Archive for the 'bling blog' Category



Freedom! (with super slow internet)

Today (or I guess really as of tomorrow morning), we cut the cord, as the kids are saying. Though I guess the kids actually never had anything to do with the cord in the first place. What am I talking about, Mom?

WE CANCELED CHARTER.

That’s right. After a harrowing phone call during which I almost caved, I have cut off our cable service. We’ve switched to AT&T’s U-verse internet, which is cheaper and slower, and we’re going to go with rabbit ears, Netflix, Hulu and HBO Now. I know this is not a perfect solution for a TV junkie like me, but the $183.53 monthly bills are just no longer tolerable. I’ve had Charter for 10 years and there’s never any reward from them for sticking with them. OnDemand works maybe 50% of the time. We have to reset the modem every other week. We watch a ton of Netflix anyway. And it’s just too damn expensive! I’m really worried about how we will watch live sports, but that’s not as much of a concern in the summer. So, for now, this is who we are. Eeks!

The cost chart:

Charter Silver package with fast internet: $183.53 per month. Our price includes HBO, Showtime and Cinemax and tons of HD channels. And one DVR box. We also have been paying $8.43 per month for Netflix, making our total monthly TV and internet costs $191.96 or – gasp! – $2303.52 per year.

Our new life: $31.95 for internet (plus tax, so I’m not sure yet of the total number) + $8.43 for Netflix + $15 for HBO Now + $7.99 for Hulu = $55.38 per month or $664.56 per year, a savings of $1638.96. I suppose that number should be adjusted for whatever the cost of our antennae will be, but it’s still a super significant savings.

I figure that even if we end up going back to Charter for internet, we’ll end up with a better deal than we had because they reward new customers, not long-term ones.

So, away we go!

Is there a name for this?

Is there a name for the condition of wanting to watch videos like this over and over again? I could watch this everyday. Or maybe every other day if I could alternate it with the Susan Boyle one.

Sometimes you’re a caterpillar

Isn’t this the greatest?

FroYo

This might not be on everyone’s mind, but from time to time I find myself wondering about frozen yogurt. Do you? Specifically, do you think about how it was really big in the early 1990s and then suddenly it was nowhere and now it seems to be back and no one is acknowledging its former absence? Because I do. I think about that more than I should.

So today I wandered over to the omniscient Wikipedia to see if I could get any confirmation for my thoughts and lo and behold, I’m not completely off base. Turns out, if the article is to be believed, yogurt came to the US in the early 1900s and the frozen variety started to pop up in the 1970s. TCBY opened its first store in 1981. Being that all trends take longer to hit the midwest, I don’t take this as inconsistent with my early 1990s memory of frozen yogurt treat nights. Apparently, the demise of frozen yogurt was due to the Atkins-esque crazes of the late 1990s. So why the resurgence? Something about “probiotic powder-based mixes” and Pinkberry. There you have it. Mystery solved. Kinda.

Tulum: the food

I’ve been bad about following up on travel posts in the past, so I bet you thought I was heading down that road again. Waha! I fooled you. See, here I am and I’m prepared to break down our culinary tour of Tulum. Or, I’m sort of prepared. I’ve got pics, but my memories have already faded so bear with me. Plus, it’s annoyingly cold outside so looking at these pics might make me more bitter than nostalgic. In any event, here goes. When you tell people you are going to Tulum, they will tell you many things, but frequently you hear that you simply must eat at Posada Margherita (on the beach) and El Camello (in the town). So, of course we ate at neither of these top spots. Oops. We decided that it just meant that we’d have to return.

Anyway, where did we go, you wonder? Well, here you go. We had absolutely delicious breakfasts at our hotel, Posada Luna del Sur. It’s true. They. Were. Amazing.

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The second day that I ordered this delicious egg and salsa verde number, it came with crema, which made me sad. I suppose that’s what I get for not branching out.

Oh! I almost forgot! This breakfast shown above was actually our second meal in Tulum. The first came the night before at Charlie’s, which was a couple of blocks from the hotel. I had a quesadilla and AO had something I can’t remember, but I know that he didn’t think it was very good. The more memorable part of the evening, though, was when the restaurant was bombarded by some sort of postmodern avant-garde small theater troupe that put on what I can describe only as bizarreness. I know I’m kind of a cultural-stick-in-the-mud anyway, but this was just odd. There was a group of America’s Next Top Model contestants sitting next to us (ok, not really, but there was something going on) wearing weird hats and some of them seemed to think the whole thing was so awesome that they took out their phones and videotaped it all. I can’t really explain it except to say that the troupe was maybe five people and one skit (I’m sure that’s an offensive term for what they were doing but I don’t know what else to call it) was about selling shoes. There were possibly some political overtones to the whole thing, but I couldn’t tell you because it was all in Spanish.

Mostly we ate in town, though we had a few meals/snacks on the beach. In town, we had yummy nachos, fish and shrimp fajitas (we ended up taking almost all of the fajitas back to the hotel) at El Capitan.

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One morning, we skipped our hotel’s breakfast to try breakfast in town. We settled on Don Cafeto and ended up more lunching than breakfasting.

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We had a beer at Mateo’s, which is not on the beach but in the beachy part of Tulum.

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On the beach, we ate chips and guac at Playa Paraiso, which were quite tasty. Plus, is there anything in the world like sitting on a warm beach in January and having someone bring you drinks and guacamole? I can’t think of much.

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We also ate absolutely delicious Thai appetizers at Mezzanine, which is a really neat place. It’s up on a hill, above the beach, with great views, tasty food and yummy margaritas. For some reason, I don’t have great pics of it. I think I was too busy pinching myself for being so lucky.

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Another highlight was La Nave, which is an Italian spot in the pueblo. This is where we had delicious pizza, toasted to 40 and listened to street musicians do a bang-up version of La Bamba.

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Excellent, excellent pizza.

The number one spot that we hit, though, was here:

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Antojitos La Chiapaneca. This place opens at night and gets crowded, which makes sense because the tacos are delicious and inexpensive. I’m really annoyed that I don’t have pics of the actual deliciousness. I guess we’ll just have to go back.