Just What I Needed

I started this blog post two weeks after I returned home from NYC, and here I am, 3 months later, finishing it while watching the World Cup Championship. So here's what I started saying:

Though it's been two weeks, it feels like I just got back from the BIG CITY to see Meredith! And what have I been doing, instead of blogging, you might ask? I'm not sure. But here I am, ready to give the dirty deets and report everything we did. And ate. Mostly ate.

The theme of our trip was "Just What I Needed" because (a) it was; and (b) with every single thing we did, we would say "Ahh! This is just what I needed!" and then we would break out into a two-part harmony of "Just What I Needed" by The Cars.

The trip started on a lovely Thursday afternoon, with an extremely smooth Xanax-induced ON-TIME flight! This almost never happens - the smooth flight (hence the Xanax) OR the on-time part! In fact, I think this was the first time ever. No problem getting a cab, and I was zipping along the streets of Manhattan on my way to Mere's. We screamed and squeeled upon seeing each other, causing the cab driver to laugh at us and the hipster people of 8th Street to stop and stare, but we didn't care! We were together at last!

After panting up the 4 flights of stairs, Meredith and her roommates and I finally got to go up on her roof for a rooftop toast - something we've always talked about doing, but never actually got to. Due to the late flights.

A pic of us finally rooftop toasting!

We polished off a bottle and away we went to a cute french BYOB restaurant, Tartine. We got right in (which never happens there evidently), and we split the Spicy Chicken and Guacamole with French Fries (not sure how "French" that dish is) - but it was delish! We walked around the West Village and finally settled on a "seasonal American restaurant and bar", Joseph Leonard, to enjoy some wine and time with her roommates. A couple of glasses later and a quick stop by Insomnia Cookie (where we may or may not have gotten a few late-night cookies), we were back on the couch laughing about nothing and headed to BED.

We got up the next day at a decent hour and stopped by one of Mere's fave breakfast spots, Murray's Bagels!!! I opted for the whole wheat bagel with eggs and cheese. The whole wheat completely balanced out the egg/cheese combo so don't worry.

Ohhhhhhhh yeah.

Did I mention that we were talking the whole time I was eating the afforementioned egg/cheese delicacy? That also helped me feel better about my choice. And the cookies the night before. Leave me alone.

We then took the subway to Brooklyn so we could walk the Brooklyn Bridge! It was couldn't have been a better day and I was loving my life.

Cooooool!

The happy, awkward couple.

We then walked around the Lower...East Side. Or West Side. I don't know these terms. There may have been a few stops for Band-Aids and blisters along the way, but who cares!? We didn't let it ruin our trip! We saw City Hall, the Financial District, and Ground Zero. We walked around TriBeCa and kept our eyes peeled for celebs...and even though it was smack dab in the middle of the Tribeca Film Festival, there was no Deniro spotting or otherwise. Bummer.

Then we found this lovely patch of tulips in Madison Square Park. Loves it.

Best Friends! But not the best pic.

We had a hankering for some more food (surprise) so we walked over to the Flat Iron District (named for the building below that's shaped like an iron...where Meredith works near now!) and waited in line at the now famous Shake Shack.

Shake Shack!

The long ass line that wrapped all the way around the park.

The delicious burger and shake that was well worth the hour wait!

Meredith has talked about the MoMa for years, so she took me there to see the [weird] sights. The building itself is really incredible, and some of the art was too (see below), but we were both distracted by the Naked Exhibit that was currently showing at the MoMa that day. Though that's not what it was really called, that's what I'M choosing to call it - because there were ACTUAL naked people there that you could walk up to! Performance art is bonkers, yall. Other highlights included a woman (fully clothed, thankfully) sitting inside of a large square staring at participating patrons, trying to shift the energy levels in the room or some shit. WhatEVER. I'm all about art and appreciate all different types, but this was just WHACK. Give me a good Impressionist painting any day. So what if I'm mainstream!?

"Mom, my pancakes are looking at me funny."

- Meredith

Starry Night! In all its blurry, without-a-flash glory!! See? This is what I'm talking about. Good, mainstream art.

Back home for a quick nap, and off to meet Meredith's NYC b-fri Caroline at Pulino's, the new HOTTEST SPOT in TOWN!!

Meredith and I then made our way to a very secretive 1920s Prohibition bar called The Back Room. It's in an alley through all these doors and what not. We had plenty of drinks and then met up with Drew's cousin, Danny! The remainder of the night is a little hazy - I know it involved a lot of walking, more blisters, more places, more drinks, and MEATBALLS. We are unable to resist late night food, as you will come to find out.

Meredith took us to The Meatball Shop, a restaurant that stays open late for people like us and that serves MEATBALLS and ONLY meatballs. I was in heaven. Literally. I'm quite confident Danny was horrifed as we ate the meatball sandwiches (paired with a salad! Healthy!) and our peanut butter ice cream sandwiches, judging by the look on his face, but we chose to ignore him.

A good, solid, action-packed day ended with Danny taking us home in a cab and heading to bed. Whew.

Part 2 is still to come...maybe in a few months.

Who Are These People?

