Thursday, March 29, 2007

Burt's Bees


Well, many of you may know how this tale begins but since there are some who don't, I'll start from the beginning. I had been using Burt's Bees face moisturizer and eye cream for a while when one day....I woke up and my eyes were swollen shut. Well, not all the way shut but mostly shut and they itched like mad. So, I stopped using the stuff immediately. This condition continued for days so I called the doctor. My doctor called in a prescription for steroid eye drops and in about 2 days, I was fine.

So, after all this happened...I called the company to tell them about the reaction to see if there was anything in particular wrong with this batch. Nope...it was a little expired but nothing wrong...it was me. They took down my information and all of the symptoms I had and were going to forward them to some department to make sure the company was aware it happened. I received about 3 phone calls from Burt's Bees people asking me how I was doing. I thought that was really nice.

I hadn't thought about this for a while but I got a call the other day from them and they wanted to verify my mailing address because they wanted to send me a refund check because of all the trouble I had. I thought this was really nice. So, since I can't buy their products for obvious reasons, I urge others to because they were so nice to me and they are all natural and they have some damned good stuff.

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Set your TiVo!


On Tuesday afternoon I went to a taping of the Martha Stewart show which will air tomorrow, Friday March 30. As many of you know, I LOVE to watch this show and I TiVo it every day. I will say I was a little disappointed because Martha starved us. I was asked to arrive by 12:30pm for a 2:00pm taping. I was thinking there would be some sustenance since we were going to be there for a LONG time. Well...not really...there was bottled water and plates of chocolate chip cookies. That was all the food we saw from 12:30pm to 3:15pm. So, I was hungry.

I must say that the crowd control was handled well though I did feel like I was being herded like cattle. At least they didn't brand us. So we were herded into a waiting room where they had the water and cookies and a few plasmas playing old episodes of Martha. We waited there for about 45 minutes where we had to fill out waivers and we were given our instructions by the warm up guy. We were told to turn off all electronics and we were also given instructions about how to clap...yes...we had to know the different hand signals for a standing ovation, medium applause, huge applause, an appropriate ooooooooooooh when necessary and finally an mmmmmmmmm for when there was something yummy being made.

After being in the waiting room, we were called to go to the studio. Each ticket had a different marking on it and this was how we were called. I was lucky enough to be blue highlighter which meant I was the second to be called. We got into the studio and it was freezing and really bright of course but it was perfect as it should be since it IS Martha. We got to listen to the warm up guy for another half hour or so. Whatever...nothing too exciting. Then we were ready for the show to start.

Zac Posen was on the show and he had a little spring fashion show which was nice. He's adorable but he's on fire. Then he baked a cheesecake with Martha....that I could smell and because I was STARVING....I was salivating like mad. The other 2 guests were some Iranian chick who went into space as a tourist. She went to the International Space Station to visit. She spoke about the experience that she paid a paltry sum of $20 million to enjoy. Finally, we had Chef Andre something or other...he was the chef at Lutece (used to be a very nice and famous french restaurant in NYC very often compared to Le Cirque) for 35 years. He and Martha made a lamb stew....yeah....with the aroma of this my stomach began to digest itself.

After the taping, the chef took some questions so I asked a question about making stew since my meat always seems to be tough...never gets really tender. He gave me a few tips. Said to make sure I always keep it in the gravy and don't allow it to dry out. He also said to always use shoulder meat. We'll see.

Georgia and I were seated in the 3rd row on the aisle. We are behind the seating on the floor and we are in the middle section. I'm wearing a green t and Georgia is wearing a grey blazer. I think we were caught cracking up on camera during the Zac Posen segment. This is the funny thing. I had just said something about one of the crew being pregnant to Georgia. There were a lot of pregnant women. So, after I said something, Georgia looked at her and looked at me and said, "Um, that's not pregnant....she's just really fat." Well, oops on my part...she really did look pregnant. So, that's why we were laughing.

