The ROC outsider

Some one has been trying to call me on my cell phone for the last few days. I keep just missing them.

Granted, I'm a great believer in voice mail and if the phone is downstairs and I'm upstairs, I'm not making the mad dash just to answer it after the last ring. I know I'm going to miss the call.

So this number I didn't recognize kept calling. And not leaving a message. I tried to call it back and got the beginning of a recording that I admittedly didn't listen to for more than 2 seconds.

Finally, they got me. Someone who was having trouble reading the script said they were the Radio Research Group (or something like that) and they'd surveyed me a few months before about my radio listening habits. (They had? Must have been in an alternate universe.)

Then she wanted to know if I had a few minutes for a follow-up survey. Sure. Why not. I'll tell you how I feel about the radio.

Basically, she asked what stations I'd listened to in the last 24 hours. Given that I'd spent some time in the car (driving to Wegmans of course), that involved every station programmed into the car radio. Unfortunately, I was forced to admit that I spent most of the time listening to WBEE.

Then she asked me my age and my race. And then said they didn't need to talk to any more 29-year-old white women with a secret country music addiction. (OK, she said they were full for that demographic.) After all that. Apparently they'll spend another 3 days trying to call me again in a few months.

What's odd about the whole thing is that there is no Radio Research Group. Could they have been the Radio Research Consortium? I guess unless I call them back, I'll never know. And given that I currently have no idea where my cell phone is, that's kinda unlikely.

Aaaaah! Where did the week go? How did it get to be Saturday morning already?

What have I been so busy doing that I've almost forgotten to blog? Well, setting up a new freelance commercial writing business, for one. Doing work for current clients so I can keep paying my mortgage. And promoting a movie showing at my church this weekend.

Plymouth Spiritualist Church is showing a sneak preview of Conversations with God today and tomorrow. Show times today (Saturday) are 3 pm and 7 pm and tomorrow (Sunday) at 4 pm. Tickets are $10 and available at the door (or online with a credit card, though at the door is a better bet right now).

The movie is based on the books by Neale Donald Walsch and how he came to write them. I'll be honest and say that I haven't seen the movie yet. But it's gotten good reviews and it's a ton better than the Indigo movie in which N.D.W. acted in (which was kinda hokey, yet moving). You can see a trailer for it here.

OK, back to doing market research. What a fun Saturday in front of the computer...

Wax your legs...
It always seems like a good idea to wax my legs myself. A bottle of Nair leg wax costs around $7 and lasts through a few waxings compared with $30 + tip for a trip to the salon. And the quality of my at-home job is as good as or better than a salon. As long as I get to finish.

The upside of having someone else yank your leg hair out by the roots is that they keep going, no matter the pain you're in. Doing it yourself...well, the warm wax feels good going on, but you just have to keep steeling yourself over and over again. Or give up half-way through and just go and shave.

This time, I made it through. Just in the nick of time before Exhausto-Boy became insatiably interested in the white sticky things I kept slapping on and ripping off my legs.


Keep trying to order groceries online...
A trip to Wegmans is in my near future this afternoon. In the rain. With a 15-month-old toddler who wants to sit in the front of one of those impossible to push carts with the car on the front. As time goes by, I grow less and less fond of going grocery shopping.

The October Reader's Digest has an article about saving money and somehow they figure shopping online for groceries is one way to do this.

Almost all of the online grocers they mention don't deliver to Rochester. A few that do...

Netgrocer.com - I only got as far as checking out the outrageous shipping charges ($6 for a $25 order, $10 for a $50 order).

Amazon.com - free shipping on orders over $25. Considering that you can also sign up for an Amazon affiliates account and get a small percentage of your purchase back, it might not be a bad idea for namebrand items, depending on their prices. And the ability to use coupons.

SAM'S Club - they don't deliver, but they have a "Click 'n' Pull" service where you order online, they pull the items from the shelves and have it ready for you to pick up within 24 hours. Of course, you have to be a SAM's Club member and support the evil Walmart empire. But they do have great frozen scallops...

I've been needing a car charger for my iPod nano, well, ever since I bought it.

I was going to just buy one online, but a friend/colleague told me to check out the Apple store at Eastview mall. Apparently just going is supposed to be quite the experience.

I like Macs. My first computer was a Mac. My current computer is a PC, but I've used Macs lots at work. So I can go either way. It's just that all the software I own is PC, so switching at this point would be a huge investment. But they both have their good qualities.

OK. So I'm at the mall and go into the Apple store. The lighting is cool. All the stuff looks cool. There's the "genius bar" with people waiting for their turn to talk to a genius, I suppose. There's a workshop going on. There's a children's station that I'll probably be parking Exhausto-Boy at in a year or two. (He's going to need his own computer soon, if only to keep his hands off mine!)

I find my car charger thingie amongst a half-dozen options (car charger with FM tuner, car charger with syncing-something, car charger with wireless remote something else...) and get in line to pay.

A guy (possibly even a genius) who'd been helping another customer opened an extra register and rang me up. He asked if there's anything else he could help me with (yes, I know they HAVE to ask you that, no one really wants you to say "yes'") so I asked him if he could tell me why iTunes insists on crashing on my PC and keeps corrupting my library file.

"Because you have a PC," is my answer. Of course. I am in the Apple store, after all.

Something then happens in his ringing-up-the-purchase process which obviously frustrates him, because he starts muttering to himself and then blurts out, "Well, isn't that so special?"

