Three-Day Weekend Recap!

Back to work Tuesday for most of us. At least it's a short week and that's nice. I haven't been doing a lot of weekend recaps recently, I just can't figure out how to get them to flow. The weekly weigh-in posts are doing well on Monday and I just feel that if I push a weekend recap to Tuesday, it's just dumb. Eh... Maybe I'll do 2 Monday posts if something exciting happened.

Saturday morning started off bright and early with my 8am Jenny appointment. Before I move on, I want to comment on something I see every week. There's a Burn Boot camp right next door to Jenny and they have an 8am class that's PACKED. I mean every.damn.Saturday there are a ton of people in there. I swear I've never seen so many people at a class before, especially every week. I looked online at their prices and I can't believe all 50+ people are paying in excess of $150 per month to go. Maybe Saturday morning is a free class or something?? 

Anywho, after jenny, I came home, ate, and went to Body Pump and my perfectly nice $20 a month gym. Before I left, Kev and I were watching Fit to Fat to Fit on A&E, which I'm obsessed with. Trainers gain 40, 50, 60 pounds over 4 months and then work it off over the next 4 with the person they're training. I can't stop watching it. When Kev does, he feels immediately compelled to go to the gym. He's down 30+ pounds since his birthday in March and is doing amazing. 

After we got home, we needed to go to Best Buy and look at a new printer, but first, someone had to get a bath.

She pouted the rest of the day after we washed the stink off her.

We go to Unleashed, which is a local pet store. They have really nice self-washing / grooming facilities for dogs. You use their supplies and they clean up the mess. Works for us.

This was one of the available shampoos. Because boy dogs need sport / performance shampoo?

We went to Best Buy, looked at a bunch of printers, picked out a really nice one, looked it up on Amazon after the sales person went away, saw it was $25 cheaper for the same one, plus free shipping... We ordered it from my phone in the store and left and went home. Sorry Best Buy.

We hung out until it was time to leave for dinner. We had reservations at Mothers and Sons in Durham, which recently opened. Disclaimer, it was AMAZING.

I started with a glass of Lambrusco, because bubbly red wine is my thing. Then I ordered the panzanella salad special to start.

Homemade ciabatta bread, local mozzarella, local heirloom tomatoes. omg.

Kev started with a primi of gnocchi alla romana, with prosciutto and some stupidly good cheese.

It wasn't heavy and potato-y like most gnocchi. It was just right.

Then he got the porchetta with roasted potatoes. They have this crazy wood hearth that they cook stuff on and the potatoes had this amazing roasted char.

I had the hearth roasted chicken with charred broccoli and cauliflower.

I really can't even begin to tell you how good this place is. 

To end the evening, Kev had the zeppole with some caramel sauce. I had a bite because fried food = pain for Lara, and it was unlike anything I'd ever eaten. I've had zeppole, but this was next level awesome.

Just go there and eat all the things. The come back and let me know what you ate.

Sunday morning dawned bright and early. Kev went to work and I started the laundry. But first, I needed to find an outfit for work next Friday. It's 'Murica day, and we're encouraged to wear 'Murica themed clothes. There's a pie eating contest and a pie bake-off. I needed something good.

I found this shirt on Amazon. Yep, that's a picture of a sneering Reagan, "I smell hippies". 

I'm so not a conservative but this, this shirt is perfect. Then I was lucky enough to find these leggings to go with. 

Oh yeah...

Groceries, laundry, then off to Body Flow. I got home, and eventually Kev made dinner.

Oh yes. Lovely rate strip steak. 

We needed to hurry up and eat because at 7pm we were going to see the new Independence Day movie!

I was so disappointed when I saw that it didn't get good reviews. Well, you know what? Those people are WRONG. JUST WRONG. It was over the top and plenty of Goldblum being Goldblum-y, which was all I wanted. I'm really glad we went, it totally didn't suck.

