DPF: KENYANS!

Not much to say about this Dance Party Friday. Except we should all go to Kenya.

I expect Laura and Chrissy late this evening. I'm excited to spend the weekend finishing the invitations and I'm hoping we'll have a good time and not want to throw our heads against the wall.

Erfday / Brfday

First off. It's Earth Day. However much I love the Earth I dislike Earth Day. Similarly however much I love Love, I dislike Valentine's Day.

I'm not a big fan of one day out of the year to say I Love You or to Recycle. I think those are things we should be doing every day of the year.

On a completely different topic, I've been watching Season 1 of Dollhouse on Netflix and just yesterday there was a moment in the episode Briar Rose where Alan Tudyk has a ridiculously appropriate line rant.

Earth gets one day, alright, the other 364 we're-we're-we're cranking the AC in our Hummer and then one day a year, ooh we separate the plastic. You know what I think? I think that once we die out, a couple hundred years, Earth is gonna have a people day, you know, to remember us. One day a year she is gonna laugh and laugh and shake our bones.

Basically, that's how I feel. Thank you ever so much Joss Weadon (or whoever wrote the script for that show) for putting it so well.

Anyway. Be a Planeteer and Save the Planet...but do it legit-like and make it a full time thing all year round.


So it has come to my attention that my sister is throwing me a birthday party the weekend we're at the beach house. This is exciting and I wasn't really expecting it. I figured a bunch of us would get together (who? I'm not sure) and we'd go to the beach house, Jason would drive up to meet us, we'd have cake, have some beer, go to the beach, maybe hit up the General's or Big Pecker's and that would be it.

Since she can't keep a secret very well Julibean let slip that "shh, some of your friends are coming" ... ... ... huh?

All of my friends are very busy and important people. We don't all have time to travel willy nilly around the east coast so this was a shock. I have NO idea who will be coming, but I'm excited none the less to see who loves me enough to make the trip.

Then the Beaner asked me if we wanted a theme for our birthday party. I know Jason doesn't care so I racked my brain and shot out a few ideas here and there. Finally I came up with a ridiculous interpretation to celebrate Memorial Day (which is the following weekend) and also stupidity and frivolity.

Our birthday will be a Party in the USA!

Yeah, that's right. Everyone will wear the most outrageous combination of red, white and blue clothing they can pull from their closet and we will have a party and dance around the kitchen to Miley Cyrus until we're exhausted.

Here's my list of demands for birthday presents:

1. Five hundred thousand dollars all in fifties.
2. A Shetland pony died pony blue to match my eyes.
3. Powder Blue Eyes.
   

Alright, alright. I'm kidding. I don't expect any presents, I'm just happy people want to travel to celebrate Jason and my Quarter Century...but I wouldn't mind a Nike+ sportsband, an Esther Williams bathing suit, or a gift card to Old Navy.

I Could Color All Day

I literally just had a very Carrie Bradshaw Moment...

Remember these?

The shoes I WANT TO MARRY?!

Well I was looking at flapper costumes (no, you're not going to get an explanation for that one, so don't ask) and I came across these:

And literally I said out loud, "Hello lover."

These shoes, although still ridiculously expensive are slightly more in my "price range" at only $150, you know instead of the Christian Louboutin pair which are easily $2k+ and I could never dream of purchasing...or rather I can only dream of purchasing.

All I'm saying is that if I have a reason to purchase wedding shoes in the next errr, six months, THESE will be contenders.

Thank you Unique-Vintage for making my dream come true. And pleeeease don't discontinue them, they're gorgeous and come in many different colors!

Cake-tastic!

I've been waiting for it for awhile now.

A few weeks back Ashley and her roommate Mel decided that pie had it's day in the sun (3/14) but cake was always sad and alone in the rain. But no longer! We would have a celebration of cakes! And it would be marvelous!

At first they had scheduled the Cake Party for a day I was going to be in Virginia. Then it was rescheduled and suddenly I was actually home that weekend!

I asked ahead of time if they would prefer a strawberry cake or a chocolate Nutella cake since I already had those cakes made and chilling in my freezer from my Wilton Course 1 classes that I missed.

