Jitterbug's Beat

Love, Food, Exercise, Football and Clothes. My Holy Cinquefoil.

Oh happy Friday, heading into a long weekend after a serious dry-spell of any time off.  Time off for some, I'm sure, means a break from it all - for me, a break from work is enough.  Any time not spent working I can spend with my great boyfriend doing anything or nothing at all, or at my great gym, taking my great classes, or on my great running trail.  Don't really need to go anywhere new or do anything crazy - just plain ol' not giving up myself to the giant work-machine will do fine.  Here's what's making me especially happy today:

 

Okay I love bagels, but those humongous family-sized dough lumps don't exactly jibe with this one-small-person-with-one-pound-left-to-lose-thing I've got going on, and I am thrilled now to be able to have my bagels AND cream cheese, and yes, you guessed it, eat them too.  The Fro Yo?  Well that just speaks for itself, does it not?

Now since the office closed early today, I got to spend my whole lunch hour in my most favorite step aerobics class with the craziest instructor I've ever loved.  She just got back from a big fitness convention in LA and brought back many new and wonderful fitness toys for us to experience.  Today we did a 20-minute interval set running from one end of the room to the other using mini inflated balls for jump squats, up-downs... I don't know if there are even words to describe some of those techniques, but I think they may have been developed as torture methods at Alcatraz.  You can just call me Kelly Stockholm Sullivan, 'cause I LOVE IT ALL, the pain, the sweat, the high!  And thanks Athleta and Nike for you're ever-wonderful gear, spokeswomen and ad campaigns.  They occupy my refrigerator door.

Next up, Fall = football.  'Nuff said.  Except that's not exactly 'nuff - with the lock out, and NO DAMN NEWS in the lock-out-off-season, I'm pretty durn (not a typo) clueless as to what's going on.  I spent some time today trying to get to know my fantasy team... a few old veterans, and a bunch of whoosy-whatsits I've never heard of.  Oh and thank you, Cedric Benson, for getting yourself thrown in jail... I know, I know,  you play for the NFL, you should be able to punch whomever you want, but life just doesn't work that way.  Apparently you're predicted to do horribly anyway.  Know what else?  Just ot add insult to injury, none of my Seahawk jerseys belong to current team members anymore.  What. Ever.

What else... oh September, beckoning fall wardrobe staples... what am I loving right now?  J Crew and Madwell, of course... what's extra sweet?  How about sizes 4 and xs??  Oh hells yeah. Dangerous, I know, but I didn't even remember how much I loved clothes until getting to a size where so much more is available to me!  Fast approaching, the lovely season of pea coats and scarves and hats and gloves and all things layered.  Pieces in every spectrum of the orange rainbow, from vibrant flame to pumpkin!  And yellow!  RED!  With all the beautiful blacks and grays, charcoals, chocolates and olives.  MMmmmnnnnn.  That's my deliciously-anticipating-fall-clothes sound.  I love the word "bundled."  

 
  

 

 

Football Fantasies.

How I picked my fantasy football team.  Mmmmmm, mmm.

My football fantasy.

Recently my dear friends and I came together to pick out our fantasy football lineup from the live draft.  Did I say dear friends?  You might not know it when things get underway with the pointed absurdity of me actually having the audacity to put Adrian Peterson in my queue when he is the best of the best of the best and my pick is the last of the last of the last.  I'm just gonna say it.  Sometimes.  I.  Lose.  My.  Temper.  I know you are shocked.  Please take a moment to put your socks back on.  Well I still had a few of my queued players when it came to be my turn, and I believe (FIRMLY) that I ended up with quite a good fantasy team.  Then my quarterback AND my backup quarterback ended up at the top of the list of BIG NO NO's for fantasy players.  I don't care what they say.  I stand by my fantasy men.  Like Tom Selleck.

At our fantasy draft gathering, we have also adopted the tradition of plunking everyone down in front of a video camera to record our predictions for the upcoming season.  What this year has taught me is that without alcohol, I am neither witty, nor charming, in front of that camera - in fact, I'm downright boring.  And probably less attractive.  Perhaps it's good that I occupy my time with friends who drink rather heavily.  My predictions were predictable.  But here's my theory.  If I keep saying the Seahawks and the Patriots will play each other in the Superbowl, eventually, if enough time passes... well it will still be my theory.  

 

 

The Boys are Back in Town.

