San Juan, Part Dos

Let me first say that my Spanish is absolute crap! Seriously almost a week in San Juan and I got by with a warm smile and four simple things:

"Hola!"

"Gracias"

"No hablo Español."

"Cafe con leche."

Yeah, that's about the limit of my Spanish speaking abilities, which means I really need to dig out the Rosetta Stone CD and dive back in. However, all those of years of taking French were not wasted in vain because I was able to read plenty of documents written in Spanish and ascertain enough information to finish my work.

And next time I need to figure out how to buy more than 2 bags of espresso and 1 can of coffee beans to take home with me! I love dark coffee and being back in Puerto Rico was like a flashback to honeymooning in Brazil where the coffee was divine.

Besides working 10-plus hour days, I was able to enjoy a few moments of fun in San Juan.






Amazing celebration for Noche de San Juan celebration in the hotel's pool area. There was a beach chic fashion show that started at 11:30pm, which meant I drank even more coffee the next morning after being up until 1am. I'm way too old for that behavior on a work night!!!

Why hello there San Juan

I've been racking up the air miles as of late with quite a bit of work travel in the past few months. Some of my destinations haven't been that glamorous, such as Detroit, but this past week I've been holed up in West Palm Beach, FL and San Juan, PR. It's a rough life.

However, I have some very over-protective family members when it comes to living out of a suitcase. Back when I first started traveling for work, I had three quick trips in succession to Denver, Fort Lauderdale, and Newark, NJ. While having a celebratory birthday dinner with my parents in Newark my dad leaned over to me and said, "if I find out you went for a run in downtown Newark like you did in Denver, I'll beak your legs." He may or may not have repeated the same warning when I've went to Detroit, but you get the picture.

To add injury to insult, when the hubs found out I was going to take a train to go from West Palm Beach to the Miami airport so that I could catch a direct flight to San Juan he immediately responded with, "wait, you're going to go to Miami by yourself, in a suit?" My other option was to take a non-direct flight that had me backtrack to Atlanta and then fly to San Juan. I picked a train ride over the chance to have to run through the Atlanta airport and hope not to miss my next flight. Gesh!

Goodness gracious! I'm a big girl, I can handle myself on these trips.

And here's my hotel in San Juan.
It's not like I'm staying in a motel that rents out rooms by the hour here people. I just need Hilton and Marriott to like each other and let me combine my points total for a sweet vacation stay. Or, the hubs needs to tag along on a work trip.

We're homeowners!

As you may or may not have noticed, I've taken a nose-dive from posting and this little ol' blog has been collecting dust much of the past year. Well, I've had my reasons, but the main one being that the hubs and I were in full-on house buying mode. It seems every waking second has been consumed with house-buying relating things since January. The past 65 days since we put in an offer on our house have been exhausting. I'll go over everything in greater detail in the future, but for now I'm busying packing up and moving to our home.

Our home.

House.

Casa.

Maison.

Permanent place of residence for the next 12-20 years.

Like already bought a mailbox and cemented that bad boy into the ground. For the record, I was completely against the cement aspect, but the hubs went a head and did it while I was out of town. You win some and you lose some.

It's a cinch!

One of my "goals" this year is to take more risks with my personal style. I'm a big black/grey/beige person when it comes to my office wardrobe. Sure, I have a few polka dot pieces that I like to mix in from time to time, but overall I'm pretty bland.

With this amazing bland outfit I did three things I don't usually do. And yes, my legs are that pale in person!


Cardigan - Banana Republic
Dress - Target (I've had this since college and wore it to both my undergraduate and college graduation ceremonies!)
Belt- Target
Shoes - Nine West

1. I wore a non-black, non-J.Crew cardigan! Yeah, you think I'm kidding, but I own the J.Crew Jackie cardigan in four colors: black (obviously), white, grey, and mint green. I'm twitching because I haven't purchased one yet this spring and I feel like I'm so far behind. And that's just the Jackie cardigan. I don't want to count the additional number of other black or J.Crew cardigans I own.

2. I belted my cardigan. I'm struggling to find skinny belts that work and the hubs keeps taking his darn braided belt back from me. The nerve of that guy! I'm not sold on the whole "high belt" look yet because I feel it just amplifies my already short waist and makes my top look even more stumpy.

3. I started my "new" job in October 2009 and this is the first time I've worn open toed shoes to work. They aren't explicitly outlawed in the company dress code, but I'm quasi-old school and I just don't like open toed shoes at work. However, it's been ridiculously hot this past week and peep toe shoes sounded amazing.


I'm also going to try to post more outfits here on a routine basis for a variety of reasons:
- there's enough daylight when I get home to take a picture. Taking a picture at 6:30am is just not going to happen.
- allow me to see just how much black I actually do wear.
- give me something to post on a routine basis
- get feedback on my outfits. The hubs is king of Mr. "you look great in that!" I'd like to believe he's telling the truth, but I know on some days he's totally full of it.