So I spent most of Saturday morning frosting my chocolate Nutella cake while watching Fly Away Home. Let me just go on the record saying I heart Anna Paquin and the movie still totally makes me cry at the end when all the geese land in their new safe happy home.

Anyway, drove into Manhattan (which is always a joy) and got to Ashley's apartment near Inwood more or less around the time I meant to. She knew most of her friends would be on the late side but assumed correctly that I'd leave to make it on time but get stuck in traffic. How well people know my punctuality.

Let me just say, when the cakes started pouring in we all got more and more excited. We started off with meatloaf cupcakes with sweet potato frosting. Sounds disgusting but is actually quite delicious. Ash's sweet potatoes were amaaaaazing.

Then we munched on mini pancake muffins which you could chose to dip in syrup. Greatest idea ever for a brunch or something with friends. They taste good even if they're not hot and right out of the oven and they're all ready at once instead of actual pancakes which take forever to cook and some will be cold and you don't get to eat together.

We had quite the selection of cakes to gorge ourselves on. Also, cake shots, need I say more on how enjoyable the evening was? I think I do...

Courtney (my fellow EMACer who I haven't seen since graduation in 2007) brought a 7-layer rainbow cake. Of course the nerd in her (which we all appreciated) had the layers in ROYGBIV order. It was beautiful to cut into.

I'm awful with names but another one of Ash's friends brought a giant cupcake cake. Another brought a fruit cake (aka a fruit torte) and someone else brought some gourmet cupcakes from a famous bakery in NYC that I can't recall the name of but my Dad managed to guess. Mel also made a delicious applesauce cake with cream cheese frosting.

Holy crap I love cake. And it was so great to catch up with Courtney and her manfriend James and meet all of Ashley's friends who I can now put a face to their names when she tells me stories.

Cake Party = Success!

I decided we needed to take this picture. Allow me to explain. Senior year the three of us must have had about 5 different classes together. It makes sense we were all the same major with the same concentration. So to celebrate our last day as seniors and our last EMAC class together, we decided to all gather in my apartment and have a power hour.

So here we were, all in the same place for the first time in three years and slightly intoxicated. I think we've grown as people...

Sunday morning Ashley and I may or may not have woken up, eaten cake leftovers and watched The Lion King.

c25k: week 1, day 4

This morning I frosted my cake for tomorrow's cake party and headed out to the gym.

Still sticking with Week 1 for now. I want to be able to keep my pace up at 5.5 for jogging and 3.5 for walking before I move on. I'm thinking this week will be another few Week 1 workouts and then I'll move onto Week 2.

This time around it really was painful. I'm starting to get shin splints. They aren't fun. I didn't do the last running interval and I'm glad I didn't push myself through it because my ankle was bothering me during my cool down.

I'll have to be careful with my ankle and maybe even wrap it the next time I run. We'll see.

DPF: Scarily Biographical

For those of you who don't already know, my Dad and I have a very special relationship which often involves him forcing me to sit through movies which he has deemed "classics."

I'm pretty sure most of these movies are really only classics to my father and no one else, but every once in awhile he comes up with a doosey.

A few I actually love that he's made me sit through include the Christopher Guest Mock-umentaries: Best in Show and A Mighty Wind. Guest is also famous for Spinal Tap but I'm more of a fan of the ridiculousness that are his other works.

A Might Wind is very special for a few added reasons other than the quality entertainment the movie provides. My father's friend Steve is a folk musician and he's said on numerous occasions that A Might Wind is oddly biographical and it is in some cases very true to the folk music scene. This connection just adds to the ridiculousness factor in my mind...

Some of my favorite instances in these movies include Jane Lynch. Especially the whole entire story line in Best in Show with her and Jennifer Coolidge. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, what are you waiting for? Get thee to your NetFlix or Blockbuster and check it out!

In the meantime please enjoy today's Dance Party Friday!

A-One SoCo, One Mojito, and One Beer

Yesterday was Shawn's birthday.

Shawn is a friend of Jason's from the Shire who I'm pretty sure is one of his oldest friends. They grew up together and I believe lived down the road from each other.

He's a super sweet guy and I'm glad I've gotten to know him over the years because if I know one thing it's good to befriend mother's and best buds if you want to make any relationship long-lasting and easy.

