Заказала себе для работы “самодельный” календарь и несколько фотографий на Snapfish — хочется как-то свой уголок украсить. Я уже пристроила возле компьютера кактус, веточки бамбука, цветочек из IKEA, кружку, привезённую Маруками нам в подарок из Арубы, и пачку с разными чаями. Мышка, кстати, оказалась очень удобной — все мои коллеги тоже заценили. Фотография рабочего места получилась не супер — снята iPhone-ом.

I don’t get excited about shoes. I also hate shoe shopping with passion. That’s the reason I have 2 pairs of shoes total including a pair of sleepers. Lately, however, I started to realize that probably I should wear something more comfortable than my dress shoes for times when we go hiking, be it either long walks around the city or exploring the trails of some national park. We decided to buy me a pair of sneakers, something that I didn’t have since high school.

That’s where Zappos.com makes its entrance. The selection is huge, the shipping is free, including return shipping and they have all the sizes and a bunch of reviews. We settled on two pairs of hiking shoes near the top of the list when sorted by popularity. Turns out Eldar has ones of those, so that’s what we ordered¹ based on his recommendation — The North Face Hedgehog GTX XCR.

We got two pairs still, since I wasn’t sure on the size, and looks like one of the two pairs is a good fit. First real life test of these will be the upcoming weekend in Pocono Mountains. Either way it’s going to be better then running around the mountains in dress shoes.

P.S. Shipping was extra fast too. Zappos upgraded us to the next level (they probably do this for everyone), so we basically got them 1 day after we ordered.

Last Saturday we set on checking out some new place for dinner. After the choice was made we were going to a new place that had rather big history for Alena and I — Applewood.

Applewood happened to be located in the same very place that Blah Blah Lounge used to be located at. And Blah Blah Lounge was the place that we went to for our very first date, on December 6, 2002, and spent over 8 hours talking. We went there one our first anniversary as well, but then the place went out of business and closed forever.

Going there definitely brought up some memories even then it looks and sounds nothing like it was inside 5 years ago. The food however was great, even though everyone complained that the portions could’ve been bigger.