A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Mall

So, I decided to take myself shoe shopping this past weekend-I haven't bought myself work shoes in about 4 years, (I know, I'm not the typical "woman with a billion pairs of shoes,") so it was high time to treat myself to some new ones. I got myself a little zipcar and drove on out to Tysons to begin the hunt. But, a funny thing happened on the way to the mall. My feet shrunk. Yes, crazy, I know, but it's true. My feet are already pretty small as it is, but I've consistently run about a 6 1/2...hard to find, but possible. But, as I was trying on shoes, the 6 1/2's seemed like I was a little girl playing dress up in her mom's shoes--they simply didn't fit!

I decided to go down to size 6, and see if those worked, and still, I needed the shoe pads in order to make them fit. It's official though, I am now the floor sample girl. I've been reduced to buying whatever is out on the floor-something I'm sure hundreds of people may have stuck their feet in....I don't get the new shiny in a box pair--no, no! I get the floor sample-and not even at a reduced cost! I mean, if you buy the sample furniture on the floor, it's for sale, is it not? This is an injustice! I'm here to fight for the rights of small feet-because given this latest event, it seems as though my feet are getting tinier. It couldn't be my hips or my butt, nooo....it's my feet. Gah! Sometimes the world is just so unfair.

Cabin Fever

Over the weekend, the Mr. and I headed out of town to celebrate shepdc's 30th birthday extravanganza at Lake Anna. Mr. Shepdc and I went to Tech together (i hung out with his fraternity throughout my college days), so it was heartwarming to be included in shepdc's festivities, especially since the Mr. and I are so fond of her!

This trip was perfect for the ADD in me-because there was always someone around to play a game with, take a walk with, jump trampoline with, etc. And plenty of time to read my new book (Blink) as well. Lots of vino throughout the weekend, and at one point, a few of the people decided to polar bear it into the lake-which was following by loud screeching, and a lightning fast run to the hot tub. It was an awesome weekend away, and I enjoyed meeting some new folks and getting to spend time with shepdc and mr. shepdc, and having some time to decompress. Now if I could only do it more often....

2006 in review

Now that we've kicked off 2007, a quick look at all that happened in 2006:

January: Al and I ring in the new year first at Katie and Matt's, followed by meeting up with my friends from high school and new friend Colleen at Rosa Mexicana. At the end of the month, Al and I decide to travel East, and buy tickets spontaneously to go to Japan.

February: Our friend Kristen from California comes in for a quick visit-while she's in DC for work, we got a full weekend in, including a trip to the Corcoran to see the Warhol exhibit, and of course the annual Super Bowl activities at the Russell's household.

March: Al and I take off to Japan! Highlights include seeing the big Buddha, dining with perfect strangers under the most magnificent cherry trees in Tokyo, diving with amazing people in Okinawa, strolling the path of philosophy in Kyoto, a delicious french/japanese meal, bath time with old japanese ladies, and karaoking with new friends Jez and Emma.

April: We head to Roanoke, and get to spend time with some of my favorite great aunts and uncles. Tons of great food, laughter, and tears.

May: Off to NYC to see the Odd Couple with Al's family, and spend some time with our friend Mangan in Jersey getting drunk out of our minds and singing along to Bon Jovi's Livin' on a Prayer. Good times! At the end of May, my girlfriends Bets, D, Shannon, and Kat all come in to town for a girl's weekend extravaganza.

June: Mom and Dad come to town and we accidentally take them to a gay line dancing club.

July: We head to Utah for Clay and Nicole's wedding. While we are there, I get to go horseback riding, and Al and I get to attend a fantastic concert and go hot air ballooning.

August: Al has jaw surgery. And then has it again. And then returns to the hospital for an ulcer. His jaw is wired shut for nine weeks. I realize my friends and family are the most amazing people in the world! Our friends Josh, Jenny, Erik, and Ilona all breeze through town, but it's good to see our friends faces, and makes us feel loved. We also get some Boothy time in as well.

September: I turn 30. My friend Colleen hosts a girls night out for me to celebrate. Al still has jaw wired shut.

October: Al throws me a Spytastic Surprise 30th, which is attended by friends and family from near and far. Again, I'm the luckiest girl in the world to have such great people in my life. Al becomes unwired about 10 minutes after our last guest leaves (of course!). At the end of the month, Al and I celebrated our 3 year wedding anniversary by going to DC's 1st Annual Unique and Unusual Food and Wine Festival. We also host our annual pumpkin carving party.

