Off The Desk 11/10/26

Hello and welcome back to Off The Desk on this Tuesday morning. I'm Kaylee Collins. I'm Julia O'Keefe. And I'm Chris Pazakis. Tuesday, happy Tuesday. Happy Tuesday. Yeah, it's a little chilly out there this morning. Nothing like last week for us. No, it's definitely feeling like November again. And it's only going to get colder as the week goes on. Likely seeing our first stretch of just high temperatures in the 40s as we go down towards Towards the end of the week and into the weekend. I did even bring up the first time of speaking about maybe a little bit of wet snow in the Berkshires. But for many of us, it looks to just be plain old cold rain by the end of the week. But it is a sign of the season's beginning to change. We are in November, so. The talk of, you know, cold and snowflakes is not out of the question this time of year. Right. Yeah. But yeah, today should be nice. And tomorrow looks good as well. I know a lot of communities are doing some events for Veterans Day. So it should be a good day for that. But yeah, weather's pretty quiet until the end of the week. Yeah, it's going to hit us. I feel like yesterday even was chillier than, I mean, obviously than what we've been feeling, but I felt it more significantly because of the contrast. Oh, for sure. We were saying that last week. It's going to be like that. I feel like if we didn't have temperatures in the 70s last week, this wouldn't be feeling as cold. But since you went a whole week with temperatures like in the 70s and warm, even one day near 80, and then you just drop back down to reality like that, you know, it's going to feel a lot colder than it is. As we were talking, I'm just thinking I need to get a winter jacket for Eva and like mittens and things like that because she has light jackets. But as we head into the colder months, one thing that's difficult is that you can't keep your baby in a coat in their car seat. Because apparently it makes the car seat straps not tight enough. It's not effective. So you'll have to just bring blankets. Bring your baby to the car, take them out of the coat, blanket over them, or put a blanket over them that's thick enough to keep them warm from wherever you're going to the car. I'll cross that bridge. There you go. She's got a little snowsuit for her. I just bought a Santa hat. So I can take little pictures of her around Christmas time. That'll be fun. Nice. That's the plus side of, I guess, this winter is that it's her first winter. Yeah. So when it snows for the first time, or like significantly Christmas and all that, it's fun. Lots of exciting things. Cool. Yep. So dealing with the cold weather, did that put a damper on your activities over this weekend? No, it did not. It wasn't that chilly. It was nice. Yeah. So Friday, well, I left here after the news. I guess we can talk about this too. I went to go and see the regional chamber of super 60 awards. Yeah. So that was a really nice event. There were tons of people there recognizing a bunch of business leaders around the area for their accomplishments throughout the year. Um, tons of award recipients and yeah, it was a really nice event to recognize them. A great, great keynote speaker. Um, Wilbert West, she's a motivational speaker, podcaster from the area. And yeah, he, he really gave that empowering, like motivational style keynote, which was, um, really great and refreshing to hear. Um. And then yeah, I presented the awards. So congrats to all the award winners. It was great to see a lot of familiar faces in the room too, from working obviously, around the community with these people highlighting their stories, but also some people that I just knew from my personal life too. So it was nice. It was a really nice afternoon. And then from there, I left and went to New York City, wasted no time. But yeah, I had a really nice weekend. Friday night, I hung out with my college friends and I hadn't seen them in like six months or so. So that was really nice. Then Saturday, my friend had a little birthday party and we did. It's a trend right now. I hadn't even seen it before. Sprinkle embroidery. Oh, yes. Everyone. Yeah. Everyone gets a little cake and she's super crafty. She's so crafty. And. Everyone gets a cake. It's like a personal cake from Trader Joe's. And she got a bunch of sprinkles. And we all made little designs on the cake. That's cute. It was fun. Mine, you know, I had a vision. Did I execute it? Probably not. I made like a little ocean scene with a sailboat and a sun. Do you have a picture? I do. I do have a photo. Not to put you on the spot. No, like it's fine. But some of these girls, they were so good. And mine was not very good. So yeah, this was my, this was my sailboat. There it is. I don't think it's that bad. That's pretty good. Guys, some of them were so good though. Like one girl's here. I can see if I can zoom in. Shout out Allie because she made this little duck. Like be so for real. All right, that's pretty good. And the fruit, too. Were they just, was that