Big Brother is Watching You

I teased it here, tweeted about it, and posted to Facebook. So by now, it shouldn't be of any surprise that my iPhone was stolen.

And by stolen, I mean, "picked up by someone after I left if somewhere, but that someone did not return it to Lost and Found and instead left the store and started driving away from the mall."

So, not lifted from my purse, but lifted from the place where I accidentally left it (um, the top of the toilet paper dispenser in a bathroom in Macy's). Found it, I'm sure, while I was STILL IN THE BATHROOM washing my hands, since there was a line for the stalls and I'm quite sure with my big, white case, the person saw it as soon as she walked into the stall.

I washed my hands, left, met Mike outside, and walked a few stores down to get a Diet Coke. As we are standing in line for the soda, I realize it's missing. Ten minutes, tops.

I ran back to Macy's, but it was already gone from the stall. We went up to the management office and reported it as lost. We were calling it and calling it and nothing.

Since I was in Tyson's, I went to the Apple store.

People, if you have an iPhone and you do not have MobileMe, get it. You are smoking crack if you don't think the $99/year is worth it. MobileMe gets you three very important things in my opinion (it gives you more, but these three are what I think are the biggest, and the rest is just extra fluff):
1. It will activate the GPS on your phone, and from a website, you can track the location of your phone.
2. You can remotely make your phone cause sound, and display any message you want on the screen.
3. You can remotely WIPE your phone clean, so it's a completely dead and empty phone. All your contacts, emails, apps, and information, gone. poof.
4. You can save certain things from the phone (like contacts and calendars) in a "cloud," so when you do purchase a new phone, those things automatically populate. (The cloud thing works on documents online, too -- like I can save documents through the MobileMe website on my account and then access them from anywhere, like Google Docs).

Okay, that's FOUR important things MobileMe gets you.

Back to the Apple store on Monday. I log in to my account on one of their computers and track the phone. If it's showing it's still in the mall, it could be that someone returned it to an employee at Macy's and it just hadn't made it's way back to Lost and Found yet.

But, no.

The mall was Tyson's Corner.

My phone was somewhere on Rt. 50.

AND MOVING.

We kept refreshing the tracking page, and there the phone went, down Rt. 50.

I made the phone beep. I sent the message that the phone was being tracked, please call [Mike's cell] to return it.

Then I wiped it clean.

The upside? I got a new iPhone 4. My joke from last week that Contagious Communications was going to give all it's employees a new iPhone 4 for Christmas actually came true.

The Day in Pictures -- Christmas Night Edition

Thank you, Melissa, for calling me out on not posting. You're right, I haven't. I can't exactly claim how hectic it's been (since the holidays are for everyone), but I haven't gotten the precious-to-me time alone, on the couch, with my laptop since the previous post.

I hope everyone had an incredible holiday. The Petron family certainly did. I took a video of all the presents under the David Petron's tree, once Barb and Joe arrived with theirs, and Mike and I brought over ours. But, that video, along with all the Christmas photos I took, are gone, along with my iPhone. Hold your breath in anticipation, because the next post will be about the aforementioned iPhone getting stolen.

But needless to say, it was a present extravaganza. Nate didn't quite understand the opening of presents for himself, but I truly believed he loved watching everyone else open -- and react -- to their presents. We had a blast after a great brunch on Christmas morning (oh! And this was after a great night at the David Petron's before... wait for it, wait for it... 7:30 p.m. candelight service!!!! NOT 11:00 p.m., as we've gone in the past. Do you know how much happier I am at a 7:30 p.m. service instead of an 11:00 p.m. service?!?!)

After the present extravaganza, Mike and I went home and took a nap for 40 minutes (said all quite and whispery so you don't judge) before staring dinner. I had worked really hard the day before to cut, prep, marinate, and cook as much as I could, so it was just a matter of pulling it all together.

The Keelings joined us, which was the best Christmas present of all!, and thanks to Kristin for taking all these pictures of the meal and general merriment.

Notice the plethora of glasses on the table. A lot. We filled them all. A lot.

Butternut squash soup. The only non-paleo course served, and it was at least primal, if not paleo. It had a bit of cream, and topped with a little bit of honey.

Then a simple spinach salad.

And for the main course, Barb's family's tradition of fillet and lobster tail. Accompanied by a port-red wine sauce, roasted broccoli, and roasted mushrooms.

And while not my making, the delicious and famous Christmas cookies. Please note that you see on this plate -- out for everyone to eat!! -- are the triple chocolate chip and the peanut butter ritz sandwiches dipped in chocolate.

A good time was had by all.

Tipsy.

Upon the Keeling's last visit, Kristin requested caroling at Christmas. Joe not only brought his violin, but also printed out packets of music for all to sing along.

I think Nate was fascinated more by the singing than even the present opening.

Although, eventually, the night won out and defeated him.

These two, though! These two! I'm not sure they ever run out of energy. See me holding that rope? Luci didn't much care for the caroling, and wanted to play tug of war instead. See Goldie in the picture? No? That's because it was all too much for her to handle, and she was curled up asleep in the dining room.

Mike holding evidence of the amount of fun we had.

Although at this particular moment, Nate might disagree.

The Day in Pictures - the Pre-Christmas Edition

Another semi-cop out post. Okay, fully cop-out post. But I'm still not fully recovered from this cold (I mean, there has been a half-full bottle of red wine sitting on the kitchen counter since Friday, and I haven't felt like drinking it. Someone should probably take me to the ER.) so here is my day in pictures, instead of words.

