Parties, shopping and sales ... oh my!

Hey there! I hope everyone is having a great start to the week. I had such a great weekend that it's super sad to leave it behind. 

Friday was a predetermined "chill night." I went to work and worked out out at lunch. Afterwards, I met Ashley and her friend from Texas, Christy, for happy hour at Coastal Kitchen. We had two drinks whilst sitting outside on the porch overlooking the marina. Nice! I left there, stopped by the grocery store and went home. We grilled and were just settling in when Josh got a call from the DOT folks. Some a-hole truck driver had spilled diesel fuel all over I-95. Near J's job site. 

For those of you who aren't married to an engineer: Diesel fuel is BAD for asphalt. As in, you have to tear it all up and repave kind of BAD. But it's also bad for traffic. You can imagine what would happen if there was a  spark. Yeah. So J had to drive out to the site and figure out what to do: Close a lane and put up message boards, etc. BOOOOOOO. I was SO tired. Couldn't hold my eyes open - and didn't, I went to bed and was asleep by the time he got back (around midnight). 

Saturday I had to get up at 5:30 a.m. (yes, on a Saturday) to make sure I could be at our company yard sale by 7 a.m. It's a Relay for Life thing. I have ONE more week and the event will be done. Not that it isn't a great event. I'm just sick of volunteering and more sick trying to rally the newsroom folks to volunteer with me. 

So I packed my gym clothes for later, feed the doggies and headed out. The sale was at this big grassy lot across from our building. And the sand gnats were out in full force. For those of you who aren't from Coastal Georgia, here's your intro to sand gnats: Forget the Exorcist, Linda Blair spitting up pea soup. Forget that creepy little Dante kid from the Omen. They. Are. The. Devil. No friggin joke. They are, in many ways, like your typically annoying black gnat. Except they bite. There is nothing you can do (short of going inside) to escape. Aren't effected by the usual OFF replenet or whatever. The only thing that works is Avon's Skin So Soft spray. It's hard to explain how much this sucks. 

Back to Saturday: Sand gnats were out. Biting me while I volunteered serving coffee and donuts at the yard sale. Lovely. Then someone brought out the Avon and I was saved. Hurray. 

After two hours of being the good employee, I rolled. Done. I didn't want to but I hit up the gym and had, without a doubt, the most amazing run ever. All runners have had one of these at some point. You feel great and just want to keep running forever. It started out as a 5K. Here's my time:

I felt really good and said let's stretch this out to 4 miles. At 4, I was like, why not a 10K, baby! This is the first time that I've done a 10K since my hip started giving me problems. 

This was my personal best time. I was so stoked.

When I left, I was soaking wet but in the best mood. After going home to shower and get ready, I headed to J-ville for a Costco run along with a trip to the Avenue's Mall to pick up a gift for birthday girl Marla (along with a couple of things for myself - Hehe). I got back that afternoon, regrouped and got ready. Then it was off to Coastal Kitchen (yes, again) this time it was for Marla's birthday dinner. It was such a blast.  

 

Here's the evidence:

Me and J cheesing it up

 

Such a funny group of girls

Marla and her b-day cookies

There was talk of going to dance after - but I was secretly hoping that it would get nixed. I was exhausted. It did. And I went home to bed. Yay. Girl has to get her beauty sleep. Ya know?

On Sunday, I was ready to handle business at the casa. I cleaned the house, cleaned out the DVRs, finished exchanging summer/winter clothes in my closet, got the yard sale stuff ready, pre-cooked, went to the grocery store again - ugh. Josh went golfing but when he got home we grilled again. We did BBQ chicken, with broccoli (for me) and roasted potatoes. Those were FABULOUS. I will post the recipe soon. 

After that, we had some couple chill time (since the DOT put the kibosh on that Friday).  We watched BUtterfeld 8 (Elizabeth Taylor's first Oscar winning movie). I liked it. It was about this extremely "loose woman" Gloria (Taylor) who ends up falling for this married man. She uses sex and booze to compensate for a lack of self confidence. Not too far from the real Elizabeth Taylor according to the bio I'm reading. It was a pretty good flick. Worth watching. Taylor herself threw a drink at the screen the first time she saw it. She wasn't a fan. 

Then it was sleepy time. See ... awesome weekend!!!