Written Right: a writer's guide to more than writing

Oh yes, I surely love my wine. I'm not a daily drinker, but I appreciate good wine and love finding quirky vintages and new flavors. While old standby is a slightly sweet Riesling, I'm usually willing to venture out and try just about anything.

I know it's supposedly an art when you are skilled at pairing food with the correct Champagne and Wine, but I like to approach the pairings with more flexability. I see no sin in drinking red with chicken. ;)

I completely dig that you can buy wine online. We have some great stores here in the city that have a lot of variety, but there is no better variety than having the entire internet available to your wine cellar.

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Well, this was an odd headline. A planned Manhattan display of a 200 pound, milk chocolate, nude, anatomically correct sculpture of Jesus has been cancelled. Though it's been touted as a Holy Week exhibition, I have to admit I see some of the points being made against the display. I never thought is was supposed to be an actual sincere event.

My main reason for feeling skeptical about the true value of such a sculpture is that the artist, Cosimo Cavallaro, is known for "food art" that is usually meant to be non-serious, often a joke.

Blogging is “it” on the internet these days. Even most newscasters put serious stock in what the bloggers say, even though I think it’s asinine to refer to bloggers as one, lumped collective unit with some sort of mystical shared brain. But then, that’s modern journalism for you. I may think it’s asinine, but I’m not even a little bit surprised.

I have a few blogs and I read many, many other blogs each day. I have some of the blogs I liked bookmarked, some on blog rolls and others kept safely in my memory. Having all my favorite blogs listed in one place holds a lot of appeal to me.

HighFivez.com is a web community for and about blogs, blogging, and bloggers. How’s that for a little alliteration? You can keep a list of your favorites and share posts and blogs you think other “HighFiverz” will groove on. If you like the blog, give it a HighFive. If not, Pound It. The ratings are all totally comprised of real votes by real people. That’s more than most typical blog directories can boast.

Submit your blog and file it neatly away in the appropriate category. Then go to town checking out other blogs and swinging full force with HighFives.

And so he was knighted.

Can I tell you how cool I thought he was back when I was a teen and had U2 posters up in my room? I think it was right around the time The Unforgettable Fire was released. Those guys hung the moon back then. I was majorly hooked on the album Boy. Now the man is just a self-serving walking EGO and I have no respect for a single word that comes out of his stylized mouth. Meaningless. Drivel. *yawn*

Ok, I'm not a mom yet. Unless you count being mommy to my new fish. But, that's kinda odd, I suppose.

I still adore Mother's Day. I love honoring my mom and my grandma. They are both flying in for the weekend around Mother's Day in May so we can do a girly weekend of shopping and theater. I'm thrilled and keep making all kinds of cool plans to add to our itinerary.

I also want to have special keepsake gifts for each of them. Of course, if you know me then you know that I am a huge fan of shopping online when I want to find just the right gifts. You just can't do as much browsing in 4 hours of store shopping as you can in half an hour online.

Collectibles Today has Mother's Day Gifts for Grandmothers, Grandmoms and Grandma. The selection is just perfect for what I have in mind. My Gran is into the whole Red Hat movement and there are tons of pretty little figures with the whole red and purple thing going on. I'm looking for a music box for mom. In any event, I have found pretty much perfect items on Collectibles Today and that's fine by me. One order makes it all the easier.

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No cats. No dogs. I cannot have them in my apartment. So, I have decided that living alone is not for me anymore. So, I trekked on over to my friend Lou's house. He bred fish. Some kind of hobby, huh? He gave me one of his spare tanks and set me up with some lovely little freshwater buddies.

The tinkling of the filter is actually great white noise in the apartment and I get a small thrill when I go to feed my fish and them swim excitedly to the surface. Do they love me? Is that possible? I have to let myself beleive they do. Apartment living can be lonely and if I derive love from my pet fish, then so be it.

I'm not sure if I mentioned it before, but I'm a bit of a math buff and I've been treating myself to some college classes in the field. When I went to college the last go-round, I focused on literature and now that I am working in publishing and quite surrounded by literature, I realize how much I missed out by not taking a little higher level math class here and there. And so now I am. And while I'm at it, I'm putting in some free hours tutoring elementary students in my neighborhood.

Of course, the real world of math and science is a metric world, wholeheartedly ignoring our American imperial measurement system. My brain, though, is still imperial. :) So you might just understand my glee when I see a product like the 1-Step Metric Conversion Calculator. It's a conversion calculator right on my level -- easy to use! The 1-Step is particularly recommended for teachers and students. It's an all around handly tool whether you are working in volume, weight, length, area, cubic, temperature, or pressure.

