Why Charlotte, Why?

So Austin is home to the biggest Whole Foods in the country, and Susan and I have been having lunch there this week (yes, every day) and I'm obsessed with it. I've always loved Whole Foods, but when I get exposure to such a fabulous one, it makes me angry at Charlotte for not having one. I mean Winston-Salem has one for god's sake. That's not even a real city. What's the deal, Charlotte? Susan must have wondered aloud 30 times while we were eating today "I wonder what we can do to get one of these in Charlotte." And I couldn't agree more.

And no, Trader Joe's IS NOT an adequate Whole Foods substitute.

Obsession: Wii

Well, I had to leave for Austin Monday night, which is actually good because I needed some Wii detox time. I didn't realize it until Monday morning, but the console keeps a running total of the time you spend playing it daily, and when I looked at it, I realized that I am now one of those video game freak people.

We did go to the lake on Sunday afternoon and we did dinner out there, which was lovely. The weather was great, sunny and not too hot, and the water is up to 78 degrees. It was much fun. But not as fun as Wii.

Blake and I have become obsessed with the Wii Golf game. He is going to get the Tiger Woods Golf game either for my birthday, or before then if he can't control himself, because the Wii Golf game only has 9 holes...and it's so fun. You have to actually swing the controller to hit the ball and whatnot. We're getting progressively better at it. It's a bit like playing Golden Tee at the bar, but way better because it's in your own home and you get to swing the club.

I haven't had much luck finding Wii Fit for myself, so I'm hoping Blake will come through on that. We took a walk Saturday afternoon to Target and Best Buy and we played Rock Band a bit because it was on display. We were awful, but it was fun. So I definitely think I'll order that when it comes out for Wii next month.

And now, before I dedicate this blog to Wii rather than my life in general, I will briefly discuss Austin. It is hot as sin here, but the client has their shit together, so it's not all bad. Susan and I aren't flying out until Saturday morning (lame) but we have a nice little date planned for Friday night whereby we will go to fancy dinner (that we will run through on our expense report) and then see the Sex and the City Movie. Yay!

Ok back to work before Susan murders me.

Lesson learned: I shop when I'm angry

So I mentioned Speed Street in my last post...well apparently, the street parking that I have a city issued permit for can't be used during this debacle...and I was walking home from work yesterday and noticed that my car, and all of the other cars that were parked in the area, had been towed. It was after 5 at this point, so there was basically nothing that I could do to retrieve it. So I have to deal with that today. Bye bye $100 birthday cash from Blake's family. I was hoping to spend that on something not awful.

So anyway, I was obviously pissed about the car towing, so I decided to take a walk to release some steam. I wanted to walk to the new Best Buy and figure out what time it opened on Saturday so that I could be a Wii-buying-psycho. It's about 1.25 miles and it was really nice out yesterday, so it was a nice walk. And then I get there...and the Best Buy is OPEN. So I go in there an amass nearly $600 worth of Wii and accessories (thank you, tax rebate. I was really just doing my civic duty and putting that back into the economy, right?). And then I realize I have to walk home...and I'm scared that I'll get robbed if I walk all the way back with expensive electronics...fortunately Carrie was coming uptown and I was on her way so she picked me up and dropped me off at home.

Seriously, Wii is awesome. Even though there were several games I couldn't get because they were out of stock (Wii Fit, Mario Kart, Dance Dance Revolution, and Rock Band are officially on my birthday list), it was awesome. Before Blake got home, I set it up and played the Karaoke Revolution American Idol game...good times! And then after Blake ate dinner (and I had some cereal...I literally forgot to eat dinner because I was having so much fun) we played some Wii Sports. Before Blake had come home, I had made our Miis...which are little characters that you design to look like you and you play as them in some games. Blake's looks EXACTLY like him, it's hilarious. We played tennis, golf, bowling and baseball against each other, and then we boxed against the computer (I only got one nunchuck controller, which was necessary for boxing...we need to get another one so we can box each other). I was actually sweating at times. And it was ridiculously fun. And I haven't even opened Super Paper Mario, Mario Party 8, or Wii Play (more mini games like darts, pool, etc) yet.

So I'm in a much better mood now, regardless of my towed car, although it's going to be a bitch to pick it up today. And Blake got a speeding ticket on his way home last night, so we had a bad car day yesterday. But the Wii even put him in a better mood. It is awesome. I can barely contain myself at work right now because I want to go home and play games. Yay! :)

where have I been?

