Sad Day!!!!

I haven't posted in the last couple of day because I had been running non-stop at the conference I was at and was going to catch up on things when I got to the airport and had some down time but horrible news was received in the last hour of the conference and the last few days food and events really don't matter. 2 West Memphis drug interdiction officers (Brandon Paudert and Bill Evans) were shot and killed this morning on I-40 at Airport Road. The 2 suspects got away and were located a little while later in the Wal-Mart parking lot where a huge gunfight erupted and the Crittendon County Sheriff and another officer were shot. The suspects were killed also! The wounded have been taken to The Med and it looks like the Sheriff will recover but the other officer is in very serious condition. I have no words.....

Hilton Portland

It took a hell of a lot longer than I thought it would to get here but we finally made it to Portland and our hotel yesterday afternoon. 1st flight was a little over 3 hours and about 30 minutes on the tarmac and the 2nd flight was about 2 1/2 hours. We are staying at the Hilton Downtown which is where our seminar is being held and it looks like there may be quite a bit to do. It is very beautiful, especially for not being a beach locale!

I went straight to my room....the TINY room and snagged a nap. I was worn out from the trip and waking up so early. I was outta the house at 5:30am and by the time I got to my room it was around 4 Memphis time. So took a little nap and then went to meet Richard and Art at Jake's Grill. It was downtown, probably about 10 blocks from the hotel. It was pretty good. I had a couple of glasses of Pinot Grigio, a salad wedge and some linguine with garlic, olive oil, tomatoes and shrimp. Very tasty!

A weekend full of food dough

Monday morning and I am sitting at gate C-10 waiting on my flight to Portland and rehashing our completely unproductive and enjoyable weekend with lots of money spent on food and thinking about how fat and bloated I feel. Was it worth it? Possibly but probably not but we sure enjoyed it while it was happening.

We had late reszies at Restaurant Iris Friday night so we started off at the Blue Monkey for a few drinks and then headed over to Iris around 8:30. Everything we had was absolutely amazing. Jamie waited on us and we couldn't decide on appetizers. We finally decided to start off with oysters 3 ways (fried, bread pudding and something baked similair to Rockefeller) and then Jamie brought us a sample of the other appy that we were thinking about getting. It was 2 corn pancake type things with lump crab meat and yummy spices in between. Both of these were to die for. K ordered the surf and turf and I got the soft shell crab served on top of mock shoux.....both were really, really good :))))))) Then Kelly brought us some kind of ice cream sundae thing for dessert. I really wish I would have gotten a picture of all the deliciousness!

After dinner, we swung by The Half Shell to see what kind of craziness was going on there and to have a few more drinks. The craziness was in full swing with a drunk, lunatic girl and her boyfriend, a couple of hookers and a really large, red headed girl trying to pick up someone/anyone at the bar. K and I were enjoying ourselves so much we drunk texted his mom who is on her girl's beach trip and closed the bar down.

Saturday was spent recuperating around the house all day with the exception of me going to Panera to grab us some lunch. Saturday night, we went over to Jason and Heather's to finally celebrate Shera's birthday with her.

Here are the girls enjoying the weather outside, in between rains!











I love these guys!!! Especially the 2nd one from the left!












And I love these girls too!

On the way home, K wanted some Awful Waffle so we stopped in at the one by the house...never a good idea but my scattered, smothered, diced, peppered and capped were pretty damn delish!

Sunday was spent being lazy (again!) and catching up on TV. I fully intended to go to Church and get outside and exercise and enjoy the weather but that plan didn't pan out. We got outside to go by the office and pick up my laptop so I'd have it for my trip and then again when we went by Sissy's to drop J's clothes off that he will need for the nights he spends with her and to get some dinner at Houston's. I was craving one of their salads with the garlic buttermilk dressing and cheese toast. K ordered the ribs and I got the prime rib and we shared and it was goooood!!

I was hoping to get a good night's sleep but that didn't happen. I never sleep well when I have to get up early. I freak out and keep waking up, thinking I am going to oversleep. I am hoping to get some sleep on my flights. We will see. I just hope whoever it is with the smelly feet at the gate right now is not sitting anywhere near me!

Leftover pizza

I don't imagine I will be able to say the scale didn't budge tomorrow :-\ I slept late this morning after staying up late last night for the baseball game and a massage so I didn't get a workout in this morning. Figured I would do it this afternoon after work, totally forgetting J had a baseball game tonight. I had a spinach pancake w/ tzatziki and an apple this morning but was starving by 9:30am so I had 2 pieces of leftover pizza from yesterday. At lunch. I ran out and got my B-12 shot and went to Whole Foods to pick up something easy to make after the game tonight. I grabbed some pistachio crusted halibut, some potatoes to bake and some squash and zucchini to roast. While I was there, I grabbed some shrimp spring rolls, a little cup of pasta salad and some toffee to eat later in case I got hungry before we got home. I would up eating 3 pieces of the toffee and both spring rolls when I stopped by the house to grab J's baseball gear and the team snacks for tonight. Got to see K for a few minutes before I left. Oh yeah and snagged some reszies for tomorrow night at Restaurant Iris....surf and turf, here we come!!!!!!

