Labor Day in So Cal

Now that I have finally recovered from my recent trips, I can start blogging about them. 

One of my good friends moved down to LA not too long before our wedding and since we had to pay for said wedding and honeymoon, I haven't gotten a chance to go down and visit her.  She has since met someone and they now reside together in Manhattan Beach.  With all of the great deals on Southwest, I snagged a decently priced ticket and headed down there for Labor Day weekend with another friend of ours and left JB at home.

Since it was also the upcoming birthday of the friend I was heading down there with, Steph and her BF made some plans for us which involved driving down to San Diego on Saturday.  After they picked us up from the airport on Friday night, we headed to a nearby bar where their friend, Dane, was playing an acoustic set.  I have a video of him between songs just messing around, but he was pretty awesome.  I love, love, LOVE acoustic sets!



That's Steph trying to creep into the video.  If you can see in the mirror, there was a girl in red and black flannel that was getting down on the dance floor.  A friend of Dane's, supposedly.  She was dying to get us to dance with her and was apparently a rep for Red Bull so in order to keep us out there with her, she kept buying us rounds of drinks.  Works for me!

Later that night we went back to Steph and Kris's apartment which is right on the harbor in Marina Del Rey.  We had to take this cutey-patooty for a walk, so we ventured out to the pier:


Meet Chester (Newfie/corgi mix)

We were almost at the end of our walk when we heard snoring coming from the docks.  There was a mountain of either seals or sea lions (how do you know the difference?) sleeping on the dock.  When we approached with Chester, the alpha male started barking at us.  So naturally, I took some video.  You can't really see anything, but our drunk commentary made me laugh:



A pic of us on our evening walk:


Apparently I didn't get the PJ memo before the walk

The next morning we headed down to SD, but not before we had ice cream cake to celebrate Maren's birthday. 
 

Wish I could wake up to this every day!



Given the fun the night before, we didn't get the early start we were hoping for and it took us 3 hours instead of 2 to get down to SD due to holiday traffic.  We had some road sodas (and a designated driver) with us though, no worries.


And Chester!!

We made a brief stop at the apartment we were staying at to change real quick and then headed off to a house party right on Ocean Front Drive.

Gotta get the booze from the car to the house without getting busted

 

Don't all of your house parties overlook the beach with a DJ in the living room?

One of my favorite morments of the trip:

 

And the award for Best Lover goes to....

Shortly after this we all headed downstairs to the patio for the sunset:

And then proceeded to go home and get ready for a night out at Hard Rock:

That was a late night with a lot of drinks, which led to brunch the next morning looking something like this:

After brunch we headed to Coronado for a day at the beach (which may or may not have included 6 bottles of champagne) some delicious Mexican food, and another night at Hard Rock.  However, I don't have pictures of any of that. 

We ended up staying up all night since Kris had to work his bartending job in SD and we planned to head back to LA as soon as he got off work.  We hit the road at 5am and pulled into their apartment complex, full sunrise, at 7am.  We slept for a few hours and then headed out for brunch/lunch in Venice Beach before heading to the airport.  I'm pretty sure my liver still hasn't forgiven me for what I did that weekend.  At least it was good prep for my Vegas trip.

Up next, Vegas Bachelorette!!!

That One Time Jenna Jameson Called me Rude

As a follow up to my earlier post, feast your eyes on this:


You would think being in the porn industry would give you a thicker skin...

That One Time I Was In Bed With Jenna Jameson...

I seem to have failed to mention that I was once in bed with Jenna Jameson.  Luckily, I didn't contract anything....

Anyone remember the show on MTV called "Becoming"?  The show where a star's BIGGEST FAN could send in a video application telling MTV what makes them THE BIGGEST FAN and then the chosen one would get flown to LA for a few days to re-make the video and get a bunch of swag?

Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?

Well, about ten years ago I was dating Slim Shady's BIGGEST FAN.  I was a huge fan myself, but I don't think I could have pulled off resembling him in the video so I chose not to apply.  Anywho, he applied and listed me as the person to contact if he was chosen (because they like to keep it a secret and surprise the winner).  I got the call one day while I was at work.  I was so excited for him!!  I remembered in a previous episode I had seen that a girl who won got to bring her boyfriend along, so I straight up asked them if I could come along if I paid for my own plane ticket.

