Social Media is #Exhausting

Snapchat, Instagram, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Flickr, Pinterest, Google+, Friendster, Goodreads, Vine. Creating a username, password, and complete profile. Making sure to have pictures, videos, posts, statuses, followers, friend requests, comments, likes, check-ins, endorsements, updates, hashtags. Does anyone else find all of this exhausting?

When does anyone have time to do anything else? Like #takeawalk? Or just, I don't know, #think? I keep waiting for the stopping point, like when TV hit Blu-ray.

I have begun to get suspicious of why so many of these innovations are named with two words slapped together, often with a missing letter or a weird capitalization in the middle. That's not very innovative. I'm concerned that it's all becoming #mindnumbing. Here are some suggestions: BrainFart, DumbDwn, NoThink, StatusHunt, BragFest, EgoGo.

Vine is the one that recently pushed me over the edge. My reaction was: ANOTHER ONE?! Not that I have all the others before it. I'm frozen at Facebook level, which is probably at least seven social media trends behind. I'm at the equivalent of "Soulja Boy," when there's been "Jump on It," "Gangnam Style" and "Harlem Shake." Or maybe I'm still at "The Electric Slide."

Perhaps other people have a greater capacity for updating and ditching than I do. Oh my blog. What's happened to all of us?

Come here, my little cupcake

Ever since my last trip to New York a few weeks ago, I've been dreaming about the most wonderful cupcake in the universe. It was in the basement of the Plaza Hotel in the Food Hall at Billy's Bakery. And the most amazing part of this whole story is that the cupcake WASN'T EVEN CHOCOLATE. I know! Hard to believe, right? What could possibly be better than chocolate? (As a side note: I am always suspicious of the true character of any person who claims to not like chocolate. Alien being? Most likely.)

But back to the cupcake. The cake part was banana and the frosting on top was of the cream cheese variety. It was sensational! The perfect density. The perfect level of moisture in the cake. The firm-yet-creaminess of the icing.

I have begun a pre-next-cupcake exercise routine just so I can eat more of these the next time I go to New York. Notice I say these, as in, plural cupcakes. Oh, New York, why do you have to be so fattening?

Here's a link to a story about the Food Hall. I don't think most tourists know about it, and it's a great place to eat, even if for some insane reason you don't want a cupcake.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/23/dining/the-food-hall-under-the-plaza-expands.html?_r=0

Conversations with My Husband (Sample #1)

This morning in the bathroom while I was brushing my teeth and my husband was shaving and reading the sports section, he posed a question to me.

"Who are the only three players on the Heat to never be a part of March Madness?" he asked.

"Hmm," I said as toothpaste burbled out of my mouth. "Well, the first one is easy, it's LeBron, because he didn't go to college."

(I will pause here for a moment, because I know all of you ladies out there are thinking: "What a lucky woman! Her husband is obviously a romantic." Yes, it is true.)

My analysis continued: "Definitely not D. Wade, because he was at Marquette. Not Chalmers, he hit that big winning shot."

I tried to gauge Ricky's silence over the buzzing of his electric razor. I took it as a sign that I was correct so far and continued.

"Norris Cole has the whole green van thing, the one that went with him to different championships, and he went to college four years, so not him. Um, Udonis and Mike Miller were teammates at UF, so..."

Here Ricky jumped in: "So you have your answer on them. If you have two NBA players on the same college team, you know they were in the tournament. As a matter of fact, they were in the Final Four."

I was a bit perturbed by his interruption. I hadn't quite gotten there about Udonis and Miller, but perhaps Ricky was getting impatient with the slow pace of my analysis. My mind started wandering to the centers. Birdman (Chris Andersen) had joined the team mid-season.

"You know, I don't really know much about Birdman," I said.

"That's No. 2," Ricky said, once again a bit more quickly than I would have liked. "He went for one year of junior college. The last one is Rashard Lewis. He came right out of high school, like LeBron. Remember, that's why they said he's already been in the league 15 years."

I hadn't actually remembered that, and I don't think I was ever going to guess Rashard Lewis. But Ricky and I had finished our grooming, and, you know, these romantic moments can only last so long.