Weekend Roundup

This weekend wound up being kind of boring. Well, not Saturday. Saturday I did a whole bunch of stuff, but then Sunday rolled around and I had run out of stuff to do so I read an entire 600 page book. I literally sat on the couch, did the laundry, and read for like 12 hours. Awesome.

Friday there was a partner retreat for the partners in the office, and for some reason a vast majority of the managers were also out of the office...so I left a bit early. Pretty much everyone did. I was planning to do something productive, but it started to rain when I got home, so I sat around and read instead. Then when Blake came home, he wanted to check out the new Trader Joe's, so we did. It was ok. It annoys me that you can't really do a full week's grocery shopping there. I mean they basically have zero produce, which generally makes up 50% of my weekly purchases, so that was lame. I'm going to have to hit the farmers' market tomorrow to make up for it. After that I made some pasta for dinner and then hung out.

Saturday I went to pilates and then I got a haircut. I got brave at the salon and went with the Katie Holmes short bob with the bangs and everything. It looks cute I think, but I'm going to be real tired of these bangs real soon. I have about two weeks to weigh my options, and then I'm either going to have to have them trimmed or grow them out a bit and push them to the side. It was important to cut the hair short now because my hair lady is going on maternity leave next month, so I won't be getting another cut until at least March.

After we watched Wake get completely dominated by Maryland (horrible), we decided to go look at scooters. And I've basically decided to buy one. I'm even considering going all out and getting a motorcycle license so that I can legally drive more than 30mph on it (it should be able to hit about 45 considering my weight). Here's a picture of the model I think I'm going to get...though I can't decide on whether I want the blue and white model or the black and gray.

After that, I did some house cleaning and made a tasty turkey and mashed potato dinner. We are going to have turkey left overs for at least the rest of the week. Haha.

Please watch this clip from SNL this weekend. Amy Poeler is hilarious. I can't believe how much she can move around given that she's due to give birth in like a month. It's crazy. And the clip is very funny.

I really have nothing to say about yesterday. I was so damn bored. I made cookies because I was bored. Which was a terrible idea because now I'm going to eat them. Oh well. They're delicious.

This is a short week because I'm heading to FL t see my dad on Friday afternoon. Yay. I'll post again soon.

The Office

Ok, so the first two episodes of the office have been a little bit off. The first one was funny, but it seemed to be much more of a plot moving episode than anything else. The second one had improved. Last night was awesome. It was just back to complete ridiculousness, which is what makes the office great. I think I'm also partial to the episodes that Jan is in because she's so freakin crazy and hilarious. I didn't even miss Pam. In fact, the scenes that they put in there with her didn't really seem to fit in the episode at all...I wish they had cut one and kept in the deleted scene that just posted to nbc.com...because it's hilarious.

I mean for real, Michael was calling the kid "ass-turd" and Dwight was fake-giving birth to a watermelon. These are the things that great Office episodes are made of.

"And the baby will be related to Michael through...delusion." ~Jim

You can view the full episode here.

I've been also giving Kath & Kim a chance because I think Molly Shannon is funny. The show is just ok for now, I'm going to give it a few more episodes before I commit. Selma Blair is really funny. I think my main problem with this show is that they remind me a little bit too much of my mom and sister.

The SNL Thursday Weekend Update was funny too. Blake and I had watched the debate right before, so the first skit made sense but...for some reason this year, the candidates are so ridiculous that the writers barely even have to change the dialogue for it to be funny. Which is pretty sad. I noticed this especially when they spoofed the Vice Presidential debate. Am I the only one that doesn't particularly care for either of the presidential candidates right now? I'm a little sad that I have to actually vote for one of them. Anyway, the weekend update portion of the episode was, as always, hilarious. Amy Poeler is going to be sorely missed when she leaves the show next month.

Last night, I made a tasty butternut squash risotto with a squash that I got at the farmers' market. It was good. I hadn't cooked much this week because I've been at pilates and yoga every night until 8. But it was nice to be able to cook again and not have cereal for dinner. Tonight I'm throwing together some ravioli, and I had to prepare the turkey I'm going to make on Saturday. I have no major plans this weekend, so I get to finally relax a bit. I'm going to pilates tomorrow and then I'm getting a haircut, watching the Wake game, and making some turkey. Sunday I'm going to lift, maybe go for a walk, do some laundry and cleaning, and go to the new Trader Joe's. I'm excited. I was hoping to go scooter shopping on Saturday, but the dealership will be closed by the time the football game is over. Boo.

Hope you all have a good weekend. :)

Tagged.

Jordana has tagged me. Tagging makes me embarrassed, because I don't have enough blogging friends to tag back. I'm a blog loser. But, to partake in the fun, I will share the 6 random things about me but then I will not tag 6 other people. Because I can't. LOSER.

1) I'm all pumped up right now because it's starting to feel fall-like in Charlotte. By "fall-like" I mean less than 80 degrees. I am very excited at the prospect that I can soon trot out my fall and winter clothing. Summer's great and all, but I really like cozy sweaters and they're just not practical in NC for the months of April - October. Also, I enjoy boots. And tights. And coats.

2) I got my first turkey of the season to make this weekend. I have a really killer turkey recipe. The first Thanksgiving that Blake and I were together, he didn't get to have a regular Thanksgiving at home because his sister was studying abroad in Spain, so his whole family went there for the holiday. When he got back, I told him I'd make him a real Thanksgiving dinner, so I made my first turkey. Then a month later, when I went to his parents' house over Christmas break and met them for the first time, he actually said to his mother "you should get Jen's turkey recipe. It's really good." I died a little inside. This weekend I'm trying a new recipe...hopefully it will be just as good.

3) I'm actually embarrassed about the amount of money that I now spend monthly on my fitness regimen. I really hope it pays off, so that I don't wind up being poor AND fat.

4) Blake and I are the only people we know who just straight up don't have internet access at our house. We tell people we don't feel like paying for it. And he has a Blackberry, so we can use that in emergency situations. But the real reason is that when we did have it, we found out our neighbors were stealing our signal. So we tried to security enable it. And we couldn't figure out how to. So we cancelled it, assuming our other neighbors also wouldn't be able to figure out how to security enable their internet and we could steal it, but we were wrong. And now we're so mad that our neighbors are apparently smarter than we are that we refuse to get the internet in the house at all.

5) We still have a working Wake Forest issue laptop, even though we graduated more than 3 years ago, and we got the computers 3 years before that. It is a behemoth Frankenstein that we created using half of his and half of mine, because we had to make up for the parts that had crapped out over the years. It currently has my hardware, but Blake's hard drive and battery. Not that we use it much (see #4).

6) I've been super unproductive at work lately and I think it's because I haven't had a proper vacation since July. But I'm trying to hoard my vacation time this year so I can roll some forward because I really want to go to Italy next October. I've been trying to plan this trip for three years, and I'm finally going to do it. I don't care if I have to go alone. It's happening.

That's about it. If you read this and have a blog of your own, consider yourself tagged. And please forget about what a loser I am and that I don't have any blog-friends. :)

Wedding Pictures

I have downloaded the pics from Kelli's wedding for you all. You can see them all here. However, the lighting in the ballroom was low, and I have no idea how to correctly use my camera, so most of them are useless. Here are some of my favorites.

Accounting girls that were not in the wedding party - outside the church.



My table-mates.



Picture with the bride!



Phi Mu reunion.



Sorry ladies, Ryan's taken. And he's heir to a grocery store empire. ;)



We all had a great time, but fortunately, we will all get to see each other again soon, as Dan and Leeann are getting married Memorial Day weekend in Atlanta. And it will be awesome. Congratulations again to Kelli and Adam Stauff, who are having fun currently in the south pacific (I hate them a little).

PS - my private pilates lesson was freakin awesome last night...I will henceforth spend 90% of my fun money at the pilates studio...and I'm ok with that. I start yoga classes tonight. Yay.

Busy Bee

I've been super busy lately, but I wanted to find time to update today. I forgot to bring my camera to work, but I'm going to upload my pictures from Kelli's wedding later in the week and post them. This will have to be just a text-only post.

Thursday I left work early to head up to Winston-Salem for the Wake vs. Clemson football game, and Wake won! The game was pretty terrible unless you really like watching our defense own people and our offense be unable to score. All that really matters is that we won, so now if we can beat Maryland this Saturday, we have a really good chance of going to the ACC Championship again this year. Yay!

Friday I fully intended to go to work, but then we didn't get home until 1:00 in the morning Thursday night, and when my alarm went off at 6:30, I was like "um...no." So I took the day off. I hit the gym, hung out a bit, and took care of some of the errands that we ordinarily would do over the weekend, knowing that the wedding would cause us to be low on time. I drove to the Vespa dealership, but then I didn't go in...I'm pretty afraid to enter vehicle-purchasing places without Blake. Because (a) I know nothing about buying vehicles and (b) I'm a huge impulse buyer, which is not a good quality to have when I'm in the land of $4,000 scooters. I'm going to try to get Blake to take me there this weekend. Also, Blake's still telling me that I should really test drive one of these things...because he's relatively certain that I'm going to be petrified to drive one, given how I act behind the wheel of his stick-shift car and his boat. But I've weighed options in my mind, and the scooter is pretty much a necessity for me at this point, so I'll have to get over my fear.

Saturday morning I hit pilates and it was good. I walked there to get in some extra exercise. It was really nice outside. While I was there, I signed up to try a private lesson tonight. I would like to do pilates 3 times a week, and I can only make it to two mat classes, so a private lesson is pretty much necessary...although really expensive. I've gone through my finances and made sure that I can afford this luxury. Because I've been really good lately about not shopping, I can do it. Yay. I'll let you all know how it goes later in the week.

When I got home, Blake had picked Bridget up at the airport, and we left for Greenville. And as soon as I got in the car, it started shaking and driving weird. Blake got out at a light before we got on the interstate to look around, but nothing looked off. So we get on the interstate, and no more than 15 miles into our drive, my front right tire blows. Awesome. Did I mention I had the car inspected A WEEK AGO? I mean how do they miss that? Fortunately I had a donut in the trunk and it allegedly can go for 3,000 miles up to 65 mph, so after Blake put it on there, we enjoyed a slow and steady ride to the wedding. I'm going to be buying 4 new tires later this week. Because that shit was scary.

The wedding was fun. It was great to see everyone. I'll post more about it when I get the pictures in. Yesterday we left Greenville around 11 and headed back to Charlotte with a stop at the Cracker Barrel and outlet mall in Gafffney. And then we were going to drop Bridget back at the airport on the way in, but like 5 miles before we get to the airport exit there is an accident that blocks off our entire side of the interstate. They had to re-route us, and luckily Bridget's plane was delayed, so we got her to the airport just in time. I was exhausted when we got home, but I had to do laundry and finish errands. And I had what was easily the most ridiculous and horrible Harris Teeter experience of my life (of maybe it just felt that way because of the tired-ness) and was too cranky to cook dinner. For the rest of the night I did my laundry and mopping and read a book.

I was super tired this morning, but it's going to be a full and busy week at work, so I have to get my ass in gear. The manager and partner that I'm working for are both gone for the week, so I can chill a little bit...but there is still much to get done. Also, I forgot that it is Columbus Day or something (we don't really get off for many fake holidays) and I'm concerned about my gym being open. I swear to god, if I get there at lunch and it is closed I am going to scream. And then I'll probably suck it up and go order some tires instead or something. Sigh. I missed a strength training session last week (it was supposed to happen yesterday but didn't due to the aforementioned crankiness), and I hate missing workouts. Boo.

