The Roof is on Fiya

So zumba last night was pretty terrible. I want to get this teacher fired. Seriously. Like how can you come to class SO unprepared? It takes 3 minutes to put your GD music in order. I tried to time how long we spent just standing around but I lost track. UGHHH I think I'm gonna have to pick another Thursday night activity :(

The one upside to zumba yesterday was this hysterical experience that I just have to share. So one of my favorite zumba songs is this Lil' Jon and Pitbull remix -- Floor on Fire (watch the video here, this song is awesome)

There's one older woman who is always in the class. I love her -- she's so enthusiastic and always gives it her all. I can only hope I'm that awesome when I grow up. So this song comes on and she gets reeeeeallly into it. Every time the chorus came on she would sing along at the top of her lungs and add in a word that is NOT in this remix.


So just imagine, this lady gettin' down to lil' jon and screaming "LET THE MOTHERFU*KER BURN" every five seconds. It was so funny I could not stop laughing.

Anywho...I'm so happy it's Friday! I'm going to Burlington, VT which I'm super excited for!

Tonight I am planning on doing some running at the gym, cleaning my disaster of a room and packing up a little bag for VT. Can this day be over? Please?!

I hate Sephora

Yeah. I do. I work next to a mall, and I've adopted a new rule every time I enter it: wear headphones without the sound on. This way, everyone thinks I can't hear them so they avoid me and don't try to speak to me. The reason for no music is because I tend to like the music played in the stores! Especially H&M, I keep my finger perpetually on sound hound when I'm in there.

Anyway, back to Sephora. A few months ago I went in looking for something new. I had very strict instructions for the saleswoman I approached: I want a tinted moisturizer, I want it to be oil free, I want it to be made for those lucky people who are prone to bad skin, I want it to be less than or equal to $30. The last one was a big one. I was struggling with the $$ a few months ago and really stressed this to her.

Despite everything I said she ignored that, and somehow convinved me that getting a tinted moisturizer wasn't going to do anything if I wasn't using the right face wash, and getting the right face wash would do nothing if I wasn't using the right toner, and getting the right toner would do nothing if I wasn't using the right night cream, and so on and so on. I managed to put my foot down somewhere in the middle of there and left spending about $85. UGH.

I ended up with:
Philosophy Hope in a tinted moisturizer ($39)

and Ole Henriksen Aloe Vera Deep Cleanser ($30)

The moisturizer is okay, but a bit too much for my oily skin. The cleanser SUCKS. It has some pretty good reviews online but seriously, my skin has never been worse. I'm pissed because I had to give it a long enough try where now its a.) too late to return it to Sephora and b.) has turned my face into something resembling a character from the Walking Dead. And no I'm not talking about the live ones.

Anyway, I decided yesterday to just forget it and went back to CVS to buy my usual $4 face wash. Hopefully this thing will work its magic soon. I went back into Sephora because I needed new foundation and this time I was prepared. I did my research online first, nobody was going to be asked for help. I had my silenced head phones in place and ready to do their part. Everyone who approached me was respectfully ignored, and I achieved my goal.

In your face, Sephora.

Watermelon & Feta Salad

The first half of this week has been exhausting. I'm so happy it's Wednesday!

Last weekend was pretty fun. I had to work really late on Friday so I just went home and went to sleep. On Saturday I spent the day lazing around....reading, watching TV, cleaning up a bit. I went to the gym for about an hour which was huge! I haven't been to the gym on Saturday in ages so I felt really good about that. Plus, my gym is starting a new dance class on Saturdays at 12 that I'm SO excited for!!

Saturday night I went over to my friend's place in Coolidge Corner for a bit. Always nice to see everyone!

On Sunday afternoon TKO, my roommate and I went to brunch at Stats down the street. I have been there for drinks a few times but haven't gotten food in a while. The service was pretty crappy but I got this amazing salad!! It was a spring mix with watermelon, feta cheese, cucumbers, sliced almonds, grilled chicken and a white balsamic vinaigrette. The presentation was awesome and it was sooo delicious.

I've always wanted to try a watermelon-feta salad but have been scared. I am definitely going to be recreating this on my own. I am obsessed with watermelon but it's too heavy to carry from the grocery store haha. I will have to figure something out.

