Pack Your Bags, the Bitchin' Wives Club is Heading South

So, there I was, innocently minding my business, just doing my best to keep the boys out of juvie while juggling life, late Christmas cards, and a quick trip to Vegas, when my husband announces that his interview while I was at CES had gone terribly well—so well, in fact, that they had offered him the job... in southern Louisiana! 

Other families might sit on news like this for a good, long while. Other families might decide that they should stay put until school ended before making a big cross-country move with three children who might still be somewhat vulnerable from their recent move from England back to the United States.


Those other families are wussies. 


Being the unstoppable and dramatic Furious Five, we immediately bought a ticket for me to fly down and look at houses... and fell in love with not one, but TWO, of them. Being like normal families, however, we only put an offer on one of them. (I know. Ridiculous!)


Cross your fingers! We're hoping to close on it at the end of February.


Now, here's the really shocking part: Daddy-007 started his job in Louisiana today. So, I am a single parent until we get the house closed there and then moved out of here and into there. Possibly as soon as mid-March. God, and financial institutions, willing.

Daddy-007, otherwise known as the Iron Fist (because I usually get to be the Velvet Glove), has only been gone since Friday morning, but things have already gotten dicey with the boys. In fact, a "Come To Jesus" talk had to be initiated last night to make sure that everyone was crystal clear on how things are going to roll in Dad's absence. I think we reached an understanding. I understand that they will continue to misbehave and they understand that I am going to grow increasingly erratic and shrill until they stop or the PS3 gets thrown down the basement steps, whichever comes first.

If you are on good terms with any higher powers, please put in the good word, m'kay? Because I will surely need every bit of help I can get over the next month. Our darling Gigi, the deported babysitter of yesteryear, can only carry so much of our borderline-insanity, after all.

In the meantime, as I slog through closing up our beloved house of thirteen years and saying goodbye (in a more final way than when we left for the UK in 2009) to my many friends here and to the Midwest, in general, I am trying to keep this mental picture in my head to keep me going:

Me, sitting on that porch swing, husband and camera by my side, drinks in our hands, while we watch the boys tear around the four acres trying to kill each other.

Peaceful, isn't it? 

Paula Deen and the Greasy Truth About Her Diabetes Announcement

When I heard about Paula Deen’s recent announcement about being diagnosed with diabetes, I responded with a  tsk, tsk and “Well, that’s not surprising.” If you live and breathe the kind of food that she is famous for making, it certainly isn’t a stretch, or even unexpected, for someone to develop type 2 diabetes. Even though the disease is a natural consequence, I still sympathize and feel for Deen and her family—I have a beloved uncle who was diagnosed with diabetes not so many years ago, certainly stemming from his lifetime of exuberantly loving food (a quality that I have always adored and share with him, if I am being honest, but understanding scientifically that something bad is a consequence of something that feels so good when you’re doing it doesn’t make it any easier to accept. Obviously. Or life would be a lot different, right?

That said, I was shocked this morning when I read an op-ed piece in the New York Times titled Of Mouselike Bites and Marathons, by Frank Bruni, which revealed that Deen has been living with diabetes for THREE YEARS. And that she had timed her announcement in the most self-aggrandizing way imaginable—to promote her son’s new lower-calorie cooking show and to reveal that she landed a pitchwoman gig with a diabetes drug. Nice. Way to keep it klassy, Paula.

With obesity being such an epidemic in the USA, particularly in the South, upon whose mayonnaise- and butter-rich recipes Deen has built her empire, I find it almost reprehensible that she would continue cooking and selling her style of calorie-blind recipes without acknowledging that she was suffering from a disease that she developed in a direct response to the cooking and eating style she is selling.

I wrote about Georgia’s anti-obesity ad campaign featuring obese children last October, wondering if their tactics were too harsh or if the ads could really work as the makers of the campaign intended:  Not to shame the overweight children, but to make the parents of obese children realize that it is the food they serve their children (and the amounts they dole it out in) that is causing their children to become and stay overweight.

The ads are harsh. They make you uncomfortable to see and at least one of them made me tear up, as a young obese boy shakily asks his morbidly obese mother, “Mom, why am I fat?” and her only response is to silently hang her head in shame. Ooph. There have been many articles written about the commercials being awful or even counter-productive because of their shame-based approach to the issue of being fat, but Georgia’s Strong4Life felt strongly that traditional education/awareness-based campaigns that had been used in the past to inform the Georgia populace (which is second in the nation for childhood obesity) of the health concerns related to obesity were not working and that they needed a more extreme approach to “wake up” their community.

Now, imagine Paula Deen… a Georgia native, sitting back while the controversy around these anti-obesity ads swirled— and making the conscious decision to continue hiding her diabetes diagnosis while putting on her happy TV face to continue serving up the fried chicken, pies, and Krispy Kreme donut-encased cheeseburgers that have made her rich and famous.

Deen strikes me as a genuinely nice person, so I like to think that she was choking on each one of the super-unhealthy and super-tasty dishes she created in the years after her diagnosis. Money may make life easier in a million different ways, but it can’t buy a good night’s sleep that is free from the torments of conscience. (At least I hope it can’t, but I acknowledge a certain degree of idealism may be coloring my opinion here.)