Many times Martha gives out some really good stuff. I've seen her give away digital cameras, gift cards to various stores, books, etc. Well, we were told in the beginning that there were no giveaways at this show. Well, as we left the building, they were handing stuff out. I couldn't see what it was until I got up to the front. It was actually two things. One was a little bag of toiletries and samples of shampoos and other fun stuff. Not bad. Well, the other giveaway just left me baffled. We were each given a box of Barilla linguine. Yup, I got a $1 box of pasta. Wonderful.

Today on the show....the audience got 2 tickets to the circus, giant ziploc bags (they were a good thing) and the book 1000 Places to See Before You Die. I got pasta. YAY!

Monday, March 19, 2007

Babies are doing well...


The babies are starting to eat. They have to be fed through a feeding tube since they can't suck yet. She is eating about 1/5 of an ounce of breast milk every 3 hours. They have IV lipids and fats to bulk em up and they are off the oxygen. So, all is well. The first pic is Jacob and the other two are Isabella. So, looks like everything is good and going in the right direction. I wanted to thank everyone for their well wishes, it means a lot. I'll get back to my ranting posts soon....these kids did warm my cold heart though. :) How can they not, look at them! OK, I'll stop gushing. Happy Monday to everyone and hope it's a good week.

Friday, March 16, 2007

Tiny Babies...


Many of you know that my cousin had premature twins last week. They were born at 29 weeks and were 2 pounds and 3 pound 6 oz. Well, this picture totally struck a cord with me. It was a color pic but I snazzed it up a bit with some tricks I have up my sleeve. I am pretty sure this is the little 2 pound girl's hand. I just can't get over how teeny it is. I saw the kids the day after they were born and they are so small it's amazing. So, I had to share this picture because I love it. My cousin's sister loved it so much, she used it as the main picture on her site for the March of Dimes walk. I was honored. Not that she thanked me or anything but whatever. I guess seeing it there was flattery. So, basically, I just had to fill some space with words because I wanted to show off this picture.

Monday, March 12, 2007

I saw his fine ass this weekend!

I was out with a friend on Saturday and we went to eat at a place on 7th Ave between 26-27th. Well, The Bourne Ultimatum happened to be filming on 7th Ave so I saw me some Matt Damon. He looked good. My friend and I had our lunch and then we wanted to walk south but we were stopped from doing that because of the filming. We were told we'd have to wait for a bit. So, we waited and we watched while a crash/chase scene was filmed. It was fun to watch but after like the 3rd take of the same scene, I was over it. Some guy started talking to me though during the filming...turns out he's a security guy. He said they went through 26 cop cars during the movie so far for crashes. He also said his main job is security for L&O SVU which most of you know is one of my favorite shows. He said that the whole cast is really nice and cool to all the crew so that was nice to hear. Ok, well...that was my celeb sighting. Not extremely interesting but it happened and I was stuck there so I watched. Oh, this was cool though....Matt Damon was being filmed driving a VW Toureg. The security guy was telling me that they basically opened the top of the car like with a can opener and put this mechanism on top so the guy sitting on top was actually driving the car because they yanked out all the insides of the car so they could put all these cameras inside to get all the angles on Damon. It was cool to see that. It looked like there was a go cart on top of the Toureg. OK, that's really all...I'm done.

Friday, March 09, 2007

Respect for others!


For a change I have a rant! I went down to my basement to do some laundry....I saw what looked like a melted cardboard box in one of the washers. It was in fact the rubber backing from a bath mat. Someone just left it there. I think that is SOOOOO rude when you have communal machines. My building has 6 stories and about 5 apartments per story. So, that's about 30 apartments. Well, we all have to share 3 washers and 4 dryers. It's not a lot but it should work. People are just animals and have NO respect for others. My super keeps the place real clean and spiffy and I thank him for that. He's a great guy but people just make a mess even though he keeps cleaning. It makes me so mad. It also kills me when they don't clean the lint trap. I don't really want to touch my lint...much less the lint of some stranger. So why can't people just clean it after they use it? Ok, I'm done with my rant. I just ask for some respect...that's all.