Our Married Life

Everyone’s been asking how was our vacation. AMAZING. In my usual style, I’m going to document each moment here bit by bit. I meant to bring a journal with me, but left it at my desk at work, so I guess I’ll have to draw things from memory. We have over 1500 pictures but I don’t want to bore everyone with them, so I’ll just post the ones that I like or that captures the essence of it all.

Flight to Rome. At the last minute the agent changed our flight for a better deal. So we got to fly Lufthansa for the first time. The plane ride was smooth. We tried to sleep the entire way there, but of course it was rather cramp and uncomfortable. The service on the plane was definitely great. They serve alcohol for FREE! I had a couple of cups of wine hoping that it would help me sleep, but of course that just gave me a headache. At least the movie selection was good. I fell asleep here and there, but it certainly wasn’t refreshing. 1/3 of the way there, I just sat there tracking the flight on the monitor…”only 4 hours to go”….

We finally landed in Frankfurt but had to board almost immediately. For some reason, being in Germany scared me. Maybe because everyone was 1 foot taller than I am?

Anyway, after 1.5 more hours on the second flight, we finally landed in Rome. We grabbed our baggage and found our driver. Unfortunately we had no change, so we couldn’t tip the driver :-(. The same thing happen with the Parking Spot driver. All we had with us were Euros on the way to the airport. :-(

Despite feeling like a jerk we finally arrived at the hotel. We stayed at the Visconti Palace Hotel which is somewhat modern compared to everything else in Rome. It was built in the 70s. The rooms were small, but I expected that. The one thing that mattered was that the bathroom was modern and clean, which it was. It even had a bidet, which grosses me out by the way.

We unpacked, changed, and decided to explore the neighborhood. First up was lunch. Since it was already quite late for lunch, we wanted something small. After walking up and down the streets we found a tiny pizzeria. You pretty much had to stand and eat. The pizza didn’t look very tempting, so Brian got a calzone stuffed with sausage and rice, and I got some weird fried thing. I rate it a 1 out 5. Actually it was rather gross. It was cold and flavorless. Ick. Here’s a picture of Brian trying to be nice. “Mmmmmm”. With the disappointing lunch, I was hoping we’d find something better for dinner.

With that said, I’ll have to finish day 1 later…

Cursive

What do you all think? I certainly remember having to practice cursive in elementary school. Today, my writing skills consists of cursive mixed with prints but it’s as messy as it can be. Is typing on the keyboard causing my penmanship to fade? I remember in HS trying to write as neat as I can with the big curlz. I could care less today. I still use paper to take notes and whatnot, but I can see how writing wouldn’t be necessary 10-20 years from now. It’s strange to see that the need to handwrite something is starting to fade…

I have this thing about vacations where I want to experience EVERYTHING in of course a very short period of time.

An ideal vacation for me is to experience the sights, the food, the culture, and of course relaxing the whole time. I’m not sure how any of that can be balanced especially if you throw in relaxation.

I’ve been putting together an itinerary, hour by hour itinerary. I’ve even gone to google maps to see what the scenary will look like if we walked from point A to point B. I am after a project manager :-p. Maybe I should stay home and enjoy the trip from my laptop ;-)

Brian on the other hand thinks it’s silly and refuses to acknowledge it. He thinks we should just play it by ear when we get there. We already have 50% of the activities planned. UGH. I don’t want to spend the trip trying to figure out what to do or where to go. If I just lay it out, we can always veto things when we get there.

I’ve got the first two days planned out. Last night I had asked him if we should plan having breakfast out on the third day because we have something at 2pm. But since breakfast is already included with the hotel, should we save the money and eat there? He looked at me as if I was insane. I get his point…

This will be an interesting trip :-)

I haven’t written in awhile. Mainly because I’ve been trying to keep myself from pulling my hair out from all the other daily stress. You know, work, parents, blah blah.

It’s not bad at all, but I do prefer to come home and zone out in front of the tv or cooking for my husband or reading.

I’m currently reading Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. Life as a chef is quite dysfunctional. I’m glad I don’t aspire to be one.

I have been trying to stick to my diet, but I’ll have a failure every now and then. I certainly can’t make good choices when we go out. So I need to bring my lunch in more often and cook at home more.

My birthday is in 2 weeks. I thought about doing a dinner with some friends, but I don’t think I’m going to keep it low key. The stress of trying to plan anything (although shouldn’t Brian be doing that?) is unnecessary.