Monday morning I was up early to run the Four on the Fourth. Four mile race in Carborro, it's part of the Tour de Carborro, and one of 3 races. The others are October 1st and Thanksgiving morning. I've never ran it before, but I thought I should.

I posted this on Instagram, but when I registered for the race, it asked me if I wanted to compete in my age group or by weight.

Really.

I've never seen such a thing before. Don't get me wrong, I have a faaaar better chance of going against 160+ pound ladies than the 105 waifs. But really??? Who came up with this???

I got there at 730am, to not much parking and rain. I got my bib, made my way to the track and it really started to rain harder. I'm glad I brought a ziplock bag for my phone, because it definitely would have gotten wet. We made it to the starting line for the 8am race and stood there. In the rain. For 15 minutes. Finally the rain slacked off and the race started, I get it. They started late so the rain would let up. But you know, maybe you tell people what's going on instead of standing confused in the rain.

I did OK for me. Considering I've only bee running again for the last few weeks, I'll take it. 

The course was reasonably flat, a few hills, but fine. I felt much better at this one than I did at the Komen race and definitely saw some progress in just a few short weeks.

I got home, dried off, had breakfast and took a nap. Big 4th over here.

Kev and I headed to the mall for a bit and checked out the sales. Nothing really thrilled us though.

Now we're watching TV/blogging.

I hope everyone had a great weekend!

Nine Things about Me

Another Fun List today. I saw this one on Instagram and decided to put it up in ye olde Blog instead. So, here goes.

1. Last thing you watched on Netflix – I don’t know if it was on Netflix or Amazon Prime Video, but eh, they’re the same thing for me. Naked Gun. Damn, I forgot how funny that movie was and if you were wondering, it totally holds up. Kev and I were watching the most recent OJ documentary series, “OJ, Made in America” and they were talking about his acting career and how it never really, shall we say, took off like he wanted. Everyone thought Naked Gun was perfect for him. He was in if for all of 5 minutes and got shot and the crap kicked out of him. Heh heh heh.

2. Height – 5’3”. Yes, I’m short, and whenever possible I wear heels or something to make me a little taller. One time my chiropractor suggested that I perhaps wear flats or an orthopedic shoe. I explained that he must have me mistaken for a different patient, because that would never happen. It only happened 1x and he realized the error of his ways.

3. Last thing you listened to? - Like on purpose or something that happened to be playing? If we go wit on purpose, I was listening to the Broadway Showstoppers Pandora channel all day at work yesterday. It was definitely a Broadway sort of day. When I was at the nail salon last week, there were playing a fab mix of songs (I can’t believe I wrote that when you read the next part). I asked which Pandora station it was and she said it was the “Artists like Celine Dion” channel. In my defense, they were playing “Total Eclipse of the Heart” which is one of my ALL TIME FAVORITE SONGS, because Jim Steinman (he wrote most of Meatloaf’s songs AND Celine’s “Its all coming back to me now”.

4. Cats or Dogs? Ahhh. Both? If I had to choose, I’ve always been a cat person and cats really like me. But I have a dog too and Cleo is awesome.

We went for a run one day and she reached maximum derp.

5. Zodiac Sign? - Sagittarius. If you read anything about the characteristics of people with certain zodiac signs, yea, it's totally me.

6. Worst Fear - I could get really deep here, but worst fear, heights. I hate hate heights. F them. 

7. Relationship Status - Married. It'll be 10, yes 10 years for me and Kev in August!

8. Favorite Band?- For everyone who knows me, and I'm sure I've mentioned it on the blog 100x. BON JOVI! I have been a fan since Slippery When Wet came out in 1986. Yes. That long. 

DOES ANYONE ELSE HAVE A PROBLEM WITH GREY HAIRED JON BON JOVI IN THE DIRECTV COMMERCIAL?!?!?! BECAUSE I DO. There is no need for him to be grey. color that -ish. Really, it's making me feel old. Jon, you are my first crush and I have mad love for you, but I need you not to  be grey, M-kay?

