It's the next big thing

I've seen this on several blogs in the last few days so I thought I'd be one of the cool kids too. ;)

A- available or single? - Hmm, shouldn't this be available or taken? I'm happily married for four months now (wow it still feels like yesterday..)
B- best friend? Bernadette, we met if first grade and went through all the dorky teen moments together. She was my maid of honor and it meant the world to me.
C- cake or pie? Brian's key lime pie :)
D- drink of choice? - a glass of Eiswein with dessert (Ice Wine)
E- essential item I use every day: -my cellphone. I can not live without it.
F- favorite color? - light pink, followed by light blue and light purple.
G- gummy bears or gummy worms? bears.
H- hometown? Jacksonville NC
I- indulgence? Makeup, yarn (for knitting), anything hello kitty.
J- january or february? February
K- kids and names: None yet but I've always been fond of the name Erik for a boy. For a girl, probably something like Adelina or Sabine.
L- life is incomplete without? My husband, his cooking, hello kitty, my cellphone and laptop.
M- marriage date: Sept. 23, 2006
N- number of siblings: none.
O- oranges or apples? apples.
P- phobias or fears? drowning (I still can't watch the ending of titanic) and a fear of not being able to have kids someday (there's nothing to base this on, I'm just paranoid I guess)
Q- favorite quote? "Everything in life is a learning experience" - unknown
R- reasons to smile? My kitten Isabelle, hugs from Brian, sitting outside when it's a beautiful day.
S- season? Summer
T- tag: anyone
U- unknown fact about me: I met Weird Al once, he was polite and appreciative of his fans. Not weird at all.
V- vegetable you don’t like: onions.
W- worst habit: procrastination.
Y- your favorite food? Creme brule
Z- zodiac? Leo

Wishlist...

Why is it that I only see things I really want when I don't have the money to buy them? There's got to be a conspiriacy going on here... this only happens a few days before payday when I have just enough spending money for lunch and maybe a magazine. I could break out the credit cards but Brian and I promised each other not to use them since we're trying to pay them down a little more.

If I had the money, this is what I would buy right now....

This Panasonic digital camera is definitly at the top of my list, it's little, pink, got great specs, and is easy to use. About $300.

The photo printer that's also from panasonic. I love getting prints but hate waiting in line at walmart or waiting for them to shipped if I order them online. About $175.

We're currently trying to find a Wii, but they're sold out everywhere. We've got a couple friends who work for electronics stores so we'll see if they can find one for us. Brian wants legend of zelda and I'd like warioware smooth moves, they both seem like fun games. About $250 for the console, another $65 for another controller and $50 per game.

A Coach bag, I love this one but it's $358... If we can find it, or one like it at the Coach outlet in Myrtle Beach for less then I may get one either for Valentine's Day or with my bonus.

And last but not least... the HTC tytn/xv6800. It should be available in March with the cellphone carrier I work for. Probably around $300 or more but thank goodness for employee discount!

The crazy thing is that with my bonus comming in Feb, I could actually buy all this stuff with money to spare... but Brian would probably kill me. ;) We agreed to save as much of our tax returns and my bonus as possible, but we are each going to get a little "treat" before putting the rest away. I'm definitly getting the pda since I'm eligible to upgrade my phone, and probably the camera if not sooner since my old digicam is on it's last legs. I love the yearly bonus, it's like a second Christmas. ;)

Finally!

No more redirects! No more blogspot addresses! Everything is back on NicoleCarina.com!

After fighting with blogger, ftp settings, our server, the web cache server of our internet provider, and code in my template, I FINALLY have all my posts and archives on www.nicolecarina.com I had some problems with the new blogger and moving posts/comments but now it's all fixed. :)

My older archives still appear in my old layout design, but that can't be helped for now, they were saved with the old css file... and I'm too tired worry about it.

The first cellphone picture message.

"... Philippe Kahn's story of the origin of the cell-cam started when his wife, Sonia Lee, roared at him while spending 18 hours in labor. "I'd gone to the Lamaze classes," Kahn, now 54, tells me. "And the second time I said, 'Breathe!' Sonia said, 'Shut up!' So I said, 'OK, I'll sit at this desk and find something to do.' "

As his wife's labor went on, Kahn started fiddling with his hardware and writing code to glue it together. "I had time to make a couple trips to RadioShack to get soldering wire," Kahn says. "I just stayed in the room and made that thing work."