I haven't been a very good blogger lately. It's like every time I think to myself "you should update your blog" I then think "but I have nothing to say." I've been pretty busy-boring these past few weeks. When my Mom left on Mothers' Day, I had about 4 days to myself before Blake's parents came to town, and I was mostly lazy. I need a day off I think. So I may disappear from the office a bit early tomorrow if I get all of my shit done first.

I've been terrible at working out, which is bad. And now it's effing Speed Street in Charlotte for the weekend because of the NASCAR race, which means that it's almost impossible to walk around uptown due to all of the food and vendors and concert nonsense set up. It sounds fun, and it is when you don't have to avoid it to walk to work in the morning. And I couldn't even come up with a creative way to get to the gym yesterday, so it was a great excuse to be lazy and not go.

The new Best Buy that is a mile from my house right by the new Target is opening on Saturday, and as a Rewards Zone member, I was invited to a secret event from 6-8 last night and I botched BIG TIME. I want a Wii so bad, and they actually had them in stock, and I didn't buy one. I just couldn't pull the trigger. It didn't help that they didn't have Mario Kart, Dance Dance Revolution or Wii Fit in stock, because I want all of those games. If I was smart, I'd have bought the console and some Mario Party to get by. Because now I'm looking online, and the consoles are nowhere to be found. The store officially opens Saturday at 10am, so I may have to be one of those psychos waiting for the door to open so I can get my hands on a Wii. Blake went with me and offered to buy the console for me for my birthday, but then he said I couldn't open it until June 18th and I decided that I'd die if it was in my house and I couldn't use it, so I said no. Boo.

I haven't been cooking much lately due to the busy-ness. And I've been bad for lunch because we had horribly boring training for the past two days at work, so they catered lunch in and I figured there was no point in buying lunch food this week when I'd only need it for like two days. Monday I was good and just got a sandwich from the deli downstairs, so I'm going to try to do that again today. Tomorrow I have a date with the lovely Kirstin Washam, during which I will be jealous of how much she's allowed to eat because she's all pregnant and whatnot :)

I have to fly to Austin on Monday, so this weekend my goals are just to find some time to relax, probably go out to the lake, hit the mall and probably best buy, and do a bunch of cleaning and laundry. The boring life continues. Boo.

Chopping my hair off, and motivation loss

I left work early yesterday to get my hair cut. It had been getting WAY too long, and was in need of a cut for over a month when I was too busy to get it done. I heart it. My hair does exactly what I want it to when it is above my shoulders. I'll probably become angry when it starts growing though. I'll post pics soon, I forgot to unload my camera today.

Also, this happens about once a month (I wonder if laziness is related to my girlie cycle), but it's now the week that I have zero gym motivation. I'm still being really good about my food intake, but I have no motivation to go to the gym. What happened yesterday and today was this: I like to go to the gym after I eat my lunch as a break from work, but then I get consumed by my work until it's silly to leave for two hours because by the time I got back it would be like an hour before I'd go home. So I decide to go after work. But after work, all I want to do is go home and change and read and make dinner. Yesterday I even cleaned the railing and windows on the balcony instead of going to the gym (when I'd rather clean than do something else, it's serious).

So I'm letting myself off the hook today, but tomorrow and Friday I MUST hit the gym at lunch. Blake's family will be around this weekend, so I'm sure there will be a lot of food involved. And a bathing suit, which I'm not particularly excited about. Yes, I haven't gained weight in over three years, but I haven't really lost any either. I decided that I really should consider getting a trainer at the gym once or twice a week once my travel dies down so that maybe I can actually drop a few pounds. I have to price that. If I did a half hour of strength training with a trainer twice a week, it would probably help things. Provided that I could get my ass in gear on doing cardio as well. Plus it would force me to actually GO to the gym.

Ok, I'm out of here. I think I will go to Ulta and buy things to do my new hair with. That's an adequate gym substitute, right? I hate me.

Weekend Activities

This weekend was busy, but I got a lot done. My mom was in town. Saturday we went to the uptown Farmers' Market which was fabulous. We then got pedicures and went to the mall where I purchased a number of items. I did not, however, purchase the Coach bag that I planned to buy. I went to look at it again, and I like it and everything, but I don't know if I $600 like it. I'm going to wait for my birthday next month and reevaluate.

I bought two of the three pairs of Also shoes that I mentioned in my post last week: the yellow ones and the slingbacks. I didn't get the peep toe pumps because I got these at Steve Madden instead. They had a buy one get one 50% off thing going on and my mom was buying one pair, so I felt that I needed to get one too so we could both save some money. Here they are:

I couldn't give my money away at Banana Republic unfortunately (the navy blue dress I wanted looked terrible on. There was something really weird and poofy going on in the back). But I got this little pink and black number for $50 at the Ann Taylor Loft. I'm wearing it today without the ribbon belt, with the straps attached, and with a 3/4 sleeve black BR cardigan over it. I'm liking it.


I also got this green dress at Ann Taylor for Jessie Stew's wedding in a few weeks. I'm going to summer it up by adding the below jewelry that I got at Aldo and my new yellow shoes. You all know how I feel about dresses that enable me to wear my regular bras underneath, so this was clearly a winner. I'm pretty pumped up to go to Charleston for the festivities. It's gong to be a fun one.


Sunday, we went to Home Depot and started pricing the cabinets that we want to add in our dining area. It's looking like if we install them ourselves (and by ourselves I mean Blake, my dad, and possibly Susan's husband because he's an architect and he knows what he's doing), it'll cost roughly what our mortgage-interest-related tax refund was, so I think we should do it. As long as I can convince Blake that a built-in kegerator is asinine (he's 26. it is the worst idea ever, and it will destroy value we're attempting to add to our home), I think we'll do it. I'm pretty pumped for added cabinet space so that I can buy more appliances.

When my mom left, I made this recipe for dinner: Cheesy Baked Tortellini. I wanted to make something casserole-like because I'm going to want to eat leftovers tonight after Yoga since I'll get home too late to cook something new. I also needed marinara sauce for the recipe, so I tried this recipe out of my Everyday Italian cookbook. It's pretty good. Adding carrots and celery to marinara sauce is a little bit weird to me, but at least I'm sneaking in veggies to Blake's food so that he'll actually eat them.

That's about it. I slacked on the gym this weekend, so I'm heading back in full force today. Goal: to not pass out at the end of Yoga this week. Awesome.

Birthday Dinner

Blake's actual birthday is on Friday, but he's leaving tonight to go to Vegas with his friends for EW's bachelor party (God help us) so we celebrated last night. For my birthday, I usually insist on going out to dinner, but Blake hates going out to dinner because it's unhealthy and expensive, so he prefers that I cook something nice for him instead. I usually throw together some of his favorites and add dessert. Last year I made lemon chicken thighs, for example. But I wanted to try something different this year.

I broke out my new Everyday Italian cookbook and found this recipe for chicken piccata. Blake likes chicken piccata because it's lemony and because he likes capers. But I had never made it before. The recipe was easy to follow though, and it came out pretty good. My only suggestion if you are making this recipe is that you use only like half of the capers it suggests. I was already cutting the recipe in half because it was only for the two of us, and there were just way too many capers. I like them, but they're strong and salty, so I wound up throwing a lot of them away. For side dishes, I kept it simple with plain, Parmesan risotto and roasted asparagus (throw asparagus in a jelly roll pan with salt, pepper, garlic, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar; roast at 425 for 10 minutes).

For dessert, I made some chocolate mousse. Nothing fancy though. Blake's mom had sent us a box of chocolate mousse mix a while back because it's his favorite, so I just whipped (ha) that up. What was exciting about it is that I finally got to use the wire whip attachment on my stand mixer to make it. Apparently, chocolate mousse is basically slightly stiffer, chocolate flavored whipped cream. I threw some strawberries on top for show. I was so excited to break in my whip attachment. I have now successfully used all three of my mixer attachments. Yay.

I got Blake a Flyers jersey he's been talking about for months as a gift. He of course wanted the official jersey that the players wear, customized with his favorite player's info and a "C" on the front for captain. He was really excited about it. He figured I was getting him something Flyers-related, but he didn't think I'd be able to pull this jersey thing off correctly. He was borderline shocked that I knew which player to get and to get the "C" on the front and to get the new jersey (apparently they still sell last year's even though the team doesn't wear them anymore. I didn't even see those). It was pretty easy actually. I just found the most expensive customizable jersey on NHL.com and figured that was the right one. It was pricey, but he wore it around the house for about an hour and really liked it, so it was worth it. All in all, it was a pretty good birthday night.

Laughing Cow cheese

As you probably know, I have a bit of what I like to call a "cheese obsession." Every day, Blake challenges me to not eat cheese of some sort, and every day I fail. I eat something cheesy every single day. I think that's the Italian in me.

