Today I tried Vapiano for the first time and oh em gee, I’ve found a fantastic place to go to for lunch. From walking by it, I always thought it was just another Italian restaurant. I’d seen some coworkers get pizza from there before, but I had no idea what was inside. Now I know that it’s an amazing blend of freshly cooked food in a casual yet upscale cafeteria type environment. It’s kind of like stepping into a fancy sitdown that got blended with a farmer’s market. We were handed cards upon entering and then stood in line for our chosen food items. I opted for a pasta dish, which was cooked in front of me and then the charge added to my card. I could have gotten other items and added them to my card tab, but I knew I wouldn’t finish it all so I went conservative. We also got bread to complement our meal. It was fabulous – custom, fresh, and delicious. Seating was open and there were herbs growing in little pots. They even had a tree growing near the entrance. What a great concept for a restaurant!
365great Day 335: Vapiano
Winter storm Pax
Here comes the snow! What a crazy snow event we’re expecting here in Northern Virginia. A few days ago when I first heard of it, I figured it’d be another small thing that would pass. But then they started predicting 4 inches, then it grew to 8 and 12 and now possibly 15-18 for higher elevations! I started to take it seriously and today I decided to head out of the office at 6 just to get home before the insanity. The snow wasn’t slated to start until around 8, but by 6:15 I was seeing my first flakes. Check out some pictures from the night…
The snow plows were out, hanging out as they waited for the snow to start.
Then it started to pick up momentum.
It was melting on my windshield, but quickly started to stick to the ground.
By the time I got home 15 minutes later, there was a light dusting. I made some tire marks and left some footprints that were quickly covered.
Such pretty snow that is shiny and sparkly! Snuggling in for the night and there’s already quite a bit of snow building up out there.
365great Day 334: gardens
It’s so peaceful to wander through a garden. I love the variety of plants you can find there and of course the insects that are inevitably attracted to them. My mom loves to plant things in our backyard, making it a rather tranquil place to hang out. We have rose bushes, fruit trees, and other odds and ends. It’s a place that is teeming with life yet so calming all at once. I particularly enjoy gardens with water, benches, and shady parts to hang out by. I could sit and stroll among the plants for ages, basking in the sun or shade. I’d even climb and sit in a tree if I could. It’s very soothing to enjoy nature and decompress away from the stress of day-to-day life. What a great way to step away from our normal surroundings and relax for awhile.
Beauty Box 5 February 2014 review
Here comes the February Beauty Box 5, which is their birthday box – happy 2nd anniversary to them!
Beauty Box 5 is $12 per box (or as discounted as $99 for an entire year, with an option in between) and comes with 5 cosmetic products. Boxes are sent monthly with no option to skip. You also have the option of buying it as a gift your box to a friend. They offer a referral program that earns you points towards products or boxes.
Birthday bash time.
A birthday card and discount code card.
Info on the products with prices of their full sizes.
Back of info card with ways to connect.
Rockstar Nails Nail Polish: I can’t find the name of this shade, but it’s a nice sort of teal shade. The formula’s a bit more fluid than I’ve been used to, but it applies nice and opaque in one layer. It’s a lovely color and the consistency is perfect to work with the caviar it came with!
Rockstar Nails Nail Sprinkles: This is a brand new product for me. I’ve seen ads for it and now I get to try this type of nail decoration too! How fun. I love how it matches the nail polish. I’ve quickly learned that this can get very messy – in just opening the bottle to take a look, beads were falling everywhere. Be sure you find a nice flat surface to go apply these on.
John Frieda Luxurious Volume Shampoo & Conditioner: There are two sets of these samples. They’re generously sized and perfect to bring along on my next trip. They also come with coupons for $2 off a full size product, which is good for all of this year!
Aveeno Positively Nourishing Calming Body Wash: What a soothing combo of lavender, chamomile, and ylang ylang. I have a ton of body wash at the moment and since this is sealed, I will keep it to use later. I can’t wait! It could also be very useful for my travels.
