When I got my BlackBerry Pearl last December, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with my old Motorola StarTac... so it sat on my kitchen counter ... until this past week! Before I went to the DC Pearl Jam show I checked out this site they have in conjunction with Verizon Wireless. I found out you could donate your old phone to Hopeline and get a gift from Pearl Jam! Woohoo! So I took my old phone (and charger!) and donated on the second night of MSG.

I got a cool Pearl Jam backback/tote bag, a Pearl Jam t-shirt,mini-poster and a live Pearl Jam DVD (that I did not already have!

As I was having dinner on 6th Ave the night before the first MSG show I noticed people carrying Pinkberry containers! My friend and I decided that we would need to find Pinkberry tomorrow, as it must be right around the block. Then I decided that I could Google it on my Blackberry... which I did and discovered it was about a block away :)

Next day, we headed downtown in the afternoon to pick up 10Club tickets, then across town in search of Pinkberry!

I got a Pinkberry with Raspberries... they also have Green Tea and Coffee flavors (its basically frozen yogurt).

It was YUMMY!

I spent Wednesday late morning through early afternoon at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). I have never been before (except for a 1 week temp job that I worked shortly after graduating college). It was interesting and I saw a bunch of cool stuff. They have a Van Gogh exhibit coming in the fall, which I wish had been installed for my visit.

See pictures here!

I got into NYC about 15 minutes ahead of my scheduled arrival time, and then headed to MSG will call to pick up my fan club tickets (since I was let off right outside of Penn Station which is righ next to MSG it worked out well). Well it would have worked out well if it 1) wasn't raining and 2) the 10 Club line had opened on time at 2pm instead of over an hour late - at 3pm... shortly after I arrived. So I arrived to a mass of wet PJ fans, that were starting to get rowdy :-)

It stopped raining shortly there after and the line started moving... I picked up my tickets... 13th row dead center! YAY 10 Club!!!

My friend arrived via the train, and we headed uptown 10 blocks to our hotel.

An hour later we were heading back downtown to grab dinner and head into the show.

Seats were great, show was great ( still no "BetterMan"! YAY!) crowd was awesome. My shoe choice was not so great as my feet were killing me, but I got a cute new Pearl Jam baseball cap and a sticker (that I planned to put on my car).

Checkout pictures here!

Next up my day in New York!

So I took the Megabus from Baltimore to DC. It was great! The bus was the same as a regular coach bus, and stated that it had WiFi (I couldn't check though because I didn't want to cart my laptop). The bus up was about half full ( ie everyone except for a few had 2 seats to themselves) The bus back home was 3/4 full...

we made good time both ways and I will definitely use them again.

Also, on the way up I saw a few BoltBuses coming back the opposite way... turns out its the same type deal as Megabus. A couple in front of me night 1 at MSG had taken the BoltBus from DC ( for $1!) and they said it was great... and half full.

During this tour I realized I was starting to forget which PJ shows I have attended ... so I started a list ... using Mac OS X stickies :-P

I have lots of pictures and stuff to tell. Look for updates all weekend!

Also, while in NYC I came to the realization that even after working in DC for almost 2.5 years , I know my way around NYC 500 times better! :/

Sent from my BlackBerry

Spending the morning at MOMA.

Sent from my BlackBerry

I hate packing so much that I washed my car, cleaned 2 bathrooms, vacuumed, and folded 2 loads of laundry to avoid it!

They played a lot of great tunes, about a 2.5 hours long set... and no "Better Man" - I hate that song.

Thanks to the Ten Club I was in the 12th row... and thanks to my new camera with 12x zoom I got some great pictures.



On to NYC!!!

I can mo-blog :-)

Sent from my BlackBerry

This is my first official, moving forward post via Blogger ( I used to use Yahoo! 360).

After being frustrated with my Flickr photostream being stuck showing pictures from last fall, I started looking into other blog alternative... and I decided to move to Blogger.

I think they offer more options for me to customize...

