The Weekend

Yes, a recap of what I did this weekend. I really like these posts but lately I’ve seen bloggers bash their own recap posts which I think it strange. They’re really great!

Friday started with a pool party at my friend Elisa’s apartment. It was an overcast, hot day, just like every other day she’s hosted us for a pool party. Why break tradition, right? The best tradition of the Elisa pool party is breaking out our friend Erica’s delicious 7-layer dip the moment we arrive. That stuff is so good and so dangerous.

After devouring 7-layer dip we headed down to the pool to barbeque.

There were a few problems getting the BBQs working, but luckily her building’s great maintenance man fixed everything and we were soon in business.

Burgers, sausage, and corn. Yum! (And note to self, my scarf tied like that is not flattering!)

We hung out by the pool for  awhile and around 6pm decided to go upstairs for dessert. Which was good because right when we got upstairs it started pouring.

Dessert was a delicious frozen chocolate peanut butter pie made by me and a very inappropriate ice cream cake.

If you don’t know what that means just Google. The birthday girl says it all the time.

I got home around 11pm Friday night and happily crashed.

When I woke up Saturday morning I intended to go running but I just wasn’t feeling it. Instead I decided to take in a matinee showing of Crazy, Stupid, Love.

I’ve been so excited to see this movie since I love all of the actors. Sadly I was disappointed. In my opinion, the movie focused too much on the babysitter and Steve Carrel’s son. And too much on Steve Carrel. I wanted more focus on Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. It was a cute story though, not really original, but it was entertaining. Probably better to wait for the DVD though.

Since I didn’t get my run in I brought my gym clothes with me to go to the gym right from the movie. That worked well and I was in, on the elliptical, and out in no time.

After a quick stop at the grocery store I went home to relax in front of DVRed episodes of Suits. Anyone else watch that? I think it’s pretty good!

Then it was time to get ready to meet my friend Natalie, who was down from Boston, and a group of people at Motorino in Williamsburg.

Unfortunately it took me 5 trains to get there (stupid weekend construction), but luckily there was a long wait for a table so I didn’t miss any food!

Three of us split the Cremini, Margherita DOC, and the special pizza (all I remember was the heirloom tomatoes and raw basil). They were all delicious, but I thought the cremini was the best.

The only I picture I snapped from the night was one in the bathroom.

I wore my romper (same outfit as here) and it’s just so annoying to go to the bathroom. That’s my belt and cardigan on the top of the toilet (I didn’t know where else to put them!).

I got home just before midnight (I love that I was home before midnight both days and didn’t get drunk this weekend). And headed to bed so I could wake up to run.

I did indeed go for a run Sunday morning and it was hot! In the shade wasn’t bad, but when the sun was shining down on me it was terrible!

I managed to run 3 miles with only 2 walking breaks, but man, it was rough!

I called my parents as I walked home and also stopped for a bagel along the way. Then I did some weights and caught up on Necessary Roughness (another USA show I really like).

Otherwise I’ve just been relaxing. It’s been nice to have some downtime since last week was pretty crazy and the week ahead will be pretty crazy as well.

I’m going to head out to grab some food in a bit and then keep relaxing. Perfect Sunday!

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What I’m Listening To

“Empty” – Ray LaMontagne

“One” – Johnny Cash

“We Used To Vacation” – Cold War Kids

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Darned Technology

Lately there have been several new and new-to-me things on the interweb that other people seem to be all about, but I just don’t understand. Can anyone else me out?

Pinterest: I was dying to try Pinterest, I kept hearing people on blogs and Twitter talk about it so I was so happy when I finally got my invitation. I expected to be addicted to the site, but I just don’t get it. Maybe I haven’t found my niche yet? I would say my main things I do on the internet is look at Twitter (where I follow tennis, soccer, and healthy living people and some news and cultural organizations), read blogs (healthy living, cooking, tennis, soccer), and then read the news.

It doesn’t seem like Pinterest covers any of my traditional online interests. I do think it’s fun to look at the very creative home improvement or craft projects people do or to check out fashion trends, but I’m just not into home improve, crafts, or fashion enough to want to spend time looking at them.

