This weekend was a spectacular of shopping fun-times, eating good-times and beautiful weather. I'm talking 70s and perfectly sunny, with an awesome cool breeze. It was awesome! See below for case and point:
Bow tank from H&M ($12.95? Not on sale.)
Bird skirt for $7 from H&M (remind me not to wear these two things together)
New jewelry setup with cork boards! (Target - $7.90 for 4 panels)
Leopard flower hair-clip (Forever21 - $1.50 for 2)
Owl earring hanger (Forever21 - $11.50)
Oyster Trio @ Sip (5th & Madison)
Flatbread Pizza (Sip)
Poutine for Breakfast! (J&M Cafe - 1st and Washington)
Of the Food Network. And HGTV. And sometimes TLC. I just can't help it. This is the second time I've watched this rerun of Next Food Network Star today...and I'm still kind of watching it. Why? Who knows. I'm a glutton for rerun punishment.
Happy Father's Day! I sent my Dad a card, but he didn't get it yet. Super lame.
My computer at work on Friday got a virus from somewhere or another (sad. face.) around 11:30 in the morning. It's something nasty, and doesn't allow me to even see my desktop background (even though it's there and working fine) and gives me false alerts about memory execution failing and such. Our IT dude called it tenacious, because at around 4:00PM, after having the computer repair itself and running a freakin' three hour virus scan and deletion, it still wasn't gone. I don't know where it came from, because I didn't open anything that I hadn't already opened on the computer before, so who knows where it came from. But it was running another virus scan when I left on Friday, so hopefully that wiped it out? Of course, Brian (our accountant) was out, so I was only one there who actually knew how to do the stuff that was supposed to happen to the purchase orders -- way to make me feel necessary -- and I couldn't check my emails. It was el stupido.
In any case, our trip to New England was awesome. The wedding was beautiful, even if the weather wasn't, and visiting with friends and family just made me even more homesick. The feeling has been appeased a bit, however, because my sister is here! And to escape her bible-study offering housemates, she came and hung out with us Friday night (for sloppy joes -- nom!) and then on Saturday, Nate and I rented our first Zipcar, picked up Liz and went shopping. We had Five Guys for lunch, then proceeded to drive back and forth between Target, QFC and Northgate Mall as many times as possible in a 5 hour period. I'm only slightly kidding -- we retraced our steps multiple times because we kept forgetting things. And as it stands, we still forgot grocery items (after hitting up Safeway, also,) and somehow we misplaced a bag from Target containing two packs of hangers which is part of the reason we were going to Target in the first place. We are winners.
I'm looking forward to summertime, when the weather is supposed to be gorgeous here, I get to hang out with my sister more and Nate is working a desk job very close to my desk job, so we can meet for lunch and walk together in the morning. Yay!
One of these days I'll stop being a lazy bum and start writing regularly again so I don't have to lump our giant weekends o' fun into one long and slightly boring post. Ah, well. A girl can dream.
This weekend was one of the most gorgeous times I have seen in seattle. Friday and Saturday were both super sunny, and Sunday was marginally sunny, so Nate and I took full advantage and walked around for a total of 13+ hours from Friday night to Sunday night. All our pictures are on the real camera -- we took the real camera out, aren't you proud of us?! -- so I don't have many to post here today, but as soon as I can muster up the energy to steal them from Nate's computer, I'll post our marathon walking tour.
Friday evening we walked downtown because a) it was nice and I wanted to get some exercise but b) Nate was still a bit of a sicky, so we weren't going to submit the gym to his snot just yet. We walked down to Pike Place and got some awesome shots of Rainier over Qwest.
The crazy-ass giant volancomountains is one thing I will definitely miss whenever it is we decide to scurry back over the east coast. I love the Appalachians, but there's really nothing like craggy, snow-capped peaks in the distance. It's one of my favorite things around living in Seattle, for realz.
Friday night we watched The Fighter. I though it was good, but I really have no love to give to fighting -- it just isn't really my sport. I don't like watching people get hurt. Nate said he thought it wasn't as good as he thought it was going to be.
Saturday we woke up at a vaguely reasonable hour, got ready and set out to find breakfast. We had yet to find a decent breakfast place and upon some further inspection, discovered a diner, Planet Java, right on the waterfront, a straight shot down Washington from our house! It's super cute and has that old-school, 50s diner vibe, including the music. There's vintage Coke and diner paraphernalia everywhere, but the most ridiculous thing is that the entire place is covered in clocks. Most of them are cool. Some, like the scary clown clock, not so cool. But the vibe and food (and our waitress) was AWESOME and just what we wanted.
