My Life, As Told Between (Baby Cakes') Naps

In case you’re interested, here are some of the dresses I tried on and actually liked!

Update: Since my friend CH mistakenly expressed an interest in my wedding stories, I thought I’d explain why wedding dress shopping was so much harder than I had anticipated. Apparently most places require you make a reservation – which I didn’t realize and when informed didn’t understand. Since we only had an hour to spare (and I don’t want to spend $1,000+ for my dress), we popped into David’s Bridal, a big chain store that could accomodate walk-ins. The reason appointments are necessary immediately became obvious. Many of the dresses require petticoats and bustier bras (provided by the store), are heavy, delicate, and/or cumbersome. Getting those suckers on and off is a labor intensive endeavor so someone is assigned to you who gets the dresses and helps you put them on and take them off while your friends sit on the sideline ready to provide commentary. It’s a little unnerving to be the center of that much attention, but maybe it’s good preparation for the wedding?

Happy Halloween all! Hope everyone’s enjoying their week! We’ve been super busy lately, but mostly with fun things. Friday night, we had dinner with a couple of T’s friends who were staying with us as they had a wedding in LA that weekend.

Saturday morning I did an 11 mile run by myself because I woke up too late to join my running group. Saturday night we went out with KA and some other friends in Hermosa, which was a blast. The girls dressed up as sailors and T came as a low-budget pirate (because the Halloween stores were ransacked we only managed to buy the pirate accessories but not the actual costume, so he wore jeans and a white t-shirt).

Sunday I went wedding dress shopping with some friends, which wasn’t nearly as horrible as I was anticipating, but a lot more involved than I thought. I even found some dresses I liked. Afterwards, T and I went to a pumpkin carving dinner party. But being the old fogies we are, by the time the dinner portion of the evening was over, it was so late we were too tired to do any carving. Fortunately, most of the other guests felt the same way so our hosts kindly gave us all cute little pumpkins and a carving set to go. T and I carved ours last night (well, T carved while I hurriedly threw together dinner since it was getting really late):

Went to the UCLA game Saturday with a bunch of T’s college friends who were visting from out of town. I’m not much of one for football – I brought a book, which I finished during the game – but it was a beautiful day and I had a great time just hanging out. I even hear we (UCLA) won. =) Afterwards, we ate at Hurry Curry, which was super yummy!

T and I tested our hosting skills by having everyone over at our place for most of the weekend. Lack of seating aside, I think it went pretty smoothly. We even managed, with the much appreciated help of a couple of his friends, to prepare breakfast for eight on Sunday morning!

Between the game and the race in Santa Monica taking over my usual running route, I didn’t make it for my long run this weekend and instead settled for doing 4.5 miles at the gym Sunday morning, which did not put a dent in the massive amount of food I’d consumed over the weekend. Fortunately, after breakfast, and some more football watching, we went biking. It was the first time we’d gone biking since we’d moved. The bike path and beach were relatively empty and the weather was perfect. It was the great way to end the weekend.

• Went on a great 11 mile run with my friend the Teacher this past weekend!
• Visited a beautiful possible wedding location both T and I loved. It’s a scenic ranch in the Malibu mountains. We’re looking at August ’08 and are leaning heavily towards a Friday wedding, since it’s so much cheaper, but we’re worried about the inconvenience to the guests. Wedding planning is hard. I’ll feel so much better once we book the venue.
• Bought some fantastic hand soap from Target this weekend. I’d been wanting to try it ever since I read about it. I bought all three scents available and the first one I used (Almond Flower) smells great. The soap container feels nice, looks beautiful and is biodegradable. The soap lathers wonderfully, is creamy without leaving a film and isn’t antibacterial! Yay for Method hand soap! =)
• Finally got an overhead light up in our bedroom without too much hassle. We’re slowly but surely getting our condo in order.
• Saw a beautiful bridemaid dress in one of the sample wedding albums we viewed. I’m now on a hunt to find out the dress’s designer and exact color. Unfortunately, googling “grayish blue bridesmaid dresses” hasn’t proven particularly useful, although it has exhausted my investigative arsenal.
• Hung out with T’s friends visiting from New York and their adorable 1.5 year old son who will hopefully be our ring-bearer. =)

How cute is this dress from BR?  Sadly, they’re out of my size online and it doesn’t seem to be available in any nearby stores.

We’ve been “working on” (i.e., messing up) the condo. This past weekend, we spent most of Sunday trying, without much success, to install overhead lights into prewired slots, a seemingly simple task. Except somehow, when we do things, the simplest tasks turn into minor disasters. After much cursing and fumbling, we concluded that one of the lights we bought was clearly defective (and hence it was not our fault we couldn’t get it on properly) and that the other light was meant to be slightly crooked. Oh well. At least we’ve got a bit more light in the place now. Also, a few more gaping holes until we purchase non-defective lights.

Between household chores (like laundry, installing lights, and battling against an invading army of ants), T and I went for a 5 mile run this weekend around the bluffs behind our neighborhood, which was fun. I also went to a Pilates class taught by my friend J and while I’ve done mat Pilates before, this was my first class with the Pilates machines.* I’m sore all over today. But in a good, I-feel-my-muscles-developing kind of a way. Can’t wait for the next class . . . which is unfortunately after my 12 mile run next weekend, so we’ll see if I survive to write about it. I have not been working out as much or eating as well as I should lately.

When not working out or puttering around the house, we did some reading (I finished a series recommended by a coworker while T started The Golden Compass), hung out with T’s brother (I watched while they played Halo 3), forced some of our friends to watch Serenity with us (one of my favorite movies), and caught up with one of my Quad friends who happened to be in town. (T also went to the UCLA v. Notre Dame football game, but considering the horrible outcome of that game, he’s choosen to pretend that it never happened.)

*Funny story. Upon being told that someone whistled at me on my way to Pilates (I realize I should be offended, but sometimes a good whistle is appreciated – especially when one is feeling a little tubby!), T’s response was a confused, “Why?”