"sick day" ?

I have a boss who doesn’t understand the definition of a “sick day”. I have had a somewhat crazy week, at least for me, that resulted in falling asleep only to cough all night. then i woke up this morning feeling terrible. I guess my boss believes, in a passive aggressive sort of way, that if you have your computer and you're not in the hospital, a “sick day” = “working at home”.

I had great intentions to sit on the couch all day and watch tv and knit, but that just didn’t happen. I instead just sat at my computer all day and I literally just finished what she considered a “quick” project about an hour ago. So while I didn’t knit, I do have reporting still in me.

There have been several minor yet gratifying things OUTSIDE of work that have happened in the last month or so which have been keeping me busy or pre-occupied.

In knitting news, I started Shopping Tunic with a bang. It’s freaking hot out right now which is lowering my motivation but I am on the cowl part and it took me about 3 days to get there. While I’d hoped to finish her today, she’s close. I don’t have it in me right now to take pictures, and while not a good knitting photo, the background is great. This is the deck of friend’s house where we spent July 4th. And Shopping Tunic as an accessory.

Speaking of July 4th, that’s my birthday and Hart took me, as a surprise, to Babbo, on the Saturday before.This is my (and his) ultimate favorite restaurant and needless to say, reservation getting isn’t exactly easy. It's almost annoying but the upside is that it can actually happen. If you want a specific date you need to call at 10am exactly 1 month to the day before and hope for the best. Such a great guy that Hart is– this required him calling the day before we left for Eastern Europe in the middle of some crazy work situation. Not only that, he enlisted his entire team to sit in a conference room and have Babbo’s number on redial in the hopes of getting through. I will say that all the pain and annoyance is worth it.

The best part about the whole experience is that he tricked me into thinking we were going to another restaurant and as we were walking by Babbo for a *stroll* next to the park, he stopped me, told me to put on my heels (I was walking in flip flops, with the Manolos in my bag) and we were going in. Nice.

As usual, Babbo was unbelievable. No it's not cheap, but it's not out of control - it's a special occasion type of place. The food, for both meat-eating foodies (Hart) and vegetarian foodie-in trainings (me) is perfect.

On to one of my next goals, learning Spanish, Hart got me for my birthday Spanish lessons! Unfortunately right now most classes are mid-semester so this will be in the fall but one thing I am really excited about in the meantime is a great Spanish podcast, Coffee Break Spanish, which I’m trying to listen to and practice.

For any one interested, you can go to their website and download previous podcasts. For anyone interested in another language (Crimenotes: Hindi) I found the Spanish one via searching the store at Itunes. They list a bunch of podcasts and most are free.

Speaking of I-tunes, many months ago I saw Fig and Plum post this and it introduced me to this new and exciting Nike+ gadget. It’s a souped up podometer. It’s $30 and comes with a connector that fits on a nano (only) and a sensor you throw in your shoe. It tracks your running and with the push of a button tells you (in your earbuds) how long you’ve been running, how fast, distance, etc. You then sync it to your itunes and voila – it keeps track. I combined many generous gifting for my b-day and bought a new nano, an armband and the Nike-id and it’s great.

One other really cool thing is that on the Nike website you can use their map to determine the distance of routes you may already, or may think of running.

So many goals that are exciting. I wish I could convince my motivation to get on board.