Category: personal

So yes, I’ve survived the holidays and no, I haven’t given up on this blog, I promise. Things have just been super crazy busy the past few months between work and social stuff (this is starting to sound like my standard excuse but it’s true!). But I wanted to post on this new exercise thing I found out about, it’s two sites, One Hundred Push Ups and Two Hundred Sit Ups. For each of these the goal is to be able to do that total number of the exercise at one time (with rests in between reps). You start out with an initial test to determine your fitness level and then each week you do this pre-set group of reps three times a week and each week the number in each rep increases until you’ve reached the goal. Both are six week programs, Jeremy started doing the push up challenge a few weeks ago and is seeing some great results so, not to be outdone, I figured I would try it too 😉

So now that I’ve written about this on the internets I’m hoping this will make me more accountable to actually complete it. To start, I can do 10 (knee) pushups and 35 crunches/sit ups, we’ll see where I end up in 6 weeks…

So apologies again for being a delinquent blog author, things have been pretty crazy the past few weeks.  I hosted a Halloween party on the 31st, costumes were encouraged but optional and we ended up with lots of “Liz Specials” plus quite a few fun characters, Dr. Horrible, Duff Man, Supergirl, Harley Quinn, Batgirl (that was me), Blue-Footed Booby, Windows Blue Screen of Death, a Stocking and the Stuff-R…here’s the group shot. Also carved pumpkins for the party and roasted the seeds, very tasty, I used a great recipe from Simply Recipes. I got the pumpkins from Bethel’s pumpkin patch, the biggest one was over 35 pounds. It was quite fun carving them even though I couldn’t find my pumpkin carving knife I got in a little kit one time, instead I used a flathead screwdriver and a tomato knife, gotta love improvisation.

Also went on a nice weekend getaway with Jeremy to Charlottesville last weekend. We stayed at this nice bed and breakfast right in downtown called 200 South Street Inn. It’s in a big old house and we were on the top floor so the ceiling was all sloped and slanted in various directions because it used to be the attic. Very unique and very fun since I hadn’t been to a bed and breakfast in a really long time. We walked to dinner both nights and even though we were only a block away from the pedestrian mall we didn’t go farther than a few hundred fee from the inn because there were two really good restaurants literally across the street, Bang! and Mono Loco, recommend both if you’re ever in the area. We also did some winery and brewery visiting while we were up there, Cardinal Point (visited Saturday afternoon, quite good), Horton (first one we visited Sunday, offers way too many wines, none of which were all that great), Barboursville (second visted on Sunday, fun tour, $4 tasting fee but you get to keep the glass, new favorite), and Prince Michel (last one we visited, heavy pours for the tastings, also good), and on the brewery side we visited Blue Mountain Brewery where we had lunch on Saturday and enjoyed a flight of their beers, my favorite was the one at the front of the picture, the Blue Mountain Lager. Before we visited Cardinal Point on Saturday we drove down the Blue Ridge Parkway and lucked out with some really pretty weather for driving, yielded some nice shots that I have up on my flickr page. We were a bit past peak on the leaves but I’d say probably half were still holding on to some great color.

And last but not least I started a new job at the beginning of November at Solertium Corporation in New Town. I’m working with a great group of people and get to work on lots of different projects where I can do both web design work and programming so I get to exercise both “sides” of my computer interests, plus I can walk to work now so that is an extra bonus.

So there you go, my life updated in approximately 500 words 😉

I know better than to go grocery shopping hungry, but today it couldn’t really be helped. I didn’t have any milk, therefore couldn’t have any coffee or have an english muffin with peanut butter (which has been my breakfast trend this week, and something topped with peanut butter and only orange juice to wash it down? no thanks) so a trip to the store was required. Decided to roll a bunch of errands into one trip and stopped by the Williamsburg farmer’s market where one of the Williamsburg Winery chefs was doing a demo and offering a “fall salad” and oyster stew. I was really excited about the stew but they didn’t have any prepared while I was there so never got to taste it, oh well, now I kind of want to make some though, my mom makes a really good version, lots of cream and butter, how can you go wrong? Stopped by Bloom to get coffee filters and dishwashing sponges (one thing Trader Joe’s lacks, home cleaning stuff, although I did notice today they had one variety of paper towels and toilet paper) then headed to my friendly neighborhood Trader Joe’s, initially just for milk and soymilk, or so I thought.

