Let’s hear it for New York…

Dear New York,

Fall, especially Thanksgiving Day, always makes me want to see your face, again and bask in the glory of your noise-polluted busy streets, overpriced meals and nonchalant residents. I don’t care if you’re loud, arrogant and pretentious. I still love you and you feel warm and tingly…like home.

xoxo

On feta cheese, pizza and love

After deciding to camp out in my office until Real Housewives of Orange County comes on tonight, I decided that I should secure some nutrients. My appetite is on overdrive these days, but I rarely stop to feed it. Today, I did breakfast and lunch, but that didn’t do much to make me full.

I decided on pizza. Figured I could cover a couple of couple of food groups at one time. My thought was to get a medium pizza, with regular sauce, light cheese, green peppers, red peppers and dice tomatoes. Yeah, no meat. I had turkey earlier. Typically, I order my pizza from Pizza Hut. If not Pizza Hut, Papa John’s. But a couple of weeks back, the honey ordered from Domino’s (cringe), but it was actually pretty tasty. A good even balance of cheese, dough and pizza. So, I decided to order from Domino’s.

Boy, did I make the best decision of my life. Their their fancy website tracks the status of your pizza, from the time you place your order, to the time they receive it, to the time they begin preparation, to the time it goes into the oven, to the time it gets quality checked and finally when it leaves the store to come to you. They have this graph thing that actually moves. So very intriguing. I sat there snarling at first, thinking, this stupid thing isn’t going to move. This is some sort of set up to have people like me sitting here staring for minutes and minutes to take my mind off the fact that I’m slowing dying from lack of food. But it moved – over and over again.

But the most exciting part of placing my order was learning that they actually offer FETA CHEESE. I love feta cheese. Give this girl some feta cheese crushed up with some tomatoes and she’s in heaven. I first tried that combo at a little greek restaurant in the very fabulous Mt. Vernon area of Baltimore City. Anyway, back to the pizza. I got a medium, with 1/2 red and green peppers and the other 1/2 diced tomatoes. And FETA CHEESE on the whole entire pizza.

Dear Dominos, You have a friend in me. I will forever be grateful for this delicious pizza you placed before me on today. I am trying to exercise much restraint at this moment, because I would love nothing more than to devour the. entire. medium. pizza. xoxo.

Yours forever and always in everything saucy and cheesy,
Miss Miranda

Lifestyles of the young, fly and tacky

It’s very clear to me that Kimora Lee Simmons and Wendy Williams are the fabulously, tacky aunties I’ve never had, but will always want. So, from here on out, we shall refer to them as my aunties in my head.

My birthday is on Monday…I’ll be a delightful 27. While some may say, “how dreadful!”, I’m excited. 27 is one step closer to 30, and I have certainly convinced myself that my 30s are going to be the best years of my life. I say it and I claim it before all of you.

I always buy myself a birthday gift or two or three. I rarely tell anyone what I want when I asked, because then I wouldn’t have anything to buy myself. So today, I got a new iPhone, because I did some really nasty damage to the one I’ve had for the past two years. But the iPhone isn’t the big present. Afterall, it’s a phone. A phone I already have. It won’t be anything too exciting, except when I sit down to sync my calendars. I always get a huge kick out of that whole process.

The big present is the accesory I purchased to go along with it. The cover.

My last cover was a Chloe Dao (do you watch project runway? cute little asian chick who won…I die for her) exclusive. Ok, maybe not an exclusive, but she designed some cases, they were sort of stylish, very functional and affordable. I got one.

So this time, as I searched endlessly on Overstock and eBay (yeah, that’s right), I thought’d I’d find something with some pop to it, something that would turn heads, something daring, something…well really, I just wanted something that I couldn’t get too dirty and that would cover my screen (bless the soul of the crack in my current iPhone’s screen). I also wanted something kinda stylish that could hold my business cards and wouldn’t cost me an arm and a leg.

And then, I found this. And then, I fell in love. This case and I are engaged in a passionate lover affair. I cannot wait to get it in my hands.
I love a good zebra print, but I won’t wear it and I won’t use it as decor for my house. But I sure will carry it along in my purse and whip it out with a smile on my face. It’s tacky, it’s fabulous and it’s all for me! Please click the picture to enlarge and sit with the lovelyness that is my new phone case. I shall name her, WenMora.

Here in these deep city lights…

I know I should watch the news. Trust me, I realize it’s in my best interest to know what’s going on in this crazy city. However, I find it really difficult to listen to stories that revolve around rapes, shootings and robberies. I get all tense and emotional as if I know the people involved. The stories become an obsession. I Google the involved parties and their neighborhoods, search Facebook, MySpace and even local court records. Somehow, I think having more details will make these stories make sense.

Sometimes, life seems like one of those horrible video games with the bad guys in fancy cars speeding away from police sirens, while hitting innocent bystanders with their cars and stray bullets. One minute you’re walking down the street and the next minute your family and friends are standing over your casket crying because they want you back. The pastor stands in front of the church using your funeral to recruit people to join church and “come to God” so their sins are forgiven and they can get away from the “world”. The choir belts out hymns in an attempt to soothe to church and you lay there stiff in a box.

