Beer

We recently had a request from one of our readers, who happens to go by the screen name Awesome, for a beer review post. I happily agreed to write about something that our poor tortured male readers would be interested in checking out. FYI: We are trying to expand our horizons and reach beyond the usual girl chatter, so we will embrace guy topics like football, beer, hot chicks, and tacos. Keep those requests coming.

Today, I have good news and bad news for you, Awesome. Good news: I did drink beer this weekend and enjoyed several different varieties. Bad news: I don't remember the name of a single one. Well, that's not exactly true. I went back to the old standby Newcastle for a couple pints. Otherwise, I really broke some new ground on the beer drinking front. I tried an international tasting sampler at the Box Bar in Plymouth that featured 4 different selections from their vast and beautiful cooler of beer. I liked letters A, B, and C, but didn't enjoy D that well. Wait - the name of D just came back to me. It was Lindeman's Cassis, which tasted almost exactly like Lindeman's Framboise. It was fruity and juicy and not something one would want in a pint. I think many ladies who don't normally enjoy beer would like Lindeman's Framboise or Cassis because of the raspberry flavor, so it probably has an audience.

My beer review is really sucking right now so here is my promise. I will go back to the Box Bar sometime soon with a pad of paper and take notes. I don't have any technical knowledge whatsoever, so the review will likely consist of drinkability ratings or maybe just alcohol content. We'll see what happens. In the meantime, I highly suggest visiting the Box Bar to try out the beverages for yourself. It doesn't have much in the way of ambiance (unless you like flourescent lighting and giant screen TVs), but the beer list will not disappoint. Try playing my favorite "Around the World" drinking game. You flip open the beer binder, close your eyes and point. No peeking. Whichever beer your finger lands on is the one that you have to drink. Yes, Pakistani beers are fair game! You might just find a diamond in the rough or you might never drink again. Either way, it's an adventure!

Karma Karma Karma Karma Karma Chameleon

I did it. I took my bad karma and turned it right around. I've had a very productive Saturday (the norm for us non-football fans). I went to Target to purchase a new cloth mop for cleaning my hardwood floors - cause that's what I do. I ended up walking out of there with $100 of other things - damn you Target and your aisles of useless crap. I even walked out of there with a jumbo package of toilet paper that I maybe sorta forgot to pay for. In my defense, it was on the bottom of the cart and no one brought it to my attention. Not even the helpful rent-a-cop at the front entrance. I didn't notice until I was already unloading my new shirt and Halloween costume for my dog. Immediate reaction is always, "crap, did anyone notice?" Then you move into the "well it's only toilet paper" phase and quickly decide that somehow the world owes you this $7.00 package of Quilted Northern. I'm sure at some point I overpaid $7.00 at Target for something! But being the righteous and just person that I am, I couldn't live with myself any longer. Plus, I realized that this was a golden opportunity to get my clearly terrible karma back on track. So on I went back into the store with the 12-pack of Tee Pee, walked right past Mr. observant rent-a-cop and stepped into the express line. I felt so proud of myself I even tossed in another pack of Trident as a reward. With all of my legal purchases loaded up I proceeded on to my next good deed of the day. I donated a giant trash bag full of clothes to some charity box on the side of the road. I'm sure someone will put my old threads to good use (especially the souvenir t-shirt from that Stripper class we took in Las Vegas, "Stripper 101 Grad"). There might even be someone out there who deserves it more than I do. So I'm feeling pretty awesome about my karma right now and I'm ready to tackle Saturday night. Wish me luck!

Sexiest women part 2...

Well Lease, I hate to burst your bubble but I found the breastfeeding photo of Mrs. Jolie-Pitt and I must say that this wouldn't crack my top 100 photographs for sexiest woman alive! Maybe it's the fact that I've never experienced the miracle of life through having an infant nursing on my ta-ta (and I'm not here to offend anyone, I think it's a lovely natural event that should be shared ONLY between mother, father, child), or actually...it's probably that I'm a cold and heart-less biatch... but honestly people, I don't want to see anyone besides my sister or best friend breastfeeding without a blanket over them...the same goes for you Angelina, even if you are the world's most gorgeous woman!!!

P.S. It is not our goal to alienate all of our mommy readers, we really do love you and we'll probably eat our words in 15 years when we actually have kids!

Sexiest Woman Alive?

