The things I receive in my inbox from Araba

Karin's Floss

My friend Karin worked on the redesign of the packaging of the new Reach dental floss and had given me a product sample last year to try. I am a flosser, but maybe not an everyday flosser, although I would like to give off the impression that I am that type of girl. But when I tried the Ultraclean sample that Karin gave me, I was totally hooked. I flossed every day, morning and night, until the sample was gone. I evens started flossing with like a two inch long piece, in order to make it last longer. So now, every time I go into a drugstore, I check to see if they carry it, because I am that obsessed with this particular floss.

It is that good.

Seriously. Imagine springy elastic in a lovely shade of blue, the exact color of those plastic paper bibs that dentists roach clip onto your shirt whenever you get a cleaning. The floss knocks the pants off of any other floss on the market. Comparatively, Glide is now in the same category as that cheap G.U.M. waxed floss the dentist gives out for free (which I happily use), for me, and it used to be the gold standard. In fact, the moment I came home from the drugstore, I ripped open the package and immediately began to floss (after washing my hands). And I had just flossed before going to the drugstore. It was almost as pleasurable as eating the Smarties + Haribo bears candy that I got in Frankfurt. Almost.

oh, and my most favorite part? How freaking cool the packaging itself is. It is so cool looking that I saved the insert to the package.

Hello Kitty socks

I met my friend Elizabeth for brunch on Saturday, and she had a package of the most wonderful treats for me, including a stack of Hello Kitty socks from H+M. I love these socks so much, I already anticipate wearing them for a few days in a row before I can part with throwing them in the washing machine. It then made me me Google Hello Kitty socks and H+M and I came up with this person on Flickr, who has a whole wardrobe of Hello Kitty socks from H+M.

I heart Teastar

Designed by tea company, Today Was Fun, I found this super nifty package of tea featured on Lovely Package. "There are shooting stars, rock stars, film stars, star fish, star wars, mega stars, and now there’s Teastar™. We’ve taken 10 organic loose leaf teabags, wrapped each in our philosophy and packed them in a clever star shaped box. Once opened, the box is like an old fashioned paper yap yap toy. Peer inside and choose your favourite brew."

Each Teastar contains
2 x Happiness, 2 x Sleepy,
2 x Inspiration, 2 x Love Love
and 2 x Friendship loose leaf organic teabags.

I want a sheep.

This was sent to me by my friend, Sheri. Because we like these sorts of things.

Baby bikes

I saw this tiny child's bike locked to a street sign this morning. I love love love that the parents are teaching their kid proper bike etiquette at such a tender age...or else they are like me in thinking that bikes do not make good apartment decorations.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Sunrise over Walmart

My view from the hotel window this morning.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Flickr Clock

How cool is this?! Flickr Clock is an ongoing project that will collect member video and display it according to the (approximate) time that it was taken. As more members participate, we’ll have the opportunity to experience what a moment in time looks like from a diversity of perspectives.

Hello from Northwest Arkansas

All of the little red dots are Walmart stores…

every town seems to have at least one, if not more.

I am sure that the town where I am staying today has an actual name, but the airport is called Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport, and that it pretty much what this corner of Arkansas, right nearby to both Oklahoma and Missouri, is called. Sadly, I had to look it up on Google maps to see where Arkansas was even located, because although I knew it was near Oklahoma and Texas and so forth, I was a little in the dark as to exactly where it was. I mean, I am sure that I knew subconsciously that it was located right next to the state of Tennessee, my birth state, but consciously, this did not really register. And I have to say, I am grateful for the chance to travel to a state I have never been to before, but all in all, it is a little too country for me. There are a lot of pick up trucks, and horses, and giant rolls of hay, and no sidewalks. I never thought I was a city girl per se, but the uncomfortableness that I feel when seeing horses running around unleashed, makes me realize that I do indeed have asphalt pumping through my veins.

Hiking Naked

I love that the NY Times online featured a headline story about naked hikers hiking around the alpine town of Appenzell, Switzerland — where women were just granted the legal right to vote in 1990. (What?!) 

