I love that I have all the ingredients to make biscotti just... in my kitchen. At my mercy.

I love that my apartment now smells like cinnamon sugar biscotti.

I love that biscotti are easily dipped into freshly tempered Ghirardelli milk chocolate.

I love how 4 dozen chocolate dipped biscotti look... cooling and smelling heavenly on my counter.


I thought The Dreambear™ will come home from work... (and with me asleep by then) and immediately try to snatch one up off the counter... and then realize the chocolate isn't hardened yet... and it'll stick to the parchment paper, and knock the other ones over...

So I drizzled some melted chocolate all over the last piece of his birthday rum cake his mom sent from Baton Rouge...

I figure it'll distract him and save my biscotti from doom.

We'll see.

I did something I haven't done in way too long. Make a nice big pot of sauce with sausage and meatballs.
Feast your eyes...

Over some stone ground whole wheat pasta

I'm 1 week into my 2 week free trial of Net Flicks. I like it and I think I'm gonna keep it.  
Anyone on here thinking of going on the Chumley Bear Cruise? I'm goin. Gonna be my frist time.

The place I always order pizza from just started charging a $2.00 fee for delivery.

Now I'm expected to also tip the driver in addition to the fee?

Hmm...


Poll #1243119 Pizza Delivery: Do you Tip When they Charge a FEE?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

My pizza place charges a $2.00 delivery fee now... do you tip the driver?

I just picked up new lenses for my glasses.

Holy hell I can see so much clearer.

My prescription isn't that strong, but the astigmatism was just strong enough to make things blurred.

Amazing. I guess 3 years is a little long to go without having your vision checked.

Tee hee.

My mind doesn't work when tired. I was looking at allrecipes.com today after work (after a really long week), and then went to my google-search bar to go look at adorable Saint Bernards at the Local Saint Rescue Organization. I couldn't figure out WHY I wasn't getting any search results until I looked more carefully at what I had typed... "VA Saint Bernard Recipe". Started chuckling right out loud.

Next up:

Joanne, a manager from another office of my company, called me laughing. She had been calling one of our customer's employers to try to get him to talk to us. She called the payroll lady at our customer's job... and after verifying our customer still worked there, she couldn't get the lady to give any more location information. After this, the payroll woman got anxious, and would only give a PO Box as the address (knowing creditors can't serve a summons to their employee at their PO Box) Joanne called it quits, seeing she wasn't going to get anywhere...

Now... unless the business asks us to stop calling their number to try to collect on our customer... we keep calling... daily... trying different ways to get the customer to come to the phone and work things out with us... (mind you, being uncooperative isn't the same thing as asking us not to call (or that the employee can't receive calls at work)... so we usually get 3 or 4 shots before they get fed up and tell us to stop calling...)

So Joanne called our customer's job again today... and the conversation went something like this:

Joanne: "Good morning! I just needed to get your address please?"
HR Lady: "Po Box..."
Joanne: "Oops!(perky) I meant your street address!"
HR Lady: "Its 101... wait... who is this?"
Joanne: "(thinking fast) Its... I have a flower delivery!"
HR Lady: "Oh! Its 101 Main Street, Northern VirginiaTown."
Joanne: "Thank you very much!"
HR Lady: "Wait--who are the flowers for?"
Joanne: "Uhh--- (then she remembered her name from the day before: Maria". They're for Maria. I'll be right there!"

We were cackling... that poor woman was probably waiting there all day for her flowers. Aww...

Development Goals and Basic Accounts

Last week we updated our development goals for 2008. Generally we noted a number of cool enhancements and investments to LiveJournal that we are working on, including improved search, usability, and site development.

We also wanted to let you know how we hope to accomplish all these things, and how we plan on paying for them. In order to accomplish our stated goals for this year and beyond, we need to increase the revenue gained from both groups of LiveJournal accounts: paid subscription accounts and ad-supported accounts.

As of August 28th, all users will be able to choose to downgrade their account to Basic through their Manage Account page. Additionally, we will start showing advertising to visitors who are not logged in to LiveJournal when they are looking at Basic Account journals and communities.

Basic Account users themselves will not see ads on any Basic journal or community while they are logged in to their account. If you want more information about this, take a look at our new post on lj_2008 where we outline our reasoning.

Indian Flash Fiction Contest

In other news, we are excited to tell you we've launched "Quick Tales" LiveJournal's first initiative for users in India, in celebration of India Independence day, August 15th. "Quick Tales" is a flash fiction writing contest in which we're partnering with Caferati.com, one of India's largest online literary communites. The contest's winners will receive some great prizes and it is open to anyone with a mailing address in India. We hope that users with an interest in Indian writing or just India will watch LiveJournal's india_writing community. That's where the finalists and winners will be announced, so keep an eye on it towards the end of September! If you're in India then enter the contest - if your story is slick and quick (under 500 words) then you could be the lucky winner!

Meanwhile, back at LiveJournal Inc.

We have updated and redesigned our corporate site. The goal of the redesign was twofold: first, to update the look and feel (Dystopia users will appreciate it!); second, we want to provide a destination for prospective employees, partners, and members of the press where they can access important information about the company. Kudos to our design team.

olympicgames08
The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games Community.

babyidols
A photo contest community for babies aged 0-3 years, in the format of American Idol.

muslimgirls
Where Muslim girls from all walks of life can share articles and discuss issues regarding Islam today.