(no subject)
okay, here's the big news:
WE ARE GOING TO CHINA.
we haven't been anywhere significant this year, & i was getting a craving to travel. i looked at a bunch of groupon getaway deals, knowing that the only way joe would agree to travel while he still owes me a grip of cash would be if the deal is TOO GOOD TO REFUSE. & this groupon was exactly that! after the base rate, china visa fees, passport fees & such, the trip will be about $2500 each... but what we get is roundtrip airfare from seatac, ten fucking days in three provinces (beijing, shaanxi, & shanghai), five star hotel accommodations, eighteen meals (including an "imperial dumpling banquet" & "the beijing roast duck banquet" - peking duck in the very province that made it famous!), & all transport & entrance fees to whatever we're doing with the tour group.
o m g, check this shit out. Tour Highlights:
Beijing: Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Great Wall, Sacred Path of Ming Tomb, New Qianmen Street, Olympic Stadium, Acrobatic Show, Peking Duck
Xi'an: Ancient City Wall and Gate, Big Wild Goose Pagoda, Terra cotta Warriors and Horses Museum, Shanxi Provincial Historical Museum, Tang Dynasty Dancing and Singing Show, Dumpling Banquet
Shanghai: Nanjing Road, The Bund (waterfront), Yuyuan Garden
there are also some free days - one in each province - & a small piece of that time will be used for the first addition to the Grammy Memorial Tattoo. my original desire had been to go to france first, as france was grammy's favorite country & a place she & i had visited together when i was young, but i realized a few things. one, there's no reason i have to tattoo the countries i visit in order. that was a restriction i placed on it, & i don't know why i did. i can leave room for france to be listed first if i want it there. plus, as my leg fills with countries, i'll end up listing places out of order anyway. two, grammy often travelled wherever she could at the time - just going & having the experience was the most important part. she'd totally encourage me to go to china over france if a deal like this came up. & finally, if china came second in grammy's mind, it was only just. she LOVED china, had been there numerous times, & her bedroom was done (& later redone) with a strong chinese influence. so this is quite very suitable. :D
the part that makes me sad is that i wasn't flush enough (or in the right mindset) to travel like this when she was still taking trips, all the way up to within a couple years of her death. it would've been so beautiful to travel with her as an adult, especially with the popularization of half-off deals everywhere. i also wish i could've had grammy's ashes - i would've taken a small vial of them with me on every trip i take, to spread them as far & wide as she loved to go. but i'm told they were spread on the delaware river, & that connects to the majority of the water on earth, so in time i'm sure she'll figure it out. as for me, at least i can travel to the places she's been, & put them permanently in my skin.
i found a decent studio in beijing, longxuptang tattoos, & emailed them to see if anyone speaks english. i got this response back from dragon: "ok no broblem Eamail me anytime" (omg i <3 him already). all of the artists look competent to do a linework "China", & google maps puts it about twenty miles from the hotel. (btw, my favorite line from the website, via google translation: tattoos care basis having the tattooists guidance, allowed to deal with the unexpected situation of peril. *nods*) so that's happening!
november is going to be AMAZING. & maybe we'll do xmas in canada again so "China" won't be all alone on my leg for long. :D
back to the semi-mundane, my foot tattoo healed beautifully albeit incredibly slowly (it's in fact still settling) with no loss of color. i also had absolutely no loss of progress on my workouts for the two & a half weeks i was away from the gym. in fact, i dropped .8lb in that time, which is as much as i lose WHILE working out! granted i was pretty careful with my diet, but it must've been a delayed reaction; i'm under no illusions that things would continue this way for long, & i won't be surprised if my next couple of weeks show no measurable loss. (btw, i broke my best one-mile time upon my return, at 14:08!)
this past weekend, silverwood happened again, but differently this year - we didn't take anyone with us, & in fact were ourselves taken! travis works some kind of entertainment stuff for the park, & this was a kind of reward/thanks trip that he brought us along for. super awesome of him - but also remember travis is the one i bullied 150lb 160lb (!) off of in the past year & some, & i'll admit without modesty that i've been instrumental in his getting his life & health together & becoming a happy person. so it felt like a kind of reward/thanks trip for me, too. :)
travis drove his fancy new challenger (which i helped him to get - hello, First Bank of Lish) & it was a great ride. on the way there, we stopped at mizuna as always, & it was even more perfect since travis is vegetarian-by-genetics & half their menu is veggie/vegan, prepared with different tools & equipment & all. i had the grilled new zealand rack of lamb with herbed pistachio quinoa, pecorino, sauteed vegetables, & chimichurri, & it was fucking phenomenal. best lamb i've had since mechoui - three mid-rare double chops with perfect sear, glorious with the chimichurri, balanced expertly by the quinoa, asparagus, & yellow squash. i gnawed the bones & made the waitress express my deep & abiding love for the chefs. for dessert, travis & i both had the flourless dark chocolate & crystallized ginger torte with blood orange sauce, & it was SO dark & wonderous - even better than the flourless dark chocolate hazelnut pavé i had on a previous visit - & i practically licked the plate.