Relax, friends, relax - I know you've been logging on day after day wondering WHEN GOD, WHEN will she turn this back into that BRILLIANT football blog we miss EVER SO MUCH?!?  Well it's not a football blog, so BACK THE HELL OFF - oh but wait - right now we're going to talk about football.  I've even changed the scenery, if you noticed.  So.  Tonight was the Seahawks first preseason game, and we ruled the San Diego... what do they call them again?  OH right - the Chargers.  I think it has something to do with them maxing out high-end credit cards or some such thing.  That's what you get for growing up in San Diego.  So the Seahawks - the team seems so different!  And change is good!  As I flew to the store at 6:30, in a mad dash to make it home before kickoff, the radio announcer exclaimed: "It's such a relief to see Matt Hasselbeck walk on to the field without holding his back!"  Dah da dah, dah da dah!  (If you're a fan, you'll know how that sounds).

Even being a preseason game where we've got slightly stumped announcers trying to figure out the who's who among newbies on the field, the team is BACK - it was like a reunion out there!  I love to watch the passion the younuns bring to the field, out there playing for their carreers.  Granted some of those careers guarantee more moolah than proven veterans, some three-time pro-bowlers (Aaron Curry, you'd better EARN that contract, son) They get hit - and hit HARD and when they hit the ground they're still twitching, trying to get back up and get that ball.  Maybe it shouldn't have squirted out of your hands in the first place - but that was a goddamned HIT and you're lucky you only lost the ball and not your head.  I can't remember your name 'cause you're either new or you're not on the starting lineup, and I was generally distracted by the one-girl-preseason-party-general-football-happiness-miasma going on in my living room, but whoever you are, good on ya.

I have a lot to learn this season as well - like this new zone-blocking approach - and how to pick a winning lineup for fantasy and avoid shooting myself in the foot by choosing a player who shoots himself in the leg.  How to learn something - ANYTHING  - before my football homer of a boyfriend, who swears all my knowledge only comes from repeating what he says.  Yeah well... imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.  Besides, you gotta fake it 'till you make it.  I see LOTS of good change in the season ahead.  Stay tuned.

Goin' down to Cali'.

If any of you out there have been following football this season, you'll know that my team Seahawks have not been having a great ... haven't been doing very ... can't quite get their groove... okay we're just flat out sucking this season.  So when there is a win, it's a pretty big deal.  And a win at an away game is an even BIGGER deal!  We were in San Fran for this win.

Beautiful day!

 

Hearty breakfast of McD's - technically Irish Cream and Buttershots with a splash of coffee...

  

LOTS of fans from home...

Mere mortal, meet Patrick Kerney.  Patrick Kerney, mere mortal.

 

Game day socks.

San Fran Fan - like ALL OUT.  She was there until the very end, still flying her freak flag.

 

GAME ON

AND GAME OVER!  WOO!

 

So for the rest of this trying football season, we'll have our memory of our smashing victory at San Fran.  Loving a team is like loving a partner - you gotta stick it out through the good and the bad, and just hang in there and support 'em!  Wait up there - I am divorced.  Hm.  Well I do like the Giants...

Deep fried, beer-soaked weekend.

Finally football season has begun and the spirit is alive and well ... despite the Seahawkscoming in at 0 and 2 right now, I'm convinced that they can come back and take back their season!  Convinced!  And I joined fantasy football this year too - the title is misleading.  Maybe more of an appropriate title would be "what-would-have-been-your-real-fantasy-team-if-nobody-else-in-the-league-took-all-the-good-players -before-you-got-your-turn-football."  Even that said, I've got GREAT players.  Great!  Payton Manning.  Joseph Addai.  Felix Jones.  Donald Driver.  But even with my great players, I keep on losing games.  I believe, like the dear Seahawks, that my current fantasy record 0 and 2 will also be left in the dust as I labor on, winning the rest of the season.  But if it can only happen for one of us, please lord that watches over sports teams, let it be the Seahawks.  Walking out of the stadium last night after our loss, reminded me of beating San Fran last year, and JW and I walking out of the stadium in our Hawks jerseys, high-fiving other Hawk fans in the stadium, reveling in the downtrodden looks on all those San Fran faces... last night it was the same thing in reverse.  I have absolutely no voice today from screaming myself hoarse.  So sad for our boys!  But they're nothing if not resilient, and Holmgren's got to know what he's doing.  They'll be all right. 

Earlier this weekend, Friday night, we rode the motorcycles out to Oktoberfest in Mt. Angel.  It was great fun - our friends acquired camping spots right on the edge of all of the fun and food, and we made a late night of it Friday and a lazy day of it Saturday.  The main clock tower rings, and these big, carved figurines spin to music, telling the story of Mt. Angel.  It's a giant, slightly racist cu-cu-clock.  Pretty sure Native Americans never dressed like Tarzan.  But, food, food, food - OH the food.  Deep fried Twinkies covered with ice cream.  Gross but accurate, quoting Nate, "It's like an angel pooped in my mouth."  Giant corn on the cobs sitting in a crockpot full of butter.  Cabbage rolls.  Pulled pork sandwiches.  Ice cream.  Elephant ears.  Spiced pork sandwiches.  Meatballs with sauerkraut.  Emergency ice.  The god of all good German food smiled on Oktoberfest.  Oh if only Molly had been able to join us!  I would love to see her take on everything - my camera went dead after two pictures!  And neither of those pictures were of food.  Sigh.  We will damn sure be going again next year. 

