I learned to juggle. Well, sort of. I can juggle well when standing in front of a wall, and can only catch the balls 3-4 times when standing in the middle of the room. It is all part of my plan to quit my job so that Nate and I can travel the country with a world-class juggling act.

Today we're going to the European Beer Festival at the Sharp Edge. I have somehow lost 5 pounds in the last 2 weeks by working out with Gilad about 5 times a week. Gilad rocks! And it is easy and fast. Everyone should come over and work out with Nate and I every night.

I played Mickey Mousecapade for the NES today. It was a real challenge. Not really, I finished it in about 15 minutes. It got me to thinking though how you remember weird things and don't even know you remember them. For example, I haven't played Mickey Mousecapade in years... but there is a section in "The Woods" where you have to go through certain doors and open up secret doors in trees to finish the level... I remembered where they all were without even thinking (ok, winter took me 2 tries). Fascinating! Now I am listening to a mix cd that I made probably 3 years ago of songs I haven't heard in as much time, and I remember all the words. Not that that is all that impressive, but I think it is neat how stuff just comes back to you like that.

Oh yeah, I got my hair cut. It's totally smokin'. I always have this picture in my head of the perfect hair cut but can never find a picture that does it much justice and then the hair cutters never know what I'm talking about. I also hate how a lot of stylists give you this blank stare when you say you just want it shorter overall, but more than just a trim. How is that so difficult to comprehend? Just look at my hair and remove the same amount of length proportionately all over my head.

I must go nourish myself now and maybe play a round or Top Gun. See ya.

Posted by Julie at 03:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nate and I went to eat at the new Ethiopian restaurant, Abay, in East Liberty the other day. It was pretty good. You don't use utensils... instead, they give you this crepe-like bread thing that you use to scoop up the food and everyone at the table shares the same platter. We got a sampler platter with 4 different things and it was definitely a neat experience. I would recommend that everyone in the area should try it at least once.

We went to Ford City this past weekend and took Honey Bun for a walk. She got tired and we had to carry her. Poor little scamp. We also watched "Bruce Almighty," which I thought blew, but Nate liked. Finally, we went through round 2 of Operation Throw Crap Away. We threw away at least 4 more bags of garbage... one of which was almost the entire contents of my filing cabinet, which wasn't even "filed" neatly to begin with. Why did I keep all that crap, anyways? Now I am down to 5 folders of actual important things and they are all filed neatly. I found a receipt from like a Sheetz MTO in there. Good thing I kept that!

This weekend, we are going to the "Great European Beer Fest" at the Sharp Edge. Should be fun. Nate's acid reflux is almost gone, so he should be able to participate.

Oh yeah, we went to Whole Foods last night and I stocked up on awesome frozen Amy's Kitchen meals that Giant Eagle doesn't have. They have like 4, but Whole Foods has like 40! I wanted to buy some more pita chips, but we searched the whole store and couldn't find any. You would think Whole Foods would have something like that. Alas, I didn't find any. Boo hoo.

We got new phones today at work and everyone is all in a frenzy about that. Our old phones were these really old multiline ones from like 1976 and our new ones are like these space age crazy things with buttons, lights, and wacky gadgets.

Uh yeah, that was interesting. Last night, my feet were really cold when I got in bed (as usual), so as usual, I politely asked Nate if I could put my foot on his leg. He hates this, but when your leg is warm and my foot is cold, there's really no discussion to be had. So, I gently placed my foot on his leg and he shouted, "Ew! There's grime on it!" I had just come out of the bathroom with bare feet, and I guess the floor needed swept or something. Oh well. They don't call me "Grimy Toes" for nothin'.

Posted by Julie at 03:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Not much new up in here. Nate and I have worked out every day I think for about a week. Except for last Friday. We are going to start our own fitness show called "Two Flailing Monkeys with No Rhythm that Don't Want to Work Much for Results." It's going to be a big hit. I set TiVo to record a variety of fitness shows today on Fit TV and I'm going to pick the ones I like best and do them often. Last night we gave "Gilad's Bodies in Motion" a shot because it happened to be on right when I wanted to do some exercisin'. My mom used to work out with Gilad when I was but a wee one, so I figured if she could do it, then surely I could.

