December 2009:
When I started this life of leisure, I thought it would be full of fun and adventure. Little did I know that fun and adventure was heavily reliant on funds and friends. I’ve been in Arizona for about two months and my sister moved here only a few months prior, currently we don’t have an abundance of friends. I could honestly say, she is my ONLY friend and while my sister has friends in Arizona, she never sees them because she is working all the time. This is highlighted by something my sister said the other day. We were watching Julie & Julia with the kids and seeing all sorts of yummy French food with lots of butter being created. My sister says, “Do you remember Tasja’s cookie and white elephant exchange?” I said, “Yeah, that was a lot of fun!” She says, “WHEN we have friends, we’re going to have a cookie and white elephant exchange too!” My goal is to have one new local friend before the end of the year. I recently dropped my youngest daughter off at a birthday party and I told my sister, I think I will be friends with Kinzley’s mom, she seems nice and I’ve met her twice now! Now we have to find cool, new, local friends for my sister. While I love reading FB status and seeing pictures of my current friends, it would be nice to leave the house and meet up with friends who are not visiting from out of state.
When we were in California, we had our close friends and we always made friends with the people we worked with everyday. Since I’m currently a stay at home mom, this is not an option for me and might not be an option for my sister either. While her coworkers are mostly female, most of them have ummm…how shall we say, spent some time on a government sponsored vacation which I can only imagine provided a small room with bars for decoration. I met these women and they are actually very nice and normal, you would never guess they ever had a record. Cassie & Janet, if you are reading this, don’t worry, Czarina will not be replacing you any time soon.
More Time != More Travel
As I previously mentioned, some adventure is dependent on funds. If I had more funds I could go to Chicago to visit my BFF Stef, who I’m sure is freezing to death or dying because it’s too cold for him to get to the Diesel store to buy new jeans. While in Chicago, I could also visit my cousins. I could also fly to California to visit friends or Manhattan to visit my east coast cousins. Since I’ve burned through most of my frequent flyer miles, I’m just “chillaxing” at home and reading books from the library which involve adventure around the globe. I also wouldn’t want to go to the east coast until after spring because I wouldn’t have any coats warm enough, the cold there makes you cold in your bones even when you’re sitting in front of the radiator trying to thaw out.
Confessions of an Electronics Shopaholic
I recently became obsessed with getting the iPhone 3GS and ALMOST bought it the other day. I had it in the AT&T shopping basket and only had to choose between the 16 GB or 32 GB, then while I was waiting for friends to get back to me on which one to get I took my kids to Michael’s (craft store) to buy a couple T-shirts for projects. On a side-note, I love Facebook status messages to get a quick answer on whether or not to do something…more on this later. When we arrived at Michaels, I saw the AT&T store so I thought I better go in there and see if I can even text message on this thing because I LOVE texting or IMing. It would be a total deal-breaker if texting on a virtual keyboard was as hard as it was on the first generation iphone where I wanted to throw the thing at someone’s head because I was so frustrated with having to backspace because I couldn’t get my fingers to type the right letters. Anyway, it was much more accurate than I remember but the only reason I didn’t get it right then and there is because the guy wouldn’t let me get the iphone 3GS with just the required $30.00 data plan and unlimited messages. He said I had to buy a voice plan with it, which doesn’t make any sense to me, what do people do who can’t hear? They would only text right?
Here is my logic, if the iphone is a crappy voice phone, then I don’t want the voice plan, I would rather have unlimited data and text which is what it is good at. The main reason I even wanted the new iphone is because it has a Kindle app and I have a list of electronic devices I wanted to get and a limited amount of funds, I don’t believe in credit card debt so everything needs to be paid out with cash.
Here are the other things I wanted to get:
HP Mini 311 (ION based netbook with an 11.6 inch screen) —obsessed with this even though I have the HP Mini 1000 with a cool tattoo inspired skin
- Why: This netbook has HDMI out and VGA out so I can hook it up to a TV and stream my shows from the internet or when I get a UFC fight from a forum I can watch that on the big TV. For people who don’t do all their TV viewing on the computer, this netbook has a bit more power than existing netbooks with the Intel Atom processor because it off loads some of the processing to the GPU while still being small, light-weight and with good battery life. While I have no intention of doing any Photoshop on this thing, I expect I’ll be able to multi-task with a Word document and click around on Farmville with a little more zip.
HD video camera (Flip or Samsung or iphone 3GS or Droid phone)
- Why: I take videos of my niece or my kids from my Blackberry to upload into Facebook, it would be awesome to be able to take it with a higher resolution, not sure the iphone with guarantee a better resolution but it would narrow my wish list down if it did
- I’m not a camera person so for me to even want an HD video camera which isn’t integrated into a phone is huge compromise because I would have to throw another gadget into my purse.
- Why: to be able to share books with my sister! I am looking for Kindle alternatives because I don’t want to throw a Kindle, a phone, an HD video camera, and my netbook into my purse. I just downloaded the Kindle app for PC on my netbook and I LOVE it! Sometimes though, I don’t want to turn on my netbook to read so an iphone would be great for this.
Motorola DROID $199 with online discount on Verizon Wireless
- Why: It has a better screen than the iphone, seems to take great pics with it’s 5 MP camera and it has a slide out keyboard. The only reason this wouldn’t be a good purchase for me is because it doesn’t have the Kindle app, which is one of the key selling points of the iphone. The bonus for the DROID is easy integration with Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Maps all products I use almost everyday, if not more than once a day.
- Cons: The slide out keyboard means there is a hinge for me to break on this phone, I’ve destroyed every single Motorola phone I’ve ever owned including the really rugged black and yellow Nextel phone but then I guess you’re not supposed to throw them at people you’re mad at or run them over with a car. The ones which weren’t thrown or run over just broke apart from the hinge because of repeatedly opening and slamming the phone shut to abruptly end heated phone exchanges with an exes who say annoying things. The slide out keyboard also means this phone will be too thick to put in the back pocket of my jeans. Why don’t cell phone manufacturers understand the back jeans pocket test for women? One of the selling points of the Nokia E71 was because it fit in my jeans without making my butt look big, plus it had a great phone, email, calendar, Pandora, FM radio, and wifi.
DROID Eris by HTC $99 with the online discount through Verizon Wireless
- Why: This phone is a thinner Andoid phone with wifi and a 5 MP camera, visual voicemail, and speech recognition and easy integration with Gmail, Google calendar, and Google maps.
- Cons: No Kindle app
Dooney & Bourke Baby Satchel in black patent leather $195
- I have a D&B black patent makeup case and when I start working again, I’m totally going to get this back or the red patent leather Coach purse, which means I would need to get red patent leather shoes to go with the purse. The reason I NEED the D&B purse is because it would go perfectly with my black patent leather Stuart Weitzman shoes which I love and were practically born on my feet, in English they are cute AND comfy!
- While this purse doesn’t fit into the category, it would perfectly hold the electronics I wish to put in my purse. I also understand I don’t NEED the purse, I have the makeup bag and need the matching purse to match my shoes…end of story!