Mahnamahna (Muppets Show)
Click the HERE to hear mahnamahna! I can't stop watching this video and singing the song, lol. It makes no sense, but it makes me laugh. I like the Dr. Pepper commercial that uses this song too, but it's originally from The Muppets. Oh and look at this Mahna Mahna: Bush, Blair, Saddam

It's Ladies Night
Tonight is my friend Divina's bachelorette party!! I helped plan it, along with a sorority friend of her's from UCONN.

We're hitting the bars in SoNo (South Norwalk, CT) in one of my uncle's limousines (Settembre's Limo).

Of course we'll be giving her gag gifts and making her wear a tiara and silly t-shirt that she'll have to get signed by random guys, haha, I can't wait. Before we head out for the night we are having a stripper come to her apartment and pretend to be a police officer and request that she keep things down, this was her one request, she insisted he be a cop so she can experience the cliche herself. After lots of private "interviews," just kidding, we picked Ian.

UPDATE: two real cops stopped by her apartment but then happily cuffed the bachelorette and posed for photos, was thrown towards the ceiling by the stripper and then plopped upon his shoulders (he was more like an acrobat than a stripper), danced on a bar for the first time and had a blast!!

The History of Love
I just read The History Of Love, by Nicole Krauss. I've been wanting to read the full story ever since her original short story, "The Last Words on Earth" appeared in The New Yorker. I had read the whole piece in one sitting, and with how my magazines pile up, it really means something that I didn't just flip through it.

I appreciated her clear and simple writing and the story flows very nicely. Overall I thought it was a very tranquil and compassionate story. Because Krauss writes her male character so effectively, I was actually surprised to find out after I had read it that it was written by a female author.

The opening paragraph grabbed me from the start:
"When they write my obituary. Tomorrow. Or the next day. It will say, "Leo Gursky is survived by an apartment full of shit." I'm surprised I haven't been buried alive. I have to struggle to keep a path clear between bed and toilet, toilet and kitchen table, table and front door. If I want to get from the toilet to the front door, I have to go by way of the kitchen table. I like to imagine the bed as home plate, the toilet as first, the kitchen table as second, the front door as third: should the doorbell ring while I am lying in bed, I have to round the toilet and the kitchen table in order to arrive at the door." The same beginning starts the book too.

You can read the rest of the short story online for free at: http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fiction/040209fi_fiction That way you'll know if you should bother buying the complete book :) My mom is reading it now.

Back to Life, Back to Reality
Now Playing: (see above)
This song has been repeating in my head ever since our plane started to land back in New York and I spotted the miserable and rainy 50 degree weather. Welcome home! :( I also had an article due today and just started my full-time position at work. On the upside, I did manage to schedlue a vendor briefing with a journalist.

Here's the recap of my trip to Marco Island:
Marco is off the West Coast of Florida, south of Naples, but the closest airport, Fort Myers, is 45 minutes away and at least 10 miles from the shore. But the smell of the ocean's mist and the balmy heat can be inhaled and felt through squinted eyes, the moment you walk out onto the hot pavement, just as my heavy Soring clothes began to stick and cling to my body.

A high, arched bridge leads you to the City of Marco Island, where you are welcomed by palm tree lined streets and clay tiled roofs, reminiscent of a more tropical Beverly Hills. Elaborate manatee and seahorse shaped stone mailboxes try and outdo the dolphin and seashell ones of their neighbors and mark the entrances of amazing homes.

The weather was perfect and cloudless each day and remained in the high 80s despite the forecast, which called for scattered thunderstorms every day.

My friend and I opted for a day at The Spa, which was of course lovely and completely booked with guests. I had my first Sweedish Massage, LOVED IT!!

Instead of meeting laid-back locals and Bob Marley, Jimmy Buffett types, the people we met were mostly the same inhabitants of my native island. The majority of the barefoot tourists are New Jersey women and Wall Street men looking to unwind by escaping to their summer rentals. New Yawkers can easily be spotted in summer frocks and strappy, elaborate sandals, daringly incorporating colors into their normally black filled wardrobes.

The Mr. Perfects that I had secretly hoped to meet had Mrs. Perfects in the beach chair next to them, their kids playing in the wave-less water with their grandparents lying a few feet away under an umbrella. And their stares were not the ones I had in mind, when I sported my new black bikini for the first time this season.

It seemed, from family vacations to romantic rendezvous for two, Marco Island makes for the perfect paradise for both. Just do not expect to see many single people under the age of 35 to socialize with. According to Wikipedia, for every 100 females age 18 and over, there are 95.8 males, and the median age of inhabitants is 60 years old. So although the ratio is not that horrible, an older sugar daddy was not who I was looking to luau with.

Oh but the sunsets on the white sandy beaches, over the Gulf ocean, were amazing!!

CAUTION: I wasn't aware of this but apparently if you put your room key card near your cell phone it can erase the coding and you wont be able to get into your hotel room. It happend three times to us and each time I was either dripping wet from the pool or in grubby gym clothes when I was forced to trek down to the front desk and wait for our keys to be recoded.

I am here:


Spending 5 days in Marco Island, FL, curtosey of the trip that I won on the Tony Danza Show. It's my first vacation in a year, and I'm soo looking foward to it.

This is the hotel I'm staying at:


These are hopefully the drinks I'll be drinking:


and the guy I'll be meeting, lol! (wink, wink):