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It was one of those rare weekends I had to spend almost completely at the office. Although I am an editor, I'm still in the "management" circle and all managers had to be there to oversee our departments as the contractors overhauled the computer system.

Although it was a rough weekend and I got little to no sleep, I am also quite thrilled with the new technology we have brought into the publishing house. As time goes on, I will have to blog about some of the new "toys" we have around.

At our office here in NYC, we own all the computer equipment we use. Well, not us personally as in the employees, but the publisher. Our offices in other cites all use rental services to rent their computer equipment. As odd as that seems, they have much better upkeep and service for their equipment. It's rational for an office environment.

Our L.A. offices use a Los Angeles computer rentals company mostly because that office tends to do a lot of on-site training and meetings. They are the business-publishing side of our company and supply books and training for corporations on things like Positive Reinforcement in Management and Leadership. Heady stuff. Nonetheless, it beats lugging equipment from city to city and setting up and maintaining it ourselves.

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Some small part of me still wishes nights out started a little earlier with my frineds. I'm OK with being in bed right about now :) But, as it stands I still have an hour or so until I meet the girls for some rounds at our favorite clubs. We take turns choosing the places we hit and it's Kayla's turn tonight so I am sure there will be cigars and pianos involved ;)

Portable hard drive storage is always a good idea if you bounce between home and work and even if you just want an easy way to back up files and store all your music and pictures. I’ve been using one for a while, but it’s older and kind of clunky and not very cute.

Pexagon has a new pocket-sized portable hard drive that would be cute even if it didn’t come in five different colors, which it does. I am in love with the sassy cherry red, and not just because it matched my cell phone. They are available in versions from 40 to 160 GB and Pexagon's portable drives are super affordable. You can pick up 100 gigabytes for $99. That’s a steal.

And here’s the vanity factor in all of this: they laser engrave your logo on the front and your name on the back for free. Now that’s hot.

I just picked up the most amazing side gig. One of the authors I work with at the publishing house has a cousin here in NYC that has a business as a personal shopper/gift buyer. She gets hired to do all sorts of shopping for the super wealthy who are too buzy (or perhaps too lazy) to shop on their own. She also gets paid to shop for gifts for party favors, people's Christmas gifts, high-profile baby showers, etc.

Since those around me apparently think I have my finger on the pulse of all that is cool, I've been contracted to help this cousin of the author's pinpoint the hippest gifts this season.

I kid you not. I'm going to be paid to buy stuff for other people, paid to test new trends and scout new hot items.

I am in shopping heaven, my friends.

It's rather like my cousin who lives in Florida. When you live somewhere people like to travel to for vacation, you get a ton of house guests. Growing up in the Midwest, we had to quite literally beg friends and family to visit. There just wasn't much of an attraction to visit our town.

Now, everyone wants to fly in and bunk on daybed. It's a little flattering until I remember they're mostly here to see a few ball games and see some Broadway. Either way, I become their official tour guide and I have to dig up great tickets at affordable prices. It's no small feat. I like to let my guest narrow down what they want to do before I get the tickets, so I've been sending them to websites that have tips and reviews all together, like this NYC sports & travel site. It has articles on all the major sporting attractions here, as well as the museums, theater and other "must see" places in The City.

I actually like to use the site myself, even though I live here, because it has tons of cool historical info about a lot of different buildings and neighborhoods here. No matter how long you've lived in New York, there is always something new to learn.

More and more of my friends and family are signing up for MySpace accounts. I've secretly had one for a couple of years. There, I guess it's not a secret anymore. :)

I've always rather thought of MySpace as a thing for teenagers. I suppose it's becming more all inclusive lately. My mom even has a MySpace account. And she has more "friends" than I do.

I love it when I find a new source for unique, cool gifts for my friends. I have some pretty edgy pals and getting them a gift they like can be difficult. I tend to move more toward the hand made, one-of-a-kind items so that I know for sure when I give my gift, the recipient won't already have one at home.

Artisansmarket.com is an online marketplace for artists to show and sell their creations. It's like going to a local craft show or to a unique artist gallery, but it's all online and I have access to hundreds of different artisans all in one place. I'm particulalry thrilled with the cool baskets they have available. In fact, I found one that totally eased my stress about finding the perfect gift for Lilli. Shh, don't tell her.