After eating, we were going to wander down by the waterfront (along with everyone else who lives in and/or was visiting Seattle,) but we got distracted by the ridiculously loud sounds coming from Qwest, so we walked over there to check it out. There was a U2 concert on Saturday night, and they were setting up and sound checking while the Mariners game was happening at Safeco right next door, so we were not alone. (When we walked home later, I got an awesome shot of Lenny Kravitz -- their opening act -- using the digital zoom on the camera and focusing in on the giant screen above the stage. It almost looks like we were there! ;)
Afterwards, we headed to the waterfront, and walked and shopped and took pictures for the rest of the afternoon. We ate dinner at Contour, where they have a $2-5 happy hour menu until 8PM with some really delicious food. We also got a free round of drinks because they neglected to tell us until much, much later that they didn't actually have the fried calamari we ordered. Oops. Free booze!
I wound up getting a little sunburned from walking around, but considering were out for hours and my chest is just a little pink, I'll take it. Saturday night we watched The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. It is kind of horribly depressing, but really really good. Beautiful cinematography and music (by James Horner,) but man, I did not see that ending coming. You should see it. And then be kind of depressed for a while.
Sunday wasn't as nice, but we went a-walking anyway. We would up at Planet Java for breakfast again before heading downtown to do some shopping. Originally we went for cologne for Nate, since he's almost out, but we wound up with six pairs of shoes instead. Hahaha. Hah. Ha. Oops. =\ But we needed them, and we got rid of some shoes that were really quite past their prime (which the shoes we bought replaced) when we got home, so it wasn't completely frivolous. Nate replace his semi-dressy black shoes, his gym shoes and walking sneakers and I replaced two pairs of casual walking shoes and got a pair of wedges for work. See, see?! We needed them. Neeeeeed. I mean, yes. Plus, they're having a BOGO sale until July 4th. Totally justified.
I also got this awesome ceramic owl at UO.
Technically he is a piggy bank, but since we keep out change in a Cafe du Monde tin near the door, he is simply a decoration on the window sill. He was on sale for $1.99, how could I say no?!
I'm so glad this was a short week because I. Am. Beat.
I had my first two free personal training sessions at the gym. The girl was very cute and nice and I hurt all over. We did arms for 45 minutes on Tuesday and legs for an hour on Thursday. I'MSOTIRED. Working out is hard and stuff. But now at least I know how to use the machines and don't feel as awkward about it. Holla. My trainer is also trying to get classes for the evening to happen at this gym location, which I am all for. Some people live downtown and only have one gym membership. Hmph.
I'm also crazy excited about the fact that next week this time I will be in BOSTON! Granted, I don't get to spend much of my time in the New England actually in Boston -- I'll be in Maine Friday night/Saturday and in New Hampshire on Sunday -- but that doesn't make it any less exciting. I am returning to the land of Dunkin Donuts and Chik-fil-a. It's a dream come true.
You guys, I'm looking forward to fast food chains. This is my sad, sad reality.
Not that I don't love Seattle, especially right now. It's beautiful here, being able to live right on the water without paying exhorbitant prices is pretty freakin' cool (cooler if we could see the water from our apartment,) and the whole Pike Place/Space Needle area of downtown is really, really nifty. But I am affected by sunshine, or lack thereof, and I just can't handle it being 45 and drizzly most of the year. If it's going to rain, I'd rather have crazy thunderstorms that last for an hour or two than constantly being spit upon by the overcast sky. Personally.
Did you know Seattle is the birthplace of Starbucks and UPS? Nathan discovered UPS's Waterfall Garden right downtown near my work today.
It's also the birthplace of grunge.
You know what Boston is the birthplace of? Awesome.
But seriously, I'm glad to be here for the time being. I am embracing the newness of it all, even 8 months later.
(also, I got a new follower! Helllloooo, new follower! =)
I took a little bit of a breather this weekend. And by a breather, I mean, I didn't really do a whole lot? I guess I took a breather from my debbie downer posts.
I guess that isn't entirely true. Friday night we had grandiose plans to go to the gym, but I was tired when I got home, so we sat around and ate, instead. A viable alternative, I assure you.
