LottieB’s Weblog

Even though I slept in I was still tiredtiredtired, whoops. I caught the late bus and rolled into work around 9:15. During the lunch hour (2 hours in my case) I met Kate and Maggie for our bi-monthly “Future Ladies Who Lunch” meeting at Rugby Cafe. We’ve all secretly wanted to try it, and I mean is there a more ladies-who-lunch spot than the preppiest cafe in Georgetown, I think not. I had a Mozzarella and Basil Panini with a side salad. When being a lady who lunches your meal automatically has to include salad.

Conversations ranged from our upcoming charity benefit (winefest) to our summer houses in the Hamptons (how to sneak into the Hilton pool) and of course our cheating husbands (you better not be making out with an Asian booboo, I’ll kill ya). After dining we decided to be totally bad ass and shop. I found a great shirt at Anthropologie, but they didn’t have my size. Once back at work I ordered it online. It’s flowy and summery and has a pattern. I am trying to avoid solids, I already have too many.

After my two hour lunch I made it back to work, finished up my stuff, and left around 5. I headed to Tiffany’s to pick up my jewelry, with a stop at Saks and Banana on the way. I didn’t let myself buy anything, just browsed. To my delight Tiffany had gotten the contact solution stains out of my stuff, oh how it shines.

Once home I popped on my Lulu shorts and went for a run on my favorite Massachusetts Ave loop. Exhausted I made some dinner and watched TV, calling it an early night. I have to rest up for winefest tomorrow!

Today at work were the annual Chairman’s Awards. At 1pm we all ended our workdays and headed to the Kennedy Center to attend the ceremony. Winners are nominated by their peers and awards are given out in a number of categories. Since I’m not old enough or cool enough to win one of these, I always look forward to the after-party. This year’s festivities commenced at 3pm on the lawn behind our office building.

The theme of the party was Spanish, they must have known I’d be there. With Manchengo, Paella Balls (yeah odd, but they were good), skirt steak, chorizo, gazpacho and shrimp. My company don’t mess. Then for dessert there were churros and chocolate, dulce de leche, and some other fine sweets. Most importantly they served white sangria, various Spanish beers, and champagne. I had around 3 glasses of cool fruity white sangria. It hit the spot on this beautiful late spring day.

We drank and socialized until 5pm, then went on our merry ways. I called up Michelle, as I was happy and buzzed and didn’t want to end my night. She met me at Bistro Du Coin, where we had some mussels and, you guessed it, pinot noir. After that we really didn’t want to go home, so we headed to Russia House and had some Baltica #8’s and a TON of girl talk.

As we were leaving Russia House Jess called. So we met her at Gazuza, had a passion fruit martini, and a mixed fruit hookah. YUM, the hookah hit the spot and we called it a night around 10:30. I’d be drinking on and off from 3pm to 10pm, wow, what a day, almost like college, yet I wasn’t tanked — great success. Once home I read my book club book “Beautiful Boy” and went to bed.

Work was just crazy. We had a big client meeting today and had to do a lot of prep. I also had to catch up on 3 days worth of Perez. Luckily I didn’t miss anything too big. The meeting took up the bulk of the afternoon and I caught the bus soon after I returned to the office.

I went right to MINT from work for Advanced Pilates. This time the class was three people, still awesome, still a great workout. The teacher will never be Linda from Longfellow, but she is so great and really helps me with the hard positions. I am elongating and doing all the moves correctly now! I never knew I could raise my chest so much in a push-up position.

Once home I caught up on some work emails and decided to make some maple walnut ice cream. I used a Emeril recipe from food network. It included milk, cream and eggs, which are always a little hard to work with. First I accidentally curdled the milk and cream. I mean what is a “steady boil” come on Emeril. Then, I think the mixture was too hot and the eggs cooked a little. Luckily the recipe said to strain it at the end, otherwise it would have been maple walnut egg chunk ice cream, gross. I reluctantly let the mixture chill, threw it in the mixer, and held my breath for 30 minutes while it mixed…

In the meantime I candied some walnuts for the topping, ate a salad and even had a short conversation with my lover far away in China. He was just starting his day. To my surprise the ice cream came out great, no egg chunks or cream curdles. You could really taste the 3/4 cup reduced grade-a maple syrup and the 3/4 teaspoon of maple extract. I added the walnuts and froze it for a little.

As I waited patiently for it to freeze some more I began to read the Kaplan GMAT course book, courtesy of my little rice ball Marco-ze-dong. Barf, this is going to be hard. I didn’t even remember what an integer was. When my head started to ache after about an hour(ish) I dug into the maple goodness.

