Go Hawks!

We are fair weather fans of the fairest variety. In fact, we never watch sports on TV, unless its golf or the Superbowl or that American Ninja show - does that count as sports?  Anyway now, this season, we find ourselves on the bandwagon of enthusiasm for this years Seattle Seahawks and we're actually paying attention to what's going on. 

I'm not going to pretend that I know shit about football - I just enjoy the culture of watching, yelling, eating...I mostly try to yell kind of in a low voice since it's common for me to yell at the wrong times, or during an instant replay because I don't know it's a replay - and I'm an idiot. Hence the low yelling - I try not to embarrass myself. Whatevs - I'm having fun.

The latest realization though is that we have NO GEAR. NOTHING. How are we expected to be "FANS" with no gear. I'm going to fix that and surprise the hubby with a little Seahawk's swag. I went to the Proshop on the Seattle Seahawks website - here are some choices out of a kazillion that I found there. Women's choices. The men's choices are the normal stuff - I barely looked at those. 

Kind of subtle $29.95

Sweatshirt $54.95

Gray Tee 34.95

Leggings (are not pants) $44.95

Long sleeve Tee 39.95

Standard Mens style sweatshirt $49.95

Completely slutty halter top $124.95

I'm thinking one of the long sleeve tee's or the sweatshirt - definitely not getting the slutty shirt - and yes, if you are interested, it's also available sleeveless - real halter style. Oh God.

Online Shopping - Where the Deals are

You should see my inbox every morning, day, night, middle of night, all the time. It's freaking loaded with the latest newest awesome offers, begging me to shop now for great great great great great great deals – and it’s nobody’s fault but my own that I get so many emails – I obviously signed up for these services at some point in the past. Now, I’m shellshocked- the offers never stop coming and I can’t keep up. And, I realized something else this weekend too! While trying to shop for a handbag in a real store - I was just pissed that everything I wanted wasn't on super sale. WTF? I'm brainwashed into thinking I can only buy designer goods at discounted prices. Nordstrom must really love that. So I thought this might be a nice time to talk through some of these discounted fashion sites. I’ll just go over the clothing sites right now, maybe later we can discuss all the furniture sites out there calling my name. Here we go.

Gilt Groupe – They just recently revamped their site and while I’m not convinced it’s as easy to navigate as it used to be, I'm ok with it. I’ll figure it out because Gilt Groupe is awesome and I like them. Here’s why. When they feature something on their site to discount – it’s really a good price, not like some others that I will get to later that don’t really offer discounted pricing unless you are buying an off size or super ugly item that will never sell. These guys mean it – good stuff at good prices, sometimes designer (high end) and sometimes independents (not as high end), and they have women’s, men’s, house stuff, travel (see their sister site Jetsetter), and baby stuff. I’ve ordered piles of things over the last couple years – and it’s all been good quality. They also have a return policy where they will take things back and most often give you a credit toward your next purchase – also good because there will always be something coming up that you will like.

RueLaLa – Also awesome. They have similarly good stuff for the whole family – and usually an excellent choice of nicer brands. Me likey. And they do sample sales at times to reduce their inventory - at even better than usual prices.

ShoeMint – I’ve ordered a few items here – just to check out the shoes, because frankly they have some really cute shoes at very low low prices. I had to see for myself if the product was good or not. I got some really cute silvery loafers – I like them but they are sort of stiff and I haven’t gotten them broken in enough and they hurt like hell – but still…..very cute. I also got some wedges – for around $40 bucks – and while I think they will only last one season, they are super cute too. I think the price/quality deal is pretty fair. Inexpensive for only ok construction and quality. I haven’t seen tons on this site that I love, but I still think it’s a good option for inexpensive shoes.

HauteLook – This site is operated by Nordstrom, but it’s not super obvious or super Nordstrom-y. They have deals on brands that are pretty straight forward, I think the prices are really good, I've only ordered a couple of things here, but I like it because Nordstrom tends not to mark things down very much, but this site does, and it's kind of like your own version of Nordstrom Rack but you don't have to pick through a bunch of dirty racks to find anything good. It's all right here.

The RealReal – Holy crap – this site is awesome. It’s a treasure hunt of high end fashion – a consignment site of models and rich ladies throw-aways. For handbags, gently used shoes and clothing – you can find some great things here. Check it out. They do a pretty nice job of close-up photos, so you really can see what you're getting and what the flaws are. The only downside is that models all have super skinny bodies and giant feet - so good like finding your sizes. But when you do, then HELLO DOLLY!

Bluefly – Remember when this was the first site of this kind and people were talking about it. Well, for the longest time I couldn't understand why anyone ever liked it. I’ve never once found that their prices were worth the time to look through the stuff– their discounts were always pretty lame compared to others. I have never purchased anything here and probably wont. I have noticed recently that since all the other good sites have come online, Bluefly is starting to better their discounts to keep up. I'm not sure that will work for me though - I'm still a little bitter from past years and lousy discounts here. But feel free to check them out if you want.

Field Trip - Storyville Coffee

Yesterday we walked down to the market and had a little breakfast date at Storyville Coffee in downtown Seattle.  It officially opens tomorrow and while I did take a few pics, you should really go straight to their website to look at theirs. Much better.

