little taste of the good life*

A Passover Breakfast 

The Haggadah clearly states, that each person at the table is to fill up their wine glass 4 times. 

My family takes this part of the Seder very, very seriously. 

Weekend in Photos: Baltimore Wedding

Overall, I would say it was a good weekend. Fun wedding, great group of friends I haven’t gotten to see in way too long, dancing all night & endless champagne.

But then I had a drunken episode at the hotel with the window blind. The window blind won. I now have a black eye. And lost a good amount of my eyelashes.(Sparing you all the photo.)

And then coming home yesterday, half blind, half hungover, OF COURSE I would get pulled over. I mean, what would a 5-hour trip home on 95 be without a speeding ticket? A really, really bad one at that.

Why does Baltimore seriously, seriously, have it out for me always? 

It was a good run. 10 years of driving with no speeding tickets. And come to think of it, my first ever black eye as well. I guess my time was up. Woo-freakin-hoo. 

My aunt recently opened her own fitness studio. She has always had the most amazing bod (you can see her in some of those photos above from her website) and every time I see her, she tells me I should come and try one of her classes.

She teaches the bar method, and it’s “a mix of core conditioning, Pilates, yoga, and orthopedic stretching. It is a one hour class that increases strength and flexibility, improves posture, and boosts energy levels. The goal of this seriously effective body shaping program is to help you feel long and lean.”

I tried one of her classes in high school, before she had her own studio, and I remember being at the bar, and all of a sudden everything went black. Needless to say, I haven’t been in any rush to try it again.

I like to think I am in much better shape now than I ever was in high school. I run & I lift now, the gym is no longer a foreign place to me. So, I finally went to her class last night & Jamie actually agreed to come with me.

Um, every single centimeter of me is sore today.

It’s amazing how 2 pound weights start to feel like 50 lbs, and how repetitions that are really only moving your leg an inch, can burn like all hell.

Jamie and I kept having to stop halfway through a set to give each other the “WTF are we doing, how is this even possible?!” look. But it did make me feel a little better that my naturally athletic, Mr. Big Muscles-boyfriend was struggling right along with me.

If any of you are in the Northern Jersey area and looking for a challenging bar class, I would have to recommend this one! Once I am able to walk up & down stairs again, I will be back for more :)

Jamie has signed up for a Tough Mudder in April. He is a maniac. I can’t even really think about it yet because it makes me have panic attacks.

I’m not sure if you all know exactly what the Tough Mudder is…but it is basically a 12 mile marathon that includes obstacle courses. These obstacle courses include plunging into freezing water, fire, slippery monkey bars, crawling under 10,000 volts of electric barbwire, ropes, chains, and, well lots of mud…the list goes on.

I am scared enough to even have to go and watch and cheer him & his equally crazy friends on. (I have to walk/run the 12 miles to keep up? Uh OK. Meet ya at the finish line!)

Anywho. Jamie has been training for this and making his workouts more and more intense lately. I usually get to the gym a few days during the week with him, though sometimes I will chose to take a class like Zumba. (I would much rather embrace my inner-wannabe-Latina for an hour than try to brave the macho-man gym we belong to.)

I went with him last night to the gym. Figured though I am not (ever) going to participate in the Tough Mudder, I could still do the workouts with him, right?

Um. Today. Holy hell. Knees keep buckling. Hurts to move. Can’t lift one leg to cross it over the other. Standing up and sitting down I feel like my 80 year old grandmother. I am walking like a tin soldier. The upstairs office bathroom? Out of the question.

Ugh. I am not cut out for this crap.

Currently have to fill out 10 award submission applications for my company. 10!

All handwritten! What is this, the stone age?

I hardly remember how to write by hand. I have barely completed the first one and I feel carpal tunnel on-setting.

Let’s get with 2011, people.

The past 3 days I have noticed these tiny painful bumps on the inside of my right palm. (The past 3 days I also went to the gym. File this under: another reason working out is not safe. Remember the bee sting??)

My logic, was that the dirty, man infested, Guido, intense, ugly gym I go to, infected me with some sort of - sweaty-guido-virus via the elliptical handles. Seems to make perfect sense.

My boyfriend, seemed to believe, that when I was sleeping, some sort of bedbug crawled into my hand and laid baby bug eggs.

Gross. Both options gross.

So I decided today to go to a dermatologist and have it looked at. I randomly googled a doctor in the area that took my insurance, and for whatever reason they were able to take me right away.

The doctor was adorable, super sweet and bubbly and talkative. She was looking at my weird hand under her microscope and seemed stumped. (Actually turned out she is dating my uncle’s brother. Small world!)

“I think what we should do, is freeze this. Scrape it all off, and send it to the lab to do a biopsy.”

I instantly went pale. Cold sweat. I am so, so squeamish.

“I’m squeamish,” I told her. “I am telling you now I will faint.”

She lowered the chair all the way down so it was a bed. Gave me an icepack to keep under my neck. And gave me a tootsie roll pop. Embarrassing. Delicious. It helped.

As I am laying there, I casually mentioned how I had some strange red mark on the side of my head for oh, five months now that won’t go away.

“We are going to need to remove and biopsy that as well. The face is worrisome. It is probably nothing, but it could be cancerous.”

Greaaaat.

And so, this is what I look like now. All bandaged up. For 3-4 days. BANDAID ON FACE for the entire weekend. Super.