Shawn is what I like to call Jason's homeless friend. Not in the sense that he lacks a place to live, more in the sense that he travels a lot for work and his parents have moved away from NH so he has no "home" to go back to on the holidays.

There are many times when he winds up staying with Jason's family when he's in town visiting friends (even if Jason or Amanda aren't home) because that's just the way things work in the Shire. So when I found out that Shawn was going to be in town (away from home and friends and family) for his birthday I took it upon myself to make sure he didn't spend it alone.

Jason's only request for this mission of mine was to A) remind him which day was Shawn's birthday and B) make sure Casey came along so Shawn could "experience" her.

After a fun-filled day of being blind (Casey drove me to and from my eye doctor who decided to dilate my pupils, I hate that), and sitting at work with my shades closed and my computer screens' brightness turned all the way down...we picked up Shawn and brought him over to G-Town.

A few years ago Casey found this great little Greek Restaurant called Greek Town in Rockville Centre. They are delicious. And inexpensive. And can I tell you their tzatziki sauce is drool worthy. This soon became "our place" and whenever Casey and I just needed to get out of the house we'd go over to G-Town and sit and relax and rant and ramble over Greek Salads and Pitas.

So since Shawn hadn't ventured there yet, we took him for dinner last night to our favorite little place. It was hopping last night, usually there's no wait but I guess it was prime G-Town time when we walked in. The food is always totally fresh and prepared to order, the place is always really clean and the wait-staff is extremely friendly and attentive enough. Sometimes over-attentive waitresses irk me, but the ladies at Greek Town are friendly and get the job done without a lot of frou-frou-ness.

After dinner (which was predominately a story about Casey getting tasered), we headed over to RJ's.

RJ Daniel's is what we lovingly call "our bar". And by "our bar" I mean Casey's parents go to happy hour there and hang out with their friends so often that the bar tenders know us by sight and can have Casey's shot of SoCo and Blue Moon up on the bar by the time she's done saying hi to everyone.

By the time we got there last night it was a few hours past happy hour. One or two of Momz's crew were still sitting around so we said hi and had a few drinks.

Cue more stories from Casey, including a baby pool in the living room and a door kicked in in Bronxville.

All in all, a good night. Shawn was happy to get out and it was good food, good company and good drinks.

Hoping we'll catch him again before he's done with work in town and leaves.

c25k Week 1, Day 3

I'm going to do a few more week 1 intervals this week and start on week 2 next week.

I didn't get a full work out in. I started cooling down when I still had 2 jogging intervals left because I was running out of time. I didn't give myself enough time at the gym to finish it and still have enough time to get home, shower, get ready and get to the doctor's.

I'm feeling okay. My knees are still getting used to everything and I was feeling some shinsplints during the run but I feel better now.

I still need new sneakers. They didn't have the ones I wanted at the Foot Locker in VA when I visited Jason this weekend so I'll have to call and see if the Foot Lockers near me have the sneakers in my size.

I did run at 5.5 today instead of just 5.0 and it felt more natural a stride than 5.0 did. I walked at 3.7 and 3.5 depending on how my shins felt.

I felt good about the work out, even though it wasn't the full thing.

The Picard Manuver

For those of you who weren't fortunate enough to grow up in a household of Scientific Parents, you have no idea what you were missing out on!

I was brought up in a household that watched Jeopardy every night, laughed at contestants Wheel of Fortune who stupidly buy vowels, and watched at least three hours of Star Trek a week.

Laugh if you want. It has made me who I am and I'm proud.

In no way shape or form am I a Trekkie. I enjoy the movies. I enjoy the television shows (especially The Next Generation), but I have no urge to dress up like a Klingon and go to a convention.

Moving right along with my point. This morning I read a re-tweet that said the following:

happysorceress

Two of my *favorite* companies, @AdagioTeas & @ThinkGeek,have made tea magic!!: http://bit.ly/aPrWBo

Of course I clicked the link. I love Adagio Teas and ThinkGeek too! And what did I find? Something I might just have to purchase!
Umm, hello? Four teas that sound delicious! And check out the name of that one on the top!

Earl Grey, Hot!

