A potpourri of things going on lately

After over a month off the ice, I finally laced up my skates again yesterday morning and hit the rink for an hour workout with my skating buddy. We caught up on things going on in our lives and did several practice routines. Thanks to muscle memory, I hadn't forgotten any of my moves and I didn't fall once. I'm looking forward to going again on a Friday morning when I can enjoy the absolute freedom of skating to my heart's content on a virtually empty rink that seems to be there just for me. No other feeling in the world compares to having an entire rink to yourself where you can blast your music of choice over the loudspeakers and just skate!

Speaking of music, I've been listening to quite a lot of new music lately - and not just listening but also singing. I recently discovered Kate Nash and created a Pandora station with her tunes. The songs by Kate and other female artists on the station are great to sing along to, which I did quite a bit of over the weekend and now still have a bit of a hoarse voice. Sunday night my next-door neighbor came over for an art and wine night where we talked about our lives and drew pictures of our "perfect planets" over a delicious bottle of red zinfandel. The Kate Nash Pandora station was on in the background and we frequently found ourselves singing along.

Last Saturday night my other neighbor and I went out to a bluegrass concert by an awesome local band (Kickin Grass) that I had heard about the night before on the Local Beat segment on a local radio station. I particularly love the song "Run Away", which can be heard on the website. It was great being out downtown for the first time in a few months as I haven't gone out a whole lot since colder weather set in. But this weekend was actually quite mild, with temps on Sunday reaching near 70 F (20 C). After the concert we weren't quite ready to head back home, so we decided to go dancing. The club we went to had no cover and featured an awesome blend of very danceable world music and jazzy beats. Towards the end of the evening the two guys who had been keeping a casual eye on our coats let us know they were about to leave, but then started dancing instead. The one guy was quite possibly the most amazing and entertaining dance partner I have ever danced with! He had the best moves and really knew how to spin me around the dance floor. It was a blast! My new dancing friend and I exchanged business cards and agreed to meet up at the same place with our friends on Friday for another round of dancing. Since it will be First Friday, there should be a lot of people out and about. I can't wait!

Last night a friend invited me to go to an all-girls Wednesday night small group and I decided to go. All of the girls were around my age and extremely nice. Since I've been looking to fill my life with more quality, genuinely nice people, this seemed like a good place to find them. The group is currently working through lessons that examine the sources of problems in our interpersonal relationships and how we can resolve them. I really enjoyed last night's discussion and getting to know the girls. Next week we are planning to go somewhere to watch the big match between arch-rivals UNC and Duke.

I've also got some great follow-up news to add to last week's shopping experience. Last night before small group I went back to the Express to see if I could return two unworn items and repurchase them using one of the $25 off coupons I got with last week's purchase. The girl at the register said it wouldn't be a problem at all. Instead of just giving me the discount on the two items, she did something amazing: she returned everything on the receipt and rung it all up again since almost everything had gone on sale. I ended up getting back nearly half of the money I had spent! Sometimes when you ask you end up getting even more than you ever could have expected!

Time to go back to sleep for an hour, then hit the gym, have some breakfast and start on the day's work. I'm really excited about a networking event tonight to meet other local translators and interpreters. Oddly enough I've never met another translator from around here, so hopefully tonight some other linguists will come out of the woodwork. As diverse as this area is, I'm sure there must be a good number of us. Should be a good night!

Exciting Friday and weekend so far (including Dave Ramsey)

Since I usually work on the weekends, I often take Fridays off to relax a bit. With the State Fair in town and beautiful weather to lure me out, I was very tempted to spend Friday at the fair with my parents, but ended up spending the majority of the day building my business website in preparation for attending a conference later this month. So far it's coming along quite nicely: www.wunderbar-translations.com. I still have a lot to add, but think it makes a good impression for promoting my business for now. This next week one of my work-related activities will be I'll be working on vamping up my business cards to take with me to the conference. Friday afternoon I made a wonderful yellow squash and mushroom risotto (I'll post separately) and baked orange and purple sweet potatoes - yummy! Friday afternoon I went skating and had a make-up lesson since I missed Monday's class due to recuperating from a cold. For those of you who don't know, I've been figure skating off and on since I was about 5 years old, have had lessons at various times in my life and after a nearly 16 year break from lessons (only skating here and there over the years) started taking lessons again this past winter (inspired in part by the Winter Olympics). I took a summer break and am back at it again, this time with a much more challenging coach. I can still jump and spin but have a lot of bad habits to overcome.

The theme for Saturday was Dave Ramsey! He was speaking live in Raleigh today and I had purchased tickets for me and my parents back in May as soon as they went on sale. It was great hearing him speak live and definitely motivating to continue working to get out of debt. I have another blog on which I've been trying to track my efforts to get debt-free (http://creating-a-debt-free-life.blogspot.com). Now with more motivation directly from the source, I hope to strengthen my efforts and make even greater progress. Apparently some of the things I have been doing have not been in the right order, so hopefully now I can make the necessary changes to drive down my debt. Check out the other blog for more info on that.

The next highlight of this weekend comes tomorrow afternoon... more on that tomorrow or Monday.