9. One thing you can’t live without - Chapstick.

This is just on the end table next to me. There are 3 in my car, 2 in my purse, 3 at work, a few on the bedside table... In my defense, Godiva knocks them off the table and they roll under the couch. I think I've lost them, or Cleo ate them (she likes to chew on the tubes) and I get another one from the stash. Kev found 5 under the couch the other day. #IMightHaveAProblem

Happy Wednesday!

Scenes from the Weekend

How was your weekend? I swear they go by faster and faster. I think I just need one 3 day weekend or 4 day... just a little extra break would be awesome.

Everything is picking back up again, move in at NC State was over the weekend and today starts Spririt Week, I swear they just went home for the summer. I remember having to head back to school earlier than most, because every chapter has Spirit week and recruitment practice the week before the rest of the students come back. I swear it wasn't this stinking early. Maybe I'm just getting old and my memory is failing me.

Cleo isn't amused.

Friday night we started off with a trip to Margeaux's. We hadn't been there in a while and decided to go back. After work I stopped to get my nails done and got home later than usual. The nail place I've been auditioning, meh, I'm going to keep looking. I need you to do a good job on my raggedy cuticles and to be able to do a good job painting with dark polish. If you can't do that, you can't be my nail guy.

Anywho, I apparently didn't take any pictures of my food (I had salmon) or my cosmo, which of course I had one. Afterwards we went to Yogurt Mountain and I ate the toppings off my fro-yo and saved the rest for later.

Saturday Kev and I needed to get some much needed purging done. If we have any hope of selling this house we have to get rid of some of our crap. Namely all the crap that we brought from our last house and haven't used since we moved here. 

I cleaned out a TON of clothes, re-organized my dresser, the closet and all the cabinets in the bathroom. There were a lot of things....

Saturday night we headed to the Blue Note in Durham where there was an accapella shin-dig. 7 or 8 groups were there, Kev's being one of them, and they were all singing 4 songs apiece. It was a nice event, don't get me wrong, but the venue left much to be desired. They didn't have nearly enough tables in the main area to accommodate all of the people and it was worse than standing room only. We had our names in for a table over an hour before and when they finally called us, the only space they had was in a strange side room. Oh, and the owner / manager was a giant douche. While I was asking Kev if sitting in the back was OK, he tried to give our table away and I kinda got into it with him. Yea, not a fan. The groups did a good job and everyone had a good time, the owner just really put a bad taste in my mouth.

Thankfully we didn't eat there. Instead we went to Vin Rouge, home of the delicious steak tartare. Nom nom nom....

We took a good selfie too.

On another note. my front camera has been super blurry recently.I need to figure out what's up with that. 

Sunday morning came and I headed out for my usual grocery shopping, 

I did go to a 3pm Pump class at the gym. It went something like this...

Me: Oh, my hip has been bothering me, I should lower my squat weight. Oh, that lady, who I've never seen before, and never will again, has more weight than me. I guess I could use my regular weights. This is why I have issues....

That's my weekend, tell me you did something awesome!

Linking up with BLoved Boston!AND

Things I Learned While Kev was gone

The last week Kev has been away at a convention. You may think by the collage that it was a bacon convention, sadly, it was not. But by the number of pictures of bacon he sent me, you would have thought it was.

I didn't post him being gone, I wasn't terribly concerned about anyone coming to my house and touching my butt. I was more worried that Cleo would mess someone up.

We've had various things to attend in the past and have spent a few days apart but when either of us have big conferences to attend, one usually joins the other for a few days. Since I just got back from Orlando and we're heading to Europe at the end of the year, I needed to say home and save my days. This might be the longest we've been apart since we've been married. Crazy!

Well, since Kev was gone for almost an entire week, I realized a few things would happen if I were home alone more often.

 - I would eat Mexican food almost every day if it was just me. I love me some Mexican food and Kev just isn't a fan. I might have eaten it 3 of the the last 7 days...