we stayed two nights at the holiday inn express with very comfy pillows, a 24h gym/pool/hot tub, & a friggin' water park inside. (o_O idk!) they offered a huge free breakfast each morning - i stayed away from the pancakes, bagels, muffins, biscuits & gravy, pork sausage, & cheese omelettes in favor of a bowl of mixed shredded wheat/raisin bran with half a cup of skim milk, a hard-boiled egg white, & a small, surprisingly flavorful cinnamon roll (which nearly killed travis as i keep forgetting he's highly allergic to cinnamon. sorry, buddy). & i gotta say, it's somehow even more satisfying to treat myself to a [portion-appropriate] cinnamon bun knowing that i have the means & ability to burn it off at the gym (or even walking around silverwood all day); i didn't have food guilt before, but now it's like having food anti-guilt. :)
i wanted travis to go on my favorite ride, aftershock, & this was a huge deal. in all his years working for the park, he'd never ridden it - partly because he was shit-scared, but partly because he simply didn't fit. i pushed hard for him to go at least once as a statement on New Travis; really, how can a guy make so many difficult, life-altering changes & still hold on to silly fears about well-secured thrill rides? yeah, he couldn't answer that either. we headed there first thing, after some minor stalling ("oh i just want to see if they added any new games to the arcade... oh i just have to stop in & see if nancy is here yet... oh i want to find a locker for my keys first..."), & i've never seen him so sickly green-pale as the gate opened for us to load in. but he did it, & i'm really proud of him for the achievement. & just like i'd predicted, he enjoyed the ride & wanted to go again! ha, i RULE!
after lunch at lindy's, the boys split for the water park. we usually go late in the season when boulder beach is closed, so joe hadn't been. i dislike being wet, but i'm perfectly happy on my own & didn't mind being abandoned while they rode the lazy river & whatever. we decided to meet up after three hours; half that time later, i'd ridden a few rides alone & was walking along thinking how this is fun, but it's not a tenth of the fun as having friends around to share it with. & barely thirty seconds after that thought, joe was suddenly in my face from nowhere! they'd opted to take a break & try to find me, & spotted me within five minutes in a packed park of eleven thousand people. hilarious that joe's lishdar works so well.
another notable point was when joe & i were walking a few steps behind travis, & i was whispering with joe about a girl walking nearby, because her ass looked amazing in her bikini. apparently travis heard us, as he muttered, "check this shit out," then yelled, "HI TIFFANY!" miss nice-ass turned around, grinned, & started waving travis over for hugs. wtf, how much more rockstar can you get?!
we stopped at red lobster on the way home, for multiple reasons: idaho seems to only have chain restaurants, i hadn't been since i lived in florida, & they do know how to cook shellfish. i managed a pretty great dinner out of them - we each ordered a "feast" meal, but had salad dressing (vinaigrette) on the side, broccoli instead of mashed potatoes or fries, swapped the fried shrimp for broiled stuffed flounder, & declined garlic butter on the lobster tail & snow crab. the one unchangeably-buttery thing, shrimp scampi, had ample time to drain, & it was easy for me to skip the cheddar bay biscuits since i hate cheese. X)
it was a fucking great time. we covered travis's gas in appreciation (it took less than anticipated, even at premium), & the whole trip was just awesome. now that i'm home, i'm glad to be back on my normal diet & routine - i did overindulge a bit at the park, so i'm making it up to myself by eating nothing with added sugar until wednesday night ( aforementioned cookie), & i intend to up my gym time to an hour each day this week (50 minutes has been my max so far) to get back on track. (i caught an office cold almost immediately post-tattoo-healing, & we left early friday, so i only made it to the gym monday & thursday last week.)
so that's that.
eleven months hawk pics!
enjoy. :)
next up: JOE'S FUCKING BIRTHDAY OMGZZZZZZ IT'S HAPPENING
WE ARE GOING TO CHINA.