Spotify: This one really confuses me. I first heard about it last week when people started posting on Twitter how they got an invitation. I requested an invitation and got one a few days later. I excitedly downloaded the program and started listening to music. But I don’t get it. To me it seems like a combination between Grooveshark and iTunes. Basically you can make playlists and stream songs from the internet (like Grooveshark), but it also incorporates all the music you already have on your computer (iTunes).

Maybe if I was more into making playlists I would find Spotify more useful? The only thing I make playlists for is working out and the free version of Spotify doesn’t include streaming to your mobile phone. So if I wanted to make a Spotify playlist to workout to I would have to pay $9.99/month. I suppose if I was already spending $10/month on music it would be worth it, but since I don’t it doesn’t really make sense.

Goodreads: I heard about Goodreads a while ago, joined, and then never really looked at it. Then I saw the site mentioned on Eat, Live, Run and since I’ve been in such a reading groove lately I thought I’d revisit it. I joined and added some books I’ve read, what I’m reading now, and what I want to read. I also liked a few authors. But otherwise I’m at a loss of what to do. Maybe because I don’t know anyone on it? I was particularly annoyed when I clicked on recommendations and I had to “request” a recommendation. What does that mean? Why can’t it just recommend things based on books on my shelves?

Those are the three things I don’t understand. Anyone else? Anyone want to argue for the usefulness of any of these? Anyone else confused by anything?

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Why I Can’t Make Blog Friends

I have been blogging for exactly two years tomorrow. It hasn’t been a constant two years, I’ve taken off days, weeks, and months, but I started this blog on July 28, 2009. When I started the blog I didn’t really know what kind of blogger I wanted it to be. I read a lot of healthy living blogs and, since I was in the process of losing weight myself, I thought it might be fun and helpful to document my food like my favorite blogs.

But soon I realized that wasn’t for me so I started writing about food, cooking, exercise, and life in general. During the winter of 2010 I was training for a half marathon and I had tons to write about. After the half marathon my fitness kind of took a beating and my posting slowly decreased until I stopped posting altogether before starting again earlier this month.

(I thought of this post completely separately from my what I learned from my lonely summer in DC post but as I was writing the DC post I realized they go quite nicely together.)

However, even during the year where I blogged pretty religiously, I never picked up a following or made blog friends. I often stop and ask myself why that is. I think I’m a pretty outgoing person (I mean I work in sales!), I have friends in real life, and I think I’m very accepting of people. So I’ve come up with a few reasons for my lack of connections.

1. Insecurity. Sometimes the blogs I read, about people running marathons or vegans, are intimidating. I work hard on being healthy but I am still overweight and I don’t have a perfect diet. Even though I know it doesn’t matter and it’s not true, I often feel like I would be judged or wouldn’t have anything in common with people I view as “perfect” bloggers. Plus I also feel insecure about my blog since it doesn’t have a fancy design or ads (which is fine with me).

2. Fear. I guess this is kind of the same as insecurity, but I see it as something different. I’ve attended two blogger “events.” The first was a meet-up with Kath from Kath Eats at the Brooklyn Brewery where I met some nice people, but I was afraid to talk about my blog because I didn’t really have readers. I also didn’t really feel a connection with anyone there, which made me question if I really fit into the blogging community (although I have to say most people there said didn’t have blogs, they were readers of Kath’s). The second event was a spinning class at FlyWheel run by Jess from Fit Chick in the City. I know a class isn’t really the best place to meet new people, but I was surprised by the lack of friendliness among the people I spoke with (and maybe I seemed unfriendly to them). There have been other blogger events in NYC I’ve wanted to attend, but I have never worked up the courage to go.

(I want to say that I place the blame for my lack of readers and blog friends squarely on my own shoulders. I hope it goes without saying, but just in case, even though I was disappointed with the blog events I attended I don’t blame either Kath or Jess for my own experiences and I think they are both great, inspiring bloggers.)

