KrissyInBoston

Well, I've done it again...I'm at http://krissyinboston.com/ and there to stay :-)

Another fun place to karaoke

Matt and I discovered a fun new place to karaoke last night. Legends Hall of Fame Grill at 249 Lexington St in Waltham. I felt a little guilty, as if we were cheating on our Wednesday night karaoke pals over at the Tin Alley Grill in Cambridge since we haven't been there in about a month.

Anyway, Legends has karaoke on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. (Yay for a place that has karaoke on weekend evenings!) They also have a pretty decent song selection and a good crowd. Very Bostonish folks there. I mean that in the best way possible, Bostonians are fun!

Legends is a decent place, but their beer selection is pitiful. Pitiful, I say! (Beer snob at your service...I'll have to write an entry about all of the awesome locally brewed beer)

It was a great time. I'll definitely go back there again for a fun karaoke night. :-)

Thank you, with a capital T!

In April, I had a horrendous experience waiting for the 70 bus going towards Central Square. I waited an ungodly amount of time and got very frustrated. I don't know why I even bothered taking the 70...it's never on time. After I got home, I immediately logged on to MBTA.com and issued a complaint.

In the mail today, I receieved an apology and two shiny T tokens wrapped in plastic.

I am pleased on several different levels. I am an extraordinary cheapskate, so free things make my day. I am also pleased because, contrary to my prior belief, the MBTA does care enough about their customers not to leave them disgruntled and dissatisfied.

Oh, the places I can go with a shiny new T token...

London

I wanted to write something about the London bombing, but I'm not so good with words when it comes to things like this. Howard Dean said it better than I could.

Thanks to BlueBus for sharing the quote from Dean.

Be well, everybody.

Happy 4th!

Hope everyone's having a great 4th of July! We're not really doing much today...just BBQing up some Bubba Burgers, lazing around the backyard, and possibly hitting up open mic night at The Cantab.

Kennebunk and Kennebunkport

My internship turned into a job at Backbone Media and I am quite pleased! To celebrate, Matt and I decided to go up to Maine to enjoy some lobster. We decided to forget the fact that Dubya's vacation home is there, and we drove up to Kennebunk!

We hit a little bit of traffic in New Hampshire...we probably should have waited to go tomorrow, in all actuality, but I'm glad we went. It would have only taken us about an hour and a half had we not got caught in traffic.

Anyway, we stopped at a little sea-themed miniature golf course in Wells on Route 9. It's part of the Sea Vu Camground. I actually got a hole in one -- my first ever. I still lost the game, however, after it took me about ten tries to get one in at a later hole.

Afterwards we went to Gooch's Beach which is one of the prettiest beaches I've ever been to. And it has a funny name. I kept trying to incorporate "Gooch's Beach" into conversation with Matt because I liked saying it. Gooch's Beach. Gooch's Beach. He was far less amused than I was.

For dinner, we went to Federal Jack's Restaurant and Brew Pub. Matt got an entire lobster, and I got lobster with linguini. Man, am I glad that I didn't order an entire lobster...because Matt, scientist that he is, felt the need to point out all of the lobster's innards to me. Ah yes, lobster guts.

Downstairs from Federal Jack's, you can buy beer! We bought three JUGS of beer and a box of assorted beers. The latter is for Matt's dad...the jugs are for us. :-)

There's a Gifford's Ice Cream in Kennebunkport. I'm glad I noticed it, because otherwise I would have gone to Ben and Jerry's! Not that I dislike Ben and Jerry's, but I always enjoy supporting more local-ish companies. I've blogged about Gifford's Ice Cream before...they serve it at Wild Willy's in Watertown but it had freezer burn when I tried it there.

Had a great day. Tomorrow we're staying in town, and going to the fabulous record store, Stereo Jack's, that specializes in jazz and blues. It's between Harvard and Porter Square. They've got other genres of music, too...Matt got a Donald Fagen CD there for $2.99. We're hoping to find some inexpensive Ray Charles albums.

