lately.

It's been a long week. Apologies for no witty updates in awhile. Work has been.... stressful. I'm just getting through it one day at a time. :)

So, I got a new phone. I feel like gadget girl, haha. Obviously I'm broke but both my Palms got old and quit on me. I finally gave in and got a Blackberry - shame on me, I know! I still love Palm phones but can't help that T-Mo has the cheapest rates and no Palms to offer!!

Speaking of Palm, I just met up with my old boss from Palm EMEA this evening. Had a lovely dinner and some wine down on the water. It was good to catch up with Fiona - she always has a lot of good advice in advancing my career!

This weekend is Labor Day weekend. Guess what I get to do? MOVE. effin-a. I really hate moving, so tiring and usually realllly stressful! I have to pack everything up Sunday night and move first thing Monday morning. Bah Humbug. However, I'm so excited to be living in Brookline!!

Yeah so I guess I didn't have anything witty to say after all. Hope all my secret readers (all 3 of you? haha) are doing well.

Muchos.

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green tea for you and for me

I just want to discuss my new found love for green tea. It is probably one of the healthiest beverages you can drink other than water. It's got amazing health benefits and tastes good (to me at least).

Green tea has been known to help conditions such as cancer, arthritis, high cholesterol, heart disease, infection, and impaired immune systems. The Chinese have been using green tea for all kinds of purposes for centuries and I'm only sad that I didn't get on board with it sooner.

I know that caffeine is bad for you but green tea has a much less amount than coffee and you can get decaf green tea as well if you'd like. I was getting green tea downstairs at Starbucks everyday either hot or cold and it was good. However, I just discovered "Boston Beanstock Coffee Company" across the street and their iced green tea is amazing! They also have a large variety of tea bags for hot tea that are AWESOME.

So this little mom & pop coffee shop is amazing. Their website is under construction but would be interesting to see it once it's back up. However I read some reviews of the Boston Beanstock Coffee Company online and everyone seems to agree that the quality, taste and price all match up. I had lunch there today as well - yummy panini with not too much cheese and really fresh ingredients. I highly recommend anyone in the area to check it out sometime.

This place far surpasses the Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks outside the building. I'm happy Sarah introduced me :) Don't have to feed money into those conglomerates anymore - woohoo!

Go out and get some green tea!

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my beautiful little baby laptop

She's hereee!! I finally just got a new laptop because my last HP died FOUR times!! Luckily, I bought the Best Buy protection plan on it and because it broke a fourth time it was approved for their "no lemon" policy meaning that they would give me a brand new equivalent laptop at no cost. Hooray for a brand new laptop one month before the protection expired :D

Here is my new baby laptop. I promise to start putting more pics up now that I'm in possession of technology again. I love the design on this laptop. I also love that the guy from Geek Squad hooked me up bigtime with a deal on all her software. MS Office, Anti-spyware, and anti-virus all for $100. This new machine is 5x more powerful (fast) than my last laptop and holds 4x as much data. Woop!

So now I've moved up in the world to Windows Vista. I hope I don't have that many problems with it. I still really want a MacBook but I'm surviving with my replacement for now!!

I also still really want an iPhone. Does anyone know if the new 3G version is capable of being unlocked? I last read that some company in Brazil could do it for something astronomical like $500 before shipping charges. Christian can use an application on his iPhone that is similar to Skype and call me for so cheap - I think that's super cool.

Well back to work homework. Busy busy - saving qas.com one day at a time. I've probably made six pages now just this week. Once they're pushed live I'll post links to share with you. :)

a healthy heart :)

As it turns out, I have excellent blood pressure and excellent cholesterol. I had a health screening today free through work. Have to admit I was a little bit nervous about the whole thing. But, as it turns out, I'm a pretty healthy kid. Woot!

Have you ever heard of "good" cholesterol? It sounds like "good" fat - how those two words could ever be associated together is beyond me but it's apparently true. Good cholesterol is called HDL it's supposed to fight off the bad cholesterol. The lady told me today that you want your HDL to be at least 60 and mine was 77 which she said is awesome. Hooray for my HDL.

