Tiny Tuesday Tragedies

I like alliteration. Please don't confuse my mildly unfortunate circumstances for real tragedies.

Now that we've clarified that, a recap of my less-than-stellar day, parenthesized by little glimmers of hope from Monday and my upcoming Wednesday:

First week of the month means partner yoga, which means lots of pictures and interesting new poses!



So much fun!

Tuesday was much less fun, but at least we got to decorate some Christmas ornaments as a "team-building exercise." I think we all just got high on Sharpies and that's why we were laughing and smiling while talking about funding cuts and more work to be done.

I wished for happiness and warm weather. We had to keep it PG.

I also lost my one trivia night today. Part of me is glad because it wasn't worth the headache to deal with those people, but I could have used the extra $60 every week. Looks like I'm back to being broke. Wah.

On the bright side, at least I could go back to Tuesday night yoga fusion...foiled again. Partner yoga fusion resulted in a 5lb weighted ball being dropped on my face and slamming my head into the floor. Holy headache. 

To end this negative rant, I bring you Chloe the Christmas pup!

All I can say is that I am so glad I took Wednesday off work. Having vacation time to waste is nice, especially in times of high stress, overall bad moods in the office, and an insane, long day booked for Thursday with a dreaded meeting and Christmas caroling. Starbucks, Christmas shopping with my friend, and a mini-break from work will make for a wonderful Wednesday. 

Psst, see what I did there? Alliteration again ;)

MIMM: Weekend Wrap-Up

My Monday might not be especially marvelous (with the exception of back-to-back vinyasa and hot yoga after work, that is), but my weekend sure was, so let's focus on that, shall we?

I spotted these two gems at BJs on Saturday. The wisdom penned in these two books is, I imagine, insurmountable.

Duck Dynasty cracks me up. And I am a die-hard Anchorman fan. I was anti-Anchorman 2 at first, but the promos and  previews sucked me and I'm anxiously awaiting its release date.

Saturday night was the annual Stoop Christmas party, which my ex-neighbor and dad's best friend decided to take on this year. Everyone brought a dish and a $15 gift for the best version of Yankee Swap in existence. Having multiple opportunities to steal gifts from people and cause arguments is always a great time. 

My contribution to the swap: The Winter Warmer Pack. Warming chamomile tea, fuzzy socks, and nips.

I started the game with this heinous clock and figured I was destined to end up with it. I always seem to go home with the crappiest gift. To my surprise, after three decks of cards and some vicious steals, I scored some lottery tickets. Bonus! I won $35. Not the Hot $1,000,000 advertised, but I'll gladly take it.

Sunday was a super lazy day. I stayed at home in sweats, did paperwork, and made a clean-out-the-pantry type soup. I used this recipe from Spatulas on Parade, with a little tweaking. I omitted the taco seasoning and used Weber's Kickin' Chicken seasoning in place of the chipotle rub, and amped up the spice with chili powder and medium instead of mild enchilada sauce. Pretty delicious. I was lazy and didn't take pictures, sorry.

Linking up to Katie's Marvelous in My Monday!

Kicking off the Christmas season

I won't lie, I prefer when Thanksgiving comes late. I can only tolerate so much of the advertisements, decorations, and non-stop Christmas music on the radio. I feel that the Christmas season begins the day after Thanksgiving, and since I've got less than a month to get into the holiday spirit, I can actually enjoy it this year.


Yesterday, my mom, sister, her boyfriend, and I hopped on the train to Boston. I spent the hour trip coaching my mom through level 147 on Candy Crush, which she's been stuck on for months. I wasn't successful. Fast forward to this morning, she'd beaten the level. Obviously, I deserve some credit for showing her what moves to look for and pair up yesterday. ;)

My mom and I on the train to Boston after she ran out of lives on Candy Crush and could be bothered to socialize.

Roasted beets, asparagus, edamame heaven

Avoiding Black Friday traffic without being housebound was nice. We shopped around Newbury and Boylston St, hitting up my favorite Marshall's store, and ending the day at the Prudential Center. We also enjoyed a late lunch at Cheesecake Factory in the Pru. We were all ravenous by the time we were seated...I should have eaten more than a grapefruit at 11:30am. Oh well. The result was me ordering and inhaling two shrimp spring rolls, basically before they touched the table. So good. I also ordered a chopped vegetable salad as an entree with Sesame-soy dressing.

We (barely) caught the 5:05pm train home, and began decorating the house for Christmas. I also baked some red velvet cookies with a cream cheese icing. Pictures and super-easy recipe will be supplied in a later post; I never bake these just once around the holidays. 

My favorite part about breaking out the Christmas decorations is a long-standing joke with my family:

A Very Perry with the Wine They Call Sherry Christmas (link to the entire CD on Grooveshark). This beauty randomly came in the mail addressed to my dad one year, and it has the best worst versions of all the yuletide classics. He recognized the guy on the cover as an employee that served him clam chowder on the Pine Lakes golf course during a golf trip with some friends. Oddly enough, my dad never gave his address, nor used his card to purchase anything, yet he was the only person to get the CD. I call that a divine intervention.

Once the tree was up and the lights were lit, we sat down to watch Elf together. Perfect end to a near-perfect day.

So bring on the Christmas craziness. I'm ready to embrace it...as long as I'm not forced to listen to "Wonderful Christmastime" by Paul McCartney. 

A very thankful Thanksgiving

Happy thanksgiving! Today I bring you a cliché "thankful" post because my life can be pretty amazing sometimes.

I'm thankful for:

-Fun times with great, lifelong friends

- Having the ability to laugh at myself for mistakenly wearing moccasins to the gym this morning, and pushing through a workout regardless.

