Oh hello, October.

After an [unplanned] summer hiatus from blogging and just like the return of the fall network television season, I'm back!  I'm surprised Uncle G2 didn't kick me off his blogroll.  Like most returning series are doing for their season premieres, a brief recap is in order:

After running a full marathon (San Diego Rock n Roll), completing one of Camp Pendleton's World Famous mud runs, and conquering the Hollywood Sign Run with A Runner's Circle...all in the month of June, mind you, the summer of visitors and travels was in full swing.  Jasen returned from deployment.  Feven came to visit for her introduction the best coast. 

I went to Maine to celebrate the wedding of one of my closest college friends from UMBC XC, Blakeslee.  Lots of lobster and many local microbrews were consumed.

Hands down, my favorite lobster roll was actually consumed in Boston at Belle Isle Seafood.

From there, I spent a week in Boston working remotely and catching up with the former ATL roomie before we headed off to meet the rest of the LP fun crew in Mexico for a wedding in Cancun and vacation days in Playa del Carmen.

Food adventures in Mexico will surely get its own post.  Pronto, lo prometo para ti, Uncle G2.

Until then, I present you with a photo of Tulum.

Then Mama Barin visited Los Angeles. Followed by Vegas 24-hour trip #1 of the summer with Nancy & Anh.  I was in a flash mob as a bridesmaid for one of my college roommate's weddings in Maryland.  That same week, I ended up attending the MTV VMAs in LA Live before heading up the coast to Santa Barbara for Maj's Dirty Thirty.  I participated in my very first triathlon relay.  Then balanced out the healthy adventures with Vegas 24-hour trip #2 of the summer with Jen & Maj. 


And now we find ourselves on the first day of October.

Phew.

Now you kind of see why I resorted to Twitter, eh?

What I've Been Doing & Not Blogging

Lots of running.

Family time in San Diego.

Quality time with friends in PA/NYC.

...and Mothers Day in South Carolina, which will be the subject of my next post.  Get ready blogoverse, I'm baaack!

The Big Easy

An idea raised during a Vegas dinner with five friends over July 4, 2011 led to a reunion of 15 in New Orleans over this past Presidents Day weekend. Parades, gumbo, crawfish etouffee, beignets from Café du Monde, po-boys, beads and live music - it was a packed three days of good food and partying. While I would probably pass on another Bourbon Street night out, I wouldn't mind returning to the music venues along Frenchmen Street or for more food adventures over Jazz Festival one day.

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

East Coast Weddings (Weekend III)

Off to the southern gulf coast of Florida to take part in and celebrate the nuptials of Christina Reed and Matthew Beers this weekend! I've known them since middle school :)

Three Things

1. Magnolia Bakery's cupcake of the month is Snickerdoodle. I suggest everyone within reasonable distance to one of their bakeries go get one as soon as possible. It's also a super awesome coincidence that the (early) birthday celebrant's favorite cookie is Snickerdoodle.
2. Popbooth is one of my favorite apps on my phone. Highly recommend that you download it to your iPhone or iPad!
3. I can't say enough good things about the crew at Lola Gaspar in Santa Ana. We shared the cured chorizo flatbread, short rib mole and special ribs of the day - the cocktails and drink options were great, and I'd like to give kudos to Bartender Ed for introducing us to their homemade bourbon + tangerine wheat beer combo.
   

East Coast Weddings (Weekend II)

Tomorrow, I'll be heading to South Jersey reunite with some great UMBC friends in celebration of the nuptials of Desi Tubb and Tim Conway.

Miss Tubb, or should I say the soon-to-be Mrs Conway, is pictured at to my left. Many of my fond early-college memories of pasta and t-shirt parties, long runs in Patapscos and bus rides to meets include Desi and the additional lovely ladies of UMBC XC below...see you girls soon!

East Coast Weddings (Weekend I)

Today we're headed up to Street, Maryland to celebrate Cleo and Alex's wedding!

The lovely bride is pictured to my immediate right - she and Allison helped me plan a surprise visit for Feven and Emily one fall when I was helping to recruit at Maryland schools for GE IMLP.

Three Things

This week's Three Things post is more of a Three Pictures Across Three Years post. One of the friends I'm excited to catch up with next week in NYC is Alana - we met via IMLP, the only two girls in our US Energy class...many cities later, we've both moved onto new professional adventures on opposite ends of the country but are only a tweet or blog away!

2008 - Atlanta, new roomies first night out on the town!

2009 - Shanghai, out of the classrooms

2010 - New York City, right before we flew out to Atlanta for IMLP graduation

Happy (Belated) Birthday, America!

July 4th weekend consisted of a great road trip adventuring. Friday afternoon was spent paddle-boarding in Malibu (many kudos to the Malibu Surf Shack for awesome service) followed by the Tim Burton exhibit at LACMA. The outdoor installment made up of various vintage streetlight styles is beautiful.

Saturday was spent traversing the great mountains and deserts to get to the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately, we had to wait about an hour at the entrance due to an accident - but we entertained ourselves with Pictionary Man, the high-school-mix CDs I had packed and some squirt guns that were supposed to be a surprise for the Vegas pools.

Luckily, we were still able to enter and explore the trails along the South Rim before the sun started to set. Minus the abundance of tourists and multilingual ooh-ing and ahh-ing around us, you really could feel as if you had found yourself on another planet. The timing of the sunset really highlighted all the different layers and colors of rock in the terrain - it probably also saved us from heat exhaustion since the highs were around 110 that weekend.


Sunday morning, we joined the rest of the LP friends up in Vegas. And well, what happens in Vegas...gets posted to Facebook. So you'll just have to check that out to get the rest of the weekend story!