Oh and I started Book #8, The Scorch Trials (the 2nd book in the Maze Runner Trilogy) and am about halfway done. Today I bought 4 kindle books that were on sale on amazon! I cannot resist.

Introducing...

...the world's most boring dinner.


Last night I had to work really late and when I got home all I wanted was pasta. I made some whole wheat spaghetti with garlic salt, olive oil and parmesan cheese. Whenever I make a real single serving of pasta (2 oz.) I'm always so surprised. It really is SOOO little. When I don't measure it out I'm easily eating 3 or 4 servings. Crazy.

On the side was a pretty crappy salad...just some romaine with bleu cheese dressing.

It's pretty gloomy outside which is making me want to stay inside all day. I haven't gotten much exercise in lately so I really need to go for a run/get to the gym...that's the plan.

Anyway the real purpose of this post was to finally write about what I gave TKO for his birthday. The kid loves sweets and so I brought him to Cafe Fleuri's Chocolate Bar in the Langham Hotel. The bar is only open on Saturdays during brunch, which is a little strange, but we had a great time!! Get ready for tons of mouthwatering pictures...


chocolate fountain!


cotton candy!











The place was like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory on Steroids. I would HIGHLY recommend it to any dessert lovers. I summed up the whole experience in my yelp review, here: http://www.yelp.com/biz/cafe-fleuri-boston#hrid:Vcqqz_sR0rmHWDGg5ZfdAQ

Now it's time to get back in bed for a bit :)

Buffalo Chicken Lettuce Wraps

I have lots of things to update on...but I'm going to put it off just a little bit longer because I don't have the pictures available to me at the moment. So in the meantime, a few random things:

I finished the Stegg Larson trilogy and started book #7, The Maze Runner by James Dashner. This is another trilogy so I have the next 2 books lined up. It's so funny how much of a releif reading series gives me. When I'm about to finish a good book and don't know what's next I start panicking. At least that will be put off for a while longer now. I'm flyyying through this book (it is reading level age 12 after all) and should be on the next one pretty soon.

I need to get my books in order. I have no idea if this is really #7 or #6 or #8 or #20.

Last week TKO bought me these gorgeous flowers. I haven't been able to stop looking at them and I want to freeze them so they will never die!!



Last night's dinner was so awesome. On Tuesday night I cooked up a pound of chicken in the crock pot and then shredded it. I cooked the chicken in only water with salt and pepper. Apparently I made my own chicken stock without realizing it, but it had some weird floating chunks in it so I dumped it down the sink. Next time!

Anyway, last night I decided to make some Buffalo Chicken Lettuce Wraps!


I mixed up the chicken with some of Frank's RedHot Buffalo Sauce, then scooped it into three big romaine lettuce boats. Next I added some chopped celery and cherry tomatoes, then drizzled some fat free bleu cheese dressing on top. This was soooo good, and so much less messy than I expected. I can think of a million varieties to this and am so excited!!

I had some green grapes on the side, which I never buy but they were on sale. They made my mouth feel super weird after eating them. After some googling I read that grapes are the most "toxic" fruit you can buy because they're the most heavily sprayed with pesticides. There's a chance I could have had some sort of allergic reaction to the pesticide. That makes me nervous...I think I'll stick to organic purple grapes for now on.

Breakfast today was some Kashi Heart to Heart cereal (an old fave) and an apple.


Lunch was packed last night and will be a wrap with turkey, lettuce, tomato, banana peppers and pickles, plus a banana and some pistachios on the side. I'm trying a new type of wrap today and I hope it doesn't suck.

I'm going to a reception for work tonight and don't know what they're serving for dinner or where it even is. Better find out some info stat!

Catch ya later.

Iceland Day 4

The last of the Iceland updates :(

On day 4 we decided to sleep in a bit and then catch a bus to the Blue Lagoon on the way to the airport. Of course we waited too long and headed down for the buffet breakfast after it was already closed. I really don't know why we couldn't remember what time breakfast was.

I'm not sure what time we arrived at the Blue Lagoon but we were on the bus for about an hour. Guess who was asleep?

When we got off the bus we locked up our suitcases and walked down the pathway to the entrance. The location of the lagoon was so weird. Driving up all you could see in every direction was gigantic lava fields. There were no houses, buildings or people anywhere.