Anyway, at the Teeter this weekend, I was looking for some cheese for an afternoon snack. I had wanted the baby Gouda rounds from Babybel, but they were out. I briefly considered the original flavor, but decided to pass. Then I remembered the commercial I always see for the Laughing Cow Light cheeses. My Teeter has a fantastic cheese collection, so I was able to find those pretty easily. I purchased the French Onion flavor and moved on.

The good thing about this spreadable cheese is that it comes in 8 wedges (and you know how I loves me some forced portion control) that are each only 35 calories. So when I spread a wedge over a sesame Wasa wafer, I got a delicious 100 calorie snack. I will say that it didn't really taste like French Onion so much, but it was good and it satisfied my cheese craving for a lot less calories and fat than my normal gourmet cheese snack. But I do like to mix it up a little, so I'm hoping to run into the Babybel Gouda next week (only 80 calories each. Yay!).

Ooh, the pain.

So the past two weeks while I was out of town, I went to the crappy hotel gym and did cardio, but I did no strength training whatsoever. The first week, I brought my resistance bands and everything, but I never could make myself use them. By the second week I had just given up.

Yesterday, already sore from my first bout with Yoga in 4 months, I started lifting again. It was fine when it was happening. And then I woke up this morning.

You know how the pain is worst on the second day after you do something? Well I'm in my second day with my Yoga pain and my first day with my lifting pain and it is bad. I fully intended to go to Yogilates class tomorrow night, but if I feel like this I'm definitely skipping it. I know the pain means I'm doing something, but that doesn't make me like it.

I was doing a pretty kick ass job on my carb restriction yesterday until dinner. Blake's grandparents were passing through town, so they took us to dinner. I looked over the menu and tried to get the least horrible thing that I could eat (I'm quite picky), but it was too hard. I had it narrowed down to a turkey melt w/ fries (I think fries would probably be the absolute worst thing to eat), a spinach pizza (I would eat the entire thing, and that's a lot of dough and cheese), and proscuitto and cheese ravioli. I went with the ravioli, knowing that at the most there would be 8 ravioli on my plate so I'd have some kind of portion control. I only ate 6 of them, and one piece of french bread with our mussel appetizer. Not too terrible. And delicious. We went to the Village Tavern and it reminded me of Wake. Good times.

Sometimes things just go my way

So you all know how I feel about price adjustments. The only thing that is better then the all-important price adjustment is when you see something you really want but you don't buy it and then it goes on sale. This weekend my sister and I were at the mall and we went into Aldo (love). I saw two pairs of shoes that I wanted, as well as a pair that I already have in one color but it's so comfortable I want it in another color too. But I was not prepared to drop $300 on shoes due to my overwhelming amount of BR purchases of late. My sister got three pairs of shoes. I don't know how she can afford them. But then again, I shopped a lot in college too.

Today, I went online, and saw that ALL THREE pairs are now on sale. $200 for three pairs of shoes sounds much better than $300.

I really heart these shoes. They are a pale yellow and would look killer with navy blue. Unfortunately, I usually avoid navy blue because I don't have appropriate shoes. I can solve that problem by buying these shoes. And then buying a navy blue dress that I've had my eye on at BR. And the grass green skirt from BR too...which would look good with yellow as well. And a yellow shirt to go with it. (You're probably thinking right now that buying these shoes will result in a further $500 being spent on clothes to go with them...but you have to realize that I don't care.)

The first pair below are pretty cute as well. I considered ordering them online, but when I tried on the floor sample this weekend they were slightly uncomfortable, so I need to try them on again before I commit. Whenever I buy new shoes I think to myself "Do I have another pair of shoes that I could easily wear with the same outfits as I'd wear these with?" If the answer is yes, I then ask myself "But is the other pair sub-par in some way and I can evict it from my shoe wall to replace it with these new shoes?" This first pair is very different from my other black sandals, so it qualifies for purchase. This second pair (which I already have in tan but is SO COMFORTABLE that I want them in every color now) looks like another black pair that I have, but that pair was $39 at Off-Broadway Shoe Warehouse and will probably fall apart any day, so it can easily be evicted. Perfect.

I have a serious shopping problem. It's amazing that I'm able to save any money at all.

I may be tired.

So I made my triumphant return to Yoga class last night. I get to be in Charlotte for the next three weeks, so I figured I should get back into my usual habits. I haven't made it to Yoga since busy season started up, so it's been about four months. And sweet mother, did it hurt. I am in a significant amount of pain today. But I digress.

The real point of this entry is this: I am a sleeper. I need 7-8 hours a night to properly function. And a lot of the reason that I don't go out much on weekends is that it interrupts my sleep schedule. I generally go to bed by 11 on weeknights (12 on weekends) and I'm up at 6 on weekdays (by 8:30 on weekends). But Saturday night I was out until 2am, so I slept until 10:30 Sunday, and I couldn't fall asleep at 11 Sunday night, so I was tired at 6am yesterday, and it's basically a chain of horror until I'm back in my normal habits a few days.

So yesterday in Yoga class, during the final resting pose, I'm pretty sure I fell asleep.

I mean, the point of that pose is to meditate a few minutes, reflect on your time in the class, and relax after the strenuous workout. I usually doze off a bit. But I'm fairly certain you're not supposed to narc out. When the instructor started speaking again to end the class, I behaved like I do when my alarm goes off in the morning. I was like shocked into awake-ness. I'm pretty sure I had a weird dream too, but I couldn't remember it when I woke up. I don't think it's a good sign that I can fall into deep dreaming sleep at the drop of a hat. I mean, 9 times out of 10, I fall asleep the literal second my head hits the pillow at night, but I was laying on a thin rubber mat on a hardwood floor, and it didn't bother me at all. Not good.

I need to get back on my sleep schedule, stat. I was NOT happy when my alarm went off this morning, even though I was dead to the world by 11 last night. Something has to be done about this nonsense.

In other news, I decided to listen to Blake after about three and a half years and embrace protein shakes. I always thought I couldn't be satiated by breakfast unless it involved a carb of some kind, but yesterday I had a protein shake and some strawberries and I wasn't hungry again for like five hours. I was impressed. It doesn't have much fewer calories than what I usually eat in the morning, but I'm trying to reduce my carb intake so as to begin a rampage on my belly fat. The only carb materials I had yesterday were a handful of croutons in my lunch salad, a whole grain wasa wafer w/ peanut butter after the gym, and a bagel for dinner. OK, so the bagel wasn't a great idea, but I didn't get home from Yoga until 7:30 and I was STARVING. At any rate, this is all much better than the approximately 15 bread servings I usually have on a daily basis. I'd like to lower that to between 4-6. And I successfully got in 9 fruit/veggie servings yesterday, so I consider that a victory. I say I'm going to try to lose 10 pounds roughly every other week, but I'm serious this time. And I have very few excuses this time of year as well.

Oh! The uptown farmers' market opens this Saturday! I'm so pumped! It's about a block and a half from my house and it has delicious, fresh, cheap fruits and veggies. I'm going to go crazy on it on a weekly basis because our Teeter bills have become a bit high for my tastes (thanks, gas prices, for your impact on my groceries. I hate you).

Ok. I should work now.

Tax rebates!

So this has to be the best thing ever to happen on a Monday morning. I was checking my bank account balance, as I always do on Monday mornings, and it appeared unusually high. I was afraid I had forgotten to pay my student loan or something, so I looked at it more closely...and noticed $600 from the government. Happy day!

Now, I really am happy about this because I have spent $400 at BR in the past two weeks (but I did manage to get that price-adjusted on Saturday, so we're down to $350), and Blake's birthday is Friday so I spent in the $300-region for that, and I can use this extra money. However, I also have a frequent-travel bonus coming in a few weeks ($240!) and a birthday coming up in a month, so I'm not really hurting for cash. And therefore, when my mom comes here this weekend, there is a high chance that an expensive coach bag will be acquired.

I have been obsessed with this particular bag for MONTHS. I wanted it in deep red, which it no longer comes in, but at $800 it's a little high to request as a Christmas present. And my sister was greatly uncooperative when I suggested that she work at Coach again this Christmas so I could get it for 50% off. The only issue I saw was that it can't be put over your shoulder, which could get annoying...but it's so pretty.



Then, at the mall in Houston last week, I stumbled upon this one. It's so cute! It's only a little bit smaller (both are more than big enough to hold all of my necessaries as well as my work-stilettoes for my hike in the morning), it's $200 cheaper (and therefore directly within government-rebate range) AND it can be worn over the shoulder. Which I know because I walked around the store with it on my shoulder to see how I felt about it. I felt good.



There are a LOT of other things I want to buy right now, but I can probably wait for my birthday for those. I haven't bought a fancy new purse in like a year and a half. Unless you count my Coach computer bag, which I don't because my mom got it for me at the outlet.

