#23- try a new restaurant

one of my best friends, meghan, called me on friday morning to let me know she was in dc for the weekend. it was a great surprise, and so a few adjustments to my weekend plans needed to be made to accommodate the great news. on friday meghan was kind enough to come the museum to eat lunch with me and just take some time to catch up, the two of us. saturday night we made plans to get together in the city for dinner with a few other people (mark, jessie, missy, jon, and one of meghan's old friends from work).

luckily, two of the three restaurants that meghan wanted to go to while she was in town were new to me! we decided on the grill from ipanema, in adams morgan. anyone who is a geography buff can guess that it's a brazilian restaurant- and we were not disappointed. the food was really good and the drinks were delicious. the only complaint we had was the service, it was horribly slow, but when in good company, it didn't matter that much.

here's a quick shot of meghan and i after dinner:

#24- gain a new perspective

i also like to call this one "no more pity parties." everyone has problems and that's just how it is. but, it's true that happiness is a choice and i am supremely guilty of making the wrong choice at times. within the past year i've tried to change my outlook on life but it hasn't always worked...actually it's pretty cyclical. sometimes i'm just in a "woe is me" mood that may last for a couple of weeks. and sometimes i'm in a "life is lovely" mood that could also last for a couple of weeks. the truth is, i have it pretty nice. instead of thinking "argh, i have to go to work" i really want to start thinking "oh, i GET to go to work!" and i GET to go to school, and i GET to put food on the table and i GET to pay a mortgage and i GET to have a new car payment and i GET to do a ton of other things that may seem like a pain sometimes, but i am really lucky to get to do them. so many people are in dire straights these days with work, money, food, and life in general. my job, although sometimes frustrating, has enabled us to buy a house, buy a car, put food on the table, and allowed me to get into grad school. i should be more thankful for that. granted, i'm not expecting to be susy sunshine everyday (i'm not trying to set myself up for failure!), but i hope that tweaking my perspective just a little bit will allow me to be happier in general, and then to pay that happiness forward.

this is me not having a pity party:

#25- have fresh flowers in the house

i LOVE the sight of fresh flowers in the house, but usually i pass them by at the market because 1. i have the amazing ability to kill any form of vegetation, and even though flowers in a vase have already been picked, they're lasting time is greatly diminished in my presence, and 2. sometimes they can be expensive and/or feel a bit like a luxury. but alas, i love the sight of them nonetheless and sometimes you just need to give in to the things you love. so, tonight on my way home from work i stopped by trader joe's for eggs, marinara sauce, and three bunches of beautiful, fresh flowers. here are a few snapshots...

there are two vases in the living room, one on the coffee table and one on the mantle:

then there is one vase on the dining room table, of white hydrangeas, which was also the majority of my wedding bouquet, and i love them:

it makes me happy to see all these beautiful, living (not really), non-wilted flowers around our house- at least for the time being :)

#26- blog

um, i don't consider #26 a cheat. i may have blogged more in the past two weeks than i have in the previous two years. the real kicker is that i plan on holding fast to my blogging over the next month during my 30 for 30, and then hopefully beyond! there are no photos to accompany this accomplishment, because again...it's past 10pm and i've had another full day of work and class and i don't want to hit you with a "tired jenn" photo two posts in a row!!! :)

#27- eat dinner by candlelight

i've never done this. ever. mark couldn't believe that i'd never eaten by candlelight- and as the logical partner in this relationship, he felt like at some point during a power outage i must have eaten by candlelight. maybe, but i don't think so. at least it didn't leave a lasting impression.

mark and i received beautiful candlesticks for our wedding from mark's aunt lynn. the candlesticks were given to aunt lynn and the late (and infamous) uncle iggy on their wedding day. the gift means a great deal to both mark and i, but until now we hadn't put these lovely sticks to good use!

granted, i look exhausted...mainly because i was. this photo was taken at 10pm after a full day of work and then class. also, we may or may not have eaten chick-fil-a by candlelight. good thing i didn't specify "eat a FANCY dinner by candlelight" then i'd be out of luck!

it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that as soon as i took the photo, mark asked if we could turn the lights on. it shouldn't come as a surprise that i refused his request.