Uh, wrong. Well, sort of. I was a little taken aback because we are so used to "Walk Away the Pounds" where Leslie Sansone babies you and gives you plenty of warning before moving to a new move. Gilad gives no warning, though. He just jumps right into it and he only repeats things like 4 times, so by the time you figure out what the hell is going on, he's already moved on to something else. At one point he was even doing pushups! Within the first like 3 minutes! By this time, Nate and I were so conflustered and scrambling to catch up, that I was laughing so hard that I was crying. Like I can or even WANT to do pushups. I didn't sign up for that. The rest of it was pretty fun though... there were definitely some elements of walking away the pounds in there, so I think Leslie copied from him. I'm going to give Gilad another go tonight even though Nate hates him now.

This all, of course, comes after my Econ midterm of doom at 6:15 this evening. I have a very small fonted help sheet to assist me, but it is one of those deal where you know that even with all the notes, you probably still won't do that well.

Road Rules "X-TREME" is still annoying. Last night, the token homophobe of the group became friends with the gay guy in less than an episode. It's great how problems can be solved that quickly. Some forum posters from Television Without Pity bring up a great point though... why isn't there ever more than one gay person on any Bunim-Murray production? Are they afraid they might get it on or something? As if that would be any different from the crap load of cast members they have screwing each other every week now. Diversity, my ass. My apartment is more diverse than a Road Rules cast and only Nate and I live there.

In other news, everything is all set up for the big move. We decided to get cable internet and signed up for the "deal" at Best Buy, which included 6 months of service at $19.99, a free modem and installation kit (after rebates), and a $50 Best Buy gift card. Pretty cool. I also tried to minimize the phone bill as much as possible, so our new bill should only be about 20 dollars each month, as opposed to like 35 (what it is now). Cable is good to go and so is electric! Now I have about a month to try and minimize the crap in my apartment to move... we donated 4 bags of clothes to Goodwill last weekend and I threw away about 4 bags of crap just from the bedroom. If anyone wants to be on the moving crew, July 10th is the day.

Posted by Julie at 03:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Stop the presses, Nate has acid reflux! That's right... he's been reduced to eating nothing but pasta and bread. I guess that means I will have to eat the rest of the good food in the house. What a sad life I live.

Nate and I have been "walking away the pounds" for the last 3 days, consistently (well, he skipped a day). I think Fit Day is lying to me or something, because everyday it says I burn like twice as many calories as I eat, or close to it, and I haven't lost one pound for a long time. The good part is that I didn't GAIN any pounds on the cruise. Who knows.

One of my summer classes is officially over, which means I only have one for the rest of the semester. Next week I start the IT Leadership Program, which I am slightly annoyed about because I found out today that two of the program meetings are in Wexford and Warrendale! How in the hell am I supposed to get there??? Well, Nate can take me, but still. I was only planning on taking off work an hour early on those days, but Warrendale is like over an hour away! I am peeved that they didn't tell me this information before applying for the program, but oh well. I'll figure something out, but I'm still ticked.

One month until we move! I have a date set for the cable people to come and set us up in the new place and that is key. We also signed up for Comcast cable internet today, so goodbye forever, Verizon. You won't have the chance to screw up my life ever again. Unless it is in the phone area only, which you haven't screwed up that badly for me yet.

I guess I am too antsy to move or something since I set up this stuff a month before we move. I always think that is a good time to do stuff, though. Like, I know some people wait until a week or a few days before moving to do stuff like forwarding mail, but I always like to get things out of the way really far in advance. Otherwise, I stress about it and get annoyed that it is one more thing on my To Do list of life and I have a semi freak out attack and Nate wonders what the hell my problem is. I just wish there was a button you pushed when you were moving and all your bills, magazines, TiVo subscriptions, utilities, etc. were transferred and good to go. There probably is some kind of service like that for lazy rich people who can't figure out how to do anything on their own. Perhaps I should look into going into that business.

I think that we will finally buy frames for our diplomas before we move... maybe. It's only been slightly over a year since I graduated and over a year and a half since Nate graduated, but that's cool. At least I didn't find my diploma in a pile of towels when I was moving, Kim.

