Category: Daily Life

Wow, I feel like a complete slacker for blowing off two days of blogging just weeks before I leave for BlogHer.  I don’t really even have an excuse other than extreme morning tiredness.  I think last weekend’s trip caught up to me a little late.

Because I’m sure you don’t want to hear me whine about how craptacular I’ve felt over the past two days, let’s talk about BlogHer some more.  I’ve finally gotten around to making my airline reservations, and my friend Cagey is going with me.  When I first registered for the conference, I don’t think there were any corporate sponsors, but it’s grown significantly since then.  I’m really excited about having a whole day to talk about blogging with people I’ve never met but whose blogs I read all the time.

I plan to confine myself mainly to the business-oriented sessions, but there are enough social-time cushions built into the program that I’m sure I’ll have the chance to just chat with people.  Cagey and I are still determined to visit the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose either Friday or Sunday.

If you’re interested in seeing who else is headed to BlogHer, here’s a Bloglines webfeed of everyone’s blogs.

I promise this signals a return to my regularly-scheduled blogging routine.

I’m back from the Big Easy, none the worse for wear.  Eleven of us (all women) traveled together on Thursday and returned yesterday.  Hurricane Dennis loomed throughout the trip, but all we experienced of it was a couple of minor rainstorms and some wind.

We stayed at the Hotel Villa Convento in the French Quarter.  Two other people and I shared a third-floor room that had king-sized bed on the main level and a loft with two twin beds accessible via a rather alarming spiral staircase.  Fortunately none of us ended up falling up or down the stairs. 

We spent a lot of time in the hotel’s courtyard chatting and waiting for members of our party to gather so we could go out.  The food we had throughout the trip was very good, particularly the Gumbo Shop where we had my birthday dinner on Thursday night, and the French Market Restaurant and Bar where we had breakfast before we left on Sunday.

Another standout restaurant was the Praline Connection, which had excellent food and service.

Because we had such a large group, we stayed away from "tourist-y" activities for the most part, preferring to wander and shop.  I did insist on dragging one of my roommates to Cafe du Monde for beignets yesterday morning, though.

After the first evening on Bourbon Street, we’d had enough of the "spring
break" atmosphere and we spent the subsequent evenings at Frenchmen
Street clubs.  On Saturday night we went to a club called the Blue Nile
and saw an awesome band fronted by trumpet player Maurice Brown.  I bought his CD as my husband’s souvenir.

The most interesting thing we did in New Orleans was attend the funeral parade for Mardi Gras "Indian" Chief of Chiefs Allison "Tootie" Montana on Saturday afternoon.  Several local people encouraged us to go, saying it would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. 

We walked to the church in the late morning and watched as dozens of people in elaborate feathered and beaded garb gathered for the procession, chanting and beating drums and tambourines.  Jazz musicians with tubas, Souzaphones, cornets, trumpets and other instruments clustered in groups throughout the crowd, warming up lightly as they waited.  It was extremely hot that day, so I can only imagine how the people in the feathered suits must have felt.

As we stood in the crowd, everyone we met was very friendly, and we ended up running into our waiter from the Praline Connection and meeting quite a few of his relatives.  We’d been advised not to follow the parade, so once the casket was loaded into the horse-drawn hearse and the parade began winding its way  through the nearby neighborhoods, we made our way back to our hotel.

Although I’d like to return sometime and do some of the tours and other more traditional tourist activities, I had a wonderful time on my first trip to New Orleans.  Now where should I go for my birthday next year?

Pros:

• Did I mention it was my birthday?
• Tickets to New Orleans on my favorite airline and hotel reservations in the French Quarter
• I found a great dress, a skirt and two tops on yesterday’s shopping trip

Cons:

• There’s the whole getting older thing, but since it’s better than the alternative, I don’t really mind.
• Hurricane Dennis
• Never did find any shoes, but I can make do with ones I already have.

I’m skipping tomorrow’s post one way or another (well, unless the National Weather Service decides we aren’t going to New Orleans).  Have a lovely weekend!

Since I’m trying to compress a week’s worth of work into two-and-a-half days, I’m rushing to get as much stuff finished as possible.  Yesterday I was three-quarters of the way through a project that I really needed to complete, but it was almost 4:30 p.m. and I was getting rather burned out.  I decided to mix up an energy drink and even at the time I quipped to someone, "I’ll be up ’til midnight."

