Christmas Concert

Kevin's mom sings in a number of local choirs, and every holiday season she performs in a variety of concerts in various venues around town. We usually try to make it to a few, but with time constraints this year, we were only able to attend one.

That one was the National Choral Arts Society's concert at The Kennedy Center. When we're in town, we attend this one on Christmas Eve, but this year we went to the abridged version earlier in December. The concert was on Monday night, and the length was cut down to accommodate that. But it was still a great show, perhaps better for clocking in at under an hour and a half.

Every year this concert is sponsored by a different ambassador, and music from that ambassador's home country is included in the program. This year the chosen country was Argentina, which made for a very fun concert. The Argentinian songs were performed by the Pan American Symphony Orchestra, who traveled to DC for this show. The music and language was just familiar enough for me to follow it, but different enough from my usual experience.

The choir also performed a number of traditional USian carols. And this year there was an extra treat. Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, of Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers fame, joined in on guitar for a few songs. The guitar isn't an instrument I normally associate with Christmas music, but Silent Night was apparently originally composed for the guitar. It was cool to hear variations of these songs that I'm not used to. I left wishing we would be in town for the full concert this year. Hopefully next year's concert has some similar surprises.

Finding the Christmas Spirit

I love Christmas. I hold off on the carols and decorating until after Thanksgiving, but I'm usually ready to head out and get a tree that Saturday. This year was a bit different though. This year, Thanksgiving took a lot out of me. I spent the week after in a sort of zombie-like haze, trying to catch up on sleep and laundry and being thankful for the leftovers in my fridge. While people talked about Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, I could barely bring myself to care about presents. I started to worry, ever so slightly, that I would fall too far behind and be scrambling to get things done at the last minute.

On Friday, Kevin was talking about various gifts he was planning to get for friends and family. Something he said triggered an idea in me, and almost instantly I had figured out nearly all of my presents. The ones for family, anyway. With a firm idea the fog lifted from my brain, and I started planning out the stores I would need to visit.

We got up bright and early on Saturday to get the tree. It was raining, but that only helped us to be more decisive when we found a good one. Then I went out shopping in the afternoon and, miracle of miracles, I made a huge dent in my Christmas shopping list. And it's an impressively long list.

On Sunday I had one or two things more to buy. I actually found myself eager to go to Tyson's, the massive, nightmarish mall near our house. But I decided not to fight it and braved traffic. Parking was impressively easy. They implemented a new system to show empty parking spaces with red and green lights (and blue for handicapped spaces), and I was able to find a spot almost immediately. In the mall I quickly found what I wanted, rewarded myself with what is fast becoming a traditional cup of lobster bisque at Brio, and managed to not spend any money at Barnes and Noble.

I still have one or two more things to buy, and I need to wrap most of what I have bought and get it shipped to Colorado. But I'm feeling very on top of things. We have a fully decorated tree that I love looking at. The pile of presents beneath it is growing. Now all we need is some snow and everything will be perfect. I love this time of year.

Endless Celebration

Thanksgiving week was intense this year. Kevin and I hosted for the second year in a row, and we had a busier week than I've had in a long time.

Dad and his girlfriend arrived on Tuesday, and Connor came over for dinner and pinochle. We didn't quite finish the game before it was time for bed, but we played some.

On Wednesday my cousins arrived, as did Danielle and Eric. We ended up having more people over for dinner on Wednesday evening than we did for Thanksgiving. The meal was a lot simpler though, since it just involved chopping things up and setting them out on the buffet so everyone could make their own tacos.

Thursday was the Thanksgiving whirlwind. We cooked. We ate. We drank. I fell asleep before the football game ended, but other people were up until almost 2.

Since no one had to be anywhere, we spent Friday drinking mimosas and beer and playing games. Once again I fell asleep before the rest of the party. I just can't get by on as little sleep as I used to.

Everyone left fairly early on Saturday morning (well Connor stuck around for a while because we couldn't find his keys and then we watched The Lego Movie instead of looking for them because sitting was better than standing). We did some picking up, but mostly Kevin and I lounged around building up strength for his high school reunion that night.

The reunion was fun, even if I was starting to feel a bit burnt out. It was interesting to meet a bunch of the TJ crowd, and it was nice that there was no pressure on me to know anyone or make small talk. For example, after I met a bronie, I was able to exit the conversation and avoid him for the rest of the evening with very little effort.

Sunday was a day of rest and laundry and leftovers. I tried to go to bed early, but ended up reading until my normal bedtime. Oops.

Monday was my company party, which meant that our branch of the office was full and noisy and then we all had to troop downtown for the fancy dinner. I cannot for the life of me understand why this party is on a Monday instead of a Friday, but there it is. The servers kept our wine glasses full throughout dinner (so much for everyone gets one glass of wine, though I suppose that if you never finish it it all counts as the same glass). We left early, and I still barely made it home awake.

On top of the Monday night party, my company scheduled a mandatory meeting for Tuesday morning. I made it, but it was rough. When I got home, I basically just went to sleep. I spent the entire night dreaming that I was wandering around a library inside of a castle, which helped to refresh me. I woke up Wednesday morning feeling almost human.

The house still isn't quite back in order following the festivities of the past week, but it's getting closer. Two more loads of laundry ought to get us there. We're finally almost down with the leftovers. I'm even starting to get excited to cook again. But this week took a lot more out of me than I was expecting it to. We may need to scale back the Thanksgiving celebration in future years (or at least not follow it immediately with back to back parties).

Exercise Bike

For the last year or so, I've been becoming more interested in the idea of building up a home gym. As I learn more about weight lifting, I feel more confident in my ability to put together a workout on my own. And it would certainly save time and money if I didn't have to actually go to the gym. But there are obstacles, too. For one, a home gym is really expensive. Mostly because of all the different dumbbell weights you need. But mats, foam rollers, and exercise balls don't come cheap either. There's also the fact that I lack motivation at home. Just like getting dressed and going to an office helps me focus on my work, being in a gym surrounded by other people helps me focus on working out.

All that said, we've taken a first, tentative step in this direction with the purchase of a stationary bike. A bike is something Kevin and I will both use a bunch, especially in the winter. We have it set up in front of the TV, so it should theoretically be just as easy to hop on the bike as it is to sprawl on the couch. Though we haven't really put it to the test yet.

Since getting the bike, I've managed to use it every day. The plan is to continue this, even if it's just for twenty minutes. Getting up half an hour early to get on the bike before showering shouldn't be too much of a hardship, especially since I was able to get up early for physical therapy this time last year. And pairing it with a sitcom (New Girl for now) should make the time go faster. I just hope the Thanksgiving house guests don't throw me too far off  my routine, assuming I managed to actually establish one in the next week.

Now the trick is going to be getting into the gym to lift weights. Especially on weekends, it's a lot easier to just hop on the bike at home for an hour. Which is fine if that's what I was planning to do anyway. And I could always do pushups, situps, and squats at home. I just need to get my mind to frame that corner of the basement as a workout space.

And maybe one day (in the next house), I'll be able to acquire enough equipment and motivation to do everything I want to at home. For now I'll just focus on cycling every day that I can.

Plumbing Problems

Several weeks ago, Kevin noticed that the toilet on the main floor was leaking. There was a hairline crack in the mechanism that indicates that the tank is full. It wasn't closing fully, so water was just running through continuously. He shut off the toilet until he had time to deal with it, and we just used the other toilets for a while. One of the perks of having multiple bathrooms is that it's not the end of the world when one of them breaks. (One of the downsides is that you have to clean all of them).

When he found the time over the weekend, Kevin got the replacement pump and set about installing it in the toilet. This shouldn't be all that difficult, but it turned out to be. First, unscrewing the original pump turned out to be a two-person job. I had to hold it still so it wouldn't just spin around and around. There must be an easier way to do this, but we probably didn't have the right tools. Then things didn't quite match and what had been a steady leak inside the toilet that could simply be turned off, turned into a slow but steady leak into a bowl underneath the toilet.

I'm not sure where this leak was coming from, as I know almost nothing about plumbing (I know some very basic things from the day I spent hooking up a water cooling tank thing in my undergrad lab, but it was mostly following instructions from someone else because I was small enough to fit in the corner with the piping). At any rate, we lived with that for a few days, hoping to get a plumber in after our Halloween party.

But then the leak got worse. A lot worse. Whereas the bowl underneath the toilet had previously needed emptying every day or so, it now filled up twice an hour. It wasn't the sort of thing we could leave overnight, let alone while we were hosting a huge party.

This was on Thursday night. Guests were due to begin arriving Friday evening with the big party taking up most of Saturday. Kevin called a plumber hoping to get the toilet fixed as soon as possible. The earliest the guy could make it out was Friday morning. And since the leak was bad enough that we couldn't leave it, we turned off water to the entire house.

Friday morning was not fun. I'd filled some water bottle with water the night before and made sure the tea kettle was full, but there's only so much you can do. I couldn't shower in the morning, and I ended up taking my toothbrush to work with me, trying not to breath anyone on the metro. Thankfully we got it fixed in time for the party, only for the next plumbing disaster to pop up.

