Also, my blog stats are in the tank with my infrequent posting so it doesn’t really matter. And this way my mom will know how my trip went.

Portland, where do I begin?

This was the first vacation I’ve taken in awhile where I went somewhere I’ve never been before. And since I know a few people there who are big fans of the city, I knew I was going to have a good time!

This is just going to be a bulleted list of highlights with some photos interspersed…

• Portland is a drinking person’s city. Wineries, breweries and drinkers, oh my!
• We started my first morning off in Portland with probably one of the best things I’ve ever eaten – a fried egg sandwich with bacon and pimento cheese on a homemade biscuit. (Washed down with a big mimosa in a pint glass, of course.)

• I would now like to put pimento cheese on everything.
• Before I left for the trip, Rhi asked what I wanted to do on Thursday afternoon – a brewery tour or a winery tour. I told her I was under the impression that 2 days before your wedding, you have time for neither. But being from Portland, Rhi makes time for booze, and we headed to the wineries.

• We hit up Sokol Blosser, where Rhi is a preferred guest at. Also the winery doing the wine for her wedding. And the first woman-owned winery in Oregon. We got our tasting for free! And we enjoyed ourselves! After that we headed to Ponzi, not the actual winery, but their shop. We drank wine and snacked on meats and cheeses and I cursed the fact that I couldn’t get any of this wine home with me.

• In between all our fun, we did get some wedding errands done. And I made sure to help whenever and wherever I could, so the bride could enjoy her company with me. I mean, I am awesome, let’s face it.
• Thursday night I went to dinner with the bride and groom and I sampled some local Oregon beers. And I noticed we were on Flanders St. And I was like “ha! I saw a Terwilliger street today too! Like The Simpsons.” And Rhi is all “um, you know the creator is from here?” No. No, clearly I did not.

• So I did what every other drunk person would have done, I sent a photo of it to my brother in the middle of the night because he’s the biggest Simpsons fan ever.

• After dinner and a stop for one more beer, we headed back to the house and opened the wine. Rhi and I decided to don some some lovely hair bows. And then we decided to get nice and drunk and I decided I needed to cut Rhi’s cat’s nails.
• This is Gelsey, who also answers to Goo and Fat Cat. She had really long nails. They would click-clack on the hardwood floors like she was wearing kitty high heels. She couldn’t sneak up on anything, poor thing.

• And Rhi was improperly trimming her nails because Rhi is weak and doesn’t like to hear her cat sad or uncomfortable. Whereas my cats are a bunch of whiney bitches so that doesn’t bother me one bit.
• I think Goo was a little traumatized, especially when she later went to use the scratching post and bounced off it because her nails weren’t as long. And then I laughed.
• May I remind you, we were three sheets to the wind when this was all going on. The Goo will thank me some day.
• Or she probably peed in my suitcase.
• Also while the bride-to-be and I were wasted off 100 beers and a lot of wine, we decided to alphabetize the seating cards for the wedding. Which were written in fancy script. And very hard to read when you were seeing double.
• Rhi had to completely re-do them in the morning.
• So much for making less work for the bride.
• Being severely hungover the day before the wedding is not our smartest move. Probably for me more than her, since I seemed to be struggling all day. We did all the last minute things on Friday – picked up the dress, ran to Target, got our nails done, stuffed the wedding confetti into bags and tried to keep Rhi calm. (We succeeded. Mostly. There was a small incident at lunch, but Rhi recovered like a champ and I distracted her with my dancing like a chimp! Or something.)
• And then it was on to the rehearsal! I served as the official photographer for the rehearsal and I think I got some good shots. I tried to capture it all. It was a lovely venue (more on that come wedding day) and it was so nice to meet both Rhi and Bill’s family and friends.

• The dinner was at a lovely Peruvian restaurant and we had a private room and it was a beautiful way to spend the evening, talking to old friends and new, and anticipating the big day for Rhi and Bill on Saturday!

And now I think I’ll leave it at that because this post is long enough! And there is still two whole days left of the trip, including the Wedding of the Century!

I want to tell you all about my trip. Even though no one really cares, because it was my trip and who wants to read about my fun and my awesome times and my days off from work?

But I’m too tired. I went to bed last night at 9 PM, which was actually a smart thing because I didn’t sleep well at all. First I woke up around 11 PM from a dream where Spike from Top Chef was my doctor and diagnosed me with a brain tumor. And I woke up freaked the fuck out and not worried at all about the fact that a chef was my doctor, but convinced that my dreams were telling me I had a brain tumor. You try getting back to sleep after that kind of dream. GOOD LUCK TO YOU.