Elizabeth Mott It’s So Big Volumizing Mascara: I got this in an Ipsy bag awhile ago and it’s the first one that doesn’t rub off after some wear. I like its thicker, somewhat glue-like consistency that makes it waterproof and rub-proof. I do have a lot of mascaras and I rarely use them, so I might still consider trading this.
MyNameNecklace Gift Card: This time we got a bonus item in the form of $10 off a necklace. That could be as much as 30% or so off one of these necklaces, which is a decent deal. I’m not sure if I’ll get something since I rarely wear necklaces, but for $25 I might just snag a Carrie style one.
For me, the nail polish products and gift card made this box feel like a birthday celebration. What was your favorite item? If you like what you see, sign up for Beauty Box 5!
[This post contains affiliate links. Signing up through them helps support my subscription and I’d be ever so grateful. 🙂 All opinions are my own and I received no compensation for this review. I just purchased this box and wanted to share what I got!]
365great Day 333: weight machines
To me, a gym is more wonderful the more weight machines it has. Treadmills, ellipticals, and stair masters are useless to me (as I mentioned, I prefer strength exercises to cardio) so I completely ignore that part of the gym. Instead I go straight for the various weight machines that can work out my upper body, lower body, and core. Free weights work too, but they’re not nearly as fun. I feel a lot more challenged when I can use these machines. I’ve started using the gym in our new office building and I love it! There are enough weight machines to cover most muscles and before I know it, an hour has flown by. I certainly never get that feeling with cardio exercises. Plus, I don’t like to sweat much when I work out, so I take it slow and work on my control over heavier weights. Afterwards, I always feel great because I feel stronger!
365great Day 332: Yelp
I became an avid Yelper sometime around 2012, when a friend brought to my attention that they’d featured my review in one of their newsletters! That got me really excited about the whole thing and I reviewed like crazy until I achieved Yelp Elite Status. Funny enough, once I was Yelp Elite, I didn’t do much more. I never seemed to make it to the events and after awhile my reviews dwindled. They renewed me for 2013, but by this year I’d been inactive on the reviewing side for so long that I am no longer Elite. I still check in like my life depends on it though (and I have no idea why, though getting statuses like this time I was briefly the Queen of Cardiff on Yelp is super fun). Once upon a time I was connected to the owner of a Japanese restaurant near work through my review on Yelp, which was awesome. I’m also pretty sure I got a free appetizer or dessert because of my Yelping at least twice. And of course I still turn to them whenever I’m trying to figure out where to find the kind of places I’m looking for on any given day. They make it a lot easier to find great new places to try!
The academic cost of moving
When I was growing up, my parents and I would move every few years (no, I’m not a military brat nor are we missionaries – the two most common guesses). As a kid, this was never really an issue – I’d just help pack up my stuff and settle into another new room. I’d go to a new school with new teachers and new friends. Life would continue on its merry way and my experiences expanded further. I even went to China for a full year of schooling when I was 9 and came back without skipping a beat. But then came 7th grade.
We were living in St. Louis at the time. I’d been there for 5th and 6th grade. I don’t know when I found out, but sometime in 7th grade my dad found a better job out in New York. We’d be moving over winter break. In a way, I was glad – there was one class I was really struggling with and I was convinced I’d get my first C in the class. That’s a seriously awful grade for a straight-A student with a Chinese-American upbringing. I don’t know if I would have actually done so poorly, but I was glad I’d never have to know! The move to the New York school system meant that that particular class would get lost in the shuffle; there was no equivalent course at my new school, so it wouldn’t transfer and count for a grade.
I thought my problems were over with this fresh start, but boy was I wrong. My counselor at the new school was concerned with placing me in the advanced track in case I had a gap in education (this was only for science and math classes). She convinced my mom and I that the best course of action would be to take the classes for the normal track and then test out of it before starting high school. So I finished up 7th grade and the next year came and went as well… my counselor had left by that point, so when I went to find out how to test back into the advanced track, I hit a wall. There was no such test to be found. I was stuck taking algebra while my peers in advanced placement had moved on to trigonometry (or something like that… the details are fuzzy now).
Studying in our Houston hotel room.