 - All the plants would die, We really only have one plant, and it's a pot of basil. Thankfully I remembered to water it yesterday. I didn't want him to come home to a dead plant.

 - It's quite a bit cleaner around here..... No comment

 - I would go to the gym more. Last week I went 5 times. Because it was just me and the dog. Going to the gym filled the late hours. If it wasn't for Kev, I might have abs. lol

 - The garbage would never be emptied. As I'm typing this, he comes home tomorrow and the garbage can is at critical mass. I can shove like 3 more things in there before I have to get a new bag. I can make no garbage before he gets home. Garbage is gross.

 - I would know how many rolls of paper towels I had. Before Kev left  he told me we were out of paper towels. So I spent the next 4 days wiping my fingers on my pants. Sunday I bought paper towels and when I put them in the garage, what did I find? Paper towels...

 - The dog might actually start listening to me.

 - The bed covers are always neatly tucked in and it's made when I get out of the bed.

 - There's no one to tell me not to buy naughty food. I had golden Oreos and hot tamales while he was away. It's all delicious, but I don't need them. Thankfully I went to the gym 5 times.

 - It's also pretty lonely. I'm glad that he's finally home! Welcome back Kev!!

Linky Linky!

Scenes From The Weekend

I know that the weekend starts on Friday evening but some interesting things happened during the day. Well, maybe not that interesting but hey, why not?

I spent the morning catching up on some much needed reports and paperwork... is anything really "paperwork" anymore? There's no paper...

Alright, after all my paperwork, I needed a mind afternoon pick-me-up so I headed to Ross (more on that later) and to get an iced coffee. It's coconut coffee season at Breuggers and it is delicious iced. Well, next to the Breuggers by my office is a Jake's Wayback Burger. I've never eaten there but I heard it was good. My impression of the place changed drastically when I saw this.

I tried to move the table to get a better picture but people were staring at me. There's a reason why they hid it. That is a SLIM JIM MILKSHAKE!!! Who thought this was a good idea?? Really? Have they run out of things to put in milkshakes? If you want to protein pack your shakes, just add some protein powder, NOT hunks of smoked meat. Vom,,,,, 

Unbelievably, the chocolate cricket protein powder wasn't the most disgusting thing on the advertisement.

I got back with my coffee and headed over to the empty office on our floor to see how my interns were coming along with their decorating. 

Last week, my boss was sitting on his back porch with a beer and thought it would be awesome to have a haunted house to educate the staff on the new software features we were debuting this week. It's a "Creature Feature". We have 5 rooms decorated like different horror movies.

I worked on the Mummy Room.

Some days I leave work and think, nope, I can't put that on my resume. Nope.... This is what my interns do, decorate empty offices and dress up as creatures. I thought my internship at the Andy Warhol museum was pretty cool, I got to play with his time capsules and catalogue the contents but yeah, they get paid to do this, My internship was $0.

Friday night Kev and I went to Bolt Bistro for dinner. My cocktail was yum but my food not so much. I also left my phone in the car so no pix.

Saturday morning I was up bright and early for Pump class, Well, 10am early. It's the perfect Saturday morning class time. Sleep in and still get a morning workout? Perfect.

I got home and had a hair appointment to get my roots touched up at 130. Kev wanted breakfast and we "thought" we could get to Briggs for breakfast and still get to my appointment. Nope. We called and the wait was 10 minutes. We got there 5 minutes later and the wait was 20-25 minutes. Grrrr.... It was too late to go anywhere else so we just decided to wait. 

My food was gross. Everything tasted like plastic. I told my hairdresser and she said that Briggs went downhill and tastes like old people. I don't know, my food was gross but the server was messy and that was a huge turn off for me. She splashed water and coffee all over the table, the coffee pot she left on the table was wet, it was just messy... and plastic-y.

Saturday night we wanted to see Trainwreck but sadly it was sold out and we went to Ant Man instead. Dang this weekend sounds depressing. It really wasn't that bad, I swear. 

