Jeff City!

This weekend, Elphie and I made a trip to Jefferson City, and we drug Russell along with us. We had a great time visiting with the Stokes and did lots of adventuring in the outdoors.

We spent some time on the Katy Trail...

We went to Binder Lake...

We even went to prison!

...kind of. We had dinner at a place called Prison Brews. Very tasty food, good drinks, and a boccie ball court. Here are Maria and Anna trying on Russell's hat.


We also went to the state capital! We walked around inside, learned a lot about Missouri history and got to dress up in clothing that the settlers wore. Good times, indeed. Here's a picture of Russell and me at the back of the capital.

And, of course, me and Elphie at Binder Lake.

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! Enjoy your Cinco de Mayo :)

Life...le sigh.

It's been a pretty bum-tastic couple of days here in my life.

Yesterday:

I did a lot of bumming around (so nice!).

I got a new phone. Good bye Blackberry Storm, hello Samsung Rogue! It's a touch screen but it also has a pop-out QWERTY keyboard so now texting will be so much easier!

I went to Borders and only bought one book, Such a Pretty Girl. This was a struggle for me, but I'm trying to limit my book buying until I catch up on reading all the other books I have... And I'm half way through the book; so-far, so good.

I watched Race to Witch Mountain and it was a pretty good movie. Believe it or not, the Rock is a good actor.


Today:

I woke up. Yay.

I did not eat breakfast. This is a rare occasion in my life because breakfast IS the most important meal of the day! It kick starts your metabolism and gets you going for the day, but I just wasn't feeling it today. I did, however, have a nice cup'a joe.

I realized that Disney's Oceans comes out today and am super bummed that I have to work tonight so I can't see it until Saturday or Sunday. LAME! :(

I realized my dog is a bum. She insists that I wake up to take her outside and feed her and then passes out on the couch. Really Elphie? I could have slept through the WHOLE morning!

I re-discovered the thermal feature in Mac's Photobooth. Pictures are so much cooler in the thermal setting!

Wonderdog is out for the count...Guess I'll have to save the world on my own, again.


Until next time my friends...

Puppy Dog Face

This is the face I see everyday when I leave for work...

Talk about sad puppy faces.

Eat, Pray, Love Trailer

I am a wanderer. If you can't tell by the blog, I choose to live a life less ordinary than most. Though the past 9-ish months have been a bit more ordinary than I'd like, I do my best to roam and follow my heart and somehow pay my bills in the meantime. Ever since I read Eat, Pray, Love, I have wanted to travel and write a book about it (or have several magazine articles published about my adventure). Getting paid to write and travel? Count me in! (Actually, I didn't know a person could get paid to write about traveling until I read this book. I'm a little slow sometimes...)
Anyway, Eat, Pray, Love is a fantastic book and it made me want to travel around the world for a year and learn some new skills all the while learn more about myself. Well, Hollywood has once again turned a fabulous book into a movie, but we'll have to wait and see if it's any good. The trailer doesn't look too disappointing. What do you think?:

Updates on Life

I super-suck at updating my blog this year. Sorry peeps. Highlights of the past month:

-Weather. St. Louis weather in February and March is NOTHING like the Keys. I was in Florida a year ago...I still kick myself for leaving sometimes...Anyway, the weather is finally starting to make a turn for the better here in St. Louis which means lots of playtime and walks with Elphie, which I know she LOVES. This winter has been pretty harsh and I've been a wuss this year and haven't been walking her as often as I should, leading to lots of pent up doggie energy. Not good. I've been trying to take her with me on my errands to get her out of the house and maybe make up for not going on as many walks as we should have. Thankfully the weather is getting bearable enough to wander around the park for an hour or two and completely tucker us both out. Today we saw a bunch of ducks mating in the pond at the park (it was really quite sad, actually) and we ran up and down some hills. Good times. Thanks for warming up earth!

-DRIVING! I can officially drive a manual vehicle now :) Thanks to Maria's kicking car, the Kennedy parking lot, and some patience from Ron and Maria, I understand and am fully capable of driving a manual :) It's pretty exciting because I can cross it off my list of things to do this year/in my life AND I my hottness rating went up by 3 or 4 points. Eat you hearts out, gentlemen.

