Hello Kirsti: reviews

Sooo remember I started off the year with this post, and graphic?

Well it’s working, down 15 pounds since January, this last bit has been sloooow. I have been super good about logging my Cals in MyFitnessPal, the phone app really helps make it easy!
Now that I’m working from home I spend my days ‘hamster’ wheeling as I call it…
It’s not actually a hamster wheel, it’s a ‘portable elliptical’ which you can do standing (work that core balancing) or sitting.

Did you know such a thing existed? Neither did I until a Alpha Gam sister posted hers on FB (Thanks Ann Marie for helping me “To develop and prize health and vigor of body.” =).
I have mine set up under my desk most of the time. While you’re obviously not ‘doing as much’ by sitting and doing it, it’s still far better than nothing, and the resistance does go pretty high, and you do ‘feel it’ that night and the following day.

It even has a built in computer with time, distance, and few other things, I ‘hamstered’ for 3 hours over the course of a whole day last week!

Overall I really like it, you’ll eventually get to the point where you don’t have to ‘think’ about the pedaling.

I got mine on Amazon, free shipping is key, it’s pretty heavy. It comes like this and is super easy to put together. I paid $90 and definitely feel it was work that, it is very solidly built, far than the infomercial type equipment out there. Best part I don’t have to worry about moving a giant treadmill or elliptical.

The Elliptical arrives like this, then Less than 5 minutes later…

If you think this might work for you but have any questions let me know, I’ll happily answer them =)
Note: I bought this item personally, Amazon, and Stamina fitness have no clue who I am, I just bought their product in hope of it working for me, and it has so I’m sharing it here in hopes that maybe it can help you too.

Since we stayed in Edgartown we ate their a lot so Edgartown's guide is broken up into 'sites' and 'eats', visit my 'sites post' here, and my post on Newport here.

Breakfast

Espresso Love

Thie is where most of our mornings began since A has an extreme coffee addiction. They also have lunch fare, but we never ended up eating there, I 'like' them on FB and they always post their lunch specials, which always make me hungry!

They also have a great covered area and pretty courtyard to enjoy your brews outside.

Dock St. Coffee Shop
A true local greasy spoon, and a long closet of a place, we got tasty breakfast sandwiches and hash browns here quick. The coffee however didn't get the A stamp of approval.

Lunch
We didn't do much lunch on this trip since we mainly stuffed ourselves with an early dinner.

Main Street Diner
We ate here when silly me realized the famous "Among the Flowers Cafe" was closed for the season. We still had yummy BLT Sandwiches, it's decorated cute too, located near the tiny movie theater, and across from Espresso Love. A great lighter lunch spot.

Dinner

The Wharf Restaurant & Pub
We ate here after our journey to the Island since it was a stones throw from our hotel. I was still full from my mega Fish Tacos so I got potato skins, and A got a Philly. Both were good but nothing spectacular.

Newes From America Pub

Located in the bottom of Kelley House this was one of our favorite places on the island, we ate here twice and had drinks here once as well.

Newes has our favorite Fish n Chips on the whole island (we sampled many), a nice huge hunk of fish and tasty crispy fries. I got the Fish n Chips twice, once A got the burger which was also awesome.

They also have super size beer mugs... and who doesn't like those? You even get wooden nickels to collect to join their 'Declaration of Superiority', we've only got 490 to go!

David Ryan's

In hindsight, their webpage background says it all, this was our only lackluster dining experience on the island.

The whole time I felt like Gordon Ramsay could pop out at any moment declaring this place a 'Kitchen Nightmare.' They had all the classic blunders: elevator music, near empty dining room but everyone super bunched together, a lone clueless waiter who quite literally copied down the entire title of our entrées over our shoulders, reprimand of said waiter by owner in earshot of customers, question if A's beer was ever going to arrive, a specials menu full of entrées far fancier than their menu, and long wait for everything.

Our food was pretty good, and luckily it was buy one get one on the entrées from the bad word doc 'special menu' of $20+ entrees.

The Grill on Main

The great part of going in the off season, even the popular fancier places have Buy one get one entrées. We saved the best for last and went to Grill on Main on our last night, it was amazing!

We got their crab cake appetizer (Atlantic Crab and Sweet Corn Cakes with a Roasted Garlic Mayonnaise) which was AMAZING, even the mayo was awesome, and this is coming from Maryland girlie, so it's kinda a big deal.