Apparently, "in recent years, it has become fashionable for a growing number of Swiss and some foreigners to wander in the Alps clad in little more than hiking shoes and sun screen. Last summer, the number of nude hikers increased to such an extent that the hills often seemed alive with the sound of everything but the swish of trousers."

I love you, Fort Greene

Chez Lola. Never really loved the food here, but the front has always made me think of a super great clothing store in Vancouver, whose business cards looks exactly like the store front.

The clothing store in the old cleaners rocks and carries APC which thankfully did not open until I left, because I would have gone there way too much.

One of my most favorite blocks, South Portland.

The Masonic Temple on the corner of Carlton and Lafayette Avenue.

I read an article on Fort Greene, Brooklyn today, in the New York Times. This is the first neighborhood that I lived in when Kenny and I moved to Brooklyn more than five years ago. While initially freaked out by the fact that at that time, Pathmark was the only grocery store option nearby, I soon got over it, as I had fallen in love not only with our amazing apartment (despite the "rat incident"), but also with the beauty and character of the neighborhood itself. I have never felt more at home anywhere in my entire life as I did when we lived on Lafayette Street in Fort Greene. When we had to move, I cried, and I hope that someday, I can afford to buy an apartment in Fort Greene... because even though I am not sure I want to continue living in New York, or even the USA, I think I might stay forever if I could live in Fort Greene again.

The charm of laying in bed and hearing not only the cheerful chime of the G train doors closing, but also the occasional bus stop scuffles and fist fights that would occur when Mo's closed at 4am, and the drunk patrons would be waiting for the bus right in front of our house. 

There were the small kids who thought it was fun to try to hassle me — a girl who slapped my head while I was walking down Hanson Place and a elementary school kid who tried to steal my Palm Pilot from my hands on Lafayette Street; and the amazing neighbors that we met and befriend, Kate and Doug; Richard the mayor of Adelphi Street; our friends who moved to Fort Greene, like Rich and Chloe, Susanna and Mitch, the list is endless. 

I used to run across the street to Ralph's Meat Corp in the middle of baking cookies, cakes, whatnot, to pick up more flour, butter, because I invariably never had all of the ingredients on the recipe — sometimes even in my pajamas would I run over there, and one time I left my recipe on his counter and had to run back. 

I loved buying my annual red geraniums from Gardel's garden shop on South Portland, getting a slice (this was very, very rare) from Not Ray's, and dropping off my dry cleaning at Jody's place on Fulton Street, where she always could be counted on to give me honest and unsolicited advice with regards to things such as my weight (wow, you've gotten big, huh?) to my dry skin (it looks like you have dried rice stuck to your face!).

Walking home from BAM was a breeze, and it was such a delight to go see a dance performance and then be able to walk home in two minutes, practically; especially if I had to go to the bathroom. The C train stop was around the corner, and took me under five minutes to get from my bathroom to the platform.

And while you might wonder how I could love the potential palm pilot snatchings and the rat eating cupcakes on our front steps, I simply just loved it all. I mean, yeah, at the moment, I was like, "what the fuck, there are 14 rats eating the leftovers of Sheri's bridal shower, on our front steps!" But you know how it is, once the heat is turned back on, and the rats are eliminated via some guy Kenny found on Craig's list under "intrepid tarp removal," then it's easier to look back and see just how lovely life in Fort Greene was.

the Third Bird

I had planned to go to Bird on Smith Street again today — despite having just visited the store on Friday night when I bought a Mina Perhonen scarf with hand drawn stars all over it, after practically skipping around the store in glee when I saw that they carried Mina Perhonen things for Spring. But when I looked at their website to see if they had the scarves online, I noticed that they just opened up a new outpost in February in Williamburg, two doors down from where I get my hair cut. How coincidental, since I had an appointment to get my haircut today at 5pm this afternoon! This never happens, these sorts of conveniences, for me. The new store in Williamsburg is quite fancy (hello, with $350 stuffed, plush mushrooms in the window!), as it is completely LEED-certified, and designed by Ole Sondresen. Apparently, 70 percent of the materials used to fit out the space were sourced in Williamsburg and various wood paneling was actually salvaged from a dumpster in SoHo. Nice. The place was lovely, and I could not stay more than a few minutes, or else I would have bought a crinkly Paul Smith striped scarf ($125), one of the above stuffed mushrooms ($350), a plaid APC blouse ($150), an Isabel Marant belt ($50), and some lingerie by Eberjey ($84, for a bra and boy shorts). 