Saturday morning Nate had to work, so I slept in a little -- til 10:30 or so -- and then got up and cleaned up some. And then, before I got to the real cleaning, I realized we were almost completely out of paper towels. So mostly I picked up and took out the trash. Then I made pumpkin bread, because we've had this can of pumpkin I wanted sitting it our cupboard for a while and I am always up for pumpkin flavored things. I am a firm believer that pumpkin should not just be a fall flavor -- it should be an every day flavor! It is so good and almost gone. It is also a dessert that I eat for breakfast. (me = gluttonous)
On his way home, Nate got paper towels so we could actually clean. We swept and everything! Only thing we still can't do is mop or vacuum. But the (only) carpet is dark green, so you don't see anything on it and we can just use damp paper towels to "mop" the 6' x 3' kitchen space, so I'm not sure it will get remedied anytime soon. The place gets pretty dusty, though, so maybe we should invest in some Swiffer products, since we have a whole book of coupons =P
We finished cleaning and hung out until Nate's sister and Brent showed up, then sat around and talked for a while before deciding we should leave before it got dark. We took the bus down to Westlake, then wandered around the market for a little while before deciding we were all kind of hungry. So we hit up Noc Noc and discovered it was 80s night. Unfortunately, the music didn't start until 9PM and when it did start, it was kind of lame. The best things they played were One Night in Bangkok (which not many people know, besides me, apparently) and Walkin' on Sunshine (one of Nate's most hated songs.) There was no Bon Jovi, Journey, Whitney or anything of merit. Granted, that probably comes out later on in the night, but a little something upbeat for the five people who were dancing might have been nice, Mr. DJ.
Anywho.
Sunday was for grocery shopping! We didn't leave the house until after 12:30PM, but we didn't think it would take us that long, so we planned to go to the gym afterwards -- doncha know, we just loveplanning on going to the gym. Well, we wound up spending two hours at the grocery store and didn't get everything we needed. So we dropped stuff off at home and headed to the drug store/small grocery store downtown to see what they had. We wound up getting everything on our list except coffee, which we couldn't find for a decent (enough) price (for us.) We've set a budget of $75 a week for groceries and managed to only go over by about $10 on our first shopping trip. It should be noted, however, that some of the items we purchased we won't need every week (like dry goods, condiments, spices, etc.) so hopefully some weeks we'll be able to keep it well under $75. (We also didn't include household items in our $75 budget, because we can't just decided not to buy toilet paper because it doesn't fit in the budget.)
For our $85, we purchased:
1.5lbs brussel sprouts
1 zucchini
2lbs strawberries (on sale because they were on their "way out," so we took them home and cut out the brown spots.)
1 bag baby carrots
1 head iceburg lettuce
1 box pre-chopped mushrooms (I don't really understand this, but you can buy 1 box whole mushrooms for the same price. I don't think it's done by weight, so the chopped is a way better deal! In any case, we still have a couple whole mushrooms for stuffing and baking. Noms =)
3 roma tomatoes
2 kiwis
3 white peaches
2 packs of spaghetti
5-pack large chicken breasts
small pack of ground beef
one salmon steak (unfortunately atlantic farm salmon, not pacific wild, but the wild is way more expensive.)
one gallon milk
8oz sour cream
frozen edamame in the pod
two boxes no-sugar chocolate covered almonds
one box pistachios
coconut water w/ mango and peach
two loaves of bread (one wheat, one white)
8oz fresh cow mozzarella (from Pike Place)
one bottle chocolate syrup
one bottle caramel syrup
one pack double fudge brownies
one box margarine
one cup yoplait (free w/ coupon!)
one bottle strawberry jelly
It was pretty good haul. The fudge brownie mix is actually to see if it adds enough chocolatey sweetness to a smoothie to be as cost-effective as the syrup, since it costs less than two dollars. We'll see.
We also got this yesterday:
Because it does this:
It's the JosephJoseph Chop 2 Pot cutting board and it's quite possibly one of my favorite inventions. We're slowly but surely trying to replace all our kitchen things with JosephJoseph: they are both colorful and functional!
We had the mozzarella and tomatoes last night for a caprese salad before dinner. SO GOOD. The fresh mozzarella was so very very delicious. Mild, with just enough flavor. So different from store mozzarella. Also calorie-laden. Hehe. Good thing we walked around for five hours beforehand!
For dinner we had salmon in catalina with couscous, onions and spinach. Definitely one of my favorite meals. The catalina left over from cooking the salmon makes a perfect sauce for the couscous, with veggies for extra flare!
I'm so tired, because I couldn't sleep last night. My coffee helped, but I'm probably going to crash after I eat lunch. Ugh.
alternately titled: why can't you just leave our crap alone?!
(in +/- form, because I don't have the energy this morning to make intelligible paragraphs.)
+ new dress from Express for a wedding in June. It has pockets!
(Mine is white with floral print, not black. I like it better.)
+ Nate won a giant bag of candy in a raffle at work. And by "won" I mean, you had to be present to win, and he was the only employee not working that showed up for the drawing. The manager that did the raffle/bought the candy actually won, so she spread the love.
+ I have plane tickets to and from that wedding, yay!
- Plane tickets cost almost $400. Boo. Does anyone else remember $200 being the mean advance plane ticket price? I would like that back please.
+ Boy got plane tickets for cheaper using Priceline's 'Name Your Own Price' feature!