I know a lot of my friends and their friends and their friend's friends read this blog. So here's a request for all you people living her in the City: get out and check out the Shadowlands party tomorrow. This is a one-of-a-kind celebration and you'll seriously have some rockin' water cooler talk for Monday. Would I lie to you? Do you ever wonder why I'm the queen of drop-dead amazing water cooler talk at my office? I attend the best parties, that's why.

I've misplaced my favorite sunglasses again and since it's still wintery outside, I didn't notice until I looked for them today. They might be in the apartment somewhere, but my best bet it to buy myself two new pairs so that I have a pair in my desk at work, in my bag and at home (if I ever find them).

I found a cool Sunglasses Buying Guide at OpticsPlanet.net. It talks a lot about choosing the right fit, shape and size. I've never read a buying guide for sunglasses before and find this very useful. Their prices rock, too. I'm browsing the sunglasses right now and most of the prices are about half off regular retail. That's my kind of pricing system! You have to check out the price on this pair of Orange County Choppers shades. Cute and reasonable. I'm considering them, but I'll probably also want to pick up a pair of classic Aviator Sunglasses. For some people, their classic is the old Elwood style. For me it's a hot pair of aviators.

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We live in an age where many people use a VCR or DVR to record shows they may miss when they are out of busy. So when it comes time for networks to start showing reruns, I get irritated. I use my DVR diligently and I have seen the episodes of every show I wanted to see. I'm ready for new fodder. Last night I ended up watching Survivor and I think most people would agree that this season is anemic without a character like Yul (last season's winner and one of the absolute hottest men on earth). I have a little crushes on Anthony and Alex. That's mostly because they seem to be more out to play as a team..., and nice. They seem nice. I want to kick some of the girls on the luxury team for being racist and entitled. I hope they're the next ones out when the teams switch it up. There they sit fat and spoiled while the team is quite literally starving and all they seem to want to do for sport is spit venom on the black people on their team. Gross.

And while I'm thinking about Survivor, how in the world did a non-CBS entity get the survivor.com domain name? Good for them, but it's filled with useless ads and annoying crap. Don't go to that site unless you want to load your computer down with so much junk it will reach across the desk and slap you.

How did this turn into a Survivor rant?

A firefighters' union is accusing Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani, my city's former mayor, of committing "egregious acts" against firefighters who died in the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Seriously? Now? Not years ago? Not while he was still in office? Anyone with half a brain can see this is being prodded on by liberals who see Giuliani as a threat to anyone they might coddle into the position of candiate for the Democrats in the next Presidential election.

And you wonder why I hate unions? Is there some unwritten law that says you have to surrender your own thoughts and opinions when you join a union and allow some spokesperson to hand out your opinions for you? Unions are SO easy to control and make no mistake in your thining when you ponder who might be behind this. It's terribly transparent if you look at the timing.

My skin is one of my best qualities and I take a lot of extra time and thought in working up the best routine for its care. I'm religious about knowing what's actually in the products I use on my face. I admit it's not always the most expensive products that are the best, but whether the products are inexpensive or pricey, I am going to use what's best for my skin.

The website SkincareMD.com sells professional strength Skin Care products. They sell the products by educating you about the right products for your skin, not by pushing you into the hottest, most hyped new products.

They go to the trouble of testing every product that they sell. That's why they tend to offer a more narrow array of products when compared to other online retailers. You can be assured that the people at SkincareMD actually know about each and every product.

What I like is that the product aren't just listed next to a gushing paragraph that uses a lot of flowery language, but neglects to inform me about the product itself. This site shows me the ingredients, directions and indications for its use


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I just got my tickets to see Liev Schreiber in Talk Radio at the Longacre Theatre. It's nice to have Schreiber back on Broadway. I try to see whatever he happens to be in. Last summer I saw him in the lead role in MacBeth in Central Park. Of course, those ticket were free. Talk Radio tickets mean I have to skip my morning coffee for several weeks make up for the splurge.

Schreiber has been called the greatest stage actor of his generation and I happen to agree. The man's a powerhouse on stage and steals any show he's in. It's less apparent on TV and on the big screen, but that scene stealing is still there.

And he's going to be a father. His girlfriend, Naomi Watts, is carrying his spawn. I'm hoping they're secretly married already.

