When In Rome

Unlike Trisha, I'm at the ripe age of almost 23 and love the silly comedy without smart humor (if it's girly) just as much as the next girl.

I think I must have missed the Orange Cheeks that Nikki referred to as well...

The story is about a girl, major fail at love. She's in Rome for her sister's wedding and ends up taking some coins out of a very special lovey-dovey fountain. Suddenly, people fall for her left and right because of some random lovey-dovey fountain superstition. Ensue craziness.

Anyway, I thought it was a silly, albeit predictable, feel good comedy. And I really can't say anything bad about something that makes me feel it good. She was adorkably cute and the suiters were all characters.

Final note: I want to dance in that fountain.

The Hangover (2009)

I'm beginning to think I waited too long to see this movie. I didn't see the trailers (or at least, didn't remember seeing the trailers) and it's possible I watched it in the wrong setting. I was doing some work and decided to plop it down in the background of my living room.

I mean, I'll suspend all logic for the sake of the movie, but from there, nothing was super duper funny as everyone had led me to believe. 'Side from that, fun bits, the stripper was adorable, and the photo montage at the end was interesting. I also really want to stay in that room (pre-disaster)

Least favorite part: the Asian. Every time he was around, I just wanted him to get off screen. SOOOO annoying and not in the funny way.

It gets three stars because it wasn't a waste of time, I'd be willing to try again with alcohol and a group of friends, and yeah. :)

Race for the Galaxy

Okay...before I go into too much glowy praise, I'm going to be very candid: I know the creator. In fact, he's known me since I was a baby! So here's my relationship with the game.

1st: I've been playing it a heck of a lot longer than most people. My parent's house has a nifty feature to it: LOTS of boardgames. And they play a LOT of boardgames on a LOT of days of the week. Every Tuesday at 8 PM, the house fills up with gamers and they play to their heart's content until they feel like going home to get some semblance of sleep the next morning. Some of the games are still in beta. I have cards from Race to the Galaxy that are paper pasted to regular playing cards. Dead serious. I am that cool.

This means I played the game before it became what it is in that pretty little box with pretty little pictures on each card. I am rather attached.

Oh, so this is supposed to be a review about the game instead of how awesome I am, right, forgot that.

The game.

There's always a bit of strategy, which changes depending on how many players. In a 2 player game, you each pick two actions to do each turn and everyone gets to do those actions. If you picked it, you get to do something special. Once the player count gets greater than two, you're only picking one action. Then it becomes truly essential to figure out who will call which actions so you don't have to. It's got some fun strategy, some great graphics, a little bit of luck, and plays quickly. A great game to introduce to your family!

Note: the expansions do add some other features and complexities. You are warned. :)

Quaker Chewy Granola Bars, Variety Pack

Well, if you guys have seen my prior reviews, you can guess why I'm reviewing these. Here's the dealy-o on the Quaker Chewy bar thingamajigs.

Yesterday's TLC Kashi things were just crunchy as all hell despite their tempting "chewiness". These bars actually have some chew to them. Now, they're nothing like the soft chewy-chewbacca-minus-the-fur-ness of something like the Nutrigrain bars that are super soft and chewy but you have to eat 20 of them because they keep calling to you and are gone in a couple bites.

Speaking of needing to eat more than one, I definitely took two this time. I just stared at them and went "this is not going to be remotely filling..." and I was right. So I tried the Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip and the Low Fat Oatmeal Raisin ones.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip: For some reason I was expecting it to be a bit like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. It wasn't. Far healthier tasting than expected. Good texture and flavor though.

Low Fat Oatmeal Raisin: This one again did not match what I thought it'd be. I was expecting the tastiness of an Oatmeal cookie. Mmm, I love Oatmeal cookies... Nope, this was highly cinammon. I think I missed the part where there were raisins in it. But again, pretty tasty and similar texture. Didn't taste quite as healthy though. Not sure why. I think it was because I was already expecting something healthy...

