Week 4: Say Yes to the Dress!

This week was fairly uneventful. No really exciting plans: work, gym, tv, repeat. However, this weekend….fabulous.

The weekend started out right, happy hour at a fun bar with a fun friend, seriously a great way to cap off a week of uneventfulness. Happy hour kind of eases you into the weekend, you start early, you end early, and you wake up on saturday fresh and ready to go. Which is good since i had to be up bright and early to head to NYC with my mom for: The Big Clean Out.

My mom, sisters and I spent the whole day cleaning out my sisters apt to make room for her fiance’s stuff. One entertaining trip back through “fashions of the 80’s”, one battle waged against the “Closet of Mystery”, 12 bags to goodwill and 14 boxes in the car later, we were done. We emerged victorious. We had accomplished the impossible: we made room in a NYC apartment! So, as a reward, my sisters fiance took us to a Chinese New Years party (year of the rabbit!) and out for a delicious Japanese dinner (cooking on a hot rock!). And yet, this was not the highlight of the weekend. Because on Sunday, we…..

Said Yes to the Dress! We trooped over to Kleinfelds and settled ourselves in a lil room to watch my sister try on the most gorgeous wedding gowns ever. We ooo’d, and ahhh’d, and ooooh’d. It was fabulous. It came down to 2 beautiful dresses (what a great problem to have), my sister buckled down and made her decision, and a mere hour and a half later we were meeting the fiance for lunch. It was so easy and drama free and exciting and successful! I want to shop for wedding dresses every day. Seriously, is that a job anywhere? AND we got to see all our favorite “stars” from TLC’s “Say Yes to the Dress”. What up Randy!

It was literally a weekend where everything went right. Which never happens! We had two things to accomplish, we knocked them both out of the park and even had 2 delicious breakfasts and dinners to boot. It almost inspires me to clean out my own house……almost.

Week 3: How to throw a fabulous pampered chef party

Step 1: Invite interesting people

Step 2: Have lots of wine

Step 3: Have fun snacks

Step 4: Repeat step 2.

I tend to hate “fill in the blank parties”.  You know the ones ladies: Lia Sophia, Silpada, Avon, Mary Kay, Pampered Chef, etc. etc. etc.  They are everywhere.  You can’t escape them.  Every friend you have knows someone who knows someone who does this.  Nor can i go and not buy something, not because i feel obligated (a pesky problem with these parties) but because i love to shop.  Put me in a room with marketable items and i will scoff at how much i dislike these parties and yet i will still get sucked in EVERY TIME. 

So clearly the next step in this vicious cycle is to throw my own party.  If you can’t beat them, join them type of logic.  Then instead of shopping, i get free stuff (sort of) and most of all control.  The trick, i find, is to have an interesting mix of people.  Make sure everyone knows at least one other person, but no one knows everyone.  Have good snacks, good wine, and keep the “presenting” to a minimum.  And lo and behold, it worked.  We had a great time.  I actually think everyone that came had a great time! (unless they were faking it, which bravo, cause it looked real).  Plus i got to bring fancy leftovers for lunch today, and who doesn’t love that?

After the success of this party, i might try an Oscar Night Party next.  Fancy dresses, Fancy cocktails, Fancy snacks.  Oh yeah.

Week 2: Happy Hour Yoga

don’t get too excited, happy hour yoga refers to the time slot, not to martinis.  (i know i was little disappointed too…)  anyway, on to week 2!

so after the carjacking ninja looter hit there was a bit of stress and a lot of anger.  a tiny part of me hoped the guy would dare to break into my house just so i could beat the crap out him with my hockey stick and practice my hog tying skills.  luckily (i suppose) this did not occur and i simply spent the week vacillating between anger and unease. 