And boy did it hit the spot!

I dreamt of ice cream parties, sugarplum fairies, and princesses!

Today was cloudy, but hot and humid, a brief preview of the DC summer that is to come. Work was super busy and Sue invited me to lead ALC’s Mexico trip this summer. I wish I could drop it all and just do it. We’ll see. At lunch I was absolutely craving cool ranch Doritos, I bought some at Safeway and they hit the freaking spot.

After work I went over to Tiffany & Co in Friendship heights. On the way home from NYC my ClearCare contact solution leaked in my toiletry bag. It spilled on some of my jewelry and the hydrogen peroxide in the solution reacted with the silver turning it a very tarnished grey. It looked like they’d been excavated from King Tut’s tomb and I was upset. Too upset to even take a “before” picture for the blog.

I also called CIBA Vision customer service hotline and asked to speak to a chemist, maybe they could give me some tips. However, no such request was granted, but the lady was super nice and told me about the chemical reactions that clean my contacts and perhaps why it could have tarnished the silver. Did you know my contact case contains a small layer of platinum. Yeah, I roll high.

Once I brought the jewelry to Tiffany’s, the customer service man told me they’d be able to clean them no problem, they just need to use a chemical solution, rather than the regular polish. It was so cool, maybe I should switch careers and become a chemist?

Finally, after a quick stop at Barney’s Co-Op I got home, went to MINT. Then I tried on my new dress and necklace from South Moon under. I had to take two pictures to capture it all. I need to get a camera stand…

It looked great with my gladiator sandals purchased in NYC.

For dinner I had the rest of my Thaiphoon Pad See Yew, made an Absolut Grapefruit Cocktail, and watched the season finale of Desperate Housewives. OMG, intense.

I left work at 2:30 PM on Friday and met Rachel and Mscott downtown, where we began our journey to the city of New York. It took about 6 hours all told, with 2 whole hours spend getting out of the DC area and past Baltimore. After a stop in Brooklyn and a subway ride I reached Columbus Ave between 66th and 67th, Melinda’s apartment.

Almost immediately Melinda, Christie and I went to Pinkberry. I got a medium original with blueberries, granola (Christie’s suggestion) and rice balls. Melinda wanted rice balls too, but they messed up an gave her yougurt chips. She was pissed, but I was in Pinkberry bliss (p.s. that pic is not of mine, it’s stolen from google images, but you need a visual).

After some resting we went out on the town to Ace Bar, meeting up with Danielle and Julie. It was so Wayland High School it wasn’t even funny, but the four of us had a great time. They had skee ball at the bar and Melinda played a round with Christie. To top it all off, we ran in to Eli Berlin on the way out, he looks the same as he did in 2001. That made it truly a Wayland night. We even took a High School sleepover pic, hotness.

In the morning I got up early (10am) and made my way to Maplewood, New Jersey — only a 40 minute NJ Transit train ride — to meet up with my Ecuadorian host family. My host sister Gabi, her sister Aurora and her brother Eduardo, all live in the states, so their parents are here visiting them for a month. Gabi hasn’t been home or seen her parents in 3 years!

We all ate brunch at a cute little diner in picturesque Maplewood, and had a photo shoot of course.

Me and my host parents.

Me and my hermanita Gabisita.

Me, Aurora and Eduardo.

And most importantly, Eduardo with his requisite bottle of Coca Cola (he’s obsessed). In Ecuador he went through a liter a day by himself. It was so wonderful to see all of them. I’ve seen Gabi a few times, but I hadn’t seen anyone else in the Diaz fam since I was in Quito back in 2003!!!

Once back in the city Melinda and I walked across the park to my most favorite address in NYC: 59th and Lex, my mecca, my second home, BLOOMINGDALES. They were having a huge sale and after combing the racks for about an hour and a half we found NOTHING. It was really sad, but my wallet was actually quite happy.

That evening Melinda and I made Ina’s Portobello Mushroom Lasagna for dinner and drank some Harpoon summer brew. At about 11PM we went down to Kristy’s apartment in midtown

We had some drinks then made our way to Underbar at the W Hotel. It was trendy and swank and loud, but we ended up talking to some very odd boys (a metro, a gay and a midget) and enjoying ourselves. Afterwards, we hit up Union Pub and called it a night around 2am, whoops.

The next morning Melinda and I grabbed some bagels and bolted to Sheep’s Meadow in Central Park. Kristy met up with us and we tanned the afternoon away.

Around 4pm we left the park and did some shopping in the area. We stopped at Levain’s, the bakery from Bobby Flay’s chocolate chip cookie throwdown. One of the owners who was in the show was there too! Total celeb sighting.

