cheaplazygirl margaritas

I am something of a margarita connoisseur and the first to admit that they are hard to make. I don’t even attempt to make legit margaritas at home. It’s kind of like how I feel about homemade salad — it requires too many ingredients for a single person to keep fresh.

There tends to be a bottle of Skinnygirl margaritas in my fridge. (I don’t like drinking alone, but Gossip Girl kind of requires alcohol at this point. WHY BLAIR WHY.) But if I’m going to a party, bringing four bottles of Bethenny’s stuff is a little expensive, and also a little lame. That’s why I love these easy margaritas for tailgating, BBQs, Tuesdays, or (imagine that) Memorial Day parties.

It’s nothing but equal parts limeade concentrate, tequila, beer, and Sprite. I think you’re technically supposed to use Corona, but nobody cares. The beer I bought for today is Lime Cactus Michelob Ultra, which sounds awful, but I’m sure it will be fine.

Oh good lord, I just looked up reviews for LCMU, and they are not good. I do not understand most of the words these people are using (who knew there were such avid beer snobs?), but there was this gem: “The heavy lime taste masks the traditional Michelob Ultra flavor very well.”

Seriously no one will know the difference.

the top 1,000 baby names

I don’t have any children, but I love the blog on the Baby Name Wizard website. The new data from the Social Security Administration on 2011 baby names is out, and Laura Wattenberg’s posts about it are fascinating. She just did this post on the fastest-rising names, which usually reflects pop culture in interesting and unexpected ways.

I thought surely Pippa would be a big hit last year, but apparently there just weren’t that many takers.

Among the big-bump names were Aria (which Laura attributes to Game of Thrones), Mila (like Kunis), and Milania (like Giudice, on The Real Housewives of New Jersey, or Donald Trump’s wife). Weird, right? (Oh, also, this might be a good time to point out that no, I’m not @thefauxmilaniag on Twitter.)

What’s interesting is that even if there is a pop culture connection, none of these are names so unique that they’re exclusively associated with celebrities or characters — like Pippa or Suri, neither of which has ever cracked the top 1,000.

The only celebrity infant connection Laura notes is Harper — the second-fastest rising name, given to you-know-who last year. I had heard it a lot, even before the Beckhams gave it to their baby, so I don’t think it’s exclusively related to Posh’s name choice.

I still wish they had named her Santa.

What is this for?

So I used to use this Web site to document my theories about television so that later on, after I was right, I could point here and say “I told you so.” It didn’t happen all that often.

Now, I’m going to use it to talk about all kinds of things I like, such as:

  • Cake and cake frosting.
  • My dog, Freckles.
  • Many things on the Internet. Like this.
  • Fringe. Oh my God, Fringe.
  • The Olympics!
  • Downton Abbey parodies.
  • Kate Middleton’s hair.
  • What Kate Middleton will wear at the Olympics.
  • Freckles’s and my Halloween costumes.
  • Freckles’s and my costumes for my forthcoming Gossip Girl-themed birthday party. In December. I will be Blair and she will be Dorota. Or maybe she’ll be Blair and I’ll be Dorota.
  • Country music and my pink cowgirl boots.
  • Nicole Kidman. (Nope.)
  • Tiny Tower.

…you get the idea.

Welcome and hello!