Storytime.

Happy Friday!!!

I know, I'm not getting much better about blogging regularly. Slow and steady, people. Slow and steady.

But I do have some things to be happy about today, so I figured I'd go ahead and link up for 5 on Friday.

1. One of my long-lost best friends from high school is in town!!! She moved to Houston after we graduated, but we kept in touch all through my time in college. She's still in school, and she's only been back one time since high school, and that was a year and a half ago. In college, though, we met up in New Orleans one weekend, and while this picture isn't your typical NOLA photo, it's one of my favorites:

At that time, my dad was working on a barge out of Houma (about an hour from New Orleans). So we went to visit him. And we had to wear hard-hats the entire time on the Barge. Good times!

Anyhoo, I'm super excited to see her. Obviously I'm taking her wine tasting.

2. I know I brag about my sweet Winnie-pooh all the time, but she's just been extra cute lately.

Obviously Scout's a little jealous of Winnie's cute new dress.

Correction: 2 new dresses.

Her favorite sleeping position

3. I finally found an online store that sells CND Vinylux--and it's legit! Remember back when I used to be obsessed with getting my nails done every 2 weeks? I always got CND Shellac manicures. Toward the end of my obsession (aka toward the end of me being able to afford getting shellac mani's every 2 weeks), my nail girl showed me this new product CND came out with called Vinylux. It's actual nail polish, not shellac, that's made to last a week without chipping. Back then they only had a few colors and I was her first guinea pig for it. She painted my toes with it and it last, no lie, 2 weeks without chipping. ON MY TOES.

Needless to say I've thought about it ever since. I found it on beauty.com a couple of weeks ago. I tried to contain myself and start with just 3 colors (they've probably produced 7 times as many colors as they had when I tried it a year ago).

Powder My Nose, Lobster Roll, and Romantique (used to be my go-to color)

Here's what Lobster Roll looks like on my nails 2 days after being painted (usually when my nails have at least 1 chip already with normal polish):

I do wish it was a little thicker-looking, like Shellac, but I don't think that's possible without a UV-lamp, honestly. So I'm gonna go on-record and say I love it. And I will definitely be getting more.

4. Ummmm less than one month till MEMPHIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

5. This is kind of more of a story than anything, but it made me happy, and it made me think about some things.

I've been going to the gym with the friend-boy, and he's all about lifting. I think he needs to do some cardio, but whatever. I know the value of lifting, so I've been trying to let him show me some stuff. The first time I tried squats with a bar was at my gym, and it was on a controlled machine, not a free-weight. I didn't do perfect, but I wasn't struggling too bad. Well yesterday I went to the boy's gym, which made me uncomfortable to begin with. It's a HUGE gym and the weight room was literally full of men. There was 1 other girl besides me. 1. And I'll get to her in a moment.

I was doing pretty well until we got to do squats. Like I said, it was a free-weight, and the bar felt super wonky and I couldn't control it, let alone focus on having decent form in a squat. The boy isn't very patient and probably should have thought about the fact that I've never done a freaking free-weighted squat before, and I got frustrated. So I sat down and played on my phone while he continued his stupid squats. After a couple of minutes, that one other girl that was in the weight room--who was in exceptionally great shape and working out with her boy thing--came up to me. She was super-friendly and asked if that was the first time I've ever done squats before. I told her I'd done them before but on a machine, not with a free-weight, and she offered to help me from a girl's point-of-view. Not gonna lie, at first I was a little embarrassed. But then I figured...it's a gym, everyone's there for the same thing, and she and I were, like I said, the only girls in that part of the gym, and girls are way more judgmental than guys, so I really didn't have too much to be embarrassed over. She helped me for a good 5 minutes and then went and got something called an "easy-bar" or something like that...it's a curved bar that's not nearly as wide as the one we were using, that contours to the shape of your shoulders. We started with just a 10-pound bar to get the form down, and eventually I got it. Obviously my squats weren't perfect, but I wasn't pissed off about doing them or embarrassed. I guess the point of this whole story is, I'm glad that girl came over and offered to help. Gyms can be really intimidating. And I know there's a fine-line you have to walk when it comes to determining if you should go say something to a stranger about either something they're doing, to offer them help, or to commend them or tell them you've been where they're at and they should be proud of themselves. Well in this case I'm glad she did.

Alright, that's all I got. I hope everyone has a great weekend!!!