Or better yet: The Family That Sees Each Other Every 6 Years...Acts Like It.


Drew and I had the "pleasure" of going to Wimberley, TX this weekend for some forced family togetherness at the Annual Graeber Family Reunion! My dad has a huge extended family that we see every 3-4 years, so needless to say I was less than thrilled at the prospect of introducing Drew to all these people whose names I barely knew. But...my parents were hosting and we had no choice but to pack up and drive 4 hours to the luxurious 7A "Resort" for a night of pure unadultered awkwardness.


After pleasantries were exchanged and rooms were scouted out, we were able to escape the group for a much needed afternoon together in the Texas Hill Country at the Driftwood Winery. We'd never been to a winery and I had been wanting to go to one, so this opportunity presented itself at the perfect time!


It was $5 for a tasting of 6 wines of your choice (bargain alert!), and we sipped and tasted and swirled our glasses like we knew what we were doing while they told us about each of them. After the tasting, we settled on the Vigonier, a light, summery, crisp white wine, and took some glasses down to the wall overlooking the vineyard and enjoyed ourselves.

My boo, enjoying his vino

Me, chug-a-lugging my wine in anticipation of the long night ahead

The "bar" where we had our tasting



The beautiful vineyard we overlooked

Other highlights? My cousin is married to the owner of a Chic-fil-A so Chic-fil-A pretty much sponsored our weekend. Chicken nuggets for lunch, dinner, and breakfast (among other things) and nothing could make me happier. I also happened to finagle a Blue Blue Cookies and Cream ice cream cone out of the deal so that was a plus.

The remainder of the weekend was an uneventful blur - a lot more wine-drinking and a lot more eating and a lot more driving home. While it wasn't the way we would have chosen to spend a weekend, it's the things you do for your parents/family that make them feel good...which I guess is supposed to you make you feel good!

I'm off to watch the contestants of the Biggest Loser run a marathon, while I could barely run 2 miles tonight. Sigh.

Victory!

If any of you really know me well, you know that I've been training for a 5K for about 7 years now. I first discovered the Couch to 5K Running Plan in college - and while I attempted it about 435 times, I would only get 2/3 of the way through it before something came up. I'd get sick. I'd get a blister. It'd be too hot. I'd discover I hate running more than anything else in the world. Etc.

While discussing my failure at life to ever complete anything worthwhile, including running, my friend Stephen said "You know...you'd like it if you were good at it." At the time, I wanted to punch him because I was NOT good at it. And I'm still not. But I got engaged 2 years ago, started hauling ass, and got BETTER. Running 1-2 miles a day wasn't as hard anymore...so I guess he was right. And you know what else?

I RAN A 5K TONIGHT!!!

Wahooo! Though Drew and I would push it and run the distance of a 5K at sporadic points throughout the year, I never felt like I could call myself an accomplished runner until I ran an OFFICIAL 5K.

The Katy Trail 5K is a fun Dallas Uptown event that is put on every year to raise money for the Katy Trail...that my company happens to pay for. I love it because it's on a Thursday night (always fun), it's in my hood, and it's sponsored by Michelob Ultra! After completing the race the runners and walkers get to feast on delicious samples from tons of awesome restaurants around Reverchon Park and guzzle beer and wine at their own free will. You and 5,000 of your closest friends partying it up while sweating profusely!

I'm not saying it was easy by any means - especially when I almost started crying because my shoulder wouldn't stop hurting - and I'm not saying I did it in a timely manner (13 minute mile anyone?), but the point was that I DID IT, I FINISHED IT, and I ACCOMPLISHED something. And boy do I feel good.

And now I can start training for a 10K! In the heat of the summer! First stop 5K, next stop...the world.

Spring Forward

Spring has sprung, Drew's almost done with Busy Season, and love is in the air! Or something. I realized I started my blog during a very big down time/slump for us, considering I haven't seen Drew since February, and my nights consist of my various activities and then watching TV alone. But no more! We are now in mid-April and I am looking forward to so many things:

• Beautiful weather!



• My BCOR Boot Camp I just joined! Actually, I hate it. They beat me up and I'm the worst one in the whole group. But...I'm looking forward to the results I am praying to see.



• Cooking for someone again! No more cans of soup or Weight Watchers meals.



• Did I mention the beautiful weather? Beautiful weather also means a new variety of weekend activtities, including but not limited to...hitting golf balls, going on walks, sitting outside at a restaurant, drinking margaritas, etc.



• It's lighter later! I hate it when it's dark so early in the winter and the sunny evenings make me happy.



• And perhaps the most imminently exciting thing...is going to NYC to see my bff MEREDITH! We have quite the itenerary planned, so I'll have to report back on the restaurants we'll go to, sights we see, drinks we'll have, celebs we stalk, and the plenty of pics we'll take. I'm pumped.

More to come next weekend!

Knitting and Sitting

What started out as a happy-go-lucky evening from the last post quickly turned into a shitty one upon Drew's arrival home. Literally. He was home, things were fine - a toilet somehow got backed up and then we got into a heated "debate" over the proper way to plunge a toilet. Ahh...the joys of being married! But that's not what I'm here to talk about....tonight anyway.