By the time he was holding his newborn daughter, Kahn could use his jury-rigged contraption to take a digital photo and wirelessly post it for his friends and family.

Motorola was in the process of buying Starfish, and Kahn says he first showed his invention to his new boss. But Motorola was just getting a new CEO (Chris Galvin) and embarking on one of the most ill-fated projects in global corporate history (the Iridium satellite phone system). Motorola passed on the cell phone camera.

Kahn formed a new company, LightSurf, to build and market PictureMail - a back-end system that would let a cell phone take a photo and send it somewhere. The first version came out in Japan in 1999, helping spur the Japanese to make the earliest cell-cams. Motorola and Nokia ended up being late to the cell-cam game."

I found this at Picturephoning.com, it originally came from an article at usa today. I remember hearing about the first cameraphones in Japan years ago. I wanted one SO bad. Now I can't imagine not having one. I picture message all the time, and use it to post to this blog when I'm not at my computer. The pda phone I'm planning to get in March will have a 2.o mp camera... same as my canon digicam I got a few years ago. Crazy.

Tea time

Brian and I had brunch at the Wilmington Tea Room today. It's one of our favorite places to eat in Wilmington and we even had our wedding reception here. We got the usual, which is a full tea. It comes with a salad and a three tier serving tray full of scones, tea sandwiches, and desserts. We decided to try Blue Lady tea today, a black tea with citrus, passion fruit, and other flavors. So yummy. The tea room itself is just so pretty, and it's right on the waterfront downtown.

Caressa was supposed to join us but her and her baby, Orin, aren't feeling well. Hopefully they'll feel better tomorrow so we can take them to the greek restaurant we've been telling them about.

Wow I feel popular ;)

I got 5 letters in 2 days! 3 are from my penpals and 2 were from my friend at work, kelly. I love writing letters to family and friends, its much more personal than an email. Plus its a treat to get mail that isn't a bill or junk mail.
It's really nice to learn about someone through letters, it seems like letter writing is becoming a lost art. It also seems easier to share things about yourself when writing which makes penpaling so personal and fun.

Just because day

Our company knows that Jan and Feb are the busiest months for those of us at the call center so they've given us a few just because days to keep up morale. Today was the free ice cream day, we've also had nachos, hawaiian shirt day, sweatsuits day, hat day, and flip flop friday. It's really nice that they appreciate what we do and give us stuff like this. I mean. what's better than free ice cream?

Lazy day....

I had today off since I worked Sun for a coworker. I fully intended to do productive things, but I was a lazy bum instead.

12:15 pm - woke up after sleeping about 11 hours, catching up from lack of sleep all week.

1:15pm - woke up again since it felt so good to just lie in bed that I dozed off again.

2:00pm - had "breakfast" and decided to sit on the couch, watching tv and surfing the web, until Brian got home around 6pm.

6:30pm - went and had dinner at Indochine, a great thai food restaurant. I had the shrimp and pinapple curry, very yummy. I wanted to take pictures to post but it was so dark in there I should have used a seeing eye dog to guide my chopsticks to my food.

8:00pm - watched Children of Man, the new movie set in the future where women are unable to have children. It was pretty good, weird but good. Could have had a better ending though.

12:42am - posting on my blog when I should be in bed, since I have to work tomorrow. I'm not sleepy yet since I haven't really been awake for 12 hours yet, but that's what my bottle of Woodchuck cider is for.

I accomplished absolutly nothing today... and it felt damn good. :)

A Culinary Goddess in the Making!

Last night I really outdid myself... I made dinner AND cookies! Remember, I'm the wife who cooks about twice a year! ;)
I was already planning to make sugar cookies for our team meeting, but unlike last time I did it right this time. I made some as sandwiches with cream cheese frosting and strawberry preserves, some with pastel colored glaze, and some with vanilla frosting and pink sprinkles. Yes they're on towels on the ironing board, our little table didn't have enought room for everything, ha ha. I took them to work today and everyone loved them. I'm already planning on trying out a few other recipies.
The lasagnia was a last minute idea, I really wanted to try to make a small pan since Brian usually makes a huge one. It wasn't as good as his since he makes the sauce from scratch but we both agreed that it was pretty darn good. And it was the perfect amount for dinner last night and tonight. If I keep this up I might need my own apron, move over Brian! ;)

Cooking dinner

Yes that's actually me in the kitchen!

I even made the grill marks look good.

Brian had to work late tonight, so for once I was home before him. I stopped by the grocery store, got a couple steaks and some veggies, and got ready to make him dinner. Now, what makes this so amazing is that Brian makes 99.99% of the meals because I have almost no cooking skills whatsoever. Seriously.
But Brian's been really sweet to me lately, so I got my groceries home, did the dishes (also a big deal because he always ends up doing them) and started cooking. By some culinary miracle not only did I *not* burn down the kitchen but dinner actually turned out great! The filet mingons were perfectly medium rare. Brian was so proud of me. ;)

Hello Kitty ipod adaptor

I got this Hello Kitty ipod adaptor from the Sanrio store in Raleigh last weekend. I used to have one that went in my tape deck but it got stuck and I cant get it out. :( This one is cuter and holds my ipod in a better position for using the dials.

Nabeyaki soup

Today was cold and nasty so for lunch I decided to grab some nabeyaki soup fro Tokyo Deli. The owner comments on how much nabeyaki she'd sold today and told her how good it is on cold days like today. It's basically a soy sauce based broth with thick flour noodles and egg, mushrooms, fried tofu and fish cakes. So good. I like to sit and flip through Japanese magazines while I eat. I can't read Japanese but it's fun anyway. The toyota add with Leonardo de Caprio was something you don't see here in the states, and I wonder what a New Gerorgia Start! soda tastes like. Who knows. ;)

I can never leave without getting at least one box of pocky... this time it's chocolate mouse flavor. I tried some on the way back to work.... very yummy.

Cookies!

Here I am, trying to make cookies. The problem? Instead of making the dough from the recipe I have, I decided to just buy sugar cookie dough from the grocery store and roll it out and use a cookie cutter. Big Mistake. The dough kept sticking to the table, it felt slimy no matter how much flour I added, and the the shapes melted into each other while baking. Oh and I burned the entire second sheet too. That's what I get for trying to take a shortcut.

Here's the recipe that I've made with my mother-in-law and it works out great. I'm going to try again sometime next week and hopefully report back with better results.

Sugar cookie recipe – Lupe Jones (my mother-in-law)
1 cup of sugar
1 cup of butter
3 T of milk
1 tsp of vanilla
1 egg
3 cups of flour (add a little more for that shortbread type of cookie)
1 tsp of baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Mix the dough let it rest for at least one hour. I mix about 3/4 of the recipe with the mixer and the rest I mix with a wooden spoon that way I don't have to wait one hour for the dough to form. Bake at 400 degrees, 8-10 minutes on a greased cookie sheet.

The icing (a runny, glaze type)
1 cup of sifted powder sugar,
1/4 tsp of vanilla,
enough milk for the consistency you want

Remember to leave it a little thick because you will be adding the food color to your icing, then if you have to, you can add more milk.

Dinner with Kelly and Grey

Sunday night after leaving Raleigh we went to Kelly and Grey's house for dinner and a movie. Kelly made the best bacon and onion stuffed chicken breasts, I wish I had gotten a picture of them. We watched a Japanese movie called Nana, it's based on one of our favorite mangas. The guys were making jokes the whole time, we were all laughing the like crazy. We had such a good time, next time we'll have to have them over for some of Brian's cooking.

Weekend in Raleigh

With my bag of loot from the Sanrio store, I just can't go to Raleigh with stopping by there.

Brian's new leather jacket.

Orin is showing off his awesome chopstick skills.

This exhibit was pretty interesting, it was a flat screen TV with a running video feed of five people who would take turns shifting position or the expresion on their face. As the video progressed, the "painting" changed and altered the whole meaning of the project.

They have a huge outdoor park with sculpures and a theater. I sat out here for a while soaking in the sun while waiting for Tom to meet me.

We had a great weekend in Raleigh, our friends Caressa and Jim asked us to come up so Brian could help them with some computer work. I had to stop by the Crabtree Mall on our way in to town for the obligitory stop at the Sanrio Store (home of everything Hello Kitty). Brian got a new leather jacket and then treated me to three (yes three!) new pairs of shoes. We went out to a great japanese restaurant on Sat. night, I can see why Little Tokyo was voted the 2nd best sushi in the triangle.

The next day I went the the NC Museum of Art while everyone else went to fix the computers. I had such a great time lingering over all the beautiful artwork and exhibits. I'm starting to appreciate modern art more than I used to, and try to see what the artist was trying to convey. But my favorites are always the classic european paintings, and and ancient greek sculptures.

After the museum I met up with Tom to grab a bite to eat. We ended up driving all over Raleigh searching for a good steakhouse and ended up at Longhorn again. We had a nice time catching up and joking around.

Spending that time enjoying Raleigh makes me want to come alot more often.

My new favorite band

I just got the new album from Quietdrive the other day and I love it. I had never heard of them, but the other day when I was in the mall I heard a remake of the old Cindy Lauper song, "Time After Time". I looked it up on itunes and downloaded the whole album. I love that song, in fact, it was the first song I ever got. My mom got me the single on a 45 (that a small record for those of you too young to remember). I was just a kid, and we didn't have cable so I envisioned the singer was a clean cut looking woman with long brown hair or something. The first time I saw the music video I was pretty suprised, ha ha!

They did a good job with the remake, in fact they sound alot like my favorite unsigned band, The Mile After. (they're playing at the soapbox tomorrow night, woo!)

Penpals!

We recently had to move to new desks at work. I used to sit by my friend Kelly but now we sit a couple rows apart so we decided to become "work penpals". Its alot of fun since it reminds me of passing notes in class, ha ha. I also have a couple of penpals in other states and I've even got a tea swapping pal. Thankfully my penpals all like cutesy stationary too.

Chinese food

Had chinese for dinner tonight, complete with a generic fortune cookie fortune. Brian got orange chicken and I got chicken and veggies (steamed with sauce on the side). And since our favorite chinese resaurant delivers, we didnt even have to leave the house. ;)

5 facts

Seeing this post on Ele's blog inspired me to do the same: list five little known facts about myself. Here goes:

1. I have a half sister, from my dad's first marriage. I don't really know much about her, except she's married with kids somewhere in the western part of the US (I think). I don't even know if she knows I exist, but it's not a big deal to me if she doesn't. I kind of wonder what she's like, but I don't think I'll ever try to find her. I don't want to barge into someone's life.

2. One of my fears is that I won't be able to have kids when the time comes. I have no reason to think I'm infertile, but I know it would be the worst news I could hear from a doctor so it scares me. I've always wanted to have children, so that would be really hard for me to handle.

3. Sometimes I wish I could just be a huge bitch. It may sound silly but I have a hard time being mean to anyone, even if I should be, and even if they deserve it. I always try to be the better person in any bad situation, and I know if I were to ever be really hurtfull to someone I'd feel guilty later.

4. When I went to NYC about 5 years ago, I went to see The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway, my dream come true. After the show, I met a young Japanese businessman that I struck up a conversation with, and we really hit it off. He gave me his business card and said if I ever wanted, he'd fly me to Japan to visit him. Until I started dating my husband I kept the business card, just in case. (like he'd even remember me, ha)

5. I was in a beauty pagent as a kid, Miss Preteen North Carolina (it wasn't big enough to be on TV or anything). I was one of the ten finalits out of 150 or so girls. My mom still has my little trophy and ribbon.
It was fun but I told my parents that I wouldn't want to do it again. The thing that I noticed was how fake most of the girls were, they just "showed the judges what they want to see" like they were coached, even the judges weren't around.
I was a pretty shy, akward kid, I still have no idea why I made it to a finalist.


If you read this, consider yourself tagged. Either comment here or post to your own blog. ;)

My guilty pleasure

I love reading magazines and manga in my spare time at work. Sometimes there's a few minutes between calls where I can read a few pages or I'll read on my breaks. I'll read knitting mags, local mags, makeup catalogs, all kinds of stuff. Manga is my favorite though, I love the romantic comedies the most.

Fondue on Front St.

They have a tank of jellyfish by the bar, they look so beautiful just floating around. I could stare at them all day.

Our friends Caressa and Jim and their baby Orin met us Downtown to have some fondue at The Little Dipper. The food was delicious and we finished up with an amazing milk chocolate fondue. It came with strawberries, bananas, marshmellows and more. Definitly a treat!

After dinner they stopped by our apt. and we gave them one of the eggnog custard pies that Brian made. He created the recipe on my request since I love eggnog anything. Orin had so much fun playing with Isabelle, and she was especially sweet and gentle with him. We all had a wonderfull time.