Clearly I do spend too much time in the yoga studio and not enough time doing cardio. I forget what it feels like to wear sneakers...or have a brain haha.

- This wine, which I'm enjoying after a massive thanksgiving dinner. Drops of Jupiter red blend. If it reminds you of the Train song, you're dead-on. It's from the lead singer's winery. 

Didn't snap a picture, but I had an enormous sweet potato, white meat turkey, gravy, chili roasted broccoli, and warm red cabbage salad. Yum!

- My amazing family

This picture is from the last holiday we spent together before my dad passed away. Easter 2010. Today we are smaller, but stronger, and I'm so grateful for what I grew up with and what I still have. I love my family and wouldn't trade them for the world.

Nothing could make my Monday more marvelous than a great weekend behind me and short work week ahead

Yep, the title pretty much sums it up.

I mentioned my pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving celebration with my godfamily in my last post. Needless to say, it was a blast. But let's be real, how could I not have an awesome day when I was sporting teal leggings? Bold colors make me feel happy.

As always, I ended up playing bartender and blowing everyone's minds with my drink concoctions. My favorite sampling of the night was what I called a Caramel Maple Cake. The Red Hot Apple Pie and the Cinnamon Pumpkin drinks were pretty incredible, too, if I do say so myself. (Just a side note, my "drink names" really do nothing more than describe the flavors of nips that were randomly purchased and combined. ) I sampled all night without actually imbibing, however.

Sunday morning yoga was great as always, and almost all of my favorite people showed up. Yay! A good workout + good conversation = success.

I spent the rest of my Sunday grocery shopping, doing laundry, joking around with my family, and taking the opportunity to watch Meet the Millers since my sisters rented it OnDemand last night.

Oh, and I have to mention that leftover turkey is the best and I enjoyed it for dinner on a salad with spicy brown mustard and habanero mustard for dressings. Yum!

Not to break from the positivity, but my Weather Kitty made me sad today with the forecast. So I put on glasses on him. Yeah, didn't change the fact that it didn't reach 30ºF

This is why I hate New England. At least this cat is amusingly adorable.

Monday's forecast, regardless of the physical outdoor temperature, is looking a-okay to me. Lunch with someone on my caseload as part of my workday, vinyasa and hot yoga, and a 3-day work week.

As always, thanks to Katie for the push to see the positive side of Mondays. Linking up!

Martinis, margaritas, and wine galore. Acting 24.

Apologies for being MIA the past few days, it's been a really rough week, which called for some much-needed time out with friends. I'm trying really hard to be 24 instead of my typical 70-year-old cat lady esque self. Let me tell you, I feel happier than I have in a while overall.

Backtracking to some new-to-me snacks from the week that are worthy of review:

I won a mixed case of Quest bars recently and decided to heat up the Chocolate Brownie flavor in the microwave for 15 seconds after yoga on Wednesday. Is there any other way to enjoy a Quest bar? Seriously, it's heaven. 

Unfortunately, chocolate brownie just didn't meet my high expectations. It was good, don't get me wrong, but not as good as the other flavors I've tried. 

Another giveaway win from a while back: MuesliFusion. I decided to pack 1/3 cup with vanilla almond milk in a small mason jar for a pre-workout snack (FYI Stop & Shop unsweetened almond milk is pretty damn good).

Morning Zen blend had pumpkin seeds, cranberries, flax seeds, almonds, raisins, and oats. It was really tasty. I took the bag's advice to let it sit with the almond milk for a few hours to develop flavor and let the oats expand. I can't wait to try the other varieties I have at home.

Well, I'm off to enjoy an early Thanksgiving dinner with my godfamily. I love them! 

All I want is a little respect and some sleep. Is that too much to ask?

Apparently so.

Tuesday was not a pleasant experience for me. Nothing majorly awful, but just constant annoyances that really gave me a huge headache and resulted in a sleepless night, along with terrible dreams. I woke up in a panic after dreaming that my mom died of a heart attack, and my dadwas stabbed in the stomach, who then turned into my youngest sister, all American Horror Story style. Looking back on the dream this morning, it was actually kind of funny in some ways considering how ridiculous it was, but my sense of humor doesn't register in at 3am. I will say that I liked my unintentionally revolutionary idea to have 911 call centers Facetime callers to visually assess the severity of emergency situations would probably benefit a lot of people...butttttt for this to work, everyone would need an iPhone. Nightmares are flawed.

Other annoyances of Tuesday include:

• State budget cuts
• Arriving to host trivia and having no one in the restaurant, then having the owners make me wait over an hour, only to yell at me to start asking random questions to no one. I'm sorry, but it is NOT my fault that you are not getting people into YOUR establishment on a Tuesday night. I do what I can to promote, but it is your business and your job to draw people in. Oh, and giving me a really hard time about paying me AGAIN is not cool. That is both my pay and the company's pay. I arrived, I set up, and I stayed late to host trivia at your request. How dare you try to tell me and the company your hired to leave empty-handed. It's just so unprofessional.
• My highly unsatisfying dinner of a Recharge Peanut & Caramel 100 calorie bar and 1/2 bag of roasted chickpeas. While delicious as a small snack, it does not suffice for a meal. 

Snacks ≠ dinner. This made me cranky.

To avoid being completely negative, I did manage to successfully drive one of these bad boys around Cranston:

 Bubble-top transvan, baby! Riding in style!










Yeah, much different from my precious little Ford Fiesta. I was so uncomfortable operating that van. Talk about a major size difference.

Oh, Miguel Corona Ricardo Guacardo Avocardo, how I love you.

Wouldn't he be so cute with a mustache? I need to find one of those magnetic ones for the front bumper. Any advice on where to get one would be much appreciated :)