Christopher Street

Boy, am I dumb.

I have these shoes that I love. They are sleek and taupe and they match many, many outfits. Problem is that they are a little pointy at the end, and if I walk too far in them all at once, they pinch. But today, I didn't think that I would be walking terribly far, so I went for it.

Now, as a little bit of background, I have recently started working for myself, in a business that involves a lot of cold-canvassing. For the last couple of weeks, we have been calling on hotels and hair salons. I know, that's an odd combination--but they are more alike than you would think. But I digress.

Most of this canvassing has involved walking from the car to the door of the business. I expected that this day would be the same. And, for most of the morning, all was good. My shoes were more comfy than I remembered. All was good.

Then, we decided to stop in the mall for lunch. While there, we thought that it would make sense to check out the hair salons. So, we parked at one end of the mall--the end closest to the California Pizza Kitchen--and went to the Mall Directory. There were a handful of salons, scattered all through the mall. So, we started walking. Hmmm. In retrospect, this is where things turned ugly.

By the time I got to the other end of the mall, I could hardly stand, let alone walk. It was bad. But, short of grabbing one of those wheelchairs--which might not have been so outrageous, in retrospect--my choices were walk back and hope for pain-killing endorphins, take my shoe off and hope to not be kicked out of the mall or buy a sleeping bag at sears and sleep in the food court.

I chose A. And the endorphins did arrive, about halfway through the mall. I stopped in the Easy Spirit store when I was about 90% of the way back and picked up a much more comfy pair of shoes to wear for the rest of the day and thought that I was out of the woods. But no.

I just got home and removed the comfier shoes and discovered the largest blister that I have ever seen. In 36 years. It's the size of my small toe. As it is on my small toe, it's easy to compare. It's angry red, about an eighth of an inch thick, and literally covers the entire front surface of my toe.

And it really hurts. And it's making me cranky.

Date Plate

Back in January, my dear friend Leigh asked for a favor--would I be willing to let her and her TV crew into my house to shoot a couple of episodes of her new reality series, "Date Plate"?

Well, I do love me some TV, and moreover, am fascinated by watching it get made. So, of course I said yes! It was a really interesting day--they shot four separate "scenes", for lack of a better word, featuring two contestants. Each contestant had a shot in my kitchen chopping some veggies and pretending to cook, and another "interview" sequence. Since the two contestants that were filmed here won't be on the same show, my house will actually see the light of film twice in this initial run of shows. Tres cool.

The show premieres on April second on the FOOD channel. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be getting a lot of coverage--it's only on at 9:30 Wednesday evening, with **one** repeat three hours later. :( Maybe if it's a tremendous hit, it will get more airings during the week. As is, it gets trumped by West Wing and Angel in my Season Pass Manager, so I need to catch the later airing myself.

Worth mentioning is that this is the latest offering from the creative team that brought you Trading Spaces and Warehouse Warriors. I would imagine that the tone would be similar.