Kitty's Scratch Pad

ChikaLicious

I just discovered ChikaLicious while browsing.  This is now top on our list of eating priorities while in NY next week.

Brilliant really.  Why mess with dinner when you could have an entire meal of just dessert.  I think it sounds divine.  Dessert is the only course when sharing meals with Alex where I mandate a perfect 50/50 division. 

When we were in Barcelona, we missed out on Espai Sucre`.  Another dessert only spot recommended by Chef William at Mistral here in Seattle.

Want a new pair of shoes?

This is hilarious!  Click on the shoe then read the reviews...   

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One of the best perks on earth with my new job is access to our corporate apartment.  We were bumped back in October because business takes precedence over personal trips.  I have had my Jet Blue credit burning a hole in my pocket ever since.  It has been almost two years exactly since I have been to New York and I am booked for the first three days in February.  Tickets right now are $109 each way!

Unfortunately, Alex cannot go.  He will be at home slaving away in his study.  Now that he is officially consulting, he has deadlines and stuff...  I have this image that boys when they are home alone like to sit around in their underwear and scratch themselves while playing World of Warcraft and pretending to work.  Oh and they don't shower or do the dishes either... 

In reality, Alex will be home making money while I am off having fun...  :( 

I would have been totally content going alone but I decided it would be even more fun to go with Fen.  He has never seen the city and we haven't spent any quality mom and son time together in a while.  The original plan was for Fen to miss one day of school - there was an in-service day scheduled for Friday but with all of the make-up days due to extreme weather, they are staying open.  I convinced the school it would be totally educational.

Our itinerary is shaping up - here are some of the plans (in no particular order):

Spamelot, Ice-skating in Central Park, the Zoo, FAO Schwartz, Bergdorf Goodman, Purl Soho, Balthazar, Serendipity, Pizza, Museum of Natural History, Katz's, Staten Island Ferry, Babycakes

I will be sure to document our entire trip and post some of the highlights here...

Cool Kicks - Neat Tricks

Alex and I went to breakfast this morning in Ballard.  I needed to buy my mother a gift for her birthday from the tea store (review coming soon).  We stopped in to check out a fun little shoe store called Market Street Shoes.  There were cool shoes everywhere and I was excited to purchase my first pair of J Shoes (shown left) on sale for $70.00 (right now $96.00 at shoes.com). 

I came home to check out more about this brand and was pleasantly surprised to find a super cool online catalog.  Check out the page turn function...  Alex says it is ripping off the MSFT page turn demo for WPF/E.  We both agree that J Shoes did it better.  I think as a consumer it is super rad.  I do wish I could choose which page I want to go to rather than having to scroll through each of them but I am sure someone will figure that out easily.   I suppose for marketing purposes, their intention was for me to see each page. 

Social Butterfly

My dirty secret...  Since Microsoft released the Zune, I have coveted it - especially the brown one.  I was very anxious to see and play with one.  I totally fell captive to their catchy, demographically-correct ad-campaign and find their greeting, "Welcome to the Social", neat. 

I had thrown in the towel on iPod's long ago and found my Zen by Creative to be cool but it definitely wasn't sexy.  I do admit that I missed that part about the iPod - it was hot and had great sex appeal - but the rest of the nonsense and headache wasn't worth a one night stand let alone a relationship. 

Since this was a totally unneeded, gadgety thing - Alex thought it would make a perfect Christmas gift. 

So far I have been super happy.  You can tell that they spent a lot of time thinking over the little things and I love that.  When I plug in my computer even shows a picture of my Zune and it is brown - how smart!  The UI is super slick and I think easier to use then it's counterpart.  I love, love, love the quick list - it is great for long car rides.  I only have a few things I would change:

1. Make my photos tall...  When viewing photos, it doesn't distinguish between portrait or landscape.  It is too bad really because the rectangular shape of the screen would lend well to showing portrait photos as they are intended to be seen rather than cropping the sides.

2. Quick list...  I did mention how much I love this but there are a couple of things we have run into: a) It does not allow you to remove one song - you have to delete the entire list.  A real bugger if something ends up in there by mistake.  b) The UI on adding songs is not perfectly intuitive.  Both Alex and I made the same mistake of playing a song rather than scrolling one down to "add to quick list".  Not sure how to fix it but I am sure there is a way.

3. Subscription service...  I think the concept makes perfect sense however, I have been having problems getting songs that I have moved over to my player to play and sync more than once.  I am not sure if it is user error of if there is some sort of weird rights management thing going on.  If it is the ladder than the whole thing stinks.  I shouldn't have to pay a subscription only to find that I am limited in play time.

4. The Social...  Another great concept with one problem - it completely suffocates your battery life.  Too bad.  :(

Outside of those comments - everything else has been smooth sailing.  Microsoft's team gets extra bonus points for using images from Coachella as a part of their software package included with the player.  Very nice!

