Archive for Product Reviews
Maroon Bells is truly God’s gift to Colorado – a hike between Aspen and Snowmass
Posted by: | CommentsAfter decades as Colorado Natives, the hubby and I finally made it up to Maroon Bells and WOW was it worth it. The drive up to the base camp is so pretty you don’t ever want to go over 25 mph because you have to pull over every mile or so to take yet another spectacular photo. We were lucky enough to see it at the absolute peak of the “Aspen turning” season and a few of the 200 photos I took are below for you to enjoy.
I’d suggest an entire weekend, use one of those find a bargain hotel website and see what you can do for lodging. Aspen itself is such a friendly, beautiful, healthy, visitor friendly place.
I will take my moment to tell you one place to avoid like the plague!
DO NOT GO TO UTE CITY GRILL!!
We had the worst service, rudest waiter, longest wait for everything and could not believe a restaurant like this was still in business. Pathetic! If you look at the ratings for the place you’ll see either glowing or horrible. I suspect the glowing ones are friends of the owner/wait staff that perhaps get treated like one should when they are dining out.
I DO recommend “The Red Onion!”
After being disgusted with our time at Ute City Grill, we wandered over to the outdoor walking mall and met many friendly locals. When we mentioned that we really had been looking forward to getting to sit outdoors and sip on a glass of wine and soak of the mountain atmosphere this Aspen local suggested the “Onion” and assured us they would take care of us and that it was even happy hour. Not only did they take care of us but we ended up meeting a wonderful couple at the “community table” and were treated like regulars even though we were only there for a couple of days.
We also highly recommend visiting the John Denver Memorial Park – article to follow.
Enjoy these lovely photo of Maroon Bells Peaks and Maroon Bells Lake.
The trees are truly spectacular and with the warm temperatures you can’t find a better time to see this spectacular vista. It’s known as the most photographed spot in all of Colorado, and once you visit you’ll know why.
Enjoy the slideshow photographs of Maroon Bells Peaks and lake taken in late September.
Anytime you head to the mountains be sure to take water, wear layers and lather up with sunscreen.
For more information on Aspen and Maroon Bells.
-
- Maroon Bells valley of aspens in full glorious color Aspen Colorado
-
- Close up of the Aspen Trunk
-
- the view from the top side of Maroon Bells Lake
-
- Maroon Bells valley of aspens in full glorious color Aspen Colorado
I Love Starbucks
Posted by: | Comments
I just had to say it out loud! I know it’s such a cliche’ but I really do just love Starbucks! Everything about it… somehow if I start my day off or take my mid-morning Starbucks trek, my whole day is happier, brighter and more jubilant that other days. I really don’t know for sure what the magical power is there, I didn’t even drink coffee my entire life before Starbucks. My 6th grade daughter introduced me to the heart attack waiting to happen Caramel Frappuccino at the Safeway Starbucks in our town eight years ago and I’ve been hooked ever since. I’ve changed orders to a Venti Iced Caramel Macchiato 1 pump non-fat with a caramel swirl drink most times.
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
I’m just NOT a hot drink person unless it’s really REALLY cold out and it rarely is in Colorado. It used to be an exciting Holiday tradition that I’d share with my theater daughter and all of her friends when the Gingerbread Latte’s came out on November 1st. We’d arrange a meetup and thoroughly relish our first taste of this scrumptious holiday treat. Starbucks this year however, ruined that for us by changing the entire formula and as far as I’m concerned RUINING the drink.. what the heck ARE those little foreign objects they decided to sprinkle on top?? YUCK!! They call them caramelized ginger sprinkles, but they tasted like nasty dead gummy bear pieces… I did twitter @starbucks my dissatisfaction with this change and hopefully other’s were upset with the changes as well, we’ll see come this November. I also miss their
7 layer bars that were discontinued awhile back. My usual bakery treat is either the Cranberry Orange Scone or the new Oatmeal cookies that have the raisin cranberry fruit mix that they use for their oatmeal optional add-ins now.