We got on a pretty long time until we got up to the counter where we received towels and robes. This was the worst part of the day -- there were no instructions and TKO and I had no idea where to go. It was bizarre. Even more bizarre was that everyone around us seemed to know what they were doing. We took a wild guess and headed into our separate locker rooms hoping we'd eventually meet somewhere on the other side.

I put away my things, changed into my suit, and bypassed the "mandatory" pre-lagoon shower. It was so cold outside!! TKO and I hung up our towels and ran out into the lagoon, which to my surprise was actually hot! I was so sure that I wasn't going to be able to stay out long and didn't believe it would actually be hot. The first thing you notice about the Blue Lagoon is how BLUE it is (duh). The water is really cloudy and you can only see a few inches below it. There is steam rising off of it and the whole thing just looks fake, in a beautiful way :)


I wish we could have brought our cameras out but it wasn't worth the risk of getting them wet. We stayed in the lagoon for a few hours -- we swam around, I put on some sort of mineral face mask that they provided and we got some goodies from the swim-up bar. TKO got a beer and I got a vanilla ice cream bar! It was so surreal to me that I was in Iceland, in February, in some sort of lava-induced hot lagoon, eating ice cream while it was snowing/raining. So crazy!

They had a couple of steam rooms you could hop into and we went in for a few minutes. In one of them we both couldn't breathe at all...it was pretty funny. When it was time to get out we went to our respective locker rooms. I was ordered to take a shower (I was going to anyway!) and then ordered to dry off in a separate room. I'm making this sound worse than it is -- all of these things were necessary it was just funny there were people standing there giving orders.

Once dressed we headed back to the bus, but not before stopping to take a couple of pictures. You can see how beautiful my hair is looking here -- it seriously felt like I had a rat's nest on top of my head. I thought the mineral-filled lagoon was going to make it softer!

We were on the bus for another half hour or so until arriving at the airport. We got through security quickly and then had our last Icelandic meal. We left Iceland at 5 pm their time and landed at 5:40 EST! TKO had to head right onto a flight to Chicago but I went home and spent 2 hours getting the knots out of my hair.

It was an amazing vacation and I wish we could have spent more time there! Now where to go next....

Snack Monster

Holy moly was I snacky today! I'm alone in the office all week and whenever this happens I for some reason cannot stop snacking. I tried to prepare and bring lots of extra fruits/veggies but today it just didn't suffice. Yesterday I ate an entire bag of baby carrots and hummus throughout the day. Who does that??

For lunch I had some pasta salad with a banana and a pudding cup. I ate the pasta salad last night for dinner too with a side of some berries. Look at the gigantic strawberry!!! It's almost as big as my palm!


Like I said I was super snacky today. I had packed some pretzels and clementines but still wanted something else, so I walked to the mall and bought some hard boiled eggs and a reeses peanut butter egg. God I love those things. Hopefully this will hold me off for a while and I can eat a light dinner later. I really need my co-worker to come back so I can start acting like a normal person again.

Zumba last night was really good. My Tuesday instructor has been seriously kicking it up a notch the past two weeks. Maybe she stumbled upon my blog and saw all my complaining haha. Tonight on the menu is a 2 mile run + intervals. I'm trying to decide if I want to do this outside or on the treadmill. I'll have to see how the weather feels later. My shins still hurt despite the icing but I'm going to run anyway. I'm probably going to have to cave and get some new kicks even though I really don't want to. Gahhh why does everything cost so much money?

Bye.

Iceland Day 3

I feel like this is gonna be a long post. When I was going over everything we did on day 3 in Iceland I really don't know how we did it all!

We were up early around 7:30, got ready, and headed down to eat some hotel breakfast buffet. This time we were one of the first people down there. Mwahaha, take that Hilton Nordica!

Around 8:30 or so we were picked up for our Golden Circle tour by Go Travel Iceland.


We drove for a couple of minutes and then stopped in this weird little town. I'm not sure why we stopped here. TKO and I figured the tour company must have had a deal with the wool shop to bring in tourists. The "town" was about 1 block and was deserted. There was a wood shop, a little pub, and this giant ear hanging on the wall.