When I woke up, I realized that my internal clock had made the shift to Pacific time and it felt like it was 5 AM and not 7 AM. That’s no way to start your work week.

I want to tell you all about my awesome visit to Portland. And about the awesome food in Portland, and the awesome wine and beer. I want to tell you all about the fabulous times I spent with Rhi and Kerri (and Kramey and Amanda and others). I want to tell you about Rhi’s wedding and the fun times we had! And I need to tell you about Nick, who is so perplexed by blogging and Twitter that he asked us to write about him.

But it is going to have to wait. Because my brain can’t handle more than keeping my eyes open and my body upright. And now that it is close enough to bed time, it is time for me to go to bed and to read my book and attempt to win as many games of Catan as I can so I can become this:

I’ll also be celebrating the fact that my Gram should be coming home to her house on Saturday! No more rehab! Cross your fingers that all of the Is get dotted and Ts get crossed and it happens as it should!

I read a post yesterday somewhere online about how we all, as bloggers, connect more through Twitter. And whereas prior to Twitter, all our online connections were through email and blogging, now we have Twitter and that’s more of our online personalities and where people really can know us and interact with us.

I tend to agree with this. We live in a busy age. We all have so many things we need to be doing. And it is easier to find out how your friends are doing online through 140 characters, rather than through a whole blog post. And even if you don’t tweet, it is the same with Facebook, isn’t it? You lean more towards posting a status update than writing an email or picking up the phone.

I love the interaction on Twitter. It’s how I get through my boring, lazy days. And I think Twitter has introduced me to more bloggers and online friends than I ever would have met through just reading blogs. Let’s face it, on Twitter, people are more likely to respond than they are through blog comments, etc. (Even me! I used to reply to every comment and now I have more going on in my life that it isn’t as easy.) There are just so many blogs out there. I barely have time to read the ones in my Google Reader, let alone add new ones to read. That may make me sound like the biggest asshole, but it’s the truth. I follow over 600 people on Twitter. I do not have time to read 600 blogs a day, let alone a week. And that is OK. Because I feel that through Twitter and Facebook, I know what is up with you and that makes me happy. Because I’m the nosiest motherfucker you’ll ever meet.

But I miss writing. I miss coming up with a post idea and getting so excited about it that I had to write it down in my notebook that is always with me. I miss my creativity. I hate my complacency.

So I’m going to try to write more, be it here or somewhere else (like putting pen to paper on that novel that is floating around in my head.) Because it is what I love doing. And I don’t ever want it to become a chore. I don’t want to lose my passion for it. I don’t ever want to be at a point where I want to stop writing.

So if you aren’t aware, I was in New York City this past weekend for BlogHer. This was my third one and I had an effing blast. Not only was it in a great city, I was surrounded by 2,500 bloggers, people who don’t get offended when you get on your phone to check Twitter at the lunch table (well except for the one lady who didn’t appreciate it when we were Twittering from the elevator).

I went into this BlogHer with no expectations. I had been to NYC one time before, so I had done a lot of the touristy things. Plus, this time it wasn’t on my stomping grounds so I didn’t have the pressure to think of restaurants and bars in an unfamiliar neighborhood.

I learned early on that one of the only ways to enjoy BlogHer is to really have no plans, no expectations. There are so! Many! People! that it is hard to see everyone, let alone talk to everyone. You just have to play everything by ear. It’s how you end up finding cute little cafes with awesome mac and cheese or sitting outside a hotel getting weird looks for wearing a McDonald’s hat on your head.

This year’s BlogHer was different. Not a bad different, just a lot different than past years. I first went in 2008, when there was a then-record 1,000 people at the conference. Compared with the 2,500 people from this year (not including the people who came to NYC but didn’t have passes), that San Francisco conference in 2008 felt like an intimate dinner party.

The problem I had with it being so big was that there are so many people there that I wanted to see. And there were so many people I didn’t get to see or meet. And that’s a bummer. But thankfully I did get to see a lot of old friends and meet some new ones.

And now I’ll attempt to recap my awesome time in NYC in bullet form:

• On Thursday night, I went to dinner with Regan and Slynnro at Colicchio & Sons. It was one of, if not THE best meals I’ve had in my life. We had 2 bottles of prosecco, my first taste of sweet, sweet hooch in three weeks. And it went right to my head, just like you’d imagine.

