As you Frederick County folks probably already know, the Voltaggio Brothers from Frederick's own Volt Restaurant are appearing on Top Chef, and get this: the ladies over at the E! Channel online are swooning over the Voltaggios and not just because they know their way around a buerre blanc.
After chatting with some friends and reading a few articles today, I think this blog is going to be moving over to WordPress shortly, where it will be reinvented. Stay tuned...
Hello everyone out there in cyberspace who might be reading this,
I thought I would give everyone a quick explanation and also a little bit of an advance warning as to why I am ending this blog on Vox.
This page will stay up for a little while as I gather up those past blog posts I wish to keep as a part of my own personal journal, but soon I will be taking it all down and will cease all blogging here on Vox.
My reasons for ending the blog are multiple:
1. I started my own business recently, and it has started to consume my entire life. People tell me this is normal for the life of a business owner. I am OK with it for the most part, as I enjoy my work. The problem is at night I feel so tired that I just want to veg out and relax with a hot bath and a book. The business is going very well; that is not the problem. The problem is I sit at the PC all day working, so when the evening arrives I find myself more interested in reading or taking walks or doing other things aside from sitting on the computer some more.
2. While this blogging platform seemed very exciting to me at first, I have to be honest: some of the mechanics of the Vox interface drive me bats to the point I avoid using it because it feels like such a pain in the ass as compared to other blogging platforms available. Even if the other platforms don't have cool free layouts like Vox does, they at least seem faster and more intuitive to me, and I'd rather have an ugly blog no one reads that is easy for me to use as my personal journal than a pretty blog that gets read but has features and controls so annoying I don't want to write anything. I'm sorry to say this stuff, as I think there are many nice things about Vox, and I have encountered such nice people here, but I just can't stand some of the mechanics.
3. Our computer at home has security on it--in fact, multiple layers of it. But we were recently infiltrated with some kind of virus that traced back to Vox. This is probably random-- I am not accusing the software or the users here of doing bad things. All I know is: the big bad virus looks like it came from something over here--perhaps a third party add-on or something. But all I know is, I need to be cautious. (By the way, another different virus seemed to come from Facebook-land, so I am not going over there very much any more, either.)
So...I suspect this is my last post here on Vox. If anyone would like to reach me, you can send an email to my Gmail which is annamatt. (I purposefully just phrased that sentence awkwardly to try to avoid Internet bots from grabbing my email address and spamming me, so I hope the phrasing was intuitive enough that anyone who wants to reach me can in fact do so.) I do not open my Gmail as often as my other email accounts, so please be patient with me, knowing the response will take me awhile.
I want to say a quick thank you to all the nice people I have met through Vox the past 2 years. I have really been touched by some of my interactions with random strangers on here and I appreciate everything you have all done for me. I am sorry to be leaving this community but I hope you will understand my situation.
Will I ever blog again? Most likely. I have blog post ideas in my head all the time; I am always seeing fun restaurants, shops, and places to blog about, and I am still a snack addict and a bath and body product addict who wants to share her fun finds with others. I think I just need a little time to mature my business and restore my schedule to an even keel.
Now, it's time to go run one of those hot baths... My back hurts from sitting at this computer so much.
I feel so badly about the Metro train accident that happened today; I cannot shake that "there but for the grace of God go I" feeling about this local tragedy. I hope all the Brunswick area commuters who use the Red Line are OK. I hope all the crash victims and their families are able to heal. It's too soon to say what caused the crash, but whatever the cause might have been, I hope lessons are learned so that future crashes here and elsewhere can be prevented.
- 6,000 lbs of free food
- Info on low/no cost health insurance
- Free clothing swap / giveaway
- CASS Open House
- Foreclosure assistance
- Free carbon monoxide detectors
- Free toothbrushes
- Free blood pressure screening
- Need a job? Talk with Workforce Services to learn about what jobs are out there and what free training you may qualify for
- WIC and Food Stamp Assistance
- Talk to Salvation Army
- Q&A about cancers and mental health referrals/issues
- Prescription discount cards
Typically when buying bath products I am drawn to sugary food scents like dulce de leche and buttercream frosting, but lately I've been wanting something cleaner and simpler, something that smells pure and natural...and I found just the thing: Chidoriya Hinoki Bath and Shower Gel. Hinoki is Japanese cypress, and this blend of hinoki and camellia oil is all natural, amazingly lightweight and clean rinsing, and imbued with a fresh, green, woodsy scent that feels both purifying and refreshing. The product is also suitable for guys because it has a masculine edge--nothing fruity or floral about it. Plus, it's nice that all the ingredients are botanical and natural, so no guilt over chemical pollutants and industrial compounds. I got my Hinoki Bath and Shower Gel from B-Glowing, but many other beauty websites carry it as well.
1. I don't get as sick as I used to. Seriously. Back when I used to commute by car 2+ hours a day, I used to come down with multiple colds each winter and also lose a lot of time throughout the year due to stress induced stomach issues. I have been a lot less sick since being my own boss.
2. I know with great certainty every day that the bathroom will be clean, unlike in the icky place I used to work in, where the nasty unkempt bathrooms scarred me for life.
3. Christmas / winter holiday parties are tax deductible.
4. If I need an office supply item like a new printer or a set of 25 spiral bound notebooks, I don't have to go up a 15-person-long chain of command defending my need for a new stapler to each person in that chain--I just run down to the local Staples store and get whatever I need so that my work can resume unimpeded as fast as possible. Gone are the days of writing proposals addressed to the micromanaging company president explaining why a labelmaker is a good investment. and not a frivolous expense.
5. All my office snacks are healthy, organic, low cal stuff bought at the local coop I belong to--no more foraging for salty and sugary snacks in the company vending machine. I have lost weight since being my own boss, too, because I chug less calrie-bomb soda than I used to in order to remain energized.
For all the struggles and long hours...being one's own boss is definitely far better than slaving away for the man.
My husband and I were parked at That Cuban Place Restaurant in Frederick munching on Cuban sandwiches, plaintains and yucca, calmly sipping our mango smoothies, when we suddenly noticed a girl in the sidewalk walking her dog on a leash...only, the "dog" was actually a dude in a black fuzzy dog costume waving at people and doing disco pointing maneuvers with style and flair. Odd. We waved at them, and the "dog" waved back, then the couple went on their merry way. Customers at the restaurant speculated about whether or not we had all just witnessed some "plushies." Ah, puppy love.