- Boy got an e-mail last night from Priceline saying that his flight had been cancelled 'per his request.' Uhm...no!?
+ Weekend weather was absolutely gaw-geous.
- Now, the forecast is rain for ten days.
- Car was broken into AGAIN. Because once wasn't enough. And whoever did it had absolutely no idea what they were doing, because they tried to get our headunit (aka fancy radio/CD player) out by ripping at it with their fingers. In doing so, they cut themself and bled all over the front seat. EW. They also broke the harness that keeps the headunit into its little predefined space. Awesome.
+ Got to watch a police officer swab our car and take fingerprints. It's like, so CSI. (err...is that really a plus?)
+ Headunit wasn't actually destroyed -- they only managed to cut a couple wires. So it still works and Nate can put it back together.
- New TV's USB port doesn't work, so we can't upgrade the firmware. Lame.
+ Target switched it out no problem!
- 2nd new TV's USB port doesn't work. Nate did some (more) research and it's probably because the jump drive we're using isn't big enough to format it correctly with our Macs. Luckily, I have a PC at work. So I'm going to try formatting the jump drive and putting the firmwake package on it here. If that doesn't work, well...we're kinda S-O-L. We'll probably just wait and exchange out our current model for a different/better (ie: more expensive) TV from Target, since we can't just return this one. We have 90 days for that, so it shouldn't be a problem.
- Target couldn't hold onto new TV while we ran to QFC to do grocery shopping, so Nate had to sit with it in the car (because, you know, the window is busted,) so I had to grocery shop alone.
+ Great sales at QFC! (kind of a minus, because we didn't need that much/have that much to spend on groceries right now, so we couldn't stock up on anything.)
+ New coffee maker is awesome!
+ Gym down the street from us is $18 a month, plus $12 a month for a "friend or family" that signs up after you, so for Nate and I to go to the gym, it would be $30 each month, which is totally doable.
- What's not doable is the $50 "processing" fee for each of us. If I'm looking for a cheap gym, I ain't got $100 to spend signing up! Especially when you have to pay first and last, as well.
+ Nate fixed the window. It now looks like this:
(come to think of it, I dunno if this it's legal to drive it like this. But it will at least keep the copious amounts of rain we're currently getting out of the car, so that's good.)
- Death in the family. This should get multiple minuses. Don't know what the arrangements are yet. Don't know if I'll be able to go to the funeral because we just spent all our money on plane tickets for June, and my hometown isn't really near a major city or airport (closest is 2 1/2 hours by car,) so it's going to cost an arm and a leg. And it's on the other side of the country, so it isn't like I can just drive there. Ugh.
You can take the title of this post both at face value and sarcastically. For two different reasons:
I skipped work Friday morning to go to the doctor for the first time since...I don't know...2008? I'm usually a pretty healthy type of lady, but I've been having some...ahem...issues that have gone on for way too long, so I sucked it up and went in. For the long and short of it, I'm absolutely fine. But I did scare Nate because his shift at work was cancelled so he walked up to my appointment with me Friday morning and I was in with the ARNP for about 45 minutes, but I was a new patient, so lots of questions and paperwork equal a longer appointment. He had no need to worry =)
Backing up, we were planning on going to Target on Thursday evening to switch out our coffee maker, which crapped out on Tuesday morning. I guess technically it crapped out Monday afternoon, but I already had my coffee for that day, so we didn't notice anything until Nate try to rewarm the extra coffee from the morning later that day...which just didn't work (and as a side note, this is the second of this particular kind of coffee pot that has crapped out on us for various reasons.) In any case, Nate gets ready to pick me up after work, goes out to the car and the back passenger window is smashed in. Awesome. So I walk home, we wander around in circles for a while before deciding we need to go out, anyway, to find a place with a vacuum to clean out the car, anyway. While trying to clear out the stuff from the car, we discover that our inverter is gone, as is a duffle bag, a bag of change (plus all the change in the change drawer -- mostly dimes, nickels and pennies,) flashlight, the remote for the radio, Nate's extra pair of glass (they have a prescription, what is anyone else going to do with them?)and the DUCT TAPE?! The fuse cover is off, but the radio hasn't been touched, and the faceplate for it (which we keep in the glove compartment) is still there. As is our tent, folding chairs, Nate's OBDII reader, rope and various other camping equipment, including our tent. What random items to take.
While we were cleaning everything out, we talked to a guy who had also had his car broken into and they'd swiped his fishing gear, but not his tent. He said that between Monday night and Tuesday morning, all the 4x4's that were parked on the bridge near our apartment had been broken into. Ridiculous.