As I've mentioned before, I've been trying to stay busier this semester and get involved in new, fun, different things. One of those new hobbies is KNITTING. My friend Kathleen approached me a month or two ago and asked if I was interested in learning to knit and taking a class at a cute little shop, The Shabby Sheep, conveniently located about 3 blocks from me. While I've been under the impression for years that knitting is something that old people do or that women write crappy fiction novels about (Friday Night Knitting Club, anyone?), I thought...why not? We jumped in with both feet and never looked back.

Here are some of my first projects:

This is my first attempt at an actual scarf. It was made with small needles and even smaller yarn, so it took weeks and weeks. Not a huge fan of the rainbow pattern but...my mom evidently is. So consider it her's!

This is my second attempt at a scarf. It's made with much bigger needles and much chunkier yarn, so it took about 4 hours. Which isn't much time at all. This scarf will be going to my mother-in-law.

This is what I call my "Valentine" yarn for my "Valentine" scarf...even though Valentine's Day is long gone. The actual pattern is called the "Lumpy Loopy" scarf, after the yarn. See? One of them is LOOPY and the other is LUMPY! In the end, it should look something like...

THIS. God willing.

Knitting has proved to be an EXCELLENT hobby for me and my lifestyle. On the nights I am home, I get to sit in front of the TV, catch up on my shows, and sit and knit. And Drew likes it because I'm always entertained, no matter what's on (football, basketball, baseball, ice dancing, curling, etc.)! This week Lindsay came over and I taught her the beauty of knitting and now she's hooked too. Perhaps we'll have weekly stitching and bitching sessions.

Ronda, our teacher, encouraged us to take our knitting out in public and let people ask us about it - to make knitting a more common thing so more people will do it. I don't think I'm ready for that kind of publicity yet. I just prefer to blog about things for all the world to see.

Honesty

After reading a variety of blogs over the past year or two, I have come to the conclusion that the most honest blogs are the best blogs. But sometimes it's difficult being as honest as I'd like to be because I imagine that eventually, people might read this. If I ever tell anyone I started a blog. And I don't know if I'm allowed to say that...for example, everything is up in the air at my job right now and I don't know what the future holds. And I don't know what I want to be when I grow up and I'm 25 years old. And I don't know if I'm allowed to say that I can't stand Drew's hectic work schedule right now and we got into a screaming teary fight (OK, fight = fit. Thrown by me.) about it on Sunday while I was on the way to church and I had to skip our class altogether because I didn't want to go in by myself with a splotchy face. And I don't know if I'm allowed to say that I have tried getting more involved in things this semester but I think I've overbooked myself and I feel like I never have any time to relax, even though I'm by myself a lot.

I don't know if I'm allowed to say these things because they sound like complaints, and I don't want to complain. I have a great life. They've just been on my mind lately. Lately being tonight.

And now I just found out that Drew gets to come home "early" tonight and is on his way here and...I'm excited and happy. I think I'm allowed to say that.

Famous Relatives

When coming up with a title for our blog, we started brainstorming about things pertinent to our lives. We like cooking. We live in uptown. We're newlyweds. We've been together almost 9 years and counting. But nothing we could think of was clever enough. But you know what is clever? Having the last name Solomon and realizing that there are plenty of allusions that concern the name of our most famous ancestor! And so...we stumbled upon the name "Songs of the Solomons".

The exact definition of a song (according to Dictionary.com) is a "short metrical composition intended or adapted for singing, esp. one in rhymed stanzas; a lyric; a ballad." And while we don't plan on composing anything to sing, and we don't plan on rhyming too much, we are choosing to have our definition of "songs" be...chronicles. Diary of. Stories. Life. Not sure if there's going to be a general theme or what...because I haven't thought that far ahead, but I just thought an explanation was needed.

Enjoy!

Valentine's Day

In an effort to save money, Drew and I decided to stay in for our first Valentine's Day weekend and make dinner. No fancy restaurants, no big presents, no flowers - just dinner. And meaningful cards if a person felt so inclined. As I was bored at work this week, I went completely overboard on our Valentine's Day Dinner Menu and everything ended up costing as much time, money, and energy as a regular dinner out on the town would. Ohhh well. I feel like it's great experience for me/us to cook together, AND to cook/bake/make things we never have before. Here is my menu, along with some amateur pictures.

Ina Garten's Filet Mignon

Complete with Pioneer Woman's Onion Blue Cheese Sauce. Ignore all the cream. I did. It's Valentine's Day!

We also had Giada's Twice Baked Potatoes with Mushrooms, Onions, and Prosciutto. Only we didn't use the prosciutto because...we forgot it. I'm sure it would have been delicious but these were pretty amazing without it.

For dessert, we had Bakerella's/Betty Crocker's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Brownies. SO GOOD. Even after giving some away to family members, we have a ton left. Which doesn't bode well for my day off of work tomorrow.

Before they went in...

After they baked...covered in ganache. Again, ignore the cream.

Perfection.

All in all, it was a wonderful, stress free dinner and Valentine's Day. Which is more than I can say for this first blog post.