Sunday morning is groceries and laundry. As i was leaving, I saw this in my cul du sac. That's a family of 7 asshole deer. I hate them. They have no people fear. They run in front of cars, eat our flowers, just are a general nuisance. They were back when I was walking Cleo and she really, really wants to chase them. If I thought she would come back, I'd let her but Cleo chasing dear equals a half hour of me chasing Cleo.

The Big Spoon lady was sampling all their nut butters. Since I have 0 self control when it comes to nut butter I walked out with this one and a belly full of samples. Nom....

A few weeks ago we had a work happy hour and I discovered this deliciousness. 

Today I found it at Trader Joe's. Yay.... It's in my fridge now. 

I also found this, much to Kev's delight. 

Then we took Cleo to the pet store for a wash. I take her to Unleashed and for $15 you can use their facilities, supplies and they clean up your mess. I think it's a great deal. Clean dog and I don't have to clean the bathroom. Win win.

She's never happy to get a bath and at Unleashed there's a wall of what I refer to as "awful animal parts". You can get beef trachea, dried duck feet, moose knuckles, you name it, they dry it and dogs eat it. I let her pick out something and she went with what might be an elephant ear.

That thing is huge. Now she's lording over it. Because the cat will take it. The cat never takes anything...She doesn't want your dumb elephant ear. At least she smells good now.

After bath, I went to the gym, folded laundry any ended the day with some blogging. Not terribly exciting this weekend but I have a clean dog, which is an accomplishment.

Tell me you did something awesome.

Linking up with BLoved Boston!
AND

Merry Christmas!

How is everyone? I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas /Hanukkah / Kwanza. I took a little blogging break over the last week while I got caught up on a few tings but don't fret, I have PLENTY to talk about.

Let's chat a bit about last week. Since I just started a new job a few weeks ago, we didn't have plans to go any where, it was going to be a nice relaxing time here with the two of us.

A few thoughts about working over the holidays, it's the least productive time of the year. I manage sales people and lets be honest, you aren't selling anything this last week. You'd best have made your quota on December 19th because nothing is happening right now.

They did some work on Monday and Tuesday and on Christmas Day they sat around wondering when they'd get to go home. I had one lady pitch a fit about having to work. Look honey, if you wanted to be off, you should have saved some PTO and planned accordingly. mkay?

I got tired of listening to them complain and let them go around 1:30.  Instead of going home I made a quick trip to Target. Target on Christmas Eve, shoot me. It's nothing but dads and over-stimulated kids wandering around aimlessly. The kids know what's coming tomorrow, they can't control themselves. I navigated though the mess, grabbed a few last minute things and headed home to wrap Kev's presents.

After wrapping we decided to go to Flemming's for some $6 appetizers. 5 for 6 til 7 is a glorious thing. It also started about 36 hours of gluttony for me. I had the calamari app and the fried food didn't give me a stomach ache. It was a Christmas miracle. I'm sure all the Christmas cookies soaked up the fried goodness in my belly.

Before we knew it, Christmas morning! Kev did a great job with my gifts. I might have done a little returning but I really love all my presents.

So, this kinda started as a HP Chromebook. I'd been asking for a white on white Chromebook for a while, so I could do all my blogging and KD stuff instead of using Kev's. Well, since I started my new job I can really use my laptop for whatever I want and it doesn't make any sense to have another laptop device. I just didn't decide that until 2 days before Christmas. Ooops.

Over the weekend we returned the Chromebook and went to the outlet mall to scope out the Coach and Michael Kors stores. Michael pulled through AND I got a 20% off coupon from the Tanger Outlet Customer Service. It brought it down to less than the laptop we returned so it's a win win for me. 

Kev also got me 2 ten pound kettle bells. I actually needed something a little heavier and I traded them in for one 25 pounder and some snazzy weight gloves. Now I need to search Pinterest for kettle bell exercises. I know I can squat with it and that's about it. 

