Indescribably Good.

That's the Zaxby's mantra. You know what?

I AGREE meow.

I'd never been meow to a Zaxby's meow. Remember last month I posted how Sasha meow and I were going to mix up the fine dining with "everyday" meow dining? Well, this meow month it was Zaxby's.

We ordered a Zappetizer meow - fried mushrooms with Zaxby's sauce and each had the chicken meow finger platter.
The combo mealz come with meow fries and a piece of texas meow toast.

Fries are crinkle meow cut - hell yes!
Zaxby's meow sauce is better than ranch - BOOP BOOP!
The ice for your drink? GREAT!

Every last thing about Zaxby's is perfection meow.

I'm sorry? What's meow that? What are you meow talking about?

I'm not meowing.

13.1

I did it! I ran it! The whole way! I was going to stop at 10 miles but at that point....you might as well keep going. So I did. Feels good. I should say hurts so good. My knees and my ankles are screaming in pain. Good times all the same.
x
Tired Lola

SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY!

i am not sure how it happened, but i am running the Atlanta ING Half Marathon this Sunday.
Actually, I know how it happened. Pookie ran a half marathon this past winter and afterwards she talked me and R into running the ING. She was going to do it with us.
Well guess what? POOKIE IS NO LONGER RUNNING. She's got her reasons, so I'm not going to hate*.
I'm as ready as I'm going to be. I just got back from the gym. I ran an hour. I feel good.
God help me on Sunday.

If you're an ATLien here are the details:
ING Half Marathon
03/29/09
Half Marathon starts downtown (I think, I've been avoiding looking at the map, Google it) at 7:00 am.
I should be done within 2.5 hours. Definitely by 3. If you don't see me cross the finish line by 3 hours, the marathoners have lapped me and I passed out in a bush somewhere along the course. Remember that I don't run these things with a goal time in mind. I run to run and to rub it in your face. Hey, at least I'm honest about it.

I know its early, but come out and support. I'd do it for you.

*Dearest Pookie,
Please note that I can now bail on a run you want to do, no questions asked.
Thank you,
Lola

La'Lola & Bon Qui Qui

to make you feel my love....

i've heard this song many times before. it's not an adele original, but she has such a lovely voice, i had to post it.

What do you think about "us"?

I've given up thinking Friday is part of the weekend. It's not. You work most of your waking hours on Fridays, so it doesn't count. Saturday and Sunday are the weekend. End of story.

Needless to say, when I got home from work Friday night, I went straight to bed. Correction, I stopped by Cray-Z's house to give him some money I owed him (thanks again for helping me out, Cray-Z!) and then I went home and crashed. I slept from 8:30ishpm Friday to about 10ish Saturday. Thanks, Benadryl!

I ran on Saturday. I ran a lot BUT I'm definitely no more ready for the ING half marathon this weekend than I was when I half assedly started training a couple of months ago. Meh. I always say I do these things to say I was able to, not because I had a time goal. So thats what I'm doing.

After my run I walked to the park to meet L + J and all their fabulous friends at the park to play kickball. Now let me say I had intended to play kickball with them, but as I was walking to the park I just became so enamored by the weather and by the laziness and easiness of the day, I opted to just spectate. I spectated for over 3 hours. I walked home. Felt good.

I laid down for a nap and when I woke up around 7ish, I saw I had missed a call from good S. The last time I actually talked to good S was before I left for England and even then it was through email. I hadn't even seen him since I gave him my college TV and that was in February.  Intimate? Last year. September? October? Anyway...

So he was in my neighborhood. Down the street at a bar watching the NCAA tournament. Super. Want to come down? YES! Finally someone to watch games with me! Eat wings! Drink beer (cider)! So I go down to the bar and we have brews and chat and then hop on over across the street to another bar and do more of the same. Then the question.

"What do you think about us?"

I honestly didn't think I'd heard him correctly.

"What's that?"

"What do you think about us?"

Had he not had such a serious, business-like look on his face, I would have laughed from thinking he was joking with me. He wasn't joking.

"Um, what do you mean?"

"Well, I'm not looking for a relationship"

"I wasn't asking you for one"

"So we're friends"

"(Uncomfortable laugh) Um, yeah. YEAH! OF COURSE! YEAH"

So awkward. Had I done something to prompt this? Was I fawning over him without realizing? I mean what? Where the hell did that come from? Became mortified just sitting there thinking I was throwing off some embarrassing vibe. I haven't been attracted to good S since the night we first got intimate. This was out of NOWHERE.

So when his friend showed up at the bar and came over to our table, I quickly excused myself and sprinted out of the bar. 