I see you, Sammy

I met Sara, Scott and their baby Sammy, for brunch this morning at Lupe's East LA Kitchen — a hole in the wall Mexican diner teetering on the edge of SoHo, with incredibly delicious food. I have not seen Scott and Sara in more than a year, the last time was right after Kenny and I came home from our trip to Spain and Romania in OCtober 2007. Fast forward ahead a year and a half and now Sammy is almost one, and a lot has happened in the past 18 months in both of our lives. So we had a leisurely brunch, catching up, interrupting each other to ask about one another's lives, and it was so wonderful to catch up with old friends and reconnect. The lovely part of it was that I felt like I had just seen them last week, not a year and a half ago; albeit now they have a baby. But, there was not any of that awkward small talk; it was a great afternoon with good conversation and some very lovely time spent at the park swinging Sammy on the bucket swings, watching him laugh. 

Chocolate Pandas for Happy Hour

Someone in the office kindly brought in a box of chocolate pandas for one of our Friday evening happy hour treats...chocolate macadamia nut pandas, I might add. While koalas are not as cute as panda bears, because there is something vaguely rodent like about them, like cute, plushy rats disguised as bears, they are cute in their own weird, beaky nose kind of way. And these chocolates are just awesome in both kitsch factor, and cute factor.
Of course, you can never go wrong with Dare® Maple Leaf Cookies from Canada, my perennial happy hour favorite. Richie does not get them for every week's happy hour, it is like maybe once every three or four weeks, just to keep the suspense up and therefore each time it is like the first time all over again...the cookies are that good. 

I like Bananas

I have had an ambivalent feeling about bananas for as long as I can remember. Sometimes I like them, sometimes they gross me out with all of their banana-y flavor and slightly chalky texture and those strings, ugh. But lately, I have been in a banana frame of mind, and some weeks, I have been eating a banana a day. Partly, because I have been experiencing some twitchy-ness at night in bed when my muscles involuntarily start spazzing out. And I found that bananas have helped keep this in check. And also partly because they are sweet, cheap, and easy to eat on the go, sort of like candy that is good for you. But maybe I might have eaten bananas a lot sooner if they all had come with such great labels as above. 

What a TV commercial set look like:

The boxes of doughnuts are missing, for some reason, as are the stacks of snacks and candy that was ridiculously present. I think i might have gained four pounds just by sitting for 8 hours in my director's chair, eating snacks like perhaps it was a law that no more snacking would be allowed ever again starting tomorrow.

Yo, Pepsi!

I don't care what anyone says, I personally LOVE the new logo for Pepsi. Albeit, I am not a soda drinker anymore, and if I was, I would be drinking a Diet Coke, but regardless, this logo could potentially make we want to drink Pepsi. It is so bright, happy and modern. I know that no one likes change, especially to our beloved brands, but I think that this is a good thing, this new logo. there has been considerable hullabaloo over the new logo, and Tropicana's redesign as well. 

In fact, it is like the American people finally woke up and realized what graphic design actually is, and no, we don't design clothes. Of course, as usual, the American people as a whole only notice design when they feel it sucks and hardly ever take the time to appreciate design when it is something new, beautiful or striking in its edginess — except for perhaps the Apple iPod, the iPhone, et al., which were all of those things when they first came out. But I digress.

The fact is, everyone has had an opinion on the new Pepsi logo, from Ad Age, to Under Consideration. People think it took like barely two minutes to change the old logo to the new smily face logo that "looks like Barack Obama's campaign logo." Whatever, I really don't care what the naysayers are saying. Because at the end of the day, we are all talking about Pepsi, which for them is the best advertising ever. And for me, every single time I see this billboard on 10th Avenue, I am filled with unexplicable glee. And then, I drink some tap water.