• I had the heirloom tomato salad, which was so tasty, but I didn’t eat all of because I knew that would probably give me off the chart heartburn. My entree was the skirt steak and short rib with edamame. It was so delicious! The short rib was so tender, it reminded me of my Grandma’s pot roast. For dessert we shared the funnel cake and chocolate-filled donuts. That Tom Colicchio, he fries a mean hunk of dough!

• I had the awesome pleasure of meeting Jenbshaw and Shauna Glenn at lunch our first day there. Ali has told me all about the fabulous Aiming Low ladies and of course they are just as awesome as she’s always said! Shauna Glenn and I are kindred spirits and I have now dubbed her my new BFF, whether she likes it or not. (We killed it on the dance floor at the Sparklecorn party Saturday night, which was one of the weekend’s highlights!)
• I finally made it to Ground Zero. It’s sad that almost nine years later they are still working on it. And also sad that it looks nothing like it did and it could just be another construction site in New York.
• Finally got to meet Isabel, who invited us to her FABULOUS TERRACE to just sit and chat and enjoy the lovely NYC weather and city living. Isabel is one of the nicest people in the entire world and I was so lucky to spend time with her at her house! Plus, we went to Dylan’s Candy on the way to her house and I love candy and three floors of candy is like my heaven.
• The Expo hall this year was insane! Insanely good! I got so many great things, so much so I had to ship it home!

• Spent time with some of my favorite people

• And there were so many others! I’m afraid to link to them all, lest I forget anyone. But let me just say, if I saw/met you this weekend, it was so much fun and I’m so glad we got to hang out. I enjoyed this weekend immensely. You are all AWESOME!

Can’t wait for San Diego in 2011!

In the last two years I’ve gone to BlogHer, I have never written something beforehand telling people about me. So I would hand out business cards and people would come here and either read a post that I DID NOT EVEN WRITE, or a post where I asked them to choose between which two hideous people you would have sex with.

So third time is a charm and now I have learned!

Hi, Internet! I’m Kristabella! And clearly I’m insane!

Here are some things you might want to know about me:

I’m tall. I’m about six feet tall with no heels.

I’m pale. I’ve been dubbed once “a different shade of pale.” You will not be able to tell the difference between my skin and that of white sheets/tablecloths.

I talk. A LOT. And when I’m drinking? You can’t shut me up. Please, shut me up. And don’t worry, I won’t be offended. I know this about myself and appreciate people who tell me to shut my yapper.

I like to drink. In fact, you are more than welcome to give me your drink tickets. I haven’t had a drop of alcohol in three weeks, so I AM DUE.

I drink a lot of red wine so I end up with reddish-black teeth and tongue. It’s tres attractive.

I also laugh a lot. Mostly at jokes I make.

I created the #spinstertweets hashtag on Twitter. I’m hoping it will become all the rage and get me a book deal.

In reality, it’s pretty sad I tweet so much about my cats and single life that I could create a hashtag.

You can talk me into a lot, like stealing Cheetos.

I may seem super outgoing, especially with liquid courage, but the thought of 2500 women all in the same place freaks me the fuck out just as much as the next guy.

I love reality TV. I can talk to anyone about it. Please seek me out to talk about Jersey Shore while giving me your drink tickets! We’ll be friends for life!

This is what I look like. This is me and my niece. She’s my mini-me.

My bangs won’t look this good in the summer humidity. They will be very Farah Fawcett-esque.

So if this post hasn’t scared you off and you see me this weekend in New York, come say hello! We can hide out behind the fake trees together.

This past weekend I went up to visit the Martell clan in Milwaukee. Ali has been up there the whole month of July, but because of the Kristin Johnsons and some other issues, we haven’t been able to meet up. I was super bummed because I know that weekends at her mom’s are rough with Shabbat and the kids not being able to watch TV, leave the house or play video games.

So we decided that this past weekend, poop or not, I was going up there. Thankfully the poop issue seems to be almost gone (I say seems and almost because I don’t want the cruel hand of bowel movement fate to slap me in the face) so I didn’t have to worry about that.

It was a great weekend. It was just what I needed. I needed to get away and be around my peeps and laugh and stuff my face with good food, including this cake, which you all need to make right now. My diet went out the window with my first taste of this cake on Friday night, and I was dreaming about it for hours after my third piece Saturday night. (It was my dinner. And I have no regrets about that whatsoever.)

Meeting blog friends in real life is always so much fun. It’s even better when you get to meet their families and see their blogs come to life. When I go to visit the Martells, I’m as excited to see Ali as I am to see all of them. In fact, I’m pretty sure Emily thought I was coming to visit just her. Which, maybe I was, since she thinks I’m famous!

