Put on your aprons!

This is your mission, should you choose to accept it: Brighten the day of our soldiers who are serving in the Middle East.

How? Well, it's simple. Packages from home. From YOU.

Remember my post about Operation Baking Gals? Round 6 is officially upon us, and we need to get started. So many of you left comments and sent me e-mails about wanting to participate, and well, now I'm asking you to put your money where your mouth is.

I really, really want the participation to be great, so I'm hoping that most of you that said you were going to volunteer actually follow through.

We have two teams, baking for two deserving soldiers. All you have to do is go to http://www.bakinggals.com/, create an account (it's free, super simple, and you won't get spammed by a ton of e-mails), and then register with one of the Heather Drive teams. You'll do this by clicking on "Join a Round 6 Team Here." Please try to keep the numbers fairly even on each team. If there are more people registered for Team Heather Drive - Fuller, please register for Team Heather Drive - Archer instead.

You will find the shipping address information for each soldier under "Round Six Info - Meet the Teams." There is an article in there for each team with details about the soldier (if I received any), and the address for where to ship your packages.

DON'T BAKE? No TIME to bake? Well, that's NO EXCUSE. :) There are plenty of store-bought things that the soldiers can use and enjoy. Please visit the Baking Gals FAQ section for a list of acceptable items to send.

Ship dates for Round 6 are between February 7 and February 21, so you can basically bake and send at any time now. I think the sooner, the better because one of our soldiers is actually going to be coming home sometime in March... Also, don't you think it'd be great for our soldiers to start receiving packages around Valentine's Day? So preheat those ovens and start whipping together those baked goods!

Be sure to include a bit of "yourself" in your packages as well. Cards, letters, pictures... anything that will give the soldier a little bit of an idea of who you are, and let them know how thankful you are for the sacrifice they are making for all of us. You may even want to include a link to your blog, or an e-mail address. I've heard that some of the soldiers like to write you to thank you. I did not hear from my soldier in Round 5, but of course, I do not hold it against him. :)

If you are baking, there is important information for you in the FAQ section, too, including tips on how to ensure that your baked goods get there in good condition. Additional info about the organization and my experience with it so far can be found in my original post from December.

Remember, the best thing to use is a large Flat Rate box from USPS. You should be able to pick one up at your local post office (the box is free). Take it home, pack it full of as many goodies as possible, and then take it back to mail it. You'll get a discounted rate for sending it to an APO/FPO address. Normally, it costs $12.95, and I think it's $10.95 to send to the soldiers.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. E-mail me at roadtotheaisle@gmail.com, or leave a message in the comments. If you do that, though, just make sure to check back, because I will answer you in the comments as well.

Also, if you participate, I want to hear about it! If you have a blog, post about your experience--Pictures of your baking, you with your package, etc., maybe post the recipe for the goodies you made. Then send me a link to your Baking Gals blog post, or leave a link in my comments section. I am going to try to compile everyone's pictures and stories and post about them later this month.

So come on, baking gals! Get baking! :) And thank you so much!

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Rentals vs. Hotels

Soooo many things to research when going on vacation.

Flying? Gotta research airfare.

Driving? Gotta estimate gas costs and figure out the best route to get there.

Activities? Gotta find out what there is to do there (and how much it costs).

Transport? Gotta plan how you're going to get around in an unfamiliar city.

And, of course, there's the ever important one that can really make or break a vacation: Accommodations. Where the hell are you going to stay?

Right now, that's what we're struggling with for our anniversary trip. For Seattle, we have been lucky enough to be offered a place to stay with a friend, so that's awesome. One city taken care of. But for San Francisco, it's been more of a struggle.

The biggest part is that for the most part? I hate hotels. I've stayed in a lot of nice ones (especially when I used to travel for work!), and they're comfortable and generally clean, the staff is nice, etc. But I really hate not having some of the comforts of home.

Mainly, I always miss having a refrigerator. I know, it seems stupid. And sure, you can get hotel rooms that have little mini refrigerators, but sadly, it seems like those hotels are few and far between.

I don't like eating out for every meal, even on vacation. I don't want to have to wake up and immediately figure out where we can go to get breakfast. I want to walk to the kitchen, still in my pajamas and post-slumber stupor, and pour myself a bowl of cereal and a glass of juice. It's my favorite way to start a day, no matter where we are. Also, it is so nice to come home at the end of a day and enjoy cold wine and beer.

For our honeymoon, we wanted to stay in luxury accommodations for reasonable prices. And given that we were going to be away from home for 12 days, we wanted the places we stayed to feel just a little bit like home. So we opted to rent condos, and we loved them. They were fabulous, beautifully decorated homes. They were a joy to go "home" to at night.

For this weekend's trip to Vegas with friends, we actually did look into vacation rentals, but the pull of wanting to be in the middle of everything, and the complication of having a lot of people invited to go on the trip made a hotel the right choice. And I'm sure we'll have a nice room and it'll be fun and all, but I'm not going to lie--I'm pretty sure I'd rather be in a condo. I can certainly handle three days in a hotel, though.

So this brings me to San Francisco. Today, I found a beautiful condo rental in an area of San Francisco called The Castro. It is totally reasonably priced, and I think we would really enjoy our stay there. We are essentially ready to click the button to put down our deposit on it, but we are hesitant because of a couple of things.