free-handed, or did you have an inspo pick? Oh, they're inspo picks, but then, yeah. Oh, my friend Jackie made this butterfly, and she was like, no one's going to be able to tell what this is. Oh, and then there's a wiener dog under it. Look. Oh, my gosh. That's a really good butterfly. So, yeah, mine was on the lower end of the... Of the good ones. Don't you hate when you're doing something like that and you're feeling very confident? You're like, wow, this is coming together pretty well. And then you, like, look at everybody else's and you're like, I didn't actually even really try. Like, I just threw something together. Yeah, I did try. I just didn't. Wait, this one also? SpongeBob. Oh, that's a good one. Oh, that's like, come on. Yeah, everyone really. Really, really, like, locked in. There was a lot of competition there. Yeah, there was a lot of people. But it was a lot of fun. Yeah, there were about 13 of us, I think. So it was really nice. We just chatted and did that for about, like, four hours. So that's fun. Really fun, yeah. And then Saturday night, hung out with some of Noah's friends. That was nice. Then Sunday during the day, I made it to a Broadway show. I was wondering if you were going to get there. Yeah, we got up and... We went right to the box office and waited in a pretty long line. I was getting nervous, but we were able to get tickets. There was a big group. Eight of us went and we got they do the rush hour tickets. You just go the day of. So we're able to get tickets for forty five dollars, which is like really good. And I was able to secure them for everybody. So I was really proud of myself. I was like, I got this, guys. And the show was so good. We wanted to go because. The guy who was playing the lead, he's the swing-in, so not the original caster, but he's the understudy, so goes in when someone's off or whatever. He went to Villanova with us for a year. Wow. So I never crossed paths with him, but my college roommate, who was also there, she had a class with him or something because he was originally a pre-med biochem major. Oh, wow. He was going to be a doctor, yeah, and then left Villanova to pursue Broadway. Wow. And then there he is. I mean, there he is. Like, star guys on Broadway. That's cool. So it was really cool that we were able to go to a performance that he was in because he swings in, you know, randomly. Yeah. So that was awesome. And he was so good. We'd been following him on TikTok and everything. He posts videos of all of his stuff. He was so good. The show itself was so good. It's a little weird. It's about, I knew it was about a band. I didn't know that there were vampires. Oh, okay. So it's about, yeah, this family moves to this small town in California from Arizona. And the kid's just trying to figure out where he belongs and ends up befriending this band. They're kind of like a punk rock band. And then it turns out. They're inviting him to join them and being very, very welcoming. They're vampires. Oh, God. So there's like, yeah, a lot. A lot of. Yeah. A lot of. It's a little creepy, but the special effects were super cool. They were flying. The lighting was awesome. Yeah, they were. There was one scene where all the vampires were sleeping in their den and they're all like hanging upside down, completely still. It was it was. That's impressive. It was really cool. I'd never seen anything like that on stage before. So. It was awesome. I did a little Broadway show. I haven't gone in like years. They're so good. Yeah. They're so good. I loved it. And now, of course, you go to one show, my entire Instagram and TikTok feed is like all this. But I'm getting more of the lore behind the story and the actors. So it was really cool. It was a super fun weekend. And then, yeah, I was off yesterday just for a much needed rest day. Yes. After a lot of traveling, we got home late Sunday night. So probably wasn't going to make the middle of the night. Wake up. But yeah, we're back. That's great. Yeah, it was nice. That sounds like a lot of fun. It was nice. Did you guys have any weekend highlights? I mean, we haven't really caught up yet. No, we talked about it yesterday. Chris and I had very low-key weekends. Yes. Yeah, it was very low-key. The only thing I had going on this weekend I had the baptism on Sunday morning. Oh, that's right. That was it. Yeah, Friday, hung out, watched a movie. I'll be sad. Saturday. Didn't really do much. yeah, My brother came up that late afternoon to stay over that night for the baptism on Sunday morning and watched football and unfortunately watched the Patriots. yeah, Yeah, that was rough. Nick was on yesterday and he gave his takes on, you know. Oh, the game. Yeah. That was a little bit rough. We were yeah. watching it on the train and then turned it off because it was also losing service, obviously, like in the train, but it was to give up. It wasn't even worth it. Yeah. I did watch the finale of Love is Blind on Friday night. Bobby and I watched that. So we haven't watched the reunion yet, which