That said, I have no idea how other reviewers determined these things were HEALTHY. I mean, sure, it's a lowish calorie count (100 for the PB one, 90 for the Low Fat Oatmeal one) Seriously, if you do it by calorie counts it's okay...if you only consume one. But still, what makes up those calories?

For the purposes of this, PB/Oat is the order.

Fat Cal: 25/15
Total Fat: 3g/1.5g
Sodium: 95mg/80mg
Carb: 17g/19g
Sugar: 7g/7g
Fiber: 1g/1g
Protein: 2g/1g

And minuscule amounts of vitamins and minerals. Seriously, what's HEALTHY about those stats? Oh, and did I mention they use Corn Syrup. That stuff turns off your brain telling you you're full and is terribly unhealthy for you.

That being said, I still give it 4 stars because I danced my butt off last night and could care less about the fact that they're not healthy. I was just letting you all know to read more than the calorie count. :P I'm done. *takes a bow*

Kashi Tlc Granola Bars, Honey Almond 37949

Well, we got a ton more snacks in the break room, so I decided to test some of the new ones before falling back on my tried and trues. One down so far!

Okay, here's where I give them props:

1. It tastes healthy but still a good flavor.

2. A decent amount of bar, so you're not feeling like you just ate two bites.

Now, the problems occur when part of the reason it lasts so long is because the bar is so dry. I mean, dude, I don't want a health bar that makes me want to dunk myself in liquid. I'd rather be able to just eat it to go and then drink something when I'm actually thirst. It was described as "chewy" and I believe it lied. That's really the biggest downside for me. There are far more bars that I'd prefer to munch on. I think I also would have been far more forgiving if they hadn't advertised themselves as "chewy"...

Demi Bra by Sexy Little Things

Well, since no other ladies nor Derek has stepped up to the plate, I see what needs to be done.

I bought this bra (I'm keeping colors to myself to make the mental image a lot harder to produce) awhile back and fell in LOVE with it. A month later, I walked into a store and asked if they had the bra. The answer was no. Apparently, Victoria's Secret doesn't love me and didn't love the bra nearly as much as I did.

This bra was the first one that actually FIT me. Now, many of you ladies here are probably far bustier than I so this might not be a problem for you, but I can't find bras that are snug. UNTIL THIS. I seriously was going to walk into that store and buy one of every color they had in my size... Sadly, all I have is the one I bought awhile back despite my longing searches at Victoria's Secret... Maybe I'll try some of their other ones and see if ANY fit well enough.

With that said, this style (at least on me) makes for a fantastic boob shape, doesn't leave those annoying outline marks of a bra so it appears seamless, no accidental boob-showage (sorry boys) although the bra looks great if someone should get a peek, and yah. I loverz it.

That's my bra review.

Special K Cereal Bars

So, we have these bars here at Sazze, and they're fairly popular. One of my co-workers was briefly doing the Special K diet (I think for 2 weeks) and determined it's a sucky diet because you're either eating A. Cereal, or B. Cereal bars. Yeah, I agree, that diet would suck.

Moving on about the bars. They're decently tasty and the calorie count isn't bad...but the balance of why just seems silly.

First off, they taste uber sugary, and don't really fill you up in any way shape or form so you might find yourself eating two to make up for it. That said, I tend to lean towards the vanilla or strawberry. I'm not sure I've tried the chocolate ones from our assortment box.

Second off, I'd rather a bar that didn't taste so sugary (if it's going to be passing itself off as healthy). If it's not a healthy sort of bar, bring on the sweet!

Other than that, great to grab-n-go. I just happen to have other bars that I prefer.

2006 Mazda 3

This is the moment where I say, why on earth do we not have a "Car" category. I mean, "Auto Parts" just isn't the same because dude, it's more than just parts!

My last car's name was Hepzibah (her license plate letters were HPZ). While a first or last name might occur with this current car (I haven't decided which) the current name that I am calling it is "Sesame." I vowed that my car would get automatic locks just so I could say "Open Sesame!"

