Friday Favorites:

Friday Favorites

New beginnings: In February, I got engaged to my favorite person in the entire world. This week, I started a new job, which came when I needed it most. After a week, I really think I’m going to enjoy this job. This year has started well for me, and I feel incredibly blessed for that. 

NCAA Tournament Round 1: The first day was phenomenal. My fiancé and were watching one of those March Madness highlight shows, where they showed classic moments from the tournament. What did we notice? That all but one of the “classic” games occurred before the 2000s.  The tournament hasn’t been good in quite a few years. This one is shaping up to be interesting, after a very un-interesting year in college basketball. With many of the classic tourney teams gone (UNC, Connecticut, Arizona, UCLA) this year is wide open.

Williams and Sonoma: It won’t be good for my bank account but there’s one right near my work, and that makes me pretty happy.
 
Friday Fails

Not using your brain properly. Well, not you, me. You don’t use your brain, and you end up in East L.A. in a Disneyland-ish line to get your birth certificate and to top it all off, get a parking ticket too. I’m always thankful when a bunch of bad things happen in one day; that way I feel like I’m getting all out of the way for awhile.

Ron Washington- He’s handled the situation as well as he could in the aftermath, but cocaine? At 57? That is disconcerting, to say the least.

Wedding diet. I’m not really on one (surprising information, I’m sure) but I am trying to eat better and work out consistently. That said, working in a big office makes it nearly IMPOSSIBLE to eat healthy. Today there were TWO kinds of cake due to someone leaving, and tomorrow we’re all bringing breakfast stuff for someone’s birthday. I mean, what am I supposed to do with mint-n-chip ice cream cake? Watch other people eat it?

No.

One of my most importantly life rules: if there's mint-n-chip ice cream in the vicinity, don't let it melt.

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Friday Favorites and Fails

Friday Favorites

Living in Southern California: We’ve had a rash of bad rainstorms here over the last few weeks, but that is nothing compared to what the Mid-Atlantic is going through right now. I’m sure these are great places to live, but 45 degrees and rainy is generally as bad as it gets here, which is something to be thankful for. I can see snow on the mountains from my house, and that’s exactly where I like it: close enough to take in how beautiful it looks…but far enough away where I am in no danger of the snow touching me if I go outside.

My new cookbook: My plan is to write a full post on this later, but it’s truly ridiculous and nerdy how excited I get about buying new cookbooks. If I wasn’t a writer by trade and actually had money, there’s no doubt the collection on my shelf would at least be double what it currently is.

This particular cookbook makes me happy because it’s a cookbook for athletes called “The Athlete’s Palate.” I plan on cooking through many of the recipes and writing about it here on this blog…and I may or may not be trying the cupcake recipe first.

The Lakers winning without Kobe Bryant:  It’s impressive, first off. Second, it makes other NBA fan bases really jealous and they hate the Lakers even more. This always makes me laugh.

The Winter Olympics getting under way: Opening Ceremonies is tonight in Vancouver. It’s always a great two weeks where we get to hear lots of incredible stories about extraordinary athletes who have sacrificed a lot to get where they are. The Concession Stand is especially pulling for Tim Burke, Emily Azevedo and Jeff Isaacson who have been featured here!

Friday Fails

College basketball: UNC is having an off year…and so is UConn…and so is LSU…and so is the entire Pac 10 Conference. My interest in college basketball, pre-March, continues to wane as each new season comes. Which could be a sign I’m getting old, but my interest in college football remains unchanged. The only college hoops game this year that I have flipped by on TV that compelled me to watch to the end was Kansas-Kansas State in Manhattan (if for no other reason than to see if K-State’s head coach would finally explode from intensity). It’s not that the college game is without good players, but there is no one in my mind that I HAVE to watch when he’s playing. And that’s a problem.

Myself: Spilling a berry smoothie all over the floor and on my tan canvas shoes this week is pretty worthy of a fail, I’d say.

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Enjoy your Valentine’s Day everyone!

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Friday Favorites: Jan. 29 Edition

This will be a new feature here, I’ll post it every Friday. It will be my way to recap the week in sports.

Here we go:

Friday Favorites

Quote of the week: “I know he’d like to win the first for British tennis since what is it, 150,000 years?” – Roger Federer, talking about facing Britain’s Andy Murray. Britain has not won major singles men’s title since 1936.

Federer is talented, witty and has just the right amount of arrogance. I enjoy him immensely.

Story of the week: Colts and Saints in the Super Bowl. This is a complete reversal of the BCS national title game this year, where I didn’t really want either team to win. Now, I don’t know who I want to win, because these teams have my two favorite quarterbacks in the NFL. I have followed the careers of Drew Brees and Peyton Manning since they were in college. The Saints and Brees are my sentimental pick, but a second Super Bowl title for Peyton Manning pretty much cements his legacy as the greatest quarterback the game has ever seen.  I guess I’ll be happy either way.

Videos of the week: While we’re talking about Peyton Manning…

http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=4590458&categoryid=2378529

Peyton Manning and Kenny Mayne combining forces makes my life better. So does Manning speaking Gaelic. That is all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeyGNsmIcn0

I don't watch the show, but this Jersey Shore spoof with the Kansas women soccer team is fantastic.

Friday Fails…

Swimsuits already out at Target. There isn’t a female in the world (fine, Megan Fox, but I’m certain she doesn’t shop at Target) that’s thinking about swimsuits right now. Not physically, not emotionally, not at all. So please, stop making us feel bad about how we’re not in swimsuit shape right now. Or for some of us, how we’ve never been in swimsuit shape.


Gilbert Arenas: it’s a failure on several levels, OBVIOUSLY. Maybe this should be not just a Friday fail, but a year-long fail, or a life fail. Just some seriously bad choices made by Arenas and Javaris Crittenton.

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