So, while I’m glad she has finally stepped forward, I can’t help but find the hypocrisy of her decision to wait so long to reveal her illness galling. I don’t know what her net worth is, but I would assume it is enough that she could’ve used her status as a celebrity chef to acknowledge that diabetes is one of the major health consequences from leading a life of excess calories and then she could’ve used her platform to start creating new recipes that hold to the spirit of the South, but acknowledge that we can’t eat eat 2,000+ calories every time we sit down to eat.

Wouldn’t you want to know how a woman who has lived her life relishing Southern food, in all it’s salty, sugary, bacon-y, fatty glory, is able to reconcile her new dietary restrictions with what her taste buds want? Anyone can make healthy recipes, after all, not everyone can make one that satisfies that primal (and almost insatiable) desire for fatty/sweet/salty foodstuffs—a genetically hardwired trait that is one of the major factors in our nation’s ever-expanding waistline problem.

I challenge Paula Deen to show America what she really eats these days and to talk about what she did, personally— the missteps and will-power-related foibles, in particular— to teach herself how to eat the right way to keep herself healthy and happy. A lot of people would like to hear an announcement like that—and would respect her for sharing the fact that no matter how hard it is to change, it can be done in a way that still allows food lovers to relish every meal.

Photo Courtesy of: Bristol Motor Speedway & Dragway

Laptops You are Definitely Going to Want in 2012 (As Seen at CES)

The big thing at CES this year was the mass introduction of the ultrabook, otherwise known as the PC version of the MacBook Air. With a 13" MacBook Air starting at $1299 and a near universal agreement that netbooks stink because of the cramped keyboard, I think ultrabooks are definitely worth getting excited about with their thin profiles, ultra-light construction, and more reasonable (i.e. family-friendly) price point.

While working with Microsoft's Windows' Team, I got a chance to see a few of the new ultrabooks up close while I was at the conference and can confirm that a few of them will definitely give the MacBook Air a run for it's money. If Windows 8 continues to improve the user experience the way Windows 7 has, I think Apple is going to have some tough decisions to make about their pricing structures in the next couple years.

My second day at CES, looking at Lenovo's U310 and Hotmail's new features. 

Video from Microsoft Windows Experience Blog.

My favorite ultrabook at CES would have to be Lenovo's clever IdeaPad Yoga. Until I saw the Yoga, I was with everyone else ooh-ing and aah-ing over Asus's Tranformer Prime, a tablet with a nifty clip-on keyboard was getting all the press, but Lenovo's Yoga, for my money and keyboard-craving fingers, looks like a way better solution and quickly won me over. It opens like a laptop, but has a touch screen that rotates and folds over to become a tablet, or it can be set up like an easel to watch the screen—with no special gizmos needed (like an iPad or other traditional tablets). It is, in a word, PERFECT for those of us who think a tablet looks nifty, but still don't think they're worth replacing a laptop for when traveling or are willing to add yet another piece of technology in an already too-heavy bag.

Another standout was the tamer, but still more than edgy enough to stimulate a visceral "I want that!" reaction, Lenovo IdeaPad U310 ultrabook. It's available in four colors, and even though I'm partial to the red one, I have to admit that the metallic light pink with the pearl/white interior was probably the most eye-catching. The U310 claims a battery life of up to eight hours, a super-fast boot up feature which allows the machine to start up within 10 seconds of opening it, a full complement of ports, including USB 3.0and weighs just over three pounds. Nice. Intriguingly, it's supposed to enter the market in May at about $600—making it a steal in the ultrabook market, where most machines are hovering closer to the $800-1100 mark. We'll have to wait and see what the full specs are before deciding if it's really worth the lower price tag, but I am very interested.

Another sexy contender is the ASUS Zenbook, a ravishing little number clad in "Rose Gold" aluminum. It stands out as one of the best looking laptops I've ever seen. It is the same size as a netbook with an 11.6" screen, but weighs just 2.42 pounds. There is a 13" version, as well, and it weighs just over 3 pounds. It is supposed to be lightening quick, one review I saw said it started up and was in Windows 7 in just 20 seconds. And don't get me started on the Bang & Olufson speakers. I actually get a pang of "want" when I think about this laptop for too long. 

Finally, Toshiba unveiled a brand new ultrabook that has a 14" screen, is a little over 3/4" thick, and features all the ports you'd expect in a full-sized laptop (3 USB, one of which is a USB 3.0, HDMI, SD card, Ethernet, and mic/headphone sockets). No word on it's exact specs, but it looks like the MacBook Air's darker, more muscular cousin and is supposed to hit the market in June at $799.

Are there any laptops that you are dying to add to your tech corral this year? And are you peeved that I left the HP Envy Spectre ultrabook off my list? My apologies to HP, but as the mother of three sons, I have a gut reaction against anything expensive that claims to be covered entirely in glass. Even Gorilla Glass. I know it's stupid because the glass is scratch-resistant and super tough, but ... I just can't do it. 

Favorite Product For Families at CES 2012: The All-In-One PC

With only two days at CES (Consumer Electronics Show), I was able to see a mere fraction of the new tech on display, but it was more than enough to make me wonder what rock I've been hiding under to miss the trends that were very much on display at the show. Perhaps it was more a "what rock I've been hiding ON" situation, as my life in England didn't include as much tech-obsession as it does here in the USA.

Even though ultrabooks (ultra light, ultra thin laptops) were the big trend that everyone was going on (and on) about— for me, the big new tech thing at the show that had me most excited for how it might change my life at home, was the advent of the all-in-one PC. I talked about the Vizio one in my last post, specifically about how gorgeous it is and how it will very easily fill the post of TV/computer in any room that you would normally just haul your laptop to. (You can see my first day interviews, including the Vizio line-up coming this Spring, in the Microsoft Windows Experience Blog video below.) But I quickly saw two other all-in-ones that I fell in love with, too, but for different reasons.

The first was a Toshiba DX730 all-in-one that, though not as pretty as the Vizio model, has a touch screen and an incredible price point of $799 or $999. What the ??? I had no idea that there were 23" touch screen monitors, much less entire computer set-ups, available at this price already. The Toshiba, with it's wireless keyboard and mouse, touch screen, built-in speakers and available TV tuner, would make the perfect kitchen PC/TV. The touchscreen is a huge selling point, not only for the convenience it brings in the kitchen (Hello, I can control everything with a knuckle when my fingers are covered in flour or other kitchen mess!), but because it makes the machine ready to take full advantage of the radical redesign of Windows that is coming in the Windows 8 later this year. (I'll talk more about Windows 8 in the next post, but imagine if you could translate your smartphone experience into a more beautiful and much larger scale PC experience. If you've seen the newest Windows Phone OS, then you are looking at Windows 8, for all intents and purposes.)

Personally, I watch almost all my TV while cooking dinner via Hulu+, catching up on all the shows that I miss at night. I refuse to pay for extra DVR boxes with our cable, so using Hulu or Netflix allows me to bring my shows to whatever room I'm in. Right now, my set-up includes my laptop, usually perched precariously near the splash zone of my sink, with an external speaker wired to it; all of which makes for a pretty unsightly set-up with the cables, the speaker, and their power cords—not to mention the huge amount of counter space that it takes up (Of course, it also means that I only had to buy one computer, so there's that!). The Toshiba would be a welcome, clean-cut and utilitarian solution to the problem of needing both a TV and a PC in the kitchen.

On my last day of interviews at CES, I made it over to the Lenovo booth, which was located, not at the conventional (read: boring, predictable) convention hall, but at a slick restaurant/club called Aquaknox, at The Venetian, that they had re-purposed with red lighting, for a week of no-holds-barred Lenovo sexiness. Seriously. I had walked by the "booth" every night in my travels with our Microsoft group and it was closed for a private party each time, music and people spilling out of the space. And their employees had a level of hot-ness that was, ummm,... unusual for the CES venue. Ahem, moving on....

Now, call me out of touch... but I thought that Lenovo, maker of the ThinkPad, was all about stodgy business PCs and laptops. I was like, "Well, okay, I can interview them, but why did you send the 'family reporter' for the job instead of Annie, the student reporter?" My Microsoft guide for CES, Moe, who was phenomenal, was like, "No, no, no, they're in the consumer market, too. You'll see!" And, sure enough, I did. The Lenovo lineup of consumer laptops and PCs were gorgeous, sharp, and trendy enough to turn the heads of all the mommies on the block. And their husbands', too. I'll tell you all about the laptops in another post, but *drool* the IdeaPad Yoga and U310!

I looked specifically at their IdeaCentre A720 (bonus points for the Euro-spelling!), an all-in-one PC with a huge 27" 10-point touch screen, which means that it responds to every finger on your hand, or multiple people touching the screen simultaneously. The machine is stunning—a perfect example of PC manufacturers designing a desktop to move from the office to any room in your home. It is the thinnest PC of it's kind at only 1" thick, which seems impossible, given the size of the screen and that it has to house PC bits, as well.

The A720 has the bonus feature of very niftily folding down onto itself, so it lies flat or at any angle in between. Perfect for board game-style games with the kids or to play a whole host of programs that cater to the tablet app market—I don't want to sound silly, but imagine how tired your arm would get if you had to play touch-screen Angry Birds on an upright screen! Watch this video to get an idea of what I'm talking about.

It really was amazing. And Windows 7 looks gorgeous on it, but, again, as with the Toshiba DX730, the touch screen on the Lenovo A720 leaves it poised to take full advantage of the forthcoming Windows 8 touch interface option.

So, now I am in love with three different all-in-ones, but each for a different reason. I'd take the Vizio, purely on design, the Toshiba for it's sturdy practicality and great price, and the Lenovo for it's cutting edge design and massive touch screen. Needless to say, I am very curious what the price point will be for the Vizio and Lenovo machines, and how quickly Vizio adds a touch screen to it's option list.

2012 promises to be an extremely interesting year as Windows 8 is surely going to transform the PC market upon its arrival.