Monday, March 16, 2015

Coffee Date

Hi friends! I didn't mean to fall off the face of the earth like that. Just stress and work and everyday life, you know?

But! A lot of that went away for a little while because last week we took a long weekend and flew back to Texas to surprise Matt's sister for her birthday! We also went to visit my grandparents, and stopped in College Station for a few hours to see a few friends. We managed to eat tacos for a lot of our meals. And got in some Blue Bell too. Ahh, food and family. This trip really cemented that Texas > Virginia in all the ways that matter. :)

Happy early birthday sister-in-law! We got beers and went bowling, and I learned that I bowl better left-handed. But still pretty badly.

What makes you and your partner laugh really, really hard? I'm not sure if it was because of the sleep deprivation or because it was really that funny, but as Matt and I were driving home from the airport at three in the morning — note to self, don't fly into an airport that's more than an hour away if it's going to land after midnight on a work night — we popped in a Taylor Swift CD and started singing all the songs in super deep old-man voices, and it cracked us up so much that it made the last half-hour of that exhausting drive fly by.

I am basically dying for a lay-around-do-nothing vacation. Did you know that Carnival has some cruises that leave from the Virginia coast, that basically just go out in the ocean for a day and then turn around and come back? They call it "the cruise to nowhere," and that makes us laugh. But we're saving up our vacation days for my sister's wedding, and hopefully we'll get to go on a real vacation next year. In the meantime, I'm hoping to get some more fun day trips in. There are so many states nearby that I haven't been to! And so many things I'd like to see in Virginia! What places are near you that you're dying to try?

I went to a wine-tasting with some friends the other week at this gourmet-cooking store, and I got really distracted by this wall that had all these beautiful canisters of tea. I've never been much of a tea drinker — my college roommate loved the stuff and believed it could cure everything, and I thought she was wrong and that tea was gross except in the cases of sore throats and so I avoided it forever for reasons I'm no longer sure of — but I'm finally feeling like I should give tea a fair shake. Or maybe the pretty wall of tea just hypnotized me into thinking this is a good idea? What's your favorite type?

Do you need a new thing to listen to while Serial is on break? May I recommend the podcast Grownups Read Stuff They Wrote As Kids? It's exactly what it sounds like: adults reading their childhood diary entries and angsty teenage poetry in front of a live audience. It. Is. Hilarious. Isn't life so much better now that we're not teenagers anymore? :)

What are your goals right now? I have a few things I want to accomplish in the next few months, but I'm thinking about letting go of some other small goals I've been working on that have lost their appeal, that I'm no longer doing to benefit myself, but still feel obligated to slog through. I read on Ali's blog that sometimes you have to let go of some things in order to make room for things you really want, and that's been resonating with me lately. I'd like to stop putting so much pressure on myself.

But enough about me. What's going on with you? What have I missed these few weeks? (I'm super behind on both writing and reading blogs. Feedly tells me I have an overwhelming number of unread posts waiting for me. I'll get to them eventually.)

16 comments

  1. Katie @ A Beautiful Little AdvMarch 16, 2015 at 10:43 AM

    I'm glad you had such a fun trip back home, it's always good to go home. I'm dying at picturing singing tay tay in old man voices. A cruise to nowhere sounds sublime right about now, I'm so over winter. With the baby coming we're pinching pennies in any way that we can, so any big weekend trips or vacations have gone out of the picture for us. Instead we are doing fun little things we never really do in our hometown. Welcome back to blogland :)

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  2. I'm so glad you had a great trip and got to visit your family! I hope you are feeling refreshed, and the idea of a cruise to nowhere sounds like a great idea. I don't think I could handle a long cruise with so many other people, but a day trip sounds like something I'd like to try. Do you drink iced tea? I wasn't into hot tea until more recently, but now I really like it on a cold night or when my allergies are acting up. Sleepytime Tea by Celestial Seasonings is my favorite and it doesn't have caffeine.

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  3. If you're already doing this, I apologize, BUT my absolute favorite activity during Serial's break has been watching THE JINX on HBO. Holy cats. It's just six 45-minute episodes, so it's entirely too easy to bingewatch, but so worth it. Last night was the finale, and I actually screamed!


    Glad you had such a nice trip to the Lone Star State :) Also, a cruise to nowhere sounds so ridiculous, it could probably be a really spectacular time.

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  4. Omg, that drive sounds awful! Haha... I get antsy if we arrive home after 11pm from flying on a work night. But we usually can't fly into places like Basel too late at night because the trains stop running and we don't have a car. I really want to visit Lichtenstein some day because it's right next door, and Luxembourg too.

    I love all kinds of tea. English Breakfast, apple and cinnamon, chai, green tea, herbal blends, you name it. Ginger and lemon tea is really good for when you are sick or just normally... I just love it. :) It's spicy!

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  5. Those cruises to nowhere have always sounded like a good idea to me, too--they run them out of Jacksonville from time to time.


    I love tea and it's a toss-up each morning whether I'm going to have coffee or a cup of English Breakfast or Chai tea instead. At night it's either Sleepytime or Earl Grey. The most amazing tea I've had, though, was an Earl Grey Cream from Teavana--talk about a wall of gorgeous teas!


    Glad you got a little breather from the work stress, hope you can find some pockets of tranquility now that you're home, too! Whenever I get truly behind on Feedly I start marking certain verbose categories as read, figuring if it was truly important it'll show up somewhere else, too!

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  6. Thanks! Hopefully it'll be warmer soon. I swear, just feeling the sun shine warm on my skin makes such a difference in how I feel.

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  7. Katie @ A Beautiful Little AdvMarch 17, 2015 at 8:49 AM

    for sure. we hit 60 for a little short tiny bit yesterday and it was amazing, like, "oh this is what it feels like to not wear a coat???"

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  8. You do realize you asked about 25 questions in this post, right? So... I've forgotten them all already. I WILL say that I'm glad you're checking in! I admit I was wondering where you had gone, but I get life being busy. Glad you got to back back to Texas for a bit!

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  9. That "Grownups Read Stuff They Wrote As Kids" sounds hilarious! I'm Googling it now!


    Also, I hear you on late night flights! We flew into an airport at 12:30am this morning... that is 2+ hours away from our house. We finally got home around 3am and then crashed... then promptly woke up for work. Craaaaazy!


    Glad things are going so well! :)

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  10. I just heard about The Jinx! Haven't seen it yet, but apparently the main guy just got arrested the other day for a 15-year-old murder?!

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  11. You have such cool places nearby! Hopefully you'll get to go soon, and then I can live vicariously through you. :)


    I just got me some black chai tea, and about to try my first cup!

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  12. I would totally be on board for the cruise to nowhere if it weren't so dang expensive. Plus, I am totally one of those vacationers that wants to relax for like two hours and then is like, so what are we gonna do now huh huh huh? :) But I am trying to do yoga more when I can, and get back in the habit of meditating to keep the stress down.

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  13. Oh wow, I did not even realize how overwhelming that was until you mentioned it. Sorry!

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  14. Oof, I hope you'll be able to make it an early night and rest up! Coming in that late totally messed up our whole week's schedule.

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  15. I had no idea cruises left out of Virginia, but a cruise to nowhere
    sounds hilarious. I just started getting into tea recently because my
    office doesn't provide coffee (what!?) and I highly recommend Harney
    & Sons Hot Cinnamon Sunset if you want something caffeinated. DELISH
    + pretty canister. Can't beat it.

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  16. Mmm, sounds good! I just bought a box of chai tea, and even though it says NOTHING WHATSOEVER about caffeine content on the box, I fell asleep about two hours after drinking it, so … yeah, should probably try something caffeinated.

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