Last night George and I went to see Hitch. It was v funny, I
definitely recommend it. If grumpy George laughs at it, you know
it’s funny. Why was George grumpy (besides the usual level of
grumpiness)? Because we sat in the wrong theater for 15 minutes
with three ladies. Oops! When I went to complain to the manager,
I realized that we were sitting in the theater for the 8:00
show, not the 7:15 show. But they did offer us a refund, which
we did not take them up on. It was, I suppose, technically our
fault for not looking at the signs, but also I blame the
ticket-taker for not pointing us in the right direction. She was
not so bright.

Anyway, we made it to the theater just as the movie was starting
(I hate missing the previews!) and it was v good. Go see
it. I still can’t bring myself to see The Aviator or $1,000,000
Baby (I like to write it that way) because they look so dull, so
we saw Hitch instead.

New gym is awesome. I love it so much. It’s clean, it’s
friendly, and it’s run by a hospital, so it’s safe. I can’t wait
until Tuesday when I get my assessment. Well, I can wait
if they plan to check my body fat with calipers (shudder) but if
they just make me do the electronic kind, that’s okay. Mostly I
can’t wait for them to figure out a weight-training routine for
me. So I can be buff.

Well, this weekend was great. I flew to DC on Friday after work
and my sister and brother-in-law picked me up at the airport. On
Saturday morning, Jenny and I met a bunch of friends – Ren,
Gary, and Alison, Chris, Shelby, Anne and Bill, at a restaurant
called the Carlyle Grand. All unbeknownst to Kristina. She
showed up expecting to see my sister and cousin! Heh heh heh.
She was very shocked to see all of us. Very exciting. Wish I had
photos but I forgot our digital camera and I haven’t gotten
pictures from the people who took them.

That afternoon, Kristina and I watched Bring It On (natch) and
Eurotrip on a very large television. On Saturday night, Kristina
and her boyfriend Mike and Bill and Anne and I went bowling. Tee
hee. We drank cheap chablis (that came from a tap) and bowled.
It was Cosmic Bowling. There were disco lights and bad music.
Excellent.

Sunday was a fancy mall (bought lipstick and eye makeup from
Sephora, very exciting.)

And today I’m wearing a pair of size-12 pants from Banana
Republic. They’re hand-me-downs from Kristina. I think they must
have been mislabeled. It’s the only explanation.

That never got posted. Emailing your posts in is not very
reliable.

Okay, I’ll CONSIDER seeing Million Dollar Baby. Yeesh. And it’s
not the wedding, it’s the lame-o films being nominated. Why
wasn’t Eternal Sunshine nominated? Now that was a great film!
Grumble, grumble. Maybe I’ll go this weekend. *wink*

Went to Rocky’s for pizza for dinner last night. The French
restaurant we were going to go to has closed since my birthday!
Too bad, I was really looking forward to mussells. Ah well. I
always love pizza, so it ended up okay.

George gave me the best Valentine’s day present, too…a card,
flowers, and a big bowl of Smarties! Now if that isn’t love, I
don’t know what is…plus my dentist will be very grateful.

I’m thinking of quitting dance class until August and joining a
gym. They’re running a special now, so I think I might go by
there after work tomorrow and check it out.

********
End of Tuesday post. Now on to Thursday.

I joined a gym yesterday. It’s really nice, very inexpensive,
and close to my house. A ton of treadmills. A really cool
computerized workout tracker thingy where there’s a PIN pad on
every machine (cardio and weight) and you punch in your number
and it tells you how much weight to use, how many repetitions to
do, how many sets, for how long, etc, etc. I won’t get trained
on that until my first assessment on the second of March or
something, so until then I’ll be doing treadmill all the way.
Last night I updated my running mix on my iPod so I’ll have lots
of good, motivating music to listen to.

My mom and I are doing the Race for the Cure in Baton Rouge on
the 26th so I want to see how well I can do for that. She’s
going to walk, I’m going to run. This might be my last
cool-weather run for a while. Then again, it might be hot. And I
know the course is hilly, for me. But I had a good time last
time I did this race (I don’t mean it was fun, I mean I was
fast-ish) so I have high hopes for it.

Fun weekend! Fun weekend! Yesterday I went to visit my dress again with Polly and Regan and Teresa. It was lots of fun. For me, at least. Teresa tried on the bridesmaid dress too and she likes it, so that’s good. I really didn’t want to take the dress off, even though it wasn’t very comfortable, seeing as the sample was 6 sizes too small for me. Still…

The best part is the salesgirl told me this time that it’d take 2-3 months to come in (I was originally told six) which means it could be here in a month or two! I won’t hold my breath, though. It still might take six months. Ahh, now I wish I hadn’t asked. Now I’m going to be desperate for a call from the bridal salon every day, starting a month from now. I might go insane.

Today George and I saw Sideways. It was good. I enjoyed it. I’m not really getting into the whole Oscar race this year. I think I probably enjoyed Finding Neverland best out of all of the Best Picture noms that I even saw. (Okay, didn’t see Million Dollar Baby – snooooze – or The Aviator – Leonardo Dicaprio is repulsive – so I guess I’m not a great judge. And really it was only because Finding Neverland yanked the tears right out of my ducts. (I stole that line from my brother, I think.)

