Happy Birthday...To Me!

Today is my birthday. Which I typically dread because I always have the worst luck on these days (read: I've cried every year on my birthday since...a long time).  However, my dumb luck just might be changing...

While the rest of my life seems to be breaking and crashing down around me, today was actually a pretty great day - thanks to some pretty awesome people in my life!

I walked into work to find my desk decorated with hats, balloons, streamers, and blowers.  See below:

Thanks, Gretchen!!

A few minutes later Brittany walked in with Einstein's Bagels.  My favorite.  These girls know me so well.  I wish I would have gotten a picture of the deliciousness...

After our pow-wow in the cafe, I came back to my desk to find presents from the other Recruiting girls:

Thanks Brittany and Sarah!!

As if being armed with a new scarf, fantastic candle, and a gift card to DSW wasn't enough (on top of a scrumptious breakfast and awesome decorations!), we ordered in Greenz for lunch (one of my favs) and they brought me cupcakes from The Cupcakery.  They truly went above and beyond to make me feel special:

After work I met up with my parents at one of my favorite Uptown restaurants, Dream Cafe.  Yum.  We came back to mom's chocolate cake (DELICIOUS) and presents.  To give you a little insight into how diverse and "all over the place" I am with my interests, this is what my parents got me for my birthday:

1) Two Jane Austen books ("Sense and Sensibility" and "Pride and Prejudice") from Anthropology.  They have these ornate hard covers that make them look vintage.

2) A cordless power drill.

3) A Keurig.

And there you have it, folks.  It's almost 11:00 PM and I haven't cried, yet!  Only an hour left of my birthday and I think I'll make it ;)  It's been a truly wonderful day and I feel so blessed to have such amazingly thoughtful people in my life!

Happy Birthday...to me!  Woo.

Hear Me Rahr

Today I made it one step closer to accomplishing my goal of running a half marathon: I finished my first race!  I did the Rahr Brewery Oktoberfest 5k in Fort Worth.  Up until this morning it was at a "TBD" status considering my ankle still looked like a balloon.  However, given the determined stubborn person I am, I pushed through.  The thought of wasting the $35.00 bucks I forked over for it was a big proponent.

Here we are pre-race/pre-sweat:

I had to stop three different times for a minute or so to allow my ankle pain to subside but considering it was still swollen and achey I don't think that's too shabby.  And Zac was sweet enough to stop with me every time :)

Here we are post-race/still sweating/squinting:

And my awesome friend, Paul, who's company hosted the race:

One thing I do know, is that I'm now addicted.  Addicted to the race atmosphere, addicted to the feeling of accomplishment, and addicted to legitimately working toward something on my life bucket list.  So here I am, race world, hear me roar rahr!

Food, Frazzled, Friday

By now you all know what Friday in my office means:  Phenomenally Free Food.  Today we had Cafe Express which was, of course, delicious.  The chicken was tender, the salad was superb, the green beans were seasoned, etc, etc.  My favorite part, however, was the mashed potatoes:

 Yes, that is an entire bowl of JUST mashed potatoes.  Delish.

Seriously, people, if you haven't had the potatoes from Cafe Express, do so immediately.  As is customary with our Friday lunches, we had some pretty good dessert.  I washed down my hearty plate of food with this little beauty:

Cupcakes are my weakness.

As I'm sure you perceived from the title of this blog post, my day was a bit frazzled.  It was constantly "go, go, go" with a million things on my "to-do" list which was continuing to exponentially grow by the minute.  I tend to like these fast-paced days better because, albeit stressful and harried, they are productive and make the day swoosh by in no time.  However, by the time 6:30 rolled around and I finally had time to sit down and take a breather for a moment, I definitely jumped on the chance to grab a beer.  (Another perk of my office: fully stocked fridge of booze).  In the process of twisting off my Shiner Boch cap, and in true 'Ashley' fashion given the week I've had, I spewed beer all over my lap.  I consequently looked like I peed myself:

How perfectly is that placed to look like I peed?  You can't plan that stuff.

Given that everything around me is breaking, including myself, and that everything I seem to do somehow goes awry, I could do nothing but laugh at myself.  Well, and continue drinking.  Winding down with a beer in the Recruiting corner gave us the little break we needed to push through for the next couple of hours:

Cheers to a crazy day in the world of BCG completed!

Oh, and don't let your eyes fool you.  Brittany was definitely drinking straight from the bottle.  It's a hectic, frazzled, food-filled life we lead on Fridays and sometimes you just need a beer, or a bottle, to celebrate when it wraps up :)

Accident Prone

So on top of everything in my life breaking, I'm breaking myself as well.  Remember back to a couple posts ago when I shared with you that I was embarking on one of my life goals: to run a half marathon?  Well I've been diligently keeping up with my training schedule (haven't missed a day, yet!) and even signed up for my first race this Saturday (go me!).