At this point it's starting to rain, because we live in Seattle, so we decide to head out to vacuum out the car and find some new duct tape. We wound up at Target, anyway, and go a new coffee maker. After returning the old one, we sprung for a better (read: more expensive) type, with a timer and different strengths of brew. Fancy.
The other thing that crapped out on us was our free old-school TV that we got from Craigslist when we first got here. I turned it on one day and it was just a colored line in the middle of a black screen. Nate fixed it (first by taking the back completely apart and moving stuff around, and then by banging on the sides of the TV until the picture spread back out,) and that stuck for a while, but then it decided it didn't like being hit anymore and that stopped working. So the other thing we bought at Target was a new, 26" LED TV. Oh yes, it's awesome. Nate has already found things wrong with it, but he does concede that the picture is way better than he had thought it would be. But the USB port doesn't seem to working, so we can't upgrade the firmware like we're supposed to, according to Westinghouse's website. Ah well, you can't have everything work perfectly, can you? Oh wait, maybe that's just us...
So we have a new TV and a new coffee maker, but we still have to fix the window on the car. It's a balance, you see? No, I don't really either.
It never really got above 65, but it was pretty warm in the sun. All I had on was jeans and a t-shirt, but sitting in direct sunlight I got hot after a while. Not hot enough to move (because I'm actually a lizard and I get my energy from direct sunlight,) but hot. I dropped Nate off at work, went to the drug store to get him some cough drops and Zicam, dropped those back off to him at work and went to wander around. I hit up Bed, Beth and Beyond, Nordstrom Rack and H&M quickly before wandering down to the water. Everyone was out and about, plus it's the SakuraCon this weekend, so the streets were kind of congested, but I managed to find a small open area next to Anthony's at Pier 66 to sit and stare out at the water. Since I brought my Kindle, I read for a while, too.
For dinner, we got some delicious appetizers at Noc Noc, a really cool bar with a crazy gothic atmosphere. Then we came home and watched a HORRIBLE movie, Night of the Demons. It was kind of a remake of a bad 80's movie that Nate had seen when he was younger. It was neither scary nor sexy, despite all the slutty Halloween costumes. It was just...bad.
I didn't drink enough water while I was walking around and sitting in the sun, so I'm feeling a little dehydrated. It's unfortunate because I'm tired but I'm not sleepy, since we didn't get up until almost noon, so I'm watching 16 and Pregnant. Television at its finest. Oh yeah.
I don't even know where to begin. Let's try...Friday.
Friday, I met Nate after work and we decided to find some dinner. We wandered for a while, tried to get into a highly recommended sushi restaurant, Japonessa, but their wait at 6:30pm on a Friday was an hour and fifteen, so we decided to hit up our new favorite Irish bar, Kells. We were hungry but not starving, so we decided to sit by the window and try out the Irish Cheese Plate and a few Pasties. They were good, but not excellent -- the cheese plate was better than the pasties, but that could just be my cheese-lovin' tummy talking. While eating "dinner," we decided to see a movie and checked out the listings. We decided to see Insidious, but the next show wasn't until 9:25, so we headed over to Gameworks to kill some time. They had a 2 hour unlimited play for $22 deal going up, but since we only had an hour and a half before we had to go the theatre (which was right next door,) we decided to just get $30 worth of credits for $24 (a different promotion they were running.) We played DDR, Jurassic Park III and one of those coin dozer games to our little hearts content. The coin dozer game froze up in the middle, so we got 40 extra plays, which was exciting! We used the tickets we got to buy ourselves snacks for the movie.
Which. Was. HORRIBLE. Seriously, don't see it. It wound up just being strange and not really scary. The special effects were bad, the storyline wasn't very good and the acting was horrible. And I'm all for bad scary movies, but this was...just a bad movie.
Saturday, Nate had to work during the afternoon, so I stayed home and played Facebook games and watched National Treasure for the umpteenth time before meeting him after work, again! We wandered around to find somewhere to eat and decided on Blue C Sushi, since it was still happy hour for them. We got drinks, four rolls, edamame, gyoza and cream puffs for $25. It was awesome! The vibe is really cool, plus they have a conveyor belt, which we both want to try, but wasn't included in happy hour, so we put it off 'til next time.
After Blue C, we went home for a quick stop before meeting Meghan & Matt (our new Seattle friends -- Nate knows Meghan from college) at 88 Keys, a piano bar in Pioneer Square. It was fun and loud, and we made friends with our waitress, Andrea. It was her first night, and she was running around like a chicken with her head cut off, but she did an awesome job! We sang very loudly and laughed and tried to talk, in spite of the noise level. Afterwards, we hung out at our apartment for a while and had nachos (which nobody wanted when Nate asked, but everyone ate when they were placed on the coffee table,) and smoked some hookah. And got into arguments about which ways to point the wheels when parking on a hill. It was fun.
