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RENO / TAHOE PICS

Here’s a few choice pictures from my and Abby’s recent (well, two months ago now) trip to Reno with a stop at Tahoe.

IMG_0217-002 IMG_0221-002 DSC04633 DSC04616 IMG_0236-002I had forgotten how pretty Tahoe is. I hadn’t been there since a friend got married there in 2001.

I just remembered – at one point on the evening we went out to dinner with our dad at the Basque restaurant, we were all driving along to go to the Silver Legacy when a skateboarder latched on to the back of the car and helped himself to a ride. It was a little crazy!

First two pics courtesy of my sister. 🙂

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Trying Hard / Hardly Trying

UGH SUMMER. Sometimes I wonder to myself how I lived in Texas for five years which was pretty much ALL SUMMER ALL THE TIME, aka my least favorite season, of all time.

Normally in California the weather is pretty mild and doesn’t get too cold in the winter or too hot in the summer. ALAS we occasionally get some unpleasant heat and last week it got really hot here (six straight days of 105-110 degrees… in the shade) and even with central air I find that the heat really takes it out of me. I sleep a lot better when it’s cold – when the house is in the sixties or lower, and anything over 74 or so I find exhausting. So I haven’t been sleeping very well. UGH SUMMER.

I took some time off over my birthday last week and was really busy so I still didn’t sleep very well. Luckily the uber hot weather broke on my birthday and when I left the house to go to the bakery for birthday cinnamon rolls, it was 60 glorious degrees! So this weekend was nice and we’re back in better weather – hot in the lower 90s during the day and in the upper 50s at night. Hopefully I’ll start to sleep better soon.

Anyway, my birthday was really fun this year! Last year was awesome too (my Texas trip) but I haven’t really done anything for my birthday back home in CA for a couple of years aside from making my parents take me out to dinner or whatever. This year I did the family birthday thing on the 4th, then this year had friends over on my actual birthday (the 5th) for cheeseball, cinnamon bread, and, as it turns out, Cards Against Humanity (love that game! …Don’t play it with your parents.) We all went out for tapas at Havana, home of delicious Cuban food, where my favorite crab cakes live.

Here’s some birthday nail polishes I got. Abby got me the Deborah Lippmanns. (“I never expected to get these!” I said enthusiastically to my sister. “Ummmm, they were on your list,” she replied.) Which means, yes I DO have all the beautiful Lippmann mermaid polishes, muahaha! They are so pretty.

Birthday Nail Polishes

So far I’m not a HUGE fan of textured polishes except for the Nails Inc Leather Effect (I also have the black), so I thought I’d try the Beaded Polish too… and it’s heinous. I mean, it’s horrifying, borderline gross. AND yet! I kind of like it a lot, though I think I would more likely use it for accent nails. So I am obviously not a reliable source on consistent opinions re: textured polish. I’ve tried a number of different brands and apparently what I like is barely textured, like the Leather Effects, or way too textured, like the Beaded polishes. The in-between types (like the ones offered by OPI, Zoya, Sally Hansen, etc.) have left me cold.

Here’s a recap of what I’ve been up to lately since I can’t be bothered to update regularly apparently: 

May:  Went to Reno one weekend with the sister. I had food poisoning most of the weekend so that was fun! (The trip didn’t poison me, I suspect *I* poisoned me prior to leaving.) We went to the buffet at the Atlantis and also to the Basque Restaurant downtown, where we randomly met up with our dad who was in town visiting his friend. We stopped in Tahoe on the way home and that was really nice, I hadn’t been there since 2001 or thereabouts. They had warnings not to feed the animals because they might be carrying Bubonic Plague. I shouldn’t laugh but… heh.

We also went to THREE different Super Walmarts in the area and each one was special in its own way. Yes, we went to Reno and went to Super Walmart(s). We went to the Silver Legacy once to gamble and I didn’t have any cash so I borrowed $5 from my dad to play penny slots, promptly won $6.80, gave him back his $5 and pocketed my massive $1.80 winnings.

I also went to the dentist and had a filling (story of my life) but at least it was an easy one and they didn’t have to wedge my tiny mouth open to get to the back like they did last time. I should be good on fillings for at least another year! *crosses fingers*

The office was invited to go to one of the Battle of the Bay games at the Oakland Coliseum  and this was the first time I ever tailgated! One of our vendors had an awesome BBQ and then we got to watch one of the A’s v. Giants games. It got late and cold so we left around the end of the sixth inning but it was a fun game and the A’s wound up winning. I also won an A’s hat from a raffle! I like the A’s better than the Giants but I’m fond of both our hometown teams.

