Lent Day 1: are pretzels bread?

I am now fully in the swing of lent. Except that I'm at Search Conference which provides us with not-so-delicious lunches. The lunch consisted of turkey sandwiches, pretzels and a brownie. I ate the turkey and cheese not the BREAD. But i toyed with the pretzels. Are they bread? Are they on the list? Off the list? I decided to have a couple. Then i started to think -- if i were buying one of those warm pretzels -- i would totally identify them as bread! these little hard pretzels -- duh! they are just stale bread. So to clarify for myself. YES! Pretzels are bread! So they are on the "off" list.

lent

I am committed to giving up the following for Lent:

1 - no drinking: no wine. no beer. no cosmos.
2 - no desserts: no cookies, no chocolate, none of that yummy gooey sweetness.

may the lord help me!

Update 2/27/06:
Julie and I went to dinner at Five Points - and met this lovely older man who eats out in NYC every night! We asked him how he does it and he said:
- no rice
- no potato
- no bread

So, in that spirit, i'm adding these three items to my "given up for Lent" list.

happy 85th grandma!

My grandmother turned 85 today! and she's still cooking up trouble! My sister and i both sent her birthday greetings (well my sis sent her's first and reminded me to send mine!). Here's the screen captures:
#1 - Sheila (pic via isight?)


#2 - Me (sent via MSN Messenger, i went the full video interactive route -- to which my grandma said "oh but sheila sent me a picture" and i said "but i'm talking to you LIVE!")


Since my mom is the big blogger these days...you should probably check out her blog for the updates:
joychase.blogspot.com (aka moi and mine)...

note: <-- picture not taken by ichat removed 2/7/06 per comment below, and re-posted w/ permision per eml and updated as possibly from isight-->

silverscreen

so, i'm really behind on my blogging and internet going's on and my bloglines feeds because i've been on vacation (and yes i do intend to back-blog the details of my trip)...but i've just discovered Nordstrom's Silverscreen (that the rest of the blogosphere discovered about 35 days ago).

So here's the deal -- nordstrom's silverscreen is going to release a new remixed 80's video EVERY month for the next 12 months. and the video's are good!

check it out:
Culture Club - I'll tumble 4 ya
Go-Go's - Our lips are sealed

The hitch? The video's are remixed with a fashion show of clothes you can actually BUY. I'm serious, i think this is great. I mean, so many video's are a fashion show of clothes you *can't* ever dream of owning.

So, net-net...I'm totally into this.

On another random note -- isn't this the worst outfit ever?
amber tamblyn

Mark Sullivan/WireImage.com --> eonline.com Fashion Police

taxi + bus + boat + taxi = beach

We are finally on the beach in Koh Phangan!! It is lovely, although the rainy season is still trailing a little bit so the water isn't perfectly clear...but the weather is warm and there's nothing to do but beach relaxation...

It was, however, an adventure to get here from bangkok:
- 2 hour taxi ride in HORRIBLE bangkok traffic. We are lucky we didn't get the train tickets we wanted because we surely would have missed our train and been stuck in bangkok. Since we took a bus, they waited for us! Very very nice of them.
- 11 hours bus ride. This was hard. The seats were uncomfortable and the most comfy ones were downstairs but they smelled like diesel! so they just weren't manageable. The bus had one stop at a series of markets in the middle of nowhere. I got a snack of watermelon which was perfectly refreshing at midnight.
- 2 hour wait at the river dock. At this point i was cranky from the contorted sleeping and missing my bed back home deeply. I don't miss the beds at the Shangri-La, or Le Meredien or the Davis because frankly beds in Thailand are hard and low to the ground and i much prefer my high, soft bed.
- 3 hour boat ride to Koh Samui and then to Koh Phangan. The boat ride was really quite nice.
- 45 minute taxi ride across the island to get to Thong Nai Pan Beach. This was a fun taxi - it was an open bed truck. We sat in the back. It started to pour! we got sooo wet. We moved inside the cab. Which was a good move because the ride was very bumpy.

After all of this, we arrived to our nice, very rustic, beach bungalows. We are literally on the beach! Yesterday we walked around, got in the water and ate delicious meals. Today I think we are going to kayak and I am definitely going to get my first Thai massage.

i will eventually post pictures of all of this to flickr...

happy christmas!

Another christmas, another year of wonderful adventures. Here's wishing you all of the best. I'm in Thailand now (great shopping in bangkok let me tell you) and lots of fun chaos as all of us (jasmine, joslyn and sheils) have arrived....adventures to be tracked online soon...

ads in gmail...

so i've been noticing lately that the ads in gmail are getting really good -- and by good i mean useful, relevant and things i just want to click on for more information.

This may in part be to seasonality - right now a lot of my e-mails deal with shopping (gifts for the holidays, my mother's birthday) and travel (i'm going to thailand and my sister and I are writing back and forth about where to stay and what to do)....

The other thing I've noticed is that the number of ads changes. Sometimes I get 3, sometimes 4, sometimes 3 on the rail and one in the web-clip. Sometimes I get a search link. Sometimes not. Hmm. Those google kids are definitely getting crafty!

There are of course those really, really irrelevent links...like the link to buy sushi at Target:
Sushi
Sushi online Shop Target.com
www.Target.com

Sushi? at Target? I love target but not for fresh fish.

I'm curious, are others finding the links to be better? More useful?