Andrew had the prime rib and I had the shrimp Alfredo both were awesome. It was a nice light Alfredo, if you can call any cheese sauce 'light'. It was the perfect cap to our trip, and is certainly a must for any Vineyard visit. (Note it isn't in downtown, it's further up Main near the Stop and Shop.)

So we all know I'm a techy AND that I'm pretty much addicted to the internet and social media, right? Well as far as accessing this via clients all I was using was Digsby (A IM mega client that has some social features) and Tweetdeck. I was never really happy with tweetdeck and I'll show you why

See this?? This is CLUTTER. I only way to save views and collumns is to add more clutter... and then you add the motion of stuff moving down the columns as it updates... I can't believe I used it for like six months.

Now to meet my new best friend Seesmic aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh

Yeah he's got a silly name and funny looking logo, but just look at those smooth curves and clean lines. Wait it gets even better... rather than having to scroll left and right to find the collumn with what you're looking for, you GASP get to choose the list, topic, whatever from a sleek left hand collumn. Even better it's got 40+ plugins for everything you could possibly use and want to see. It also integrates with Facebook and Linked In on top of being a Twitter client. The other cool feature is the 'Home' tab which integrates all you have have it connected too into one feed. Sure it's not what I look at all the time, but it's still pretty darn cool.

So give Seesmic a shot if you're looking to replace your client or if you're still lame and are using the website... tehehe

Get Seesmic by visiting their site here. You'll need Microsoft Silverlight as well, but the downloader will help you get it.

Let me know what you use? What you think of Seesmic? Or you need help by leaving me a comment below.

Happy Tweeting.

I've been a member of Alpha Gamma Delta my entire college experience at Belmont and it has been the most rewarding experience. To celebrate the four years I've spent with the wonderful women of my pledge class I decided to send us off in style with a senior sleepover.

Using a Google Spreadsheet form I collected what days worked best for the most people.

Making each date option a question and offering these options:

Perfect =D
Works but isn't the greatest =/
Can't be there =(

With that we finally settled on a date that worked, the evening of the last day of finals. (Punchbowl has their own date decider I later discovered, so for the easy way use that.)

Then came time to create the invitation.

Facebook offers such limited ways to make an invitation pretty, and with only a small number of people being invited I wanted something a little more personal.

There are tons of options out there. (Pingg, Punchbowl, evite, to name a few)

I'd used Pingg before and wasn't crazy about how much was paid nor the customization options. So I opted to try punchbowl. Overall I'm really happy with punchbowl, they don't make their unpaid version useless, basically you have a few less fonts and designs to choose from, but not so much you can't make something you like.

The Invitation I picked and altered in their web creator.

Easy to use, lots of options

Then you have tons of add-on tools, like a paypal fund guests can contribute to, this potluck list which I used to determine most people wanted to just have me buy and then spilt the cost of, maps, travel suggestions, loads and loads of extra features you control which was awesome.

Punchbowl has loads of options for importing the emails of your guests, and tons of controls to help you get a good count, you can manualy RSVP for a person and even link couples together. The best part though is you can see who looked at the invitation and who didn't and resend the invite to just the people who didn't look at it.

Punchbowl even helps you with your ettiquette, so you can be Emily Post the easy way.

Stay tuned more to come in this HK party series.

To start this off I'm in no way affiliated with SodaStream, I just simply love their product.

Visit their site here: http://www.sodastreamusa.com/

What is it?

Soda Stream has been around since 1903 (Wikipedia) It's essentially an at home carbonator, allowing you to carbonate water and then add one of their 30 some odd flavors. What's great about soda stream is that it allows you to carbonate at home for about $100 as opposed to a soda fountain which costs $2.4K and up (Soda Bar System)

Hello Kirsti's Thoughts

SodaStream is great as a way to reduce how much recycling you drag to the curb, and a great way to make grocery shopping easier (and lighter), per what I've calculated it SodaStream cost wise works out to be about the same as CocaCola or Pepsi products. All their flavors are pretty close to their National Brand counterparts, the cola tastes most like a cross between Coke and Pepsi.

Why I Love It

I love not having to bother with buying coke at the store and lugging those 12 packs up my townhouse stairs. Plus I love have the massive variety of soda flavors available especially the variety of caffeinated and caffeine free. I also like that all their diet drinks (which their are lots of) are flavored with Splenda. Plus theirs nothing better than having a tummy ache and knowing you can make some club soda or ginger-ale right then. It's great for parties too since you have on demand mixers, they even have a tonic and diet tonic syrup. I also like that I can make a 16 oz serving or a liter depending on my mood, the little bottles are great for when you're on the go, and fit in the cupholder in my car.