Butternut squash ready for roasting, for dinner on Christmas Day:

 

A mountain of meatballs for the sweet-and-sour meatball appetizer on Christmas Eve:

And I do mean a mountain. 114 to be exact:

In going from here:

 ... to a plate to cool, Goldie got one. From that moment forward, she was ON ALERT in case it should happen again:

I swear, she didn't leave this position, or this closeness to the stove, all day:

Some yummy spiced almonds:

And we can't leave out the butternut squash seeds, either: 

For the rest of this evening, I shall scan my Google Reader, and watch bad reality television.

Gingerbread, But No Spiced Cider

It's another Monday, and I'm writing yet again that I am sick. What is wrong?!? I am rarely ever sick, and I feel like I have been nothing but this winter! Mike has an interesting theory that since I'm spending more time at home I'm not exposed to outside germs and viruses to build up an immunity, but I'm suspect of that. I get out plenty, and certainly get out to a much wider variety of places than if I were just going from my car to the office to the car to home every day. Blah.

Andy gave me this for my birthday. It made me laugh.

This weekend was gingerbread building at Cork Wine Bar in Logan Circle.  Building gingerbread houses? Wine bar? Hello? Did someone call my name?

Only, they wouldn't serve wine. Not even spiked cider. Does that make sense to anyone?

There were actually way more kids than I expected, because of the locale, although adults vastly outnumbered them. The long cafeteria-style table we were at was all adults, and then a second long table was half kids, half adults.

They tried to make the house building idiot-proof, with these little kits.

Mike and Kristin teamed up, and were quite competitive. As in, hog all the icing, competitive.

My house was an itty-bit crooked, right from the start.

 Kristin decided she'd rather just eat hers.

Mine

 Mike and Kristy, very proud. They wouldn't let anyone eat theirs, and insisted on saving it "for show."

 So later, back at Kristy's house, we smashed mine to eat.

And as a complete side note, see these three beggars?

The one on the right is mine. The two on the left are spending Christmas with me. That one in the middle there, Zoey, is a 90 pound Rhodesian Ridgeback. Lucy, on the far left, is a 45 pound mix. This should be interesting...

Mixed blessings

Today is already turning out to be one of mixed blessings.

I am grateful for the snow today.
Because it showed me that Goldie is still peeing blood, despite me thinking the UTI was cleared up.

I am grateful that my husband can be downright indignant at times.
Because he agreed to call the doggie oncologist and tell him no, we didn't want to test to make sure it was still a UTI and not anything else ($$), and no, we didn't want to come in to see him for a consult ($$), and yes, we realize the cancer may be spreading and how would we know for sure what was going on without tests ($$$), and just friggin' prescribe more antibiotics, please, because I didn't want to.

I am grateful for this latte that I am drinking.
Just because I am.

I am grateful that I bought these boots (only in gray) last week for the trip to NYC.

Because if the two days of walking in the rain in NY didn't justify them, needing to head into downtown today with the slush surely does.

Okay. Those last two were obnoxious, but typing them gave me enough time to sufficiently calm down (and drink enough of the latte) to feel better about the whole blood-in-the-snow thing.

Going downtown today to see Love and Other Drugs. I'm generally not a chick flick movie kind of girl, but I'm trying to live up these last two weeks of downtime (well, downtime, with the holidays thrown in) because I have a few projects lined up to start in January. And since I have yet to sleep in until 10 or drink at noon since my layoff, I figure an afternoon movie is acceptable.

Now I'm going to go order another latte.

Christmas in NYC

I have a lot of memories of New York City during Christmas time from growing up. I don't remember exactly, but it seemed that my dad always had a conference or meetings or something right around the first weekend in December, and mom would take the rest of us up. I really only remember Patricia and Tim with me, which would make sense since Terry and Frank would have already been in college by the time I really start remembering. Driving through the city was always a nail-biting experience and the worst part for my mom, so one year, dad hired a limo to take us up.

Mike had never been to NYC during the holidays, but a meeting came up for him yesterday morning. So we both boarded a train on Sunday (I mean, why not tag along?) and headed up.

And while we wanted to do all the typical mid-town holiday sight-seeing, there was one other place I really, really, really, really, really wanted to go.

Eataly.

Eataly just opened at the end of August, and is a food and wine marketplace dedicated to Italian eating. It's a brainchild of Mario Battali, and in addition to seven full service eateries (yes, I'm pulling this from their website, but, hey, it describes it!), it also has a cafe, wine bar, and then stall after stall after stall of fresh meats, fish, cheese, vegetables, pasta....

OMG, it's like my heaven on earth.

(Melis, you may want to scroll really fast and skip some of these photos... ok, just one. Sorry.)

After gorging on cheese and prosciutto, we hopped back in a cab and headed to Midtown.

I present, the tree: 

 A view inside St. Patrick's Cathedral as mass was about to start:

The top of St. Patrick's:

 A lot of the high-end shops on Fifth Avenue decorated the outside of their buildings, which I adored.

Cartier:

Oh, shoot. I forget. But it was still pretty.

 Dior:

But I think I liked even more the big bank buildings on Sixth with their decorations out front:

Drinks at the Oak Room at The Plaza, then back to the hotel for some football and sleep catch-up (you can guess which of us watched football and which of us slept....)

Then a huge steak dinner at Maloney & Porcelli, with way too much wine, and somehow we stumbled back to the hotel. We forced ourselves out of bed to go for a jog in Central Park on Monday morning, but I admit to wishing every second I was still sleeping. Lunch with Frank, and an afternoon train ride back.

Not a bad 24 hours in Manhattan.