paranoid android

do you ever have the unfortunate experience of having words fly out of your mouth before you really process what you're saying? i had that experience today, among many other experiences. this one in particular was when lori called and invited me out for drinks with her and jeremey. i totally had all intentions of going, but for some reason my mouth formed the words saying that i wasn't going to go. i honestly didn't even realize what i had said until i hung up the phone... and immediately thought of calling her back. but, as is often the case, i decided that maybe my 30-second delay was from my brain and body telling me i needed to go home and relax. to put it mildly, it's been an "interesting" day. (interesting for me, not necessarily interesting to anyone else.) i really just need to process some things at the moment.

let me start with the good part of it all - last night george the garage door man came and almost completely fixed my garage door. my dad paid for it all (yes, i know i'm spoiled... but the door wasn't getting fixed otherwise), and it was lucky because it cost $550! basically, everything's wrong with it - springs, track, and a bunch of other things i neither remembered, understood, nor cared about... he fixed everything he could last night, but needed to get another part before fixing the opener part. luckily, my door is about a gazillion times lighter now thanks to the new springs and i can lift the door without killing myself. george said it was all pretty awful and that i easily could have gotten really hurt and i could have really wrecked the rest of my garage. hmm. oh well, it's much better now and it'll be fantabulous tomorrow afternoon!

this morning i headed out to the south side soup contest, which was pretty great. we had good weather for it and it even warmed up a little towards the end! i had expected actual bowls of soup, but instead we got little cups about the size of dixie cups. everything was still really good, though. i think i got to sample about 15 of the 23 soups - i almost made them all, but the last few were out of soup and a couple of them had signs that they were "forced to not participate," whatever that means. still, $5 and a can of campbell's broccoli cheddar got me a late and yummilicious brunch. i think my fave soup was the soupe savoyarde from le pommier. it was like a creamy vegetable soup. the crowd favorite from what i heard was the exotic wild mushroom soup. i puke on mushrooms, so i didn't try it, but every single person who left that table said it was incredible. i don't think i've ever heard so much food praise in my life as i did for the mushroom soup. actually, on my way back to my car, there was still a small line for the mushroom, so i jumped into it and decided to suck it up but (gasp!) they ran out of soup just a few people ahead of me. i guess that was for the better. wouldn't want little chunks of lindsay hanging around the southside...
there's more to the soup contest part of my day, but i'll keep that all to myself.

i had to scramble from the southside to make it to monroeville by 3 for my eye dr appointment. i'm SOOO glad i went - while i was being examined, i casually brought up my eye watering/pain issues that i'd had checked out a month or two ago. it's a lot better, but it's still there, so i'm pretty sure it's not the suspected sinus infection. maybe part of it was since i seemed to get a sinus infection almost immediately after starting antibiotics, but it wasn't entirely that. this doctor, however, offered a more reasonable and lindsay-plausible solution: my mystery autoimmune disease is probably flaring up and it's projecting itself through my eyes. given my ridiculously crazy medical history, i'm willing to bet that's the case. anyways, he gave me some new contacts to try (ooh, and i LIKE them! they seem more hydrating!), and then i checked out a sweet pair of vera wang spectacles that will be coming home with me in about 2 weeks. :) also, the technician fixed my old glasses since they're constantly falling off my face. now they actually fit! they'll probably stay that way for about a week or so. :)

after all the excitement of the day, i hit up the gym for a loooooong workout. not my longest by any means, but i didn't have my ipod, so the time just dragged on and on. i did the first part of my abs exercises, the little stair stepper machine (ugh), the elliptical, then the treadmill, then used nearly every machine i'd never used before since the gym wasn't crowded and i was soup-drunk. it was pretty cool to use other machines and i even found a few i like (and some that i hate but should probably use... i'm talkin to you, glute machine!). i ended it all with part 2 of the abs and mat workout. it was only an hour and 33 minutes, but it felt like 4 hours!

quite an exciting day for me!

you are the sunshine of my life, right by nature!

I don’t have a whole lot to report today, but I DO want to sing the praises yet again of Right by Nature. I stopped yesterday before volleyball “scouting” to waste some time and fuel up on a salad. I got the things I was looking for, loaded up my salad (spring mix, sunflower seeds, roasted soynuts, dried cranberries, a feta/asiago mix, bean sprouts, some mixed nuts and some de-lish green goddess dressing!), and headed to the registers… but wait! What’s that sign the bakery lady’s putting up in front of the bakery case? Surely that doesn’t say “Buy one, get two free!” Oh yes, friends, buy 1, get 2 (yep, 2!!) free! So I got 3 bakery bagels for some breakfasts: a blueberry, an everything, and a sunflower honey wheat. 3 breakfasts for only 69 cents total. Rock. Freakin. On. In addition to my salad and breakfast beauties, I snatched up 2 tiny tangerines and some new salad dressing – Drew’s Lemon Tahini Goddess. I’m super excited about the dressing and I think it’ll go swimmingly with my feta. To be on the safe side, though, I think I’m going to ditch the rest of my bagged spinach since I’m pretty sure it’s waging a war on my stomach. Perhaps I’ll stop at TJ’s before going home today to grab some spring mix.
 
