Things I did on my summer vacation (in no specific order):

Beat my buddy Will A. on 4square...I knew the opportunity would most likely never arise again since he is a 4square master, so I checked in everywhere.

Got too drunk on a Friday at Neighbors (my first visit in probably 6 years - possibly my last for at least another 6.)

Picked the wrong day to visit Alki and get a sunburn: http://westseattleblog.com/2010/06/heavy-police-presence-on-alki but picked up a super cute dress from Coastal that I later wore at the GBF's Birthday Happy Hour:

Missed a minor anniversary with my boyfriend. We spent the day together and had a wonderful time, but both completely spaced on the significance of the date.

Visited the Seattle Art Museum to check out the Andy Warhol media works (neat! added our photo booth photo to the interactive art display) and Kurt Cobain (yawnnnnn) exhibit. Also got this fantastically awful picture of me and him in the porcelain room (I literally LOL'd loudly for a few minutes after taking this):

Attended Artopia then headed downtown for the Seattle Lust Tour with Valentina and Kristi from Shutter Tours (also respectively of Valentina Vitols Studio and Kristi Lloyd Photography - 2 sweet ladies who can take a damn fine photo.) We followed that with wonderful cocktails at Zig Zag Cafe (home of Murray!) with most of our respective beaus and a couple of gals on the tour from Ann Arbor, MI who had run the 2010 Rock n Roll Half Marathon that morning.

Cooked dinner (salmon, finally got it right!) for 8 people, of which I was the ONLY American-born and non-Turkish speaker.

All that and a whole lot of nothing...'Twas perfection.

Tah daaaaahhhhh!

I successfully stay-cayed, y'all! An entire week was spent enjoying not working (except for a few IMs and one phone call) and having my lovely boyfriend camped out at my apartment.

There was continued laziness and lots of Breaking Bad, tons of eating, shopping and touristing, then finally yesterday I tore myself away from Bear and spent my last night of freedom at home giving myself a mani/pedi and watching episodes of Royal Pains (after one morning of TV at Bear's I was seriously missing cable television.)

Today it was back to work for both of us - for me, my 9-5 and getting the ball rolling on many more posts for CultureMob, for him it's back to rehearsal for his upcoming show at Chop Suey (deets here - friends, if you want to buy tickets in advance hit me up to avoid fees) and working on some new projects.

Also, I'm totally effin' giddy to mention that tonight I start my training for the Aflac Iron Girl 10k! Fellow blogger and runner Emily sent me a message about this run on Monday and I was immediately jazzed at the idea of having a reason to hit the sidewalks again. I've been a slackimus maximus with my running all spring and although I haven't fallen to pieces/gotten out of shape, I am anxious to tone up as well as being extremely curious to see how much better my lungs feel now that I've had more than 3 months of smobriety. I need to update my running playlist ASAP (any suggestions? what do you run to?) but otherwise I'm itching to lace up my nikes and git.

*sigh of relief*

Rubaiyat/36 - RUMI
When I am with you our loving won't let me sleep.
Away from you the tears won't let me sleep.
God, it's amazing to be awake both nights,
But how different these awakenings are!

I am thrilled to report that I made it through the first week after my boyfriend's return alive and well!

As a matter of fact, I've pretty much spent the week in domestic heaven; making breakfast every morning and lunch or dinner every evening, pulling out cookbooks or just throwing shiz together. Except for another sad salmon experience (I've successfully cooked salmon to my liking once ever,) I've been pretty darn pleased with my results. I'm quite sure that through hours of experimentation and trials over the past 4 months I have almost perfected my quesadilla.

It has seemed so easy to pick up where we were (though we have been much more homebody than we usually are,) happily spending most of our nights watching episodes of our favorite TV shows. Bear is still jet-lagged of course and I've gotten very adept at napping once a day - something I don't think I could really ever complain about. There's also been lots of coffees and laughing and kisses.

He trekked home this morning when Cec and I attended another class with Faye the Tattooed Psychic at Helle, so I ended up inadvertently getting a little Domestic Goddess Sunday time to relax, do laundry and figure out some recipes for the week of vacation that starts the day after tomorrow (squee!). I'm currently surrounded by a pile of cookbooks (Life's Too Short to Chop Onions: 99 Dinners to Make When You'd Rather Be Doing Something Else being one of my new favorites,) The Pocket Rumi, and my dayplanner which is beautifully untainted next week.

For those of you keeping track at home,

my boyfriend arrives home today (I've got the flight tracker up; waiting for the plane to enter US airspace - squeeeeeee!)
Also, I've got a whole bunch of vacation scheduled soon and the weather in Seattle is pretty.darn.beautiful lately.

My dear readers, can you guess where this is going? I imagine the next few weeks will be a smidge busy (and/or incredibly lazy) and though I will do my best, I doubt that I will be posting here very often or with much detail until the beginning of July. Picture me having a fantastic time, as per yooj, and please accept my apologies in advance (again). >:/

xoxo & regards,
Al

3 more days

Three (üç) more days until I can wrap my arms around my boyfriend again. I kinda feel like I am going to explode.

Ohmigoodness, what do I wear??

It recently occurred to me that while I have put oodles of effort into getting my apartment and everything on my body ready for Bear's return, I have put zero thought into what I am going to wear to see him for the first time in almost 4 months...

Determining factors: I've got to work (at my job in an industrial/dirty-ish office where I wear jeans, t-shirts and baseball caps most of the time and anything nice would cause heart-attacks if not mild sexual harassment) on Monday and will be going directly from there to my hair appointment with Chivahn at Helle, then over to the Island where my beautiful jet-lagged boyfriend will be waiting at his home. Also, the forecast is suggesting the temperatures will be in the 70s so while my office will be really effing cold, outside it will be dress weather. But...a dress seems a bit much when my only intentions are to scoop him up and take him directly back to my apartment to "catch up."

Normally I would be all for picking up a new outfit, but the majority of my funds are tied up right now, I'm pretty busy for the next few days and for once I don't actually feel like shopping.

Although I could use some new shoes...New shoes never hurt. ;)

Weird things that consume (waste) time.

After a conversation I had with a friend last night where she told me that at a event recently someone was "talking mad shit" about yours truly (really Yelpers? Guh, move on already,) this morning I was inspired to google "Haterade" and "haterade made of" for the proverbial sh*ts and giggles.

I am now following at least one more blog. I mean, it's called "Whiskey and Haterade" - how could I resist?

If I would've had more time before work I would've watched the haterade-related youtube videos.
Some of the images are pretty entertaining as well.

Jeezus, it sure is easy to waste time on the internet.

What does it mean?

My boyfriend's English is pretty damn good; my Turkish, not so great yet. He's been helping me with the little I have learned, and I do my best to help him become more familiar with informal phrases and slang and words he just doesn't know. Sometimes I have to hit the thesaurus or dictionary.com to find words I can use to explain that I know he already understands.

Yesterday he asked me what "abstract" meant. Um, yeah - YOU try and explain that one.

It's a good thing my boyfriend is coming home soon,

because at this point in our separation sometimes I don't really feel like I have one.

I know that may sound weird or kind of sh*tty, but for the past 3 months life has pretty much been business as usual, the only difference being I am Skyping with someone on a pretty regular basis (so, it's basically like the times I have sworn off boys except this time I actually still have a boyfriend.) I go out by myself or with my long-term homies, I sleep alone in the middle of the bed, I don't shave my legs, etc. Add to that the fact that Bear is increasingly busy so we haven't been skyping as much and you get me feeling like a kinda boring single girl.

It's a unpleasant feeling.

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