My Dogs

Over the years, my feet have become increasingly worse when snowboarding.  Alex and I made our first trip to Snowbird a few years ago and for Christmas, he bought me new boots.  He knew my old boots sucked and thought he was doing me a favor.  We got to the mountain and I cried the whole way down.  I replaced those with another pair of boots and was really hoping for good things to come.  We must have spent at least two hours trying boots on and finally, I felt confident that these would work.  On our next trip, I had to stop after only a few runs.  This pattern has gone on now for almost two full seasons.  I have changed socks, I have cut my boots, had custom foot beds built, spent hundreds of dollars on wasted lift tickets and hundreds of dollars on lessons to work on my mechanics.  I think I know what is happening or at least causing my pain but cannot seem to figure out how it is possible to fix. 

Over Thanksgiving, Alex and I took a last minute trip to Whistler.  They had over 60 inches at the base and we grabbed a deal for $125 a night at the Hilton inside the village.  My feet were asleep by the time we got on the Gondola.  I tried to tough it out as best I could but it was total misery.  I mean misery sort of like the movie.  You know the scene where Kathy Bates hobbles the Author...  That is what my feet felt like.  Alex finally told me to see a doctor.  This cannot be good.  I have literally done everything.

I went to the University of Washington Sports Medicine Clinic.  I had convinced myself that 10 years in pointe shoes must be the problem and enlisted the dance specialist on staff to talk to me.  I was able to replicate the pain I was having and was even able to show her how my feet can seize.  I was going in there without any expectations.  I wanted to keep my anxiety at bay and stay realistic about the fact that most likely they could do nothing and that in the end this was all just a cruel and mean trick my body decided to pull on me after years and years of abuse.  She decided that it was a vascular issue and that blood thinners would clear it right up.  Now, my expectations were low but you can imagine my skepticism after getting such a quick diagnosis.  Could it really be so simple?  And what about these blood thinners?  I scheduled for a second opinion by the ski and snowboard specialist.  I went back a couple of weeks later and he decided that it wasn't vascular but that it was mechanical.  I scheduled another visit with a Physical Therapist to work on my boots and foot beds. 

In the meantime, we canceled our trip to Snowbird due to lack of snow and scheduled another last minute trip to Whistler - this time we paid $169 for the Hilton...  Not bad for a holiday weekend.  I was super nervous about this.  I really didn't want to blow another bunch of cash on wasted lift tickets.  I was beginning to get to the point where all of the bad experiences were starting to outweigh the good ones.  I was afraid I would end up hating this sport and throwing in the towel.

Rory came over the night before we left to open presents.  She brought her ski boots.  During my heartache and pain, Rory and Alex had been devising a plan for how they could convince me that skiing is really what I was meant to do all this time.  The thought of learning another sport all over again was not that appealing to me.  I reluctantly tried on the boots.  My feet were instantly asleep.  At that moment, we both realized that the boot was literally cutting into my calve.  I yanked it off and shook my foot around, waiting for it to tingle back to life.  It sort of felt like someone filled my legs and feet with rice crispies.  I put on my snowboard boots and sure enough, they were also cutting into my calves.  We grabbed the liners out of my old boots and put them in the new ones.  Sure enough, they hit just below my calve.  Could this be it?  After all these years?  The next four days sure would tell...

Alex rented a snowboard our first day up and we took it pretty easy.  He was doing quite well and decided to venture up to the top of the mountain for a run down on some harder terrain.  The winds and snow had picked up at that point and the Gondola was slowed to a snails pace.  It took over twenty minutes to get from the mid-station to the top.  When we got off the swirling whirling wind was driving tiny particles of ice across your cheeks in such a way that you got a free exfoliation if you stood there long enough.  The downfall of boarding is always strapping in.  We desperately tried to find a sheltered place to strap in a fast as possible.  It took us quite a while to get down but we made it.  The next day, we paid for First Tracks.  $17 CDN will buy you a lift ticket, buffet breakfast and first tracks with up to 650 other folks as insane as you for getting up at 7 in the morning.  They ring the bell and announce the mountain is open.  At that point you and everyone else get first dibs on fresh snow.  We had 11 inches from the night before and it was beautiful. 

I admit that riding in the powder is still not a fond memory of mine.  I actually hate it.  Everyone wants me to love it as much as they do but it is just plain hard.  It was Christmas and I cried...  After digging out, I decided to stick to the groomers while Alex played off piste.  I took the next day off and Alex went for a short day.  I decided to sign up for a lesson the next day.

I was put in the more advanced group along with three teenagers.  Apparently  parents still put their kids in lessons to be babysat while they go out for the day.  I didn't get much instruction and by lunch time I bailed.  The good news was, my feet didn't hurt (that much) and we rode over to Blackcomb where I got to ride 7th Heaven for my first time.  The sky was clear and blue and it was absolutely amazing.  I also got to try out deep powder and trees - I got about halfway down and bailed back over to the groomed section.  I guess it was refreshing to know I could do it but am not sure I would choose to do an entire run that way.  I met up with Alex and we rode for the rest of the day.  I made it from 9 to almost 4 before finishing.  And the best part was, I didn't cry once the entire day!