Before I started my sophomore year, my mom and I went to the principal and counselor to present all the work I’d done (fully documented in the form of homework and tests). We convinced them to let me take the next level of math with a compromise: they said I still had to sit in the class I was “skipping” due to New York state laws that force you to spend a certain number of hours in that classroom. So I doubled up on math that year and “caught” back up. I don’t remember what happened in science. I wonder if ultimately it made all that much of a difference in my education. The one main component was that I was surrounded by less motivated peers in the normal track, whereas when I got back into the advanced track classes, I was surrounded by overachievers.
Sooo the moral of the story is not to move your kids around in the middle of a school year if you care about high academic performance. Between the different school systems in America, you never know what a transition will do. At least try to hold off until the summer so there’s a much more clean break. I’m going to plan on not moving anytime during the middle and high school years for my kid(s). It’s a whole lot harder to get caught up after the fact and with each step you miss, it could set you back that much more.
365great Day 331: help
Sometimes, the best course of action is to get help. When you’re not very good at something or would be much better with the assistance of others, why waste time trying to go it on your own? I’ve always been taught to be very self-sufficient and I’m just now learning how to lean on others. It took me nearly my entire college career to learn that I sometimes needed help with my coursework, whether from a TA, fellow student, or tutor. I also never considered getting help in the house, like a maid, housekeeper, or nanny. However, I’ve completely rethought that approach after reading an article about not wasting time. It’s an interesting point that hiring people for household chores could be argued as a moral obligation. At the very least, it’s gotten me thinking about the people out there who would love to have a job so they could support their families. Since I am in a position where I can put money towards getting those tasks done and I don’t like doing them, why not hire someone to do it for me? They get to earn a living and I get to not stress about those things. So when it came to moving, Panda and I agreed that we should hire some folks to help us out. I certainly didn’t want to struggle with carrying loads of furniture up and down stairs. And as I’ve learned from watching them today, they’re very good at what they do. I mean, they were carrying couches through our hallways and didn’t leave a mark while I just carried a suitcase and managed to scrape black on the walls. -___- I’m more than happy to pay them for their service so I could get moved faster and with a whole lot less strain. I’ve learned that getting help doesn’t have to affect my pride at all and it can actually be a win-win situation! How great is that?
The move
We finally did it! Panda booked two guys and a truck for today and we got almost everything moved out. There are some stray kitchenware and toiletry items we kept but pretty much everything else is all packed up and moved over. It took a little longer than the two hours we estimated (2.5 total, almost down to the minute), but it felt like quite a bit longer. That was probably due to the prep work we did beforehand and then all the setting up and unpacking afterward. I’m glad that it barely snowed today, so we had pretty decent moving conditions.
It feels great to be moved in, even though there’s plenty of unpacking to be done. At least it’s a chance to reorganize. I’m taking it slow and making sure everything goes in a designated place. It’s also a chance for me clean off some of the things that needed a wiping after some time. While we were moving in, we met some other neighbors who are also Chinese and got a chance to connect with our downstairs neighbor again. It’s going to be fun living here.
Almost ready for the movers!
Still had some things to sort out.
Have we even prepped this room? Can’t tell.
Whoa, that’s how they get all our crazy heavy stuff out.
Thank goodness they came with all the materials to pad the move.
We definitely didn’t need a truck so large.
Now the room feels so spacious!!
That’s all our stuff, ready to head out.
Panda did a great job covering the stairs to protect the carpet.
Pathways to every part of the place we’d want access to.
Moving through the garage was pretty convenient.
365great Day 330: beauty tools
My favorite part of subscription boxes and gift sets is often the most mundane product. This is especially true when it comes to beauty and skincare-related stuff. While I definitely love my cleansers, lotions, and potions, what usually gets me excited are the brushes and towels and whatnot. I don’t know why I like that stuff so much, but I’m sure it at least partly has to do with how it enables me to feel more effective. I prefer ones designed for skincare and don’t much care for hair and makeup ones. It’s probably related to how I tend to fiddle and like something to do with my hands. Plus, using them gives me better results, and who doesn’t want that? Saving me wasted effort is certainly great.