After about 20 minutes we headed back into the van and stopped at some gorgeous lookout points.


We took a walk through the historic site, Þingvellir, where we could see the mid-atlantic ridge (Eurasian plate on one side and North American plate on the other). Þingvellir is also where Parliament was established. You can still see the remains which was pretty cool.


Our next stop was Iceland's most famous waterfall: Gullfoss. It was really beautiful, and once again pictures don't do it justice. At one point we were looking at the waterfall from the highest point and everything around us was totally white. It felt like TKO and I were completely isolated -- so crazy!

Who is that loser posing like she's on the red carpet??

After a little while we walked over to a nearby restaurant/cafeteria to warm up and eat some lunch. I ordered some all-you-can eat lamb stew and had two huge bowl fulls. It was so good! And now I want lamb for dinner...


When lunch was over we headed back into the van to make our way to the Haukadalur Valley to see "The Great Geysir." We didn't see Geysir erupt and I wasn't too upset about it. The tour guide told us if the Geysir erupts while we're nearby we have about 30 seconds to run as fast as we can before boiling water falls onto us. No thanks!


A few interesting facts about Geysir:
- the English word Geyser derives from Geysir, so all of the geysers in the world are actually named after Iceland's Geysir.
- Geysir's eruption height is actually taller than that of Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park. For some reason I was really surprised by this!

We spent some time walking through the valley. I even got to dip my hand into this non-active pool! It was warm and felt kinda slimy. Can you sense the "eek" on my face?


There was one geyser that erupted every few minutes. Even though it became somewhat expected I was startled every time. It was no Geysir but the eruption was still pretty tall! Note the people standing next to it:

After an hour or so we headed into a gift shop for a few minutes then boarded the van once again. We made a quick stop to play with some horses on the side of the road. Icelandic horses are short, stocky and have long hair. They are known for being super docile and these horses definitely lived up to the description. I was obsessed with this white one!! Look at its white eyelashes...so pretty!


I tear up a little bit whenever I see the picture below. We had a real bond.


Next stop was a "secret" waterfall known as Faxi. Our guide said it was pretty unknown because it's off the beaten path. I am choosing to believe him on that one and think we saw something pretty special :)


Next, another natural phenomenon: a gigantic implosion crater called Kerið. This thing was SO big but you can't tell in the picture. In the warmer months when the water is not frozen they actually host concerts here and the singers play on a barge in the middle of the lake. So cool!

That was the last stop on our tour and we soon headed back to the hotel. It was a long day but we definitely wanted to make the most of our last night in Iceland so we quickly got ready and headed into the city. We stopped first at Cafe Paris, a cute little casual bar. We ordered some beer and a cheese, prosciutto and olive plate. We were really hungry at the time but didn't know we were in for a big, awesome meal.


I had read about the Fish Market on TripAdvisor before we left and really wanted to hit it up. We decided to go for dinner and got there around 9:30. The place was packed! The host apologized to us and said the only place he could sit us was at the sushi bar overlooking the kitchen. Ummm, yes please! TKO and I are both huge foodies so this was awesome. The view looked into the entire kitchen, not just the sushi area, so we got to see all the behind the scenes action. I felt so weird taking pictures of them cooking but I couldn't help myself.


While looking over the menu we were brought out an amuse bouche of salmon (I think) tar tar on a crispy cracker. Yum.


They also brought out a loaf of bread with some chipotle-mayo-tasting sauce on the side.


We decided to get two appetizers to split: the crab legs,


and the langoustine salad.


I could have easily taken on the crab legs by myself because I'm a crab leg monster. These were so good and were cooked and presented in such an interesting way. I wasn't crazy for the langoustine -- it might have been my least favorite part of the meal.

For our entrees TKO ordered the salted cod, which he loved.


I ordered the lamb and owned that plate. The lamb was cooked two ways, which is hard to see in the picture. I couldn't stop talking about how much I loved it!!


For dessert we went with this deconstructed cheesecake on the recommendation of the chef. It was tasty but definitely not what I was expecting.

After dinner we toyed with the idea of going out but decided to head back to the hotel instead. Iceland supposedly has a pretty crazy nightlife but neither of us was feeling the house music.

Will be back for the last Iceland update!