3. My lack of follow through. This is a problem I have in every aspect of my life, not just in the blog world. I would often get comments or emails and then don’t reply. Why? I don’t know and clearly it’s not a good thing. But, even with my real life friends and my family, I am terrible at replying to emails or texts or Facebook messages. There have been readers and other bloggers who have reached out on my blog and while I have often replied to comments and had conversations I’ve also forgotten or just been lazy about replying to others.

So what am I going to do about this? I really like blogging for me. I like having a record of my life to look back on and a way to hold myself accountable to me. Clearly not having readers or blog friends hasn’t stopped me for the last two years and I hope it doesn’t stop me going forward.

But, that said, I would like to make some connections so I’m going to do three things:

1. Make sure I leave comments on blogs that I read and not just comments for the hell of it. I will leave thoughtful comments on posts where I actually have something to say. And not just on the big blogs I read, but also the smaller ones.

2. If someone leaves a comment for me, emails me, or Tweets me, I will make sure I reply.

3. Go back to participating in the weekly #Fitblog chats. I actually participated in the first ever #Fitblog chat and the ones after for several months after but then fell out of the habit. They were always great ways to network and full of insightful information. (Note that I’m not off to the best start here, I meant to attend last night’s #Fitblog chat, but my dinner went late. But that’s ok because my real life social life will always be more important.)

4. I won’t let fear stop me. I am a likeable person, my blog might not be fancy or make me money, and I might have a ways to go to reach my health and fitness goals, but that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t be able to reach to people or try new experiences.

However, if I don’t end up making blog friends or gaining any readers I am also ok with that. As I said, I blog mainly for myself. And maybe my blog isn’t unique enough, I’m not likeable, or I’m not interesting. Should anything of those things be the case then so be it, it won’t affect what I do here.

Here’s goes nothing.

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Book Reviews: Part I

I have been a reading machine lately. In the last week alone I’ve finished three books. On my Tumblr I started doing 5-sentence move reviews and then 5-sentence book reviews. Here are my reviews of the three books I finished this week. (And remember you can see what I’ve read, what I’m reading, and what I want to read here.)

Wonder Girl: I am a huge fan of biographies and I’m an even bigger fan of biographies of really interesting women. Babe Didrikson Zaharias was definitely an interesting, inspiring, fascinating woman; in fact she was probably the greatest female athlete of all time. The author does a great job of describing Babe’s journey from poor girl from Texas, to basketball star, to Olympic track and field star, to vaudeville star, to the greatest female golfer ever and one of the original founders of the LPGA, to courageous and inspiring fighter against cancer. I knew a little bit about Babe prior to reading the book and I’m so happy I found out more; there were times where I wished the author went a bit more in-depth, but I’m sure he didn’t because he didn’t have that information available to him. I highly recommend this book for fans of biographies, fans of sports, and anyone interested in women’s history.

Skipping a Beat: I don’t read a lot of novels, I by far prefer nonfiction, and when I read novels they’re usually really bad “chick lit,” but, despite that, I thought I would give Skipping a Beat a try. I was very happily surprised, Skipping a Beat was smart and well-written, but still relatable and pretty easy to read. The narrator is a woman in her mid-30s who lives in Washington, DC and is married to her high school sweetheart, a guy who made tens of millions of dollars by starting a Vitamin Water-esque business. One day her husband’s heart stops for more than four minutes and when he wakes up he realizes he wants to give away all his money and start over as someone who he sees as a better person. The resulting story, about how his wife comes to terms with his decision, is honest, funny, heartbreaking, and definitely worth a read.

The American Heiress: This is the kind of book I love, but I don’t want to love; it was recommended to me by Amazon and I had my reservations, but then I saw all the good reviews so I decided to give it a try. The premise is that Cora Cash is a very, very wealthy American heiress at the end of the 19th-century and her social climbing mother wants her to marry a member of the British aristocracy so that their family can have a title in addition to money (apparently this was a common thing at that time). The story is told from many different viewpoints; Cora’s, her maid’s, the boy she loved and left behind in Newport, among others. The different narrators can be somewhat annoying, I really just wanted to know about Cora and her life, but it was interesting to read all the different perspectives. The story had its moments of being over the top, but as the author points out that was an over the top time; that said I really enjoyed it and I’m eager to learn more about that time in history.