I ended up with 5 bottles of wine (all under $5 each!), frozen gnocchi, 2 bags of frozen vegetables, a bag of frozen chicken, torteliini, Trader Joe’s version of Cherrios, blood orange italian soda (excited to try this), soy milk, soy creamer (wanted to see if it was any good since it lasts longer in the fridge I may be able to avoid my no-milk-no-coffee issue), milk, a strawberry-rubarb pie (so excited for this! I was watching Pushing Daisies last night and was totally craving pie afterwards, and according to one of the Trader Joe’s employees the strawberry-rubarb is very hard to come by if you’re not there really early in the day, yay!), and a spinach and mushroom mini quiche which I just finished for brunch with my coffee and soy creamer (conclusion on the soy creamer, not as good as milk-based creamers, thinner and tangy-er). So thus the danger of shopping hungry, be warned! 😉

Avast! For those not aware of fun random holidays, today is “International Talk Like A Pirate Day”. Here is a quick rundown of the basic phrases in case you need it courtesy of the International Talk Like A Pirate Day website:

Ahoy! – “Hello!”

Avast! – Stop and give attention. It can be used in a sense of surprise, “Whoa! Get a load of that!” which today makes it more of a “Check it out” or “No way!” or “Get off!”

Aye! – “Why yes, I agree most heartily with everything you just said or did.”

Aye aye! – “I’ll get right on that sir, as soon as my break is over.”

Arrr! – This one is often confused with arrrgh, which is of course the sound you make when you sit on a belaying pin. “Arrr!” can mean, variously, “yes,” “I agree,” “I’m happy,” “I’m enjoying this beer,” “My team is going to win it all,” “I saw that television show, it sucked!” and “That was a clever remark you or I just made.” And those are just a few of the myriad possibilities of Arrr!

There is also a handy video tutorial available 😉

Perhaps a bit of grog is in order tonight, yarrr!

So transitioning back to the “real world” post-vacation hasn’t been too bad in terms of workstuff, back to homeownership however is a different story. Although as we were driving back to Williamsburg I got a text message from Jim, who was watching the cats and the house while I was gone, to call him when I got near Williamsburg. I think “odd, but ok” and call him when I’m about 15 minutes away and he tells me that three things have gone wrong with the house while I was away, the light in the master bath won’t turn on (suspected a loose wire in the switch), the air conditioning on the 2nd and 3rd floors isn’t working (and it was crazy hot when we got back, ick), and to top it off the master bath toilet sprung a leak which caused water damage to the ceiling downstairs (he had to drill holes in the ceiling and drained about a gallon of water out), a lovely set of problems to come back to 😛

As of this morning the AC has been fixed (was low on coolant, according to the repairman it is a common problem in this neighborhood, the builders never fully charged the AC units to begin with) and the plumbing and electrical issues are tentatively scheduled to be fixed, with friends-as-contractors, this weekend, so hopefully things should all be in working order next week.

