Happy Monday! Hope y’all had a nice weekend—not going to lie, I could have done with one more day off work. But luckily, I think this week at work will be more manageable than the last two, and I will take the slightly slower pace right now. I’m also grateful the weather this week looks promising—in the mid-to-high 60s and sunny, which is the perfect after-work walking weather. After work, I’ve got a few virtual happy hours lined up, and I am looking forward to those! And then, on Friday, my dinner club is doing a virtual meeting and we’re all going to order takeout from the same place and FaceTime while we eat it.

Overall, I’m feeling pretty good about things, but I won’t lie—I do have a bit of quarantine fatigue. DC is still under a shelter in place, and my guess is that it will be extended later this week, but I really am craving a return to some “normal” activities—what I would pay to be able to sit on a patio at a restaurant right now! But I know we’re all safest at home, and luckily I really like mine. So for now, I’ll be staying put.

Here’s to a great week! x

01. SOUTHERN CHARM

I decided to sit down and watch all of Southern Charm from start to finish, and y’all, I love it—it’s seriously the perfect quarantine distraction. I’ve seen most of the episodes before, but revisiting the CHS crew is the perfect, mindless TV show for right now and I am sure I’ll finish up all six seasons by the end of the week.

Charleston is my favorite city in the United States and since we can’t travel there right now, it’s been fun to watch it on TV. It also really makes me miss bars and restaurants, parties, and giving people hugs—hopefully we can do all of those things again soon.

Has anyone seen Southern Charm New Orleans or Savannah? Thinking I might need to watch those next!

02. A CINCO DE MAYO TO REMEMBER

If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve already heard this story—but I had to share it here, too! Last Tuesday, for Cinco de Mayo, I knew I wanted to get to-go takeout and margaritas from my favorite Mexican spot in my neighborhood, Lauriol Plaza. They have a great online ordering system, so I put my order in around 10:30am for a 7pm pickup. I figured there would likely be a backup just given the demand for Mexican food on Cinco de Mayo.

After work, I went on my nightly walk and walked by Lauriol to scope it out. The line looked long, so I figured I’d hop in place around 30 minutes before 7pm. When I got in line, I learned from the people around me that Lauriol’s online ordering system had crashed and they lost everyone’s order. So you could wait in line to re-order your food and you’d give them your original order number so they wouldn’t double charge you. The police were also on the scene because the lines were so long they were concerned about people crowding the restaurant and not social distancing; they kept threatening to shut the restaurant down unless people stood six feet apart—but luckily, everyone near me, was more than happy to do so and we all were wearing masks.

I waited in line for about 90 minutes to re-order my food, and while I was raining, it started RAINING! Once I got to the top of the line, it only took about 15-20 minutes for my food and margs to come out, and it was soooo worth the wait. I had made friends with the people in line around me and every time someone’s food came out, we clapped for each other. It was honestly the most social interaction I’ve had in weeks—and it’s definitely a Cinco de Mayo I’ll never forget!

In a shock to no one, I walked by Lauriol Plaza on May 6 around the same time and there was no line.

03. USING LEGACYBOX TO DIGITIZE FAMILY MEMORIES

If you’ve been following me here for a while, you may remember a super old campaign I did with Legacybox, a company that digitizes your family memories. You can send in your old VHS, cassette tapes, photos, audio recordings—pretty much anything—and they will digitize it for you. Over the years, I’ve scanned a ton of my family’s photos, but I have no way to digitize our home videos. We did 10 of our home videos when I did the campaign years ago, but this quarantine, we’ve figured out which home videos we don’t have digitized and are sending them into Legacybox so we can finally check that project off our list. The quality of Legacybox’s work is great, and I can’t wait to have this batch digitized!

04. MY NEW SOLUDOS

I’ve had my eye on a pair of Soludos smoking slippers for a while now, and when I realized they were doing a site-wide 25% off sale (it’s since been reduced to 20%—but still a good deal!), I knew now was the time to buy them. I also own a pace of their lace-up wedges and and lace-up espadrilles, and all of them are seriously the most comfortable shoes. I am a true size 7 and always take a 7 in Soludos—they fit true to size and take no time to break in.

05. REFUNDS ON REFUNDS!

I touched on this a bit in last week’s post, but I called United last weekend and got a refund for the trip to France I was supposed to take with my girlfriends at the end of the month. They said it would take 30 days to post to my credit card, but it showed up last Thursday!

I also got a slew of other refunds last week, which I’ve funneled into my savings as much as possible. Given all the economic uncertainty right now, it’s been a blessing to have some of this money come back to me, as disappointing it is that some fun vacations and events got cancelled.

For starters, I was able to get our flights to Vegas for the trip I was going to take with my sisters refunded from American Airlines, which I never thought would happen since they didn’t cancel the flights. But I filled out the refund form, and a week later, received an email saying it had been approved!

Then, I finally got Banana Republic to refund me for the order I shipped back nearly two months ago. After weeks of bugging them via online chat, I finally just picked up the phone and gave them a call. Though I had to listen to really crappy hold music for 54 minutes, the agent refunded my order quickly and that was a huge relief.

And then, late last week, we found out the Kennedy Center cancelled this summer’s run of Hamilton, so I filled out the refund request form for our tickets and am expecting to get that money back soon.

Lastly, my sisters and I sent our mom flowers for her birthday (this past Saturday) and Mother’s Day, but the bouquet showed up with wilting flowers. We were able to get our order completely refunded—and fear not, my mom ended up with some beautiful flowers!

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I hope you guys have a great week—I’d love to know what is keeping you distracted these days!