I don't know anything about the company or the owners, but I really like the vibe at Storyville and the invitation we got to come check it out was printed on the nicest prettiest paper I've seen come through the mail in a long time. If you are in the neighborhood, hanging around the market and you need a cozy little nook to get coffee, this place is awesome! Excellent lighting and warm industrial design, delicious coffee, pastries and little foods - perfect morning, afternoon or evening cute spot.

Storyville is located on the same floor as Matt's in the Market, just across and above the pig and the market sign - really nice place to hide from the bad weather. It's a teeny bit expensive, but worth it for a treat or a date, and brings you right back to how nice it is to have a coffee date with real cups! And the bonus: we met really nice new strangers there - it's the kind of place where it's really easy to make new friends! Yipee! Shout- out to the gal from Bainbridge who knows my friend Lisa, and the Microsoft guy who's developing an app called Infinite Good. Check that out too! People are doing interesting things out there!

High Brow?

Got my hair colored the other night. New gal, new salon - so far I like her - and the color is good, etc. If I really really like her then I'll tell you to go there. I'm not committing yet. I'm getting my hair cut by same gal in 3 weeks - that will be the real test. I've been limping along without a really good salon for a while so I hope this is it! Oh please, be it!

But, that's not what I'm here to talk about - care to discuss my eyebrows? Along with getting older, losing my eyesight, getting jowly and all the other crap - my eyebrows are getting kind of lighter and disappearing. So, my new color gal fixed it. So much better. Can you tell? You probably can't tell, but I can - and I think it's good. Not Groucho - which was my main concern, but pretty good!

PS- yes, I know I'm late getting on this train - but better late than never, right?

What are you lookin at?

The Thing about Trip Pics

Since getting back from a nice long awesome vacation to Croatia - I've discovered a couple things about trip pics. 1. If you take too many it's really hard to sort through them 2. Even when people say they want to see them, they don't really. I can actually watch friends at about the 15 second mark start to fade and note the boredom that envelopes them like a fog and they sort of go into standing coma - it's just like that chick on the Toyota Versa commercial who said she read "most" of an article on the internet - because in 2013 nobody has any sort of attention span AT ALL.

So, I'm going to post a few pics - just a few - because you're going to fall asleep. Also, have you looked at the various methods of sharing photo's online in a slideshow format with music. It's really really hard to find one that is intuitive, can hold a significant amount of pics, let's you put music to it, and isn't super expensive. I've tried almost all of them and I'm left somewhere between irritated and blehhhhh about my options. 

I found what I thought was a really good site, which I've used before and liked - and I was really enjoying it right up until it stopped allowing me to caption the photos. Just stopped captioning the entire right side of edit photos - nothing. So.... tech support said, "oh wow, software problem, I'll have to take this higher up the chain - we'll email you when we can diagnose and fix the problem". Ugh, when do you think that will be?" I have pictures to share with uninterested friends, people! And no, I didn't even want zoomy effects or emoticons to bounce around in my slideshow - just a pretty arrangement of photos - and I want to email the link and not have my own husband go "I can't open it, our browser at work says we don't have the widget - wtf?????" Do you know how long I took me just to get it out the door to one person???

Note the totally relaxed vibe in my writing - ahhh, vacations  - I'm so relaxed. Haha.

Old Town Dubrovnik

Little boats and blue blue water

My $30 Kir Royale - woops. Note to self: Don't order champagne in Croatia.

Me

View from the wall. They film Game of Thrones here - yes, we saw them.

Our Cat - 7 friends, 1 skipper, and we're all still talking

She's quite pretty

Every village = cute and charming

Some guy had a great sense of humor on Lostovo

Sunset in Vis

This is a good way to spend the day

Me vs. Birds - I win!

We have a huge old black walnut tree at the farm. It's awesome, in fact so awesome that we got married under it one time. 

Here's what it does that is also awesome - it makes WALNUTS!!! But, after a number of years I've come to learn a couple of things about what goes on at the farm and around the walnut tree when I'm not looking. 

When the walnuts get ripe (or ready, or whatever) in September, I have a really really little window of opportunity to get outside and get the walnuts before the blue jays (Stellar's Jays) get ALL OF THEM. I don't like these birds very much, and it's mostly because they are super greedy little fuckers and every year take all the walnuts off the tree and off the ground and away to some undisclosed location AND THEY DON'T EVEN EAT THEM! From what I can tell, they only care about the little worms that in the outside husk of the walnut and they don't even eat the walnut. ( I also don't like them because the bully all the other birds at the bird feeder! They suck in so many ways!)

In past years, they have cleaned me out completely! So, now, I watch the tree - looking for action. As soon as the blue jays start getting all peck peck pecky at the walnuts as they start to brown up on the outside - I have to get out there in a hurry and get my share. On Saturday I saw them - three of them - out there starting to get excited. So, on Sunday, while the skies opened up and rained all over me, I spent the morning with the fruit picker reaching for walnuts. I got a bunch - I thought it was nice of me to take all the ground, low hanging and medium high walnuts - and I left the high up ones for the freaking birds. That seems nice - not that the birds would do that for me. I'm just nicer than they are. Assholes!

Oh, and I'm not clear that the fruit picker is the best answer for picking walnuts, but it's all I had. Yay! Walnuts for us!

Last thought: I keep wondering if some day I'll be walking around on the property and stumble upon seven million walnuts - whole - with a sign written in blue jay that says "Suzy - EAT ME!"

Croatia - You complete me!

We are back from lovely Croatia! Sorting through pics now - but here are a couple to get excited about!