I love dining out; it’s probably my biggest vice. But eating out on a regular basis, as you can probably imagine, gets pretty expensive, and is usually what gets me into trouble when we’re trying to save money. So, I’ve developed a process that helps ensure I cook at home more often and keeps more dollars in my wallet: I create a weekly menu and a shopping list based on it. I’m sure I’m not the first and only person to do it but it’s a good process and it works, for the most part. There are always challenges. I mean, this is life we’re talking about here.

The general process goes a little something like this: I find recipes I like, make a grocery list, go shopping (once a week) and then cook at home each night.

Lola gets. And Lola wants to dance! I must be getting pretty serious about belly dancing because I did it again! I performed with some of the same advanced beginners as last time and my instructor, Andalee, choreographed the cutest little dance to the sexy little song, Whatever Lola Wants by Natacha Atlas.

Photo courtesy of DC Dance Photography

Instead of performing at a semi-private hafla like our debut, this time we performed in public at a bar during an event called Undulation Nouveau, which I like to describe as an open-mic night but for belly dancers. At the hafla, our audience consisted of close friends and family to our fellow belly dancers but this event was open to the public so we danced in front of strangers. I was so nervous the entire time I was dancing that my mouth got really dry and I had no choice but to smile because my mouth wasn’t producing any saliva to allow my lips to move over my teeth. TMI, but seriously, I was nervous!

Photo courtesy of DC Dance Photography

We didn’t have as much time to learn this dance but I think we did really well. Check it out and tell me what you think:

bellydance

I was cleaning out my Gmail inbox today because I realized I had well over 50 emails and, for me, that’s insane. I hate having a ton of messages in my inbox…. ESPECIALLY unread messages. My work email is the same, except I think I’m at a little over 80. Considering the crazy amounts of email we get on the regular, that’s actually pretty good!

So, anyway, I was cleaning out my inbox when I found an email I sent to myself of a dream I had waaayyy back in February of 2009. I emailed it so I wouldn’t forget it and, even though I didn’t write a lot of details about the dream, I still remember it vividly. I’m thinking I should keep a dream journal because most of my dreams are doosies.

Alright, listen to this dream, y’all:

I grew up in a small southern town so it’s probably not hard to imagine little, adolescent me dreamily scribbling the last name of some boy next to my first name inside the cover of a 3-ring binder. At one point I was convinced I was going to become Mrs. Nikki Samuel. Fast forward almost 10 years later when I had an actual ring on my finger (not by Mr. Samuel, of course) and I was struggling with that whole concept. I’ve come a long way since those adolescent days and had researched the origins of marriage and didn’t like what I’d found (business dealings where daughters were “property”, religious institutions with strict rules that included discrimination, etc.) and, quite frankly, I wasn’t having any of that. But I digress.

From the moment we got engaged, I knew I didn’t want to change my name completely. My final decision came down to hyphenating it or keeping it just the same.  In the end I chose not to change at all, for a number of reasons, although part of me still thinks hyphenating would have been a fine idea because, in that way, I would have been adding to my identity, not changing it entirely.

Is sideswept one word or two? Either way, check out these bangs. The hairdresser left them on the longer side so I could swoop them just like this. Also, look at that red lipstick! I’m trying something new.