Good work day/Great family night out

I meant to start yesterday off with one of Jillian's workout but when I got up my back was still pretty bad so I did 40 minutes on the elliptical with the Ellen show. I made me a piece of peanut butter and jelly (with Betty's homemade strawberry jelly!!!!) for breaky. Work was a little chaotic. We had all the new recruits in (24) to get fingerprinted and ID'd before the class starts. The office was packed and loud and full of energy. The girls had to work through lunch so I moseyed on down to Domino's and grabbed them some pizzas and cinnamon sticks for lunch. I brought the leftover salad from last night for my lunch and ate one....yes ONE piece of BBQ chicken pizza. I really don't think I have ever in my life eaten just one piece of pizza EVER! Kinda proud about my willpower on that. Of course the big salad before hand helped but still, damn :) And I was satisfied too.

After lunch, I had a meeting out east at the training academy and it was over at 2:30. Bill gave me the rest of the day off so I went home and took a fantab nap with K before picking up J. After picking up J, we went to the Redbirds game. It was a wonderful night for baseball. The weather was perfect and we had some decent seats in the outfield. We made our seats even better after watching the really gross man in front of us gnawing and gumming and slobbering on his sandwich. So gross. K stopped me from looking but saw he had a big slime line of slobber hanging off his hand, connected to his sandwich. So we moved about 7 more rows ahead and got the pleasure of watching the monkey toes of some crazy woman that would not put her shoes on. I do think the whackos are just as attracted to K as they are to me. Another reason we are such a perfect fit! The game was good, Redbirds were up 7 to 1 when we left at the top of the 9th. It was already 9:30 and I needed to get J home. He found one of his buddies from his baseball team and they were all over the stadium all night long. Mostly at the bullpen but made they were to the big hill and the playground. The Redbirds pitcher threw J the ball he was warming up with at the beginning of the game. J was supa stoked over that. K and I had a few beers and an order of BBQ Nachos. I can't ever go there without eating those.

The day was full of junk (pizza, beer and nachos) but at least I did it in moderation and worked out that morning and I think that is why the scale had not changed when I got on it this morning! I'm still only down .8 of the 10(15) but it's better than being up .8!

Pig time again

It's BBQ fest time in Memphis again!!! This is probably one of my favorite events we have. I saw this rolling past me outside of work as I was leaving yesterday. I'm pretty sure I know where they are headed :)

I'm sad we won't be going this year :( but I am looking forward to spending some QT with K at the lake before I leave for Portland next week. It's the last weekend of Turkey season and I plan on going with K to try and bag us one or a few for the freezer. He's dying to try one in the fryer/smoker I gave him for Christmas. I hear they taste so much better than the ones you buy in the store so I'm excited!

Last night for dinner, I picked up some salad and chicken/gnocchi soup from the Olive Garden for dinner. I never had that soup before and it was super duper yummy. K and J thought so too. We pretty much licked our bowls. We also played a little baseball in the backyard....well Kand J did while I drank a little vodka/soda drink and supervised.

Plan B

J and I had dinner with mom last night. Roy wasn't there, he had to take Shenena to Arkansas for something so mom picked up some Subway sandwiches for us. She's on some kinda Subway kick lately, thinks they are really good sandwiches, I dunno. Last night's wasn't too bad, the bread was really fresh which made it almost yummy. We had some leftover chips and cookies from Mother's Day lunch that I ate too. Meant to not eat the cookies, oops! I had about 3/4 of a white chocolate chip macadamia and 1/2 of a peanut butter. Really didn't mean to eat the second one. We spent a few hours over there and then went home. I was supa tired too. K seemed to be in an ok mood when we got home. He'd had some meetings at work and the buy out doesn't go into effect until June 30 and they are saying it will only affect people at the corporate level.

J was suppose to have a baseball game this evening so I didn't plan anything for dinner tonight. Figured we would grab something after but the games are cancelled because the fields are still too wet to play on, sooooo now not sure about tonight. I would like to go out for something but have this feeling I would really overeat and would want a couple of drinks so I guess we will stay at home. I weighed this morning and had lost 0.2 pounds. I am starting to feel better, even if the weight isn't coming off yet. I definitely feel like I am starting to tone up again and not feeling quite so yuck in my clothes. I was craving something sweet to eat after lunch today but just kept saying to myself 170! 170! 170! 170! 170! 170! And I willed that damn craving away so yay for me.

Today's successes include:

Great night of sleep last night after a GREAT massage.

45 minutes on the elliptical first thing this morning and watched yesterday's episode of Ellen. She's damn funny!

Breaky - banana

Snack - wheat thins

Standing and pushing up

Lunch - went home to make some of this spinach/mozzarella pasta with a little olive oil and parmy topped with tomatoes, spinach, bell pepper and green onions and found K there too. I love getting to see him in the middle of my day, makes my afternoon especially bearable and reminds me what I have to go home to. Here's a pic of my lunch minus the best part:

Lately Mel and I have been using famous couples to call each other by since we should be connected at the hip. For example, Sonny and Cher, Starsky and Hutch, Drake and Zeke.....after texting with her after lunch, I was trying to think of some other good couple's I could call us and thought about Mr. Roarke and Tattoo. I was dying laughing, so when I got back to the office, I checked Zulu and they have about 10 of the episodes on there. That is what I have been doing this afternoon.....bringing Fantasy Island back!!! Real productive, huh? In my defense, I spent this morning revising SOPs so I kinda feel that makes it ok ;)

LOVE IT!!!!!