People are drunk enough at Hallowiener that something usually breaks. This is just part of throwing the party. One year I shattered a glass. One year someone kicked a hole in our wall. This year someone dropped a glass in the sink, resulting in a garbage disposal full of glass shards. I got as many out as I could, but a few had fallen beyond my reach. I made the executive decision to just not deal with it that night, and told people not to use the garbage disposal.

Life without a garbage disposal isn't quite as difficult as I feared. I kept having to remind myself that I couldn't use it, but peeling potatoes into the garbage can instead of the sink isn't really that much of a burden. Between the minimal impact the lack of disposal had on our life, and all the other clean up from the party, it took us a week to actually deal with the broken disposal. I was worried we'd have to call in a plumber again, but it turned out to be a pretty easy fix. All in all it only cost about $7 for a specific Allen wrench.

Now we're just crossing our fingers that the law of threes doesn't apply here. I really don't want to deal with another plumbing problem in the coming weeks.

Puzzlefest

It turns out that a competitive crossword puzzle competition is our idea of a good time. If we didn't realize we were nerds before, this knowledge definitely solidifies it.

This past Saturday was the annual Arlington puzzle festival, and we were able to attend for the first time ever. Historically it's the same weekend as Hallowiener, and Hallowiener takes precedence.

We arrived bright and early for the group puzzle competition, which was surprisingly hard. There were some word puzzles followed by a more complicated puzzle that involved 32 trivia questions, the answers to which had to be grouped together according to rules we had to figure out. For example, mail, harmony, commerce, and bay were all in group E, because sticking an e in front of each word results in an internet thing. Meanwhile dead, north, and Irish were all in group C because they're all seas. We didn't start to figure all of this out until close to the end of the time limit, so we didn't get as many points as we could have. It was a lot of fun to stretch our brains out, even if we didn't ultimately do very well.

Then it was the crossword puzzle competition, which I did horribly at. Kevin and Zach finished the first two puzzles in the time limit, and Sarah almost did, but I had a whole empty section even on the easiest puzzle. By the last puzzle I was able to figure out maybe 4 words.

We decided not to stick around for the Sudoku competition in the afternoon, because we had too much other stuff to do. Maybe next year we'll be able to spend the entire day doing puzzles. Even if we only go for the group competition again, it'll be a lot of fun.

Killing Spree

We hosted the fifth annual DC Hallowiener last weekend. It was as fun as it is every year. More importantly, we seem to be growing up. Slowly but steadily. Which is great because it probably won't be long before there are small children attending this party, and it needs to evolve a little before that happens.

Kevin and the iguana

Kevin took Friday off from work, as always. He ran around to various stores to pick up meat and munchies and beer. He got home around the same time I did, and we spent a few hours getting the house in order. Ben and Autumn arrived before too long and Zach and Sarah were right behind them. We caught up over dinner and in between trick or treaters until the Boston contingent arrived. Then it was on to beer pong and other games. Mas and I won six games of pong that night, staying up until 2 am when we decided to retire and remain undefeated. I went to bed then. because I could barely keep my eyes open, but everyone else stayed up until 4. This was not the adult part of the weekend.

Seanna and Brandon arrived bright and early in the morning. Kevin picked them up at the airport while I made biscuits and gravy, because I take every opportunity to cook this rather decadent breakfast. There were mimosas and board games, and I began to prepare some of the more complicated meats. The iguana had to be parboiled and then marinated. The beef tongue needed to be soaked and then simmered. Unfortunately, I mistook the rabbit for the tongue (in my defense, they both looked like penises) and we didn't correct the mistake until the rabbit was partially cooked.

We recruited everyone staying at the house to help us put it in order for the party. We moved furniture, set up a bunch of air mattresses, and cleaned up as much as possible. I did as many dishes as I could throughout the day, with the help of Autumn and Seanna. I eventually end up too distracted to do more dishes, but I try to stay on top of them as long as I can. The locals started arriving around 2 and things started to get busy. To give you an idea, it was at this point that Kevin decided to pour himself a glass of cider. We found it on the counter the next morning, exactly where he'd left it. He never found the time to drink it during the party.

Around 3 Sarah started preparing the rabbit and pheasant stuffing and Kevin decided it was time to butcher the snake head fish he'd bought. snake head fish are an invasive species, and he'd managed to buy an entire 12-pound fish. Butchering it was an experience. I had to stop Kina from lapping up the blood multiple times. We ended up with a bunch of lovely steaks that I kept trying to get other people to take home. I don't need to be eating slimy fish for the rest of the month.

The snake head fish, pre-butchering

Butchering the snake head fish

Then we fired up the grill and started cooking. I got exactly one picture of the first batch of meat before I was overwhelmed by other hosting duties.

Meat! Starting at the top and moving clockwise: alpaca sausage, camel steak, wild boar sausage, kangaroo loin

The first few things were timed pretty well. I had enough time to chop everything up and pass it around before the next meat arrived. But then the bunny, pheasant, and iguana all came out at once and all hell broke loose. As it always does. I recruited Brandon to deal with the full animal carcasses and focused on the steaks and sausages. I probably would have stayed there for hours had I not been distracted.

One of our guests brought his dog without clearing it with Kevin and I first. The dog didn't really get along with Kina and Lily, and there were a couple of incidents before Kevin told him his dog had to leave. At that point I was a little too shaken up to keep cutting the meat, so I went outside to drink my beer and socialize. Thankfully other people took over the chopping and serving. I managed to calm down, but I wasn't in the mood to eat at that point. I'm sure all of the food was good, but I ended up trying less than half of the animals this year. And I completely missed the duck, duck, brandy sausages, which I spend all year looking forward to.

Of the meats I did get to eat, the beef tongue was unexpectedly good. Tender and flavorful, and I could probably slice one up and be perfectly satisfied with beef tongue soup. The yak sausage was the clear winner of the night. And the rabbit/rattlesnake sausage was good, too. Though it was a bit overpowered by the jalapeño. From what other people have said, the octopus wasn't as good as in years past.

Here's the entire list of animals we cooked, as recorded by Jen:

• Kangaroo
• Wild boar sausage
• Alpaca sausage
• Cow tongue 
• Octopus
• Snake head fish
• Camel steak
• Nilgai (antelope)
• Iguana
• Rabbit rattlesnake jalapeño sausage
• Yakwurst
• Roast rabbit
• Octopus
• Pheasant
• Bacon
• Shark
• Conch
• Kangaroo sausage
• Turtle
• Beaver leg
• Duck duck brandy sausage
• Squid
• Venison saddle
• Emu drumsteak

The yakwurst was the last thing I ate that night. We had enough leftovers that I was able to try the emu and beaver on Monday. They were pretty tough, but I'm sure that was more a factor of the reheating than the actual meats. I'm a little surprised at myself for abandoning the meats so thoroughly. I was just having too much fun talking to people outside.

Aftermath

When everyone had had enough to eat, Kevin and I quickly cleaned up. We put a bunch of extra meat in the fridge, threw away things like the iguana carcass, and left a huge pile of dirty dishes in the sink. While we were doing that, Zach poured beer for Dr Killebrew, and we transitioned into phase II of Hallowiener.

Everyone played beer pong and danced and talked and munched on chips for the rest of the night. We ran out of beer just before midnight and were unable to buy anymore because the stores stop selling alcohol. It was definitely for the best. The party lasted a few more hours, with Gatorade taking the place of beer on the beer pong table. Most people woke up in a reasonable state the next morning. Tired, but able to eat breakfast and function like human beings. We played games and people trickled out until Kevin and I were left alone with the mess and the memories in the early evening.

Slumber party in the basement (there was another mattress to the right of the picture)

It always takes a few days (or a week) to get our house back in order after this party. I'm usually too exhausted to tackle more than a bit of it at a time, so the house gets put back together in stages. We still have a bunch of meat leftover, which is good because we haven't found time to go to the grocery store yet. And most of it is uncooked, which is even better. The cooked leftovers are rough to get through, but the prospect of a nice, marinated kangaroo or camel steak is a nice perk of hosting this party.

Running Again

I hate running. But as cardio goes it's basically the least bad of a series of options. The bike hurts my butt and the elliptical makes my toes go numb and the stair climber can only be used for, like, ten minutes max. At least I like the way I feel after I run.

Intervals make this all easier. And as I am determined to become a runner (for some foolish reason) I have developed a new system that makes heavy use of them.

This all started when my trainer added the intervals to my weekly session. I alternate 30 seconds jogging with 30 seconds of walking for somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes before lifting. I decided to extend this on my own time.

The ultimate goal is to run for an entire episode of the Gilmore Girls, during which I think I would travel somewhere between 3 and 4 miles. Walking I cover just over 2.5 miles, and with my intervals I haven't managed to go farther than 2.7 miles. But this is baby-steps. And a long-term goal will help keep me motivated an on-task. The seven seasons of Gilmore Girls should also help.