I also joined Goodreads, you can find me here.

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Summer in the City

No, not New York City. I’m talking Washington, DC.

I spent the summer of 2006, the summer before my senior year of college, interning at ABC News in Washington DC. Let me take a little trip down memory lane.

I lived in a George Washington University dorm room, more a suite, with a living room, kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom.

With a friend from college and a random girl who we were assigned to live with.

Random girl, me, and my college friend.

Our suite was in a great location right next to the Foggy Bottom metro, it overlooked Washington Circle Park, and was a short walk to Georgetown.

The internship was great. I was interning with really great people and I got to experience really interesting things (2 tours of the Pentagon (which I consider one of the coolest places on earth), going out on a shoot in Maryland, sitting in on lots of interviews with really interesting people).

The great group of people I interned with.

So is the point of doing this self-indulgent nostalgia post to talk about how happy I was and what a great experience it was? No, the point is to talk about how miserable I was.

Sometime around the beginning of my junior year in college I decided I wanted to work in TV news. I’d always loved the news and politics and I thought it would be the perfect high-powered job for me. I applied for several internships and got interviews with CBS and with Nightline in DC. After the phone interview I was convinced I didn’t get it and then, a few days later, I got an email telling me I was accepted.

I was so happy. My good friend Jo was interning in DC as well and we agreed to room together in the GWU dorms. My good friend Maria would also be down there interning and living with her boyfriend.

I moved down to DC really full of hope and excitement. But it wasn’t at all what I was expecting. My friends, Jo and Maria included, weren’t 21 (I was) so our options of going out were limited. Jo had a lot of friends in DC and while she was nothing but welcoming and always willing to include me they were never people I felt comfortable around so I rarely hung out with them. I actually ended up pushing most people away because of how miserable I was.

The people I was interning with were also great but none of them were 21 and none of us ever ended up hanging out with each other outside of work. I also wasn’t making any money so I often felt like I couldn’t go out and do things without getting into heavy debt.

So what did I spend most of my time doing? I worked Monday-Friday and I mostly spent my nights and weekends alone. I didn’t have enough money to go to the gym so I never exercised, I ended up eating cheap fast food because our kitchen didn’t really have pots and pans and I didn’t really know how to cook any way, and I often ended up in front of the TV eating boxes of Milk Duds (seriously, boxes).

I’m sure it won’t surprise you when I say that, in retrospect, I really regret this. Yes, I had no money, yes, none of my friends were 21, but I could have made more of an effort to hang out with people and meet new people. But I didn’t.

And, to be honest, I still often let fear or curmudgeonness hold me back from new experiences (see my post on Wednesday about how I can’t make blog friends and you’ll realize this is true). And that’s not good.

So I wrote about this not to write about how happy I was, OR about how sad I was, but to remind myself to not let fear hold me back.

But, in the spirit of ending on a happy note, I did some really fun stuff in DC that summer, too.

My friend Maria and I went to Anderson Cooper’s book signing and I talked to him about some of the people I worked with at ABC who he also knew.

We took a really cool behind-the-scenes tour of the Capitol building.

Maria and I paid a ridiculously inappropriate visit to the Museum of the American Indian.

(Look how tan I am, and how red my hair was. I’m thinking I might actually like my hair like that.)

I also went to a ton of museums and saw a ton of movies because those are good things to do on your own. My friend Becca and I watched the World Cup final together in Georgetown, which was great. And, as I said earlier, I made two amazing visits to the Pentagon (did you know there’s a KFC and a DMV in there?).

So in the end this is a little reminder to myself to not let fear hold me back and to take chances because I don’t want to life my life with regret.

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Random Trip and Weekend

I thought I’d do a mostly random recap of my weekend with a few pictures from my trip to Oregon included.

First, my randoms from my trip…

That’s the room I stay in in the condo my grandparents rent. Well, where I stayed before I got sent to the couch so my mom and aunt could sleep up there. It’s a nice room, that door goes out to a big balcony that over looks a stream…

And there’s a full bathroom right behind where I was standing when I took the picture.