Well, today was the day of over 1000 stairs. We had breakfast at the hotel (i love that their “instant” coffee machine uses real milk and makes tastier lattes than i can get in the states), then started by hitting the highlights at the Louvre for a few hours, Venus di Milo, Mona Lisa, and found a few “new” paintings I really liked as well (just have to match my photos with stuff online to figure out what they are).
After the Louvre the cloudy sky had started to break up and we had a nice walk by the Siene to a little neighborhood market area where we had lunch (a quarter roast chicken with rattatouille), then headed to Mr. Eiffel’s tower. They charge you almost twice as much if you take the elevator rather than the stairs and we figured it would be more of an experience if we took the stairs so off we went. Two sets of 350 stairs later we were at the second level of the tower which afforded some great views of the city. We walked around and took lots of pictures, took a look at the half hour plus wait (plus an extra four euro fee) and decided to opt out of the cramped elevator ride to the very top.
We headed back down the tower in the hope of making it to Napolean’s tomb before it closed, we were two minutes too late, oh well, we still had the Orangerie museum that was open late on Fridays according to both the time guide we got with our museum pass and Rick Steves. Wrong. We got up to the museum at 1815 and they had closed at 1800, the times we had were wrong (I checked their website and it did have the right closing time, note to self, check all museum times online before relying on them). So unfortunately didn’t get to see the Monet paintings, guess that just means I have to come back 😉
Instead we went to the Arc de Triumph and climbed another 250+ stairs to the top for yet another grand view of the city. It is amazing to see the twelve boulevards radiating out from that point and to see all the different areas of the city, from tree lined streets to skyscrapers downtown.
We consulted the guidebook for a place to eat nearby and found one that was apparently very good for lunch and was only a few blocks away so we headed there. As we walked up we could see it was really busy, a good sign. We got a table inside then waited (and waited) for someone to come take our order. When the server finally came she asked if we had reserved the table, we said no, and she very bluntly told us we would have to leave the table at 2030 because our table was reserved then (why they sat us there in the first place then I don’t know). We ordered and were very quickly served our food, I had cote du bouf et frittes (steak with fries) which had a very tasty sauce with it. As we were eating they changed up the lights and started playing American pop and old rock music, there were a lot of twentysomethings in there and it became evident this was a pretty hip and trendy place in the evenings, we didn’t really fit in very well in that scenr so we were glad to get out of there quickly before our uncoolness was noticed too much.
We took the metro back over to the Eiffel tower to watch the hourly evening light show (gorgeous, the tower is lit in blue with white sparkling lights all over) before heading back to the hotel. Random (if not slightly icky) tidbit, I got to see a bunch of French cockroaches and three little mice scurrying around an electrical cabinet in the station while sitting waiting for the train, lovely 😛 On the way back it seemed like all the escalators in the metro stations were broken so theres where we got our last few dozen stairs to complete the day.
Tomorrow, Versailles.

So we ended up sleeping in until 1000 this morning, guess all the walking tired us out more than we thought. After a quick breakfast at our hotel we decided to go to the Boboli gardens for the day since many of the smaller museums that we had looked at going to are closed on Wednesdays.
Made it to the gardens around noon and spent most of the day wandering around the massive grounds. The garden was the backyard of the Pitti palace, a former home of the powerful Medici family. It’s built into the hillside along the Arno river so there are many different terraced levels with statues and fountains and a nice view of the city across the river.
We decided to break for a late lunch around 1430 and found a little pizzaria nearby where we watched them make the pizzas fresh, from rolling out the dough to putting on the toppings (I had mushrooms, jeremy had proscuitto), to baking them in the wood-fire oven. They were excellent, and a bit messy since I asked them not to slice it (I was too hungry to wait for the cheese to cool so a lot of it kept sliding off the crust), but that’s the fun part right? 😉
We reentered the gardens and took our time wandering around the other two-thirds of the garden, frequently chilling on a bench in the shade (it was probably in the high 80s today, humidity was low but still hot in the sun). There were two full scale reconstructions of Pompeii gardens in two of the side terraces, which were cool to see since I had seen similar locations in real life when I visited there.
We headed back to the hotel to pick up our bags around 1800 and lugged things to the train station about a 25 minute walk away. Now its about 1930 and we’re waiting in the station for our overnight train to Paris that should leave around 2045.
(2030)
We’ve migrated to the station platform now, according to the board our train will be 25 minutes late but it’s cooler out here than in the station so we’re trading seats for cooler temperatures. While in the station an American guy struck up a conversation with us. He is from Fredericksburg (Va) and had just gotten out of the Army and was on a month backpacking tour of Europe before applying to PhD programs in political science for next semester. Was interesting hearing how excited he was about politics and everything going on in the world. He wants to teach at a small liberal arts college when he’s finished with his degree, I wish him the best if luck.
And the train waiting continues…