#28- paint my nails

it's not really a big deal, not to most people. then again, maybe i'm not like most people. i used to have acrylic nails in college and for a couple of years afterwards, but they were expensive and quite the time commitment every two weeks. since  then, i've enjoyed keeping my nails fairly short. they aren't very strong, so when they get longer, they get flimsy and break easily. anyway, this is all fairly boring, but to cut the chase, i hardly ever paint my nails. again, even paintings nails is a long process, because if i'm going to do it, i'm going to do it right: cuticle trimming, filing, buffing, base coat, two coats of paint, and a top coat. plus drying time, which lasts forever. or something close to it.

with that being said, i really like the way my nails look when they're painted, even with a clear coat...which is sometimes all i can handle. BUT, i recently saw a color on a friend at work that i really liked and decided to try. gray-ish polish is all the rage these days, and this is an OPI color called "you don't know jacques"

it's a little hard to see, but i've had it on since sunday (quite possibly a new record) and it hasn't chipped and is pretty much staying put- success! maybe this will become a new trend for me? maybe.

30 before 30

yesterday officially marked 30 days before my 30th birthday. to celebrate the occasion, i have decided to do 30 things before i'm 30- things that i've either never done before, or that i want to do more of, or something in between. it's my 30 before 30, so luckily i get to make the rules :)

#30- buy a new car

in 2001 i was fortunate enough to be given the "red robin" from gaga (my great grandmother). the red robin is a 1996 oldsmobile cutlass supreme. to my amazement it has lasted me through 2011. granted, there were many repairs and thousands of dollars that i sunk into the red robin, but it was all worth it. the red robin saw me through the last 2 years of college, my first (few) job(s), my first apartment, our engagement and wedding, most of grad school, and the purchase of our first house. but, over the past few months the repairs just came to be too much and we've had to just park the red robin for a few months and live with one car, which has been tough. over the past couple of weeks mark and i have been talking about a new car. i've been hesitant given the upcoming, anticipated changes in our lives, but i couldn't deny that having one car while we both commuted has been hard. both mark and i were in agreement about getting a hybrid, and of course, the prius is the best hybrid out there. we also decided that we'd prefer not to buy brand new due to the immediate drop in value and the certified, pre-owned was probably the best choice. after some research with carmax and local toyota dealerships, we decided to make the trek to a dealership about 45 minutes away due to their inventory. fortunately, they also offered us a great trade-in value for the red robin, and we just had to jump at the offer. unfortunately, we didn't drive the red robin to the dealership and just had to cross our fingers that it would make the 45 minute drive today. the dealership was kind enough to let us take the 2009 prius (now officially christened the "silver bullet") home yesterday and drop the red robin this morning. although the coolant leak in the red robin nearly choked mark to death, we made it! before we drove off, i snapped a "goodbye" photo with the red robin:

it was sad, but has been a long time coming. to make me feel a bit better, i also decided to snap a photo with the silver bullet:

the silver bullet is fantastic and i officially love it already. since this is my first purchase of a new-ish car, we'll categorize this under "things i've never done before"

#29- have more people over

although #29 happened on the same day as #30, i am not going to consider that cheating. since mark and i moved into our new house at the end of last august, we only really started hosting and having people over around christmas when we felt the house was finally in a decent working order. since then we've tried to host a bit more and have more people over whenever we can, and we want to continue the trend. last night we were fortunate enough to be able to host dinner for our friends hannah  and rob. hannah is a friend of mine from school, and our bond of friendship was fortified last summer as we both had to endure two painful classes- our digitization class and our cultural consumption of early america class. both were horrible and although i try to block them out from my mind, i'm glad that i was able to meet hannah through them. rob is hannah's lovely hubby, who is also an amazingly impressive runner. when rob talks about his marathon times, i just smile and nod, since it blows my mind that he can run that fast and i'm ashamed to tell him my times- ha!

anyway, hannah and rob live on capitol hill in dc but were kind enough to make the trek out to edgewater last night for a taco feast. although i didn't snap any photos, all of us had a great time catching up, building a fire, chatting, and eating until we couldn't eat anymore (well, at least i ate myself into a food coma). so, although this is only the first in a greater series of instances of hosting, we're off to a great start!