I will miss the tag cloud from yahoo! ...blogger does a big long list.. but I can add widgets, so I have hope that I will eventually find one that will let my tags become a cloud again!
I moved all my old posts over... but lost the comments.

Part of what also added to this move, is that I got a new laptop last week. My old Dell that I have had for 4 years basically overheats after more than 15 minutes of use, and crashes (usually in the middle of ripping songs of my cds and trying to import them into iTunes). Now I can do multiple things at once, import an entire CD, and surf for more than 30 minutes!

An old photo (originally posted on PearlJam.com)

See if you can find me !

Eek 3- days -- As I keep telling my coworkers "I am in Pearl Jam mode!"

( They were curious why my desktop wall paper changed from NKOTB to Pearl Jam)

When I started my new job, I had to postpone my flex days (schedule where I work 9 hour days and then can take every other Friday off), but as of June 1 - I am back on a flex schedule - WooHoo!

Usually I do something with my Mom and niece -- This week we went to Brookside Gardens to see the Butterfly exhibit.

It was hot, but a fun time was had by all!

Pictures!

I am sure that many of you have forgotten ( due to the NOTB frenzy!) that I will be traveling soon to see Pearl Jam up north

I was looking at options last month and it was really between Amtrak ( for about $60-80 each way) and the Chinatown bus (about $20 each way).

Then I saw something that CNN picked up about $1 trips! So I looked into it and basically MegaBus charges you based on how far in advance you book your tickets....I booked today and its going to be $18.50 ROUNDTRIP!!!

Its the music video for "Summertime" - Eeek!

This says it all!

Woohoo! Over $20 in service charges!! Unreal! Die Ticketmaster!!

There were 3 price points.... I went with the middle!

Happy Birthday to Alyssa and .......

Johnny Depp!

I've decided that my next weekend project will be to replace my current thermostat with a programmable one. Right now it looks like the hardest part is going to be getting the current one off the wall.

If you know the proper way to displose of mercury... let me know in comments!

This morning as I got my regular Triple Venti Skim Latte I was handed a card for a free 12oz iced coffee, for every Wednesday through July 23!!

Pearl Jam to play VH1 Rock Honors - Airs July 17th

Coming off my 5 time M'am encounter at the local Safeway this past weekend (which funny enough preceded my getting carded at the liquor store!) I got M'am-ed at Starbucks this morning

I was wondering why my shoes were soaked?!

I visited the Apple store at the Annapolis mall this weekend.... looked at laptops...I'm 95% sure that I am going with the MacBook Pro with the 15 inch monitor!

NKOTB plays the Verizon Center on Thursday October 2. No word yet on an On-Sale date.

Remember this fun post?

Well the implosion is complete! Way back in August a new person that was also questioning the way some things were being done joined the board are started requesting all kinds of documents....

The property manager didn't want to give them to her (which was a huge red flag for me!) The HOA is paying this company for a service and they don't want to answer our questions? Unacceptable! (Oh - and this property manager is completely incompetent - she creates work orders for building sthat don't exist, she mailed out a meeting notice for a BOD meeting at my house where she spelled my name wrong and included the wrong address (another building that doesn't exist).)

Around September I started asking for hard numbers/costs associated to a website that the mgmt company secured for us, but that no one was really using. They never provided the costs, and gave me some really odd graphs to try and indicate how may owners were using the website. I kept asking through November with no response. So then I did my Who Is search ( thanks UMBC -- this is one thing that I actually learned there and still use today!) and found the technical contact for the company hosting the website ( they also made the software that was running on the site). I then asked "Do you have any canned reports for this website that I can run to see how many people are using the site?' Reply "Yes, they are accessible from your site and you have access to them!" !!! Another red flag to me in regards to Mgmt Co, hiding info!

I ran the reports and found that aside from 3 members of the board no one was using it....needless to say we discontinued the website maintenance costs (they were charging us some outrageous amount to maintain the site, but the info on the site was over 2 years old!)