Calling computer errors "special" strikes me as the most geeky thing I have heard. And then I look at him. And he looks totally familiar. Do I actually know this guy? Or did I just work at a tech school (RIT) for too many years? It's entirely possible he's a student I ran into or who fixed my computer at some point. And there's nothing inherently wrong with being a Mac-loving geek that might possibly go to school at the area's largest university.

So I leave the Apple store (iPod car charger in hand and no closer to a solution for my iTunes woes). As much as I love technology, I don't belong there like Pete does. And as much as I do love good food, I don't belong at places like 2Vine either. Maybe sitting at my computer tapping away in my PJs really is the life for me.

Back to talking about food again. Although I have had the Project Vote Smart website open on my computer for a few days to slowly continue my education.

Last Thursday I dined at 2 Vine with a group of women friends. It was our leave the husbands/kids/pets at home and hang out night.

Unfortunately, it was the Let's Have an Obnoxiously Loud Drunk Office Party for the table next to us.

I've eaten at 2 Vine once before. On a date. I had the Steak Frites with a side of brussel sprouts and delicious red wine. Last week I had the same Steak Frites, no sides or salads. No wine. And it was OK.

The food was good - yummy, slightly spicy fries. Well-cooked tender steak (by well cooked, I mean cooked right, not cooked "well done"). But our server was snotty, it was way too loud, it's overpriced for what it is, and there's only one thing on the menu I really feel like eating.

Everything else sounds good...at first. But then you read the rest of the description and it's just not so appealing anymore.

Grilled Lamb Chops (OK, sounds good) with red and white Swiss chard (ewww).

Grilled Pork Chops (could go for that) with butter beans (um, maybe not).

And the menu goes on (their online menu is not what the same as the one in the restaurant, by the way).

I guess I'm just not pretentious enough to really enjoy it there. And I am European.

I almost met Susan John today.

I opened my front door on the way to go to the chiropractor and out floated a flyer with her name, photo and a handwritten note. "Sorry I missed you - Susan John," it said.

Huh. I wonder if she wrote that herself, I thought. If she was actually here going door to door? Then I looked up and there was a woman across the street talking to my neighbor. She looked familiar. She looked remarkably like the lady on the flyer I was picking up...

So I waved to my neigbor, Julie, and Susan John waved back at me. And, as it was 4:58 pm and my 5 pm chiropractic appointment was a good 15-minute drive away, I hopped in my car and sailed away.

Kevin tells me that Susan John got the best score out of all our New York State politicians on her environmentally-friendly voting record. So that's a good thing.

Kevin also gave me a flyer for the Green Party, which has Malachy McCourt on its roster. The same one who was quoted in today's D&C as saying:

"Let me point out that insurance is against something happening, so to call it health insurance is pretty dopey as I have never insured myself against health although some presidents have insured themselves against truth and intelligence.

"So let's begin by correctly calling it sickness insurance. My position is simply that all citizens should be insured by the state for every illness.

"No profit should ever be made on another person's misery and no human being in our state should ever be afraid to go to the physician or hospital and fear bankruptcy as a result of crushing bills.

"No profits from mangled bodies of our people or from mental illness or from mental retardation or depression.

"This will be called socialism, communism, anarchism, etc. I call it humanism."

Um, OK. "Mangled bodies of our people" ? "Sickness insurance" ? I'm all for the idea of universal health care and I'm not sure that I'm either a Democrat OR a Republican, but I'd prefer to vote for someone who might possibly, in some small way, be taken seriously.

That said, I have little idea who to vote for. The bigger positions seem easier to decide somehow. But I have no idea who's even running for the other offices - like judges and town clerks and people that can possibly have a greater impact on my day-to-day life.

I guess I'll poke around the NYS Board of Elections web site.

Is there an easier way to get this info that I'm just not getting? I'm 29, educated, and apparently clueless.

I'm probably still digesting everything I ate last week. That's why I'm still talking about it.

So last Wednesday was my mom's 60th birthday. I thought she needed a few treats so paid a visit to La-Tea-Da tearoom on Park and Alexander.

We went during my mom's last visit and I was going to blog about it then, but the experience was something less than spectacular. You might have noticed that I have a hard time bitching about things in public. (In private, it's another matter entirely. I'll admit that.) So I said nothing.

What happened was that the food (we had quiche) was good, but, among other things, the service ultimately wasn't and we ended up not having time for dessert! What a crime. So I said something to the owner (as nicely as I could while expressing displeasure) and she apologized and gave us a coupon for dessert for two on the house.

A birthday seemed like the perfect time to indulge, so off we went for scones and tea. And I can happily say (with some relief) that the service was great and it was a good experience all around. It almost wasn't as we got there at 4 pm when they close during the week and were almost turned away. But they let us in and we had a good time.

What did we have a good time eating? Other than a pot of English Breakfast tea, we got the strawberry scone cake and bread pudding and split them and share (good idea!).

Short description: Yummmmmmmmmmm.

Longer description: Strawberry scone cake - strawberries, scone, some ice cream, lots and lots of whipped cream (you can never have too much), drizzled with chocolate sauce. It was sweet, maybe a little too sweet, and I'm not a huge fan of chocolate drizzled on things. It tends to overpower everything else.

Bread pudding - oh my god I'd forgotten how much I love something as simple as bread pudding! There was the bread pudding part, of course, the raisins, and a delicious brandy butter sauce on top. And some whipped cream. And no chocolate sauce.

La-Tea-Da is an interesting place. I'm not sure what I expected from an "English tea room." I don't think I expected quite so much lace and hats. It's very fancy. But stuffy-fancy. Dress-up fancy. Victorian-fancy. Which is OK. I'm just not a very Victorian part-English gal. However, I can appreciate good tea and dessert.