Broken resolutions

I don't really want to do a post right now, nor do I have the time, but I am tired of seeing the title of my last post. I really need to bookmark my friends' blogs, but I haven't, and since Drea did away with her bookmarks (the only url I can remember) I need to go to my own blog to get the links.

Anyway, to recap the last few months (I would love to post some pictures, bc I have some great ones, one of these days I hope)....

I got a new job
I am traveling twice as much as I used to (yeah, I know)
I really like my new job
My new job requires a new image.
Sadly I can't fit into any of those items in my wardrobe
So I shop. A lot
And apparently I started recreationly drinking again. Oops

We went to Africa with my family. We have about 200 really amazing pictures and I need to post at least 10 of them

The day I got back, I went to New Orleans for a work conference. I really love that city and wound up having way too much fun. The problem? I was still on anti-malaria medication. Apparently anti-malaria medication and Bourbon St grade drinking do not go hand in hand.

SO I am disappointed to announce that I broke my 2010 New Year's Resolution of "No Debilitating Hangovers in 2010." Amazing I know, I made it through late October. For those who socialized w me last year, that's an accomplishment.

I went ahead and broke it again the following week, just so I could really blame it on myself and not the medication. *grin*

Next up: Being on Time in 2011. Yeah we'll see how long that lasts, the only reason I caught my flight this morning was because the depature time was actually 10 minutes later than I thought it was!

Ok, now on to the blogroll....

Just a little stressed out

I don't often declare myself stressed out, because I'm generally not. And I believe that we as individuals chose to let ourselves get worked up over things that ultimately don't matter.

But here I am. My team is going through the largest crisis we've experienced in the 4 years I've been on the team. Add a quota increase of 30% (our year over year increases are usually 18%, which is aggressive enough), and the pending failure of a project I've been working on the past year. Mix in two separate interview cycles within the same two week period and voila! You have a stressed out Suzie.

So please say a little prayer for my sanity.

It has been decided.

I am retiring on a beach. I came to this conclusion while strolling along Crystal Cove Beach in Newport Beach CA. We've been really good about saving and investing lately, but I was starting to question the present day prudence...is it really worth it? What is that money going to do for us down the road? If I got hit by a bus next week, I'll be kicking myself for skipping that 17-course tasting menu at Joel Robuchon in Vegas.

But the beach grounded me. It gave me a purpose for saving.

My 2010 beaches ytd:

Laguna Beach for my Mom's b-day in January. We also hit Coronado and Pebble Beach in San Diego, what a lovely trip.


The view from my hotel room in San Luis Obispo CA. A "work" trip. I was disgusted to learn that this beach existed a mere 10 minutes from the town/hotel that I have been staying at for the last 4 years. Without me realizing it was there! What can I say, business travel usually means a drive from the airport to the customer site and back to the airport. Wow, glad we had this fun boondoggle trip or I might never have known!

While not a beach, rather the vineyard we toured while on our boondoggle business trip, it's why San Luis Obispo is on my list for candidate retirement locations


Crystal Cove beach, where I came to my conclusion. This beach had a stretch of condemned homes along it, I don't know the story but it reminded me of the abandoned mine shacks in CO. I really liked seeing them hanging out there on the beach.



And finally, Playa del Carmen. Lots of pretty beaches here.






And I kicked off what will surely be a dangerous hobby...vacation home shopping:


So if you know of a good beach that I should add to my candidate list of retirement beaches (currently San Luis Obispo, somewhere in S or N Carolina, or Costa Rica), let me know!

Vegas, 4th of July 2010!!

This weekend my annual summer trip to Vegas is falling on the 4th of July. Come join us! I'll be there the week prior for business, Mike is coming out Friday afternoon and we're returning home Monday mid afternoon. Staying at the new Aria, there are great discounts available here.