Seriously...do I need to say more? I only do if you're a sad person and you never watched Star Trek: TNG.

I think the best way to describe if you are unfamiliar is this montage of clips I found on YouTube.

Enjoy! Oh, and if you're interested in ordering any Adagio Teas, let me know and I'll send you a $5 gift certificate! They're cool like that :)

Manjoyment Monday: *swoon*

When I have an arduous task in front of me like cleaning my room, packing my life away to move, or even just constructing, stamping or addressing 150 some-odd invitations, I like to put on something to watch that I know will keep my attention but I've seen so many times it doesn't matter if I miss something.

I also tend to do this when I'm sick. But I reserve Titanic for when I am sick because I can fall asleep, wake up two hours later, and the boat is STILL sinking.

Anyway.

Last week I cleaned my room. I still need to clean it again (I hate this vicious cycle), but then I also had to make all of Laura's shower invites too. I decided that it was time to watch all three of the extended edition of the Lord of the Rings.

I've mentioned before how sexy I find some of the actors they found to portray our favorite characters of Middle Earth, but I completely forgot about David Wenham until The Two Towers disc got popped into my DVD player.

Honestly, I'm pretty sure it's the long wavy hair that does it for me for him in LOTR. I've seen him in other movies (Van Helsing, 300, and wha-wha-WHAT?! he played Audrey in Moulin Rogue?!) and it just wasn't the same.

Seriously, there's something about the way he plays Faramir that is so endearing. If you haven't seen the trilogy I recommend it highly. It just came out on Blu-Ray too! How exciting. I might get it for my dad for his birthday.

I bought the trilogy when I heard they were making the movies. And began reading them casually here and there. Tolkien's writing is difficult for me. I get tripped up with wordy writers like Jane Austin and it seems like work to get through the words into the actual meat of the story.

It probably didn't help that I started reading the Fellowship when I worked at the beach. Basically I would read a few sentences and then see a seagull, read the same few sentences, get distracted by the waves, and wind up reading a total of two pages over the course of my whole shift.

Also, when I saw the movie the one thing that really confused me was Arwen and Aragorn's story line. I really wanted to get to that part of the books so I could better understand it and while I was reading one of my friends told me that it wasn't in the books.

What?! Something so crucial to the story-line wasn't in the book? How could they have come up with something like that on their own just to use in the movie?

Stupidly I believed him. I put my books aside and waited for another urge to tear through Tolkien, which never really came. BUT! Since I'm one of those people I happen to watch the Appendix at the end of the movies and part of the Return of the King's Appendix is about Tolkien and how he came up with some of the story lines and they spoke about Arwen and Aragorn's relationship and I was like wtf?!

Apparently my moronic friend never read the appendixes at the end of the novels. Who wouldn't read every last page of a classic like that? Now I suppose I'll have to legit sit down and read all of them. In the meantime I'm still trying to get through my Leatherbound Classics which is harder than I originally anticipated and I don't know how I'll get through them all before my 1001 is up!

Yes, he's cute. But I prefer the long flowing hair.

A VA Weekend

Spent a wonderful weekend with Jason in Virginia.

Last time I was down there I realized how close he actually is to Williamsburg so this time around we decided to head up to Busch Gardens.

I've only ever been to Busch Gardens Tampa which I knew was an African Safari, so I had no idea what to expect out of Busch Gardens Williamsburg.

Once we got there I realized that I had been there once in high school as part of a band trip when we had a competition in Virginia Beach. In fact I vividly remember going on Apolo's Chariot with my friend Joey and it was his first roller coaster ever and he was so excited/nervous about it. But anyway...

We decided to just go for the annual passes. They pay for themselves after two visits and since Jason currently lives 20 minutes away from the park we figure when people come to visit us we can take them there for a day of fun. PLUS you get things like free parking, 10% off some merchandise and food inside the park and discounts on tickets for friends. We figured it was a win-win-win situation and didn't look back.

I totally forgot that Busch Gardens is more zoological/conservation type theme park and less adventure/rides type of theme park. I love animals. My parents took us everywhere when we were younger to go bird watching and I surprise myself sometimes when I spout information like, "Oh that's just a hooded merganser" or "Hey check out this kookaburra!" What can I say, we're nature people...