we haven't been anywhere significant this year, & i was getting a craving to travel. i looked at a bunch of groupon getaway deals, knowing that the only way joe would agree to travel while he still owes me a grip of cash would be if the deal is TOO GOOD TO REFUSE. & this groupon was exactly that! after the base rate, china visa fees, passport fees & such, the trip will be about $2500 each... but what we get is roundtrip airfare from seatac, ten fucking days in three provinces (beijing, shaanxi, & shanghai), five star hotel accommodations, eighteen meals (including an "imperial dumpling banquet" & "the beijing roast duck banquet" - peking duck in the very province that made it famous!), & all transport & entrance fees to whatever we're doing with the tour group.
o m g, check this shit out. Tour Highlights:
Beijing: Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Great Wall, Sacred Path of Ming Tomb, New Qianmen Street, Olympic Stadium, Acrobatic Show, Peking Duck
Xi'an: Ancient City Wall and Gate, Big Wild Goose Pagoda, Terra cotta Warriors and Horses Museum, Shanxi Provincial Historical Museum, Tang Dynasty Dancing and Singing Show, Dumpling Banquet
Shanghai: Nanjing Road, The Bund (waterfront), Yuyuan Garden
there are also some free days - one in each province - & a small piece of that time will be used for the first addition to the Grammy Memorial Tattoo. my original desire had been to go to france first, as france was grammy's favorite country & a place she & i had visited together when i was young, but i realized a few things. one, there's no reason i have to tattoo the countries i visit in order. that was a restriction i placed on it, & i don't know why i did. i can leave room for france to be listed first if i want it there. plus, as my leg fills with countries, i'll end up listing places out of order anyway. two, grammy often travelled wherever she could at the time - just going & having the experience was the most important part. she'd totally encourage me to go to china over france if a deal like this came up. & finally, if china came second in grammy's mind, it was only just. she LOVED china, had been there numerous times, & her bedroom was done (& later redone) with a strong chinese influence. so this is quite very suitable. :D
the part that makes me sad is that i wasn't flush enough (or in the right mindset) to travel like this when she was still taking trips, all the way up to within a couple years of her death. it would've been so beautiful to travel with her as an adult, especially with the popularization of half-off deals everywhere. i also wish i could've had grammy's ashes - i would've taken a small vial of them with me on every trip i take, to spread them as far & wide as she loved to go. but i'm told they were spread on the delaware river, & that connects to the majority of the water on earth, so in time i'm sure she'll figure it out. as for me, at least i can travel to the places she's been, & put them permanently in my skin.
i found a decent studio in beijing, longxuptang tattoos, & emailed them to see if anyone speaks english. i got this response back from dragon: "ok no broblem Eamail me anytime" (omg i <3 him already). all of the artists look competent to do a linework "China", & google maps puts it about twenty miles from the hotel. (btw, my favorite line from the website, via google translation: tattoos care basis having the tattooists guidance, allowed to deal with the unexpected situation of peril. *nods*) so that's happening!
november is going to be AMAZING. & maybe we'll do xmas in canada again so "China" won't be all alone on my leg for long. :D
back to the semi-mundane, my foot tattoo healed beautifully albeit incredibly slowly (it's in fact still settling) with no loss of color. i also had absolutely no loss of progress on my workouts for the two & a half weeks i was away from the gym. in fact, i dropped .8lb in that time, which is as much as i lose WHILE working out! granted i was pretty careful with my diet, but it must've been a delayed reaction; i'm under no illusions that things would continue this way for long, & i won't be surprised if my next couple of weeks show no measurable loss. (btw, i broke my best one-mile time upon my return, at 14:08!)
this past weekend, silverwood happened again, but differently this year - we didn't take anyone with us, & in fact were ourselves taken! travis works some kind of entertainment stuff for the park, & this was a kind of reward/thanks trip that he brought us along for. super awesome of him - but also remember travis is the one i bullied 150lb 160lb (!) off of in the past year & some, & i'll admit without modesty that i've been instrumental in his getting his life & health together & becoming a happy person. so it felt like a kind of reward/thanks trip for me, too. :)
travis drove his fancy new challenger (which i helped him to get - hello, First Bank of Lish) & it was a great ride. on the way there, we stopped at mizuna as always, & it was even more perfect since travis is vegetarian-by-genetics & half their menu is veggie/vegan, prepared with different tools & equipment & all. i had the grilled new zealand rack of lamb with herbed pistachio quinoa, pecorino, sauteed vegetables, & chimichurri, & it was fucking phenomenal. best lamb i've had since mechoui - three mid-rare double chops with perfect sear, glorious with the chimichurri, balanced expertly by the quinoa, asparagus, & yellow squash. i gnawed the bones & made the waitress express my deep & abiding love for the chefs. for dessert, travis & i both had the flourless dark chocolate & crystallized ginger torte with blood orange sauce, & it was SO dark & wonderous - even better than the flourless dark chocolate hazelnut pavé i had on a previous visit - & i practically licked the plate.