There has been at least like 6 people come and look at our apartment so far and no one has rented it yet. Obviously they don't know that it's a deal... and it is even more of a deal now because they lowered the rent like 40 dollars for the next people!!! I guess the "deal" is that rent is cheaper, but now you have to pay for parking which we don't have to do. You win some, you lose some.

Last night I polished and waterproofed four pairs of shoes. It was most invigorating.

New Road Rules started on Monday... what a steaming pile of horse shit. I am either getting older or the people they pick for these shows are becoming more deluded, more provocative, more dumber (heh), and more TOTALLY OBNOXIOUS. And yet I keep watching. I found out today that old seasons of Road Rules (like season 1!) are being aired on Fox and the WB at various times during the week. I set TiVo accordingly.

On an unrelated note, I was having a discussion with Nate the other day how I am annoyed when people think that because we are vegetarians, we must only eat salad. I eat tons of different kinds of food, and I found that on the cruise, the vegetarian non-dinner items were very limited and I was sad about it. As a result, a lot of the times Nate and I could only eat like a plate of rice, some bread, and vegetables for lunch or something, which isn't bad, but wasn't as lavish as the plates the other meat eating variety of people had prepared. So, I think that people think vegetarians eat nothing is because in a lot of social situations like that where the food is clearly not geared toward a vegetarian diet, people see that you aren't eating too much and figure that that is what your diet is like all the time. Just the other day at a work event, there was salad at a little reception we were having, but I didn't want any. Someone asked, "What??? YOU don't want any salad? I guess it's because you eat it all the time." The kind of infuriated me for whatever reason, but I just said no, no I don't. I eat salad like once a week, if that. I know plenty of meat eaters that eat it just as often. In conclusion, Royal Caribbean needs to get a wider variety of food (and HEALTHY food, instead of just pizza, cookies, and ice cream) during non dinner hours. And hey, check out my Fit Day account! You will see that I eat lots of different kinds of food.

Posted by Julie at 03:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yo. Went to see the new Harry Potter tonight. Good stuff.

Anyways, here is the lowdown on the cruise. It was pretty chilly, moreso on the boat than on land. I guess that's how that works. So the whole thing was supposed to be a surprise for Nate's mom. It didn't quite work out as planned though, because she ended up being in line almost right behind us when we were boarding. Oh well - she was still surprised. The whole embarkment process was kind of a nightmare... I guess the Newark port is semi new and they don't really have the act down yet. Also, for some reason, Royal Caribbean now thinks I am a "Platinum" member, even though I've only been on one cruise before. You are supposed to have been on five for that honorable distinction. So because of this Platinum status, Nate and I wandered over to the "Platinum" check in, which ended up being ridiculous. The other people we were travelling with got through the non-Platinum line faster than we did with really no issues. Whatevs.

So we finally got on the boat and set sail at about 10pm Sunday evening. We inspected the stuff around the boat... there was an ice rink, mini golf, a rock wall, an inline skating track, a "street" with shops, and other stuff.

The next day we were at sea, so we went ice skating. That was interesting. It wasn't a full sized rink, but still pretty fun. The ice wasn't very cold... there were puddles of water laying about that Nate flailed in after falling down. Hee hee. Later that night at dinner we quickly found out that the vegetarian options on the menu were pretty much the same as they were the last time we were on a cruise... not a bad thing, but they were like "vegetable pile," "vegetable strudle," and "vegetable stack." Fun! However, the boat did have a Johnny Rocket's which served Boca burgers. That was kind of a good thing because after a few days of eating salad and desserts, I felt like I was lacking some important nutrients.

Tuesday we arrived in St. John, New Brunswick. We went on the "walking tour," led coincidentally by Nate's father. We saw a bunch of mooses - moose statues, people dressed as mooses, and the Canadian favorite - Moosehead beer. We didn't drink any Moosehead beer, but my favorite part about it was that the light version was called "Moose Light." The cool thing in St. John was Reversing Falls. It is this area where the bay empties into the river and twice a day, the water reverses because it fills up too fast for the river to empty or something like that. It wasn't quite as dramatic as I thought it might be... I was hoping for something like Niagara falls to start going backwards. But it was very subtle... I have some pictures where if you look closely, you can see the water flowing a different direction around the rock. Also, Heinz ketchup in Canada uses "liquid sugar" as opposed to the USA's high fructose corn syrup. Good to know, eh?