They said YES!!

For years and years I searched for this video on youtube and only a few months back did it surface.  It's terrible quality and it's in 2 parts.  The first part is the surpise (that's me in the "dancer" shorts waking him up during the surprise) and the whole first part of the episode where they show him filming all the different scenes (look for my intro around 13:13) and the second part is the video in it's entirety.





It was the most amazing experience, even thought it didn't really happen to me.  I got to hang out behind the scenes for three days and made some awesome friends with the crew.  Later that year we got invited back to LA for a wrap party at a bar with all of the other peeps who got to become their favorite artist.  We thought maybe we would get to go backstage since he was going to be in Sac shortly after we returned home, but no such luck. 

Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?

Inspire Me: Healthy v:4

I know we are probably in week 6 for this link-up, but due to meetings and trips out of town, I was unable to get my posts together for the last couple of weeks. 

I was visiting friends in SoCal last weekend (a whole post in itself) and I have a Vegas trip next weekend which has led me out on a few shopping excursions lately.  First of all, I SUCK at shopping and fashion, so I already dread going shopping.  And the fact that I am not where I would like to be fitness-wise makes it even more challenging.  Last week I had to buy a new pair of work pants in a bigger size, so that's awesome.  Then I went to Macy's and couldn't find any clothes between teeny-bopper slut and grandma styles.  Where do they hide the "classy, grown-up beezy that likes to still work it" clothing?

Anywho...

Last week's shopping excursion left me feeling less than stellar about myself and last night's encore was no better.  Add to that the fact that I wore a size 6 skirt yesterday that used to look amazing on me, but for the entire day I had it unhooked and unzipped because it was cutting off the circulation to the rest of my body.  No bueno.  I cried the entire ride home and tried to fix my face before I walked in the door because I didn't want hubs to see me like that 2 weeks in a row.  Unfortunately he could tell and then decided to hug me.

Wrong move, sucka.

I basically started sobbing so hard I couldn't breathe and telling him how I have never been this unhappy with my body for this long.  Usually I just start working out and eating right again and I start to feel better, but it's not working.  The entire month of August I worked out at least 4 days a week and was eating right and I don't feel better.  I don't feel tighter.  I'm not seeing changes.  My pants are still uncomfortable.  It's so annoying.  I feel like I'm not doing enough.  I want to maximize my workouts to get the most effort out of the least amount of time, but I just feel like it's not enough.

So I decided that my post today would be about motivation.  I mentioned before that it takes time.  I usually start seeing noticeable changes after about 3 months.  This is a perfect example since I am one month into it and frustrated to meltdown status.  I feel like what I am doing is not working.  It's hard to keep the goal in perspective because all I can think about is the fact that nothing is changing yet.

This time around for me, JB is my motivation.  Being a fitness professional, his insight is actually helpful in these situations.  Guys are known to be fixers.  When girls start freaking out about their body image, guys don't usually know what to do.  The fact that he knows what to do makes the fact that he wants to help fix this situation a lot easier for both of us.

After I had calmed down a bit, he asked me some questions that helped us get to a solution.  I told him some of my concerns regarding foods and my workouts and the gym.  I am going to start logging what I eat, not for calorie purposes, but to see how I feel when I eat them (am I tired, bloated, energetic, etc), and we set a goal to work out 20 times in the remaining 25 days of the month.  Knowing that I am starting up some evening classes again and that I am out of town (and most likely out of commission) for a few days of that tells me that I need to work out twice some days. 

JB and I got up early together this morning and knocked out a good workout and I plan to go to a class at the gym after work or do a body rock workout at home.  This weekend we are going to go shopping and fill up the house with lots of good food and do some food prep on Sunday during football.  The main reason the Live Fit Trainer worked so well for me is that I was consistent.  And because I was consistent with my workouts, I wanted to fuel my body appropriately, so I did the prep work necessary to get that done.  I need to get back to those roots and get it done.  Once I get where I want to be, the once daily body rock workouts will be enough to maintian.  I feel good about the goal for September and love that JB is so supportive.  I feel like my mind is in the right place again and the goal is on the horizon.

How do you keep going when you get frustrated that you aren't seeing results?