But because the Mgmt Co never game me the invoices for the costs associated to the website, I opened a BBB complaint against them

After that 1 board member wanted me removed from the board (oh yeah I was President at this time ), but the other 3 ( including the person that joined back in Aug who really pushed for me to stay) went with the option to only remove me as President !

After a meeting last March - The 1 board member resigned, and 2 of the other 3 are moving next month!

So now the Mgmt co has been ignoring me and the August person. Needless to say we terminated their contract with our HOA last night!

Woohoo!

I am in the market for a new laptop... and have made the decision to go back to Apple!!!!

The Dell did its job for about 4 years, but I am a Mac person at heart! Down with Microsoft

Now I just need to decide between the MacBook or MacBook Pro!

I guess there really is a site for everything !

I always know when its raining in the morning (like today!) because Madison is no where to be found (because she is hiding under the bed).

There are 3 points in my morning routine where Madison makes an appearance:

1)When I get out of the shower, she greets me with a Meow!

2) When I go to the kitchen to take my vitamin, she rolls around on the carpet trying to get a tummy rub

3) When I make the bed, she jumps up there angling for more tummy action!

Today... I didn't see a glimpse of her, so as I was looking around the house and under chairs, when I finally spied her under the bed, I thought "It must be raining!" and yes, it was!

I bought a Panini maker last week, and today I made my first one! It was Roasted Red Peppers and Feta. Turned out well and tasted great! ( I even managed not to cut myself when cutting the Cibatta )

check out the compete photo tale here!

This morning as I was walking up to the platform, the first pod of people was decidely smaller than usual and many people were facing away from the train tracks. As I got closer I heard people talking about a tree falling, then I haerd someone say "... and now its on fire..." I looked over and saw that something, probably another tree, had caught on fire! Then POW something exploded and sparks were flying (luckily it was around where no one was standing and I am pretty sure cars weren't parked there either). Then another POW! Then another POW! and then the train station, parking lot and platforms went dark! Lost power for about 30-60 seconds then it either came back or it was emergency backup! Fire Rescue rolled up as the train was pulling out of the station.

to my CrackBerry!

So I have had my BlackBerry Pearl for about 4 months... and its awesome!

I use it to plan my schedule, keep lists of things to do, lists of books to get at the library, and keep track of email (4 so far.... looking to add one more work related account in the coming months!) . The best benefit of the email is the MARC train alerts in real time, so I know if my train is going to be late

Today I took another step into CrackBerry addiction... ringtones.

I of course looked for a Pearl Jam related ringtone about 3 months ago , but nothing good was free. So I almost gave up... until today while looking for something else I was directed to the CrackBerry site... and found a ringtone for Animal.

Then I decided to look for NKOTB ringtones... and they had a few... and now this one will play when ever my sister calls me

Then I found the best phone related ringtone evah!! - Jack Bauer in the house

More to come... individual ringtones for everyone!

Yesterday my sister and I went to the Leesburg Corner Premium Outlets.

Hello Kate Spade and Burberry!! (actually Burberry was a disappointment -- I was looking for earmuffs. -- They didn't have any, and the cashmere scarves were as expensive as those in Nordstrom! )

Rain was in the forecast, but it held off and I even drove home with the top down!! Woohoo!

The drive out was easy... no traffic, I used my Navigation system, but set it to not use toll roads so I avoided the Dulles Toll Road. The by pass route consisted of me getting of at Rt 123 in VA ( Tysons Corner) then I cut over to Rt 7 ...simple and a scenic drive.

The drive home not so much.... I thought it would be the reverse but nothing close....I went back Rt 7 for a few miles ( of packed Northern VA traffic), then I turned off onto this residential road, that became this narrow twisty-turny road with huge houses ( they were pretty to look at)... I had no clue where I was ! I eventually met back up with Rt 193 and then 495 but it took me forever to get home.

NKOTB to perform May 16th on the Today show! With a tour to follow in the fall

Pearl Jam congratulated me on my new job ( and promotion!) by announcing a 10 date east coast tour!!