So what have we been up to the past 6 months? I did go ahead and buy that cow share for raw milk, along with sourcing all of our beef from a local grass-fed rancher and signing up for a veggie/fruit/egg CSA (where we also get our pastured poultry and pork products). Not to mention all the kitchen tools and gadgets. There is a new science experiment in my kitchen almost every day and I'm having a lot of fun. Right now I'm nurturing a sourdough starter for homemade bread, hopefully I can keep it alive.

In March we took a lovely, low-key and little prepared for trip to Playa del Carmen. 180 degrees from the hyper-organized Italy trip, this time we just showed up and did what we felt like. That happened to be a fairly even split between diving and lounging on the beach. Even though our condo was on "Fiesta Row" (aka, in the heart of the nightlife), we never made it out late at night. There's something about being in bed by 10 pm in Mexico during spring break that makes you feel very "mature." One of the highlights was the ceynote diving, this was the entrance to the underground caverns:


And the view from our balcony:


Gotta run, more later (maybe!)

Not-so-amateur Hour

I'm still going to pilates several times a week, travel schedule permitting. Even though I haven't been doing a great job keeping up on cardio or diet I have good muscle tone lurking under there somewhere. I do know that my time would be better spent jogging, but I don't like jogging. I do like my pilates studio. And they charge me if I don't show up, which is the extra incentive I need.

Lately they starting offering barre classes. As in ballet barre. I am quite possibly the least graceful person I know, and certainly the least flexible. But it's really fun and a great leg/butt workout.

The problem is that I have been gone at least 3 days per week for 7 of the past 8 weeks, and nearly the entire month of December. Out of shape is putting it mildly.

So imagine my horror when today all the regular girls no-show and I am left in class with a professional modern jazz dancer (not sure exactly what that entails, but the girl had legs) and a former ballerina from the Colorado Ballet. Seriously.

Raw milk: know anyone who's bought a cow share?

I am teetering on the edge of going hard core food weirdo. It all started with a bottle of agave syrup that my mother-in-law gave me at Christmas. She recently discovered that she's gluten intolerant and pre-diabetic; she is overhauling her diet accordingly. I did a little research into agave to determine its uses and side effects, for a variety of reasons I have decided to use it very sparingly. But that's not the point. While doing agave research I stumbled upon the concept of "nourishing traditions" and the WAPF approach to food. I found in intriguing, so am awaiting delivery of Sally Fallon's book "Nourishing Traditions" and currently reading Weston A Price's book online.

Aside from unprocessed, organic, whole foods including fruits and vegetables, it all sounds entirely crazy: eat lots !LOTS! of animal fat via butter, milk, and animal meats, including organ meats, minimize grain consumption and preferably grind your own soaked/sprouted grain, and eat lots of fermented foods.

What? Whole milk? Butter? How can that be healthy, that's crazy. Turns out they're not only talking about your grocery store variety of milk and butter. They're talking about non-homogenized, non-pasteurized, RAW milk. Which is illegal in the state of Colorado, and 21 others. But after reading about excitotoxins (primarily aspartame and MSG, varieties of which are in nearly every canned, bottled, or dehydrated condiment, sauce, soup, packaged seasoning, etc. including most skim and non-fat milk) and pasteurization, I'm ready to give up pasteurized milk. And for anyone who knows me, that's huge. I drink a lot of milk.

But what I'm not entirely ready to do is buy a cow share for raw milk. I think I can deal with the extra expense and having to join a co-op for delivery, but I am really unsure about the bacteria side of things. I've found plenty of instances of infection from raw milk, but turns out there are even more people who have gotten sick from pasteurized milk contaminated after processing.

So my question to anyone who might be reading this:
Do you or anyone you know own participate in a cow share for raw milk? Do you know anyone who has gotten sick? Am I a lunatic for even considering this? My mom thinks the answer to the last one is a resounding yes.

In the meantime, I'll be researching food dehydrators and grain mills.

Italy: Milan and Italian Riviera

Ok, I finally sifted through our 1600+ pictures and finally feel ready for a trip breakdown. Kind of sad that it took me two months, but oh well.

