Life of a Diet Queen

Here we are on Monday again. Oh how the weekends fly! I wish they would slow down so we could really enjoy them. Next week we will get a 3 day weekend without even having to take PTO – woohoo!

Twins Game

I think the last time we chatted it was Saturday. So much went on this weekend! The hubs and I really enjoyed the Twins game, although it was a bit chilly.

I am really hoping the next game we go to is more pleasant weather-wise. We have been to 2 games this season and both have been cold. At least this time they won! It’s always a bummer to sit through a freezing game only to have the team lose. I think the highlight of my time at the game was eating my brat (so good!) and enjoying 2 beers. Yum!

After the Twins game, the hubs and I stayed in the cities in order to visit my friend Sarah for her birthday. I really didn’t think we’d stick around that long, but we ended up not leaving until 2am! First we met them at Psycho Suzi’s where we enjoyed a beer and some good conversations. That place is the best for people watching. Not only are the people who work there interesting, but the patrons are all different as well. It’s wonderful! I can’t wait to get back there sometime this summer for some patio sitting. I love a good patio!

After Psycho Suzi’s (thanks Sarah for sticking around there for a while!), we headed to The Front to get our dance on. I really didn’t think I’d dance much since I wasn’t drunk. Wrong! I danced the whole time we were there, which ended up being 2 hours. I also enjoyed another beer. That made my tally of beers for the whole evening equal 4. I’m getting good at this moderation stuff! It did help that I had to drive us home.

I still can’t believe we stayed out that late, and I wasn’t even tired! We didn’t get home until about 3:15am when I crashed into bed. B of course snoozed the whole way home.

Mother’s Day

Since we stayed out so late on Saturday night, I set my alarm for 11am to get up on Sunday. Of course B woke me up at 10:45am instead. Meh. I was pretty excited to go see my family. Usually I run the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure on Mother’s Day, but this year I decided to spend it with my family instead. Spending more time with my family is on my list of changes I need to make in my life after all.

It was so nice seeing them! I gave my mom her gift right away – 3 bottles of South African wine. She loved it! My mom has done 2 study abroad trips to South Africa (she’s a professor), and seems to be obsessed with their wines. The whole time we were in Ireland my mom kept asking the waiter/waitress if they had any South African wines. Most of the time they didn’t, and she really only buys boxed wine (so classy!), so I thought she would appreciate some of the good stuff.

The bottle in the middle has actually been voted in the top 10 best wines in the US. It was a little pricier than I usually spend on wines, but I couldn’t resist. That’s the one we ended up sharing on Sunday. Let me tell you, it was definitely worth the price tag! I decided it will now be our tradition to share a more expensive bottle of wine for every holiday. Next up is Father’s Day in a month!

Personal Issues

I was going to go ahead and air some personal issues I’m having right now, but I decided not to. The issues also involve my husband, so I didn’t want to air something that could affect him. I am really struggling with something in my personal life though. It’s not something that I have much control over, so it’s very frustrating. Please keep me in your thoughts and prayers!

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

Hello, hello. How’s it going for everyone out there? As I mentioned in my last post, I worked at a client with crappy internet access for most of this week. That made for long days. Thursday I got to be home to play catch-up before Friday at a different client. I think Thursday will be my last at-home work day until the end of June! That’s so sad. I made sure to make the most of it.

A Little Under the Weather

Wednesday I thought for sure that I was coming down with a cold. My throat was irritated most of the day. At first I thought it was just because of the changes in humidity, but I started to feel really rundown during the day. The humidity levels here are nuts right now. Not nuts in that they are high or anything, just that they are jumping around so much due to the weather. It will be rainy and near 100% humidity at one point, then sunny and 30% humidity at another point. That is good weather for a spring cold!

Anyway, when I got home from work I felt like pooh. I made some cold remedy tea, which is not my cup o’ tea… hehe I couldn’t resist. Then I proceeded to take a nap from 6pm until 7:39pm. I still felt gross after that, so I made myself some soup and Airborne for dinner.

That did make me feel a bit better. When I woke up Thursday, my throat wasn’t sore, but it did bother me from time to time throughout the day. I’m blaming it on the humidity levels for real now, and crossing my fingers that it doesn’t grow into a full-blown cold.

On a side note, when I was making this soup I thought to myself, “I really need to eat more soup. I love soup. It’s low calorie and so filling.” I am totally adding soup to my grocery list and eating out list for next week. Yum.

Summer Bucket List

I have officially begun thinking about all of the things I want to do this summer. On Tuesday evening I went for a long walk with my friend Julie. On the way home I thought, “I really have to add ‘lots of walks with Julie’ to my summer bucket list”. Consider it the first item I’m adding. I am so freaking excited for consistent nice weather!

What’s Your Dream Job?

This post is very random. I don’t apologize. While Julie and I were walking the other day we talked a bit about our careers. I feel like I’ll always be in the market for a new and better job. Funny, I say that even as I have worked for the same company since I graduated college in 2006. Anyway, Julie told me about a former coworker of hers that quit and took a pay cut to work at Barnes and Noble. That, ladies and gentlemen, right there, is my dream job. I would love to work around books all day! My husband says I would hate it because I don’t like people, but I think he’s wrong. I would love to stock books, help people find books, talk about books, and ring up books for people to buy. It sounds amazing! The hubs also says that books are dying since everyone is using their iPad, Nook, or Kindle to read these days. I also think he’s wrong there. I mean people, including myself, are using their electronics to read, but paper books are still going strong. If you don’t believe me, take a flight somewhere. You will notice that it is about half paper and half electronic. Yep, working at a bookstore is definitely my dream job. Now we just need the hubs to make a crap load of money so we can move somewhere warm where I can work at a bookstore. That would be so ideal!

