of Director of Suspicious Activity. So when we got home, we figured we better give him some work to do.

Coincidentally, our PA system was in need of some fresh air and exercise, so we decided to give it some change of scenery and test it out.

So now with a speaker in front of our Director's front door, the announcements begin. The acoustics of the hallways floors actually sounded nice as different announcements and animal noises echoed throughout the building. In addition to association members being called down to the principal's office and other announcements we shall not mention here, our Director decided to join the creators of suspicious activity in an effort to learn about his new role.



SO, for training purposes, we decided to make our activities even more suspicious by placing the speaker in a cardboard box (illustrated above).

We placed the box by their door and went into the crawl space of the building. Interestingly enough, our director complied without question. He even practiced some of the announcements himself.

Exercises such as this are very important to keeping our local community government on their toes and ready.

Needless to say, that although it was about 9pm, we still managed to wake up the neighbors (whom we only intended to entertain).

Saturday was filled with a 6 hour class in NY and when we came off the PATH, we ran into a "Pub Crawl" - a birthday party which we intended to join later in the evening (after nap). Needless to say we were drawn into the festivities.

We left a little early to recuperate from the day and eat something other than pub grub...namely ice cream.

Sunday I met up with some old friends at Westville for Brunch. I had missed Caroline's birthday adventure the week before so I treated her! Happy Belated 21st!

Ideally we wanted to get cupcakes at Magnolia but there was a line out the door, wrapping around the store, so we decided to nix that idea since the wind was so strong and it was so cold that the only thing that we could think about was how unreasonably cold it was. Even Caroline, who is normally filled with alacrity, could only think of crossing whichever street had the walk sign on just to keep from freezing. Nonetheless it was a lot of fun.

Maybe next time we'll nix the brunch and do a movie...with cupcakes of course.

Forwarding Emails

So some unnamed person, who shall remain unnamed, was in charge of getting "bodies" for some public eleemosynary event at some unnamed nearby city.

Among all the people interested who responded to this event, many of them unnecessarily included head shots. One very emaciated person included, let's say disparate images of their self. Now imagine Marilyn Manson trying to look pretty or cruella deville trying to look like Marilyn Manson.

Naturally, you're going to want someone to see this. Time to forward to friend!! Now, after hitting "send," this unnamed person instantly realized that he replied to the sender instead of fowarding to the friend and wrote the following:



*Names & places have been removed from this POSTING and replaced with SAT words to protect the guilty.

Operation Cupcake Expedition: Complete

magnolia

This weekend was plagued with fevers and chills for my hunny. On top of playing the part of Nurse, we still managed to get a lot of fun in between his fevers and fainting.

I have always heard a lot about Magnolia and always have wanted to try their cupcakes. So, on Saturday we went on a cupcake expedition to find these treasures.

I must say that it was well worth the adventure. The mobs of people in this tiny shop gobbled up the cupcakes faster than they could put them out.

I waited and waited for them to come out with another one with chocolate frosting. We got our two cupcakes and sat down in the park across the street and enjoy the day. The coffee there was really good too.

The day continued to go into an exploration for the fabled Coffee Crisps from Canada. Online documentation reports that some were sighted at different locations around New York, particularly, at the Hudson News. That operation did not go as successful as we planned. Regardless, the cupcakes were the big win for us.

There was also midnight adventure into Hoboken during the early part of the snowfall.

Sunday morning was a Winter Wonderland! Preparing for the big storm, we hit the supermarket right before the weekend to stock up on food and entertainment. We "borrowed" an egg from the neighbors and made scones! They came out great and the gastronomes of the building reconvened to find out what all the hype and fuss was about.

Since we were all there, there was only one thing left to do:
GAMES GAMES GAMES!

A game of risk broke out and lasted FOUR HOURS! The blue army ended up winning the war, as blue overtook 24 countries. As the green army, I managed to take over North America twice, but failed to take over Africa, even though the continent itself was self-plagued with it's own battles between blue, black, and red so I was afraid to go in there.

We managed to dig out our cars before the food we ordered arrived. Mine was buried in 7 feet of it. It may have been the wind that did it. Ivan came out in his PJ's and an Army helmet to do his part. Fun eventually turned into business since we were all there anyway.

Anyway, back to the cupcakes! Brunch of the month club, which meets every other year, has tentative plans to make an appearance there towards the end of the month! Woo hoo!

Fight the Good Fight

Everybody, please support a good cause:

http://www.CoffeeCrisp.org

~peace, love, and chocolate

Leave me a note if you sign it!! =)

(P.S. chocolate = happiness)

Admissions is Different

admissions
Originally uploaded by shaman8933.

As of yesterday night, I have a new favorite movie: Admissions

You have to see this movie! It's such a good movie!!! I can relate SO MUCH to the main character. Don't read what it's about and just see it with no idea what it's going to be about!

I loved how the main character gets along so well with her sister and it seems like she picked up some of her mannerisms. The sisters are SO NICE to each other. So is her guy friend...it's so nice to see people SO NICE to each other. I want this girl to me MY best friend, we'd get along so well. Which makes me think that I'm abnormal in some way. But what is normal is just some personal mental acceptance of what you know, do, and are comfortable with. If what other people do and say things that are unfamiliar to you, they'll call it weird...maybe everyone should stop using the word "weird" and use the word "different."