Once again, both Leigh and I were overlooked in this category. Granted in 2008 we didn't really do anything to deserve it, but I feel the winds are blowing a change of luck our way for '09. So, Halle Berry we will concede the title to you for 2008 and allow Esquire magazine to feature you on the cover. What does Ms. Berry have to say for her sexy self: "Being 42 and having just had a baby, I think I'll take it." Fair enough. My only question is this: who in their right mind decided to put a photo of the sexiest woman alive on their cover in a natural birthing pose? Is that the outfit she wore to the hospital? I think if you look closely enough, you might see little Nahla's head...ok, sorry that's too gross even for me. But seriously! I just don't find this photo sexy at all. Squatting is never sexy! Now I heard a rumor this week that W magazine will be publishing photos of Ms. Jolie taken by Mr. Perfect himself. She's allegedly breastfeeding one of the new twins in the photo and everyone is raving about how beautiful she looks as a mother. I'm all for motherhood being sexy and I'm sure Angelina pulls it off wonderfully. Halle, on the other hand, needs to work on her sexy pose. What do you think? Is Halle Berry the sexiest woman alive?

Deleted from our dictionary...

Happy Friday everyone, thanks for reading and keeping dyingtobedivas alive! Today I'd like to introduce yet another fascinating feature we plan to provide our dedicated readers, (all 7 of you!), and we're calling it "deleted from our dictionary." I'll start by describing my inspiration for this new section; I recently joined the the BlackBerry cult and have since had to have my IT person, (my bro Kyle Arch), change the settings on my work email from a Pop3 to a IMAP server, (don't know what any of that means), so that I can receive email on my phone and forever be enslaved by The Man!! For whatever reason, it changed the way I delete my email messages on my computer from just selecting "delete" to deleting them all then having to select "purge deleted messages"....PURGE, what?!? Is my computer vomiting the messages into the recycle bin, is it sticking it's mouse cord down it's perverbial hard drive throat and yacking up torn bits of email messages into the abyss of cyberspace?!? The more I said it in my head the more I was irked by the use of word. It never means anything good or pleasant, in fact I took a moment to look it up and copied my favorite definition from dictionary.com: "to clear or empty (the bowels) by causing evacuation"...uh, gross!! Now I can't stop thinking about someone blowing chunks (a candidate for the next "deleted from our dictionary" article), everytime I have to delete my messages, which is like 497 times a day!!! So I vote that 'purge' be the first word deleted from the dyingtobedivas dictionary and that's what this feature is going to be about, eliminating awful, nasty, gross words from our vernacular! Now, who's with me?!? Send us your suggestions and we'll be happy to post the ones that make us cringe!

Bail ME Out

I'd like to take a few moments today to talk about something serious. Not that we don't take our blog seriously because trust me, we do. It's just that there is so much drama happening in the world right now it's becoming impossible to ignore it. I know everyone has heard much about the new "It" word Bailout. At this point, you could play a drinking game with "bailout" while watching CNN and be comatose within 10 minutes (note to self: Friday night is open). So bear with me while I put my two billion cents into the pile. I'd like to address a specific bailout, my personal favorite bailout, from way back in late September. AIG (American International Group for you newbies) recently received a "get out of jail free" card in the amount of $85 billion. The government HAD to do this in order to protect Joe 6-packs insurance. The hard-working American people shouldn't suffer because of the greed and complete lack of ethics of this company. The government did what they HAD to do and now we can all rest a little better at night knowing our hockey mom's insurance policy is safe and sound. Surely, someone is going to monitor this situation and make sure that the powers that be at AIG use that money wisely, maybe cut back on the botox and get down to business? NOPE! As it turns out, they felt so confident with their newfound surplus some executive genius said "hey, you know what we could really use after working so hard to completely suck at our jobs? A $440,000 'business' retreat! Someone fire up the jet because we deserve a little TLC." And off they flew to the exclusive St. Regis resort in California where rooms go for an average $1600 a night.

During my hardcore research on this topic I was able to find the expense report for the trip. A few "business related" expenses are listed below:

Rooms: $139,375.30
Banquet Facility: $147,301.71 (check this place off my possible wedding reception list)
In Room Dining: $3,064.71
Stonehill Tavern: $5,016.32 (Cristal anyone?)
Spa Gaucin: $23,380.00
Salon Vogue: $1,488.00
Golf: $6,939.09

I'm sure there are fantastic explanations for all of these expenses. No one wants to see their CEO walking around with last week's pedicure. And god forbid a bunch of rich white guys got together for business and couldn't play golf. So in the spirit of our country's great generosity, I've decided to pretend that the tax payers are bailing ME out today. Maybe I went on a few benders too many and destroyed my company from the ground up...doesn't really matter because it's not my problem now.