Also at the mall this weekend I almost got another cat. I have always upheld that we can't have more than two cats because if the cat to person ratio in our house exceeds 1:1 we would be weird cat people. But I was willing to become a weird cat person for this particular cat. She was 2, just like our boys, and female, which is good because when you bring a new cat into a home with males, they don't feel as threatened if it's a female. She only weighed 5 pounds, so she was even tinier than Norman, which I didn't even think was possible, and which means she'd be easy to accommodate in our tiny condo. Her name was Cupcake, which I took as a sign because I love cupcakes, and she was wearing a harness and had a leash, which means she'll walk on a leash (don't judge me, Blake got a harness and leash to try out on our boys at Target last week. I think he's insane, and I don't want to be seen walking a cat). She would be in my house right now except that I noticed she had an "I've already been adopted" sign on her crate. I was happy that she got adopted and everything, but I wish she was mine. We're in trouble when I go back to the Humane society to volunteer. I have to try to not let myself get another kitty.

Nothing else really exciting this weekend, Jackie was in town so we went out Saturday night, but that's about it. Good times.

Rant: Airports are stupid

So I arrived in Charlotte from Houston tonight at about 7:15. My sister is flying in from Baltimore to arrive at 8:45. So it would be stupid for me to go home. Instead, the plan was to grab dinner (note: i love Quiznos flatbread salads), and then do a little bit of shopping/internet surfing/reading while I wait on her flight. So I get off the plane and proceed to the nearest flight status board. It is just departures. I go to the next. And the next. Only departures. So I figure I'll go to the main board in the middle of all of the terminals. Only departures. Ok, so I understand that it's been almost 10 years since people without airplane tickets could go through security to pick up their loved ones at their arrival gates. But is my situation so uncommon that they've decided that arrival boards inside the terminal are obsolete?

So I find an airport directory board, and I approach it hoping I can find either a guide to which airlines fly out of which terminals or at a minimum an information desk. No dice. There is a symbol for information in the key, but not on the map itself. Awesome. Well played, Charlotte Douglas International Airport. I surrender.

So I booted up the 'puter and looked it up online. Because fortunately the airport does have wireless internet (the fact that it was just enabled a few months ago, however, is ridiculous. But I digress). Unfortunately, she is traveling AirTran, which is shitty, and which has yet to confirm her arrival gate even though she lands in 45 minutes. So I'm going to keep checking that I guess. It does actually show her baggage claim number (really?), so I can pretty much guess what terminal she'll land in. I may just go find an AirTran employee and ask them about it/give them a piece of my mind. This is way more work than it needs to be.

The Office: WTF?

OK, so I have mentioned before that I am obsessed with the office. And I don't mean 'obsessed' like "oh, I'm obsessed with my new shirt" or "I'm obsessed with Moe's queso." To quote Karen Walker, the word obsessed, used by me when referring to The Office is not "one of those touchy-feely words that people throw around that don't really mean anything... You know, like 'maternal' or 'addiction.'" I am like literally obsessed with it. Do you know how many hours I've spent at work this week surfing the internet for spoilers about the season finale? At least 3. 3 hours that I should have been working or, at a minimum, online shopping, that I spent reading about a TV show. I hope that this makes you understand how serious I am about this. (Yes, I am crazy and should probably seek professional help.)

So anyway, I have all three of the past seasons on DVD and have watched each episode an absolute minimum of 5-10 times a piece. Also, all of this season's episodes are online on NBC.com, which means that a lot of times at the office, I put my headphones on and pretend I'm listening to music when I'm really listening/watching The Office. So with the possible exception of last week's episode, which I have only seen 3 times because it's harder to fake-work when I'm at a client's office, I've seen each of this season's episodes probably 10 times a piece as well. And I can honestly say that the episode tonight was by far the worst one I have ever seen.

Usually, The Office is pretty good about making episodes that mostly exist with the purpose of moving the plot along, but are still funny. The plot-moving storylines are usually the B-plot and then there's other hilarious stuff going on in the A-plot. But tonight, I only laughed like twice. In the intro, which was really funny, and at the very end right before the credits. Maybe I'm expecting too much here? But from a show that has done three full seasons of super funny material I just feel a bit let down and disappointed. I look forward to watching The Office starting the Monday before it's on. It's like the highlight of my workweek. And this week, it was LAME. What a crappy thing to have looked forward to.

The last two episodes of this entirely-too-short season had better be amazing, or I'm going to be pissed. They could make it up to me by finding a way to keep Toby's character on the show even though the title for the season finale episode is "Goodbye Toby." I would forgive them if they could do that for me. Also, I'd like them to bring Jan back, if possible. I'm really into her specific brand of crazy. Don't disappoint me, writers.