November: Have my review at work-get a "Superior" rating! Al and I got to experience our first Cirque du Soleil, and I went to an incredible Acoustic African concert. We went to CT for Thanksgiving for a blink of an eye, and came back to a fun weekend in DC with our friends Katie, Hillier, and Ilona all in town from Boston. Nov 30th, we celebrated Al's 32nd.

December: What a busy month! Holiday parties galore, a weekend in Roanoke with my family, and then birthday celebrations with friends. On Dec 31, we had potluck dinner at our house and had about 13 people total over. Drank lots of yummy kir royal.

January: My supervisor gave her notice, and Al has some sort of stomach ailment, not sure what though. Can only hope the year improves!

Grown up moment

So, recently I have been put in a kind of weird situation-I don't want to get into it too much, but basically one of my friend's spouses has put me in the middle of a very private battle between the two of them. First, I live thousands of miles away from this friend, so I'm not quite sure why their spouse feels the need to involve me. I talk to this friend maybe 4-5 times a year-birthdays, holidays, and the random check in. But their spouse has been sending some pretty harsh emails, and quite frankly, not something an outsider like me should be receiving. I'm not going to pass judgement, there are 3 sides to every story, but honestly, I just don't want to be in the middle, and shouldn't be for that matter.

As I was talking it over with Al, it was another "wow, we really are adults" moment, when you realize that the people getting separated and divorced or having marital problems are no longer our parents' friends, but are our friends. Sometimes I wish I could reach out to college kids who get engaged right away and say, do you realize what "I do" really means? It's not just having the dream wedding (albeit, that part is nice), it's so much more-it's retirement accounts, wills, family obligations, sickness, health, adventure, extreme happiness, moments of discontent all wrapped into one. So, wait. Breathe. Enjoy life, learn who you are before settling into something that may or may not fit you. See the forest through the trees.

Look Who's Cooking!

That's right, it's me. Due to the ceremonies for Gerald Ford, I had today off, so I decided to make a fancy shmancy dinner for Al (who had to work). After hours of pouring over recipes (that new Gourmet book is huge--you could seriously hurt someone with it!), I reserved my lil Zip Car, and zipped my way to Virginia to stock up on some fresh tuna, and then started to prep. Now, most of you may know, my husband is the chef in our household, and I'm the mere "sous chef." I do cook every so often, but even when I make something and we have friends over, they mostly see Al at the helm, and compliment him for a lovely meal, making me feel like chopped liver (so, make that be a note to any of you who come over for a meal ever...I do a fair share of work, but someone has to chat to the guests!). Without Al though, I am a bit skittish around the kitchen, and don't have the most confidence when coming up with a meal. Nevertheless, I took the bull by the horns, and ended up making an asian tuna salad with pickled cucumbers, and a side of white beans mixed with red peppers and garlic. It was quite tasty, and the presentation turned out just how I had hoped! Yay me!

Tomorrow, Al and I return to sketchy yoga. Stay tuned.

Con Mis Amigos

The past few years, NY eve has been a bit lackluster-not that they haven't been fun, but it just seems to take so much more energy to get everyone to commit to anything. When I was little, new years always seemed so much fun, and I could never understand why my (or Maggie's) parents were asleep before the stroke of midnight. Of course, over the past few years, it's been a struggle to stay up to watch Dick Clark count down.

Leading up to New Years, we went out on Saturday to walk through Brookside Garden of Lights (filled with more than 600,000 lights, with tons of special effects) with our friends Paul and Erika, and Paul's sister, niece and nephew. I bought us all these fun 3D glasses that make shapes out of the lights-such as snowflakes and santas, and for the Jewish contingency-we had dreidels and stars of David. After our walk through the gardens, Al and I drove back home and hit a local Ethopian restaurant for some grub.

You know when you are in a restaurant and sitting next to someone and you start listening in to their conversation? For some reason, I coldn't seem to tune out the conversation next to me no matter how hard I tried. It was two girls out, and one was just being such a show off that she's had Ethopian food before and going on and on about what to eat and how many times she's been to the restaurant, and which beer is good, etc. And the thing is, when I go to a restaurant I haven't been to, and I want to know what is good, I tend to ask the person I'm with (assuming they've been there before), and I get a brief run down of what to try. But, this woman just went on and on. And, when they were getting full, she kept saying "two minute break! two minute break!" I guess maybe I just get annoyed easily, I just get irked by show-offy braggy types. Yes, yes, we all get that you've been here before and know how to moderate your eating by two-minute breaks. Sheeeeesh. More eating, less pontificating on the herbs of Ethopian cuisine.