Sunday we got up around 12:30pm and made it out of the house by 4:30...ish. We walked down to Sur la Table at Pike Place to try and find a sugar bowl. We didn't find one (that I liked enough to buy,) but we tried the $5000 espresso machines and decided that they are awesome. We also checked out the soda makers, which I think are cool and would like to get at some point. We hit up Ross afterward and got a new shower curtain liner, sheets and an ice cream scoop before heading home.
Monday morning it was difficult to get up, and I wasn't feeling well most of the day, but Nate got out of work at 1pm and saw my tweet about wanting a bagel and a smoothie, so he brought me a "smoothie" (aka a gelato milkshake with strawberries and coconut. That counts, right?) and a beautiful bouquet of flowers because it was our Two-Year Anniversary.
We didn't do gifts because we've been spending too much money lately -- and there will be plenty time for gifts -- but we did make a reservation to eat at Japonessa after work, so he met me at 5pm and we walked over.
The food was uh-maze-ing. We had Tempura Brie with a Raspberry sauce for our appetizer and two rolls for dinner: Seattle Crunch and Super Bad Boy.
I liked the Seattle Crunch a lot, but the Super Bad Boy was too spicy for me. It tasted good, but my mouth was on fire. And Nate laughed at me, because to him it wasn't spicy at all. Boo.
The rolls were both super rich, so we have leftovers. Nom nom nom.
We watched 'Love and Other Drugs' when we got home, which was ok. It was cute, and there were some good moments, but not great. I did laugh quite a bit, though.
There's sun on the horizon, at least for a week or so, which is fine by me. I hope it stays sunny for this weekend, so I don't just get to experience it from the conference room window.
Here's a few pics of how this weekend went. This pretty much sums up the whole weekend, except that we did a million things other than eat sushi. We just didn't take any pictures of anything else. I'll update soon!
I've been looking for a new main purse for a while now, because my old one is tattered and looking a bit busted. I couldn't really find anything I liked, even though I really only have two qualifications: big enough for my 13" laptop and not black or tan. When I was in Payless on Saturday buying new sneakers -- since my old ones did this a while back:
While I was there, I spied my new bag! It was on sale. It's pretty and pristine...and white. So you know it won't be white for too much longer. But for now, it's pretty and I like it.
(old | new)
(those white patches are where the fake leather has started to crack on the old bag. i know.)
I also spent some time trying on other shoes. I found a pair that I wanted that were on clearance, but couldn't bring myself to buy them because they are navy and they only go with two out of my three pairs of work pants and with very few of my work tops. But when I went back with Nate yesterday to get him some new work shoes, I wound up getting them, and another pair, because I just couldn't leave them sitting on the shelf for $12. I'm wearing them today and trying to get my feet used to wearing heels again, instead of flats. As it is, I'll probably have to alternate whiel I regain some flexibility in the ball of my right foot, which I had surgery on in 2003. My calves are also killing me, which I think is a combination of walking around in these in the store and then walking around in my Toms/sneakers all over downtown. It's just sad. Sad!
In any case, the other pair I bought is tan and meant to replace some old and dirty tan wedges Nate has been trying to get me to throw away for a while.
(new | old)
Not sure if you can tell, but the dark spot on the toes of the old shoes are DIRT. Ew. Showing them to someone besides me and my boyfriend makes me glad I threw them away.
Today is vaguely sunny and it's my friend Leslie's birthday! She is the last of the lifeform to turn 25. We are now, collectively, 100 years old. What a crazy thing to think about!
Anyone else have a hard time letting things go? (p.s. by "thrown away" I mean, the shoes, bag and a pile of underwear that I really shouldn't be wearing anymore are sitting by the door, waiting to be thrown away. Err...what?)
I'm so tired, my eyeballs feel all scratchy and I think I'm that guy at work because I'm having problems keeping my eyes focused on anything. Especially tiny, 10-point font. Gah. But this weekend was fabulous, so I'll sit here and sketch out for a while and not complain too too much.
Friday night, walking home from work, I ran into a lot of things having to do with the Sounders that was happening later. I got a free energy drink and saw a giant soccer ball!
I also found some pretty cool graffiti along the way.
I don't really remember what I did Friday night, but it must not have been too terribly exciting.
Saturday was a lazy day for me. Nate had to work from 10-4:30, and then they wound up keeping him until 5 after telling him he could go at 2 and it wound up being a huge 'I don't know when you're coming home so I'm hungry but I can't make dinner yet' fiasco. FIASCO!
Actually, it wasn't that bad. But it was kind of touch and go there for a little while.