So that way, instead if hearing

"You're so weird..."

you, instead hear,

"You're so different..."

Which sounds so much more flattering. Actually, when people use the word "weird" with me, I have already trained my brain to hear the word "different." This is one of many translations I have made in my head in order to make life more pleasant.*

On a different note, I'm looking to do upgrades to my house and found this website called contractors.com . It seems pretty cool that you can see feedback from all these companies about who stayed within budget, on-schedule, and on-quality work. I'm guessing that if a company is getting bad revews from here they may take their name off the site's database.

I think everything should be rated on. Are there any web sites that do this? I know there's a rateitall.com but they don't seem to be to all-encompasing yet. I think I was looking at them to find a Moving Company but they didn't have a large selection. I ended up picking a horrible company that lost $15,000 worth of stuff and them tried to deliver a shipment that wasn't even mine. You think they would check the lot # with our name, but that just makes too much sense.

* Sandra brain translations are copyright of smarti, LLC(c) 1998.

The Best Fruits Evar!

YaY!

No Lunch Outs!

So after a long weekend, I feel as if I will never drink, eat, or spend money again (in order of importance).

This mess may have begun on Tuesday, when we took advantage of Hudson Restaurant Week. The Brass Rail makes some great crab cakes and who doesn't like crab cakes? Perhaps it was the pitcher of sangria we should have held off on or the chocolate dumplings. Or maybe it was that wine tasting on Thursday where I discovered a new love for white wine.

2006's outlook compare to 2005's baseline of wine consumed may provide some competition. I blame my co-workers for getting me started. Coming out of college I was probably the most dry person I knew, except for almost all the EGW participants, save one. Those 4-5 weeks I was in Belgium (work-relate) introduced me to a whole new world of controlled over-indulgence1., good alki1., and extremely fashionable clothes.

Friday was suppose to be the well-anticipated-for Media Night Out. We intended to also re-take advantage of Hudson Restaurant Week again, but instead ended up at Ruth's Chris, where 2 Medallion served Medium rare opened myself up to jokes by their "friendly" wait staff.

The wine was plentiful as well as well as the martinis.

My Chocolate Explosion dessert I would recommend to anyone. It was well worth it even though it provided another opportunity for the wait staff to add on to their earlier joke.

Saturday provided me with the opportunity to retrieve my car from the dealership. It was the first tune-up I have receive since becoming a car owner and a licensed driver. It was expensive but everyone says it's worth it. I'm sure it is, but the day I brought it in I recalled why I was able to save (and spend!) so much money when I was in college.

Kelly, Vaughn [N... are you crazy busy right now?
Kelly, Vaughn [... I need to go pick up my car.
Martinez, Sandr... lol
Kelly, Vaughn [... I'm serious.
Martinez, Sandr... my car is at the dealership too!
Kelly, Vaughn [... hahahaha
Kelly, Vaughn [... man.
Martinez, Sandr... millenium VW
Kelly, Vaughn [... impossible!

Not only am I paying so much money on gas, car payments, and insurance but also maintenance. If I were to get a job accessible through public transportation, I would probably save about $8,000 a year, conservatively. That's a lot of money.

I tried to be more frugal for the rest of the weekend, did my piano thing for 2 hours, and even made some healthy version of Southern Fried Chicken, which was baked with Special K and some other ingredients and walked about 5 miles through the rain. It was a nice walk despite the weather, but I ended buying a skirt that I loved (and didn't regret). We even found some Nag Champa and a new facial mask to try. That was shortly followed by the purchase of two bottle of white wine, one of which we'd drink while watching that Family Guy Movie.

Saturday was additionally defeated by Sunday, where we were defeated in my first-ever game of Beer Pong. I have never heard of Beer Pong, by the way, until I entered the work force1., thus adding more evidence to the corruption of me by Corporate America.

Also, if anyone asks, we drank the other teams beer and didn't pour it down the sink... Unit 1 is 50/50 in believing that and we will leave it at that.

Our pre-gaming provided some damage as well as the bets I didn't win.


I don't think my hunny won anything either but we were happy we were next to each other on the paper. By the way, I've never bet on football before, but someone at work explained this grid once to me while she was soliciting bets for some sports game (or something).1

Yay!

So, anyway, the lessons learned from the weekend include:
1. I don't like beer
2. I don't really like to watch football either
3. Football fanatics make loud TV-watchers
4. Ruth's Chris is the place to go for steaks
5. Corporate America will lead to my downfall
6. Don't bet cookies on football

So, to make a long story short, as a part of my cost-savings initiative, I will not be eating out this week. =)

1. Corporate America will lead to my downfall.

The 21st Century Letter Notebook

When I was in high school, and probably in elementary school/jr. high, there was the Letter Notebook. The Letter Notebook is that notebook you pass back and forth between you and your best-friend and/or significant other. Some of you may think that's rediculous, but if your Asian (or have friends who were), you know what I'm talking about.

Blogs are The 21st Century Letter Notebook.

You have officially participated in an eLetter Notebook.