I just found the coolest site. Remember how I was recently ranting about the kids of men I will never date? WomanSavers.com-World's Largest Database Rating Men. The website is an entire woman-only community based on women rating their dates so the rest of us can be warned before we make a mistake. I'm sure there are some positive ratings out there, too, but I admit I am most enthralled by looking around to see what people have to say about the not-so-nice guys out there in the dating pool.

Woman Savers has a huge forum community with relationship advice and input from professional relationship counselors. They have tons of articles on men and how to tell they are cheating. There is even an expansive list of Domestic Violence resources.

This is just an amzing site and it should be your first stop when you meet someone new and are wondering about his background. Maybe you won;t see his name in their database, but if you do you can run away and stop later to thank the ladies who warned you.


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This morning when I got up, I stared at the dishes in my kitchen sink. Note I say "kitchen"; I wasn't even going to go NEAR the dishes in my bathroom sink.

They were defiant. Dirty water swirled lyrically in last night's pudding bowl. Cold dirt-colored coffee reminded me that the morning before was actually an entire day away, not the mere month it felt like. Svelt spoons and their polite cousins lay in disarray on the stainless steel. The worst part was I needed coffee and that meant I had to clean the coffee pot to make the coffee in. I wanted coffee now. Why didn't I have the sense to do the dishes last night?

I like living alone. There are SO many plusses, but every now and then I wish there were someone around to do the dishes for me.

One of the best things about living in New York City is that it's all right here. I know. That's an ambiguous statement, but it's true. I have everything I need right here, in the city, close to me. Of course, I still do my fair share of traveling outside of New York, but if I want something I can find it here.

One of my best friends is a standup comedian. She is a blast and when she and I are messing around I realize I'm also funny. The difference is that I have never been on a stage and worked a room. Back to the whole "we have it all in New York" comment. The Manhattan Comedy School is right here and they offer classes on stand-up and improv. I've been looking for a class to take, since being in an office all day makes me feel cranky and I need some mental stimulation. Manhattan Comedy Classes meet once a week for six weeks and I’ll get live feedback from the other students ant he instructor. It sound like it’s right up my alley.

The stand up for beginners class is already sold out for March, so I’ll need to get going if I want to be in the April class.



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There is no way in the world I will date a man who is with me becuase he is cheating on someone else. I will not date a man who has ever cheated in the past. I will not date a man who is separated from his wife. Have enough respect to wait to date until you are not actually married to him anymore

Creatures of habit, men tend to repeat behaviors and I don't someone who has hurt another woman like that in the past. I am too smart to believe he wouldn't do it again.

Does that answer your question?

Come on, guys. Be men. Real men. The kind of man a woman actually wants to be with. Don't whine about being single when you insist on acting like a dog. Singel is not a plague and some of actually LIKE it. If you want to play around and act like a boy, do it without involving an actual relationship. If you think you're ready to settle down and really give a woman what she wants, then lop off the old man and bring in the new.

Is blogitics even a word? Well, for the sake of this post let's assume it's a word. I'm sure you're familiar with office politics. Think about the channels you have to navigate at work to make you don't rock the boat too often.

There seems to be a working politicking method online as well. As a blogger, it is in my best interest to trade meaningful links with other bloggers. Not only does this build up my own little online network and possibly expose my blog to more readers, it also factors into the complicated Page Rank system and potentially helps my blog rise in popularity enough to earn a respectable Page Rank. I am, at this righting, sitting solidly on a zero page rank. *sigh*

There are several theories about who should link to who and when and how. A large faction says that if you have a high page rank, you should avoid linking to someone like me who has no ranking at all. Others say that any and all links are beneficial.

I agree with the latter. A link is a link in my book, as long as it is used in the context of your blog or at least one of your posts. I'm not a huge fan of blogrolls, or put more simply, long general lists of other blogs. I think any site I choose write about should be linked in the middle of rich content that is in the appropriate context of the site to which I am linking.

And while I'm on the topic of politics, be it blogitics or real-life political politics, let me mention Lisa Renee at Glass City Jungle, simply because I was recently given the link and I'm so thrilled to see a political blog written with a dash of humor and a format that doesn't try to go over people's heads. I'm an admitted political junkie and I can sit and read a blog about local politics from absolutely anywhere in the world and be enthralled. It doesn't have to be about my own state or City to hold my attention.