Okay, I'm now currently failing at actually reviewing the car. Soooo, the car. I got the Mazda 3 used a couple months ago so I think I can now judge it in fairness. Except for the fact that I had one minor issue yesterday so I might be biased. I'll get to that.

The car runs beautifully. I love the feel of a Manual transmission and it just works smoothly which makes me all warm and fuzzy. In addition, it just feels great inside. There's a lot of customization that can be done with seat positioning, and the fact that audio controls are on the steering wheel is an added bonus. I did end up installing an additional sound system component to allow me to play music directly from an audio device. Sound quality is solid, no need to blast it to be able to hear it so my ear drums are thanking me. When it comes to gas mileage, it's pretty solid. Sad thing is, it's not quite as good as my old car (and I mean, that was an old car! (a 1994 Mazda 626) Still, I seem to get a solid 32 mpg with my combined city/highway driving.

The rest of the details go as such, good trunk space, good response to brakes and acceleration, back seat space is a bit limited if you have a long legged person in the front seat, cup holders and beautiful (my last car was an epic fail when it came to holding cups), air-conditioning/heating is pretty awesome, tinted glass works well, etc etc.

In my first week or so of owning it, I also began getting hit on by other drivers. I don't know if that's a plus (none of them were particularly cute...and some were decidedly creepy) but now I've been more wary about driving with windows down. But the car seems to be at least attractive despite it not being a super expensive sporty car.

Moving on.

Issue #1: I don't know if it's the car or the previous owner, but for some reason the car is too low to sucessfully get up my driveway without going "KR-CRUNCH" unless I'm literally going 1-2 mph. Dead serious. I just avoid parking in my driveway. Granted, my personal driveway is particularly picky and the car can handle most other ones just fine. I'm thinking of looking into getting it raised an inch or so. Not sure how that works...

Issue #2: I don't know how I did it, but the trunk was barely popped open for a couple days. The car was working, the trunk never flew up, but after a couple days of that, the car decided to die. I mean, it's understandable that the battery would eventually die, but how it didn't get closed all the way, or how it decided to pop open is unknown to me. And it's weird it took so long to die. But yay for making it so I had to jump start it! Luckily I was at home so it wasn't like I got temporarily stranded. :)

So, that's my spiel about Sesame! I love my new car.

Ben & Jerry's Oatmeal Cookie Chunk

Oh so delicious. But it was not always the case...

My favorite ice cream for AGES was Ben & Jerry's Phish Food. I mean, half of that was just the look on people's faces when I responded "Fish Food" when they asked what my favorite flavor was. But I digress.

In college we were given an insane amount of "points" which we could spend on food throughout the year. And it wasn't actually insane depending on how much you ate and what you chose to eat. To me, it was insane...the things I liked didn't cost a ton of points... Except ice cream. This was a discovery of things to spend points on.

They had a couple freezers filled with ice creams. I was joyous the first time I noticed and they had Phish Food! Then, one day, they didn't have it. But I had already built up that craving and there was the freezer. I began poking around to see what else sounded interesting. Creme Brulee, check. Half-Baked, check. Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, check. Peach Cobbler, check. (That one is pretty awesome too...just fyi) and then...the Oatmeal Cookie Chunk.

I'm always a huge fan of Oatmeal Cookies, and if it were my recipe of Chocolate Chip vs. my recipe of Oatmeal Cookie, the Oatmeal Cookie would always win. So I decided to try it. Heaven in a pint.

I don't remember the last time I got Phish Food now... It's that good. At some point, I moved away from the chocolate ice creams, and this sweet cream cinammony goodness...mmmm! And the Oatmeal Chunks are soft, chewy, plentiful, and balanced. I still sometimes crave fruitier flavors, but for some reason, this one always seems to work when I can't decide. If you haven't tried it, go to Ben & Jerry's and order it! They had it at the last store I walked inside for an actual cone. Trust me, super duper yummy.