#17- let him pick the movie

mark and i are pretty good about sharing the television and watching the same (ish) things together. however, i do tend to wiggle my way into watching "pretty little liars" some nights while mark is doing homework or something and just wants something in the background. he hates "my trash" tv, but usually just rolls his eyes and tolerates it. when it comes to movies, sometimes we're on the same page and other times we're not even reading the same book. so friday we decided to go to a movie and i let him pick. i said what i absolutely didn't want to see, he narrowed it down to two, and i said i was fine with either. we ended up seeing "unknown" with liam neeson. the first 3/4 were good but the last 1/4 was eh. THEN on saturday night we stayed in (the boring lives of grad students) and mark asked if i wanted to watch a movie on demand...he had a great one picked out. it was about the civil war, called something like "riding with the devil" and toby mcguire was the lead. i generally don't like period pieces, but agreed since he seemed excited. it was good, but SO LONG. it probably wasn't even that long, but it felt like forever. my good deed is definitely done :)

#18- exercise

my exercise regimen comes in fits and starts. sometimes i exercise almost everyday and then other times it may be months before i put on my pair of sneakers. friday (a lovely day off) mark and i decided to go for a 4 mile run, our first since the marathon. in all honesty it became a 4 mile walk because it was a bit warmer than we expected and it was just nice to be outside! i won't mention the fact that i am so out of shape for not having run in so long, we'll keep that under wraps. then on saturday and sunday (and later today!) i FINALLY started the p90x tapes that i borrowed from my friend, rachel, a billion years ago. i know rach is reading this and i want to hide in shame, but if it helps, i'm sore all over and couldn't do all of plyometrics...rather, i couldn't do MOST of plyometrics...hopefully that will change over time! either way, i'm excited to be exercising again and am loving the soreness a little bit. it's been too long!

#19- take some time off

now this hasn't really been a problem for me- i'm a big advocate of using any time off i may have, whether it's comp, vacation, personal, or sick. in the federal government leave system i get far too many sick hours to use them all, but i refuse to let my comp hours disappear in their "use or lose" fashion, and the same goes for vacation. this is a 3 day weekend and when i found out last thursday that my boss would be working from home on friday i decided to swoop into her office at some point and make a case for how i would like the day off on friday. in the end, i got my day off and it was amazing. i plan to take a few more just like it over the next two weeks :)

#20- read for school

in my last post i discussed my distaste for reading related to school, but this week i had to suck it up. last week in class i felt like i couldn't contribute as much as i wanted to because i hadn't done the readings, but this week i was determined to do them all, and i did. granted, they were fairly short, but it felt like an accomplishment. i'm not sure how often this will keep happening, but it was nice to get it done at this once this semester ;)

#21- read for fun

again, no photo, which many people think is a complete jip on a blog, so i'll keep this short :)

grad students don't get to read for fun, it's against the natural order of things. this is one thing i hate about grad school because i love to read, but mainly i love to read what i WANT to read, not the things i have been assigned. saturday i had some time on my hands (ahem, because i wasn't reading for school) and took a trip to the local library and picked up a book from a new mystery-writing author that i have come to enjoy. it's monday and i'll be finishing the book this evening, which is exciting but a little scary. now that i know i can read a 400 page book in 2.5 days, my schoolwork is in serious trouble...

#22- get outside

unfortunately, i didn't snap any photos this evening. it was a bit dark went mark and i went for our 40 minute stroll, but it was nice to get outside. today was a beautiful day and even in the middle of february we were lucky enough to enjoy our lovely neighborhood view of glebe bay and it's glory!

#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: