Fourth of July Vacation

Because of having some extra vacation time, I headed up to NJ for a week for the 4th, with AJ in tow because she also wanted a vacation. While there, we shopped (see awesome purple sunglasses below), ate more than I ever thought possible, saw the Red Bank fireworks, and did a number of other awesome things. I have added pictures below. Read the captions for a vacation summary.

Sunglasses, courtesy of the Kate Spade outlet.

Being pasty white does not deter me from the beach.

My first trip to the new stadium!

That's a big screen.

Yes, we had those tickets where all of the food was free. This is a sampling of the free buffet food that AJ ate prior to the game. Amazing. Billy Joel's wife was the "celebrity" chef for the day, and she served AJ that grilled cheese/hamburger thing. Crazy.

In addition to the buffet, all food on this menu was free. Also, you could order off-menu, as AJ and I did when we got a pint of ice cream to share. What? It was hot outside.

AJ tries to avoid ball-to-face related broken nose #3, while wearing her sweet new aviators.

AJ and I at the Yankees Museum with a catcher wearing the facemask she herself should have sported a month ago.

Jackie and I in the Yankees Museum model locker. Apparently it's what the current lockers look like. Every player has an internet enabled computer in there. Because how would they prepare for a game without twitter access?

Blake feeding Buddy the Goat (can you tell that we've moved on to Pennsylvania now?)

AJ and Banchee the Barn Kitty

Blake and I posing at the mini-golf hole that he designed

Aah, Dairy Swirl...if Blake ever decides to go home and take over the family business, I am going to weigh 1000 pounds.

And that's about it. Good times. Now I somehow have to convince myself to get back into the work mindset. Lame. We did however go back to line dancing lessons last night, and I was able to successfully complete all of the dances we were taught...a significant upgrade from my last performance. Yay!

OH HAPPY DAY!

THE STUART WEITZMAN SHOES I HAVE BEEN STALKING FOR MONTHS ARE FINALLY ON SALE AND I HAVE ORDERED THEM. I'm mildly nervous about the size, because the 7's i tried on were REALLY big and they were out of 6's so I went with my regular 6.5, BUT I AM PUMPED.

I'll update soon regarding my week long NJ vacay, I promise.

Per request...

The best bathing suit ever that I described yesterday. It probably works better for me than for some other people, as it has a high amount of coverage and support in the top, but that is precisely what usually makes bathing suit shopping so awful for me, and so this is a godsend.





Also, Tommy Bahama has a number of other cute suits, so I can't recommend them enough. They are expensive though, so I usually just stalk the sale section until something good pops up.

Boo headache...

We just went to a delicious lunch at Soho Bistro, and now I have the headache of a lifetime. Ugh. I suspect it has something to do with my lack of sleep Tuesday night (my body tends to get upset a full two days after a botched sleep for some reason) and the large and not-so-healthy lunch. Boo. I have a lot of work to get done before I head to NJ next week, and the headache is not currently helping that situation.

The trip home from Austin was uneventful. I'm trying now to get back into my at-home groove, but since I'm only home a week before vacation, it probably won't take. I'm trying to be good this week though, because the combination of delicious Italian food and lack of exercise in NJ is not going to sit well.

I ordered another bathing suit from Tommy Bahama today. It is in the same style of my two others. It is just THE BEST BATHING SUIT EVER and I will buy it in multiple colors as they go on sale. So far, I have blue, black, and now I've ordered brown. When you find something that works well, go with it, I always say. Otherwise, my shopping addiction is set to "off" because my purchase of extra vacation time this year will leave my paychecks lacking a bit and increasing vacations while decreasing salary is never a great combination.

Ok enough procrastinating now because I NEED TO WORK. I just wish I had some Advil or something.

WTF Allergies

Growing up, I wasn't allergic to anything. Not even poison ivy. I would literally play in the woods with all of the kids in the neighborhood all day long and wake up the next day the ONLY one without a rash. This made my life significantly easier.

And then I moved to NC and developed some pretty serious seasonal allergies. It's the pollen. It is just awful down there. And according to my research, a LOT of people who didn't grow up in the Carolinas have the exact same problem when they move there. But it's only for a few weeks about twice a year, and it's nothing that eye drops and the generic OTC version of Claritin can't fix.

