Hello, September

How is it September already?  I feel like this summer has jetted by so quickly and now we're on the heels of it ending.  Once my vacation is in the books I know I will be fall-focused.  Autumn is my very favorite season and it's definitely looming.

I have four days of work, including today, before vacation times begin, and I'm continuing the countdown!  I'm checking the weather in OBX, adding to my packing list and figuring out when to do all the things I need to do before we leave.  BF took my car for an oil change yesterday during his tele-work day, so that's one less thing to worry about.  We take my car on on this trip since it has much more space.

I had a good weekend, too.  I spent Saturday morning and afternoon running a bunch of errands, which was really nice.  I don't often get a chance to run errands solo like I used to, as nothing is as close to where I live now, so we tend to consolidate our efforts.  This means that usually I have BF and often J with me for errands, and I hate shopping when people are waiting on me.

I bought three pairs of shoes on Saturday that I'm madly in love with. I got a pair of brown booties, a pair of black booties and a crazy comfortable walking/commuting/everything else shoe.  They're not the cutest things in the world, but they're not bad and they feel amazing.

Black Diba Bootie

Brown Crown Vintage Bootie

They're comfortable, sue me!

I also got a couple of pairs of super comfortable leggings at Kohls, a new bottle of one of my favorite perfumes (Viva La Juicy) and a couple of clearance shirts at Kohls.  It was a productive shopping day!

My new swimsuit arrived in the mail on Friday and I actually really love it!  I went with a dark teal color since I already have a pink swimsuit and it's very flattering.  The ruched waist on the bottom is a nice touch and I look forward to breaking it in this weekend.  :-)

Swimsuit

I am SO ready for a break from work.  I definitely need a time out and will hopefully come back feeling a bit rejuvenated.  It's been a hectic summer around the office and I'm feeling a bit burnt out and my patience is thin!  Ten days away from the office, seven of them at the beach, can only help things.  :-)

I feel like tomorrow starts the downward slide toward vacation.  That's when I need to start thinking about things like doing laundry before my trip and beginning to set aside things to pack.  Thursday morning I've got to drive to Alexandria for a dental cleaning in the morning, then I have an acupuncture appointment in the evening.  After that I'm meeting up with a couple of girlfriends for dinner and catching up!  Since we're doing dinner with J Friday night, we're not going to have a ton of time to pack on those two evenings.  We plan to set out for OBX Saturday morning around 9:30 or 10 since our check in time is 4 pm.

I can't say I have too much interesting to offer these days aside from pining for this long-awaited vacation.  BF and I definitely need this trip and this break from the real world.  It will be so good to just have all of those days to just spend time together and have fun without worrying about the day to day obligations.  I hope to remember what it's like to sleep in a little bit and to stay up later!  Living with BF has really cramped my style in terms of my schedule.  I've definitely had to adjust to going to bed earlier and getting up earlier.  I had to in order to be functional!

Finished another book yesterday, "The Best of Enemies" by Jen Lancaster.  I enjoyed it well enough, but will admit it wasn't my favorite of her books.  Can't pinpoint why, but it was a good enough read. Started "If I Could Turn Back Time" by Beth Harbison on my commute home last night, but just barely, and it's not overwhelmingly engaging at this point.  Maybe I'm getting burnt out on the string of chick lit, brain candy books I've been reading lately?  Hard to say.

The books I have on tap to take to the beach include:

Station Eleven-Emily St. John Mandel
The Fever-Megan Abbott
Dare Me-Megan Abbott
The Secret History-Donna Tartt

I also have multiple samples on my Kindle as well as at least one other fiction book on there.

I've been trying to read "The Secret History" for months.  I've started it and stopped it at basically the same point multiple times, which is admittedly very early on.  I feel like if I can just really immerse myself in it for a day or two I'd be hooked, but it's been a struggle to get there!  Maybe now that the fall times are lurking ahead I'll be better able to focus on a less fluffy book like that one.

Time to make myself an iced coffee and continue muddling through this already long Tuesday....but hey, at least it's September!  :-)