Saturday night we went to Kells, which is in an alley way in between the stores on 1st and Pike Place Market that we didn't even know existed, to meet Nate's friend from college, Meghan, and her husband, Matt. We drank, ate, talked and listened to some fantastic live Irish music. After about a bottle of wine each (for the ladies) and a couple pints of Guiness (for the men-folk,) we decided that it sounded like a good idea to go over to Meghan and Matt's apartment to play Monopoly. Until, you know...2AM. Which is fine. Except that it's way past my bedtime, and we were all, uhm, slap-happy, to say the least. It became increasingly harder to do math, as it got later and later. So Nate and I finally called it quits, took leave of our gracious hosts via a cab. Once we got home, we promptly passed out as soon as our heads hit our respective pillows.
Sunday morning was a little rough, but we managed to be up and out of the house by 12:30PM, which is decent if you take into account that we didn't get out of bed until 11:15 or so. We found some coffee and some Jimmy Johns (and some ibuprofen -- hah) before I sent Nate off to Molly Moon's for his website meeting. I, of course, went shopping. What else do you do with a tax return? I got a couple pieces from H&M, but I also had a giftcard from my Aunt for Victoria's Secret, so I got some new undies while I was out, as well, since they are having a 7 for $25.50 sale right now, and my wardrobe from American Eagle boyshorts is getting kind of old and well-loved. So I picked up a couple different kinds, including their hipsters and boyshorts, to see what I like best so I can use the rest of my giftcard. They were running this promotion where you get a giftcard with your purchse worth between $10 and $500, so I'll have to go back in April and see what I get! Knowing my luck, it will be $10, but you never know.
We also went grocery shopping Sunday afternoon/early-evening. We spent more than we meant to, but we got everything from Safeway, instead of splitting it up between there and Uwajimaya, and most of what we bought we stocked up on, and bought more of than we normally would, because it was on sale! Like Crystal Light and Veggie Ritz. Plus we needed things like spices and household items, which are always makes things more expensive.
Sunday night we had homemade pizza for dinner, with an appetizer of stuffed mushrooms.
I love stuffed mushrooms because they're so super easy to make. The filling is basically whatever you have hanging out in your fridge! This time, it consisted of cream cheese, ranch dressing, parmesan cheese and an Italian spice blend, whith a Veggie Ritz cracker crushed and sprinkled on top. Pop them in the oven at 400 degrees for 15 minutes and they are golden brown and delicious! I love mushrooms, can you tell?
We also bought our tickets and hotel room for my friend Catherine's wedding in Atlanta this weekend! We're leaving at 8:20PM on Thursday night and taking the red eye, so we have Friday to be there and sleep (and hopefully get me an appointment at the eye doctor -- I haven't found one in Seattle yet, and I am in desperate need of new contacts,) Saturday for Wedding-ness and Love, Sunday to hang out in Atlanta and Monday to get back to Seattle in one piece. And it's nice flying out this way, because even though we don't leave until 5PM, it's eight hours of flying, we get in at 10PM (which will feel like 1AM -- blech,) we can still get a regular night's sleepy-times. I'm so excited!
I've been listening to five tracks on my new Jessie J album kind of constantly:
-Price Tag
-Do It Like a Dude
-Who's Laughing Now
-Mamma Knows Best
-Who You Are
Big White Room is growing on me, but I feel sometimes that the recording (that's on the CD, I haven't listened to any others,) is slightly contrived. It's such an introspective song, I kind of want to hear it devoid of runs, repeated syllables. Without her all-out, girl-power, let-loose voice. Just...the song. Calm. And sad. Because really, that's what it's about. And maybe it's just me, because I don't do runs or girl-power shouting (up in that range.)
However, I really find it interesting that there are all these songs that are going along with the 'yourself is beautiful/good enough' movement coming out now. Born This Way and Who You Are, which are the two that come immediately to mind, both speak to staying true to yourself and knowing that you are beautiful and good enough, no matter what other people say. I find it kind of disheartening that it has come to the point where we need to send specific messages via music, text, videos, etc. to reverse all the body image damage pop culture has done to our psyches. But that's what has spawned this information-age purge and re-assignment, via people like music divas, video vixens and CaitlinHTP's OperationBeautiful.
Enough heavy stuff, let's talk about the dinosaur cake Nate made me this weekend!
Yeah, my boyfriend made that. That most awesomest of cakes. He's legit.
He also stayed up until, like, 1:30AM on Saturday making it. Granted he didn't start until, like, 9PM, and then had to wait until the cake had cooled to start frosting, but I couldn't quite make it up that late, because I'm an old lady. So I didn't see the finished product until the next morning. Which was awesome!