So seeing animals like eagles and wolves and other wildlife that have been rescued from shelters or from the wild is nice. All these animals would otherwise have died where they were so I applaud people (and companies) who adopt animals and help conserve nature.

We wandered about and enjoyed the European Pavillions. We joked how if we wound up in Germany for lunch we'd make sure Jason would stay away from any salmon he saw.

We did in fact wind up eating in Germany and got to see the show, which is one of the things I really wanted to catch while in the park. (Don't worry, Jason was safe and ate a turkey sandwich. Although he said that if he could do it over again he wouldn't have gotten it. The meat was dry and sort of bland. My combination plate with three different sausages - we all know how much I love those - was excellent.)

There's something about an oompah band playing the polka that gets me every time!

The stage itself was awesome. Or at least I thought it was. The gazebo had all of the music stands set up and the band marched in with the dancers. Then the band sat down and the platform of the gazebo raised them up above the rest of the structure.

You can see them sitting up there near the really cool ceiling. Das Festhaus is actually a beautiful building on the inside. All of the ceiling are these fabric ribbonesque panels that are woven into patterns.

It was just such a happy environment. Jason even turned to me and said, "Man, your people know how to have a good time!"

Gotta love z'Germans!

We continued to wander around and sat down to watch another show in Italy. The singers were excellent. A traditional group of minstrels I suppose you could call them.

A lot of the songs were sung in Italian so I had a very meager understanding. It's similar enough to the other romance languages that I can gather the gist of what they are saying, and the tunes of the songs were familiar but I would have enjoyed subtitles :P

The guitarists that accompanied them around was extremely talented and hilarious. He actually started following around people with trays of food and wandered off chasing children. It was wildly entertaining.

When we were in Scotland we caught a show of different animals doing trained acrobatics. It pretty funny. They mathematician birds and jump roping dogs. Even a pig!

That's all folks!

The weekend was nice, I wish it had lasted longer and my feet are still killing me from walking around the park all day, but I heart roller coasters and we got our fair share of those!

Deal with It

I kind of wish these came in my size.
Seriously.

c25k: Week 1, Day 2

I had no intentions of running last night. But I wound up at the boardwalk with Casey and I did day two of week one.

What I find amazing is I actually WANT to run. Like legit I just have the urge to run.

Am I sore? Yes.

Am I achey? Yes.

Does it feel amazing? Yes.

The downside to running on the boardwalk is I have no control over my pace. When I run on the treadmill I set myself at a certain pace and stay there for the entire interval. On the boardwalk as I start to get tired I tend to slow down even if I'm aware of it and try to keep time with the beat of my music.

After our run we tried to get a delicious smoothie at this place on West Park Ave but they were closed so we drove over to Smootie Roo and got some protein in us. It was pretty good although I'll have to get used to the taste of whey protein again. Just one of those things I suppose.

One thing I both love and hate about running is I can really feel it in my inner thighs. Hurts like hell but I'm glad those muscles are getting some sort of use. I wouldn't mind that area trimming down since I've inherited my mother's thunder thighs.

I'm thinking I'll run at the gym tonight. I won't get a chance to work out again until Sunday night when I get home from Virginia and depending on how tired I am I might wait until Monday night to run again.

I'm debating whether or not to do Week 1 over again just so I can make sure I can sustain the 5.0 pace during the jogging intervals. I don't want to go any slower than that.

Cooooool Runnings!

Feel the rhythm. Feel the rhyme. Let's get on up. It's running time?

Coooool Runnings!

One of my goals on my 101 in 1001 is to run a 5k. I have never run that long a distance in my life. Typically my family goes by the adage, "Why run unless something's chasing you?"

But then in college I used to have dreams - literally - where I was running. And nothing was chasing me. I just ran!

And I was happy in these dreams. Happy to be running in my little sneakers with my pony tail wagging behind me with each step.

I am not a runner however. So this dream seemed out of my reach. I mean I used to be "in shape" in high school. And I even did a little running for fitness in college when my roommate got into a marathon challenge with her boy du jour.

