Seriously - I'm a loser.

Okay, so I don't really think I'm a loser...but, sometimes I'm a little lame. I'm writing this while sitting at the Borders bookstore, getting some planograms done for work. For some reason, planogramming seems a little less laborious while enjoying an overly priced "Javanilla Shake" in a public place. But I digress.

Let me set the scene for you - it's nice to have a good visual. On second thought, let me snap a picture of my view:

yep, so here I am on a Wednesday night...working at the local bookstore. Now, I will say that it's not so lame when you consider the fact that I work from home now and I've somehow managed to turn my 8 hour work days into 18 hours....all of which feel like random, 'doctor on call-esque' type of hours. But that's another subject.

A working session wouldn't be complete without Pandora, of course...(or Rdio, which I've also recently grown to love) so naturally I'm listening to some tunes as well.

...When all of a sudden...one of my very favorite 'jams' comes on: "Just Fine" by Mary J Blige. Normally not a problem to burst into song while listening to music, right? Wrong. It's VERY wrong to while at the bookstore! Luckily, just as I was about to begin, I came to my senses and stopped myself. Unfortunately I could not stop the shoulder gyrations. Yep - I was that girl. The only thing more embarrassing would have been peeling and eating a tangerine in this place!

Alright, back to work...

Ping is coming to town!!

What a beautiful day!

Its gorgeous outside today! Remind me of this in six months when I'm cursing this place, would you?

I woke up early, and drove out to The Risser Marvel Farmer's Market. I really liked how cute and quaint it seemed, but it was nothing like my fave, the Broad Street Market! I've written about it in the past because it is one of my favorite things about living up here. There are tons of Amish and Mennonite stands that offer super fresh and organic produce, meats, cheeses...you name it! Today I spent $19 and some change on some delicious produce...yummy!



And I also snagged some all natural ground turkey and ground hot turkey sausage...which tastes so much better than what you get from the grocery store. To top it off, I got some deli meat and cheese for lunches this week. Hopefully my lunches over the week can match today's lunch. One of the Amish stands sells whole chickens that would put Popeye's out of business! I got a half chicken breast for $2.75 and the girl drenched it in hot sauce...MmmMmmm! I took my lunch by the river and enjoyed the soaking up the sunshine!!





Oh yeah, I also got some cage-free, hormone-free eggs! I never thought I'd be that girlwho cared about that stuff...but 1.) it's way more delicious, and 2.) I am becoming more and more paranoid about that stuff with each article I read or crazy food documentary I watch. Have you seen Food Inc.? Eck.

Hoping to get some stuff around the house accomplished today....and then maybe even some work stuff later on. :-)

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Facebook Hiatus

I've been thinking about this for a while now, and I've finally decided to take a hiatus from Facebook. I realized that the time I spend on the site just simply... isn't productive. In fact, it's counterproductive. :-( Boo.

So, I'm not sure if it'll be a few days, a week, a couple of weeks, maybe even a month-long hiatus...but it's necessary. And, let's face it...if it's too hard to do...all the more reason it should be done, right? Ugh.

Hopefully this will give me an opportunity to reflect more on my own life, rather than follow the lives of others. Or actually call and visit with friends more, instead of rely on my newsfeed to keep me posted on all of their excitement. Plus, I really like getting emails...and LOVE getting snail mail! Maybe this will jumpstart things a bit?

Oh well...let's see how well this works: fingers crossed.

Smokin' Summer Kickoff @ The Finger Lakes!

Jared is an awesome boyfriend...really. One of the things I appreciate most about him is that he is a wonderful planner... he cares about making our time together special, and he loves to share new experiences. Thanks to Jared, I've been on impressively planned trips to places like Baltimore, Vegas, Atlantic City, Costa Rica,
South Florida...and the list goes on. It's important to him to create special memories together and to show me his love in these ways. I've learned that this is one of his love languages. (http://www.5lovelanguages.com/). I am truly so Blessed.

We spent the weekend in the Finger Lakes, part of upstate NY area. As I mentioned in the last post, he found a great little B&B for us, perfectly situated in the heart of wine country. With very little advanced notice of our weekend together, Jared still managed to impress!

We had tickets to an event where 30+ wineries participated in wine and food pairings! Each winery had its own unique character. Some were very classy, while others were a little on the...um...unconventional side. Everything from the size of the wineries, knowledge of the staff, and sophistication of the tastings were different at each stop on our tour!

We visited 11 wineries and tasted between 2-5 different wines at each one. Some were so delicious they tasted like Kool-Aid, while others were more "oak-y". By the end of the afternoon, I was able to pick up on various subtleties in flavor...or at least I managed to fake it well enough to convince myself of it! Lol.

My computer is still with the techy folks so I can't upload pictures just yet, but I'l be sure to add some as soon as I can!

For the record, the B&B turned out to be quite delightful (said while pretending to drink my classy, dry red wine (with oak undertones)... Remembering to isolate my pinky finger from the stem of the glass so that it sticks out in mid-air)! ;-)

It was actually nice to sit down for breakfast and chat with our hosts and the other guest. Funny what impression we choose to make upon complete strangers....be it successful or not! And I continue to find myself smitten with Jared, especially in situations like these where his genuine compassion for others really shines.

Wonderful weekend...and praying for an equally enjoyable week ahead!

