That’s certainly not me! I’m a total blabberhead as my husband and anyone who has ever met me can attest to.

But right now I’m quiet. *gasp of amazement*

I’ve been eating well. I’ve been exercising regularly. Blah blah blah. But I do have some great stuff coming up next week including seeing Joel Salatin from Polyface Farms speak here in Seattle. His talk is tied into the screening of the movie FRESH which you may be able to catch in your hometown so look for it!

Maybe this will amuse you in the meantime: Here’s a crazy huge bee that was in our yard today (not to be confused with the Orchard Mason Bees or the Honeybees). Yep, that’d be 3 kinds of bees in our backyard (and a rat, but I’m not talking about the rat).

Does the Bumblebee count for Furry Friday?

How about this crazy monster?

Please play with me!

Eats today were my low-sugar smoothie, a DietRite bar, a Mediterranean Salad with shrimp for lunch, and some chips. Dinner was a Halibut Melt, which is what you do if you’ve overcooked $20 worth of beautiful wild Halibut from Costco.

This is why I’m a big fan of ordering fish at restaurants but not necessarily cooking it at home.

Rest assured this is the blogging calm before the awesome storm of a fun weekend followed by a trip to a warm, sunny place with a super cool blogger meet-up.

Happy Friday!

Geez, considering I had the day off, I was busy as a

Do not try this at home. Stingerless male drone was chosen for this daring photo op.

8:30 am – Breakfast: Egg sandwich on Orowheat Thin with Hummus and Swiss Cheese. (BFC 0/2) Drive Chris into work (aka Drop him off at my office so he can walk from there). Open my office, make coffee, answer email (yes, even on my day off. I’m a worker bee, what can I say?)

9:00 am – Drive home hoping the catch Corky from Ballard Bee Company installing our hives. He arrived by 9:30!

Say Hello to our beautiful Italians straight from an almond grove in CA.

I’ll post video soon. It was pretty exciting. I have to say it’s kinda Zen to watch them go about their business.

10:30 am – Snack: Raspberry Chocolate Truffle Doctor’s CarbRite Diet Bar (BFC 0/2)

11:30 am – Set a Carbzilla household record at Costco. Apparently I hadn’t really been looking at the cost of all those vitamins and chicken breasts, but at least I didn’t buy the kayak or a flat screen tv for my workout garage.

12:30 am – Picked up two tacos at Taco Time (BFC 0/2, Calories 425). Ate one when I got home and had the other about an hour later.

After lunch I still had errands to run but totally wasn’t feeling it so I called my friend Becky to use her as motivation to get back in the car. She lives just past the pharmacy I needed to go to so I invited myself over and visited with her and her chickens who have gotten HUGE since the last time I’d seen them!Meet Chocolate, Spreckles, Henzilla and mumble mumble….I can’t remember the two blonde ones. Starlight and Moonlight? Her 7 year-old named them, except for Henzilla who was NOT named after me, but by a previous owner who gave her up because she was such a big bully.

4:00 pm – Walked Cady around the hood. Uneventful, which is always a good thing. Had tiny bowl of Puffins (I did not know that Chris had bought himself some! Good for him!) with almond milk before heading to The Gym That Took Me Back for spin class!

5:30 – 6:30 pm – Random thoughts throughout class included: “I’m having shrimp for dinner, my crotch is burning, am I the oldest female in the room, pepperoni, our instructor looks a lot like the Pimp My Protein blogger, could I flip over the front handlebars of a stationery bike, and I think I’m going to live!”

7:00 pm – I did indeed have shrimp for dinner:Meet the sauteed shrimp and kale spinach salad with hummus! Major yum! Served in the bowl I usually mix pancake batter in (it’s my favorite bowl from Orcas Island Pottery. It rocks because it has a pour spout on one end and a finger hold on the other).

I should note that rather than making recipes, Chris and I always make sure our fridge is stocked with components, like the books when you were a kid where the pages were split in three and you could mix and match heads, torsos, and legs to create different creatures? That’s how we make meals.

Which brings me to now as I’ve been sitting in front of the computer wayyyy too long.

You know what? Today was an IDEAL day. These kind of days…getting things accomplished, seeing friends, starting a new adventure like the bees…these are the days I live for. I hope everyone had a great day today!

(Is that just the Spin endorphins talking?)

How fun is this? I heard that there was going to be a GLEE Flash Mob in Seattle yesterday, and then I found out that a friend of mine had actually taken part:

Pretty good considering most of the dancers had only learned the moves that morning.

I was a Musical Theater geek in high school and a dancer so, believe me, back in the day, I would have been ALL over the Flash Mobs. I would have made Flash Mobbing my life. (Which is very different than making Flashing your life. Just to be clear.)

But, as you know, I was working a hospital opening yesterday:

Hell yeah I'm important...I'm on RADIO!

Chris took one look at my staff shirt and asked me which way to the Giraffe Exhibit.

It turned out to be a great event, and nothing makes you more grateful for your health than working a hospital opening. Many of the people who tour new hospitals are the kind who have spent a lot of time in them. Most touching were the radiology patients coming to see the new State-of-the-Art Radiology department. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get a little verklempt when the nurses greeted them by name and showed them around. I was very honored to be among the people and equipment that were saving lives.

Which brings us to Sunday…I may run down to the Farmers’ Market, I should be going to VegFest but will probably skip it this year…I just have a lot to do around the homefront including some “professional development” work which I’ll elaborate on later. Tomorrow I’m getting some time off for working over the weekend and will be tackling the craft room…if anyone wants stickers and scrapbooking paper, speak up now!

I’ve decided to give you both the indoor and outdoor version of my latest hair color (which I believe is nondescriptly named Medium Auburn by most manufacturers):

Indoors before work...

Outdoors after work...

Those would be our straggly raspberries growing in the back. They don’t look like much, but we actually get about as many raspberries as we need.

Before we get too far into this weekend, I should show you the highlights from last weekend:

To go with my hair, natch.

I am blown away by the colors of tulips every time. We have AMAZING tulips here, grown in the Skagit Valley (pronounced Ska-jit) right up the road a ways. Chris wanted to take a seaplane tour of the fields this year, but our schedules and the weather just weren’t cooperating.

After the Farmers’ Market, we hit up a new vegetarian Thai place. It was good but didn’t knock my socks off. It’s funny, but I just am not a day Thai person. I like my Thai at night. Is that weird?

That’d be your basic Tom Yum and Phad See-Ew. I have to admit Phad Woon Sen is probably my favorite Thai dish, but we were meeting a friend’s new beau and kinda distracted from the menu. I probably negated all health benefits by having both with fried tofu, but a) I’m just not a tofu fan, and b) I rarely eat fried foods so I figured what the heck. Better than no protein at all for the same price.

Doo dah doo…and now for the Furry Friday portion of our programming:

Should I have saved this for Hump Day?

What can I say? Cady is a dominant female…technically a bitch, as it were. I have no idea where she gets it from.Note that Derby is making a sly guest appearance. He knows to stand way back when the bed abuse and humping begins.

The rest of the weekend is going to be nuts! I’m working an event all day tomorrow, and I have a million things to do on Sunday. But the good news is I took it easy this afternoon and relaxed. I still have lots of fun stuff to report next week, when I get to it. Have a great weekend and tell me what fun things you’re up to so I can live vicariously through you non-working-on-the-weekend folks.

I don’t even know why I’m complaining since, in the 3 years I’ve been with the company, I’ve NEVER had to work a weekend. But still, it’s the WEEKEND!!!! Oh, and they are giving me most of Monday off. I forgot to mention that.