The problem is that I'm super out of shape (when it comes to running, I'm actually in pretty decent shape generally). My calves do not like all of this running and they complain loudly after just a few intervals. So I made a deal with myself. I can always take a minute off from the intervals if I increase the incline during that rest minute.

This ultimately results in me running with the incline set at 5 or 6. Or, if I really can't run one day, I end up walking up a rather steep hill for ten or twenty minutes instead. Which is certainly better than nothing, and probably nearly as good as running.

I'm hoping to stick to doing this 2-3 times a week moving forward. Once I can do intervals the whole way through, I'll start lengthening the running portion and shortening the walking portion. Like my own custom "couch to 5K", but on a longer timescale. I don't want to injure myself again by pushing too hard too fast, so I'm giving myself room to go slow. And I'm staying on the treadmill. Partly because it's getting cold and wet outside, but also because I'm way less likely to twist my ankle on the flat surface.

Let's see how long I can stick with this. It'd be great to get to a point where I can run a mile again. Or even further, if my ankle cooperates. I should probably start doing some ankle exercises more frequently, too.

Weekend in New England

Kevin and I traveled up to New England last weekend with his mom to spend some time visiting family and friends. We were there for almost three whole days, and we managed to cram in a whole bunch of people. Some were out of town, but it's probably for the best. We might not have gotten any sleep if we'd really attempted to see everyone we know who lives in that area.

We landed in Providence mid-morning on Friday. We actually had some time to kill before we could visit Kevin's great aunt, so we spent some time exploring Roger Williams Park and downtown Providence. The city is adorable, much smaller than cities I'm used to. We got some great burgers for lunch, then found a brewery and had a few beers.

In the late afternoon, we headed over to the rehab center where we spent some time visiting with Kevin's great aunt, who will soon turn 100. Everyone caught up on the family gossip and we shared our wedding pictures. Then it was out to dinner with some cousins at a delicious Asian restaurant. After dinner we drove up to Massachusetts to spend the night with Kevin's aunt.

Saturday was mostly devoted to visiting with Kevin's grandmother. We took her out to lunch then showed her our wedding and honeymoon pictures. In the evening we drove in to Boston and got dinner with an old friend of mine who just started graduate school there. Then we met up with other friends for beers and went back to their place to play board games. Of course, I only made it halfway through the first game before I fell asleep. All that traveling takes it out of me.

The next morning we got up and went to brunch at a cute little restaurant with live jazz music. Then it was more board games and the beginning of the Patriots football game. We finished watching that game back at Kevin's aunts before heading back to Providence to fly home. Everything worked out perfectly timing-wise, and we made it home shortly after 10:00.

While we were gone, the cat tore into a brand new loaf of bread and ate some of it. This is the third time a loaf of bread has been eaten by one of the animals, and I've always blamed the dogs before (either Kina or Lily). But this time it was definitely the cat. They must all be in on it together, with the cat initiating and the dogs finishing off the loaf.

Branching Out

I've gotten a good rhythm going when it comes to weight lifting. I know lots of exercises. I understand about focusing on arms or legs or core, and I know how to mix it up. I can do long workouts and short workouts. I can try out new things. Most importantly, I like it. I have fun lifting weights, watching myself get stronger, mastering new exercises.

But cardio has fallen by the wayside. Lifting all the time leaves me sore all the time, which I definitely don't like. Besides which, cardio is good for you and variety is the spice of life. So I'm trying to reincorporate some other things into my routine.

Last Friday, I decided to give running another go. I haven't attempted to run at all since I hurt my knee over a year ago. But the bike hurts my butt and the elliptical makes my toes go numb and jacking up the incline on the treadmill is only going to get me so far. So I put on an episode of Gilmore Girls and gave myself permission to just do intervals for as long as I could before resorting to walking for the rest of the episode.

All in all it wasn't so bad. I managed to travel about 2.7 miles in 43 minutes. Not spectacular, but better than if I'm just walking. On Monday I tried again, but it was way harder. I could only do 4 intervals (minute jogging, minute walking) before my calves started screaming at me. Whether that's because I haven't run in so long or because I did a bunch of calf raises on Saturday is difficult to say. I bumped up the incline and walked instead, to give my calves a bit of a break.

I also decided that while I was trying (or retrying) new (okay, technically old) things, I would give yoga another go. There was a class at my gym on Sunday morning that I could make it to, so I went.

It was awful. The class was way above my level (and all the beginning classes are at 6 in the morning which is why I didn't go to them). The first ten minutes or so was fine, because it was just breathing and stretching. Then we spent ten minutes on our hands and knees, and that's not something I can do, apparently. My knees were hurting so bad from the pressure that I was near tears. Then, because I wasn't paying proper attention, I did something that caused my old back injury to flare up. I left, walked stiffly to my car, drove painfully home, and spent the next two and a half hours laying very still on my couch.

So. No more yoga.

I think that's okay though. If I can make the running work (and I will get better. Slowly but surely.) and intersperse my lifting with that, well that will be fine.

Baseball

I have this weird love/hate thing with baseball going.

On the one hand, I hate the way it just saturates my life. The season starts in March or something and it runs through September (or October). During that time, there's a game on nearly every day. And these games typically last 3-4 hours. I just don't understand how any one person can keep up with that. Football I get, because it's only once a week. But baseball is just everywhere.

I've been to two baseball games in my life. The first one was when Kevin and I were still long-distance, and he was heading to the airport right after the game. I drank too much beer and spent the last several innings in tears and trying not to be in tears. Not fun. The more recent game was long and hot and, instead of getting drunk I was sobering up and trying to stay awake.

On the other hand, the presence of baseball in my life has some definite upsides. I love that Kevin loves it as much as he does. He's been umpiring for over a decade, which is a nice way for him to get out of the house. I do like that, when the season is going, I'm guaranteed to have a couple of afternoons or evenings to myself every week. Sometimes it gets in the way of other life stuff, but mostly I like the ready excuse to have some introvert time.

I also really like walking by the baseball fields in the park with Kina every day. The little league games are often cute and the adult rec leagues that don't take it too seriously tend to seem fun, too. Of course, these impressions are based on the five minutes it takes me to walk past the field.

Moreover, the lights on the fields are pretty great. We're heading into the part of the year when I'm walking Kina after dark more often than not, and those lights help out a lot while they last. Just before sunset, when the artificial light begins to take over from the sun, the whole park looks idyllic and a little fake. Like I'm in a movie or a memory of middle America. It's one of my favorite parts of the day, and baseball is definitely a part of that.

I just wish the games didn't last so long. Kevin has explained to me all the stats and the strategy behind wearing out the pitcher, which is responsible for lengthening games. I'm starting to wonder why the fans are so willing to put up with it. Is there going to be a tipping point, where they start cutting innings out to get games back into the 2-3 hour range? Or is everyone really okay devoting so much of their life to this sport year after year?

Reading Challenge Update 3

I give up. I got close. Actually, the only genre I have left for the Monopoly Challenge is Chick Lit. I might still get there before the year ends. But there are too many books I want to read for me to make room for books I don't want to read. And I just can't bring myself to care about a book I know that I'll disagree with (September's challenge). So I'm done. It was interesting while it lasted.

At least I hit my Goodreads goal of 52 books this year. I wonder how many I'll eventually end up reading (with TV back and the holidays coming up, my dedicated reading time is probably about to shrink).

Work Hard, Play Harder

Like the rest of summer, the last couple of weekends have been filled to the brim. Over Labor Day weekend, we had Zach and Sarah over for games. We finally got to play Settlers of America, a mash up between Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride, sort of. I bought it for Kevin years ago. But it really only works with four people, and it takes hours to play. It was a good game, if a little long.

On Sunday we went up to Baltimore for a baseball game. Except we went early to eat burgers, drink beer, and watch a soccer game. The baseball game was long. And hot. It's been four years since the last baseball game I went to, and it will probably be another four before Kevin manages to drag me to another one. I just don't understand anything about that sport or why it appeals to people. Though I've been told that the games have gotten significantly longer in recent years. Given that, I wonder if they'll eventually start playing fewer innings, to get the length back down.

Labor Day itself was spent on the couch watching TV while I tried to finally kick a cold I've had for way too long. The cough is still lingering, something like three weeks after I first got sick. It wouldn't be so bad, except that Kevin managed to get over this damn thing in about three days.

Last weekend was filled with the Renaissance Festival and football. We all trooped out to Maryland to enjoy mead and cider and turkey legs. I bought a game I've been coveting since the last Renaissance Festival called Octiles. It's a variation on Chinese Checkers in which the path across the board is constantly changing. We also saw a short adaptation of Henry the V but Shakespeare's Skrum, which was a lot of fun.

Football was something of a mixed bag. Zach, Connor, and Kevin's mom all came over for the Redskins game, which was disappointing. They never quite seem to get their act together, and if they do it all, ultimately, falls apart. It didn't help that all of the scoring happened in roughly 3 minutes of gameplay, which resulted in a game that was both frustrating and a little boring.