And she’s not the only one. It’s nice to know everyone looks forward to seeing me too!

I mean, it would be kind of awkward if I kept inviting myself over to see them and they didn’t enjoy seeing me as much as I enjoy seeing them. I’d be like Urkel. Or Kristabella the Menace.

We did what I do every time I see them, we spent the day in our pajamas. (On Shabbat! I was shocked!) Emily and I played spit (I beat her YET AGAIN!) (Yes I just got cocky about beating a nine year old at a card game.) We laughed, ate donuts and cake for dinner and they got me hooked on the Settlers of Catan game. (I’ve already downloaded the app so I can get better and maybe win once.)

It was a perfect weekend, hanging with friends who feel just like family. Just what the doctor ordered (in addition to antibiotics that still make my mouth taste like rancid food). And thankfully I won’t miss Ali too much, since I’ll see her again on Thursday when I get to NYC for BlogHer.

So, internet, what did you do this weekend?

I figured I needed to post something new, since I noticed quite a bit of traffic from the announcement. And then people came here and if they read past the header, they got to read about poop in my fridge.

Kristabella: Keeping It Klassy Since 1977.

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Speaking of poop (I swear, soon I will stop talking about this!), my doctor called and apparently my samples tested positive for this. It’s basically a bacteria you get from taking antibiotics. Which I recently took when the damn cat bit me. It all comes back to that dog.

This medication is supposed to take care of the problem. I have to take it for 14 days, three pills a day. And you can’t drink alcohol. Oh, I know you’re not supposed to with regular antibiotics, but it isn’t really a huge deal with regular antibiotics. They just suggest you try not to.

With this medicine? YOU CANNOT DRINK ALCOHOL. Like NONE. AT ALL. Like my doctor was sure to mention this to me yesterday before she called in the prescription. That’s 14 days with no booze. I’m actually OK with this, I think. Seeing as the first bit of alcohol I had last week, the first beers in almost two weeks, had me on the shitter for hours. So maybe this is for the best.

And hey, think of all the calories I’ll be saving!

I finish the last pill the morning I leave for NYC for BlogHer. Yes, I calculated this out to make sure I could use all my drink tickets.

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It’s hot here. I mean, it is summer so I can’t be too shocked. But last summer was so mild that I was kind of hoping we’d have something similar this year. No such luck.

I think I’ve mentioned before that I don’t have A/C in my car. There is a leak somewhere and not worth it to get fixed on an 11 year old car. So I just fill it up with coolant a few times a summer to recharge it.

I’ve put it off forever this summer and have suffered for my laziness. And by suffered, I mean loads and loads of boob sweat. This past weekend I thought it was about time to stop complaining about it and buy the damn coolant and put it in.

I made THREE trips to AutoZone. Because the first two cans, they busted. The hose broke off in my hand, twice, attached to a full can of coolant. The highly-pressurized, frostbite-causing coolant. So that was fun. Especially at $20 a can.

I finally got some put in on Saturday and then realized it wasn’t working too well and I should have bought two cans. So it is coolish when I have the A/C on, but does nothing when it is in the 90s, sunny and humid.

New for this year is that my car also tends to overheat when I have the A/C on and I’m in stop and go traffic. And if I’m not paying attention, I’ll be sitting on the on ramp to Lake Shore Drive on a Sunday, in stopped traffic, with my A/C blasting and notice that the temperature gauge on the car is reaching boiling levels.

And then, in this situation, as to make it home and not end up stranded on the side of the road, you turn the heat on, like you always should do when the car is overheating. (Kristabella’s Car Lesson of the Day!) So you’re sitting in a dead stop in 90 degree weather in your car with the heat blasting. And you will continue to sit in traffic, not moving, because you decided to take Lake Shore Drive home during the craptastic traffic trifecta of a REO Speedwagon concert, Transformers filming that shut down Michigan Avenue and a Sunday night Cubs game.

Then your brother will try out some video calling app with you and take a screenshot of your face and show you exactly what you look like after that experience.

I kind of miss my old iPhone that didn’t have video capability. I don’t need to know how big of a hot mess I am. It’s why I avoid mirrors.

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Proctor & Gamble apparently reads my blog. Look what I got in the mail yesterday:

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I think I mentioned I saw my niece Maddie on Sunday. I hadn’t seen her in a few weeks and she’s gotten so big and alert. I ended up holding her most of the day, one, because BABIES! SQUEEE! and two, because she was kind of fussy. My arm was so sore when I left. I was actually up most of the night because of the arm pain, mostly because I’m forgetful and the pain was in my left arm and I might have kept thinking I was having a heart attack.

