Ladies Weekend

It might not be a big surprise, but I don't get too many evenings Girls Night Out opportunities.  Yes, Sam is on call all the time (or so it feels), but many of those nights I am busy with Hunter or doing errands or housework.  On Fridays I am frequently too hired from the work-week to bother going out, and often times my girlfriends are busy with their boyfriends on Saturdays.

That was not the case this weekend.  Sam went to Las Vegas with Ryan, Steve, Nick, Mason and Kirellos when the stars aligned and all the boys were off at the same time.  Dan and Tina had been planning a March Madness trip which happened to coincide with the boys' time off.

I couldn't make it due to Jackie's upcoming wedding events, budgeting for our 10-year High School Reunion trip to San Francisco, and wedding/birthday madness in July.  I guess it's part of being a mature, financially minded adult to say 'no' to some trips.  :-)  Besides, I am really looking forward to all my upcoming weekend celebrations and this turned out to be a bit of a UCI med school reunion for Sam's group of guy friends.

So anyway, Sam left me here with Hunter for the weekend.  And wow, I have gotten to hang out with lots of great ladies!  Minal, Sam's co-resident, met me at The Melting Pot after I dropped Sam off at the airport on Friday night.  She hadn't ever been there before, so we ordered spinach artichoke cheese fondue and then a pot of milk chocolate & peanut butter fondue.  It was SO fun getting to spend a little one-on-one time with her.  In fact, I think I could REALLY enjoy her company.  The only trouble is that she is from Orange County, and has a very busy social life.  I anticipate it being even more difficult to spend time with her than it is for me to spend time with Sam!

Saturday morning, Amy and I met for the 9:15 spin class at our local LA Fitness.  It was a really rigorous workout this morning; we had a sub and she was way more intense than our usual instructor.  Not that we're not usually working hard, but this girl had me POURING sweat and that is rare even for me- I feel like I sweat an unusual amount.

After spin, I came home to shower and pick up Hunter before heading down to Corona del Mar to meet up with Amy for lunch and a little Newport Coast walk.  We spent a while hanging out on Nick's patio enjoying the sunshine.  It wasn't hot, hot, but it was definitely better than the over-cast, fog situation that was going on earlier in the morning.

When I left Amy, I went by Ralph's and picked up the Rug Doctor carpet cleaning machine and decided to shampoo our carpets.  After last weekend's Spring Cleaning, it was just looking foul that our carpets had dark stains and spots.  So anyway, I cleaned the carpets for about 2 hours and made very sure to go back over the whole floor with just plain water after I had finished with the soap.  I then made extra passes JUST sucking up water from the fibers.  My hope was that the carpet would be drier than it was last time I did this (June '12) and that it would be dry by the time Sam got home if not Sunday morning.

Hunter and I settled down on the couch to watch The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and wait for the carpets to dry.  I wanted to call Jen, but she has a BIG exam (her last one) next Saturday and I didn't want to be a distraction for her.  Around 8:45, she texted me and asked me what I was up to.  Since I wasn't doing anything too important, and I had been hoping to see her, I decided to go over and have some wine.  Three and a half hours later (WooHoo for ringing in St Patty's Day 2013), after we finished a bottle of wine and played copious amounts of Guitar Hero, I finally headed home to Hunter.  While I was out, I left the heat on to try to help dry the carpets.  As soon as I got home I turned off the heat and opened back up our balcony slider and bedroom windows to help air out the apartment and speed up the drying process.

Jen texted me a 9 to see what I was up to.  She was getting burnt out studying for her big exam next Saturday and wanted to share some wine.  A bottle of Pino Noir and a few hours of guitar hero later, we rang in St. Patrick's Day.  When I got home I wasn't especially sleepy, so I decided to watch a bit more of The Fellowship of the Ring (which I was midway through when Jen texted).  I ended up going to bed around 2:30.

Sunday morning Any and I had planned to go to spin class... but she wasn't feeling up to it.  I, with only 5.5 hours of sleep, managed to get myself there and survived back-to-back spin days with LITTLE serious damage.  Nothing like last weekend when I did a poor job of working my hamstrings and quads equally... I couldn't wear heels all week and had to roll out my legs for three days straight.

After spin, I started putting things back in order as the carpet began to dry.  I also sat down to do some serious work- four hours of intense website analysis.  I am trying to work on our pages with high bounce rates so I looked at 26 pages: key term phrases, content, meta description, title, etc.  I was able to make changes to most of the pages, and there were a few I don't know how to improve upon so I will send those to our SEO guys and see if they have advice.  I also sent some weird URLs to our web design girl so she can check out what they are and if I can just delete the pages off the site or if she can make some edits so the pages function more successfully.

Now, I'm relaxing with Sam and Hunter on the couch, just hanging out and watching The Return of the King.  (LOVE THESE MOVIES!)  I watched the first two earlier today and I probably won't be able to finish this one tonight.  Oh well, I'll have to handle the conclusion tomorrow.