San Diego, Day 1: Travel Mess

Yikes, what an adventure it was to get to San Diego today.  Dad and I headed to the airport so that I could meet Meg at the ticketing counter at 5:30 AM.  Early start!  Because it was so early, we hung out in the gate area for 2 hours.  Then the gate agent said that there was a weather delay in Dallas (snow/ice) and they weren't letting anyone in or out of Dallas.  Then the weather delay got cancelled, but enough time had elapsed that we missed our connecting flight to San Diego. 

We finally got to Dallas and sure enough, there was snow on the ground.  Texas gets snow?  I didn't know such a thing was possible!  We went to look at the departure boards and lots of flights were cancelled, including many to San Diego.  Uh oh.  We were able to get on the 6 PM flight out to San Diego, but it was 1:30ish PM when we landed in Dallas which meant lots of time hanging out at the Dallas airport today!  Meg read on her Kindle and I put on a podcast and walked around the airport to get my Fitbit steps in.  One of the benefits of traveling with a friend = no need to carry around stuff with you at all times.

Finally, we got to San Diego and got our bags.  Next step was to wait for the rental car bus to take us to the rental car place.  We waited for 45 minutes and it never came.  Meg was on the phone, trying get a hold of them.  I looked up reviews of the place and it didn't get good reviews so a part of me was not surprised that a bus didn't show up.  We ended up catching the hotel shuttle, eating a late dinner (I got sliders) and calling it a night.  BLAH.  Hey, at least we're here.

Oh, and I wanted to go to San Diego to escape the cold DC weather.  And all I got was snow in Dallas and rain in San Diego. Ok, well, we'll make the best of it!

Happy Birthday, Julie!

My sister Julie got a rude awakening this morning with RJ wanting breakfast.  Meanwhile, I was able to sleep in because a) RJ didn't wake me up and b) OPM announced a 2-hour delay for the federal government, woot

I had a shopping victory this afternoon.  Not that I bought anything or found a good deal, but it's that I didn't buy anything!  I went to Ulta after my last conference call of the day, armed with coupons and I could get double points because it's my birthday month.  They were having a buy 2 get 1 free deal on Loreal products. I've been wanting to try their foundation, concealer and eyeliner, so I had all 3 items in my hands when I went to the checkout line.  The cashier was busy helping someone else, and in that moment of waiting, I was looking at the makeup and didn't feel confident enough that it'd be yellow enough for my skin tone, so I took everything back.  There was a lady in the high end makeup section who pointed out some Stila yellow based foundations and concealers, but they were definitely not at drugstore price.  Blah, no thanks.  I'm not that desperate yet.  I'll make do with what I have.

After spin class, I went to Giant to pick up an apple pie and ice cream for Julie's birthday.  Dad carried out from That's Amore for Julie's birthday dinner.  Good thing I got some exercise in, whew!  I gave Julie a bag of Starbursts and gummy bears (she's more into fruit candy whereas I go for anything chocolate).  I told her I'd get her a zoo shirt to add to my collection while I'm in San Diego.

Here's the card that I made for Julie's birthday.  I was really lucky to have cherry stickers to go with the sentiment.

Card Specs:
Ink: Colorbox chalk ink in Charcoal
Paper: Die Cuts with a View
Stamp: Stampin' Up- A Word for You
Other: Stickles
Stickers: Martha Stewart- Stitched Fruit Stickers
Punch: We R Memory Keepers Corner Chomper
White Gel Pen: Uni-Ball Signo Broad White Gel Pen

RJ the Mischievous Guest

Because of my upcoming trip to San Diego, I dropped RJ off at my parents' house tonight.  He wasn't even there for 30 minutes before he started to get into mischief.  He went to the basement and found where Mom was keeping the cat food for Harry the Homeless Cat.  He promptly chewed a hole in the paper bag and then when Mom put it in a plastic bag, thinking it would fool him, he chewed through that one too.  She had to put the bag in a plastic container to keep him out. 

There were 2 servings left of the beef noodle soup that Mom made for my birthday last week, so while I was there, I ate that for dinner and Mom had the other share. RJ got a few nibbles of beef that Mom gave him.  I'm looking forward to not having him wake me up for breakfast for the next few days!

A Productive Day Off

I usually take the day off for my birthday but I didn't since I had a committee call that day.  Because my boss was traveling today and I had work things under control, I decided to take today off instead. It was a really productive morning:

• Went to the library to return some books 
• Went to the ATM and gassed my car
• I got to the mall around 9:45 AM.  Costco doesn't open until 10 AM, so I went to Panera to get my free birthday pastry (I got a cinnamon roll).  That took just enough time that once I left Panera, Costco was open.  No crowd.  No lines.  It was awesome.  So much better than yesterday!  I bought 2 containers of strawberries and 1 container of blackberries, yum!  Once I checked that errand off my to-do list, I went to Target, where there's an in-store Starbucks and I cashed in on my free birthday drink (caramel flan latte). 

Time to get some steps in.  I walked to the other end of the mall to JCPenney and perused the in-store Sephora.  On my way back to Target, I noticed two ladies walking into Macy's and as I walked closer, I realize that it was my mom and my aunt doing some last-minute shopping before my aunt leaves for Taiwan tonight.  My aunt wanted to buy a necklace and she couldn't decided between gold and a multi-colored one, so she bought both.  Hah, awesome.

Because of the steps that I did at the mall, at home, at the grocery store to get oatmeal, spin class, a quick treadmill cooldown, and a Fitness Blender video, I managed to get over 17,000 steps today.  The last time I was able to reach anywhere near this level was back in November 2014 with 18,422 steps.  The Fitness Blender workout that I did today was "Cardio, Abs, Butt Workout - Fitness Blender's Red Light Green Light Workout."  This one was tough, but I was able to do the whole workout (not like last time where I had to just stop halfway...).  Also, I've been able to reach 10,000 steps every day this month.  Woot! :)

All this effort today was to balance out the cinnamon roll and latte I had today...

Happy Lunar New Year!

The weather was quite snowy yesterday.  The roads were pretty bad so I was thankful that my aunt postponed the Lunar New Year dinner to this afternoon.  Otherwise, no one would have made it.  There was a good balance of food in today's spread: chicken, beef, pork, fish, duck, veggies, yum!

After dinner, I went to Costco to see if I could get some fruit for the next few days. Nope, bad decision. I had a box of strawberries and a box of blackberries in my hands and went to the checkout line, only to see that it spanned almost half of the warehouse. Yikes, no thanks!  I'll come back another time...

I did get about 4,000 steps in though, so the trip to the mall wasn't a bust.

Secret Admirer?

Today was the first day I've been back to the office since last Thursday.  I found this valentine on my desk.  o_0 I asked 3 people that I thought it might be from, but none of them fessed up.  What the heck?  This is a little weird, right?

Happy Birthday to Me!

OPM had optional telework or leave today, so I decided to work from home since I only had 1 important call today.  After wrapping stuff up at home, I went to my parents' house.  I requested beef noodle soup for my birthday dinner and Mom was nice enough to grant that wish.  My birthday also fell on the Lunar New Year's Eve, so other relatives came to the house and brought more food with them.  

 

Julie made this birthday card for me.  Over the past few months, I joked that I wanted to get another black and white cat and name it Stella (who actually happens to be another character from Over the Hedge, where RJ was named from).  Julie drew in my hypothetical cat as well as my real cat.  Ha ha.