The storm is brewing...

The other night we made a lovely meal of veggies with a few chili flakes and shredded Parmesan, along with cannellini beans cooked up with some turkey bacon, sun-dried tomatoes and fresh parsley. Delicious and simply, only made better by opening a bottle of the Prime Cabernet that our friend TH made!

I suppose you could call this the calm before the storm. It's not exactly calm but it probably could be considered such compared to the way things will soon be. CF talked to the relocation company today and it sounds like someone will be out on Friday to start to make a plan for our stuff and our shipping container might be packed in as little as a week from now! Yikes! Right now I am itching to throw all our kitchen stuff in there to save room/weight in the air freight for clothes so I don't have to take a bunch of checked luggage with me and have to get it from the airport to the city when arriving. But then we'd have to live here for a month without kitchen stuff. Hmmmm...

I'm too distracted to be too disappointed but there's just about zero television shows I am watching right now. We have a new one though, No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain. I had thought it was a show about eating crazy stuff, and yeah, he does brave a number of things I don't know if I'd be able to stomach. But please note, this is a show on the Travel Channel, not the Food Network. It's about the travel, it's about the place. Watching many episodes so closely together (they're rerunning past seasons as the new one begins) it is easy to notice his repeated themes. One of them I just love, that the quickest way to the heart of a place is in its markets. Yeah, baby! I highly recommend his Paris episode which features some amusing editing while he fights of an absinthe trip in the hotel room where Oscar Wilde died. I was also amused when he pinned a sign over his head while he took a little power nap on an Italian airport floor that read: "Be a traveler, not a tourist." Naive little me, I thought I had improvised the distinction when I protested to KZ somewhere in last fall's adventure that I didn't want to do touristy things. "But you ARE a tourist!" "No... I'm a... traveler!" Oh well, I guess I'm not as brilliant as I thought.

I've made a decision that I will leave the country weighing less than 200 pounds. I've been hanging out just above for far too long. So I'm focusing on portion control and stepping up the running. I ran 5.5mph for my whole half an hour today! That's my best speed yet and I hadn't even managed to do a full 5.3mph before this. Last Friday when I bought jeans at Nordstrom's huge Anniversary Sale I got them from the regular sizes... sure they're 16's and a generously cut brand, and stretch... but hey, it's a mission accomplished. Earlier that day I dropped my platinum engagement ring to finally be resized by a jeweler recommended by Ms. KS. I was shocked to hear I had lost another ring size since resizing my white gold band last year. My ring is going from a 9.25 to a 7.

Jeans were the first purchase I made that day, but it sure wasn't the last. I proceeded to lose my mind at this damn sale. I bought the shoppingsmycardio.com recommended 8ft of cashmere for $65, the black crystal necklace that goes with the earrings I bought at the end of last year, tights, a sweater, a raincoat and a gorgeous handbag. I'd say it's my first respectable purse, but Ms. SMC would probably disagree, but she' d do it nicely. Still, it's nice, soft leather and the perfect size for schlepping an understandable amount of stuff around the city, including my camera when I want to make it disappear more discreetly than a camera case can be. Plus it has nice handles that can go over an arm or shoulder AND a nice long strap for looping around a whole shoulder. Love it. I bought all this thinking I'd take some of it back once the buyer's remorse set in. But it didn't happen. I can't argue against any of this stuff and CF agrees. Thank goodness for relocation bonuses! I ended up getting yet another coat this weekend when we went to another store and CF was taking advantage of the sale in the men's department. This one is wool and super cute. Hopefully this California girl is set to become a Swiss Miss now!