Lent time

So it's time for Lent. Matt and I celebrated Mardi Gras today with a bunch of fresh paczki from Copernicus Deli and Market. They brought them in from Hamtramck, which is basically an all-Polish community inside Detroit. Neither of us had ever had a paczki before. At the recommendation of the nice Polish lady working there, we bought four at ninety-nine cents apiece. One rose, one plum/prune, one lemon and one bavarian cream. Both of us loved the bavarian cream. My second favorite was the lemon; Matt liked the plum/prune mixture. Sure, this didn't quite fit in with my Weight-Watchers, but I figured it was a special occasion.

Now it's time to make Lenten resolutions. Every year I try to promise to do something good and to give up something bad. Last year, I gave up Diet Coke. I also promised to write a letter to a friend every day during Lent (isn't real mail great?).

This year, my current resolutions are as follows:

1) I'm giving up computer games. I'm not a huge computer gamer, but I often play little games like Minesweeper and Freecell. Sometimes I even splurge with totally silly games like Bejeweled, Sim Tower, Diner Dash, Chip's Challenge or the sheep game. I know! It's terrible. So for Lent, I propose giving them up entirely.

2) I'm taking on a running resolution - training for and completing a 10K by the time Lent is over. I've only got six weeks, but I think it's feasible. It's just going to take hard work.

What do y'all think? What are you giving up? And do you have better ideas for me?

The Amazing Race returns!

I can't tell you how excited I am about the Amazing Race returning tonight. Anyone who hasn't seen it before should definitely tune in to CBS at 8 p.m. ET. Eleven teams return from previous seasons, including my favorites Drew and Kevin, and John Vito and Jill. The Race is supposed to go to awesome new locations this season and should inspire many mroe honeymoon fantasies for me and Matt.

More of an update later... I'm off to enjoy a Vietnamese dinner with Meredith, Gaby, Greg, Matt and Alex. Then it's Amazing Race time! Hurrah.

Successful retreat

Well, last weekend's retreat was long, but generally good. We learned about a few things we didn't know about and we talked about a few things we've never talked about. Even better, we made new friends who joined us for an awesome Japanese steakhouse dinner after the second session.

This week has been semi-productive. Matt and I have done a bunch of wedding stuff: we got our invitation drafts, we figured out the readings for the ceremony, and we're choosing names for our different tables. Today we're checking out limos. On my own, I probably would have just booked a limo over the phone, but my little wedding planning guide (and the lawyer in me) recommends seeing the specific limo you will be getting and writing it into the contract.

Last night Matt and I celebrated Valentine's Day at a Korean restaurant in town called Seoul Garden. We went to the same restaurant three years ago for our first Valentine's Day together. It was sweet to return together. We got gifts for each other. Nothing too romantic, but thoughtful things. I bought him brandy (he's started drinking it lately and really enjoys it, but we don't have any at home). He got me a subscription to US Weekly, a magazine I've been craving - a little embarassingly - for ages.

This weekend will bring much fun and exotic food. Tomororow night is My Birthday, Observed. We're having people over for Polish food and drink to celebrate. If you're in town, come by! On Saturday my old friend Mary will be in town and we're hanging out together. Sunday brings a Vietnamese dinner party - we're making pho, spring rolls, lettuce-wrapped meatballs and a mango/sticky rice dessert. Yum.

Thanks, editors

Things are busy here. I've been working on editing an article of the Journal of Race and Law. This semester's article is a bit of a break - last semester, the article I edited was 100 pages long, with more than three hundred tedious citations. It needed a lot of work. This semester the editors were kind enough to give me a gem of an article - just under forty pages with around 100 cites. They even gave me a staff of four. It's still busy, but definitely less so than last semester.

This weekend, Matt and I have the last of our marriage prep - a two day retreat with other engaged couples at St. Mary's. I'm kind of looking forward to it. They have sessions on sort of interesting things, like money, in-laws, having children... Matt is much less excited. Is that just the way men are? He's dreading the retreat so much that I promised him Indian food afterwards. I'm not a big fan of Indian food, so this is a big deal for him.

I'll let you know how the retreat goes - it should be interesting at least!