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Messy and Picky - Philly's New Foodie Blog

Allow me to introduce the newest Philly foodie blog to the block, Messy and Picky written by yours truly and Lady. A labor of love, it's finally found itself to be incarnated in blog form.

So go ahead and bookmark us. Subscribe to the RSS feed. Or just plain set us as your homepage. Just come back! We've got a bunch more reviews queued up so stay tuned.

And right off the bat, who do you think is Messy and who do you think is Picky? Some know the ansewr and it can be easily found here, but that would be cheating. So take a guess before you find out.

Messy and Picky: Eating Our Way Through Philadelphia... and beyond!

Quad Rugby Tonight

Lady and I are headed over to the Carousel House tonight to check out our local Magee Eagles quad rugby team.

AJ [from the team] tells me that there may also be a news crew there which would be pretty cool - it would give them some nice television exposure to piggyback on the success of the documentary Murderball which we saw last month.

The Move

Lady has been packing up a storm lately. Me, err, riiiight. I gotta get to it. I have a shitload of junk. Oh the pains of being a packrat - moving!

But I did get a ton accomplished today. I forwarded my mail starting this Friday to the new address, via USPS's mover's guide page which is quick and painless, just costs $1. I transferred my PECO bill to the new address and signed us up for a new PGW account. Both were completed right over the phone. Amazing. I was dreading taking time off of work to go down to the physical office, but I guess we lucked out and everything was all ready for a smooth switch.

Now, we gotta get on the horn to Comcast to give us sweet sweet cable television and broadband internet. That is something I'm not looking forward to waiting around for. I've had some horror stories in the past and I'm sure I'll have more to come. But after the 15^th posts will most likely be sparse after work hours, unless....

And Lady is also going to enroll in a progressive landline telephone company. I forget the details of the plan, but proceeds go to progressive groups and we get a free pint of Ben & Jerry's each month which is pretty sweet, literally. Thank goodness I'm on so many progressive mailing lists, a deal like this we would've never found!

Moving Boxes

Where do we find moving boxes?

Tonight's trash night and also the day after the 1^st of the month so we may be able to find some out on the streets all nice and bundled up. But non-trashed boxes are always nice.

Foodie Blog

A new foodie blog is in the works. WordPress is the software we'll be using. Still getting used to how everything works on it, it's quite a change from TypePad.

I'll be chugging away at this for the better part of the rest of the week.

***UPDATE***
It's up and it's called Messy and Picky.

Signing the Lease

Me and Lady are gonna be one step closer to moving in as we meet our new landlord after work today to go over the lease and sign over a chunk of money. I'm very excited about the move, not as excited as she is to decorate the new place, but excited. I'm particularly excited in networking the place.

Where will I place the wireless router? Where will my main place to type be? I really want to upgrade to Netgear's RangeMax Wireless Router and they're even having a tradeup promotion for it as well. But I'd have to get another WiFi-G card for Lady to really use the router to its full potential. And that kind of money is just out of the question right now, oh well. I'll just have to be smarter about placing my WiFi-B Netgear Router I've had now for about two years or so. It's still pretty good.

Faith Evans @ The Trocadero

Went to see Faith Evans at the Troc last night with Lady. She put on a good show for the hour and change we were there. She came on well over an hour after her opening act finished, quite diva-ish. She's not the star she used to be and I think that was a bit much. They could've used all that time to show off some local talent. Philly's gotta have some serious underground hip-hop, it's just gotta. A missed opportunity to shine a spotlight on local talent.

But her voice was still there. Still sugary. Still sweet. Listening to her sing those sweet choruses brought me waaay back. Back to when I first started listening to hip hop. I forgot she sang a bunch of the songs she performed. Lost in all the hip hop swirling around in my head for the past decade or so. Used to Love Me, Love Like This Before, Emotional, All Night Long, Falling in Love, Soon As I Get Home. Yes, she sings a whole lot about what all R&B singers sing about, L-O-V-E, and she sings it well.

She brought me back to when Biggie first came out. The VIBE shot of Faith and Biggie in that drop top, I believe Dana Lixenberg shot that. I have that issue in a box in my bedroom in NY somewhere along with dozens of other back issues. It brought me back to the Biggie-Pac business. How they were both so on top of their games. How Faith became Biggie's estranged wifey. When she performed a song sampling Who Shot Ya?, I was kinda shocked. I didn't think she'd take it back like that.

She's still got a hell of a voice. I wonder why producers and writers aren't collaborating with her. Not wanting to get involved with a girl who was sorta in the middle of the Biggie-Pac heat? I dunno. But her singing all of those hits just like it was 1998 proves that she's still got some umph left in her vocal chords.

I miss that golden age of hip hop of the 1990s up until B.I.G. and Pac were shot. Before Wu-Tang broke up. The Fugees were making rediculous music. DMX had two platinum albums in one year. Dre and Snoop part 1. Nas dropped Illmatic. Jay-Z was putting out an album a year... I'm still living in that era of hip hop. Just a few years ago in time but so far in quality.

NBOTB: Phillyist

And by NBOTB I, of course mean New Blog on the Block — NKOTB: New Kids on the Block — duh! Phillyist officially launched, I believe, today. I have been and will continue to be a big fan of NYC's Gothamist and I'm looking forward to see what the -ist franchise has in store for Philly.

And Lady is one of the assistant editors, one more reason to take a click around.

We Got the Apartment!

Woooo Hooooo!!!

Thanks everyone for the good vibes!

Goodbye hoarding quarters and waiting for other people's laundry! Hello full sized in-unit washer and dryer!

Unfortunately goodbye to nearly daily trips to Rittenhouse Square and Sue's Produce. Not goodbye forever though, my trips there will simply be less frequent.

Goodbye to my entire apartment consisting of one room! While my studio is/was nice, having dedicated rooms to sleep, eat and live in are going to be nice.

Goodbye to my stall shower. Not that I really need a big tub since I don't like to take baths [but Lady does], after awhile, a stall just feels cramped.

Unfortunately goodbye to frequent trips to Tritone and Bob & Barbara's, my favorite bars in Philly I've discovered to date. I can't just head around the corner for The Special whenever I please. It'll just take a little while longer and with that longer walk, I can justify staying for an extra Special or two! Hello to being closer to Tattooed Mom's which is my favorite watering hole on South St.

Helllooooooo to being closer to Gianna's and their most delectable BBQ Chicken Cheesesteak, my single most favorite thing to eat in this fair city of Philadelphia. I can't imagine how fast their delivery will be to the new place, they made it about fifteen blocks in about fifteen minutes — that's counting cooking time.

Goodbye super expensive cable bills! I'll just cancel and sign up anew!

Helloooooo diswasher! It's not like the two of us generate that many dishes, but hey, who wants to do dishes?

A New Apartment?

Lady and I looked at a gorgeous apartment Wednesday afternoon. Two bedrooms, two full baths, bi-level in a gated space with a shared courtyard. We both absolutely love it. We await the call from the landlord in the morning to see if our credit checks out okay. My credit is good. So is her's. But please keep your fingers crossed and send some good karma vibes our way!