Anyway, we just paid off our trip and now I get to go shopping for it. The weather will be nice a cool. Hopefully it won’t be too cold. We need another carryon bag and Brian and I vehemently disagree on what to buy. He wants the five star quality and I could care less. Bah. Maybe we should stop at one of the outlet stores and see what they have to offer.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got.

Michael Jackson is dead? How sad, and random. He’s quite possibly the most famous person in our generation. RIP, MJ!

Yesterday was a good day. I am simply exhausted this morning. I just want another hour or two to sleep.

I went to an everlast shadowboxing class after work. I noticed my shoulder isn’t hurting has bad anymore. I hurt it while tripping and falling against a wall several weeks ago and was in incredible pain. Now it just feels sore. I need to do some shoulder workouts this week to strengthen it.

Anyway after shadowboxing I did 15 minutes of abs and then decided to stay for the dance class for 30 minutes.

So basically I burnt 800 calories yesterday, and ate 1400 calories.

Even though my family is here, I don’t think I will be breaking my diet since they all eat relatively healthy. But we’ll see about that…

My next goal is to get better about taking my vitamins.

I figured if I posted regularly about my workout, I would update more.

Yesterday was a failure. Not only was it weigh in day, which I did not lose but gained, but I also didn’t work out. My excuse was I had to go pick up my car from the dealershp, and by the time I was near the gym it was already 6:30. I was close, but Brian talked me out of it because he was hungry. So instead we had pizza because I was too lazy to cook. Of course I woke up this morning with a bad tummy ache. I tried to do some video at home, but it was already 9:30 and I wasn’t feeling it. It’s hard to be motivated when it’s hot.

So today, I am back on track and will make up for it. I’m thinking of doing two classes today, Shadowboxing and some dance class. I might skip the dance class and do some weights.

Wow, sorry for the lack of updates. Things have been slow, so I had nothing to post about. My entire family is visiting us over the next two weeks so that should be interesting. I haven’t seen my brother’s family since our wedding day. We really ought to make a trip up to the northwest one of these days. It’s so beautiful up there. My sister and her family is also visiting. From the pictures I’ve seen, her girls have grown so much. Melody, the oldest is already 15, yikes!

Brian and I have been trying to get healthier. I know we talk about it all the time, but this time we’re pretty serious. He and I bought lost 12 lbs each. I’m doing the biggest loser competition at work and so far I’ve managed to get 3rd place. My coworker friend and I have been working out like crazy over the past 4 weeks. I can definitely tell my endurance is getting better since my heart rate isn’t as high when I’m doing plain cardio. I need to start mixing in more weights so that I can increase my metobolism. We’re also trying to eat cleaner and have the appropriate serving. The only challenge with eating is finding the time to cook the proper food since I don’t get home from the gym until after 7 and sometimes 8. I think once our weekends slow down, I can probably try to plan it better. I have been consuming lots of fruit since it’s in abundance. I told Brian that if I reach my ideal goal, I should get a new car. :-)

Speaking of car, my check engine light is on again. Grrr. Hopefully whatever they find tomorrow isn’t a big deal.

Leah and Reesey are doing well. Reesey spent 2 weeks with her grandparents. We went and picked her up over the weekend after visiting with Brian’s new nephew. Baby A is tiny by the way. Congrats to the new parents.
Speaking of kids, we still haven’t made plans yet, but we keep going back and forth with baby names. It seems our first choice has gotten too popular. My mom keeps pressuring me to start but we both still feel so young. Everyone should check back in a couple years to see where we are with that thought.

Work is still the same. Nothing new for either of us. I’m still very grateful that we’re both in a good position both financially and with our jobs.

In other news, we finally booked our big trip to Europe. 11 days in Rome and Paris in Sept. This is our anniversary gift to each other I suppose even though it’s a few weeks after. I’m super excited, but I guess it hasn’t sunk in yet since it’s still far out. Of course this is the first of many trips.

My next goal is either Japan or China. But I think we may have to make a trip to Cambodia and Thailand since that’s where I’m from and all.

I’ll be sure to blog our excursion while we in Europe.

Other than that, that’s all I’ve got. I’ll try to post more, and hopefully I’ll have interesting things to talk about.

I leave you with pictures of us at a Central Market cooking class enjoying a souffle we help make. I totally recommend their courses. Very entertaining and the hands on aspect is well worth it.