That’s the large lake that’s pretty much right outside the condo’s door. There are a ton of restaurants and stores around the lake. And there’s a town square-like place where they have a farmer’s market, show movies, and hold other events.

Just don’t feed the water fowl.

Who are these fetching people? That’s my uncle, aunt, and mother. This picture has been hanging in my grandparents’ house for as long as I can remember. I always thought it was so funny growing up.

I arrived back in NY bright and early Friday morning after a fairly bumpy red eye flight where I got elbowed by the video game-playing guy next to me for the whole flight. After some squeezing onto the Long Island Railroad I was greeted by this shining face.

The great greyhound hole digger!

It’s something he’s started since it’s gotten so hot outside. I guess it’s cooler in the hole? Needless to say my parents aren’t pleased.

Here’s a zucchini and cucumber from my parents’ organic vegetable garden. I’m very proud of them. Too bad I don’t like zucchini or cucumber.

This was my gorgeous view at the beach this morning. Unfortunately it was hot as hell at the beach. There was no breeze and it was so sticky.

I also got attacked by flies the entire time. I lasted a little less than 3 hours before I threw in the towel (haha…).

This is the clear coat nail polish, Seche Vite, that my aunt told me to buy to fix my nail polish absorbing dirt problem. She said it was only available online, but then I found it at Target today. Score.

And finally here’s my latest attempt at applying the OPI Shatter nail polish. It’s really hard! I love how my thumb looks but my index finger looks awful. There has to be a trick to it.

I’m using my parents free laundry facilities and then packing up to head back to NYC tomorrow. It’s been a real vacation, but I’m actually excited about heading back to work and a normal routine tomorrow.

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An Ode to Borders

As you may or may not have heard Borders Books is closing its doors. They haven’t been doing well for a while and despite what seems like their team’s best efforts they just can’t make their business model work.

As you also may or may not know I work in book publishing. Up until my recent promotion I did the support work for the sales reps who sold to Borders. I even got to take a trip out to Ann Arbor to the Borders headquarters last year.

Because of this I know quite a few people who are losing their jobs. And quite a few who have already lost their jobs in the previous months. The papers say 11,000 people will lose their jobs in all, which is pretty terrible.

While I obviously have a professional connection to Borders I also have a personal one. Growing up as the daughter of two librarians I always loved books. But I actually can’t really remember going to a bookstore until a Borders store opened about half an hour from my parents’ house.

At first they were only books, then they condensed the book section and also started selling music, and over the years they added movies and paper products and all sorts of gift-y items.

But I’ll never forget how excited I was to take my spending money to Borders as a child. I remember buying Saddle Club books and Sweet Valley Twins books and all sorts of other books, and CDs, back in the day.

My grandparents (the same ones I went to visit in Portland) used to take us to Borders all the time. They always spoiled my brother and me with $10 or $20 when we saw them and rather than taking us to get toys or candy they used to take us to Borders, and we loved it. I would usually get a book and Nick would usually get a CD, but we would spend hours looking around.

I still remember how the books had barcode stickers on back that were kind of texturized and I loved peeling them off slowly as I read the book.

Eventually a Borders opened close to my parents’ house and that was great, but by that time I think I was in college. When I was growing up there were no Barnes and Noble stores by my parents (and there still really aren’t, the closest one is about 45 minutes away) and I can’t think of where an independent bookstore would have been (although there are two now). There was a Walmart and Kmart by my parents’ but we never went there and although I know they sell books now, I’m not sure they did when I was younger, and their book selection isn’t so great. Target is the only big box store with a good book selection and one of those didn’t open by my parents’ until I was in college.

So, until we started ordering books from Amazing (probably when I was 14 or 15?) Borders was where we went to get all our books. I actually remembered while writing this that I based my college admissions essay on something that happened to me at a Borders store. My friend and I were there shopping one night and a woman had this terror child and she looked at us and said, “whatever you do don’t have kids.” And I wrote my college admissions essay about how I wanted kids.

Anyway, I will always be thankful for Borders. Books are amazing things and who knows where I would have ended up if I didn’t have those Borders stores to aimlessly browse in? Maybe I wouldn’t have become a reader and who knows what ramifications that would have had. Or maybe I wouldn’t have been inspired to write my college essay and I wouldn’t have gotten in to college.