We aren't renting a car in San Francisco, so we have to rely on public transit. There is a bus stop at the end of the street we'd be staying on, but the nearest station for the muni is a 15-minute walk away. My initial thoughts were that was fine, but then I started looking at hotels in Union Square and everything is like RIGHT THERE. We could walk downstairs and out the door and be right at a BART station.

And so we are pulled in two different directions. Do we stay in a condo with the luxuries of home? Or do we stay in a hotel for the easy access to touristy essentials?

The debate continues. But I have to say: I'm totally leaning toward the condo. :)

Do you think the Tanners have moved? Maybe we can stay there. They always did seem to have room for just about anyone.

Whatever happened to predictability... The milkman, the paperboy, evening TV...

When you miss your old familiar friends... Waiting just around the bend...

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I'm all a-Twitter

Back in November/December, I jumped on the Twitter bandwagon.

First of all, does everyone know Twitter?


It seems like everywhere I go, people are talking about it. Given that I'm in marketing, it's one of those new "phenomenons" that companies are trying to figure out how to use to their advantage. Like MySpace, Facebook, message boards and blogs, these social networks present quite the challenge to an industry that is losing ground with traditional advertising and public relations. It's all very interesting.

Anyway, I joined Twitter personally, not professionally. I've been on it for a few months now, and it's pretty cool. I have yet to connect with a lot of real-life friends on it (since there are many who still don't know about it!), but I'm on with some fellow bloggers, and my cousin. I've been "testing it out," so to speak.

So, if you don't know what Twitter is, what it's used for, etc.--It's basically the "update your status" part of Facebook, stripped away from everything else. You have a limit of 140 characters per "tweet" (which is what you call a Twitter message). You can keep on top of and in touch with friends, family, coworkers, strangers. Whomever. Have a message that's intended for a specific person, or in reply to a specific tweet? You can call their attention to it by starting it off with @username.

You can post pictures as part of your tweets, and of course, all of this can be done through cell phones. I have TwitterBerry installed for use on my BlackBerry, but if you don't have a "smart phone"? No worries. You can also Twitter through text and picture messages.

Have a blog? You can also add a Twitter feed to it, for your readers to see what you're up to and your thoughts in between blog posts. You can see my feed over in the right side bar. See it? Over there ------------>

I'm certainly not the best "tweeter," but hey, whatever. I try.

I went to a luncheon recently at which the power of Twitter was discussed (amongst other things, like blogging, Facebook, etc.). It was pretty amazing. These things are taking over the world! Soon, we won't be e-mailing at work, we'll be tweeting. Or, well, that's what these social networking geniuses want us to believe.

Whenever one of these things takes hold, I always find myself wondering: What are they going to come up with next?

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Vegas Countdown: 5 Days

We leave for Las Vegas on Saturday. I feel so unprepared.

We are going with a group of friends and we have not planned a thing. That's all fine and good, but it is unlike me to not do a ton of research when going somewhere. But hey, we're winging it. We'll see how it goes.

More than anything, I'm excited to see our friends. The group of us going are spread out from New York to D.C. to North Carolina, so we don't get to spend time together nearly as much as we wish we did.

We're actually meeting up with the North Carolina gang in Atlanta, where we somehow all managed to get on the same connecting flight out to Las Vegas. So excited!

At the moment, my biggest challenge is that I feel like I have nothing to wear in Vegas. The problem is that the temperatures are likely going to be low 60s, and well, I have very little clothing appropriate for that temperature range. Because here, where I live? We swing from one extreme (freezing) to another (hot) pretty quickly. The "spring" and "fall" seasons are relatively short, so I can usually squeak by on the clothing that I have.

But for Vegas? For vacation? Unfortunately, a shopping trip is in order.

Have I ever expressed here my hatred of shopping? Not sure. Anyway, I know, I'm weird. But I hate it. Mostly because I absolutely HATE the mall. HATE HATE HATE.

Furniture shopping, electronics shopping, grocery shopping, craft shopping, internet shopping? All fine. I can even enjoy it. All of these things can be done without stepping foot near a mall.

But clothes shopping? Loathe.

Wish me luck.

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Super Bowl XLIII

Everyone at our party was rooting for the Cardinals, except my sister-in-law, Cristina, who decided to go against the grain. I think we all just wanted to see the underdog win, especially since the Cardinals had never won it. Oh well. At least it was a good game (except for that third quarter, and the first half of the fourth, which were pretty damn boring).

We had good food, good drinks, and good company. Can't complain about that.

Here is the whole group, ready for the 3D part of the halftime show:

Obviously, another reason to look forward to the Super Bowl is for the commercials. Overall, however, I didn't think the ads were all that great this year.

I think the group favorite was the Doritos spot with the "crystal ball." We also all got a big kick out of the CareerBuilder commercial with all the signs that you hate your job. (Especially the sign that said "You want to punch small animals." Hilarious.)

Oh! I did also enjoy the Cash4gold.com commercial, but only because I "got it" right away. MC Hammer and Ed McMahon selling off all of their gold belongings? Coming from two celebrities who publicly had to file for bankrupcy, it was funny. HA!

Which ones were your favorites?

A few more pics to end the night... we're heading to bed!

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