this was pretty fun.

this was pretty fun.

There’s a Hurricane A-comin’!!!

Atlantic City with the girls for Memorial Day Weekend

4 Hurricanes and a beer.

hurricane in hand.

Who are they talking about?

Souzai for sushi & sake! say that 3 times fast..

40/40 on Saturday. but only because she is so convincing.

i love these girls.
and not just because they put up with my obnoxiousness :-)

spring has sprung

How can you not love this time of year?! This is the view from our balcony.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and I’m considering spending a low-key summer at home.  As much as I love the beach, we have a lot of opportunities for adventure here in Western PA.  I already have a couple of affordable places to explore in mind.  Let’s see if I can stick to my plan, though I have a feeling that I could be easily persuaded to do otherwise…

bring me the spring!

My 2nd favorite season of the year has arrived!

Who wouldn’t love waking up to this every morning?!

The BF & I started the day pretty early (for us).  1st on the list of activities was a surprise trip to have XM radio installed in my car! Yay!! It feels so good to have more than one radio station to choose from!

And look what we stumbled upon while waiting for my car. I’ve never actually seen one!!

So apparently part of the charm of Sonic is that it’s also a drive-in restaurant.  I was pretty tickled by the thought of having our meal brought to our car by someone on roller-skates; however,  the BF was not tickled by the thought of me eating a sloppy burger in his car.  So we opted to eat outside in the sun instead.

I have to give it to Sonic.  My burger was pretty delicious and I can see myself heading back for round 2.

The rest of the afternoon was spent handling miscellaneous errands for our new apartment. We also caught up on the last couple of LOST episodes.  Before we knew it, it was time to head out for dinner.

The restaurant of the evening was a surprise to me. I was pleasantly surprised to find us at Green Forest Cafe!!!

For those of you not familiar with Green Forest Cafe, it is a brazilian churrascaria.  To sum it up, if you love meat, this is the place for you.  Excuse my lack of pictures from inside the restaurant, but I was too busy STUFFING MY FACE. Please note that the food was PHENOMENAL!!! I am also on the hunt for Goya Passion Fruit juice, so if anyone knows where I can find it in Pittsburgh plllleeeeaaaasssseee let me know!

Happy spring to everyone!

and if you threw a party…

so my buddies & I got together in Philly to celebrate the birth of the lovely Niques! A fun time was had by all. Need I say more?

My 1st drink of the trip. 10 minutes upon our arrival.

Keep up. Or shut up.

And judging by this photo, they didn’t shut up.

Yay!!!

So typical.

I wish I had pictures from about an hour later this same evening. Then again, I think some people might be happy that I don’t.

The next day we decided to do lunch at Mad Mex.

I ordered the tortilla soup and the chicken quesadillas. Looks good doesn’t it?!  Well, unfortunately the quesadilla looked better than it tasted.  I waited 30 minutes for my soup to arrive and whoever heard of a quesadilla with no cheese??  I have to say that Mad Mex Philly needs to step up their game if they want to keep up with the Pittsburgh locations. And by the way..they were out of strawberry margaritas [insert blank stare here].

Later that night…

From classy….to trashy. Pretty quickly.

And before we knew it, it was all over. And I was on the R1 headed back to the airport.

It was fun. Until the next time…

it was all good just a week ago…

ok, well maybe a week and a half ago…

thanks to my favorite person, i had the chance to ditch the cold weather of Pittsburgh and escape to Florida!!!

this was my view outside of our car window:

Orlando to me equals the obvious–>letting out my inner child!!!!

This time around we chose to do Islands of Adventure & Universal Studios

If you can’t guess what movie I’m acting out, then ” you need  dead.”

turkey legs. you laugh at people walking around the park with them. until you smell one…. then you buy it. and devour it.

We had a great time. And I’m sure that we’ll be back sooner rather than later–Hogwarts is calling me.

The trip was fun while it lasted.  But then, back to reality. Sigh.

the weekend in a nutshell

I’m back home from a trip to visit some of my closest buddies!  I wanted to share my fun with you but  decided to keep my post short & sweet. Here it is in a nutshell:

THURSDAY

• Late afternoon trip to Richmond with an ETA of 9:30 PM (Highlight: I’m prepared to break up the monotony  of the solo drive with 18 episodes of Keith and the Girl to keep me company on the lonely road)

• I arrive in Richmond to the welcoming new home of Tasha (Highlight: where’s Oscar????)
• Drinks and the Steelers game at TGI Friday’s
• Tasha politely rejects a weirdo (and probable alcoholic) that i will refer to as Mr. Mumbles

FRIDAY

• Slept in, awaiting April’s arrival
• Nadine arrives (though she only lives around the corner)
• Lounging, watching HGTV
• Headed to the mall after a tour of Nadine’s new home (Highlights: where the heck is April?!).
• We see a Red Robin so we immediately head in. Burgers were DELICIOUS!!! (Highlight: the cute waiter  providing top notch service & mentioning  a Wu Tang that references Nasty Nadine)

• We only make it to Frick’s Jewelry in the mall when April calls, so we leave to meet her.
• Manicure/Pedicures started sounding better than shopping so we detour to the nail salon (highlight: the lady that is prepping for a date with the guy she met on Craig’s List)
• It’s already time to start pre-gaming.
• Pre-gaming complete, freshly dressed, we head downtown to Aurora (Highlights: sequined pants, commando flashings by easy girls, April’s hour-long convos with a guy while her eyes are closed the entire time, special shout-outs to Terri aka Jersey, Tasha throwing her hip out like the  80-year-old that she is)!

• We left when the lights came on–impressive for us.
• We’re hungry again, but it’s late.  Off to Wawa’s (Highlights: Tasha orders extra pickles, April places a “special order” that is actually pretty regular, my debit card gets declined on a $5.00 order)
• We devour the food and pass out accordingly

SATURDAY

• Another late start, but on a positive note, no puking for anybody–yay!!!
• I call PNC Bank & confirm that there are no holds on my account–I was actually just too drunk to enter my PIN correctly
• Leftover sandwich for breakfast for me, pancakes & coffee for the others
• More HGTV
• Time to hit the mall. We’ve got Christmas shopping to do!
• Everyone makes a successful purchase or two successful (except for me)
• Dinner time, so we head to Red Lobster.
• After dinner, we head to Kroger’s to re-stock up on wine for game night
• We head back home & kick off the night with April’s drinks
• Welcome Shannon, Micah, and Terrell (s/p) to game night
• Wii tennis, Taboo, & Scattegories (Highlights: Team A brought down the house with our Taboo dominance)
• We’re hungry so Chef Nadine heats up a frozen pizza & bakes cookies

SUNDAY

• it’s Sunday :-(
• weather is looking pretty ugly back in Pittsburgh with all parkways closed due to ice
• despite the temptation to stay an extra day, it’s time to hit the road
• 5 hours & 23 minutes later, I’m back on my home turf.

So that’s our weekend in a nutshell. Tons of fun!!!  I love my friends! I really hate that we are all so far apart from each other, but it does make the quality time that we do get to spend together SOO much better.