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Bed & Breakfast

Happy Friday! Today was the second "summer hours" day of the year, and oh what a day it's been! As background, my company offers flexible work schedules in the summer time, allowing employees to work an extra hour every day (M-Th) in order to end the workday at noon on Friday! Absolutely a beautiful thing after barely surviving the horrible winter weather!

I worked enough extra hours this week to take summer hours for the rest of the year, but unfortunately that's not how it works. Needless to say, i shut my computer down promptly at noon today. And it felt great. Even better, I turned my computer into the IS folks who will be upgrading me to a new one! This one's been on its last leg since it was new two years ago, so today was an exciting day. More importantly, that means NO WORK all weekend! Holler @ your girl. Lol. But really.

Two weekends ago, after Jared and I spent the weekend in Hershey/Philly, I sent him a meeting request through Outlook for a fun filled weekend in wine country (the beauty of working for the same place...I can schedule our dates online! Lol). Somewhere in NY, near Ithaca, is the halfway point between Hershey and Toronto. This time last year, we actually spent a weekend together in Cayuga Lakes...very near here. This weekend, we (Jared is the master planner...he doesn't trust me to choose hotels for fear that I'll put us up in a Super 8 motel or something) chose Seneca Lakes area...or whatever it's called.

Jared sent me the reservation online...thank God for my iPad and the TripIt app...it automatically downloads all trip itineraries to one app directly from my email. Sweet. Anyway...he chose a bed and breakfast for us. I have to admit, this is my first stay in one...so when he told me about it, I w pretty nervous. I believe my response was, "like...in someone's house?" LOL

Back to this afternoon....I was officially on the road at about 1pm after filing up my tank dropping off my computer. (one more time for NO WORK this weekend!) google maps said the ride would be about four and a half hours...one hour longer than Jared's drive. But when you add in his border crossing...we can call it even.

The ride wasn't bad at all. I typically hate road trips because the blaza tends to um...shake a little when you pass 65 mph. And, well, that's not exactly promising. But now that I'm driving my brand new 2011 Subaru Outback...the ride was delightful. And air conditioned. ::sigh::

My gps said I had arrived at my location right on time. Score! Too bad my destination was a mile marker on the New York Thruway. Not good. Somewhere along the way, I must've taken a wrong turn....onto a toll road, no less. Naturally I was carrying very little cash on me. And what little cash I had left my house with this afternoon, I used to buy $0.99 chicken sandwich fro Wendy's and a bottled water. I knew I should've used my debit card!

About 10 miles later, the first exit comes up and I have to take it. I have only two dollars on me and a little bit of change at this point. Too bad I wasn't in the blazer....there's "emergency money" hidden all throughout that thing. Tons of change all over the place too....mostly by accident and less by design. Luckily the toll was only $0.35. Whew!

Fortunately I found my work iPhone earlier this week and brought it with me on the trip. (it's been hiding in the back pocket of my backpack since my Megabus trip...see earlier post). iPhone came through big time...i googled the right address for the B&B and used the Maps app to find my way. Jared had already put his stuff down inside and was waiting for me, like the wonderful boyfriend that he is, outside in the driveway. :-)

The place is nice and the couple who owns the place is nice. They do have a large dog, which threw me off a bit. I'm so glad I remembered to bring my allergy medicine...or else I'd be a wreck by now!

It's about 11:30pm now and Jared's asleep. I'm wide awake; partly because I've never been good at sleepovers, especially not at a stranger's place (kinda how it feels at a B&B)...and also because the family is celebrating Senior Weekend. I guess they have a kid that's graduating tomorrow. Cue the party. Seriously. From the sounds of it, I'm guessing there are at least 20 people out there, all of whom are wide awake....and wearing very heavy shoes, from my estimations. Lol.

We have a busy day ahead of us. First, breakfast with 'the fam' at 8, and then off to a wine tour and food pairing through about twenty vineyards. I'm looking forward to it.


This is a picture from our 2010 trip to the Finger Lakes

I'll do my best to write some more tomorrow or Sunday and let you know what the rest of our stay was like. Hopefully I'll even have a few pictures from the weekend's festivities!

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Inspired by a challenge online

I stumbled upon a word press blog that challenged readers to create blog entries everyday in 2011, or at least once a week. to help, they provide daily topics to get ya started...here's today's:

Topic #153:

What’s the smartest thing you’ve heard this week? (Lets try to take a positive twist after yesterday’s negative topic).

This is tough because to be honest, I've spent the better majority of my week by myself, without a ton of human interaction. Now that I work from my home office, I miss out on a lot of the usual water cooler talk that used to keep me going. ::sigh:: but don't misinterpret what I'm saying...I do enjoy working from home. I find myself to be far more productive, much more motivated, and way less distracted. But I digress.

Back to the question, what's the smartest thing I've heard all week? That's a tough one. But I think it was when someone told me, "do what you can."

I've spent the last several weeks getting back into the swing of things at work. If you'd like to know what your job security looks like....go on a ten-week leave, and then measure the importance of your role by the number of emails, requests, and to-dos that pile up in your absence!

Needless to say, its been a busy month since I returned to work and I've taken it pretty personally. I've gotten very little sleep, am easily irritated, and doing my best to juggle the competing priorities.

"Do what you can."

Yes, that's the smartest thing I've heard this week. I need to remember that I can only do so much. And when it seems like too much, I need to rely on my Faith and rest assured that if I can't handle it, God will. :-)


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