28 is starting great

Today is my 28th birthday!  My birthday is one of my favorite days of the year because I always try to do my favorite things and don't feel bad not doing anything else.  :)  Today was no exception.  I started the day off right by sleeping late and having a leisurely breakfast.  I woke up to several texts, voice mails and facebook messages that made me smile right off.

After laying around for a bit, I took a shower and headed out to get a pedicure.

Bright pink.  Love it. And I got to wear flip flops all day because it was so warm!

(The rental tells me the temp outside.  Handy.)

The guy that did my pedicure was really nice and chatty.  He was kinda cute actually.  Maybe I should have paid better attention to his questions?  Hm.  He was quite interested in Demolition Ball and how I got the bruise on my leg (the small one by my ankle not the massive one.)

From my pedicure I headed straight to my massage.  

It was lovely.  Since I took too long getting ready earlier I didn't have time for lunch between my pedi and massage as planned so I was pretty hungry by this point.  Luckily I had an ice cream date with Sam and Max.

So I didn't feel bad getting the medium size instead of the small.  It was delicious.  We wanted to keep hanging out so we headed over to the park to play for awhiile. 

That is a look of pure glee (hard to see in the bright SUN!)  I ran home to feed my cats then headed for my sister's house for dinner.  She made chicken alfredo and it was really really good. 

Devin helped.

 She says it's better than Olive Garden and she might be right.  And it has WAY less calories which makes it even better.  She also got me flowers and a gift card.  

And Mom brought an ice cream cake.  (She got me Cards tickets for my present - we're going to several games this summer!)

Yum.  After dinner Kristen and I hung out a bit and had some more wine and Devin read me a book.  

Pretty damn good day in my book!  

Happy birthday to me!

~E

Ha! I did that today!

Yesterday and today I went to workout classes at Club Fitness.  Melinda is kicking my butt in a good way.  Yesterday was Drills to Make You Sweat, where you basically alternate cardio for 3-4 minutes then weights for 3-4 minutes.  Truth in advertising, you definitely sweat and just when you think you can't keep doing this you switch muscle groups.  It's good.  Today was Turbo Kick.  It's kick boxing meets drills meets dancing around.  It's kinda fun.  Kinda.

When I got home from class I was watching the Biggest Loser and I'm watching Bob yell "Cross! Uppercut! Kick!" and I'm thinking... I did a workout JUST LIKE THAT today!  Go us!  

That's all.

Demolition Ball

I am surrounded by chairs that do not belong in my living room and there are dishes with remnants of cake in my sink and a buffet of drink options on my counter and I couldn't be more pleased.  Oh, and I definitely have some bruises.  It was a great party.

For my birthday this year (which is Wednesday by the way) I decided I wanted to do something a little different and decided we should all go play Demolition Ball.  The place is about a mile from my house (convenient!) and I thought it would be a fun evening.  I was correct.  Basically, you are in bumper cars with a plastic scoop trying to get a wiffle ball in a net (or at least hit the square.)

Be aware if you ever go to play that you will get bruises and that a sports bra might be a good decision.

The place also had food and a bar, so before we played we hung out for a bit and had some drinks.  

This one was called a "snow day."  Thank you Sam for recommending it!

I loved hanging out with everyone.  I'm a lucky girl to have such great friends!

After the game we headed back to my house.  Cyndi made me a delicious mocha cake and Aimee made homemade ice cream.  Sooo good.

Of course there were drinks too.

So we hung out for awhile. 

Then it was late and we are old and tired.  

So everyone headed home from my most fabulous birthday party.  

Thanks for making my birthday party awesome!!  

~E

Poor Car

This morning, on my way to work, this happened:

Some guy in the "u" of townhouses next to mine was completely NOT paying attention this morning and pulled out of his parking lot right into me.  Yeah, this happened on my street not 30 yards from my house.  When I got out to look at the damage I wanted to just turn around and walk home and go back to bed.  Instead, I called the police, filed a report, got my car towed to a body shop, got a rental car and finally made it into work about 10am.  Luckily since it's not my fault insurance will cover everything, but it was still a pain in the ass.  I've been on the phone with insurance companies all day but I think everything is worked out.  Of course, my car was full of all the stuff from last night's Bike event so one of my coworkers had to drive up with me later to get everything out of it.  Enterprise gave me a Chevy Cobalt to drive, and while it's fine for the most part no way was all that crap going to fit in it.  Those cars are small.  So Randy and I took a trip to the body shop to get stuff.  

Ah, good times.  

~E

Phil

Work has been kinda crazy this week - there's a lot going on with Walk and the whole staff had to stay late one night to make calls to past participants.  In addition to that, Wednesday night we had 2 things going on for 2 of our other events (Corporate Achievers and Bike) so all of our staff had to work late again.  Last night I ended up at the Bike event.  It did have it's perks though.

You know how I LOVE The Amazing Race?  Guess who I met.  Phil Keoghan!  