after a week of this i pretty much gave up the hope of recovering anything or of recieving any sort of closure by the police catching the guy.  so i decided to de-stress and de-anger.  thus enters “happy hour yoga”. what better way to reclaim my peaceful balance?  (sidenote: i decided something must be done about my carjacking ninja looter anger when i had to, quite seriously, talk myself out of punching the dmv guy in the head.) (although he would have deserved it).

so i gather my yoga mat that my sister bought me years ago, don a cute little yoga outfit (few things make me more confident than an appropriate, adorable outfit) and head into the room with the other yogis on a friday afternoon.  it was a good class.  not as instructive as i hoped, and the guy behind me was much more flexible than me which i disliked, but it served its purpose.  it’s hard to be angry and stressed when balancing on one leg while attempting to pull the other leg above your head behind you. 

there were no end of class martinis, but i still left pretty happy.  the class served a dual purpose that day.  1: it helped me get out of my funk and 2: it helped me break out of my gym rut of cardio and machines. so purpose served.

added bonus fun: go see the green hornet, it was hilarious and gadjet-tastic!

Week 1: Carjacked by a ninja looter

i find that about once a year something truly ridiculous happens to me.  the kind of thing that makes me have to tell people twice and then elaborate because they think i’m joking at first.  last year: i hit a bear.  i mean really, who hits a bear? i do.  this year: i got carjacked by a ninja looter.  sort of.

so onto the story.

saturday i headed to the farm show with my mom and her two friends.  my mom was driving, i was shotgun and the other two were in the backseat.  as you do before road trips, we stopped at dunkin in dallas to grab a coffee.  unbeknownst to us there was a ninja looter watching as we parked and my mom and i got out to run inside.

apparently he was watching the car and saw my purse on the floor of the passenger seat and decided he really wanted my pretty pink coach for himself.  so he walked over and in literally 5 seconds (according to our eyewitnesses in the backseat) opened the door, grabbed the purse, closed the door, launched himself through the sliding door of his red van, hopped in the front seat and sped off. 

by the time mom and i emerged from dunkin (all of 2 minutes from when we went in) the two women were out of the car and rattling off the license plate number to the cops on the phone.  dallas pd came, very nice and helpful, took the statements, and the video from the nearby verizon store and set about to find the guy.

sadly, the plates were stolen, the car has not yet been found, and most likely my pretty purse with my entire life inside is laying dejectedly in a snowbank or dumpster.  sans cash of course.  so in 10 seconds i lost my wallet, keys, phone, camera, and the other 42 things in my purse.  but i did have a lovely time cancelling all my cards, changing my locks, switching my car, and thinking about how very much the ninja looter now knows about me.

lessons learned: lock your car even if there are people in there, carry less stuff in your purse, and ALWAYS be nice to your neighbors because they are the ones that will take their truck and park it in your driveway so it looks like a big badass guy lives there. 

oh and for fun stuff this week (as if being carjacked is not fun enough) went to a hockey game with some fabulous friends and had a great time.  although it seems that fights are no longer allowed on the ice?  every time there was almost a fight the refs broke it up really fast.  stupid refs.  oh and i even took pics to post on here.  stupid ninja looter.

The Potential of January

Besides snow, ice and freezing cold of course.  Ahhh, the first month of resolutions, isn’t it so shiny and clean?  So January seems chock full of potential plans.  In order to stay focused (and off my warm cozy couch) i thought i would jot down some preliminary plans.  Things i want to do/have plans to do:

1. Go to a hockey game (already planned for friday, checkity check!)

2. Go to the Casino

3. Weekend cleanout/ bridal dress shopping in NYC with my sister

4. Pampered Chef party

5. Yoga classes at the gym

6. Go Skiing (Prep for skication 2011)

So we have 6 potential things that are new/different.  All i need to do is one per week.  Totally do-able.  In fact, i may even do more than one.  Start off with a bang!  And yes i will most likely write every blog without capitalizing “i”.  Deal with it.

How this blog will work: i think every month i will start off with a monthly overview, then write a post per week.  At least this is my plan…