random blog dump: my week + latest reads!

TGIF people. this is the first weekend in months that i have zero plans. i am so pumped to do a whole lot of nothing besides watch football, run, and hangout with my bully girl.

tuesday night i had dinner with my family at 131 main in dilworth. my parents are creepy groupies at the one in blakeney, so it's rare we get them up to our side of town for dinner. half price bottles of wine & filet mignon - yes please!

wednesday night i headed back up to verizon to see kelly clarkson & maroon 5! i am starting to feel like i should pay rent at verizon. after an HOUR AND FIFTEEN MINUTE drive, we met up with two of rachel's friends from home and made our way into the sea of screaming women. as if there was any doubt in my mind, adam levine may just be the sexiest man on planet earth. well, other than ryan gosling. it was an awesome night with new friends and some of my favorite songs. live music keeps me trucking.

i finished up a few books the past couple of weeks. first being girls in white dresses by jennifer close.

 

total easy reading/chick book. it's basically a bunch of stories of a group of friends that are in their mid-twenties going through the never ending engagement parties, bridal showers, weddings, and baby showers that consume your twenties. while it is really relate able to me, i had a hard time keeping all the friends straight. there were A LOT of characters and about half way through i gave up trying to remember who they all were and just finished the book. i would recommend it for some easy reading on the beach or something, but it didn't change my life. 

 

next up i totally shifted gears & read within arm's length by dan emmett. dan was a officer in the marine corps before joining the secret service and eventually ended up on the personal protection of president clinton & president (w) bush. i am obsessed with all things government & presidential, so i absolutely loved this book. while dan takes you through the steps of his career, you get a true sense of what life is like for someone whose job it is to keep the most powerful man in the world alive. we are so lucky to have so many men & women serving our country who are willing to sacrifice everything to save not only the president, but the rest of our country too.

 

 

 

and last but not least, i have been obsessed with anna sun by walk the moon for a few weeks now. it's awesome & makes me dance in my car.

 

have a great weekend!

the fault in our stars.

{via}

the first book i read by john green was "looking for alaska." it rocked my world. this quote is one of my all time favorite things ever written.

"but i lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and i was gawky and she was gorgeous and i was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. so i walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, i was drizzle and she was a hurricane."

so when "the fault in our stars," came out, i couldn't wait to read it. except somehow 2012 came and went and i am just getting around to it. and once i picked it up (around 9:30pm last night), i didn't put it down until i was finished (around 1am this morning). i cried for the last hour of the book and i'm pretty sure lola thought i was losing my mind. john green did it again.

without giving away too much, this is a love story between two teenagers who both grew up a little too fast because of that ass-hole named cancer. there is a healthy kid & a sick kid & a lot of words that make your heart flutter like it did the first time a boy held your hand. this book is hard to read, painfully wonderful & beautifully tragic.

so grab a box of tissues and dive in. i can only hope you miss a whole night's sleep like i did.

"as he read, i fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, at then all at once."

january 1-15.

i'm playing blog catch up. one of my goals this year (as was last year) to post 3 times a week. obviously, i've been slacking. so here are some noteworthy things i've been up since january showed up.

• getting back on the running & hot yoga train. needless to say, it's been awhile. thank goodness i have foursquare to remind me how lazy/busy i've been!

• one fun night and one beautiful afternoon at whiskey warehouse. i love that place so much.

• started reading clay travis' "dixieland delight." i'll do a review once i'm done - it is already hilarious.

• we watched the national championship game at jackalope jacks... and the SEC won the 7th straight title. roll tide!

• i saw zero dark thirty. wow.

• we went to the new 80s-90s bar uptown, the roxbury. who doesn't love a bar that plays nsync & hanson?

• after obsessively watching parenthood from episode 1, season 1, i'm finally caught up! what a show. i love joel.

• spending some good, quality, heart to heart time with a few of my oldest friends. it has been good for my soul.

the first 15 days of january have been pretty great. i'm headed to denver this weekend, i can't wait!