Went up to Sacramento at one point to visit with Malvina and Sam and we saw the new Star Trek and went shopping and had breakfast at a British pub and fun coffee at Chocolate Fish. Oh and we ate at the Krush Burger food truck “real” restaurant.

June: Went to dinner with my mom at the Thai restaurant at Todos Santos while my dad was away in Massachusetts for vacation with his mom and brother. We went to go pick them up in SF and got to check out the nice new Terminal 2.

We had another Nice Ladies Tea at Abby’s house and I tried out a bunch of fancy teas I picked up at David’s Tea in Burlingame. Abby made amazing apricot ginger scones and Devonshire cream.

Went back up to Sacramento for Malvina’s birthday where we gave Chevy’s on the River one last try since last year it was pretty bad. This year it was great! My chicken quesadilla and corn stuff were delicious. Alas no Steve the Snakes made any appearances. We also had a super stupid moment where we managed to buy birthday presents for each other right in front of each other… because jeez they finally had our Urban Decay Space Cowboy eye shadow in stock after months! Hahaha

JULY: Just my birthday and work so far. The office has another baseball game scheduled for later in the month – in a luxury box at the Giants stadium, it sounds really fun. I like baseball and I like luxury boxes, so… win win! I also have a bead day with The Bean coming up so it’s nice that she (about to be a junior in COLLEGE) still likes to spend time with her old(er) cousin. Heh. (Still for REALS, that kid was JUST a baby, right? Like a tiny, fuzz-eating baby).

This weekend I plan on going to see Pacific Rim because monsters, robots, and Idris Elba, hello.

Hobbit update: Still haven’t seen the Hobbit.

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FITNESS FRIDAYS ARE BACK!

Yes you guys, I haven’t posted any Fitness Fridays in ages (years?) but I’m hoping to make this a regular occurrence. I actually have some things to write about!

Starting the first week of March, I’ve begun a workout regimen that I am still continuing and plan to continue from here until whenever. Sometimes it’s frustrating and I don’t want to do it but…

It’s really working. I’ve obviously lost inches (because my pants are fitting too big) and I weighed myself last weekend and am down 5 whole pounds! I know that doesn’t sound very impressive, but I have done all this only with workouts and adding more vegetables to my diet. I’m not on any food program, I’m just trying to eat a more balanced day-to-day diet. I’ve started to do a lot more research on actual nutrition and it’s becoming more and more apparent that I’m doing *everything* wrong.

Though I am proof you can subsist on burritos and spaghetti.

So: what exactly am I doing? I’m working out five days a week and kind of loving it, is what I’m doing. The fact that “workout” and “love” now exist in the same sentence is truly amazing and still surprising to me!

A few months ago, after Christmas, my mom got me a small NordicTrac mini-stepper for half off at Sears. I was like, ok whatever go ahead when she asked if I wanted one, and after I tried it the first time and nearly killed myself it went into the corner until the first week of March when I had to go to the doctor. Knowing I tend to get high blood pressure only while at the doctor I decided to try to exercise the first few days before the appointment to hopefully get the endorphins going or whatever.

stepper

This failed, totally, and I got into a big fight about blood pressure with the nurse practitioner and they not only took my precious birth control away and gave me shitty “mini pills” (which they weren’t even going to give me until I put up a fuss and it turns out a large chunk – the most important chunk – of my medical history hasn’t made it into my electronic records, but that’s a snit for another time) and also, since they apparently thought I was going to stroke out, even sent me up to the blood pressure clinic.

Once I was at the blood pressure clinic, having successfully retained some sort of birth control pill (I take them for health/quality of living reasons) my blood pressure had zoomed back down into the normal range and the nurses up at the BP clinic basically were like, why did they send you up here? Because nobody believes me that I have white coat syndrome, that’s why!

Anyway, so I decided that in order To Show Them (and to get my real pills back), I really had to stay committed to my own health. Revenge! It’s the best motivator.

And since I’ve been having luck and feeling so much better, I’m definitely motivated to keep going. I’m probably boring everybody with all my health/stepper talk, but I don’t care. Six months or a year from now I’m probably going to be seriously badass.

(Yes, I’m partly into this in order to be able to survive the zombie apocalypse). 😉

The Workout: 

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday: stepper and weights, alternately working chest/triceps and back/biceps. Sundays: 3 mile walk at the reservoir plus weights if I remember. [Note: depending on my schedule I will either work out Thursday OR Friday; Saturday is my dedicated “rest” day]