The cookie was huge and amazing and gooey and crunchy and downright dank. My mouth is still watering. I also bought some trendy Gladiator Sandals, woot

That evening Melinda, Kristy, Danielle and I met at Craftbar, Tom Colicchio’s new restaurant, based off the more expensive Craft. It was simple and delish American cuisine. I had home-made goat cheese ravioli with hen of the woods (mushrooms) and apple. The ravioli melted in my mouth and the mushrooms were a flavor explosion.

However, Tom needs to practice what he preaches. The bread they served were these crumbly breadsticks, and no bread plates were provided. If my memory serves, Tom told some Top Chef contestants during restaurant wars that having no breadplates in their faux restaurant was a big no no. Interesting Tom, I think you forgot about that when you created Craftbar…

Post dinner we did some drinks and Danielle’s and found most likely the most amazing spoof music video ever made: Aren’t Asians Great, enough said.

Once we were good and Tipsy we made our way to the Hotel Rivington in the East Village. My dress matched the walls.

Our next stops were some major hipster bars where we didn’t fit in at all in our dresses. Luckily Danielle had changed into her hipster uniform of black and gray hues and converse shoes, so she led the way. I slept over at her house and in the morning I got a Pinkberry smoothie for breakfast: Pinkberry, blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries all rolled into a delicious glass of goodness. I was a happy, albeit hungover, camper.

I went back over to Melinda’s and we layed in the park for a little while, sadly our time was cut short because I had to leave. We quickly stopped at Magnolia’s on the way home and I bought 4 cupcakes for the roadtrip back to DC.

Rachel, Mscott and I made AMAZING time back to DC. We didnt’ hit any traffic, which was quite odd for a holiday weekend. I think it was because we left around 2:45 and all the other suckers probably stayed at their locales later to enjoy the beautiful weather (hmm maybe we were the suckers).

Once home I ordered some drunken noodle with beef from Thaiphoon, Marc being in China was makin’ me crave Asian. I stuffed my piehole, watched 27 Dresses, which was pretty cute, and went to bed.

Thursday, FINALLY. One more day until the long weekend. I had to wake up at 6am for a breakfast event in Rockville, MD. Barf on a stick. I made it through and was at work around 10am. The day was busy, save a morning cupcake/champagne punch break for Laura’s birthday. I had to head downtown for a client meeting in the afternoon, but still managed to leave early.

Once home I packed for my NYC trip and cleaned the apartment. At 7 I made my way over to Bucca di Beppo for Laura’s birthday dinner. I have never actually been to Bucca to sit and eat, just take-out, so I was excited at the prospect. The place is full of so much schwag they could open their own bazaar. However, it’s schwaggy in a great way. You also get to walk through the kitchen on your way to the tables.

We had the honor of sitting at the Pope’s table, a semi private room decorated with Papa paraphanalia, and a huge round table, with the Pope in the middle and a large chair, clearly the Pope’s (or birthday girls) seat.

Amazing to say the least. The meal was good, they do their classic Italian well, and the final price was right on target, even with the chilled burgundy wine, which was a little gross, chilled, and grape juice-ey.

At home I watched a bit of the Netflix I’ve had for way too long, 27 Dresses and then went to bed. However. I was awoken at 12am by the loud neighbors, it was not cool and I finally took the plunge, knocked on their door, pleasantly told them to be quiet. And by golly! It worked. I’m not scared of them anymore.

Today I had to get a cavity filled. UGHS. Apparently I did not get my teeth re-sealed in my teens and I have deep ridges and roots, so I get a cavity even with using my Sonicareand flossing every day. Thanks genes. It wasn’t bad, but the whole right side of my face was numb for about 4 hours. No fun.

While I was de-numbing and couldn’t eat I browsed Callie’s wedding registry. With the help of my coworkers, we settled on some Kate Spade Library Stripe Martini glasses.

They can think of me every time they make stiff martinis. Perfect.

Since I bought something for someone else, I needed something for me also. Especially after being such a big girl at the dentist. Thanks to a South Moon Under email coupon I went to their site and found this gorgeous dress by C&C California, at 20% off, it was a steal. I hope it fits!

Once home I began preparing the crust for my Barefoot Contessa Pecan bars. Laura’s birthday is tomorrow and Kate’s is Monday, so I’m being a lovely friend and bringing in some treats to work. In between baking I went to Advanced Pilates Class at MINT. I have not been to pilates in awhile, but I know the drill and figured I should give advanced a whirl. It was wonderful. The class ended up being only me and one other girl, so we got a TON of one-on-one time. The teacher is spectacular, though I did have trouble performing the Jack Knife. I always do.