What is the first thing that I am going to do with all that money?? Well, for starters I'm going to fly my board of directors to Las Vegas in my private jet. According to Air Royale Private Jet Rental, I can get a mid-size Gulfstream Executive Jet to take 15 of my execs from Detroit to LV for $55,403. Sold. Now I really don't enjoy flying, even on my own Gulfstream Jet, so I'd like to blackout for most of the trip. We're going to need about 10 bottles of Louis Roederer Cristal Champagne (2002) at $299.00/each so $3000 for the bubbly. Upon arrival, we'll need someone to drive us around for the weekend. I think a Hummer H2 super stretch limo should do it. It's $200 per hour and we'll need it for the full 72 hours (if the city doesn't sleep, neither do we!) so let's estimate $14,400 for the Hummski. I'll tell our driver to take us directly to the Bellagio where we will check into our private villas for the 3-night conference. Last I checked on Forbes.com, the Bellagio villas were the most expensive rooms in the city at a rate of $6000 per night. We'll need 5 of them to sleep comfortably, so put me down for $90,000 in room fees. We're going to be starving once our champagne hangover wears off, so we'll need to find something special to eat. Oh, what the heck, why don't we spread the love amongst a few of the top 10 most expensive restaurants in Las Vegas. Friday night we'll eat at Alex at the Wynn Resort. Dinners run about $120 per person so let's round up to $2500 after tip and booze. Saturday we'll dine on the Restaurant Guy Savoy's 10-course tasting menu for $290 per person = $4350. And Sunday night we'll have our conference closing banquet at Joel Robuchon at MGM Grand. I hear they have a to-die-for 16 course tasting menu for $360. $5400 is nothing for a meal prepared by the "Chef of the Century." Now we can't spend all of our time at dinner meetings, so we're going to need tickets to at least ONE show. How about 15 lower orchestra seats to the Beatle-inspired Love by Cirque Du Soleil show at the Mirage? At $300 each it's only going to cost $4500! After rocking out to the Beatles for a few hours, who can blame us when we're ready to get down to business...Tao Nightclub style. I don't mind when my employees blow off some steam on the dance floor, so I've reserved the 4 VIP tables surrounding the DJ booth. I guess bottle service is included for each table, so we'll just order two bottles of Grey Goose for each table or about $4000 total. On second thought, we could drink all of that by 11 and since clubs are open till 4am here, we'll really need the second round of bottles. I think we'll be lucky to get out of there with a $10k tab. I'll probably cancel our morning meeting on Saturday because of all the hard work we did on Friday night, so we'll just head to the Forum Shops at Caesar's Palace. Everyone knows that execs need to look sharp on a daily basis, so I'm not going to feel guilty about spending oh, say another $200,000 on various necessities. I need a new wardrobe for our company's new direction and Balenciaga, Louis Vuitton, Cartier, Versace, Agent Provocatuer (don't judge), and Marc Jacobs really helped me nail down that "sexy woman in charge" look that I so desperately need (thank you Sarah Palin!)

Overall, I really feel that we accomplished a lot. I think we can return to work focused and refreshed. If it takes $440,000 of your money to accomplish this, so be it! And to you naysayers like Rep. Jim Bunning of Kentucky (who had this to say about the bailout)
"Once again the Fed has put the taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars to bail out an institution that put greed ahead of responsibility and used their good name to take risky bets that did not pay off," I have this to say to you sir: We spent an entire weekend in Las Vegas and didn't bet once, how's that for fiscal responsibility!

Diary of a Newlywed....what a difference 16 inches makes!

Sixteen inches may not sound like alot but I am here to tell you that my life has recently changed thanks to the glorious dimensions of 76 x 80!! For nearly 4 months now Nick and I have walked in and out of one of our guestrooms placing wedding gifts and other various boxes in the corner, paying no attention to the gigantic king size bed laying at the other end of the room. I bought luxurious sheets, a soft new comforter, and most importantly a 2 inch Visco memory foam mattress topper. And before I go any further, let me take a moment to extol the genius and magic that is the memory foam topper. If you haven't tried one you might as well be sleeping on a cot because the memory foam topper can only be described as sleeping on a giant puffy cumulous cloud where every turn of your body feels like you're burrowing deeper into cotton candy like squashy perfection, and I'm not exaggerating here people, it's AMAZING!! So anyway, for no real reason other then pure laziness we've contined sleeping in Nick's comfy queen bed and have been very satisfied with our sleep experience. However, two nights ago we randomly decided to try out the giant king size bed and boy were we missing out!! No longer does my knee have to ram into his back when we both do the Heisman pose face down on your stomach, no more disturbances when he comes to bed later then me, I can barely see him all the way on the other side let alone feel him settling in! And finally, we can both do snow angels without hitting each other!!! We've wasted 4 whole months rolling into one another, elbowing each other, fighting over the middle and all the while our little slice of heaven sat only 10 feet away...who knew 16 inches could make suge a huge difference!