He also hooked me up with some gold ball earrings. I've been a strictly white gold gal for YEARS, I mean YEARS. These might actually be the first piece of yellow gold he's ever bought me in 10+ years together. I seriously love them though. I love ball stud earrings and I didn't have anything gold.

I am soooo in love with this apple cider tea from Tevana and I was really nervous about what was going to happen when they discontinued it in the Spring. Thankfully Kev got me more than enough to tide me over.

Fun fact. If you go to Tevana the day after Christmas ALL the seasonal teas are 50% off. Don't tell you husband who paid full price a few days prior. Next year we're going to get a gift card and buy 2x as much tea. 

After opening presents we watched 50 years of WWE on Netflix. Why? Because nothing says Christmas like men wrestling in tights. It was a really good documentary, I highly recommend it!

Then it was time for brunch. We had 1pm reservations at Herrons, which is the restaurant at the Umstead hotel. It's uber fancy so we got dressed up.

I ordered the omelet of the day and Kev had the french toast. I would have taken a picture but it was a little too fancy to pull out my phone. The food was amazing, really fantastic. The service, surprisingly, not so much. It was just a few little things that threw it off. They didn't bring cream for the coffee and never came back with the butter for my biscuits. Usually in fancy places they're a lot better on the service side of things. It was just kinda odd. We'll probably go back one day but there are a lot of other places I'd eat at before going back. 

After brunch we went home and took Cleo for a walk before heading over to a friend's house for Christmas dinner.

I contributed a cookie tray.

We had a great time with some friends and their family. We're so fortunate to have friends who would invite us into their home for Christmas dinner. It was a great evening and over far too soon.

Before we knew it, time to head home and get ready for work! Christmas Day was fantastic and I was sad to see it end.

Linking up!

B Loved Boston

How was your Christmas Day??

What I did this weekend

Well, well, well, it's Tuesday. First off, Happy Veteran's Day to all those who've served our country. 

If I;d still been working at the bank I would have celebrated with a day off but alas, I don't get all those holidays off anymore. It's OK, I traded it for an office with an actual door. 

This past week was kinda strange because I gave my notice on Monday and the bank said it was my last day. Good news is I was able to start at the new job on Monday but it gave me 6 days to twiddle my thumbs. 

A high point for the week was this! 

I go to Breugger's for coffee... a lot. Kev wasn't drinking coffee for a while and instead of me making a pot, I went to Breugger's. Well, I kinda go there every day. Last year I didn't get the Bottomless mug because it seemed excessive but the more I went, the more the employees "harassed" me to  get the mug. I told Kev it was what I wanted for my birthday and he got me an early surprise. :)

It just went on sale the first of November and is good until December 31st 2015. I figure I have to go 100 times to break even. I intend to make money on this investment. Challenge accepted.

Friday night we went to see Interstellar. It was fine. I wanted it to be better and the first 2 hours were great. The last 30 minutes I felt they jumped the shark. I've seen 3 disappointing movies in a row. Next time, I'm choosing the movie.

Saturday I was climbing the walls and decided to take Cleo for a run, She usually stops 750 times on a run to smell the world and ends up ripping my arm out of the socket when she comes to a dead stop. 

Halfway through we stopped for a selfie and she pulled what might be the derpiest picture I've ever seen. I almost erased it because I was embarrassed for her. Then I remembered she was a dog and didn't care about social media. Then I posted it all over the interwebs.

I also made a stop at Trader Joe's where all the pumpkin things are transforming into peppermint things. I found these Thanksgiving dog treats which she absolutely loves. Who knew?

Saturday night all the animals laid on Kev.

My cat has a fat ass...

Sunday morning I took myself on a solo run and it was nice. The weather is perfect for running! I was a little annoyed for not going the other .05 miles to make it an even 3.5. I have a slight number OCD.

The rest of the day was spent doing laundry then I headed over to NC State for sorority meeting and elections.

That was my exciting weekend, what did you do?