But then I made nachos, which I've been looking forward to for weeks, and we watched the Niners game. The nachos were delicious, and the Niners are a much better and more exciting team than Washington. They scored in the first minute of the game and proceeded to walk all over the Cowboys.

This weekend promises yet more football (I love Fall), and some downtime. Which is good. I really need to clean out my office. It looks clean, but there's so much filing to be done. Not to mention that my bookcases are, once again, overflowing and could stand to be reorganized. I'll spare you the pictures this time.

Hey Big Spender

We got a couple of big ticket items during the Labor Day sales, and I'm super excited about both of them.

First up is our new bed. We splurged on a Sleep Number mattress (that was still expensive at 50% off). I've wanted one for ages, and I've been bugging Kevin to upgrade our mattress basically since I moved in with him. I had a glorious pillow-top back in Colorado that I bought while hungover on New Year's Day. But it didn't make financial sense to bring it out to Virginia with me. So it moved to my mom's guest room, and I've been sleeping on an Ikea foam mattress that Kevin loved for it's firmness and I hated for the same reason.

But he finally agreed to buy a new mattress, so we went to the Sleep Number store. We'd also looked at some Tempurpedics, which were wonderful but even more expensive than the Sleep Numbers. We found ourselves torn between a foam-top and a pillow-top, and the price difference ended up making the difference for us.

When it was first delivered, it was a little ridiculous. The delivery men placed both foundation and mattress on top of the slats that our Ikea mattress had laid on, which meant we were sleeping nearly three and a half feet above the ground. But over the weekend we fixed it, and the mattress is now at a much more reasonable height (and Kina can get in bed with us again). I'm so, so, so happy with the new mattress. It's like sleeping on a cloud.

We also bought a new oven. I've been wanting one for a while, and it became more important when the big, front burner on our old oven started turning off at random. It's hard to cook when the heat suddenly disappears. I knew I wanted a flat top oven (we're not hooked up for gas and drip pans are the hardest thing in the world to clean) and Kevin did most of the research to find one.

The oven arrived earlier this week, and I'm super happy about it. It's so much easier to keep clean. I can just wipe it down instead of disassembling it to get at the mess. And all of the burners work, which makes me happy. The only thing is that I'm going to have to relearn how long it takes to cook things. Boiling a pot of water for pasta last night took forever, much longer than it's ever taken me to boil a pot of water before. It's probably because of the glass top between the pot and the heating element. But I will eventually get used to it, and then everything will be wonderful again.

Feeling Strong

I'm gaining weight again. Which is maybe something I'm just going to have to learn to live with. This time around I'm fairly sure it's muscle, though. So there's that at least. Really I should just stop getting on the scale at all. Except that I really thought I was doing well, and that I'd finally see that damn number go down instead of up.

Aside from that number (which I really ought to just ignore) things are going well. I'm definitely getting stronger across the board. I can do 60-70 pounds on the lat pull down and row. I'm up to 15 pounds on the Arnold Press and 30 pounds on the dead lift. I've added weight to my step ups and feel completely stable doing them now. My trainer noted that, while I still have balance issues on the single-leg dead lift, my knee doesn't wobble at all. When she pushed me to fatigue on various exercises, I was able to do 20 pushups, and then another 15.

All in all I feel stable and strong when I'm lifting now. It's hard to figure out how this relates back to the ways my body is changing. My stomach feels and looks larger, but it's always been the last part of me to show change. The shorts I bought at the beginning of the summer feel loose. So I think I'm heading in the direction I want to be heading.

If I can just remember to stay off the scale, everything should be great moving forward. Despite the weight gain, I'm pretty sure I'm healthier than I've ever been. I'm certainly more active than I've been since high school. And I'm eating way more veggies and less junk than I was back then. I am getting results, as slow as the process has been, and it's making me feel good about myself.

Autumn is (Almost) Here

I realize this is a bit premature. We just had the hottest week of the entire summer. The equinox is still a few weeks away. In fact, summer wasn't even that bad this year. It was fairly mild and gorgeous with an abundance of perfect weekends, so it's not like I'm even that anxious for it to be over. But I can't help but be excited for the signs that point towards Fall's imminent arrival.

A few days ago, Kina jumped up on the couch to cuddle with us, something she never does in the summer time. She doesn't start cuddling with us until the weather cools down. Which means that her desire to hop into bed with us points to cooler weather coming our way. And walking her the other night, I passed a tree that had started to drop it's leaves everywhere.

Football started, which means that it's time for the Sundays spent on the couch drinking beer. Not to mention all the food I associate with cooler weather: nachos, stews, and casseroles. I may have jumped the gun on this a bit, with a delicious casserole last weekend (cinnamon + rosemary + cranberries = perfection). But soon that food will be part of the regular rotation again. And I think I want to learn how to cook a chicken pot pie this year. Or maybe a Shepherd's pie. Something warm and hearty with a flaky crust.

On top of this, the forecast has temperatures in the 70s and grey skies for the foreseeable future. It's time to fling open the windows, switch over to my Van Morrison/Tom Waits Pandora station, find some sweaters and tights and enjoy the cooler weather. I'm so happy.

Treat Yo Self

Last week was rough. But the upcoming weekend was a bright spot on the horizon. Kevin was planning to go to the beach with some coworkers, which meant I'd have the house all to myself. I decided to make the most of my weekend of freedom and treat myself, a la Tom and Donna in Parks and Rec.

On Friday I made a big pan of risotto (quickly becoming my new comfort food, plus I can throw in a bunch of spinach and pretend it's healthy) and caught up on all the shows that I hadn't been able to watch the previous weekend when we had company.

The plan for Saturday was to go tubing for Jen's birthday in the morning, then head to Tyson's for a shopping spree and finally make a spicy pasta for dinner that I wasn't sure Kevin would like. But plans must be malleable. And though the day didn't go entirely according to plan, it was still fun and relaxing and ultimately a very good day.

Because I live way out in the suburbs, I managed to avoid the carpool, which meant I was able to drive myself. Most people will tell you that I'm an anxious or bad driver, and that's because I tend to be when there are other people in the car. I get lost, I get distracted by conversations, it's just not great. But by myself on small mountain roads with a proper buffer built in? That's my happy place. I scheduled an extra half hour to get to the tubing place, got lost several times, cranked my music up loud, and generally enjoyed the scenery. As expected, I got lost more than once. But I had time to get lost, so it wasn't a big deal.

Of course it's difficult to wrangle a large group of people, so tubing itself got a little delayed. I'd been expecting to be done by 12:30, 1 at the latest. But we didn't get on the river until after noon. Such is life. The float down was a lot of fun. Tubing is a great social activity for introverts, because there's a good mix of socializing and hanging out by yourself on the river. I did get dunked once, which wasn't fun, but it was mostly a nice, relaxing way to spend a few hours.

I think the rest of the group went down the river again, but I decided to leave once we got back to shore. Another perk of skipping out on the carpool: I wasn't beholden to anyone else.

I took the highway back and made it to the mall just before 5. At this point my contact was seriously bugging me (it got ruined when I went under the river) and I had a slight headache from dehydration. So I slashed shopping list and just picked up a bath bomb from Lush. Then I decided to eat out instead of cooking and enjoyed some excellent gorgonzola encrusted beef medallions.

After dinner I was feeling good enough to wander through the bookstore (though I'm rarely not feeling good enough for that), and I picked up a bunch of books. Now my to-read stack is a little unwieldy again, but these were mostly shorter books rather than the long epics I stocked up on at the beginning of summer. I should go through them a bit quicker.

I fit in my long-anticipated bath when I got home, complete with a glass of wine and a book. But the tubing earlier had left me so exhausted that I fell asleep shortly after 9. The next morning I went out in search of new slippers and gym shoes, then curled up on the couch with a book for most of the rest of the day. Kevin got home earlier than I expected, and I subjected him to the spicy pasta I'd been looking forward to. He enjoyed it, though I imagine that I'll be eating most of the leftovers.

It was so nice to have a weekend all to myself, and I really felt relaxed and rejuvenated at the end of it. But then I woke up Monday morning and checked the news and all that stress and sadness came rushing right back. At least I managed a couple of days of peace.

Connor's Here!

Connor is officially living here now. He got an apartment just a few miles from our house and is all moved in and mostly organized. I'm so excited that he's living so close by, and extra excited for how awesome his new apartment is. It's right next to one of the better sports bars in the area, across the street from Wegman's (god's gift to grocery stores) and really close to the movie theater and mall.

Connor and Dad drove his furniture across the country together and got here on Thursday morning. They dropped some furniture off at our house - Dad gave me his leather, wingback chairs - then went to Connor's apartment. We went over when we got off work to see the place and grab some dinner. We spent the night playing pinochle instead of doing anything helpful like unpacking or organizing. But Connor will have plenty of time to do that over the next few weeks.