After my abdominal extravaganza I made some chicken with parsnips. On Top Chef the other week the Italian girl made a roasted chicken dish, so i copied her and seared the chicken for a few minutes, then roasted it with the parsnips. The resulting dish was yumlish. 

While the chicken was roasting I continued with the pecan bars, making the goo. It’s a lot like sticky bun goo: butter (4 sticks), brown sugar, cream, honey and of course pecans!

They came out really well. I can’t wait to eat them tomorrow! Moo.

I woke up to a rainy yucky day. The bus was on time and I was under my big LL Bean umbrella, so it wasn’t too bad. Work was absolutamente loco. Luckily I prevented us from losing some big dollahs. Phew, hopefully I will purchase a new Botkier Steve Satchel at the end of the quarter as a reward. Isn’t she the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen (besides me of course).

After work I headed to Sonoma Wine Bar on the Hill to celebrate Kate’s upcoming birthday. I had never been, so I was utterly excited at the opportunity. Kate and friends know the owner, Scott, so we already had a table reserved and service promptly upon entering. I started with a red, as I thought it would go well with the charcuterie and cheese plates.

As the night wore on and the crowd got larger and I opted for a more refreshing chenin blanc from California. Most of the guests were hill people, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Kate was a lovely birthday girl and was showered with gifts.

I left a little before 9pm and only had to wait 2 minutes for the metro, making it back to Dupont in a record 30 minutes. To celebrate my metro success I stopped by Larry’s Ice Cream on the way home. It looked closed, but I saw Larry chillin in there cleaning some empty ice cream tubs and the door was unlocked. I asked if he was still open and rapidly made my choice. To my utmost dismay he was out of Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough (all caps added for emphasis), so I got regular cookie dough instead. It wasn’t as good as the oatmeal, but still quite vanilla-ey and delicious.

Once home I downed some agua and watched the season finale of Gossip Girl. LOVE that show. Next season is gonna be good!

This morning I slept in until 8am, it was absolutely divine and I sure needed it after my weekend. Those days of drinking heavily are over for me. I drove to work, which took two seconds (or 8 minutes) and had a pretty busy day. Tommy and I did Potbelly for lunch, MMMMMM.

I had some major catching up to do on Perez. Ashlee Simpson and her BF Pete Wentz got married this weekend. They are a really weird couple. Maybe Marc and I can start wearing matching eyeliner too, that would be so cute.

After work I went for a run. It was windy out and the air was refreshing. On my run I noticed that a building right near me has a pool. I am so sneaking in come summer. Once I ran I rushed over to Mt. Pleasant to the Turning Point Transitional Housing program to play with kiddies whose Mommas are young and pregnant.

While we play with the kids, they take various classes. Meghan was the one who introduced me to the volunteer program, so she was there too. This place was so much better than the shelter in DC I went to and there were less kids.

Precious and I played Barbies, and then Zahira and I did some coloring. They all love to shout out Poopoo and Peepee at any given moment. I guess it’s better than swearing, but honestly, if they want to be funny, there are so many better things they could say! Poopoo and Peepee are so 1990’s. Gawd.

Once home I made some Trader Joe’s shumai and watched an episode of Desperate Housewives.

My two nights of going out caught up with me bad. I wasn’t able to sleep late at all. UGH. I made some major coffee, watched last night’s SNL. Steve Carell was the host, but the only funny skit was a “Japanese” version of The Office. I took a nap at 11am UGH again, then did laundry and watched more TV.

Liza and I met up in the afternoon for a baking extravaganza. We were going to a “potluck” at Zanne and Jason’s (I got it right) and had to make a dish. We bought some fresh blueberries, raspberries and strawberries at Whole Foods. For our triple berry pie. I also had the brilliant idea to make ice cream. You can’t have pie without ice cream, and home-made is even better.

We made the dough by hand and rolled it out.

And, the ice cream maker was in full force, though it missed its Dad.

While the pie was baking we caught up and watched some TV. Then, carried our pie down 18th street and Columbia Road to Zanne and Jason’s house. It was of course a hit and complements were abound. The other dishes were guacamole and tacos. Not much variety, but very yummy!

The ice cream went with it so so so well. I just used a simple recipie of sugar, heavy cream, and vanilla.

Zanne’s baby bump was rather large, she’s due in August. Some other little kiddies came over too, when you’re expecting I guess you have to start hanging with other parents. Luckily Rachel, Liza, Meghan and I talked about blacking out, drinking etc, instead of diapers and bottles.

Once home I caught up on my bloggie, took a tylenol PM, and passed the eff out.