This is my life, folks. Super.

Observations, continued...

8) Convent Garden is not an actual garden.

Actually, its more like an outdoor mall. Pookie, her parents and I had some time to kill before boarding a train out to Pookie's uncle and aunts house, so when asked where I wanted to go and what I wanted to see I remembered that Covent Garden sounded like a good spot from seeing it listed on the Underground route. 

So when we got off I was all excited to see the famous Covent Garden.

Well, surprise! It's not a garden. Super.

But I may have found Chase's Lolly there. To be confirmed....

9) English Asian is different from American Asian.

So I've never considered people from India Asian. I mean, technically, India is part of the Asian continent... I've just never thought of them that way. I always grouped Koreans and Chinese and Japanese and Vietnamese and all those smaller countries as Asian. Not so for the English. Indians ARE Asian and Koreans are Koreans. Chinese are Chinese. and so on and so forth.

I love stories like this

happy friday and happy first day of spring. remember, it could be worse. you could be living in NYC on the first day of spring and have it snow! BLECH

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Observations, continued

7) There are lots of women in England who don't know what "age appropriate" means.

While young English men and women take fashion risks, unfortunately, some of the old ones do too and the risk is DANGEROUS. I saw a lot of women my mom's age and up wearing clothing best suited to a younger body and lifestyle. Pookie's dad calls these women "mutton dressed as lamb".
If my mom wore colored leather, stretch pants and heeled boots accompanied by fried and dyed hair I'm pretty sure I'd put a stop to it. We call these women "Cougars" in the U.S. - but Pookie's dad's word "Mutton" is a much better description.

Observations, continued

6) The English have a funny way of pronouncing things.

My ear aches for the beautiful sound of all the accents I heard in England. I've never heard so many beautiful sounds - even the chavvs (England's po' white trash) have a way of speaking that is downright charming. There were a couple of times I found myself pronouncing things and getting funny looks. In these cases I was clearly pronouncing things the right way - it's the English that were wrong. For example:

The cities of Gloucester, Gloucestershire, Worcester and Worscestershire... You (no doubt) pronounce these like I do - phonetically - Glue-kess-ter, Glue-kess-ter-shy-er, Wor-kess-ter or Wor-shess-ter, Wor-kess-ter or Wor-shess-ter-shy-er. NO. Do not pronounce these words this way. You will be speaking "ugly American". You pronounce them like this: Gloss-ter, Gloss-teh-sure, Wooster, Woo-steh-sure.

I mean really. Who knew?

Observations

I originally planned to blog every night in England; chronicling the day's events. Pfffffffft - you know how it is on holiday. Instead, I decided to do a list of observations. Enjoy.

1) The bread is way better in England.

This is fact. Late last year I became gluten-free, but as my trip to England approached, I knew better. I wasn't about to restrict myself from anything and I'm so glad I didn't. The bread in England is delicious. Soft and chewy mmmmmmmmm DEE-licious! Whether its the bread you have for a cheese (cheese is so much better in England too!) sandwich or the warm tea cakes with butter or the soft scones you have with jam and cream ALL of it is FANTASTIC.

2) The English love their tea. That is no lie.

So I knew going into England that hot tea was the drink of choice, but I had no idea how much people drank of it. A lot. Pookie's dad would wake us up with a hot tea every morning. At first I only took my tea black, but wish I'd learned early that it's best with milk and sugar. We'd have another cuppa :) tea between the first and noon. We'd have another one for noon. If we went out anywhere, we surely had a cuppa tea then. When we got back from wherever we went, we had another cuppa tea and then another right before bed. I am going into tea withdrawal. No cuppa tea will ever be the same!

3) No ice.

I'm an ice freak. My drinks are mostly ice and then whatever liquid I choose to drink. I've always been like this. I like my drinks COLD. Well, the English don't do ice and if you ask them for "lotsa ice" with you water or juice they will look at you funny.

I gave up soda for Lent so I was hard pressed to find an alternate drink to satisfy my craving for sweet. In England you drink water, tea or squash. The only way I can describe squash is a lighter juice. It's the drink you'd have if you cut your fruit juice with half water. Its hard to describe but it is GOOD. I discovered J2O the day before I left. I don't think its a squash but its an orange/mango/passionfruit flavored drink. Had I known about it, I would have drank that all trip long. Anyway, the point of going into all this is that I had to order a cuppa ice with my water or squash or J2O if I even hoped to have a cold drink. Silly American.

4) The underground makes sMARTA look like a joke.