On Friday Dad and Connor continued to unpack and shop and get everything set up. Dad's girlfriend, Max, flew in the evening. We'd planned to all get dinner together, but her flight was delayed. Instead it was just the four of us at the Mussel Bar by my office.

The rest of the weekend was spent cooking, eating, and visiting. Dad and Max were busy helping Connor, which meant that I had time to shop and read and do laundry around all the visiting, which was nice. The whole trip was short and sweet and filled with lots of good food. We have so many leftovers in our fridge right now. It's great to have my brother living so close. I'm excited to be able to see him as often as I want to.

Questions Raised While Dogsitting

This past week we watched Zach and Sarah's dog, Lily, while they were on vacation. I'd hadn't entirely realized that having two dogs would end up being more than twice the work of one, mostly because there was some work to be done integrating Lily into the household. To that end, quite a few questions came up and were answered over the course of her stay.

Is this food? Lily largely refused to eat the food that was placed in her bowl. Or rather, she refused to eat it for long enough that either Kina or Onyx would get there first. We spent a lot of time telling Kina no, telling Lily yes, and attempting to lock Lily in one part of the house with her food so the other animals couldn't get it. At one point, I was sitting on the couch in the basement telling Lily she was a good girl and generally cheering her on every time she took a bite of food. Unfortunately, that strategy only worked once.

Despite snubbing her own food, Lily was eager to experiment with other forms of food. I caught her attempting to eat grass and other plants on our walks. I'm fairly certain she followed Kina's example at least once and grabbed a "treat" from Onyx's litter box. She ate our spatula because it had egg on it, and we foolishly left it on the kitchen counter without supervision. I stopped her from going after an empty tuna can that had been left on the counter. We quickly learned that we had to be a lot better about keeping our kitchen clean than we usually are. No more leaving the dishes out overnight.

Lily eventually started eating a little more. I gave her these stew-like dishes that were more liquidy a couple of times and she chomped them down. On the last night she even ate most of Kina's food, which we were perfectly happy to let her do by then.

Just who's in charge around here? The hierarchy of pets in our house very definitely goes: Onyx -> Kina -> Lily. Lily mostly knows this, from having visited before. But the cat still felt the need to enforce it. This was most notable at bedtime, when Onyx would claim the bed. Kina would lay down on our floor between the bed and the door, and Lily was forced to stay in the hallway. If we called her in to cuddle with us, the cat would protest loudly. We did get her into the bed once or twice while the cat was distracted, but Onyx was never happy about it. Once Lily knew that Onyx was in charge, though, everything was pretty peaceful, and the cat even came downstairs to hang out with everyone and keep an eye on Lily. In all the time they've known each other, that's a first.

How absorbent is that diaper? This was one of my first questions upon Lily's arrival. She's been sick so, as a precaution, Zach and Sarah bought a doggy diaper to help prevent (or at least contain) accidents. It's basically a maxi-pad and Lily hated it. I wasn't entirely sure it would be effective. Still, we kept it on whenever we were asleep or out of the house. A few days in, we woke up to discover Lily had had need of her diaper. The answer to my question? Not quite as absorbent as we'd like. The pad had soaked through to the diaper and we had to run the diaper through the washing machine, which also meant leaving it off Lily for a few hours when we were gone. Luckily, Kevin was able to get home around noon that day, and there were no more accidents.

Is this drool or pee? Closely related to the previous question. After we woke up to Lily's sodden diaper, we were worried that it hadn't fully contained the mess. This led to two separate searches of the house to determine if and how badly the diaper had leaked. We checked the usual places (is it bad that there are usual places for this? Each animal has basically claimed a room to have their accidents in) to no avail. Then I laid down on the couch and immediately found a wet spot underneath my foot. We tried smelling it, but we couldn't determine what it was. So we cleaned it to the best of our ability without ever knowing what the mystery liquid was. It was probably drool.

Which way are you going? Walking two dogs at once is a whole lot harder than just walking one. Lily is easy enough, but Kina isn't always. I had to keep an extra sharp eye open to avoid potential problems with other dogs. I even ended up altering when I walked them to avoid other dogs as much as possible. The biggest challenge ended up coming from getting tangled in the leashes. Kina and I have a system built on her preference for passing people on the left. Her consistency means that I always know where she'll be and can pass the leash around accordingly. On our very first walk, Lily initially passed me on the right. I thought, Great! That makes it easy to keep them separated. But it turns out that Lily has no system like Kina's and will pass on either side, willy-nilly. I was never really expecting this, and ended up tangled in the leashes several times per walk because I'd incorrectly assumed Lily would a different way than she did.

Am I allergic to dogs? Very Probably. I spent most of the week congested and even more sneezy than usual. Though that could have also been a mild cold, since Kevin experienced similar symptoms. But it doesn't matter if I'm allergic to Lily and/or Kina. They'll still get all the love.

Makeup Lessons

For the past couple of months I've been wearing makeup nearly every day. Putting it on in the morning makes me feel just a little bit more in control, which is a nice way to start the day. It feels especially good when I manage to get my eyeliner perfectly symmetrical. And I've been having fun playing with colors and working out bold or subtle looks.

I've also learned a lot in my last couple of months of experimentation. Through signing up for Birchbox, reading various blogs, and just buying things that look interesting I've tried a bunch of different stuff. Here are some of my key lessons:

BB Cream is amazing. What is BB Cream? Yeah, for a long time I didn't know either. It was just this thing that everyone was talking about everywhere. One of those mysteries that everyone seemed to be in on except for me. It turns out that it's a magical combination of moisturizer, sunscreen, and foundation. So instead of looking for a moisturizer and foundation that work well together, or trying to remember to put on sunscreen *before* foundation (or at all, let's be honest), you just put this on and you're done. It has less coverage than actual foundations, but I like that it looks a bit more natural.

All mascaras are not created equal. For the longest time I thought mascara was just mascara and would just buy the cheapest one. But then I started wearing it more often, because I liked the look. And then I started losing eyelashes and no amount of makeup remover would get it off so I'd wake up every morning with raccoon eyes. Then I upgraded to something just a little more expensive and those problems vanished. It was like magic.

Eyeshadow Primer is your friend. What? Why do you need primer for your eyeshadow? I'll tell you why. It keeps it there longer. And okay, I don't actually use real primer. I get that color tattoo cream shadow from Maybelleine in neutral or white and put it on under my color of choice. And then it stays on all day long. I can go to work for eight hours, head to the gym and work up a sweat, then rinse off in the shower, and my eyeshadow will still be perfect. No runs or weird color uneveness. Also the white base makes the colors I use pop just a little more.

Exfoliate! Okay, this one's less about makeup and more about proper skin care, something I never really paid attention to until I started caking my face with makeup every day. But I got a sample from Birchbox so I started using it. Within a few days the blackheads on my nose, the ones that have been living there stubbornly since I was in high school and that I barely even saw anymore, just straight up disappeared. It was incredible. So, yeah, exfoliate. Take care of your face.

Progress Report

Who could have guessed that the week I committed to getting better at step-ups, my trainer would go and modify them on me. On Wednesday, she had me doing shoulder presses during the step-ups. It turns out the added weight/movement forced me to slow down and focus, which in turn basically eliminated the wobbling. And I really like being able to exercise multiple muscles at once. It makes me feel more efficient.

I also added dead lifts to my personal routine, which made my hamstrings scream in protest the first time but became much more reasonable the second time. The only problem is that the body bars the gym provides are all old enough that the weights have been rubbed off. I'm going to have to switch to dumbbells so I know how much I'm lifting.

As for the push-ups, I was able to do one set of ten followed by a set of eight over the weekend. I could probably do more if I started fresh, but I thrown them in a cycle with a bunch of arm exercises, which leads to faster fatigue. It's still nice to see improvement, though.

I have made very little progress on pull ups. These are hard enough that I basically have to do them first thing, or I won't be able to do them at all. So if someone's on the machine, I end up skipping them and doing other things to work out my back and arms. I'll keep plugging away at them, though.

And I still probably want to buy a bike. Though that's a little lower priority than a new oven, a new mattress, and possibly even a new fridge. Damn, expensive home ownership.

Roller Coasters

For my birthday, we spent the day at Kings Dominion riding roller coasters and water slides with a group of friends. The weather was beautiful which was something of a mixed blessing, since it meant that every single line was absurdly long. But at least we didn't get too grossly hot or overly dehydrated.

We started the day with a couple of roller coasters, both of which were the kind that launch you forward from a standstill. Thanks to lines, it took nearly three hours to ride those two coasters, so after lunch we decided to head to the water park. Lines were still kind of long there, but they mostly moved faster, or at least continuously. We were even able to ride one of the slides twice because the line moved so quickly.

We spent most of the afternoon in the water park and rode almost every ride they had. Then we went back to the park for birthday funnel cake and some more coasters. Unfortunately, the lines hadn't really died down at all. Even the lines that are normally relatively short took us a while to get through. We skipped several coasters because we just didn't want to wait. Finally we decided it was time to seek out the less popular rides.