After that, we went to Chocolate Sunday, this thingy at a hotel downtown. Chocolate everywhere. I let George down, though, by only being able to eat a relatively small amount of chocolate. Sad. I am a mere shell of a chocoholic. So sad. Then it was on to our semi-weekly (is that every other week? I can never remember.) visit to Whole Foods so George could stock up on fake meat and pot pies and I could get my beloved cherry bars.

Tomorrow’s Valentine’s Day. Yay! We’re going out to dinner…a first! Woo!

Ew. Bad gain. 2.2 lbs. But I can comfort myself by knowing that had I weighed in yesterday when I was supposed to, it would have been much worse. I’m going to be very good this week and next week’ll be a big loss. Just wait.

Not much else going on here. Polly and I went on a pretty long bike ride yesterday. My bike is too short for me and today my butt is sore. But it was fun.

Oh dear. I wonder if it’s truly possible to gain five pounds in one week. Less than one week. Oof. I’d have thought not, but then I started thinking back…to the past week, starting on Wednesday…oh…the daiquiris, the beer, the king cake, the beer, the oyster poboy, the cheese fries, the beer, the king cake, the croissants, the breakfast casserole, the mac & cheese, the beer, the taco dip, the beer, the king cake, the beer, the sugar cookies I baked from scratch today…yeah, I’d say it’s possible.

Okay, maybe not. We did walk a lot on Saturday. A lot. But five pounds is also a lot. Oh well, I’ll give it a couple of weeks to shake out, and we’ll see where I stand then. I did have a fun Mardi Gras weekend with Anne in town and lots of other fun people.

Not sure if I’m going to do anything tomorrow yet. Guess I’ll see how the day turns out. I’m just eager for Saturday to get here. My friend Regan and I are going up to Covington to have tea at the little English tea house and to go visit my wedding dress and try on veils with it.

I am so very pissed off at the *$#&@! parking ticket people.
This morning, I go to my car to go to work and what is on my
windshield of my car (which is parked in the driveway in front
of our house) but a parking ticket. For blocking the sidewalk.
For parking in the same place I have parked every single day for
the 10 months. The same place the previous owner of our home
parked.

Very nice. Yes, technically it’s illegal to block the sidewalk,
but I’ve been doing this for a YEAR and everyone else does it
and blah blah blah. Yeah, it’s only twenty bucks. But I’m going
to fight it. Fortunately, they put the wrong street name on the
ticket. Heh heh. I could get off on a technicality anyway.
Stupid parking ticket people.

Am not feeling 100% today. Didn’t get much sleep last night.
Went to parades. Drank beers. And a daiquiri. Was very cold.
(Daiquiri didn’t help.) But was very fun. Haven’t stayed out
past midnight on a school night in a very long time. Now I
remember why. I am not the type of person who can get by on less
than eight hours. Anyway, at least it was fun. And I saw Annie.
And met her fun friend Rachel. And we called our friend Skip in
Missouri. Yay!

Dang. Gained a pound. I hate that. Oh well. I’m not entirely sure why, but I’ll take care of it this week…Mardi Gras or not…I will lose it…

I am pleased to announce that my stick trees that I planted a while back (around Christmas I think) now have teeny buds on them. I’m amazed. I think I must have better luck at growing things in the ground. (Why is it that I can’t kill the obnoxious bushes in front of our house, but potted plants practically commit suicide in front of me? Explain that.) Anyway, these “trees” which are just twigs stuck in the ground really seem to be taking to our yard. So exciting!

Tomorrow is one year. One whole year. For both Kristina and I. Will explain tomorrow if you don’t already know. Must make it through today first. Not hard.

Yesterday we went to Barkus, the dog parade. As everyone knows, I’m a HUGE dog fan and I just loooove canines and…okay, I’m lying. I am not a dog person (I don’t mind other people’s dogs, I just don’t want one for myself) and dogs don’t really take to me. They don’t dislike me, they just kind of ignore me.

Nevertheless, I went to the parade so I could hang out with my friends and watch the second meeting between Carlitos, Terry’s tiny boy Chihuahua, and Lily, Regan’s teeny-tiny-practically walnut-sized girl Chihuahua. I think Lily was playing hard to

get, but we’ll have to see how this little doggy love story goes. I think parenthood is in their future.

The exciting part was not the meeting of two tiny dogs, but the bit where I ran into an old high school friend, who I have not seen since junior year. I will not give away the exciting part (yet) because it’ll be too much fun to watch Ren and the others beg for his name. There’s a clue. Him.

Saturday night was Regan and Jeff’s engagement party. They’re getting married a month or so before George and I, and Regan is the only person I can talk to in person about wedding planning without getting rolled eyes and bored looks. We can talk about this stuff for hours! It’s great. Anyway, it was a fun party. Even George had fun, and that’s really saying something.