I know aired on Sunday night later. Yeah. For us, it was at nine. Yeah, I've been trying not to watch the spoilers that have inevitably come up on my social media feeds, but maybe I'm going to try to watch it tonight. It could be something. Well, you said you want to watch it with Bobby, but it could be something that you put on in the background. Oh, really? The reunion, for me personally, it was nice to see everyone maybe tie some bows on their breakups. But other than that, there wasn't anything that you probably haven't seen revealed. You know what I was thinking, and I feel like I say this every time I watch Love is Blind and especially the reunion, is like, imagine going through an experience like that. You break up with somebody. You guys do not speak for a year or over a year. This was a year and a half. A year and a half. Because they filmed it in March of 2022. And then you have to go and air out your dirty laundry or get closure on something from a year and a half ago in front of like a national audience. Yeah. You can't hide facial expressions there. Yeah. Everyone is. I feel like I wouldn't even. I would just be like, I moved on. Right. This is old news. Yeah. But they have to do it. They do it. It's part of it, and it is what the viewers want. You want to see, where are they now? Yeah, that is true. We'll have to see what happens. I think there were some rumors about some of the couples at a recent watch party. Who knows? Julia and I are into it. Chris doesn't even know what we're talking about. Oh my gosh. That's cool, though. Yeah, it's just entertaining. So that was my weekend. I just watched that, hung out with family. Thank you, Emily. Nice. That was pretty much it. There we go. Cool. All right. Good time for a break. Yeah. We'll come back with, I don't know, something going on in the news. All right. Welcome back to Off the Desk on this Tuesday morning, November 10th. Well, I guess also afternoon if you're watching this in the afternoon. True. Forget that this airs, you know, all day. All day long. Um, and Anywhere and everywhere. But, yeah, it's November 10th. Today's National Vanilla Cupcake Day. Are you guys vanilla cupcake fans? Yeah, I would go for it over a chocolate. Really? I think I would go for a chocolate. I'm torn. I like a funfetti. I think I'd go vanilla. Sorry, chocolate. But if I could do chocolate with a vanilla icing, I'd probably do it. I like that. Like a vanilla cupcake with a vanilla frosting, like icing, I'm not a huge fan of. I like yellow cake with chocolate frosting. Yeah, that's good. That's a good combo, right? But anyway, yeah, if you like cupcakes, red velvet cupcakes are really good, too. Those are really good. Especially if there's like a cream cheese filling. Oh, yeah. Cool. So it's that. No segue here because I don't know how to tie this to the Antarctica marathon, but we obviously have to point out what's on the national day calendar. But yeah, so we had this story in our sports block this morning, but I actually saw a post about it yesterday to the Antarctica ultra marathon happened over the weekend. And that is a. This is a... Hold on. Where's the actual distance? Oh, I didn't write it down. Shoot. Isn't it? Oh, it's 100 miles. It's 100 miles. It is, in fact, 100 miles. I think ultramarathon can also be 50, so that's why I was like, is it 50 or 100? But no, this was 100 in Antarctica. Um, Yeah, the event took place, obviously, in extreme cold conditions, reaching negative 11 degrees Fahrenheit. I can't even breathe. I think a lot of people do this one because they want to do one on all seven continents. So that's why this is a thing because that just is beyond me, but obviously an amazing feat for people who do it. That's wild. A Canadian ultra marathon runner, Stephanie Case, she made history by becoming the first woman to complete the 100 mile race nonstop. That's awesome. I mean, come on. That's insane. That is pretty wild. Come on. These people must really vigorously train for that. Oh, yeah. And I imagine the training has to be in some, you know. Harsh conditions. Yeah. Very harsh conditions. And also, like, your mental skills, too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She finished second overall with a time of 17 hours, 31 minutes, and 59 seconds. Wow. That's crazy. 