Even with this faux pax I still just love my Starbucks times. I don’t know what it is, the colors, the lighting, the smells, the sound of the coffee makers, the hustle bustle of the other Starbuckians as they come in. I love it when the servers start to know your order and when you enter you are greeted by name, I love that they finally give customers some free internet access while you are there… it’s a bit tricky to figure out at first, you have to purchase a gift card, register the gift card, sign up for the service and then use the registered gift card at least every 30 days (hello! not too hard to do in my case.. more like every 30 hours) and then you get 2 hours of internet access a day, and it’s
decently fast internet access too so that’s cool!
My favorite Starbucks location has several umbrella tables in a corner a bit protected from the wind on two sides and surrounded by crab apple tree’s and perennial flowers… the little birds show up looking for dropped crumbs, people bring their dogs, our Starbucks provides a water dish for customers four legged friends and everyone is just happy there, I guess that’s why I love it there. They have also ruined me for other coffee drinks… If it doesn’t taste pretty close to the Bucky version then I just have iced tea or something else.
- Image by Earl – What I Saw 2.0 via Flickr
For some reason the noise and the atmosphere provides a great place for me to work. When I’m working from my “home office” I can always get distracted by chores to do, things to put away, phone calls, etc. but at Starbucks I seem to get LOTS of work done.. that is unless friends come by which happens often, but that is also one of the reasons I like my Starbucks office is that I get out and among people. Working from home sounds great! but one of the drawbacks is the isolation factor.. so that’s probably one of the reasons I can be so productive there.
However work isn’t the ONLY thing I like to do when I go to Starbucks… it’s also one of my favorite spots to read. I belong to a wonderful ladies book club and always have at least one book I’m reading and I usually end up at the last day before our meeting to discuss it with several chapters to go so it’s the perfect excuse to get away from my distractions, find the cozy comfy chair in the corner, or the patio chair outside in the sunshine and finish my assigned book.
My husband was told that his cholesterol was high and I’d heard something about coffee being bad for your cholesterol. Now I could get him to eat some chicken instead of burgers, do more cardio instead of only weights but take away his morning coffee??? that was NOT going to happen so I started to research the subject. It seems that non-filtered coffee does indeed raise your cholesterol. This makes NO sense to me since you think of cholesterol issues being caused by meat/milk products, but here is what I discovered. The latte’s, macchiato’s, frappachinos are all made with espresso which is EXPRESSED from the coffee bean much the way french press is made, these drinks are all bad for your cholesterol if you have those issues. What you CAN have are Misto’s. Misto’s are simply brewed coffee with steamed milk. They taste pretty much the same and you can also have them flavored, hot or iced and they are also a little less expensive than it’s latte counterpart.
I am getting to the end of my free two hours here so I’m off to a great start today! What’s your favorite thing about Starbucks? favorite drink?
Related articles by Zemanta
- Starbucks Barista machine teardown (core77.com)
- Starbucks Frappuccino Bottle: $1 Off Coupon (momblognetwork.com)
- The Great Coffee War of 2009: McDonald’s prepares to trash Starbucks (dailyfinance.com)
Have high blood pressure? high calcium levels?
Posted by: | Comments
photo credit: pasotraspaso
This is my two week post op report card, and it’s a good one!
The first week was rough, I’m sure just due to the effects that any surgery has on your system along with hormone and blood chemicals all flying up and down, but now at two weeks post op from my parathyroidectomy I am feeling MUCH better.The symptoms that were IMMEDIATELY fixed are:
- my blood pressure is now totally normal, all the time
- normal bladder control (pre-op I ALWAYS had to pee and could barely make it in time)
- bone and muscle pain GONE!
- I have lost 7 pounds (yeah!)
- digestion MUCH improved
- Sex Drive back… (double yeah!)
Still to go:
I am currently REALLY emotional, I didn’t have the mood swings when I was pre-op like some people do, but I am having them now… I’m thinking it has to do with the parathyroid having to adjust itself.
I still get a little shakey when I don’t get my calcium. I had an appointment with my Endocrinologist on Tuesday and he has me on 1000 milligrams of calcium 4x a day along with a prescription for Vitamin D that I take once a week. I am also scheduled for a bone density scan in two weeks to see how much damage has been done to my bones during this calcium leaching period of God only knows how long. After he looks at that and determines the results he’ll redo my levels.