The old wooden racer had a really short line. We almost walked right on it. Then we decided to ride the really high swings. You corkscrew up and then back down a 300 foot tower and get to see the whole park. We timed that one perfectly, because the flashing lights came on for our ride, but it was still light enough to see everything. After that we went on one more wooden coaster before calling it a day. And my sometimes unpopular opinion that wooden coasters are far superior was definitely upheld. The slightly out-of-control chaos you get on the wooden coasters adds a level of genuine terror that makes the whole experience better.

On the way home we stopped for burgers in Fredricksburg. We didn't get there until ten and then, thanks to slow service, weren't back on the road until after eleven. It was past midnight when we got home, and I was so exhausted that I slept for a solid eleven hours. I felt just like a teenager again.

Kings Dominion was a ton of fun, but the lines are so long that it's definitely a rare excursion. It had been five years since I was last there and it'll probably be five more before I go again. Unless we can arrange it to go in the middle of the week and avoid the crowds at some point.

Goals

I haven't posted about the gym in a while. Not because I haven't been going (I have), but because I'm still trying to figure out a routine that really works for me. For most of the winter, I was doing I good job of getting in four times a week - trainer on Wednesday, lifting by myself on Saturday, and cardio on M/Th or T/F. But ever since the wedding I've had a hard time sticking to that. A big part of it is that my routine just got so thrown off. Then weekends were so busy that it seemed nearly impossible to get in on Saturdays. But I'm trying to get back on that schedule.

In that vein, I decided it would probably be helpful to define some goals. The main goal, obviously, is weight loss. But I've been trying that for a year, and I have yet to lose any weight (well, except for the two pounds I gained on the honeymoon, does that count?). So I'm going to try and focus on fitness goals. Places where I should be able to see actual improvement in the coming weeks.

So from short-term to long-term, here we go:

Step Ups. I have a love/hate relationship with step ups. The thing I love about them is that it's really easy to pretend I'm Buffy while I'm doing them. Which makes it easy to get into a rhythm and keep my motivation up. But my balance isn't great. I usually start wobbling about 7 in. So goal number 1: make it through a full set (10 on each side) without wobbling. Then up that to 15.

Modified (Inverted?) Push Ups. I started doing these modified push ups that are just hell on my abs, in a good way. Instead of putting your hands on the floor, you grip some dumbbells or use a stair or something. It requires more balance, which engages your core muscles, which results in your entire torso being sore the next day. They're fantastic. Also I can actually go down farther when I do these, since my boobs and stomach don't hit the ground. Currently I can do three sets of 5. I'd like to be able to do 3 sets of 10. Or even 20 all at once.

Legs. I need to stop focusing so much on my quads and start focusing on my hamstrings. That's poorly defined, as far as goals go. I have a couple of exercises to do, but I hate them. Maybe it's just a matter of doing them until I hate them less? Or maybe I should look into other, hamstring-specific exercises. The real goal here is to build up muscle to protect my knees in the future. Currently it's all unbalanced, which is why I hurt myself so easily last Fall. I don't know, I'll figure this out.

Pull Ups. As it currently stands, I do pulls ups on the assist machine. You stand on a weighted lever thing and it helps make pull ups easier by reducing your own body weight. I have no idea how much it reduces it by or even how to figure that out. The scale goes from 1 to 16, and I currently set it on either 9 or 10. I can do two sets of 10 at that level. My goal here is to do one unassisted pull up. I have an impressively long way to go, given that the last time I tried it was like my arms simply weren't responding to my brain, which was a very strange feeling.

Biking. Okay, this is a really fuzzy goal. And it would require me to invest in a bike and then carve out time to actually ride it regularly. As of last year (ish?) I could ride about 4 miles comfortably and push myself to 10 before I actually felt like dying. So long as there weren't any major hills. So this goal (which I'm still waffling on) would come in two parts. (a) Bike to work. My office is about 10 miles from home, on bike trails. It's all downhill there and all uphill home. But if I could do this once, if I could get to a point where I'm doing it once a week, if I could get comfortable with that sort of distance, that would be a good thing. (b) Maybe sign up for Bike MS next year? There's a 30 mile component. It's at National Harbor in June. It would be for an excellent cause. I don't know. We'll see where I am when that rolls around.

Weight. Okay, weight loss is still a goal. But in a more abstract sense. I'd like to look the way I did in this picture:

We represented Westeros at the 2012 Winter Beerlympics

That was taken about 2 1/2 years (and 25 lbs) ago. I don't think I need to lose a full 25 pounds to get back to that size (~8), since I'm building muscle and that weighs more than fat. At any rate it seems like a perfectly reasonable and doable goal. If I could just lost that first pound.

Anyway, this is where I am. I'm hoping to knock out the first 2-3 by Labor Day, then up the ante on them. Or come up with new short-term goals. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Merica

When we lived farther away from Zach and Sarah, every visit seemed to turn into a beer and mimosa-fueled 3-day game fest, occasionally punctuated by naps, dog walks, and excursions for food. Since they moved to DC, our visits have become more frequent and a lot shorter. Gone are the epic sleepovers of years past, replaced by much more adult get-togethers where everyone goes home at the end of the night. Or at least at a reasonable time the next morning.

Well, mostly.

This year, we decided to celebrate our independence with a throwback to those weekends, albeit with a few more friends this time around. The weekend was, indeed, epic. Though the break to go watch fireworks kind of killed my momentum and I ended up getting cranky and going to bed early.

We played a bunch of board games, some beer pong, and entirely too much "Don't Drink and Drive" with the newest Mario Kart. We made a lot of delicious food, including biscuits and gravy for breakfast. I love biscuits and gravy, but it's really hard to make just enough for two, so I try to save it for when we have a lot of company.

People stayed through dinner on the 5th, then Kevin, Connor and I watched a movie before falling asleep early. All that partying really took it out of me. I slept for nearly 11 hours. I can't even remember the last time I slept that long. It was nice to get a full day to recover. I spent most of it doing laundry, putting the house back in order, and cooking an incredibly involved dinner. Because if you're going to be stuck in the house for five hours doing laundry, you might as well make some chicken stock, too.

Beach Weekend

This past weekend a group of us went down to Nag's Head, North Carolina for a friend's wedding. The bride's family all lives in the area, so a bunch of people ended up renting houses and staying in the area for an entire week. We were only able to go for a three-day weekend, but it was still fun.

We got a room at a hotel that was right on the beach. Not that that's difficult at Nag's Head, where it's basically impossible to be more than a quarter of a mile from the ocean at any given time. Since we arrived several hours before check-in time, we were able to spend some time at the beach and play a round of mini golf before we got our room.

The beach was fun, though I mostly didn't get in the water. I spent some time watching the crabs, reading, and napping while everyone else splashed around in the ocean. Sadly, the crabs got scared underground when everyone else returned to sunbathe. But it was fun to watch them toss sand around while it lasted.

We got into our room with just about enough time for everyone to shower and get dressed before heading over to the wedding, located a convenient quarter mile from our hotel. The happy couple had actually gotten married a year previously, so in lieu of a ceremony we watched a short video of the ceremony. The reception was a lot of fun with delicious food and tons of small children running around. The kids had their own pirate-themed area with mini burgers and pirate-ship forts.

After the reception, there was a party bus headed to a club for the after party. I opted out and went back to the hotel room instead. Kevin followed not too long after, and the rest of the group trickled in sometime between midnight and 3.

The next morning we found a truly excellent breakfast place, though they almost refused to serve Sarah a bloody mary because she looked too young. Then it was back to the beach to hang out for a bit before getting lunch with the wedding party. At lunch, the bride and groom invited us to stay the night in their house. They'd rented a huge house for them and their families for the weekend, and most people had left that day. So we canceled the hotel room and moved all our stuff over to the fantastic house, where we all got bedrooms and feasted on leftovers from the reception.

The weekend was a lot of fun, even if I did sustain a rather nasty sunburn on part of my back. I think I'm coming around on the idea of beaches a little. Laying in the sand and staring at the waves is fun, so long as there's a shower nearby. Though by the end I was sick of smelling like sunscreen and finding sand everywhere. Maybe it's just good in small doses.

Reading Challenge Update 2

The year's half over (ish) so it's time to check in on the reading challenges again.

For the Reading Suggestion Challenge, here's where I stand

April: A book from your childhood

For April, I decided to pick up Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I considered reading the rest of the series, but there were too many other books on my list. Still, it was fun to revisit this one and see how much it has shaped me as a person and a reader.

 May: A book from another country

This month was fun, because it lined up with my honeymoon. We visited three countries, and I read a book from each of them. In Barcelona, I read The Shadow of the Wind, which was written by Carlos Ruis Zafon, who hails from Barcelona. The book takes place there and does a great job of incorporating the city. When we got to Paris, I began reading The Three Musketeers, written by French writer, Alexandre Dumas. Once I'd finished that, I picked up the biography of Roise Rua, who lived on a island off the coast of Ireland. The book was originally written in Gaelic. I really enjoyed reading books that were set in the parts of the world I was visiting, and I hope to continue the tradition when I travel in the future.