We haven't decided what to do on the fourth yet. Hope everyone else has a great weekend!

Livejournal versus blogs

I'm a blogging veteran. I began my blogging life on Opendiary in June 2000. I finally wound up at LiveJournal, but I think I'm done with LJ. I'll probably phase it out over the next few months.

Livejournal Pros:

-Communities. Even when I stop using my LJ, I'll still keep my account for the purpose of communities.

-Easy to set up and use.

Livejournal Cons:

-Friending/unfriending. I'd rather not know who reads my blog and who suddenly decides to stop reading it. There's also the obligation to add someone back. It's kind of like junior high drama.

-Friends-only journals. I like to find new blogs to read, but if every single one of your entries is locked, I'm not going to read it. I can understand the desire to keep some entries locked, but I don't understand why someone would lock of all them.

-Many people (not my friends of course!) on LJ are just avid attention seekers. They'll post webcam photos of themselves making different facial expressions regularly. They all claim to be bisexual/polyamorous/vegan/cutters.

-No trackbacks. Granted, Blogger doesn't have trackbacks, but I'll be moving my blog shortly to krissyinboston.com and I'll be using WordPress.

-The info and comment pages on LJ users, and how you can't make the former look like the rest of your blog.

Blogs are the winner! :-) A few months ago I was content with my livejournal, but now after working on a blog survey for my company, I realized that blogs are HUGE right now and very cool! And once I am settled in my new blog, it's where I'll be doing most of my writing.

I'm excited about moving my blog to a service that has categories. These are the categories I'll have:

Greater Boston (General)
Greater Boston Restaurants
Things to do in the Boston Area
MBTA
Massholes on the road
Local & State Politics
Local News
New England
New York
New Jersey
My Life
Photos
Work
Music
Organic Living/Environment/ETC
Politics (general)
Current Events (other)
Humor
Blogs
Misc.

I am quite excited.

Border Cafe? No way!

As a Jersey girl, I'm not a connoisseur of Mexican food, even though I spent seven years in California and I should have had ample time to adjust my palate to appreciate good Mexican food, it just never happened. I found that many Mexican joints were overly salty, with the exception of a place I once went to in San Diego. I still prefered Chevy's, a chain of Americanize Mexican food. They don't have Chevy's up here, but they do have them in NY now. (Two in Manhattan, one in Staten Island)

Matt is from Southern California, and does consider himself to be a connoisseur of Mexican food, particularly burritos. He's disappointed with the lack of authentic Mexican food in the Northeast. He finds it sacrilegious that I prefer places like Chevy's. I can understand, because Matt prefers the types of pizza that makes me, a half-Italian/Mediterranean Jersey girl, weep.

Anyway, it seems like the restaurant of choice in terms of Mexican food is The Border Cafe in Harvard Square. I've lived here for nearly a year and a half, and I've tried this place about four times. Everything I've eaten there has tasted like it was pure sodium. Last night I ordered a tostada salad and I had to go to sleep just to fight of the severe nausea it plagued me with. I thought a salad would have been safe!! The tostada shell tasted a little odd...kind of like a giant crispy Chinese noodle, which wouldn't have been odd if I were in a Chinese restaurant. But I wasn't.

I still live in Watertown right now, and I was taking the 71 bus home...I was so nauseous and spacy that I got confused and tried getting off where there was no bus stop. The bus driver was kind, however, and let me off anyway...I got off the bus across the street from Vito's Pizza and stood there disoriented for a moment. Then suddenly it occured to me where I was, and I walked home. I must have looked somewhat akin to a fool.

What on earth was in that tostada?

Wawa

There needs to be some Wawas in New England. They've only got them from Jersey down to Virginia. None in this neck of the woods.

Wawa is cool. It's kind of like a 7-11, only nice. They have their own brand of ice cream which is awesome. My dad used to buy the brownie one and it was really good. Whenever I go down to the Jerz to visit my friends I stop at a Wawa. And often I'll purchase a TastyKake.