I am musing that perhaps my weight gain over the last two years and onset of menopause symptoms including rapid weight gain for now apparent reason may have to do with the fact I read on my synthyroid medication I picked up yesterday. (I also have Hashimoto’s Thyroid Disease) It says not to take it with calcium… so I’m wondering if that was/is part of the reason for the weight gain (Hashimoto’s is hypo thyroid) is that the synthyroid couldn’t really do it’s job to help regulate my metabolism with my calcium levels being constantly so high in my blood stream. Only time will tell.
All in all the results of the parathyroidectomy are a huge success. 
Read all my previous posts on this journey
Pt 5: 2 Days Post Operative
pt 4: Tomorrow is Surgery Day
pt 3: Consultation with the Surgeon
Definition :
“Parathyroidectomy“
Parathyroidectomy is surgery to remove parathyroid glands or parathyroid tumors. Parathyroidectomy is recommended when one or more parathyroid glands are producing excessive amounts of parathyroid hormone.
Why do Women have to shave?
Posted by: | Comments
SERIOUSLY! It has to be the single thing I most hate about being a woman. We will torture ourselves endlessly in pursuit of the “silky smooth legs” “she wears short shorts” commercial that told us over and over again the only way to attract a man was to have all the surfaces of our body hair free!!
You have so many options and yet all of them have their downfalls. (aka SUCK!)
First off.. shaving.. Ok, doesn’t seem to hard does it? But I don’t know about you ladies out there, but there are areas of my body that I’m supposed to get hairless that I can’t see.. I’ve never seen.. not sure I want to see, but I’m expected to take a sharp blade to it? I don’t think so. Wet or dry, shaving cream or gel, my daughter says use hair conditioner because you always have more of that left than you do shampoo… So ok, I’ve managed to somehow miraculously de-hair myself to the satisfaction of the TV commercial folks and guess what.. By the end of the day I’ve got stubble… UGG….
Then there is waxing! You’ve all seen the scene in the “40 year old Virgin” where he’s waxing his chest hairs… That really IS how painful that is, and how many men out there are willing to do that for us to have a hair free chest to cuddle on.. NOT THAT MANY! It’s Painful, Expensive, did I say painful?? Brazilian Wax… I call that INSANE!!! Even the “Sex in the City” ladies wouldn’t do that!
Cream Depilatories. Ok, these came out with the “who wears short shorts” commercials in the ’60′s.. (yes I’m old enough to remember those) Back in those days you were lucky to start putting that potion on one leg before you were passing out from the fumes. That much has improved, but this option just never worked well for me. I’d wait the allotted time, and parts of me would be burned by the chemicals and other parts of my legs would still have the same amount of hair on them as when I started.
I was recently sent a new product to review on my blog by www.fuelmyblog.com .. Smooth Away -Well here goes with that. It’s not too pricey, is the only good thing I can say about this product. It retails in Target, Walmart, etc. for $9.99. Not bad if it worked AT ALL???
The packaging looked attractive, the instructions fairly simple, the brochure assured me I would be silky smooth and hair free head to toe.
I assembled the “crystal…..” to the pink applicator and began to work in small circles with not to much pressure, alternating clockwise and counter clockwise as the instructions had said….. UM…. NOTHING happened.. not one hair was harmed during the five minutes of working this product up and down my shins. I couldn’t believe it.. It seemed like it should work, I thought well maybe it’s just my hair… so my daughter tried it, my friends… same result… It just doesn’t work at all. So now what…
I did discover a fairly new razor the Intuition Razor for ladies which was introduced to me by Andrea and Andrea of two 
chicks talk tech podcast. In it Andrea talked about these razors and told all the guys listening to go and get one for their wives and all the ladies to get one for their friends. I decided what the heck, nothing else is really much good so I went to Target to pick one up… WOW.. these were different. You could ONLY use them wet, in the shower, but they really did glide gently around your shavable zones and zapped the hair gone.. even those spots I can’t SEE!!! Is it a miracle? Well I wouldn’t call it that but they really do work great. The only downside is they are pricey and as soon as the soapy, lotiony part is worn down they are less and less effective. I suspect these were created by women!
If any of the women out there in internet land have anything to share that works better than all these options I beg of you to share it with me and all womankind!