It's my birthday! I'm officially twenty-five. I'm also sitting at work, munching on my maple & brown sugar oatmeal with almonds, coconut and Justin's maple almond butter (first try -- I'm hooked.)
There's is apparently a Birthday Hat here in the office, but since our Office Manager is out sick and I have the key to her office, where the Birthday Hat makes residence, there will be no hat. I'm not that good of a sport. I even had to wrestle the key away from one of our AV Managers, because it was sitting on my desk and our Accountant, Brian, tried to get her to commandeer it. I won. I'm spritely...or something.
I haven't written in a while, but I had a good weekend. Friday evening Nate and I decided to make pizza, with our 79 cent box of Jiffy pizza dough mix and various toppings. It turned out DELICIOUS.
(pre-baking. There's mushrooms and onions under there, and I had to fight to get the spinach put on.)
The crust was thin and crunchy, and just the right consistency. And it had plenty of cheese.
...I like cheese. It's a sickness, really. In any case, we grabbed the pizza, some Mike's Hard Cranberry Lemonade (well, I had that, Nate had Vanilla Rum with Crystal Light Fruit Punch as a mixer,) and watched Let Me In. It was kind of boring. I didn't think the story flowed very well, but some of the effects were pretty cool. And Nate gave me my birthday present early (which he never does) and it was Just Dance 2 for the Wii! I've been wanting it for a while, but it's hard to justify spending $40 on a video game instead of food or clothes or paying off debt. He gave it to me on Friday so we could play over the weekend, since that's more fun than getting it Tuesday night and not being able to play a lot. It's hilarious, and we already have our favorite songs. Not to mention songs that he's better at than I am, and vice versa.
(singing while making dough)
Saturday we stopped by Express and used some free knit coupons Nate got from work plus a little discount to get some clothes. With no food in the house, we stopped and had a Kobe burger with sweet potato fries for dinner and a giant brownie with vanilla ice cream for dessert. The menu didn't say it had walnuts in the brownie -- which is fine for me, but not so much for my weirdo boyfriend -- so Nate was slightly unhappy. He ate it anyway. Yum. Sunday was dark and stormy, so we made it a point to do nothing and ate mostly pasta all day.
Monday night I had plans to go to bed super early, because I couldn't fall asleep Sunday night, but then I came across a 25th Anniversary Concert of Les Miserables on PBS and I just couldn't tear myself away from the fantastic singing. It was basically the show without the set, and it was just so very well done. Minus Nick Jonas as Marius. I don't have a problem with the Jonas brothers, but you put a pop singer who's had a few voice lessons up against world-renowned Opera singers and people who have played title characters in the show on Broadway or in the West End multiple times and it just isn't going to hold up. He's was definitely the weak link, and it was kind of depressing. (I'm only slightly judgemental.)
Tonight we're going to dinner for Dine Around Seattle. I'm excited, it should be very yummy!
It's been a little while. Unfortunately, I don't have anything too terribly exciting to report. So...Happy Valentine's Day!
Those are my flowers from my booboo. He sent them to me at work. He's a very nice booboo.
Let's see. Here is a recap of the past couple days:
Wednesday it was beautiful outside, and I had delicious Jimmy Johns for lunch.
Thursday wasn't anything too special. We had a delicious casserole with egg noodles, cream of mushroom soup, onions and cheese for dinner. Noms!
Friday I have no pictures because I spent all day at "showsite" for TechReady12 learning more about what my company does. It was pretty cool, but it involved a lot of walking for the whole day. I did get to have sliders and sweet potato fries for lunch, though. Yum!
Saturday we braved the outdoors and went to Pike Place Market to do some long overdue Christmas shopping. Hopefully we'll be sending out presents soon! The shopping is mostly done, which is good. But it started raining not long after we got to the market and poured until about 6PM, which was the majority of the time we were out. Of course. Before it started raining, we stopped and got lunch at a little deli/store called 'Pear' across from the market. It was delicious. I discovered Kettle's Sweet Onion chips. They taste like funyons, only less like death and preservatives (ok, so that's a lie -- I love funyons) and more like deliciousness!
Sunday we couldn't decide what to do. It was vaguely nice outside, so we were going to go walk around, but decided to drive down to Ikea instead. I'd never been to an actual Ikea store, and I didn't know what to expect. Nate was shocked and so we did the whole experience -- shopping and eating. The food wasn't great -- it wasn't horrible -- but it didn't cost a whole lot. We got the pasta marinara combo, and the garlic bread was delicious. Plus, they have the best ice. Besides Sonic ice. Ice is an important part of my meal! Leave me alone...
Today is Monday and Valentine's Day. It's dark and gloomy outside, but at least it wasn't full on raining when I had to walk to work this morning -- just misting. Plus, I'm wearing my new shoes!
