New Orleans: Love
1. Some very excellent quality time with girls I don't get to see that often
2. Dancing the night away to my new favorite cover band (I still love you, PopRocks)
3. The food, the glorious food!
4. Cool tents
5. Not being hungover on Sunday morning
6. Nola giving us deviled eggs with caviar (deviled eggs with cavair!) after seating us 45 minutes late
7. Testing out new accessories (ghetto fabulous?) in a foreign land
8. Catching a tiny glimpse of southern life. How I love those porches!
9. Jen: "Hey, let's go to the next bar." Me: "Hold on, let me finish my beer." Jen: "Don't be silly! You just take it with you."
10. All the kick-ass pictures

New Orleans: Hate
1. The San Francisco fog, which, combined with work insanity, conspired to keep one of our most important cohorts from reaching New Orleans that weekend
2. The foul, foul smell of Bourbon Street
3. Learning that it's possible to gain four pounds in three days
4. Almost passing out from heatstroke at JazzFest on Saturday afternoon
5. The complete and utter lack of beads received by one of our very brave friends (name withheld to protect the not-so-innocent) participating in an age-old Bourbon Street tradition
6. Nola giving us only ONE deviled egg with caviar each after seating us 45 minutes late
7. Rude maitre d's at restaurants where you spend $80 per person
8.The blisters on my feet
9.The dirt; the sweat; the grime
10. Having to come up with 10 "hates" for what really was an outstanding weekend
allyson krieger experienced great inner turmoil at 10:49 AM

 
Moving: Love
1. Getting rid of all sorts of old junk
2. Every room is like its own little adventure
3. Waving "hi" to the new neighbor walking his parrot and two dogs
4. Buying new and hopeful plants that have yet to encounter my forgetful ways
5. The possibility of eluding catalog mailing lists
6. Painting with Heather and Sarah!
7. Buying new stuff that matches our new paint
8. Housewarming gifts
9. Watching the cats trying to figure out what the hell just happened
10. Moving beers

Moving: Hate
1. Packing
2. Packing
3. Packing
4. Feeling homesick
5. Having to locate the nearest gas station, supermarket, and pizza place all over again
6. Worrying that the post office is slacking off on the forwarding stuff
7. Forgetting my new phone number
8. Finding someone else's old hair in the shower drain
9. The dreaded trip to Ikea
10. "Creative storage solutions"

Overall, it's a pretty good deal.
allyson krieger experienced great inner turmoil at 8:20 PM

 
My VW: Love
1. It's so much fun to drive!
2. The $16,000 price tag
3. Cup-holders that accommodate nearly any size beverage
4. A glowing, purple-lit dashboard at night
5. That the VW dealership is right down the street (see "Hate," below)
6. Undeniable cuteness

My VW: Hate
1. March of 2000: Appears to be burning excessive oil, like a quart a week
2. May of 2000: Driver's side windshield wiper flies off on the 101 during torrential downpour
3. January of 2002: Airbag light goes on -- danger! danger! Passenger's side airbag seeks immediate replacement
4. January of 2002, Part 2: Driver's side airbag replaced erroneously; repeat danger! danger!
5. July 2002: Engine light goes on, indicating some unknown part malfunction
6. Yesterday: Driver's side window falls most literally (with a loud clank) into the door and is no longer interested in rising

You can see the dilemma.
allyson krieger experienced great inner turmoil at 6:03 PM

 
San Francisco: Love
1. Tofu. Wonderful tofu!
2. Sushi. Fabulous sushi!
3. Lookouts at the Golden Gate Bridge
4. That it never gets warmer than 70 degrees
5. The Mint
6. The 6-hour drive to LA
7. Old VW vans and Beetles
8. East coast network feeds
9. A world-class commitment to blogs
10. Good times, good times

San Francisco: Hate
1. "Chicken"
2. Movie theaters' insistence on Red Vines rather than Twizzlers
3. Highway off-ramps that are also on-ramps
4. That it never gets warmer than 70 degrees
5. Our rent
6. The 50-hour drive to NYC
7. Car detailing
8. The NFL at 10AM
9. The dot-com disaster
10. Missing these girls (and these girls) grow up
allyson krieger experienced great inner turmoil at 7:17 PM

 
Because there is apparently altogether too much spare time on my hands, I decided today to start another blog. It's an idea I've had for a while: love/hate. There are so many, many things in this world to have mixed feelings about... Why should we have to choose? I even love that phrase "mixed feelings" -- a visual of emotions tossing around in an Osterizer or stirred with an ounce of vermouth. So this blog, likely to be updated once a week if I'm lucky (or typically conflicted), will be all about enduring indecisiveness and the two sides to every story. To begin:

A New Blog: Love
1. Fun with Blogger templates and boning up on my nascent HTML
2. More excuses for useless writing exercises
3. Comments!
4. An alternative to watching The Anna Nicole Show
5. Fuel for my enduring obsession with lists

A New Blog: Hate
1. Frustration factor with Blogger templates and my pathetic HTML
2. Complaints of neglect from paraphrasing, She Said and my galpal blog
3. Lack of comments!
4. Poster Child PHP errors
5. More reason for blog-doubters to question my sanity

Shouldn't this stuff be in, like, a table or something?
allyson krieger experienced great inner turmoil at 1:23 PM