-Knitting: Hasn't gotten as far as I thought it would. I'm working on a belated birthday project that I messed up and am now starting over. Le suck. Hopefully, I can hunker down and get it done so I can keep checking off projects from my list before the weather gets tooooo nice to even spend ANY time inside knitting

-Social life: Um, check! I have gone out so much recently, and it's awesome! I actually feel like I'm 23 years old! I've gone to some blues bars downtown, gone to the city museum, played a lot of pool, have been building my tolerance back up (I cant believe I let it get so low!), and have been going to bed after 1am or later very often smelling like a bar. Though I dont particularly enjoy the last part because I LOATHE the smell of bars and smoke and I absolutely LOVE sleep, I'm grinning and bearing it because I haven't gotten to hang out with friends and people my own age in quite some time. It's very refreshing :)

-Insurance: I've been going to the doctor a lot recently to get updated on shots and get over sickness (I had some nasty sinus problems there for a while). THANK GOODNESS FOR INSURANCE!! I used to pay anywhere from $40-$75 for prescriptions. My most recent prescription totaled to $9. NINE. My jaw is still wide open.

-Kickboxing: I recently joined The Boxing Gym to get myself into shape for summer time. I really need to get in there more though! I've been eating so many carbs this past week and not working out nearly enough. Tsk Tsk Tsk. The classes are great and so are the instructors and everyone that comes in to work out. I now know how to properly punch, so watch out! And hopefully when summer rolls around, I'll have some sweet abs to show off (no promises though).

-Book Smarts: I spent 2 hours in Borders yesterday and I loved every second of it. I'm going to have a library in my house some day. From my Borders adventure I bought the old school versions of Alice in Wonderland (the movie was fabulous, btw. Go see it in 3-D!). I also purchased a book of crosswords to exercise my brain since my work is slightly mindless. I don't want to lose what's left of my good brain cells. That should keep me busy for a little while.

-Quality Time: I've been spending a pretty decent amount of time with some of my favorite people! Hooray! This includes, but is not limited to: birthday parties, learning to drive stick, motorcycle rides, Sunday night dinners (when I'm not working), playing wii, laying on the living room carpet on lazy days. Good times indeed.

And last, but certainly not least, tomorrow is St. Partick's Day! Enjoy being Irish, or at least pretending to be!

Until next time my friends...

Knitty.

Apparently February is my month to discover and declare new goals for this year/my bucket list...

I like to knit. Duh. But lately, I've been so distracted with work and sleep (I loooooove sleep!) that I haven't been able to keep up with working out, playing with Elphie, reading, AND knitting. What does that mean? It means I need to make another goal to get some of this stuff done!

Not only am I going to knit a pair of socks this year, but I'm going to finish all the knitting projects I started last year and left unfinished because I got distracted. Here's a list of projects I need to complete from last year:

-DONE: Donation hat. Just a little something to help out a kiddo who needs to keep his ears warm this winter.
-Blanket. It's gonna be big and soft and purple! I'm already half way there.
-Pot holders (for the kitchen!). That's right - a ridiculously easy project that I never completed.
-A bikini. Believe it or now, I'm knitting a bikini. I started it last summer with the hopes of wearing it before the chill of autumn set in, but it got thrown to the wayside. Now that I'm taking a kickboxing class, I'll have even more motivation to finish it for summer.

I also accrued a few knitting books last year that I hardly looked at, so I'm hoping to knit at least one thing from each book this year too. I'll keep you posted on that one.

Enjoy the snow wherever you are! Until next time...

Facial Hair February!

Ok, so I obviously don't take part in Facial Hair February, but I think it's a fun thing for guys to part-take in during this slightly boring month. Much like No-Shave November, men with the ability to grow facial hair do not shave during November, same with February. Gentlemen, liberate yourselves from your razors and let the facial hair be free!

But Facial Hair February was not why I wrote this post. Nay. I have started a kickboxing class. This morning was my first class and it KICKED MY BUTT. It took about an hour of my arms to stop shaking because there are muscles I used today that I've never used in my life (I don't normally go around punching and kicking people, believe it or not), and my arm still shakes when I hold up my cup to take a drink of water. I haven't hurt this good in a while! I figured it would be good to start now so that I will look awesome come summer time :) even though my instructor (a 50-something woman who literally looks like she might be in her 30's at most) told me I had nice legs (it's a start!). Come summer time, the rest of me should look great too.
Side note: I've had enough energy since the class to not have any coffee today. Yay endorphins!

[Mt. Rainier National Park]

The next reason I wrote this post is to officially declare a recent addition to my bucket list: I am going to visit every national park in the United States. It's definitely going to take a lot time to accomplish this goal, but I'm up for the challenge. I figure that I need to visit 1-2 national parks a year to keep up and visit them all before I croak. If I can take a big trip once a year, I should be able to hit up a couple of parks in one fowl swoop. At least I didn't say I was going hike all of them...

Until next time my friends...