Knee Highs!

On Thursday night, 30 Rock fans all over the nation watched as Tina Fey got exposed on the can with her pants literally down. What really caught my eye however was her super-c

ute knee highs.

I was inspired.

So on Saturday when we were wandering around enjoying the early-spring sunshine I went into a store and found some that would soon become my very first pair of knee highs (since adulthood):

Aren't they cute? 

The birth of a new website

The Studly Hubby's Studly (and fabulous) new video website has launched. You can check it out at: http://beta.video.msn.com.

It's fabulous!

Blatant advertising for Microsoft

Since my Studly Hubby started working for Microsoft, he has become a constant pusher of all things Microsoft. Because he is so obviously biased, I usually just roll my eyes at him. However, I have to admit that I have discovered a few Microsoft products that I am now a big fan of:

1. Zune. (Microsoft's version of the iPod). I had an iPod, and it broke. And all my friends had iPods, and they broke too. So for the next round I thought I'd try Zune. And it's been great! Plus, it has a radio (that works really really well). It could pull most of my songs in from iTunes and their software is pretty easy to use. The only negative: at the moment, you can't run Zune software on a Mac.

2. Cloud computing. Microsoft has two websites for cloud computing (storing information on the internet instead of on your computer) - Microsoft Mesh, and Skydrive. Both are in beta versions right now (translation: they aren't done making it yet). Microsoft Mesh will be really awesome eventually, because you can put a folder right on your desktop and move stuff in and out of it with ease, however at the moment it is stupendously glitchy. Skydrive works great, and has saved me in quite a few situations when I needed to transfer large data files to collaborators on the other side of the country pronto, or back up a humongous image or document.

3. Livesearch for images (Microsoft's version of Google). A negative of Microsoft's search engine is that it doesn't retrieve the same high-quality list as Google, however when it comes to searching for images, I found that Microsoft's search is far superior - the layout is extremely usable and the number of repeat images is tiny compared to Google.

4. Wonderwall (also in beta). This is the new hollywood gossip page from MSN Entertainment. I like.

5. The website my Studly Hubby is developing (for video) - it hasn't launched yet but when it does it's going to be sooooooo cool. It should launch this week, I'll keep you all posted.

20 random things about me

1) I am a closet bookworm. By this, I mean that if I were shoved in a closet, I would happily read for days on end. When not in a closet, I often don't read.

2) One big reason why I don't read a lot is because I get really addicted and can't put the book down. This is worse than it sounds. I will halt everything else, and sometimes don't even want to eat or shower.

3) When I moved to Seattle two and a half years ago, I decided to overcome my book addiction and join a book club. I've found that it is the perfect cure - the books we read are rarely addictive but still good and now I feel like I'm finally gaining control again, and am slowly starting to read more of the kinds of books that used to put me into a spiral of addiction.

4) Since Christmas I have read THREE books about vampires and Steve Martin's autobiography. I'm not sure if I'm in control but I'm having fun.

5) My husband and I want to have a baby, but we keep chickening out.

6) I really like pistachios, dark chocolate, marshmallow peeps, cheese, and nutella. I also like cake, pumpkin pie, popcorn, and lavender and peppermint.

7) I have been known to eat and enjoy strange combinations of food, like waffles & ribs, and peeps with whip cream.

8) I taught spin classes while I was in graduate school. It was mostly because my husband is a really good cook, and I am a really good eater, and I got a free membership to the gym.

9) I am a horrible athlete. People think I am good because I am persistent, but really I am very uncoordinated and slow. But persistent. Someday I hope to beat everyone because we will all eventually age, and then persistence will pay off.

10) I try really really hard not to be competitive, but if you get in my face and tell me you are better than me, I can't help but get competitive.

11) I love to be the underdog.

12) I miss my horse like crazy. He also loves to be the underdog.

13) I have 5 half-brothers, the youngest is 4 years. I am a big fan of all of them.

14) I am more in love with my husband now than when we got married, and I was pretty smitten when we got married.

15) I am best friends with my mom. But this does not take away from my other best friends.

16) I recently switched my allegiance to Macintosh.

17) I never thought I would be a scientist until I actually was one.

18) Each city I have lived in, I thought was the best city there ever was.

19) My alternate career plan is to be a chiropractor, or a fiction writer.

20) I put Brewer's Yeast on everything I can, even though my husband doesn't like it and calls it 'foot powder'.

21) I own a lot of green colored things, and my husband's favorite color is green. My husband owns a lot of blue, and my favorite color is blue. Coincidence?

22) I cherish sleep above all else. If you threaten my sleep, I will threaten you.

23) I have run two half-marathons and biked a 3-day 120 mile trek. I hate all of them, but would do any of them again in a second. I was not fast, but I was persistent.

24) I miss all of my friends that I don't see every day very very much, and I love that I can reconnect with them on Facebook.

25) I have a blog, and have been posting on it regularly since 2005.

Addicted to PISTACHIOS

I have rejuvenated my love for pistachios.

First, I got a taste of them through a giant tub I got from santa for Christmas. Those disappeared pretty fast, and I might have forgotten them, except an old friend was in town this past weekend and brought me some more.

Oh pistachios, how I love you.

I am suddenly now back to my evil old ways, hiding them in various secret places and snitching one every so often. When I eat them, I eat them fast, and pieces of them fly everywhere. That means that around my desk at work, where I am not supposed to ever have food, there are little pistachio shells and crumbs that accumulate throughout the day. I'm pretty sure this is how I got the name 'Doctor Pistachio.'

Mmmmm, pistachios....

UNITED by Chipotle

The privileged among us know what it is: the Chipotle Experience. We were all swept away. It was so good, and so spicy, and so cheap, and oh so excellent. And it was the only decent Mexican food you could get in Minneapolis from 2001 until at LEAST 2005, when some of us discovered Punch Pizza (Punch is not Mexican food but it's so good that it tops out all categories).

This weekend some friends from Minneapolis dropped in for some sight-seeing and interviewing with my boss' wife and we all bonded over our fond Chipotle experiences from back in the day. And vampires. Vampires are pretty neat too.

We went skiing while they were here, and I was very brave! I got off the 'Daisy' run and went down the much scarier and steeper 'Rock 'N Blue' and 'Hogsback' runs. We feel like expert skiers now, although there are quite a few portions of the mountain that have yet to be explored. Maybe next time.

Well even though we didn't ever actually go to Chipotle, we had a great time! I hope they come back and party with us some more sometime.