Wanna know how you can increase your HDL? I did... Turns out there are fun things that can help your HDL like having one to two drinks a day and PEANUTBUTTER. There are other typical factors that will help, like exercising. Exercising isn't as fun as drinking a glass of wine but I do both and maybe that's why my HDL kicks butt!

I do, however, wonder if my cutting meat out of my diet has helped any of these numbers recently. I mean I only went one week without meat and had chicken over the weekend. (I hope you all know that I'm not eliminating it completely. But for now it's meat free weekdays.) Anyhow - just would be interesting to know what all the numbers looked like before I changed my diet around.

I'm reading a book called The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing and am 2/3 way done after only picking it up yesterday in the car on the way home from Long Island. I'm shocked I was able to read for hours in the back of the car - maybe my HDL was fighting off motion sickness for me, haha. Anyone ever read it? I've seen it around for years now and am glad I picked it up. I really like it so far. Interesting narrative.

Anyone have any good songs to recommend to download? Gym friendly songs preferred - my music is getting old and I need some new songs to keep me motivated! Let me know.

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going organic

I am sitting here with Sophie (my roommate's adorable dog) and playing online with my recent interests in organic and vegetarian foods. I just read Skinny Bitch by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin. They claim that in order to get skinny you have to give up quite a lot. Let's start with my vices - caffeine, sugar, CHEESE, alcohol and pretty much anything you want to eat. Anyhow, the points made in this book can be viewed as extreme but I do think there is a lot of truth to what is said.

The easiest way to break down the book is into three major eating habit changes. One is to go organic - on everything. Two is to give up meat and three would be the final stage of their recommendation to actually give up all dairy products as well... aka be a vegan. Now... I don't know that I'm really entirely capable of numbers two and three but I am giving number two a shot at the moment. Today is day three of no meat of any kind and I don't miss it and I don't feel weird. What will be almost impossible to resist is a good filet mignon once in awhile.

There are a lot of really interesting points brought up in the book about things like sugar substitutes, over the counter medicine, chemicals in food, and even animal rights. Some chapters you really need a solid stomach to read but it's worth it. Of course take everything you hear with a grain of salt but just the same there is truth behind a lot of it.

You can read almost the entire book online for free from Google Books (great tool, saved my butt from the library numerous occasions in the latter part of my college career). Chapters I definitely recommend reading: Carbs: the Truth, Sugar is the Devil, The Dairy Disaster, and You are what you Eat (this is the tough one to stomach).

Here is some other research I stumbled upon...
What does organic mean?
Top 10 reasons to go organic
Why give up meat?
Vegetarian options
Check this out - it's a free vegetarian starter kit.

I'm personally a big proponent of the motto - "everything in moderation." So I don't intend to give up meat entirely but I am cutting it out extensively for awhile and see if I notice a difference in my health. Organic - I am pretty much sold and will try to buy organic going forward whenever possible. Vegan - unlikely. Skinny Bitch talks about something called casein that's found in cheese that is highly addictive. And well giving up addiction isn't easy ;)

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o-m-g i made a blog... i did it

Well here is one new years resolution to cross off the list a full 8 months later. Let's see if I have the wit and charm to keep you reading on some kind of regular basis. :)

I'm supposed to be doing homework on how to help the website I work on for Experian QAS to be more attractive and generate more leads. I decided it's time for Web 2.0 intervention and find myself writing my own blog instead. It's hard to imagine how interesting address verification really is - which is what my company does but what do I know. What I like is the Web and my boyfriend thinks I'm the biggest nerd on the planet. However I think I make more money than he does... ;)

I just got back from Denmark and had a fantastic time with Christian. While I was there it was Fashion Week for all of Scandinavia and I thought it was the perfect opportunity to do some observing about Danish life. Here is my "what's hot" in Denmark:

Hot:

• Black leggings (who would of thought they are still in... but they are!)
• Layering
• Nyhavn
• Ben & Jerry's
• White
• "Malene" - Sys Bjerre
• Paris Hilton
• Fashion Week parties
• The Olympics
• Debate over immigration laws
• ...and apparently landscaping for your mother-in-law ;)

Let me know if any of you have any additions! Or any "Not" recommendations.

I'm also fundraising... to move my half Scandinavian self back to Europe. Donations welcome.

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