RIP.

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Fort Vancouver

Yesterday, my final day in Oregon, we went to visit Fort Vancouver. Since I love history I was really excited to go. I actually made my family switch some things on the itinerary so I could go.

Fort Vancouver is actually in Washington so I got to visit two states on this trip! We started by walking through their gorgeous gardens.

That last picture is of Hops (full circle there!).

The fort was made up of several small buildings, some of which were empty to explore and some were partially open and recreated to look like that time period.

I think being surrounded by the wall was really interesting.

That’s the jail.

And that’s a body shackle.

I really liked the color of the wall in the Counting House.

And the map.

That’s the cannon at the top of the watch post thing.

And that’s the blacksmith. He was trying to make a hook, but he couldn’t get the fire going to strong enough.

And that’s my trip to Oregon! I had a really great time, I actually can’t believe it went by so quickly. There was a lot of downtime, which I can be impatient with at the time, but in the end it’s really nice. Of course I love the time I can spend with my grandparents, aunt, uncle, and cousins.

I’ll update this post with better pictures once I get them off my DSLR.

Until next year, Oregon!

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Wine and Relax

Another day in Oregon, another day of consuming alcohol. Today’s alcohol of choice? Wine.

Rather than the main drag places we went last year, we decided to try two smaller vineyards this year.

First up was Aramenta. The setting is absolutely gorgeous.

Since it was so small the owner just walked out of her house when she saw us coming and took us into the tasting room.

We got to try 6 wines in all, but overall I liked the 2008, both the reserve and the normal (I’m sure that’s not the technical term). I ended up buying two bottles of the normal 2008, one for me and one for a friend.

The reason I wanted to go to Aramenta was because my friends went there about a year and a half ago and brought me back a delicious bottle of wine. That wine was actually what I drank after my first half marathon.

Seriously how pretty was this place though?

The owner offered me a job and I told her not to tempt me.

After that we were off to Vidon, which is even higher up in the mountains. It involved driving up a very long dirt road.

The scenery at Vidon was even more gorgeous.

I think I actually liked the wines at Vidon a bit better than the Aramenta wines.

And I really, really, really liked the scenery.

After that we headed out to lunch at the Yamhill Grill. I would have liked to visit more wineries but with two older people who tire easily and don’t drink and a 15 year-old and a 10 year-old more vineyards weren’t in the cards.

When we got back to my aunt and uncle’s house I went with my aunt and her friend to see Larry Crowne. It was ok, I didn’t really understand what the point was to the movie and all the characters’ stories seemed underdeveloped and their decisions just strange.

But it was $5 for the ticket and my aunt paid. So no harm.

Then I came back to the condo and ate dinner and did some stuff online. I really wish there was an internet connection in the condo. I’ve spent so many hours staring at my iPhone screen I think I’ve gone blind!

BTW, I really liked the outfit I wore Tuesday.

Black jeggings from J. Crew (on sale after Christmas for $19.99!), tee shirt from Lands End Canvas (just bought on sale for $11.99!), and denim blazer from the Gap from 2004.

And now onto Wednesday. It’s actually good I didn’t get to post yesterday because I wouldn’t have had much to say about yesterday. My mom and my aunt came in on Tuesday night and my aunt wanted a quiet day to acclimate to the other side of the country. I ended up going for a run in the AM, then we went over to the mall, back to the apartment for lunch, over to the mall again, followed by a visit to my grandparents’ new apartment.

Then it was back to the condo where we’re staying for dinner and then out for a three-quarter of a mile or so walk. I was just planning on staying in but then my aunt asked if I wanted to do something and I thought she really wanted to get out so I said I’d grab so dessert.

We ended up also stopping at Ulta so I could buy OPI shatter nail polish.

Ignore my messy job, I always scrap the extra off in the shower 🙂

I also really liked the outfit I wore yesterday.

Romper from Lands End Canvas this year, belt from J. Crew this year, and cardigan from J. Crew 2007.

We’re off to Fort Vancouver today and then I fly back to NY tonight!

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