It was funny, I spent two months micro-planning the trip, then didn't leave myself enough time at the end. Sarah was kind enough to take us to the airport, and I wound up packing in her car. Seriously. I had to leave a whole bag of stuff that didn't fit into my bags in her car. Then we thought we had plenty of time once we got to the airport, so we had a steak dinner at the new Terminal A Chophouse. Oops, we really didn't have that much time and wound up being the last two people to board. Which means they tried to gate check our bags. I worked really REALLY hard to pack only carry-on bags for our 2.5 week trip and let's just say I did not take to the idea of a gate check. They miraculously found space on the plane, which they sensed was in their own best interest. And yes, it would appear I need to work on my time management skills.

Then we circled Dallas for two hours due to weather. Thank heavens we got those bags on that plane, or else they would've missed the connection. We ran through DFW, managed to catch the connection. Once we landed in Heathrow the door broke so we sat on that plane for an extra two hours. We were planning to catch the Heathrow Express and take a double decker bus around London with our 7.5 hour layer, but ended up only having enough time to go through security and grab a bite to eat. Thank heavens for that long lay-over! Fellow passengers weren't so lucky, I thought we were going to see the emergency door deployed by an angry mob towards the end of that long ground wait.

With that rocky start, we finally arrived in Milan. We enjoyed a leisurely morning, spent some time in the Galleria and the Duomo (the 4th largest church in the world), then caught a train to Genoa.

My first Italian Prada store, in the Milan Galleria:
Because of the crappy dollar, I didn't actually purchase any Italian designer goods in Italy. Bizarrely enough, I was not saddened by this unexpected abstinence. Probably because I was busy buying cheap Italian wine.

Genoa was off the tourist beaten track and was a great way to start off the trip. We detoured here in order to use the free nights we had with Ultimate Escapes . Our room was gorgeous, the hotel was very conveniently located right across from a train station, and it was an authentic, non-touristy aclimation period. The weather wasn't great, so we went to a maritime musuem one morning that wound up being a lot of fun. Yes, Mike is a good sport. The harbor in Genoa:

We did an afternoon trip to Cinque Terre from Genoa, it was 1.5 hour by train, and it was absolutely gorgeous. That morning we woke to lots of rain, decided to do it the next day instead, then belatedly discovered the weather would only get worse. So we hopped on the train several hours later than we should have, but still managed to see most of the CT towns. Because it was pouring in the morning, there weren't very many tourists and the trail was closed. But it cleared up right after we finished a late lunch, so we went ahead and started the hike around 3:30. Since the trail was officially closed, there wasn't much traffic which was really nice.

We started off at the northern end, in Monterossa. The trail from Monterossa to Vernazza is the longest and most challenging, but since the weather was still cool from the rain it was pleasant

The easy starting off point in Monterossa.


Shot of what the trail looks like. It really varied, at some points it was fairly wide and flat, other times it was all stone steps, and then sometimes it was a teeny tiny dirt trail on the edge of a cliff.We're almost to Vernazza, looking back to our starting point Monterossa in the distance:
Looking down into Vernazza, our favorite of the three CT towns we visited:

The backside of Vernazza, as we resume hiking towards Corniglia:

The trail takes you up and down between the towns, just to get from the town of Corniglia to the train station is over 400 steps. All said and done, we did almost 2500 stair steps that day....the equivalent to more than 200 flights of stairs!! Needless to say, we had guilt-free gelato at every stop along the way. Before we started off towards Corniglia, I was told by a French lady with knee high hiking boots and ski poles in broken English that my shoes were too flimsy and that I would break my skinny ankles attempting the hike. Good thing we ignored her, it was not as rugged as non-Colorado folks would describe.

Midway between Vernazza and Corniglia, you can see Corniglia perched on the hill behind us. And now the sun is out, so the 500 m of vertical climbing and 11 km distance is showing.
We had an adventurous midnight train ride back to Genoa that we somehow survived, and were very happy we ventured the rain for what turned out to be a gorgeous day in the Cinque Terre.

Stay tuned for volume 2, Lake Garda and Venice. Or you can skip the dialogue and check out the album posted to the right.