Speaking of heading home, I have to go home early today because a mystery man named George is supposed to meet me there to fix my garage door. The door has been broken since early September and I give myself a hernia every morning when I have to heave it up to get my car out, only to have to prop it up on a ladder to keep it from crushing me and my little Cobalt. Apparently my dad has decided that I’ve suffered long enough and he called George to come fix the cause of my morning frustration. It seemed like he was going to pay for the job, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed. The only reason I hadn’t called someone myself is because I don’t have the money to fix the door at the moment… so if George is demanding payment before he leaves, this homeowner may have to be a bit late on the mortgage payment this month…
 
I have some big plans for the weekend! Ok, they’re not really big plans for normal social-active people, but they’re exciting to a dork like me. First up, and the most exciting, is the Annual South Side Mid-Winter Soup Contest!! $5 and a canned soup donation gets you access to bowls of soup from 23 different vendors. Seriously, how awesome is that?! $5 and a canned soup = 23 bowls of soup? Hot diggity dang, that’s a screamin deal! I’m determined to forego a normal breakfast and potentially even dinner just to sample as many different soups as I can. I love me some soup. In college, my friend Katie and I called each other “soup sisters” because we always headed straight for the soup kettles in the cafeterias and ate soup whenever possible. I may go as far as to say that soup could easily be the perfect meal. I’m probably going to have trouble sleeping tonight just thinking about all that soup! :)
 
My other plans for the weekend include a super-long-overdue eye doctor’s appointment for new glasses and contacts, returning library books, balancing my checkbook and paying bills (hopefully there’s still money available after George leaves!), maybe baking some bread for next week, and cooking some dinners in advance for the week ahead. I’ve really been slacking on dinner this past week – I’ve made due with salads or soup or even some tortillas with hummus. I just haven’t been up for actually cooking. I’m hoping I’ll be inspired after the soup contest to make some delish creations of my own!
 
Happy Friday, everyone!

blonde ambition

‘Ello, guv’nor!
I’m having a pretty good day today, and I’ve been strangely motivated both professionally and personally. On the professional front, I’ve decided that maybe instead of leading my career towards Client Service, perhaps I will opt for Business Analysis/Marketing. Currently I’m on the Operations (or IT-ish) side of things and everything just seems really easy. Business Analysis and Marketing just sound really appealing to me and it seems like they might actually be a challenge. So for the next year, I plan on educating myself about the Business Analysis and Marketing departments here at work and attend all the functions they put on. My first stop is (hopefully, unless someone schedules a meeting during this time) a presentation on Friday during lunch about Modeling (not fashion magazine modeling, but more like projecting). I’m going to get some books out of our work library and I’ve already started reading industry-specific reports about BA. I think it’s a good start.
 
On the personal side of things, I want to get back into sand volleyball shape. I mean, I’m in better shape right now than I was while playing sand volleyball last summer, but I want to be even better this year. Besides, it’ll give me a goal for my gym workouts. I think I’m going to start working more on the dreaded lunges and squats, and Keri Walsh suggested pilates. I’ve never taken a pilates class in my life and for some irrational reason, people who practice pilates freak me out, but Keri Walsh has won 2 Olympic gold metals in sand volleyball, so I guess she knows what she’s talking about. Anyways, the sand season doesn’t start until probably June, so I have a few months to prepare. That seems perfect!
 
I finally made it to the gym last night, but it wasn’t my most productive visit. About 20 minutes into running, I felt like I was either going to collapse or have a very embarrassing accident, so I let up on myself and walked for 30 more minutes at 7% incline. I ended up burning 406 calories, but I felt like I should’ve done a lot more. I was whooped, though, so I went home around 8:15...
…which would have been great, but I realized I had left my BlackBerry at work and I work with a bunch of thieves, so I had to go allllll the way back to work and then finally home. I didn’t get home until about 9:00. Sometimes I’m so dumb. :(
 
I have a little beauty product review! Lately I’ve noticed really big dark circles under my eyes. Maybe it’s because I’ve been so tired lately, or maybe it’s because I’m (gasp!) getting old(er). Anyways, on my way home Sunday night, I stopped at TrashMart and splurged on the Garnier Nutritioniste Skin Renew Anti-Puff Eye Roller pen. For all things beauty-related, anything over $10 is considered a splurge in my book. Yes, I’m cheap. I’m also pretty poor and the only reason I caved in was because I had a $3 coupon for it. ANYWAYS, moving on, I’ve been using this pen every morning and night and WOW! I can totally tell a huge difference! Yeah, ok, I still have some bags under my eyes, but they’re not anywhere near as puffy and dark as they were a mere 3-4 days ago. Seriously, I totally look more awake and healthier. In fact, several people have commented that I look “healthy”… I’m not sure if that’s because of the eyes or the Caribbean tan, or if maybe I looked really sickly before, but hey, I’ll take whatever I can get.
 
Ooh, and I finally called the eye doctor and made an appointment for new glasses and contacts on Saturday. I had tried to make an appointment online TWICE (6 different appointment options), but no one ever got back to me. My self-imposed “blacklist-of-all-organizations-that-tick-me-off-by-making-me-actually-CALL-them-because-either-their-software-or-their-personnel-is-defective” was side-swiped by the impending deadline to use all my flex-spending money from last year by March, so I sucked up my pride and called them to make an appointment. I should really learn that it’s much faster and easier to just call people instead of relying on their internet appointment setups.
 
Also, 2 things I want to do this weekend if anyone else is interested: Saturday – the annual Southside Soup Contest, starting at noon. $5 to get in gets you all the different soups you can handle. Perfect for a chilly February Saturday. I wanted to do this last year, but I think my mom came to visit that day and I didn’t have time to go.
Sunday – there’s a Venture Outdoors Water Safety course on the North Side. It’s 9 am – 5 pm and it’s free for anyone who wants to attend. Since I’m a bit of a kayaking freak and this is free, I figured it might be a good idea to take it. You can also get certification (there’s a test) by filling out an application and sending in $10 after the course is done. It’d be neat to be certified, but I’ll wait and see how the course goes first.
 
That’s it for now. Tonight I plan on trying my hand at the gym again (hopefully tonight is better than last night) and downloading some Learning Tree podcasts. I’m such an exciting 26-year-old!