Perhaps my dream was obtainable and I was just going about it wrong? It was soon after that, that I read about the Couch to 5k Challenge (c25k) and it seemed like I was in fact, doing it wrong. I always just went up to the track and walked a lap and then just started running for as long as I could - which usually turned into a slightly pathetic half lap - before I was panting and had to stop and walk again.

With the c25k program though, it's more of a scheduled 13 week course of interval training, ending with you being capable of running a 5k!

Last summer I tried the c25k but I was overzealous and hurt my foot even after buying new neutral cushioned running shoes (apparently I underpronate/suponate). But now I'm ready to try again! And I'm taking special care to not go too hard too fast. And I'm going to keep a log of how I feel after each work out starting today.

Each Week I'm supposed to do the work out 3 times. It takes 20-30 minutes including the warm up and cool down. I go to my gym and use the treadmill but I've also gone down to the boardwalk and done these exercises. The treadmill gives me more control over my speed which I like.

If I don't think I'm ready to move onto the next week then I can spend an additional week at the same interval. For example, Week 1 is intervals of 90 seconds of walking and 60 seconds of jogging. Then Week 2 is 90 seconds of walking and 2 minutes of jogging. Each week the intervals increase in either time or frequency and at the end of the 13 weeks, you're actually running for 20 minutes straight.

My goal is to run a 5k, but really what I want to be able to do is run the entire length of the Long Beach boardwalk (2.2 miles) and back (4.4 miles total) without stopping. I figure if I can run a 5k (3.1 miles) then I can certainly work myself up to 4.4 miles!

Week 1, Day 1

I had to retie my shoes about 12 times before they were both the right tightness and I definitely had a lot of shin splints going on. Halfway through I wasn't sure if I'd be able to make all of the jogging intervals but I did. Also I was completely distracted by some of the other people in the gym. I went to high school with one of them. His name is Chris, he was the drummer in our class band and for the life of me I couldn't remember his last name. This was almost as frustrating as the workout. Plus a beefy tattooed guy who was working out with Chris kept on looking over at me, for the love of God I was wearing 2 sports bras! It's not my fault if I still jiggle too much!

I warmed up at 3.5, walked at 3.3 and jogged at 5.0 on a 0.0 incline. I cooled down at 3.5 as well and spent an extra few minutes in my cool down so I could finish off the second mile completely.

It felt okay. I'm not dancing in the streets but at least I got through the entire work out. I did a little stretching when I got home and logged my activity for the day into calorie-count and had some dinner.

I think tomorrow I won't do the workout again, instead I'll do something low impact like the bike or the elliptical. I don't want to injure myself.

Also, I'm thinking that since the dress I wanted for my birthday is no longer available, that I'll just buy myself a new pair of running shoes as a present. I'm pretty sure the shoes I have can last another month or so. Does anyone know if the New Balance 1064s replaced the 1062s? It's been a few years since I've worn out a pair of running shoes...

Lamb Cake Part Duex

Easter was enjoyable. I spent it with my family and we got a fantastic dinner at our favorite German Restaurant Zum Stammtisch.

Seriously, if you have any sort of German in you, or even if you just love good food, head over there. We've been going to Zum for years and years and years especially since my grandma lives so close and it's always delicious and homey.

Even Mickey loves it!

Yeah, Jaclyn brought Nanny back a German Mickey from Epcot, what about it?

Probably the most exciting thing was the chance Julibean had to try the lamb cake again. You might remember our hilarious attempt last year to try to make a lamb cake for Jason's family.

Our first try was delicious, but he was sloppy. We made him out of carrot cake (which isn't as sturdy as it should be), we didn't read the directions (and apparently made the cake entirely wrong), and we used cream cheese frosting (which didn't hold together as well as decorating frosting). Basically it was a not so epic failure.

I'd never decorated a cake before so I completely winged it and he looked as if I did (as you can see here->).

I mean Jason's family loved it. Joe enjoyed decapitating the lamb cake and he was just silly looking. This year Julibean actually read the directions, made the cake out of the proper kind of cake and she even bought little sugar eyes for him.

Lamb Cake Part Duex was adorable and so much more delicious and cute than our first attempt.

Look at 'im in his little bed of grass!

Lamb Cake success!!