Long Time No See

SO, I haven't blogged in a while..my bad!  Things have been busy to say the least.  Very busy, actually.  So here's a rundown of what I've been up to starting with my work trip...

Work Trip:

We left Wednesday around noon for Monroe and checked into our hotel...the Clarion Inn & Suites.  Yeah, about that...FUNKY NASTY HOTEL...I had bedbugs in my first room, changed to a new room, inspected it, no bugs, and woke up to my boss' text saying he had bedbugs that went undiscovered until that morning.  EW!  We grabbed breakfast, headed to Home Depot for bedbug spray, itched throughout the entire hearing (just thinking about bed bugs) and got the hell out of Monroe.  I made it home late Thursday evening, sprayed everything down before bringing it into my house, and went directly to the washing machine with everything. 

Friday I got up early and went to work where I finished up a case filing, dropped it off at Royal Street, then went home to clean house, pack suitcases, and get ready for my vacation!

Did I get a workout in while on work trip?  HELL NO...the "gym" consisted of an old ass elliptical, a MANUAL treadmill, and and some rusted out weights.  Not to mention the room was the size of a closet and it was about 90 degrees in there!  The entire hotel was like that!  The halls were hot and muggy...luckily the rooms had a/c units and they worked.  I didn't feel comfortable exercising around the hotel because the area was sketchy... if I had my own vehicle I would've looked for a local walking track or something, but my boss drove us in his car.  So Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday = No workouts!

Vacation:

Vacation was AWESOME!  We drove Friday evening and arrived early Saturday morning.  The drive was long but didn't feel as long as I thought it would.  That could be because my husband drove the entire 700+ miles doing about 90!  We arrived in Charlotte around 5 a.m. on Saturday and we unpacked the truck and all crashed.  You'd think after staying awake for 12 hours driving that I'd crash too....well, I did, til 9 a.m.  SO I slept about 4 hours!  I woke up and hung out with my step dad, and then my mom and I went to the Farmer's Market.  Once everyone was awake we headed to my mom and step dad's favorite pizza place and then we headed back home after that and hung out together.  We crashed early because we (me, Brock, Adam, my step dad, my sister's now ex-boyfriend) got up and at 'em for 3:30 a.m. fishing! The fishing trip was a success...everyone caught at least 3 fish each...including yours truly. 

Monday - We went to the local theme park, Carowinds.  We rode a bunch of rides, mostly roller coasters.  Adam and I had a caricature drawing done but the girl sucked at it and the two people she drew looked NOTHING like me or Adam.  We didn't pay for it...  Instead we did the old time photo...Adam was a cowboy and I was some chick in a dress.  It came out alright except that I had zero makeup, my hair was in a bun all day and when I took it down I didn't have a hairbrush to make my hair look decent..

We left Carowinds around 7 that night and went home and grilled hamburgers and watched the lightning bugs on the back deck.  The weather was perfect the entire trip!  It never got out of the 70's and it was overcast so the clouds kept it nice and shady!

Tuesday - We went to a local arcade place that has batting cages, and go-karts.  We raced the go-karts and had a blast.  There's a big "no bumping" rule but the guy working it was awesome and he didn't care that we were running into one another like crazy people.  He even let us ride extra longer because there was no one in line waiting to ride.  It was neck and neck between me, my step dad, and Drey....I side swiped the shit out of them and came out victorious in the end.  Booyah boys!

Tuesday was also Adam and I's 2nd wedding anniversary so we celebrated by going to dinner together at a sushi restaurant we found online.  It was nice spending time with him but we both agree that Charlotte sushi has nothing on the sushi we are accustomed to here in New Orleans!  They didn't even use snow crab!!  They used crabstick!  Not cool!

After dinner we headed back home and went fishing again.  This fishing trip was not as successful..everyone did catch 1 fish though!  It started lightning and we headed home at 1.

Wednesday - This was probably my most favorite day!  We spent the entire day at the U.S. National Whitewater Center.  We did family rafting first...which was the "easy" more family friendly rapids.  Then we did the adventure rafting which was big rafting fun!  I won't lie, rafting is kinda scary because of the possibility of falling out...but it was awesome. Each rafting trip took an hour and a half, so it wasn't a quick trip through the rapids or anything.  Very intense exercise too!  We also zip lined across the river on the mega zip...which is a 1,123 foot zip line that starts off 46 feet in the air.  I was scared at first but the guy said "sit back and just pick your feet up and let gravity do the rest.."  And I did, and I'm glad I did because it was amazing!  We did that twice!  We also did the adventure course which was SCARY AS SHIT!  You think to yourself "30+ feet in the air, held on by a harness, no worries...."  yeah, it's not as easy as you think.  Lots of worries!  It's terrifying to look down and see how high up you are, but I manned up and got past the fear and did it.  It wasn't easy...but it was SO FUN!  Even my nephew did it and he loved it!