I think I’ll end this random post right there. I’m off to a Twins game on Saturday, so I think I’ll be back to visit on Sunday. Have a good start to your weekend!

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

Let’s talk about my hiking excursions of this week! I’ve had a blast exploring the mountainous area of Grand Junction, CO. It’s always fun to mix pleasure with business travel. Here’s a little recap of where I hiked each day last week.

Monday – Little Park Trailhead

{Source}

After work on Monday I was super tired from the long day. I had gotten up at 3am to make my 7am flight and then worked until 7pm Central time. I was beat. Instead of heading out hiking right away, I went back to my hotel and rested for a while. Then I used Every Trail to figure out where I wanted to hike. The site said there was a cool mine to hike in around this area, so I headed in this direction. Alas, I never found the mine (or spent more time looking for it other days), but I did find this easy hike. I only had about 40 minutes before the sun went down, so it was perfect. I also almost got lost at one point. Oops.

Tuesday – Devil’s Kitchen Trail – Colorado National Monument

On Tuesday I discovered the Colorado National Monument. Now when I think of a monument, I think of some sort of statue. I had read the Colorado National Monument was the number one place to visit on Trip Advisor, but I didn’t really think a statute was worth visiting. Um, yeah, it’s not a statue! It’s a gorgeous national park! You bet I felt like an idiot when I realized this. Good thing nobody knows.

I found the park’s entrance, paid my $10 for a week pass, and drove around in the park.

{Source}

Since this park is huge, I didn’t get a chance to drive through the whole thing on Tuesday evening. After all, I wanted time to take a hike before it got dark! Where I started my drive is on the lower right hand side by where it says Devil’s Kitchen. Following the red squiggly line, I drove to the Ute Canyon trailhead (in between Ute Canyon View and Upper Ute Canyon Overlook). I thought this would be a good trail to hike. Yeah, it wasn’t. I got a few feet down the path and then realized this was an unmaintained path right along the canyon. As in you could easily fall over the edge and hundreds of feet below into the canyon. My palms are sweating just thinking about it. I turned back to my car. By this time it was getting late for a good hike, so I finally looked at my map of the park. I realized the end of the park was a long ways away (this point was about 20 miles in!) so I wouldn’t have enough time to find a good path to hike. Luckily the brochure the park ranger gave me when I paid him showed approximate times for each trail. The Devil’s Kitchen trail was within the timeframe I had before it got too dark. That’s where I headed!

I’m not really sure why they call it Devil’s Kitchen, but it was a beautiful hike! At first you think it’s going to be easy since it’s just a nice dirt trail. Then you come to rocks. You have to climb up the rocks! At the point when I got to the rocks, I had met up with two guys with two little boys who were also hiking this path. I chatted with them the rest of the time. Apparently CO men are born mountain climbers! There was a point where I chickened out climbing onto a big rock that one of the guys did with a two year old on his shoulders with no problem. I am humbled.

(The guy and the 2 year old)

Wednesday – ½ No Thoroughfare Canyon – Colorado National Monument

Again, I am not sure why this trail is called what it is, but I was sold as soon as I saw there were waterfalls involved in this hike. I <3 water! This hike starts out at the same point as Devil’s Kitchen but then veers off so you are following a small riverbed through a canyon. The brochure said in spots the canyon walls are 400 feet high. I believe it.

There was a lot of rock climbing involved with this hike as well, but not any sheer rock faces you have to scale like Devil’s Kitchen. It is .8 miles to the first little waterfall and 1.5 miles to the bigger waterfall. Actually those numbers are off a little since I pulled them off of a sign that is a ways into the hike. As you can see in the map above, the trail goes through the whole park, but the last half of the trail after the waterfall is unmaintained. I think there is another waterfall back there since the map shows two (they call the first mini one a pool not a waterfall), but I am not so cool with unmaintained trails. In MN maybe, but in CO when unmaintained means you have to climb yourself up a mountain with hardly a trail – no bueno.

At one point I almost crapped out on this trail. There was some animal hiding under a rock (I had seen it dart in out of the corner of my eye), but I didn’t know what it was or if it would come out and bite me. Yikes! I survived and enjoyed the waterfalls. They are a little lame right now since Grand Junction is going through an extreme dry spell.

Thursday – Serpent’s Trail – Colorado National Monument

Thursday I decided to try out Serpent’s Trail for my final hike. I thought this hike looked scary on Tuesday when I had driven by the upper end of it. At the top it looked like it just went around the edge of the mountain so that you were just hanging over the edge. I was wrong and really should have realized how wrong I would be sooner. Serpent’s Trail used to be the main road up the mountain until the 1950s when the current road was built. This should have clued me in that it wouldn’t be too bad. The trail was really as wide as a one-lane road, so much wider than all of the other trails I had ventured. The hike itself was pretty hard for me as it was a hike up a winding trail up a mountain. I was really huffing and puffing from the steepness and the altitude. The top was pretty anticlimactic – I took a picture and starting hiking back down. I even told myself, “that was pretty anticlimactic”. Yes, I talk to myself out loud. Luckily there was nobody nearby to see how crazy I can be.

After I got back to my car, I decided to use the rest of my waning daylight to see more of the park. It turns out there really wasn’t much more to see within a close distance. I drove a bit past the visitor’s center before I decided to turn around. The next town was a good 14 miles away, and it was already dark! It was a good decision for me to be coming down the mountain in the dark though. The views of Grand Junction lit up from the top of the mountain were gorgeous! I wish there was a camera that could take great pictures of lights at night. I didn’t even try since I know they just turn out blurry.

That was it from my trip to Grand Junction! I really enjoyed getting out and hiking every day. I wish everywhere that I travelled to for work would include such awesome things to do!

Be Sociable, Share!

•