Ha!  If only!  As it turned out, I left work around 6:40, worked at my dad’s office until 8 or so, and then worked at home until midnight (pausing briefly to go to Subway for a quick dinner).  I didn’t manage to wind down and go to sleep until almost 1:30 a.m.  That’s the last time I have an energy drink after noon.

On the plus side, if I get to work early today and don’t dilly-dally at lunch, I should have time to run some errands after I leave the office, catch my club’s board meeting at 6:00, and get home in plenty of time to pack for New Orleans.  I’d considered trying to make time for a pre-trip pedicure, but then I remembered how sore my feet were in Las Vegas last December, and I decided that the calluses might come in handy.

I’m still holding out hope that I might be able to find a cute cotton dress or two for the trip.  I may give Kohl’s a try.  My traveling companions suggested that I might want to purchase some airline-sized bottles of liquor to take on the plane, but I suspect that nothing good would come of that.   As tired as I’ll probably be when we leave tomorrow, I think I’ll be better off if I have a Red Bull on the plane and save the other drinks for later.

Tomorrow:  It’s my birthday and I’m leaving for New Orleans!  What could be better?

I’m afraid I have absolutely nothing to talk about this morning.  These two-and-a-half days of work are likely to be frighteningly busy.  My brain is stuffed with product description copy that needs to be typed up before I forget it.  I have a million and one things to do before I leave town.

I won’t leave you with nothing, though.  Here are a few entertaining things I can share:

• I think this sign is a must-have for my living situation.
• Here’s an interesting blog written by a bouncer at a New York City nightclub.  Not completely worksafe – you may want to save this for home reading.
• I’ve been enjoying the Bottom Feeder blog lately.  It’s an oft-updated collection of packaged food and recipe reviews.
• I wouldn’t have thought this would be my kind of thing, but I also like Jack & Hill: A Beauty Blog.  Jackie’s review of Bumble & Bumble Surf Spray convinced me to splurge on a bottle and I love it!  It’ll be the perfect New Orleans hair care product.

Okay, that’ll have to hold you for today.  I’ll still take your New Orleans suggestions!

Aside from a party last night and another one coming up this afternoon, I’ve had a gloriously unstructured schedule since I left work on Friday.

Minor highlights:

• I’m almost finished with all the laundry (just in time for next week’s New Orleans trip).
• I made the Jell-o/Cream Cheese/Pretzel dessert again and took it to my sister’s house for a party that ended up taking place in their garage, once the severe thunderstorms rolled in.
• Since my husband couldn’t go to last night’s party (he was dealing with catastrophic computer problems in his studio), I marinated and grilled strip steaks and served them with steamed asparagus and baked potatoes before I left.
• Somehow I’ve managed to keep the kitchen clean, although I’m about to make peach cobbler for today’s party.
• Two shopping trips in search of cute, lightweight cotton dresses for my trip were fruitless.  There’s a trend toward snug-fitting bodices with a zipper under the arm.  First of all, that seems like an unnecessary threat to one’s tender underarm flesh.  Second, I can’t help imagining coming in after a night on the town in such a dress and having significant difficulty with the tiny zipper tab.
• I finally managed to hang up my hammock, although the rope is so stretchy that I have to pull it as taut as it will go to keep from scraping the ground.  Still, it was such a gigantic hassle getting the thing up, I’m happy to have made it that far at all.

See?  Lots of weekend nothing.  It’s been great!

Yesterday seemed like Friday to me all day long.  I’m planning to get to the office this morning as early as possible so my three-day weekend will start that much sooner.  Here are a few things I’ve been thinking about to wrap up the week:

• Lip-Sticking blog has an interview with me that came out yesterday.  It’s only ten questions, but since I’m the one answering them, obviously the article is rather long.
• I’m counting down to my trip to New Orleans next Thursday through Sunday.  I’m going with eleven other women, so it should be quite the experience.  If you know of anywhere in N.O. that I simply must go, see, eat, etc., let me know!  I’m especially interested in restaurants that do *not* serve crawfish and other seafood, in keeping with my personal "no bottom feeders and nothing with an exoskeleton" culinary rule.
• I lucked out with my recently planted impatiens in that it rained all day long yesterday.  They might have a fighting chance after all.

Okay, off to shower and head to work.  Have a delightful weekend!

A friend of mine is borrowing my roto-tiller over the weekend, which spurred me into an energetic gardening session last night after work.  I bought a flat of impatiens about, oh, two months ago and they’ve been languishing on my front stoop ever since.  Every few days I’d bring them back from the brink of death with some water, but I could never seem to get around to planting them.