I also read Persuasion this month, which was written and takes place in England. May involved a lot of European literature.

June:  A classic you never got around to

I bought Treasure Island years ago and attempted to read it several times. Somehow I never made it past the first twenty pages. Until now! I was determined to finish this book for this challenge, and I finally did it! Having finished it, I'm surprised it proved so difficult for me, given what a quick, easy read it was.

I've made a ton of headway on the Monopoly Genre Challenge.

I only have two books left to finish off this challenge. I'm planning to read JK Rowling's The Cuckoo's Calling for the crime novel. Then I just need to find a Chick Lit book (maybe Gone Girl? People seem to like that one), and I'll be all done. I'll probably hold off on these for a while. I bought a ton of epic fantasy to keep me busy for the summer, and I don't want to buy any new books for a few months at least.

Risotto

Several months ago, The Toast posted a Risotto Template. It's not a recipe so much as a guide for making risotto. One that you can personalize to your heart's content, but that gets a lot of the basics right. It's the kind of thing that might not work for the chemists in my life, but it's exactly the kind of recipe I've come to love.

I wanted desperately to try it out. But I was so busy planning the wedding that I couldn't seem to find the time. Then there's the fact that risotto is high in both fat and carbs, which didn't really mesh with my weight-watching goals leading up to the wedding. So I decided to wait until after the honeymoon. And last weekend (after a supremely busy month) I finally found the 2+ hours I needed to attempt this.

It didn't come out perfectly - the rice was still occasionally crunchy. Which, I don't even know how that happened. I was thinking that I maybe didn't cook it enough, but Kevin thinks I may have burned some of the rice grains in the toasting step. Whatever it was, it's something I'll hopefully be better about next time.

As I said, this recipe was pretty open to interpretation. I used tumeric instead of saffron because have you seen the price of saffron? And I threw in a little extra wine and a lot of extra cheese. I did the full 8 cups of chicken stock (minus what ever boiled off), which meant that I was adding stock and stirring for about an hour and a half. And drinking wine during that time.

To my finished product, I added mushrooms, shrimp, and peas. I should have added more of all three, but I was worried about overpowering the rice. I did about a handful of each, and will probably double that next time.

The risotto tasted really good, if occasionally crunchy. The wine helps with that part, though. It was fun to make. I watched two episodes of Orange is the New Black while I was chopping and simmering and stirring and eating. All in all, not a bad way to spend a Saturday evening. Hopefully I'll find time to make it again in the future. This is one of those dishes I'd really like to perfect, as it works really well both fresh and as leftovers.

BBBBQ

This weekend was the Beer, Bourbon, and BBQ festival, another annual tradition that has gained traction as more of our college friends have moved East. It's held down in National Harbor, which isn't the easiest place in the world to get to. We have to take taxis from the closest metro stop, but we usually have enough people that this isn't too much of a hardship.

The festival is always a lot of fun, especially since the VIP tickets we buy mean we get in two hours before the general public. There are a ton of bourbons and beers to taste, and the ticket gets you unlimited tastings. It always turns into a rather boozy day, full of sampling so many things it's impossible to keep track of them all.

There's also a special VIP area that has the higher end bourbons and beers. They also have some free food samples over there, though none of it was really worth standing in line for this year. The cheese was mediocre and the bacon was flat-out bad.

We stayed at the festival for over four hours, which is the longest we've ever lasted. We must be learning to pace ourselves as we grow older. After we finished drinking, it was back to Zach and Sarah's for tacos and horse races. And, yes, more beer. Then it was time to metro home, which was involved some fun people watching. Everyone was coming home from the Pride Parade, so there were rainbows and beads and glitter everywhere.

On Sunday Kevin and I went over to the community's annual used book sale. The selection was a bit picked over, since most people had gone on Friday and Saturday. We still managed to find some cool things, including the sequel to one of my favorite books as a child, a book I had despaired of ever finding. And since it was the tail end of the sale, prices had been slashed. We took home eight books for only $5, and we could have gotten way more for the same price if we'd found anything else we wanted.

Embracing the Feminine

A funny thing happened when Kevin insisted I wear makeup for the wedding. I discovered that I liked it.

Back in middle and high school, I had to glob makeup on my face every time I performed in a dance recital or musical.  It was always heavy and felt caked on. It always made me break out. The experience led me to reject makeup altogether, and for years I almost never wore any. Unless a friend decided she wanted to make me over for a party, in which case I often felt awkward unless I managed to forget I was wearing makeup. But then I inevitably smudged my eyeliner or mascara or whatever, and looked awful by the end of the night.

Once Kevin asked me to wear makeup for the wedding, I knew I'd have to get in practice. I needed to remember how to apply it and learn how to get through a day without messing it up. I bought some stuff at the drug store and started playing.

It was surprising how quickly things started coming back to me. The realization that I needed to buy some extra brushes to get my eyeshadow just right. Mourning for the eyebrow brush I threw away so many years ago. Not to mention that it was satisfying. When I got my eyes looking just right, I was proud of myself.

In addition to this, I'd been looking for a specific shade of lipstick I loved in high school. It was being re-released in a limited run, and tracking it down was really difficult. In the process of trying to find it, I ended up visiting a lot of beauty sites and began to see tips on applying eye liner, keeping lipstick from smearing, finding brands that actually last all day. It all looked so fun and, more importantly, accessible. See part of my disinterest in makeup can be traced to my mom's disinterest in makeup. Without her to teach me the finer points I had a hard time learning. Though if I'd really wanted to I probably could have.

I also started seeing articles about women wearing too much makeup. Hand in hand with articles styling their hair in the wrong way or wearing the wrong shorts or just generally not being appealing in the right way. And I thought fuck that. I've never much cared about fashion or anything, opting for ease and comfort over style. But if men were going to tell me not to wear makeup, then I was damn well going to start wearing makeup.

And finally, the snowflake that caused the avalanche. Being one of the only women at work. Seeing twenty interns hired with nary a woman in sight. I got fed up with being one of the guys and decided to deliberately other myself. Because it turns out I do have a pretty strong contrary streak. I'm surprised I wasn't a more rebellious teenager (though I didn't really have anything to rebel against, so).

I went out and bought eyeshadows in fun shades. Blues and purples and pinks. I picked up some bright lipsticks to play with. I signed up for birchbox, because getting samples in the mail every month seemed like the ideal way to experiment. And in the very first box I found a hair product that I definitely have to start buying and using. It's amazing.

Incorporating makeup into my morning routine was surprisingly easy. I never do anything that takes more than five minutes, so it's not a big time suck. And it's so fun and satisfying that I find myself wanting to do things. I probably shouldn't have tried eyeliner for the first time on a work day, but it all worked out okay in the end.

Through all of this, the words of a guy I almost dated have started echoing in my head again. When I asked him about his tattoos, he replied "You only get one life, you might as well decorate it." It was these words that pushed me into getting my first tattoo and that are defining my experiments with making my face up every day. It's one more way to play with color, decorate myself, and define the way I look. It really is an art form, one that I'm getting better at and having a lot of fun with in the meantime.

Weekend Fun

In the past year or so, a lot of our friends have moved east. This makes it a lot easier to see them more often, and looking at our calendar for the next few weeks it seems that we will be taking full advantage of that fact.

Last weekend two of our friends came to DC to visit, one from Boston and the other from NYC. Chev was here for a week, training for her summer internship in Nepal, while Alex came down with his girlfriend to spend time with both her friends and his. As our social circles expand, it's harder to carve out time with everyone. We weren't able to just spend an entire weekend lounging around and playing games with our friends this time, but we still got in some quality visiting time.

On Saturday evening, Chev, Zach, and Sarah came out to our house for tacos and board games. We pulled out some old classics, like beer pong, and some even older classics, like Twister. I am not nearly as good at Twister as when I was younger. But the alcohol helped with the falling on my ass part of that game. Both in facilitating it and in dulling the pain.

The next morning we went downtown for mimosas with Zach and Sarah, then Alex and his girlfriend joined us for brunch. At noon, which is less brunch than lunch. But if there are eggs and mimosas, then it still counts. Then we met up with other friends to wander around the zoo for the afternoon.

Visiting the zoo is definitely something I need to do more often. It's free, it's fun, and it's walking distance from nearly all of our friends' places in DC. I haven't been since before I moved to DC, and now I'm kicking myself for letting so many years pass between visits.

A lot of the animals weren't out, probably because we went sort of late and everything was either eating or sleeping. But we did get to hear the lion roar, see the tiger cubs annoy their mom, and watch the otters play. Sadly my favorite animal, the sloth bear, was nowhere to be seen. And the panda was hiding up in a tree. But these are just reasons to go back more often. Wandering around the zoo is a great way to spend the afternoon.