Maybe Lisa Renee could help me figure out if blogitics is a real word. :)

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I have had friends calling me about going out every single night since 2007 began. All of the sudden, it's as though people are capable of running on no sleep and even less brain function. I'd say I agree about three times a week, but I have to draw the line somewhere. I have a job and have to get up at 6am. Come to think of it, so does my friend Molly -- the friend who called and begged me to go to a big club event with her tonight. How does she do it? I'm a zombie on Mondays and I usually try and stay in on Sunday nights.

It just occurred to me that when the girls and I go to Florida we should rent a villa, like my family and I do when we go to Disney. It's less expensive than a hotel and much more comfortable, since you are staying at a real house in a real subdivision. I can usually find a 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom, pool home for about the price of staying in a mid-range hotel. That way we can each have our own room, instead of getting two hotel rooms and doubling up.

A lot of the folks who own these villas are from the U.K. We always rent from someone overseas and when we eat at the local restaurants, we run into more people with lovely British accents than not. We'll start talking and find out they are staying in their own property in Florida or renting a villa from a fellow Brit. Not that I blame the people from Ireland or Wales who buy vacation homes in Florida. You can't beat the sunshine there.

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I'm not in college anymore, but several girlfriends and I just finalized plans to spend a week in Florida later this month. We decided to harken back to the "good old days" and treat it just like a college Spring Break. :)

I travel to Florida often to visit one of my cousins and her husband. I also go at least once a year with various family members and stay near Disney. No matter how much older we get, we all still like to pay tribute to The Mouse. And yes, I wear a tiara when I go to the Magic Kingdom. Where else could I get away with that? :)

While I'm in book mode, I thought I'd take some time to talk about Hunger and Other Stories by Ian Randall Wilson. I'm a huge fan of modern short fiction, so this is just the type of book you'd see me pick up in a bookstore or from a friend's home collection.

Wilson has a clean, stark style and a sweeping way of showing us who the characters are in the scheme of their own world. There is a certain masculinity to the way he crafts a sentence, and even as a female reader I have always been drawn to male writers specifically for that strength of phrasing and edgy reality. Relationships are dances, none too graceful. In all honesty, this is exactly teh type of collection I feel compelled enough to purchase so that I can read it slowly, thoughfully.


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My neighbor brought by a big box of books for me to read. We trade all the time, since we're both voracious readers. I've been turned onto some fantastic new authors by reading some of Ginny's castoffs and I'm sure she would say the same about some of the books I've given her.

I've heard of the author Laurel K. Hamilton somewhere along the line. Ginny unloaded her entire collection, because she said she was finally over her "vampire stage". I'm sure I spelled vampire wrong. Apparently there's more than one way and I'll happily admit I only know the one.

So, I flipped through one, then another, and another. This is pretty much porn, yes? I'm shocked. I mean, not literally as in I can't handle a steamy book scene. It's more along the lines that I had always associated this author with pre-teen girls. I've seen more than my fair share of the younger set toting around one of these books on the subway or in the park.

Um, yikes.

Barring my windfall shoe shopping spree, I am really quite a frugal shopper. I love to shop online due to ease, variety and the ability to feed the hungry retail-monster without leaving my desk chair. Another cool thing about shopping at online merchants is they more often than not offer some sort of coupon deal or rebate.

I don't actually enjoy the time it takes to actually locate said coupons, so I use couponchief.com. They have coupon codes for pretty much any merchant you can imagine. I’ve used their site in the past to shop through shoes.com, because as I mentioned before I love me some shoes almost as much as I love a great price.

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I love shoes as much as the next woman. I do, really. I know I don't allocate the kind of money to a "show budget" as some of my friends, but I feel like a few really great pairs of shoes is enough if you have several pairs of classics for day-to-day wear.

But let me register my excitement over a new development at work. I have been given the steering wheel for a huge series we are going to be doing on high-fashion shoes. It comes with an insane budget and I am actually expected to indulge using part of said budget so I will properly represent the project.

Sheer. Glee. sigh

I am calling in favors from contacts in design houses as we speak.

Holy cow! How did it get to be March already? My sister is getting married in June and I agreed to throw her a bridal shower in April. Somehow, the progression of days slipped my mind and here I am with a burning need to get the invitations out as soon as humanly possible.

One of the designers at the office helped me design the actual invites this afternoon. I bought some funky handmade envelopes from this guy who sells his stuff at the street market in my neighborhood, but I forgot all about having to sit down and hand address 100s of envelopes. The least I can do is order some printed return address labels. I found a site that has 150 for $4.95 and they have some great design templates. I'm in a rush and this looks like a huge time saver for me.


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