Everyone Loves a Boston Girl

I just have to say that I am in love with the new Vitamin Water flavor XXX. It is a blend of acai berry, blueberry, and pomengranate juices (waters?), and it is delicious. Never a huge Vitamin Water fan previously, I may have to purchase some stock in this. YUM. Still slightly disturbed by water with juice in it, but I’m not fooled by it, so I can overlook it.

This entry is for all of my lovely girlfriends, otherwise known as the girls who have a life goal to try the nachos at every Boston restaurant that serves nachos.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2007/04/nachos_provoke.html

Allegedly, 2 girls at Revere High School were arrested after fighting over nachos in the school cafeteria.

This tells me that we need to be more careful when going out for nachos…maybe we should create a list of rules from now on? Everyone must agree on the toppings on nachos before entering the restaurant. Always order the larger size. Only take one spoonful of salsa, one spoonful of guacamole, and one spoonful of sour cream. Don’t eat all of the nachos that are smothered and cheese and leave the bare ones. Actually, I’m surprised more fights don’t break out over nachos.

And for anyone wondering, yes, we girls did successfully eat the full-size order of nachos at the Coolidge Corner Clubhouse. It wasn’t easy, and my roommate and I had to do some serious coaching along the way. But we did it. And we were damn proud too. If you haven’t had CCC’s nachos, you really have to try them. But just as a warning, if you eat the entire full-size order, you probably will not want nachos again for at least 6 months.

So apparently there could possibly be a Nor’easter on Marathon Monday. That should be interesting. Does anyone remember last year? I recall the weather being absolutely beautiful. I believe it was so warm that they were saying it might be too hot for the runners. Now there might be running in a blizzard. Sweet, I bet they’re all psyched. Well, that’s Boston for you; I personally love the unpredictability, though it does make it difficult to plan outfits ahead of time. And road races.

Would the Boston Marathon ever be postponed?? I don’t know, it never has been before. But what would they do it there was 3 feet of snow falling from the sky? When would they postpone it to? I wonder how many people would have to drop out due to travel arrangements. What a waste of training and anticipation that would be.

WBZ’s website says this from the Boston Athletic Association:

“As the Boston Athletic Association continues to make preparations for Monday’s Boston Marathon, we are monitoring the upcoming weather conditions forecast for this area. Based on the National Weather Service’s most recent report and in cooperation with the Executive Office of Public Safety (Commonwealth of Massachusetts) and the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, together with the eight cities and towns along the 26.2-mile marathon route, we are planning for likely heavy rain and windy conditions on race day. However, all race day plans remain the same. The Boston Athletic Association advises participants in Monday’s race to plan accordingly for their run, bringing with them gear and apparel to suit the conditions.”

So it may just be pouring cats and dogs with lots of wind…I live right on the marathon route and love watching it, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to drag myself out the door to watch a bunch of sopping wet people run by. It makes me sad too, because, to me, Marathon Monday marks the beginning of beautiful weather, bringing with it the anticipation of another summer in the city, and the state-wide pride that we, Massachusettsians (or is it “ites?”), are the only people in the country who get Patriot’s Day off (except for maybe Maine and Wisconsin…but still). I know I’m praying for a bit of sunshine come Monday.

“I guess God made Boston on a wet Sunday.” -Raymond Chandler

Happy Easter to everyone! I had a very nice day…a very nice weekend, in fact. The only negative: I didn’t get a bit of work done and now I am thoroughly screwed. Basically, the next 3-4 weeks of my life are going to suck and I am oh so excited for them. Anyway, this weekend I went out a lot and had fun. Friday night was Hurricane O’Reilly’s with all my girls…I had never been before, but it wasn’t too bad of a place. Saturday night I went to Harper’s Ferry to see My So-Called Friend play…only the best Boston band around. Check them out; good stuff. Though they did not win the WBCN Rock N’ Roll Rumble, they still rocked the place and put on a fantastic show.

I also dog-sat this weekend, which means I spent time with the cutest dog in the world, hand fed her all white meat chicken breast, and slept in bed with her each night. And got paid for it. Today I went home to my parent’s and had an amazinggg dinner and spent some good quality time with mom and dad. My family was anti-ham this year, so we went the non-traditional route of pork tenderloin. Def. didn’t miss the ham.

Tomorrow dad is taking me to Circuit City so I can drop of the Durabook and retrieve my new and improved computer, assuming they haven’t re-sold it yet. Then the week of hell begins. Cannot wait for summer. If I can get there.

“The best part about getting old is that you can hide your own Easter eggs.” -My lovely father with his favorite joke that he says all the time, but gets to repeat several times on Easter day, which brings me to the next joke that another good thing about getting older is that you can repeat jokes over and over and still laugh at yourself.

Anyone who knows me, knows I have an obsession with grammar. I’m not totally obnoxious about it, I just like it a lot (as I frantically re-read all of my posts to make sure I have no major errors). I don’t really understand why our schools don’t teach it much anymore, and why our society is so careless when it comes to the English language.

A woman was on Oprah last week claiming that Oprah made a serious grammatical error on one of her shows. Do you remember Oprah and Gayle’s Big Adventure? It was a whole week of Oprah and Gayle road tripping across the country. Anyway, this lady wrote a letter and then came on the show claiming that the title of their road trip week was incorrect and it should have been “Oprah‘s and Gayle’s Big Adventure” She actually said, “Everyone who has an ounce of grammar in them knows…It is so tacky.” I was shocked when I heard this. I was 100% sure that Oprah’s name did not need the possessive until this lady started blabbing on about it. Had everything I’d ever been taught gone right through my head? This can’t be right! But this woman was so confident in herself and surely they wouldn’t have had her on the show if she was wrong.

Turns out the woman was incorrect! What humiliation. She basically told Oprah and all of her writers, editors, and copyeditors that they were tacky and dumb. She got invited to be on the show just so they could prove her wrong. I almost felt bad for her. But not really, she should have done her research before appearing before I don’t know how many millions of people on Oprah. Anyway, I felt better about myself, knowing that maybe I really did learn something from elementary school to graduate school.

If you’re as grammar obsessed as I am, definitely check out the books by Bill Walsh (Lapsing into a Comma and The Elephants of Style). Love ‘em.

My most hated error? When people spell grammar, grammer. Ugh.

“Grammar is a piano I play by ear. All I know about grammar is its power.” -Joan Didion