iPhones – Friend or Foe?

I am an old fashioned girl. In some respects, at least. My current cell phone has 3 basic functions: 1) to take/receive phone calls; 2) (clumsily) send/receive texts and 3) to make me look like a social pariah when using it in public cause I don’t have internet, email, video, apps, gps, etc.

I am on the fence about these new fangled fancy phones with their apps that give you directions, count your calories, pick a restaurant for you, do your calculus homework for you, and a whole host of other things that take the work out of living. On one hand, it would be nice to have directions at your fingertips -when K and I explore a new area of LA, we have that ultra cumbersome task of having to print off mapquest directions. Yes, people still do that. Taking the decision out of our hands for where to eat tonight might save hours of argument. Hell, I bet there’s an app for doing a recipe search and it automatically generates a shopping list for you and locates the grocery store that offers the best price on those items. I would love that.

On the other hand, are all these helpful apps really just making our life easier, or in actuality taking away our ability to put effort into something? Like, if we become accustomed to having all the answers at our fingertips, never having to really think about the where, why and how to get these answers, are we really doing ourselves a favor? Will we lose the ability to problem solve? To make our own decisions? Have the ability to read a map? Understand how to calculate a 30% off sale price? I know I sound like a curmudgeonly old bitch here, but I have always thought that sometimes the effort you put into something is just as important as the final result.

Of course, I realize I am totally generalizing – I’m sure the 90% of the people who own these kind of phones do know how to read a map, deduct 30% from the price of an item, can decide for themselves that they want to Sushi versus Italian for dinner, or look up a phone number in a phone book. I’m not advocating against technology here. I just believe that the easiest way is not always the best way.

Ok, off the soapbox for today.

At least I didn’t get into how annoying it is to have to hear people bitch and moan about being broke all the time, when they have a $100 month cell phone bill cause they NEED access to twitter, Facebook, gmail every second of the day.

Being on TV was totally worth it

Being on a game show might be something that people (I’ll call them insane people) aspire to. The thrill of rubbing elbows with people in “the biz,” getting your makeup professionally done, the green room refreshments, the bright lights, the excitement of the audience, and even the chance that you could get “discovered” would make this seem like a wonderful opportunity for some. Not for me, though!

Last fall, K and I somehow managed to get chosen to be on the Newlywed Game Show. I know, that show is still on the air? I won’t go into the mundane details of the day we filmed, but even after sitting around for 8+ hours, the filming part was actually kinda fun. Until I realized that it was going to air. To the public. Fuck.

I am one of those people who believes that they are not photogenic and sound and look terrible on camera. That’s where the problem lies – potentially thousands, I mean hundreds, of people who I don’t know are going to watch me acting and sounding like retard. Not to mention answering embarrassing questions about my sex life. K soaked up this experience, while I need an entire bottle of wine to dampen the feelings of inadequacy once it was over.

So, fast forward 2 months… we were not able to reveal the results of the show (under penalty of $100K fine) until the show aired a few months ago. I could barely watch myself act like the biggest dork ever… seriously, I was worse than I thought I’d be! K and I even managed to screw up a high five when we got an answer right, and I winked at the camera. And not a cute sexy wink, a super cheesy awful wink. Ugh.

But since it finally aired and I am happy to say that we won. That’s right, WE F-ING WON. The prize is what makes this whole experience totally worth it… a 100% all inclusive week long 2nd honeymoon to St. Lucia (yes, the same place The Bachelor was filmed, don’t remind me)! So, we managed to get our reservations for next November set today, and I’m excitedly counting down the months til we get to go… crap, 8 months to go!

Picture of beautiful St. Lucia, before it got ruined by The Bachelor

Half Marathon Training Status

As I promised in a previous post, I stated that I would status my half marathon training progress. Except that the race we picked fell through for various reasons, and haven’t yet decided on another one to run. To be blatantly unoriginal by using this word:

Current training curriculum = Fail

As the intelligent Lawrence J. Peter once wrote, “If you don't know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.”

Yep, that quote pretty much sums up why we fell off the training wagon… the not knowing where we are going = we have nothing specific to train for and the somewhere else = going for long walks with our dog, huddling under the covers from the excessive California rain and subsequent destruction, getting sucked into the West Wing series on Netflix starting with season one.

I am pretty annoyed with myself to say the least. After reading through the other blogs I’ve been stalking lately, it seems like everyone is training for a half, and kicking ass while doing it.

K and I have been looking into other races around the area, and nothing is jumping out at us, so I guess we’ll keep looking. However, this is no reason to slow down on my training, so I will be posting my new “maintenance” training plan so I am at least accountable to someone.

My ass thanks you in advance, dear readers. All 5 of you. ;)

Blog Rebirth

I wonder how many people abandon their blog out of nowhere. You spend hours sweating out engaging and witty blog entries, collecting followers, commenting like crazy on fellow bloggers to gain more said followers, not to mention all the formatting, adding pictures, slides shows, whathaveyou. All of that work, and then one day, you wake up and decide that you're over it.

In the past year, I have seen many blogs suffer a similar fate to my first blog. One can blame the demise on various reasons; lack of time or interest, a lifestyle change, a few too many posts that ruin relationships, acquiring a stalker, etc. I lost interest in my first blog because I began to find myself writing the "20 something, getting married, love my husband, life is dandy" standard issue posts. I feel compelled to offer up something different to the blogasphere. While I have a glorious life I love, a husband that is phenomenal, I found that my more realistic side needs an outlet too. Now, this blog is not going to be a litany of bitchy posts, complaints, criticism, and general woe - who wants to read that shit day after day? - I will be writing more honestly, with hopefully more careful thought.

Welcome to my slightly ironic, but more genuine treatise of my life experiences.

Sophie