Confronting the fact that I am no longer cool

So last night, a Saturday night, Pete and I stayed at home and put together the puzzle in the picture below. Yes, while most people are out having fun - eating, drinking, and being merry, etc, we sat at home and put together a globe puzzle. It's not even like we usually go out on Saturday nights, and it's also not like we even did anything cool while putting together the puzzle. Like, maybe, pounding shots of tequila while jokingly trying to rearrange the globe. Like, forcing Iraq to be neighbors with Kentucky, and maybe making Lichtenstein one of the Hawaiian islands. No, we drank some nice, tame Argentinian wine. But not too much! We wouldn't want to get too crazy, or like, get a headache ir anything.

Further proof of how uncool we are, we got up the next morning and fixed the puzzle. Because, of course, the cats knocked the peices off the table in the middle of the night. So we carefully rearranged Asia, plopped Ecuador back in it's place, and carefully finished the puzzle. We sat back with satisfied grins, and let Moses proceed to walk all over Russia and dislodge it from the Arctic. This is life for us.

Detox What?

So in preparation for my upcoming vacation, I have decided to get my bod 'Bikini Fit'. It started when I was looking for some interesting books to take with me on vacation at Barnes and Noble a couple weeks ago, when I stumbled across this bikini book. IN 4 weeks it says, I can be ready
to bust out my toned derriere in a bikini, and it would even provide me with some skin-care tips. Imagining myself roaming the beaches of Mexico with my current butt, not optimal. So after the stress of a recent business trip, I decided that I needed to go through with stage one in the book anyway - DETOX.

So I began this process on a Saturday morning, which was very convenient, because if it had been on a Monday - I would have fallen out of my chair onto the floor and slept endlessly. Can
you believe this detox plan allowed for no solid food the first day, just juice. NO FOOD! If you can imagine that stage of hunger where you just get so hungry, that you feel like your stomach is eating itself? It was like that already by noon because, damnit, I am a breakfast person! So I suffered through it, and as I was falling asleep - by 8pm - I looked into my handy bikini bible to see when IN THE HELL CAN I EAT REAL FOOD AGAIN!! It's apparently at this stage that the detox really begins to kick in. So the next day, STILL NO REAL FOOD, but at least some citrusy fruits and apples can be consumed. Anyway, so each day you begin to add something.

Today was raw vegetables and I ate an entire pound of broccoli, and tomorrow I can add brown
rice, then beans, etc - until by Saturday I can start to eat normal stuff again.

But today brought another painfully sad issue to light - I CANNOT HAVE COFFEE!!! Just let it all end now. I am so passionate about coffee and its very existence. But today had been the 3rd day without it, notable especially because today I was back in the office, and my office has a very coffee-oriented culture - a whole new coffe social sphere exists there. The whole gamut of unbelievably complicated Starbucks orders. The most frightening part of this whole being without coffee thing is not just the thought that I cannot have coffee for 4 more days, but - OH MY GOD - what if I don't love it as much anymore? Will I love the smell and the sight and the sounds of the coffee shop? Will I be a different person? Will I miss out on the social interactions that revolve around coffee? Will coffee MISS ME???

Just writing about it makes me a little teary. I am definitely going to savor that cup on Saturday morning...

New York Paris Tokyo Moab London Madrid

Ringing in 2007 Moab style

So Pete and I, and the Williams's went to Moab and rented a great little house. We hiked and talked and laughed and just hung out. It was a nice escape from the city, but DO NOT go to the bars there in the off-season. SCA-RY! Nice, relaxing time though.