101. Wild. Um Oh, and the guy who won, won for the second year in a row, setting a new continental record of 17 hours, 2 minutes, and 24 seconds. I wonder what your recovery is like after that. Like how long your body is feeling the effects of 100 miles. you. In negative 11 degrees. Sure not good, but obviously not bad enough. The guy did it again. He did it again. So maybe that wasn't a case where you're checking it off for all seven continents. He's beating his own record, yeah. But that wasn't the only, I guess, highlight or so of the race. This is the story that we actually had. There was a humanoid robot entered into the ultra marathon, but he did not make it very far. The robots' battery died just about two miles into the race. So it was an unfortunate end for the robots' race journey. But yeah, he just he did it among or it did it among, I guess, that the group of human competitors, which there are roughly 25 runners. So 25 people doing this in Antarctica. And they had the robot in a jacket and a helmet, but the power drain was able to accelerate in the freezing temperature. So I think it was because of the cold that it didn't make it very far. I think it's fine to not have any robots participating in races. Yeah, how would you feel if you thought you were doing so great, you're going, and then a robot just comes speeding past you? I'd be like, of course. Of course they're going to, you know, they don't have any of the human. They don't have anything. Like anything human characteristics or anything. They don't have to push through any physical pain or mental blocks. They don't have any boundaries. Yeah. Make them whatever you want. I would not be impressed. I would not be impressed by a humanoid robot completing an ultra marathon. Yeah. If it's what they're programmed to do, they're going to do it. Yeah. It doesn't get frostbite. It's just the emotional, mental mountains you have to climb to be able to do something like that. A robot is just programmed to do it, so it's not impressive. Yeah, I don't know exactly all they were trying to accomplish by putting this robot there. Maybe it was an experiment or they were testing equipment or things like that. Whatever they were testing for a thermal jacket clearly didn't work if the battery's still drained. But I get it if it's one thing to test in those harsh conditions, but why do we have to put it up against humans? I feel like it wasn't too long ago, Chris, when we talked on Off the Desk about the robot games that they had, where all these humanoid robots were competing against each other, and that became kind of a whole separate competition. Whereas this, it's like you're just thrown into the mix. Yeah. Interesting. Is it the future? Yeah, we'll see more of it. Yeah, sure. Next few years. Yeah. So that was that. Yeah, but shout out to all those runners, obviously. I mean. Yeah, I mean. Obviously, there was recently the New York City Marathon, too, and there was that story of the runner who sadly died shortly before, I think, the completion of the run. Yeah, she was at mile 24. Yeah, and that was, I don't know the, I can't pronounce the full name of the condition, but I think it's known as rhabdo. Yeah. I think of that now for something like an ultramarathon. Oh, yeah. So that, that's why I said the training must be very, very. deliberate and intense because that is a condition. It's rare, but it can happen if you're not properly training, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. That sparked a lot of conversation because there are people out there who, you know, We'll just go, Oh, I could run it. Yeah. And no matter what type of athlete you are, even if you're a very high level athlete, like this girl was a division one field hockey player. She was a runner. This was not her first marathon. Um, so it can be brought about really at any time, but, um, yeah, basically the condition is your muscles start to deteriorate and they release, they fall apart and they release a toxin into your bloodstream that stops your heart. It affects your kidneys too, I guess. So, very scary. It's very scary. Yeah, obviously, train. It requires a lot to be able to do this, but also a great goal. And I envy people who do, but in obviously the time and effort to train and do something like that. There are a lot of awesome stories that came out of that marathon too. Yeah, that's true. The New York City Marathon, I feel like, is always a very, yeah, like, I don't know, there's something in the air there. The stories that come out and stuff. It's kind of like inspiring. I mean, you get to see the whole city without waiting in traffic, right? You want to put up yourself. Sure, yeah. It's cool. Actually, the friends that I was with this weekend, two of them signed up to do it. Next year, yeah. Neither of them have done a full, actually, well, my friend Lauren has done a half Ironman before. So she's, she's, yeah, a runner. She's a cyclist. She's all the things, but she wants to do the full marathon. And then my friend Abby's done a half before. So she'll be working up towards the full. Has your sister ever done a marathon? My sister did the half. She said she's a runner. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if she'll ever do a full marathon. Oh, no, she needs to lock in if that's the case. I say that as if I'm like, I'm training for a 5K, you know? It's fine. Yeah, you know? Yeah, so that was sparking a lot of conversation, as you said. Another thing that people are talking about, at least that I've seen on my algorithm online, is that SKIMS, which is the, I guess, like clothing line. That Kim Kardashian and is it just Kim or is there some of her sisters, too? I don't know. I've just known as Kim as Kim's Kim's brand. They released an advent calendar that I think it was going for one hundred and forty eight dollars. And some people made reviews like review videos as they were opening up the advent calendar and were very disappointed and surprised to see that they were getting items like hair ties and key chains and kind of like low market value. products when they were expecting like skims is known for they have like lines of undergarments and workout clothing and kind of like the material is supposed to be a little bit more high-end they have pricier items so this everybody was complaining like this is what I got in my skims advent calendar and it's not just limited to skims there are other fashion retailers that Have done a similar thing where they're releasing advent calendars or something promotional for the holidays and are giving this like similar types of products. So that had people up in an uproar talking about this is what we get. Yeah. For that cost too, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I, it's funny. I saw a TikTok actually this morning, a TikTok kind of making fun of this whole thing, but someone was sweeping out from under their couch and they got a bunch of hair clips and scrunchies and hair ties from under their couch. And the caption said, I'm so happy with my Skims advent calendar findings this year. Yeah, people saying, like, Kim was cleaning out her car. Yeah, it was. I mean, it's, yeah, you never know what you're going to get. And I think that's the excitement and the draw to purchasing these things. But then also that leaves room for clearly some disappointment. Yeah. I think I'll have to double check. I think Skims has responded. I think they released a statement. It might have been yesterday. So I can double check on that. We can take a break and come back with that exciting update. Sounds good. All right. We're back here on this Tuesday morning. I know we're all probably waiting for this update, but I did indeed find that Kim Kardashian did respond. Skims pulled the item from its website and they personally contacted all buyers to offer them a full refund or they could have gotten Skims store credit as well. So I feel like that's actually a pretty good response as a If you got. That much backlash about something rather than, I guess, trying to make an excuse for it. Yeah. They listened to what people had to say and responded. Yeah, store credit. I mean... $148 store credit. Yeah, like you could actually get a workout set or something, you know? Probably an item. Yeah. One singular item. You know, that's... If people were looking for that in the advent calendar. Yeah, we were saying... So obviously those advent calendars are, they're going to be hit or miss, but that's the excitement of it. Chris, you mentioned you like your chocolate ones and that's the way to go. I was like, I'll stick with that one or like, I don't know, the beer or wine advent calendars, but I'm always the, uh, the chocolate one. I just think it's such a classic. Yeah, it is totally. I feel like, you know, we could talk about this with a lot of different things as it relates to Christmas and the holidays, but this gets kind of out of hand at a certain point Like keeping it simple with a... Chocolate advent calendar, that's kind of what it started as, you know, just to lead up to the excitement of the Christmas holiday, you know. Yeah. You can make your own advent calendar. Yeah. It's lots of options out there. Yes, there are. The holiday season is fast approaching. You could make your own. You can make your own. It could be like a craft. Yeah, we have like a wooden thing and it has all the doors. Yeah. And you just put, they're cute. They're all decorated different. And growing up, my parents would put candy in each one every morning. So we would run before school and grab a piece of candy. That's cute. Before getting on the bus. Yeah, that's fun. You could even make like a felt one, like out of certain fabric. You can't really hold things inside them. But if you did like for like a little kid, like a picture or something that's like fun related to the holiday, you could do that. I kind of want to try to get into doing some Christmas crafts. I think it would be kind of fun if you made one, like I made one for Maddie and she made one for me. Oh, yeah. Whatever makes you think of the other person. Yeah, and then every day they open it and see what you put in there for them. It's like it could be a candy, it could be like some little thing you buy them, or a little note that says something to them. I don't know. Yeah, that's a good idea. Oh, yeah. I don't know why I was thinking like a funny meme or something. A meme every day. That's a good one. Oh, a meme advent calendar. Yeah, just like something funny. Right, why not? What makes you think of them, whatever. Sure. Start your day off. On a good note, a little bit of laughter is always the best. All right. Well, that's all the time we have today. We'll be back tomorrow with a Weather Wednesday episode. Yeah. Miss it. See you then.