I lost so many family members to violence. Sometimes because they were a part of the problem and other times because they were just innocent bystanders. I’ll never forget the night my brother got shot and how much of an impact it’s had on my life. When something hits so close to home – even if you’re just a child – it really makes you step back and look at world in a different way. You appreciate things a little more. You become less tolerant of bullshit. You learn to say no and really mean it. And you learn that life can be taken away from you in the blink of an eye. It all sounds rather cliché, but imagine being a little kid playing with your Barbie dolls and hearing gun shots ring out knowing your brother just left the house literally 20 seconds before. And then sitting there just knowing in your heart that at least one of the bullets hit him. You have to grow up real fast in those situations. I couldn’t even let a tear fall. Something led me to the phone to call 9-1-1 and then to call my parents and tell them something had happened. And afterwards, as if I was numb to the whole thing, I went back to playing with my dolls – too afraid to find out the truth.

So every time I watch the news and hear the terrifying stories, I think about the pain the families feel and how the memory of the tragedy will never leave their minds. How nightmares will come and go. How they will dry tears night after night – even years later. And how they’ll share their stories for years to come.

I’m lucky to still have my brother today. Luckily, his gunshot wounds only meant that he had to endure months of rehabilitation to learn how to use his leg and finger again. His wasn’t an instance where he was deep in the middle of some gang war or selling drugs and caught in the midst gunfire. He simply walked outside of the house, en route to his car, but never made it there. Instead, he fell on the sidewalk where he laid bleeding, pleading to God that he’d live. The next morning, smears of his blood were still resting on the sidewalk.

So forgive me if watching the news isn’t on my list of things to do each day. And forgive me if I adopt the I didn’t see it, so it didn’t happen mentality. It’s just a little hard to grasp how our world got to a point where it’s not safe to go to work for fear that a former employee will come and empty a clip, where you send your child to school, but he doesn’t return home because the bully who has terrorized him decides to kill him or where an innocent college-bound student is beat so badly by her boyfriend that she lay in a comma barely holding on to her life.

I just can’t tune in to that.

Love the kids…

I put up a status on my google chat account asking people to send me a list of magazines they read. And my 10 year-old niece replied…

My Princess:
i read higlights for kids, dog fancy , cat fancy, weekly reader

She’s too cute.

Giftwrapping with Miss Miranda

Today, my honey’s surprise bday gift came (yes, his bday was on the 9th…I do realize that today is the 11th). Naturally, I don’t have wrapping paper, so I decided to use the lovely newspaper that’s been sitting in the dining room chair for eons.

I told Urbsoph my big plan and she didn’t seem too thrilled, so in an effort to show her the final wrapping and to show A. some Winston footage….here’s a video…no soundtrack…just my annoying voice. Perhaps, I’ll include some Jay Z in the background next time.

Before you ask…yes, I purposely picked that page of the paper for the front of the gift. I think it’s adorable!

P.S. Please contact me for your holiday gift wrapping needs.

FedEx Woes

Both the desk and the bookcase arrive today, but at two totally different times. I put the bookshelf together with my own two hands *rub teeth with pointer finger* because that’s just the kind of girl I am! However, the desk…is still in the box.

Where’s our electric screwdriver when I need it? Oh right, my dad borrowed it and didn’t bring it back to us yet! He said he’d bring it over today…when he came to pick up his dinner. But he didn’t come, which actually works out because I certainly didn’t cook!

I signed on to my online classes for just a quick peak. Why did I decide to take classes again? Oh right, torture is my pal.

I’m gonna have a little one-on-one with Paul S. He’s fixing to help me not procrastinate or something.

Crushing Hard

We’re all adults here, right? And we can all admit that we have girl crushes, right?

Well…I present to you…the fabulous, talented Melanie Fiona…

That voice is amazing! Her cd dropped on Tuesday. Swooonnnn!!

Google Wave

P.S.

Thanks to the very lovely UrbSoph, I am an official Waver!

If you’re on Google Wave, please please add me…I need more people to “wave,” so I can have some fun!

The Office

Good thing I’m a woman of my word. I told you guys I couldn’t promise I’d blog every day. LOL. My head is tied into 69 eleven things right now.

Tomorrow, I transform my daycare back into an office. That’s right. I’m all legit now. I have a desk and new bookcase, a business card holder, some fancy little business cards, a pen holder, a fancy little folder holder, some fancy folders and one of those letter holder things that needs to be drilled into the wall (it also has a keyholder on it – check me out!) and pillows! Yeah, I have some orange pillows and some with some orange and green and them to put on the floor for decoration (read: a place for Winston to sleep). All I need now is a chair that I love (for now I’ll use a dining room chair…I can live with that) and I need some curtains! I also would love very much to have a new computer. A Mac. Again. Please.

I start a writing class on Wednesday (woohooo!) and on Thursday I’m taking part in my very first virtual conference (it’s about email marketing). No, I’m not hosting the conference or anything…just attending.

Also, I have another site….supposed to be for business…but I’m still trying to work on it. I’m going to put a pic of my new business card below…and for those of you who decide to venture to the site…I don’t want you all surprised when you see it’s barely anything there. LOL. Fear not, I’m gonna whip it into shape!

Business card….

And here’s my newsletter layout…. (empty of course, but a working template for what I want to send out to local business owners by dec 15th)

Front:

Back: