The Case of the Missing Bridal Boutique

Last weekend my mom flew out from Colorado for the official Wedding Dress Shopping Trip. I'd made appointments at a small bridal boutique that had gotten great reviews and at the local Macy's. I'd also attempted to make an appointment at Nordstrom, but that basically fell apart. It all worked out in the end, though. Which is to say I found and bought a dress. After a bit of an adventure, that is.

The boutique I'd made an appointment at was a place called Vivian's. It had a bunch of great reviews online, most of which emphasized how cheap the dresses were. Cheap as in price, not quality. Everyone seemed impressed with the dresses they had been able to find. So I was excited to check it out and see what they had.

We left twice as early as we needed to, because I like to schedule time to get lost. I had the address of the place and figured it would be easy enough to find. I wasn't expecting to find myself in an office park on a Saturday morning.

We went inside the building, but we didn't see the name of the company on the directory. I called and left a voice mail asking if I had the right place. Then we went upstairs to see if we could find the suite.

We couldn't. As far as we could tell the place didn't exist. None of the doors had either the suite number or the boutique's name on the door. Kevin's mom eventually asked someone, who said there was, indeed, a bridal boutique on that floor.

I tried calling the number a few more times, but it always went straight to voice mail. After we'd waited for almost half an hour we decided to cut our losses and head to the mall. I emailed the person I'd been in touch with to find out what happened, but I have yet to hear back from her. I'm not sure we'll ever know, but I'm sticking with my theory that she had to flee the country in the middle of the night.

We wandered around looking at formal dresses in Bloomingdale's and Nordstrom and got lunch before heading to Macy's. Where I bought the second dress I tried on. So at least I can call the day a success, as strange as it was.

Google Really Is Omnipotent

In the past few weeks I have become painfully aware of how integrated my internet experience is. As soon as Kevin and I posted our engagement to Facebook, my news feed became nothing but wedding ads. Ads for dresses and shoes. Ads for engagement rings and wedding bands. Ads for venues and caterers and photographers. Ads for planning services.

This soon leaked out to other websites. No matter where I went, the majority of the advertisements I saw were wedding related. The algorithms knew I was getting married soon, and they seemed to believe that I ceased to have an interest in anything else. Gone was the daily Buffy quote that I so looked forward to on Facebook. In it's place was an announcement about some sale at David's Bridal.

Then something really strange happened. I had been poking around some department store websites to see if it would even be possible to find a reasonable wedding dress in the $200 - $400 range. I'm a long way from trying anything on, but I have some ideas about what I want, and I wanted to see how close those matched up to reality. To my surprise, I found a dress for less than $200 that I really liked. I sent a link to it to Sarah.

And then I started seeing it everywhere. Every time I logged on to Facebook, that dress was in one of the ads on the side. When I went to other sites, blogs I frequent or even news sites, there was a good chance that it would be there as well. This dress started following me around the internet, begging me to buy it.

It's been a couple of weeks, and that has mostly tapered off. I still see it once a day or so, but that's nothing compared to the days after I shared it with Sarah. In its place I'm beginning to get weight loss ads. "Tricks" for losing that extra inch before the big day or whatever. Which is possibly more disturbing.

It's a little frightening to realize the extent to which my online activity is being monitored. All it takes is one IM and suddenly Google knows exactly what wedding dress I'm considering and is trying to shove it down my throat. I'm a little surprised I hadn't noticed before just how pervasive this is. Then again, focusing all of the ads around a single topic makes these things more obvious.

I'm looking forward to the day when I'll have a bit more variety in my online ads again. I doubt I'll ever look at them the same way again, though.

Ringer Pilot

Spoilers for the pilot episode of Ringer follow. Massive spoilers.

Let's be honest. I'm a total sucker for Sarah Michelle Gellar. I mean, I grew up on Buffy*. So of course I tuned into tonight's season premiere of Ringer. It's probably a good thing that I didn't exactly have high hopes.

First things first, Ringer is not Buffy. Despite an ad campaign that focused almost exclusively on the fact that SMG would be returning to the CW** on Tuesday nights, the show makes it clear right off the bat that this is not Buffy in an opening scene that has SMG on the losing end of a fight with a masked man.

From there, the show proceeds to throw a dozen balls into the air. And I guess we'll spend the rest of the season either witnessing an impressive juggling act or a complete disaster. So what happened in the pilot? I believe we need a list.

• Bridget (played by SMG) is a former stripper and recovering addict. They never specify what her drug of choice was, but she's been sober for six months
• Bridget is the key witness in a murder trial for some big bad guy. Possibly with ties to the mob? If I heard correctly, he killed her fellow stripper by dismemberment.
• Bridget has a crush on her sponsor (I believe that's against the rules). Her sponsor seems to reciprocate those feelings
• Bridget is so terrified of the big bad that she breaks out of protective custody, assaults a cop, steals his gun, and runs to New York
• In New York we meet Siobhan, Bridget's estranged twin sister. They haven't spoken for six years. What better way to reunite than a boat ride? 
• Siobhan conveniently hasn't told anyone that she has a sister
• The boat had some of the worst green screen/CGI I've seen in a long time.
• Bridget takes a nap, like you do, and when she wakes up Siobhan is gone, along with all her prescription drugs
• Naturally, Bridget assumes that Siobhan killed herself. The next logical step is to assume her identity
• Bridget calls her sponsor to tell him all of this.
• There's an FBI agent looking for Bridget because of that whole key witness thing. Also the assault of the police officer thing.
• Siobhan's husband, Andrew, is distant. They don't seem to have any sort of relationship anymore. He doesn't trust Bridget's attempts to mend this relationship.
• Siobhan had a big orange book that she wrote down all of her appointments in to keep track of her busy life. This would be pretty handy for Bridget to flip through, but she seems to forget about it the moment she discovers it
• Siobhan's best friend Gemma is renovating a penthouse apartment for Siobhan and Andrew
• Gemma thinks her husband, Henry, is cheating on her
• Henry is cheating on Gemma. With Siobhan
• In 2005 Siobhan had a son named Sean (quite the tongue twister). She does not have said son any longer. Bridget may have had something to do with this.
• The FBI agent visits Bridget-as-Siobhan to ask her about Bridget's whereabouts. Bridget lies and says they haven't spoken in years. (Technically it was true a week ago)
• Siobhan has a teenage stepdaughter, Juliet. Their relationship rivals the one I have with my own stepmother. But Bridget doesn't know this and is trying to play nice, despite having walked in on Juliet having sex with some random dude.
• Juliet just got kicked out of boarding school.
• Apparently it was for possession of the same drug that Bridget used to be addicted to
• So Bridget tries to kick Juliet out of the house
• A doctor calls to inform Bridget that Siobhan was pregnant. Bridget missed the appointment because she didn't bother to read her sister's incredibly handy appointment book.
• The baby is probably Henry's but there's a slim chance it could be Andrew's. Clearly Bridget herself isn't pregnant, though. But she seems to think this could repair her relationship with Andrew. Glee already did this, and it didn't work out so well.
• The FBI agent finds the letter that Bridget sent Siobhan (she stowed it in a bike locker in the Hamptons. Of course he found it.) He deduces that Bridget-as-Siobhan lied to him. But he still thinks she's Siobhan.
• Gemma calls Bridgett and asks to meet her because she knows who her husband's having an affair with.
• A masked man attacks Bridget (this is where the episode opened, before flashing back to "nine days earlier")
• Bridget shoots the masked man with the gun she stole from the cop
• The masked man was actually looking for Siobhan (if you consider that he accosted her in the very place Gemma asked to meet, this doesn't seem quite as suspenseful as the show wants you to believe it is)
• Siobhan is still alive. And apparently trying to kill Bridget. There must be an easier way to fake your own death.
• Somewhere in there the man that Bridget was supposed to testify against kidnapped her sponsor.
• There are mirrors everywhere. I guess for the symbolism. Nobody owns that many mirrors though. Someone will walk out of the frame, and then you'll see them again crossing the right side of the screen in a mirror. Then they'll appear in a mirror on the left side of the screen. Then they'll finally have exited the scene. It's ridiculous.

So all of that happened in the hour-long pilot. Which is really only 42 minutes when you account for all of the commercials***. Some of these plots seem unnecessary (do we really need a pregnancy?). Some of them probably could have been held off for a few weeks (Juliet's drug possession and expulsion). Some things could have been utilized better (Oh my God, Bridget, read your sister's appointment book). But it will be interesting to see where the show goes from here. I predict disaster. Hopefully it will be an entertaining disaster.

*Probably the best role she's ever had
**Though Buffy actually switched to UPN before the WB became the CW
***Apparently they're remaking The Transporter with Ryan Gosling as Jason Statham.

Road Rage

The road from the metro to my apartment is about three miles long.  Depending on traffic during rush hour, this can take me anywhere from fifteen to thirty minutes.  I've managed to develop a fairly zen approach to this part of my commute, which is definitely the worst part (and will only last two more months!).  I turn on the radio or put in a CD to while away the time.

Part of the drive requires a right turn from a side road onto a more main road.  The side road is the only road that serves the metro station and the high school, so traffic tends to back up on it.  The main road has a never-ceasing stream of cars.  At some point a smart person noticed this problem and installed a traffic light. I may have to sit through a couple iterations of it, but I will eventually get through.

This evening I found myself at the front of the line waiting to turn.  I had an eye on the light and was chilling to my music.  Cars were driving by.  Someone honked.

Now the thing is, in Colorado, no one ever honked.  And on the east coast everyone honks all the freaking time. For a while it constantly made me jump.  Since I could never tell whether or not people were honking at me, I eventually learned to tune it all out.  I just assume someone else is being an idiot.

Today the idiot was me.  I had missed a gap in the cars during which someone could have turned right.  Being wary of traffic, I'm not sure I would have taken this opportunity even if I had seen it.  The cars are too close and I'd rather not get side-swiped in an effort to save a minute or two.  That's not how the lady behind me saw it.

She kept honking.

The light turned green, and I carefully turned onto the main road.  She squealed out behind me, swerved into the left lane and gave me the finger as she passed.  Accelerating while still leaning on her horn.

I really don't think I did anything wrong.  There's certainly nothing about my behavior I'll change in the future.  Had she not made such a point of flipping me off, I probably would have continued to assume that she was honking at someone else.

Maybe I am the bad driver in this scenario, but I really think she just needed to chill out a bit.

Beware Of Chicken

News on the radio just gave me a "fun fact that will make you want to be a vegetarian".  Turns out 1 out of every 4 chickens tested in the supermarket has drug-resistant bacteria that can make you sick!

My reaction: Um, haven't we known this forever?  Isn't that what fire is for?

The reporter went on to say that properly cooking the chicken will kill all the bacteria.

So yeah, this just in.  Raw chicken could make you sick.  Because that's news.

Sometimes I hate the media