It rained yesterday morning, but it was still so hot outside as I weeded, tilled and planted that my oversized t-shirt was sopping wet by the time I got all the impatiens into the ground and watered them.  The flowers look cute in their little rows and I’m sure they’d grow into lovely, bushy plants if this were April, but under the circumstances I’ll probably be lucky to just keep them from shriveling away.

Tonight I’m hosting a "bring your own grillable entree" get-together with friends.  I find that’s the perfect approach to barbecueing when I can’t keep track of who eats meat and who’s a vegetarian.  I spent the rest of last evening preparing for tonight’s dinner by making pasta salad with vegetables and Balsamic vinaigrette, potato salad, and a strawberry Jell-o dessert with a cream cheese layer and a sweet pretzel crust.  I forgot to buy charcoal, but I can pick some up on the way home.

Tonight I’ll need to get home as early as possible, try to bring the level of housekeeping up a notch or two, and drag out every lawn chair I can find.  Aren’t summer parties fun?!

I jammed so many activites into last weekend that I’m having a difficult time deciding where to start.  I suppose I can begin with my weekend souvenir:  the first chigger bites of the season.  I hope Caladryl cuts the itching a little because I don’t think I can function at work with a bloodstream full of Benadryl.

Let’s go back before the chigger bites to Saturday afternoon.  I auditioned for a band that I had found on an online message board and briefly met the previous Wednesday. (I think I needed to pass the "no fat chicks" test before they cared what I sounded like.)  So anyway, I brought my own mic, mic stand, music stand and the lyrics to the songs they’d specified and spent the afternoon singing heavy metal songs from my youth.

This band has a lot of original material, too, but no lyrics or even names for the songs.  How convenient that I’m a writer!  I don’t have a lot of spare time, but I think I can come up with a song’s worth of lyrics per week if I’m disciplined about it.  It should be fun.  The band guys are younger than I am, but not by so much that it seems weird.

On Saturday evening I went to the roller derby with a group of friends and had a great time as usual.  After that, we all went to a party not far from my neighborhood and that’s where the chigger bites come in.  I thought I’d sprayed bug repellant everywhere, but apparently "everywhere" did not include the middle of my lower spine and a couple of other places I’ll politely decline to specify.  I didn’t get home until almost 2:00 a.m., which is astoundingly late for me. 

On Sunday I decided to assemble my early birthday present from my husband:  a hammock stand.  I have a hammock that I bought with some birthday money last year (the year before?), but had never put up because we don’t have two trees close enough together.   The stand went together easily and I took the hammock out of its box and prepared to hang it on the stand, only to discover that I still need rope or chain to put it up.  Grrr.  I guess I’ll take some extra clothesline and work on it later.

Inside the hammock box was a blue, fabric bag with a sticker on it that read, "Turn storage bag right side out before using."  I couldn’t help wondering if someone had really calculated the economy of printing those labels and having someone stick them on every bag versus just having the same person quickly turn each bag right side out before shipment.

My husband had an out of town drumming gig on Friday and Saturday night and drove through the night to get home early Sunday morning.  When he finally woke up, we skipped right past breakfast, had a 2:00 p.m. lunch and saw Mr. and Mrs. Smith at a nearby movie theater.  The rest of the day went by fairly quickly, then my husband headed off for a recording session not long before I turned in for the night.

Next weekend I’m back to having nothing planned, and three days in which to make that nothing happen!  I’m taking suggestions…

Toby at Diva Marketing brought my attention to the Wedding Gown Challenge that will be held on August 5th in New York.  The idea is for women to demonstrate their commitment to lifelong fitness by taking to the streets in their wedding gowns, proving that they still wear the same size as when they were brides.

I don’t know about the rest of you married gals, but I vividly remember the deep seam grooves that my wedding dress left all over my upper body the day I got married.  Admittedly the wedding was in Las Vegas, a place that makes me retain water like a dish sponge, but still… 

Do you think there’s any chance you’ll ever fit into your wedding garb again?  I don’t.  I wouldn’t say I’m all that overweight, but even when I’ve been working out regularly and keeping the Starbucks iced mochas to a bare minimum, I’m still a different shape in my 30s than I was in my 20s.  (And, seriously, I don’t eat as much ice cream as I made it sound in yesterday’s post.) 

The Wedding Gown Challenge sounds like a worthy goal, but I’m not sure it’s one I could reasonably achieve.  How about you?