Most mass transit systems make the MARTA look like a joke. Even my beloved Metro, but the England Underground makes all of these look stupid. The Underground is England's underground (duh) mass transit system. You never have to wait for these trains because they come every 2 seconds. Okay not that fast, but not once did Pookie and I wait more than 5 minutes. The Underground is a maze of trains, but very neat once you figure it out. Pookie and I became intimately familiar with the Underground on Sunday when we tried to weave our way through to meet and see her friends from Uni at Picadilly and Notting Hill and see Trafalgar and Big Ben and eventually make our way out of London for the night.

5) The English are fashion risk-takers.

I noticed this in London first, but even in Birmingham it was obvious. We didn't do a whole lot of shopping in London - only because everything is ridiculously expensive in London and the dollar is weaker than the pound, but we did in Birmingham. The clothes are bright and the accessories are big and bold and, generally speaking, the English are not afraid to dress for themselves instead of dressing to be accepted by the masses. I definately liked this.

6) "Suburban" England looks exactly like you think it would.

The cottages you pictured based on what you saw in The Holiday are just as sweet and cute and small as they were in the movie - with ivy clinging to the walls and the hedges cut perfectly and yes, some of the roofs are still thatch. Thatch roofs are actually more expensive than "regular" roofs because you have to replace them roughly every 10 years. The smaller cities/villages are all adorable with the High Street (every city, no matter how big or small has a High Street, it's just their word for the main thoroughfare) having the main roundabout surrounded by small shops and all the cottages/homes lying just outside of the shops. This is the design of most every town I visited and I loved it.

More to come, but I do actually have to work...

Correction: Lola on Holiday!

Automatic Response: Lola on Holiday

bienvenido

Mama J's little boy, baby JLG came into the world at 10:23am on Tuesday, March 3, 2009.

congratulations to mama J, papa R and auntie A and all the Fo' family!

all my love xoxo

Lola

also....

mama j is currently in labor!

sending love and positive energy through this blog to your hospital bed!

i love you mama j and can't wait to meet BG!

xoxo

just your average Monday...

at the start of yesterday i really thought that i was going to leave work, go pick up my laundry, go to the laundromat and then go to the gym. it made me tired just thinking i wouldn't get a nap in anywhere.

the actual day seemed to go by really fast. i was busy all morning and all afternoon. yes! doing actual work! :) so by the time 5:00 rolled around, i was kinda surprised. laundry and workout was not to be because we'd all forgotten that we do trivia at Taco Mac in the Highlands at 7pm every first Monday of the month. i have several days before i leave for england to do stinking laundry, so i figured i'd go to trivia instead. if i didn't drink anything (alcoholic) i may even manage a workout afterwards. so thats what i did.

there are two rounds of 9 questions in trivia. we rocked the first round and ended up tied for first at the end of it, but would you know it? the second round is a lot harder so we tumbled to probably top 10 (i didn't get the exact rank) by the end of the second. there is always next time i guess.

since taco mac is 3ish blocks from my house, i walked there and back. when i got home, i started putting on my workout clothes so i didn't have time to sit and watch tv and decide against going for a run. i did happen to catch some tv while getting dressed and it was almost enough to make me not go, but i knew i had to since i'd had a wedge salad (with plenty of dressing and cheese) and a couple of wings. I was watching the Bachelor...

so as most people have claimed, i didn't watch the episodes leading up to the "final rose ceremony". i've watched the bachelor in the past and have gotten sick of all the drama only for the couple to break up publicly in people magazine.

well last night the bachelor claimed he was totally in love with two women. blah blah blah blah blah. broke up with one of them (molly). blah blah blah. cried. blah blah blah. proposed to the other woman (melissa) blah blah blah blah.

so that was supposed to be it.
but apparently, after he proposed to her and they started living in the real world, the chemistry changed and the bachelor decided he wanted to break the engagement off and that he was still in love with molly. so he breaks up with melissa on national TV instead of doing it at home when he realized he wasn't in love with her, essentially stringing her along and then minutes later tells molly he loves her and just when you think molly is going to do the right thing, she puts her hand on his knee and takes him back.

wait.
what?
hold on.

1. bachelor is a MAJOR BASTARD for breaking a woman's heart in public. not classy. even admits that its not the classiest thing to do. SO DON'T DO IT. break up with her, yes. but don't humiliate her like that.

2. melissa - poor thing. i was just telling Sasha it would take all my self control not to go jerry springer on his ass. for real. if you choose to humiliate me like that, don't expect me not to be evil to you. i'm not ghandi.

3. molly - dumbass. probability she will stay with jason and they will be married happily ever after and all that bullshit.... 0 ... good luck with that babycakes.