Recently, I've been discovering some new and interesting allergies. For example, I'm definitely allergic to something involving the bedding in certain hotels. I have a pretty good hunch it's down pillows and comforters. Because when I stay at the cheaper chains where they only have fake down pillows, nothing ever goes wrong. But when I stayed at the Richmond Marriott for DLo's wedding in January, when I woke up each morning, whichever eye was laying on the pillow would be crazy swollen until after I showered (thank god Katie was staying with me, because I definitely felt like I needed a doctor). And this week, we've been staying at a Radisson, and there are down pillows on the bed as well as a down comforter, and the other night I woke up with an itchy rash over all parts of my body that were touching the pillow/comforter region. Fortunately, I always travel with Benadryl, Claritin, and Hydracortizone cream. So I was able to do something about it. But I've noticed that in the subsequent nights, as long as I remove the down pillows from the bed and make sure that the sheet is shielding my skin from coming into direct contact with the down comforter, I seem to be ok. But I mean seriously, WTF? How did this never happen until I was 26 years old? And further, I used to have a down comforter inside of a duvet cover ON MY BED that never affected me. I guess the duvet cover was a more adequate shield? Or am I just allergic to the detergent that they use here or something??????

I guess I travel a lot more now, and recently as a result of the recession, we can't always stay at Marriotts, where I have all sorts of loyalty perks and therefore always receive my requested down-free rooms (something I had requested not because I thought I was allergic, but because I HATE down pillows). But it is really annoying. Like REALLY. I don't care for having to sleep in a restricted manner and waking up itchy. It stinks. I'm ready to go back to my home bed now.

End Rant.

In other news, last night we saw Austin's famous bats. There's this big bridge over the river downtown that our hotel is right next to, and apparently over 1.5 million bats live in a cave underneath it, which is totally gross. But as soon as the sun goes down every night, people gather on the bridge and watch as the bats all fly out and disburse to look for their food. While I don't particularly care for bats, because they are filthy flying rodents, it was actually pretty cool. And sweet jesus, there were a lot of them.

Today we went to the outlet mall, which was AWESOME. Thank god we went at 10am though, because by the time we left at 2 it was crowded and effing hot outside. I even got out of there spending only $100, which was awesome. I got a pair of shoes, a shirt, a skirt, and a dress. Pretty successful I think. There was a bag I loved at Coach, but I'm trying to conserve money and it was $250, which I did not want to spend. Also, the store had about 1000 people in it and I was TOTALLY OVER IT as soon as I walked in (I was both hungry and hot at that point, which is a potentially lethal combination).

Tomorrow after brunch I think we're just going to hang by the pool. We had wanted to explore the trails around the lake, but it's over 100 degrees out during the day...and I just don't think I can do that. We need to start coming here in November or something to make this more tolerable.

Happy Birthday to me.

Celebratory (half) slice of cake from Whole Foods. I may or may not have also had pancakes for breakfast (emphasis on the may).

We went to the most amazing cowboy boot store EVER last night. Here's the link. I loved at least 5 pairs, and every single one of them cost at least $400. So I refused to try any on, because if I'm going to buy a pair of $400 shoes, it's going to be the ones I posted about last week. Not cowboy boots that I'll wear once a week to line dancing lessons. But if I lived in Texas, I'd have about 15 pairs.

Hitting the BR sale tonight. Big day. I'm old.

Hi from Austin!

Hello all! I'm coming to you live from Austin for the next week and a half. I've been here for nearly 48 hours, and I've only been to the US's Largest Whole Foods one time. This is a tragedy. However, it is a tragedy that involved Susan and I eating dinner while splitting an entire bottle of Shiraz/Cabernet blend in the Whole Foods restaurant last night, so it is acceptable. After dinner, we wandered around the store for about a half hour until Susan felt sober enough to drive back to the hotel, which is downtown this time around (yay!). We're staying right on the 10.5 mile trail loop around the lake, and I intend to investigate it via foot or bike at some point this weekend (that point will be either before 8am or after 8pm, as it is hotter than hell here).

Anyway, I don't have a whole lot to report yet because most of our exploring will be done this weekend, but I wanted to say a quick hello. Also, I wanted to remind everyone that my birthday is Thursday, so only two more days to overnight mail me gifts (ha). Blake gave me the purple 16GB nano I've been wanting for MONTHS, as well as the EA Active Wii game Sunday night. I didn't get to play with the game much yet because I had to leave town, but I look forward to checking it out.

I'm sure I'll have updates to come soon. Especially since I found out today that there is an outlet mall here that is heralded as "the third largest shopping destination in the world" and includes a Neiman Marcus OUTLET. I've never seen one of those, so I clearly MUST check it out. Ciao!