Back log. Blog. Back blog.

So I'm way behind on my updates - so many random things have happened over the course of the last few weeks, and lacking a home computer and the willpower to stay at work after hours for no better reason, I need to catch up.  This is a random smattering, but I think you'll find it informative.

Lets see here... one of my brokers bought a gong for the office (a tiny one), to ring when deals are made.  Adding to the project, I got to go web surfing to find some Chinese symbols that mean "the good shall come," and "the bad shall pass."  We were discussing the possibility that the symbols might have entirely different meanings - not unlike the teenagers who get symbols tattooed on their person thinking they mean "peace" or "beauty" when they actually mean "street walker" and "this end up" and "if you can read this, there'd better be an engagement ring in your back pocket asshole."  He and I were discussing what our symbols might possibly mean - his best guess: "pound sand" "ass face."  Thankfully at that moment another broker who speaks Chinese happened by and said "OH, yes the good shall come, the bad shall pass."  Good thing.  Only I really liked his better.  Molly asked how many times it had accidentally been referred to as the "office bong."  I cannot wait for that to happen.

K caught up with a friend of ours at the BI we haven't seen in some time.  He reported that he hadn't had sex in six months, and he'd been in a hit-and-run accident with a van and was pretty seriously injured with a dislocated femur, but is recovering.  Reading that, you'd think that my first thought would be: "Oh my god, he got hit by a car?!?"  But it wasn't.  It was: "Six months!?!  No freaking way!"  Another friend of ours was in a bar fight recently wherein the tip of his finger was almost bitten clean off.  Note to self: bar fights are rarely ever clean fights.  Let's hope it wasn't his guitar pinkie.

Meanwhile, another friend is lamenting his roommates.  Besides their usual shenanigans, while he was away with his girlfriend for the weekend, the dishes were left to rot in the sink, and when he got home, he discovered (his words) an "Obama rally of ants," parading around the kitchen.  Other random notes he's left for his roommates: "Whoever pissed all over the bathroom floor, kindly clean it up.  Sincerely, the guy who didn't piss all over the bathroom floor."  One morning he found his iron in the backyard.  I think he'll have quite better luck when he lives with his girl.  But I have to admit, I can't wait to hear what's next from those guys.  On top of it all, Subway has been sabotaging his sandwhiches.  Kid can't catch any luck at all.

Did I mention that I'm ready for football season to start?  I am.  But there's a catch, of sorts.  I'm a girl, so I have some selfish tendencies (WHAAAAA?) to make time for everything that's important to me.  Then there's men, who can be relatively single-minded (WHAAAAAA?) when it comes to things such as ... oh, I don't know ... football.  So although I desperately cannot wait for the season to begin, I have to admit, I've had a whole lot of the boy's company in this off-season, and not only have I really enjoyed it, but I've also gotten used to it.  Now we were fairly new through one entire season of football, and it was fine, but when the words "football PMS" creep back into the vocabulary... well.  We'll just have to wait and see.  So although he may be gone every (other) Sunday or so, least I forget, I'll still have Patrick Kerney and Julius Jones to keep me company. 

Oh PS - he's going to read that and take it the wrong way. (WHAAAAAA?)

Nope, still not a football blog.

But how would it look if I didn't post pictures of my friends, these early-middle-aged men playing flag football (second annual game). 

I tried to get a lot of action shots - 'cause trust me, there was action.  Flag football always seems to start out with good intentions... but I've learned that its much easier to snag someone's flag after you've laid them out flat and are pinning them to the ground.  Anyhoo, most of my shots have the guys looking a little winded, dazed, a little achy - like this:

But it was a great day, fun games and everybody had a great time.  Gotta love dem athletes - hotties, every one of 'em.  JW gives me a bad time about this being a football blog - he said, "No wonder you haven't blogged anything in so long!  It's not football season!"  I think, I'd probably never get anything done if I didn't have to constantly prove him wrong. 

Too much time on my hands again.

Here's a little project of mine I'd like to call "Hawk Talk: What the boys really talk about on the field..."

Also known as "fun with InDesign..."

Snow-Hawks, we're not.

Well.  The first two minutes?  It was a fantastic game.  It's okay though guys, you'll be back next season, and I will be watching.  Thanks for a great season.