Anyways, New Years Eve-we had a pot-luck get together at our place. I literally sent out an email on Wednesday offering a place to hang out for those last minute planners like Al and myself, and we ended up with 13 people at our place. See, noone is really getting psyched for New Years anymore. Why is it that a holiday centered around champagne is so lackluster? Well, we had quite a spread, and ended up retiring around 1:30ish. Not bad...but not exactly a rager. Anyhoooo...a happy new year to you all!

The most random blog ever

New Year's Resolution #1: improve on the whole "blogging" thing-blog more often.
New Year's Resolution #2: keep to New Year's Resolution #1.

So, since last blog, Al and I checked out a yoga class. One of his coworkers told him about this "free yoga class," so we decided to check it out. I've done yoga only a handful of times, but I'm not great at it. I can't quite figure out where I need to be for each pose, or if I'm doing it right-plus, I'm clumsy as all hell. Anyways, we arrive at this sketchy sketchy place called the People's Media Center, filled with a few computers circa 1990. Ok, not exactly "zen." Then, we got down into the basement of said sketchy place to our yoga class. Mostly, yoga studios are fairly warm to make your limbs all limber-like. But, since we were in a basement, and not in a proper studio, it was damn cold. So, there we were spread out on our towels (no yoga mats for us), for 2 hours practicing our "cold" yoga. It was actually enjoyable though, and for once I felt as though I was doing it right, despite the chattering teeth from the cold. I think we'll likely go again......but this time with a sweater or two.

For the holidays, we trekked down to Roaonoke. It's a bit of a mix for me going home-I love being with my family and enjoy the board games, cups of hot tea, visits to the gym, the movies, etc, but most of my friend's families have moved from Roanoke, and those whose families are still there live in DC area anyways--so I don't get the chance to catch up with old friends when we go home. But, I digress...

We got back on Tuesday, and have been busy bees since. Birthday dinner out w/ our friend Mir on Tuesday, and then dinner out again for our friend Paul on Wednesday. Paul's b-day was a blast-we went to Bistroit du Coin (a great lil French restaurant in Dupont Cir), and Erika split up the couples so that we could all meet new friends. I loved where I was sitting-had a great time, and laughed so hard that no sound came out.

Erika came up with these clever table cards saying "to your left is so and so, ask them about such and such." It was a really great way to start a conversation. I wish every party I went to people could walk around with these cards-so fun! Anyways, as a result of the card, my neighbors learned about my "alter ego" Judy. Whenever Paul gets drunk, he starts calling me Judy....and so my new friends wanted to know all about Judy, and decided to take it one more step and deem me Judy G (as in Ali G.). It's one of those "you had to be there" moments, but hilarious. Judy G was in full force and tearing up the hizzzouse.

Anyways.....I also found out that Will's (who was sitting next to me) grandma lived in the same town that I did study abroad in (Patcham, right outside of Brighton), and was only a mere 2 blocks from my host family. He knew all the same pubs that I hung out at and everything. It made me want to go back to England (as if the movie the Holiday wasn't enough....). So, Jez and Emma, and Simon---if you're reading this, prep yourselves. I'm going to plan a visit (with newly jawed Al in tow).

After dinner, we headed to Chinatown to meet our friend O'Malls in from Philly and also meet his girlfriend. What a fun evening. I love city living. Make sure to check out our pictures: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AcNGTZs3ZOGHs

Chain Gang

Work has been crazy busy the past few weeks. Crazy! So, I haven't had time to blog, much less come up with many blogworthy tales....Here's a quick blurb of life lately....

Thanksgiving was quick-up and back to CT in about 26 hours. I definitely missed my family and all of our traditions-but we'll get to see them at the end of the month, and it was good to get our QT in with Al's fam (most of which involved sitting and figuring out our plans for the day--I tease---sort of).

Post Turkey day was a blast. The evening we got in we went out for a delish Ethopian dinner w/ friends followed by a long game night (2 am!). So fun. I just love game night! The next day we ran around doing holiday shopping and then met up with Andy, Mags, and Ilona for Belgium din-din followed by foozeball and pool. And, Sunday night some friends had us over for a yummy chilli dinner---biked on over there and home. DC after Turkey Day is the best. The city is empty and I love it.

This past week was Al's b-day. He's been burning the midnight oil too, so we were pretty low key. Ended up going for dinner Thursday night, and then celebrated all throughout the weekend, including a bowling night. I bowled the worst game in the world, but did enjoy coming up with fun names for all of the bowlers. Loved seeing the words "The Godfather" flash up on the big screen every time Al got a spare or strike! Hee Hee!

Spent the better part of the week and weekend cooking-enchiladas, brazilian stew, roasted chicken, tons of baked goods. Maybe one of these days someone will compliment me rather than assuming Al is the only cook in our household...b/c let me just tell you, I rock the enchiladas. Rock them!