Although I only got a few measley hours of sleep last night, I woke up bright and early at 6:30 AM to go for a run on The Katy Trail.  I was so tempted to roll back over and hit the 'snooze' but my dedication persevered - although I'm honestly kinda thinking it would have been better had I opted out this morning.... 

I didn't even make it a mile before I fell.  In the middle of the street.  For no reason.  There was no "tripping over a rock" or "stumbling on a road divet."  Nope.  I just straight up tripped over my own feet.  And fell.  Hard.  I'm talking sprawled out, iPod flying, skidding on pavement type of fall...pathetic.

I lost a lot of skin, a little blood, and a good amount of my pride and dignity.  I'm honestly not sure if it was more or less embarrassing that I was running with someone when it happened.  Yeah, it was nice that I had someone to help me as I crawled to the sidewalk and eventually hobbled home.  But I also can only imagine what sort of clumsily stupid image of me is now forever imprinted in Zac's mind.  My face-planting in the street for no apparent reason while cars zoom by is not how I prefer to be remembered. 

I scraped myself up from my knees to ankles, all down my hands, and busted my ankle to boot!  The scrapes and scratches burn and my ankle is a swollen, aching mess.  Here's a photo of what it looked like about two hours after my little accident:

Disgusting.  And painful. Cankle for sure.

And here's a picture about an hour after that:

Look at that sweet egg action I got goin' on my right ankle.  Sick.

You can only barely see the blood and scrapes so believe me when I tell you this less than clear iPhone picture does not do the damage justice!  Being that my ankle became progressively more swollen and sore throughout the day, my awesome co-workers swept into what I call "mom mode" and retrieved ice from our medicine stash and concocted a foot-rest for under my desk so as to keep my ankle 'elevated.'  It was very sweet of them and much appreciated - although I wish I had a cooler story to couple with all my pampered treatment!

Besides a lame story on how I hurt my ankle and acquired my kid-like bruises, bumps, and botches, I'm out the $35.00 I upped for my race this Saturday.  Bummer.  I'm still holding on to a tiny thread of hope and crossing my fingers that my ankle returns to normal size and strength so I don't have to sit out.  Here's hoping!

Spoiled.

So my office supplies good food - you all know this by now.  But they also provide a good view as well.  So good, in fact, that we were featured in D Magazine as having one of the coolest office spaces in the area.  We're on page two:

http://www.dmagazine.com/Home/D_CEO/2011/October/The_Coolest_Offices_in_Dallas_Fort_Worth.aspx

Seriously, people, this is the view from my desk every day:

What a lucky girl I am!  If I'm gonna spend long hours at the office, it's nice to be hanging out in some place visually appealing!  I'm absolutely spoiled.

Personal Goals & Typical Life Woes

Oh man.  Contrary to what most of you are surely thinking, I haven't abandoned you!  I have had the busiest, most jam packed, couple of weeks lately - hence my lack of posting...

But alas, I am back.  For now anyway.  And I have a few things I would like to share on this wonderfully hot Tuesday.  (Sidenote: Texas broke all records for "most days over 100 in a year" ever recorded today.  Gotta be thankful for my inside, desk job.)

Anyway, today also marks an exciting day in my personal life.  I embarked on the journey toward a long-time personal goal of mine: to run a marathon. Being that I'm definitely considering a "half" to be completing this goal (I've heard it's actually NOT good for you to run a full 26), and today was my first day of training, it feels good to be one jog closer to accomplishing one of my huge personal goals.  My race is 'tentatively' set for January (schedule pending) and I'm definitely taking baby steps to get there.  For those that know me well, you know I hate - no, loathe - running.  And honestly?  I hated every minute of it this morning.  But I absolutely loved the feeling afterwards.  And it will be unbelievable to see months of training and discipline come to fruition in a few short months - so here goes!

Although half of my personal life is on track and under control, the other half...not so much.  Everything around me is breaking. I kid you not, I have very few useful, working things left in my near vicinity.  Let me just give you a run-down of what of mine has broken in the past two weeks: my favorite heels, my MAC laptop, my washing machine, my cable, my mailbox key, my kitchen faucet, the Microsoft Word on my work computer, etc, etc...it's ridiculous and to the point of being quite comical, in fact.  This stuff always happens to me.  I truly believe I'm cursed and blame breaking my full-length mirror a few years ago in college.  According to superstition, I have approximately 3 1/2 more years of this bad luck.  Fabulous.

So as you can see, my life has been a great mixture of accomplishing personal goals and experiencing my typical life woes.  I'll write an update on what else I've been up to later in the week as it will be much better when I can get some photos to accompany it.  But, alas, I have not uploaded any photes, yet because ::of course:: my work computer isn't cooperating right now, either...

TGIF

I need one of these:

...and its only:

...but in 48 hours I will be doing this:

So there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Happy Friday, everyone!  And to those of you who are already enjoying your holiday weekend, do something extra fun (or extra lazy) for me!