The whitewater park was great but after spending the entire day there we headed to the store, got some beer, and headed home and grilled chicken and enjoyed each other's company.

Thursday - Thursday was the 4th of July and we spent it on the boat, skiing, ski-bobbing, swimming, and cruising around the lake.  It was perfect, minus the very bad storm that we had to escape under a bridge to avoid.  It was lightning all around us....scary, but once it passed we resumed our awesome time until the firework show later that evening.  Fireworks were great...got lots of pics!

Friday was a relaxing day before our drive back home, so we headed to Concord Mills Mall, which is a HUGE and beautiful mall...we walked around, scoped out the stores, and then had lunch.  After the mall we headed to a local bowling alley and I got hustled by Adam!  We had a wager going and we had a "warmup" game.  Everything was fine...Adam was okay at bowling but not great.  After the warmup game it was on and Adam pulls out his "ginger snap" he calls it.....like you see on the pro bowling where they curve the ball all crazy and shit.  Yeah, I lost our wager, got hustled, and he still let me win the wager because he hustled me.  Now that's love!

Saturday morning we rolled out around 7 and drove all dang day back to New Orleans.  We made it in around 6 and as soon as we got home and unpacked we went straight to our favorite sushi restaurant, Daiwa, and then went home where we both crashed! 

Great trip, I ate too much, I didn't exercise enough, and I'm sad about it now...but I'm back at it...going grocery shopping for healthy foods and getting my butt to the gym today!!!

Well guys, my computer at work is crap and is not allowing me to post pictures or edit what I’ve written.  I will need to start doing posts from home on my spare time rather than from work when I have the time.  My browser is not updated and whenever I try to update it, it gives me an error message and tells me to login as the Administrator.  Well, the Administrator logs in and attempts to update it and…nothing.  Won’t do it.  ANNOYING!

 

This past week was CRAZY at work.  New cases are rolling in, case filings are going out, and I’m trying to reorganize my office.  Luckily with my boss out this week I have some free time to work on it, but not much as I’m now putting together a New Hearing Officer Orientation and that means I’m creating a manual for all 11 of these judges so that they know exactly what being a Hearing Officer is all about.  ::Sarcastic Yay::  And since my boss is out of town, he delegated this task to me…no biggie, I did the last one with 3 hearing officers, surely I can handle 11 of them. 

 

I’m not sure what’s up with work lately but I’m hearing chit chat about e-mails which has me less likely to respond to e-mails.  But I’m reading them, so keep me in the loop. 

 

What’s Happening This Week? (BOLD AND CENTER THIS)

 

Well, like I said, boss is out of town, office is clean, but it’s time to get it better ORGANIZED!  Love that.  I’m an organizing fool!  I start Crossfit this week.  I have a punch card which allows me like 12 classes and on August 8^th Adam is signing us up on the family plan (that’s when his membership needs to be renewed) which means I will be able to go every day.  I need to make the punch card last till Aug. 8^th and for that reason I skipped last week, which worked great because I was SWAMPED last week after being out of the office on vacation the week before.  I’m going to the 4:30 class this afternoon and meeting up with my friend Melissa.  She and her husband are on a family plan with Crossfit and she has been a big help and motivator. 

 

Last week I was in a funk… it’s tough coming home from vacation!  I was tired, I had to unpack, wash clothes, and all I wanted to do was sleep.  The lawn needed mowing, and the work was piled up in my office.  It’s frustrating to go on vacation and come home to all of that!  But it’s all taken care of and I can move on from it. 

 

I go NEXT Monday for my 6 month checkup with Pennington and I’m excited and looking forward to it.  I can’t believe it’s been 6 months.  I was doing AWESOME up until vacation when I packed on some pounds, expected, but then I came home and things were rolling right along and the scale kept going up….MONTHLY FRIEND, but it’s going down again and that’s great!   

 

I have lots of pictures to post and I hope I can get to that today!  If not, you guys see it on FB page so check it out from there! 

~Shannon "Awesome" Shedd