I only ended up getting one picture of my Goopy (my nickname for her). I tried out the new front facing camera on my phone. It’s not good at all, but at least you can see how adorable she is and how she has the chubbiest, most nom-worthy cheeks in the history of all babies!

And at six weeks, she already has a better tan than I ever will.

So instead, I send you over to my review blog. Because I have another post up where you could enter to win a $100 Visa gift card. And there not a ton of entries, so your odds of winning are high! Comment once on all three posts to up your odds!

What are you waiting for? CLICK! And comment!

I knew the lines would be intense. So I opted to go after work instead of before. The closest Apple store was in the burbs, but I was hoping that was a better option than going to the Apple store downtown. (Good call on my part since the wait was over five hours STILL at 7 PM.) So I trekked all the way there after work, getting to the mall about 6:30 PM. I figured it was plenty of time to get my phone before the store closed at 9 PM and my reservation was no longer valid.

Boy was I wrong!

I had heard all the stories throughout the day online about the long lines and long wait times. But I figured it would have died down by 6 PM, right?

WRONG! OH SO VERY WRONG!

I turned the corner near where the Apple store was and I ran smack dab into a wall of people. A long line. Probably close to 100 people deep. See? (And this was after standing for 30 minutes.)

I have no patience for lines. I especially have no patience for lines when I RESERVED A PHONE. I have even less patience when I’ve worked a full day, am starving and have to pee.

After 30 minutes, I think about 4-5 people got in the store. At this rate, I figured, I would be there well past 10 PM. And since I was by myself, I had no buddy to hold my spot while I peed or grabbed food. So I decided to bail. (And rewarded my good sense with a stop at Old Navy where I partook in their big 30% off sale and got two cute dresses.)

IT IS A PHONE, for Pete’s sake! And guess what? I do currently have an iPhone. Yes, it is now two models ago, but it still works. I can still check my email, Twitter and Facebook on the go. Getting a new, MUST-HAVE gadget on the first day isn’t that big of a deal to me.

Now granted, had I gotten it, this whole post would have been an ode to my new phone. And how it was already covered in kisses. And that I obsessively licked it. And how I was going to sleep with it for the rest of time.

I’m bummed, but it isn’t like I’m not going to get one. This isn’t a ONE DAY ONLY DEAL!! The phone will be available soon. So if I have to wait a few weeks/months to get it, in exchange for NOT waiting in line? So be it. I can deal.

But it begs the question, what would I wait in line that long for? A few things come to mind:

• Cubs World Series tickets
• A bathroom
• To see a member of my family or a close friend

Um, that’s all I can think of. Not much. I do not like standing in line. I’ll stand on a corner to watch a 10 minute parade of Blackhawks, but I will not stand and WAIT in a line to get a phone. There’s some ass backwards logic for you.

What would you wait in line for, for that long of a time, to get your hands on?

It started when the bitch at Dunkin Donuts got pissed because I DARED to use a coupon to save a dollar on my iced coffee. And with that, whore, with that dirty look, you lost the tip.

Then I got to work and it got worse. I don’t even know what the deal was. EVERYTHING was pissing me off. I took deep breaths, I took breaks, I walked away from my desk, but I could NOT shake the bad mood. Thankfully I was busy so the day went by pretty fast. Until right before I was supposed to leave and then I got HULK SMASH ANGRY because someone was being not nice to my friend.

Want to see me get pissed and angry? PISS OFF PEOPLE CLOSE TO ME! I will go all freaking crazy mama bear on your ass because if my friends/family are hurt/sad/upset, I am upset.

So, I’m going to post something light! Because I don’t want to anger the full moon gods any more.

Although, this post might anger someone even crazier.

Do you watch Real Housewives of New York City? Do y’all know how crazy Kelly Bensimon is? Well, after talking shit about her on Twitter, she now is following me! UNPROMPTED! I don’t follow her! She FOUND me! WTF?

And then I immediately forwarded it to show everyone and then thought “Oh fuck! SHE FOUND ME! I FEAR FOR MY LIFE! She’s CRAY CRAY CRAZY!”

No more tweets like this:

Or this:

Honestly, she has some sort of serious mental issues. And now I fear she’s going to hunt me down.

WHO WANTS JELLY BEANS?!

Have a great long weekend everyone! I’ll be working only a half day and spending the rest of the day drinking beer at Wrigley for my first Cubs game of 2010!