we stayed two nights at the holiday inn express with very comfy pillows, a 24h gym/pool/hot tub, & a friggin' water park inside. (o_O idk!) they offered a huge free breakfast each morning - i stayed away from the pancakes, bagels, muffins, biscuits & gravy, pork sausage, & cheese omelettes in favor of a bowl of mixed shredded wheat/raisin bran with half a cup of skim milk, a hard-boiled egg white, & a small, surprisingly flavorful cinnamon roll (which nearly killed travis as i keep forgetting he's highly allergic to cinnamon. sorry, buddy). & i gotta say, it's somehow even more satisfying to treat myself to a [portion-appropriate] cinnamon bun knowing that i have the means & ability to burn it off at the gym (or even walking around silverwood all day); i didn't have food guilt before, but now it's like having food anti-guilt. :)
i wanted travis to go on my favorite ride, aftershock, & this was a huge deal. in all his years working for the park, he'd never ridden it - partly because he was shit-scared, but partly because he simply didn't fit. i pushed hard for him to go at least once as a statement on New Travis; really, how can a guy make so many difficult, life-altering changes & still hold on to silly fears about well-secured thrill rides? yeah, he couldn't answer that either. we headed there first thing, after some minor stalling ("oh i just want to see if they added any new games to the arcade... oh i just have to stop in & see if nancy is here yet... oh i want to find a locker for my keys first..."), & i've never seen him so sickly green-pale as the gate opened for us to load in. but he did it, & i'm really proud of him for the achievement. & just like i'd predicted, he enjoyed the ride & wanted to go again! ha, i RULE!
after lunch at lindy's, the boys split for the water park. we usually go late in the season when boulder beach is closed, so joe hadn't been. i dislike being wet, but i'm perfectly happy on my own & didn't mind being abandoned while they rode the lazy river & whatever. we decided to meet up after three hours; half that time later, i'd ridden a few rides alone & was walking along thinking how this is fun, but it's not a tenth of the fun as having friends around to share it with. & barely thirty seconds after that thought, joe was suddenly in my face from nowhere! they'd opted to take a break & try to find me, & spotted me within five minutes in a packed park of eleven thousand people. hilarious that joe's lishdar works so well.
another notable point was when joe & i were walking a few steps behind travis, & i was whispering with joe about a girl walking nearby, because her ass looked amazing in her bikini. apparently travis heard us, as he muttered, "check this shit out," then yelled, "HI TIFFANY!" miss nice-ass turned around, grinned, & started waving travis over for hugs. wtf, how much more rockstar can you get?!
we stopped at red lobster on the way home, for multiple reasons: idaho seems to only have chain restaurants, i hadn't been since i lived in florida, & they do know how to cook shellfish. i managed a pretty great dinner out of them - we each ordered a "feast" meal, but had salad dressing (vinaigrette) on the side, broccoli instead of mashed potatoes or fries, swapped the fried shrimp for broiled stuffed flounder, & declined garlic butter on the lobster tail & snow crab. the one unchangeably-buttery thing, shrimp scampi, had ample time to drain, & it was easy for me to skip the cheddar bay biscuits since i hate cheese. X)
it was a fucking great time. we covered travis's gas in appreciation (it took less than anticipated, even at premium), & the whole trip was just awesome. now that i'm home, i'm glad to be back on my normal diet & routine - i did overindulge a bit at the park, so i'm making it up to myself by eating nothing with added sugar until wednesday night ( aforementioned cookie), & i intend to up my gym time to an hour each day this week (50 minutes has been my max so far) to get back on track. (i caught an office cold almost immediately post-tattoo-healing, & we left early friday, so i only made it to the gym monday & thursday last week.)
so that's that.
eleven months hawk pics!
enjoy. :)
next up: JOE'S FUCKING BIRTHDAY OMGZZZZZZ IT'S HAPPENING