In 2009, he did a bike ride across the country raising money and awareness for MS and participated in several Bike MS rides.  While he was doing it, he made a movie - The Ride.  St. Louis was one of the premier locations and he was there for it and we hung out.  He's awesome, by the way.  I got an autograph too!  

Gary and Mallory stopped by too.  Gary has an office in STL so he and Mallory came to the premier.  (They're a past Race team.)  I am pleased to say that they are just as sweet in person as they appear on TV.  

Sometimes there are perks to working for NMSS I guess.  :)

~E

Zumba and Super Bowl

After I dug my way out of the snow last week it was time for some socialization.  :)  Thursday night was trivia, and we came in 2nd which was cool.  I got there kinda early and hung out with Andy for awhile just the two of us while we waited for other people to show.  It was cool to talk and hang out with him.  Good call marrying that one, Aims =).  

Friday night I went to zumba with Nellie and Cyndi then to dinner at IHOP.  Cyndi has become an excellent workout buddy for classes and such and I think when Nellie joins us at Club Fitness she will be too.  Yay!  (Aimee, you have to come back!)  In fact, this past Tuesday we tried a Turbo Kick class.  It was good but I think I still like our Monday class (Drills to Make You Sweat) better.  But maybe I'll go to both sometimes?  The same lady teaches both classes and I like her style.  We'll see.  Also on the health front I picked up some of those FiberOne bars at the store the other day.  They're pretty tasty and while I'm pretty 'regular' anyway, I've noticed a difference.  TMI?  Sorry about that.  

Saturday was our Walk kickoff at Rams park.  It snowed that morning (of course) but we still had a pretty good turnout.  And afterwards we took a tour and I considered hiding out here:

But they caught me and said I had to leave.  Oh well.  There were no players there that day anyway.  Sunday was Super Bowl and Storm hosted a party at his house.  We had excellent food (someone made chilli cheese dip that I couldn't stop eating and there were little smokies wrapped in bacon among other goodies) and great company.  I enjoyed hanging out with that group since I hadn't seen some of them in quite awhile.  Good times.  

~E

Snowpocalypse

Snowpocaplyse was really more like sleet/icepocalypse at my house.  I ended up with about 5 inches of sleet/ice/snow.  I've gotten 2 snow days out of the deal and an early dismissal (that's a lot for us!) so it's been a pretty easy work week.  I went to dig out my car earlier today and was surprised that when I stepped out onto the snow I didn't really sink - the ice/sleet/snow mixture was THAT thick.  There are some massive piles of snow that were shoveled to the side after the last snow storm that hadn't melted yet and I could walk right over them without sinking into them at all.  It was kind of weird but made cleaning off the car a lot more pleasant because I wasn't up to mid-calf in snow.  I don't think I could have gotten out of my parking spot because of it though. Guess we'll see in the morning!

I would also like to take a moment to thank Ford for making cars with excellent defrosters.  I have not had to scrape the windows AT ALL over the last 3 days.  I did have to chisel my windshield wipers free since the sleet had all piled up right there but other than that the defrost took care of it and quickly too.  I was impressed.  See how clear my windshield is?  All defrost.  

Hopefully the roads are clear by morning and I won't have any trouble getting to work.  We'll see!

~E

Pay It Forward 2011

So awhile back on Facebook there was this thing going around where people posted in their statuses that they would make you a homemade gift some time in 2011 for the first 5 people to comment.  Catch is, if you comment you had to re-post.  So I did it.  If I'm going to spend a weekend inside doing craft projects I would rather do it when the weather is cold and crappy, so last weekend worked perfectly.  I spent Friday night cutting out fabric and Sunday sewing.  I had 3  people comment on my offer, so I made two aprons and a blanket.  I don't have a picture of the blanket yet (and don't want to post one because it hasn't been delivered) but it's one of those tie fleece ones and was pretty easy though tedious.  I'm pretty pleased with how the aprons turned out for Anna and Nellie though!  

Anna's with the pengins

Nellie's with the ninjas

I accidentally cut the fabric with the ninjas upside down, but now they're right side up for her when she wears it, right?  Luckily no one else seemed to really notice this but me so I guess it's fine.  I love the print anyway!  I watched these videos to learn how to make the aprons and it went pretty well.  Thanks Aimee for helping me and letting me use your sewing machine!  Who knew I could sew?

Saturday morning I helped Cyndi sand her kitchen (they are re-modeling and took out a wall and and had to re-drywall so a few layers of mud and sanding were involved.)  It was a good upper body workout and I was happy to help a friend.  She also offered to come help me paint in my house soon which is a nice bonus.  Funny moment:  when we were done and completely covered with dust, I commented that we looked like old ladies (our hair was completely white with dust.)  Cyndi said well at least we stayed friends into our old age.  Aww.  :)  

Saturday night was our friend Jen Lui's birthday party so we headed out to Cyrano's for desserts.  Unfortunately Cyrano's took FOREVER to get us a table despite the fact that we had a reservation.  Oh well.  Lui seemed happy and the desserts were yummy so alls well that ends well I guess.  

~E