The Official Start of Summer

I've always been amused by the idea that summer officially starts with Memorial Day Weekend, almost a month before the actual start of summer. Of course, it makes sense for any number of reasons. This was always when school let out for the summer, so it marked the beginning of those blissful months of freedom. The weather is starting to seriously heat up, which makes it feel like summer. It also marks the beginning of what promises to be a friend and activity filled few months for us. So it makes sense to mark this as the beginning of the season.

We had a bunch of friends over for a barbeque on Sunday to celebrate Memorial Day. Though if we're being honest it was mostly to celebrate the fact that the weather was perfect and we didn't have to go to work on Monday. Plus we hadn't seen anyone since the wedding.

We were expecting 12, maybe 13 people. And as always, we got too much food. But then we only had eight people at the BBQ, which meant that we had way too much food. We're going to be eating chicken thighs and drumsticks for the rest of the week. It's a good thing I like leftovers so much.

It was a lot of fun to see our friends after all the craziness of the wedding and the honeymoon. Settling back in to normal life is exactly what I wanted to do. We ate burgers and chicken and drank beer and bourbon and played some games. It was a perfect afternoon.

On Monday, we went to Rappahannock winery with Kevin's mom and some family friends to drink wine and have a picnic. The winery was a little farther out than we usually travel, but the wine was delicious. And there were a bunch of dogs running around begging for attention.

The rest of summer promises to be both busy and fun. We already have plans for almost every weekend in June. After that, my brother is staying with us for a week to attend GMU's orientation and find an apartment before he officially moves here in August. I'm looking forward to spending more time with him and with friends who moved here at the end of last summer. It should prove to be pretty epic.

The 17%

Google recently released data on the demographics of their staff in an effort to be more transparent and to be held accountable for their diversity. They certainly have a long way to go to achieve equality, but it's good that they're trying. One of the numbers caught my attention immediately. When I saw it, I was struck with that weird mixture of disappointment and lack of surprise that is becoming all too familiar.

Google's tech force is made up of 17% women. Why did that number catch my eye? It was brought up in an NPR program that got a lot of attention about a year ago. The transcript can be found here. The take away is that that number - 17% - is an unsettlingly common number. It is, by and large, the number of professional women currently working in traditionally male-dominated fields.

17% of Hollywood film directors are women. 17% of US Senators are women. 17% of engineers, surgeons, professors, etc are women. Do a bit of digging, and you'll see this number everywhere.

More interestingly, 17% of people in crowd scenes in movies or television shows are women.

Recent psychological studies have found that most men perceive this as equality. When a group's ratio is 83 men to 17 women, the men are likely to say that there are as many women present as men. When women speak 17% of the time, men are likely to say that the women talked just as much as the men. And a worrying fact: when women speak 30% of the time, men start to complain that they were dominating the conversation. We have been conditioned to view 17% as good enough, to view anything approaching true equality as greed.

I should acknowledge that this is better than it was a generation ago. We have made great strides since my mom and my aunt were the only women in their respective offices. But I'm one of only five women in my office. We each get our own private stall in the bathroom, a perk I would gladly trade in to have some more female faces around me.

It actually feels like it's gotten worse the farther I've gone in my career. My college class was 25% female. Not great, but a good sight better than the 17% (or less) I deal with now. In fact, six years after I graduated, my alma mater achieved a 50-50 student body, and even graduated three more female engineers than male engineers. But they aren't making it into the workplace. At least not yet.

There are a number of reasons for this. Partly it's that they aren't being hired. Not through overt sexism, but because of a more insidious variant. A resume with a male name is likely to be seen as representing a more qualified individual than a resume with a female name, even if the two resumes are identical. A man being interviewed seems like a better fit for a company than his female counterpart, for some undefinable reason. Let's call it "culture".

There's also evidence that women aren't applying for as many jobs as men because of one of the sneakier aspects of sexism that I've only recently become aware of. Apparently women are likely to apply to a job only if they feel that they meet 100% of the requirements in the job description, whereas men will take a chance if they meet 60% of the requirements. This speaks to issues with self-esteem, confidence, and even arrogance. Of course, many companies are satisfied with that 60%, and they hire one of the men who applied as opposed to one of the women who didn't.

Then there are the cultural elements, something President Klawe identified and worked really hard to overcome at Harvey Mudd. Even if you're qualified to go to a school or take a job, many women will be put off by a student body or staff that is overwhelmingly male. Even if there's a lot of support for women, and a genuine effort to provide opportunities. My company is great about this, and I feel wholly supported there. It doesn't change the fact that when I interviewed I met with four men, and the only woman I saw the entire day was the head of HR. That leaves a distinct impression, and if there's an option to go somewhere more egalitarian, even if it's less prestigious or offers less money, the environment might make that trade off worth it.

Finally, there's the drop off effect. Women dropping out of college or PhD programs because the constant sexism becomes too grating. Women leaving careers in technical fields because they're sick of all the extra work that goes into being one of only a few women. Being constantly surrounded by men is exhausting. You're always on guard for them to make a sexist joke, wondering how to respond to one when it happens. Is it better to be a meek pushover or a feminist killjoy? Better to network and be on good terms with your coworkers or focus on your work and seek promotion based solely on your own merit? And what happens when you see man after unqualified man promoted ahead of you for a slew of reasons that are difficult to untangle and articulate?

Half of the things that happen to me in office barely even register as strange or uncalled-for. Until I share a story with my female friends and see the look of horror on their faces.

What's to be done? In college, we made a concerted effort to unite the women living in our dorm. And in our time there we saw a huge shift in the culture of our dorm, one that resulted in more women willingly moving into our dorm. But these were people I lived with, people I saw every day. An effort like that at my day job, where I really am supposed to be working instead of socializing, feels daunting. As does specifically recruiting more women, which by the way is not in my job description.

At the same time doing nothing feels cowardly. Like I'm betraying my gender, my future children. Watching that number stagnate is disheartening, though I can always hope that things will get better. But how long will that take? Will my (hypothetical) daughter be struggling with these same issues thirty years from now? Will we have merely jumped from 17% to 30%? Or will we be able, in that time, to actually create a diverse corporate world that reflects the realities of the world we spend the rest of our lives in?

There aren't any easy answers. It's hard to know where to start. At the moment I'm so exhausted (by this, by the recent Isla Vista shooting, by the prospect of another summer dominated by male action heroes) that I hardly want to do anything. But the pendulum will swing, I'll befriend the new woman on my team at work, and things will get easier again. They say it's best to attack these things from a place of strength. Until I get there I'll just rant on my blog.

Honeymoon 8: There's No Place Like Home

Travel is always a weird experience. Especially when you travel really long distances. Between the weird time warp that takes place on planes and the shifting of time zones outside of those planes, it's hard to keep track of what time it actually is.  And if you go far enough, your internal clock gets so scrambled that you can more or less reset it as you like.

We landed in DC around 3:30. Kevin's mom picked us up at the airport, and by the time we'd gotten our bags and grabbed Kina from her house, it was after five before we made it home. Then I had to run to the grocery store because after two weeks away, there wasn't much food in the house that we trusted. But it was too long before we were able to crash on the couch with Chinese food, beers, and our trusty DVR.

Sadly, our trusty DVR proved to be somewhat less than trusty. It faithfully recorded all of our shows the first week we were gone. Then it turned off completely and missed everything that aired the second week we were gone. On the bright side, all of those shows were on OnDemand, it just meant we couldn't fast forward through the commercials while we were watching.

Not that we watched much that first night anyway. I think we made it through one episode of TV before it was definitely time for bed.

The next morning, we woke up around 5:30. By six we had agreed that it was definitely not too early for mimosas. So equipped with four bottles of Andre left over from the wedding, a fresh bottle of orange juice, and an extra cheesy scramble, we once more planted ourselves on the couch to watch some TV.

We only made it a few hours before the champagne was gone and it was time to actually do other stuff. Because no matter what happens, it seems that we are no longer capable of simply sitting on the couch in front of the TV for a full day. I choose to see this as a sign of maturity.

So Kevin took the dog to the park and went for a bike ride and bought food. Meanwhile I started updating my blog (which I missed dearly during my time away from computers) and read. Because I didn't do enough reading on my honeymoon, obviously. Once we'd cooked dinner and walked Kina, it was once again time to make a dent in the backlog of television.

But once again, we didn't make it very far before we were once again falling asleep. Over the weekend we managed to catch up on SHIELD, Elementary, and Orphan Black. But that still left Game of Thrones, The Americans, and a documentary I'd been watching. Still, it was a nice, relaxing way to transition back into the real world. And since most of those shows were actually over, this meant that we still had some stuff to watch during the week, when we were still too tired to do much of anything.

On Monday it was back to work. I'm really glad we came back from Europe a little early and had some time to just sit in the house and re-acclimate to being home. It was nice to have a truly lazy day after all the running around that comes with being a tourist. And it's always more relaxing to be surrounded by your own stuff.