I'll update again soon. I hope any of you that actually have today off have a lovely day. Also I hate you.

Scooter Kick

So those of you that know me fairly well are aware that I get on these "kicks" every so often where I think of something I want to buy and then I am obsessed with it for weeks. This happened with the Wii, which I spent well over a grand on a few months ago and now I barely play it anymore (although I attribute this more to there being new TV shows on now. Next summer I'l probably start playing again). Sometimes I actually cave in and purchase these items and love them forever, sometimes I actually purchase them and eventually tire of them, and sometimes I stop myself from buying them and eventually forget about them.

For a little while a few months ago, I was on a bike kick. This somewhat corresponded with my "moving to Austin" kick. But then Blake told me that he thought I'd be too scared to ride a bike on the streets of Charlotte because there aren't really bike lanes and people whiz past you really fast and it's generally unsafe when he rides his. And he's way better at it than me. So I let it go. But then it came back when I started taking these pilates classes. The place is about a mile and a half from my house, so it's an awesome walk on Saturday mornings. But when I want to go Wednesday nights, and it's dark when I leave, I don't want to walk. And I don't really want to deal with my car either. So again, I thought "bike!" and I did some research and found a few that I liked online.

But Blake reminded me again about how scary it is, and how close he's come to being hit by cars while on his bike, and that riding a bike at night isn't particularly safe either. But this time he offered a solution: a scooter.

At first, I thought that I would have to pay for scooter insurance or something, but apparently the 50cc models are essentially motorized bicycles, so you don't need additional insurance or a special drivers license. And I noticed the other day that along the streets of uptown Charlotte, there are all of these little scooter locking stations for people who ride them. And since they go about 40 mph, there is much less chance of a car whizzing by me to pass me. This may be the answer.

I have found a number of models that are awesome. Blake wants one too now. He likes the Honda Metropolitan or the Yamaha Zuma; I'm more partial to the Vespa LX or the Yamaha Vino Classic. We're heading to SC for Kelli Brown's wedding this weekend, but we have next weekend mostly open, so I think we might go visit some dealerships and see what's up. It would be awesome to have one of these I think. Especially for when I have to be at the office until 10pm and I don't want to walk home alone. I'm pretty excited.

But I think, knowing me, I should wait until Christmas to buy one of these...just in case I lose interest. But knowing my hatred of driving, this seems like the perfect fit. And how cute would I be on one of these? Honestly. :)

Quickie Update

Here are a few little bits and pieces about what I've been up to...

- Yesterday instead of working, we had a community service day and the whole office went to a community park to assist in playground building. It was really nice outside and way better than working. I hauled concrete. And other assorted activities. Good times.

- Last night, I had my first go at a level 2 pilates class. It moved faster and it was with a different teacher, which means there were some new moves involved. It was awesome. I'm really obsessed with this place.

- I'm making the gnocci that I got at the Italian bakery for dinner tonight. I'm excited.

- It's shaping up to be a really busy weekend. My mom and sister are in town, Carrie is in town, I have pilates and the wine festival Saturday (this will probably also include a trip to the mall and the Cheesecake Factory), and we're going to the lake Sunday for what will likely be our last trip there for the year. It's going to be 78 and Sunny and the water temp is probably still in the 80's so it should be perfect. There will also probably be some Wii playing. Busy busy!

- I understand that the presidential election is a big deal, but did the Vice Presidential Debate have to be on a Thursday night? Now none of my TV shows are on tonight. It's like I've been teased by one new episode of The Office and Grey's Anatomy only to have it all snatched away from me. Bastards. Although it does likely mean that Tina Fey will be doing her Sarah Palin impression on SNL again this weekend, so I guess that makes it a little bit better.

Hopefully I'll have time to update again soon. Have a good weekend everyone!