Several times after we got back on the boat, we tried to inline skate, but the track kept being closed because it was too wet or windy. Hrmph. Nate and I had big plans to wake up and jog every morning. Uh... needless to say, that didn't come close to happening. We did take the stairs a lot though, unless it was more than like 8 floors.

So... the next day we arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Before leaving, I had looked up a vegetarian restaurant that sounded cool to eat at that was close to where the boat was docking... so we hiked it over there and found it. We didn't go right away, though, because we had a "Historic Pub Tour" we had to go on at 1:30. The place closed at 4, so we figured we'd run over there after the tour was over. Unfortunately, we forgot that Halifax is an hour ahead of EST and we were instructed to stay on EST when we got off the boat. So, we ended up getting there at 3 our time, but it was 4 their time and closed. Grr! But about the pub tour.

They had us wear these fisherman hats called "Sou'westers." They claimed it was so they could know that we were part of the group, which I'm sure is partly true, but I think it was mostly to make us look like idiotic tourists in front of the locals. Oh yeah, and following a fully costumed bagpiper from pub to pub didn't help to hide that we were tourists, either. Regardless, it was fun. We got to try some beer that we probably wouldn't be able to get around here. Halifax is a pretty neat city... it reminds me of Pittsburgh except maybe a little "hipper." It had lots of neat little shops... kind of like maybe the South Side in Pittsburgh, but everywhere. They said they had the highest concentration of bars, college students, professors, and churches anywhere in North America (I think).

After the pub tour, we decided to go on a tour of Alexander Keith's brewery, whose beer we had just sampled, since we weren't able to go to the restaurant. That was pretty cool, too. It was more of a mock up of how the brewery looked like 100 years ago. They said it was the oldest working brewery in North America and also is the best seller of India Pale Ale anywhere. Or so they say. They gave us more samples of beer there. By that time we were pretty beered up, so we headed back to the boat and took like a 2 hour nap.

One of the nights on the boat, we went to the ice show. Pretty cool. One of the couples ice skating did the spinning around move like in the movie "The Cutting Edge." If you've seen it, you know what I mean. We also went to the card room which was almost completely taken over by Chinese women playing Mah Jong. It was ridiculous... everytime we went up there, they were taking up every table. I guess they like their Mah Jong. It was kind of interesting because I'd never seen anyone play it not on the computer. Anyways, I found that they had the Survivor board game up there (!!!), so of course we had to play. It ended up being kind of lame. I won though because I'm the ultimate Survivor. Another day, we all played Scrabble, Yahtzee, and Crazy Eights. Board games rock.

We weren't able to do much else on the boat after that because inline skating was like permanently closed and the ice rink had no more open skating times. We sure did fill up on food, though, and hung out with all the towel animals the stateroom attendants made for us everynight. My favorite food was the Indian vegetable curry. Oh yeah, they sold little towel animal stuffed animals in one of the gift shops, and I bought a towel pig for my sister. We named her "Gina" and she is living happily with Kim right now. They have a website - www.towelpal.com. But uh, I just went to it and there isn't anything there! What crap.

So, that's about it. Canada was cool (and chilly). I thought Halifax was a really nice place... I wouldn't mind living there if it wasn't so cold all the time. When we were there, it was probably 50 degrees and we saw girls hanging out outside in tank tops and summertime clothing. I guess that is warm for them.

I have my Ethics final on Monday... jeez! That came up quick. And I have to go back to work. Suckage.

Posted by Julie at 03:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm back from Canada. Kind of tired and I still have to unpack and pay bills and start getting stuff ready to move next month and study for my final next week! Wow! In the meantime, check out the pictures here. They aren't really in any kind of order or anything. I also have a few video clips of Nate and I being windy and ice skating, etc. More later.

Posted by Julie at 03:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)