Less than 24 hours to go!

Call me a nerd, royal watcher, whatever, but I've been excited for this wedding long before the couple were even engaged. My parents weren't even married yet when Charles and Diana got married. I can't wait to see what all goes into a royal wedding. Plus, I have actually been to London and have been inside Westminster Abbey. Its gorgeous and its unreal knowing that I've actually been there.

I think what is most amazing about this wedding is that is every little girls' dream, to one day marry a prince. Heck, I even grew up thinking that one day I will be marrying one of the princes (although I always preferred Harry).  The long distance relationship thing didn't quite work out. But Kate Middleton seems to be the perfect girl (who isn't me) to do that. She's beautiful, fashionable, smart and seems to be into charity as much as William is.

I can't imagine what is going through Kate's head right now as she is only one sleep away from becoming a princess. I'm nervous for her! I'm sure everything will go swimmingly and she'll look as gorgeous as ever.

Of course, I'll be up early tomorrow to watch it on TV (damn you, Atlantic Ocean...why can't I live closer to London?). While watching the coverage, I'll be making British style scones from scratch to bring to work with me in honor of the wedding. I attempted to make clotted cream last night to put on the scones, but failed miserably. The recipe I followed said that you could use un-pasteurized or pasteurized cream, but not ultra-pasteurized cream which is how most creams in the US are made. I had a hard time finding pasteurized cream, but I eventually did at a local Whole Foods. However, its seems as if even pasteurized cream doesn't work well for making clotted cream as it didn't "clot" at all, but rather just created a burnt film. Hopefully, the scones turn out better, but I feel like its harder to mess those up. I'm still kinda disappointed. I loved the clotted cream that we had in London, and there's no where to purchase it pre-made in the US.

My prince and I at Buckingham Palace

Our Royal Wedding

Happy Easter and happy really nice day in Boston!

Benny and I went for a 32 mile bike ride today. It was my first ride outside. It felt so good to not be on the trainer any more. And it feels even better now that its not 40 degrees anymore. It was in the 60's and sunny for our ride today. We had a strong head wind on the way out, which also so happens to be a gradual incline as well, but it made it that much easier on the way back.

And I got my first sunburn of the season. Very mild, but it will be nice to not be pasty white going to Florida in three weeks. Although, it will be a solid farmer's/biker's tan.

It felt so good to finally be sweating it outside finally. Its hard to want to stay on a bike or do a run for a couple hours inside, or to even go that hard for that matter. I burned 1230 calories on my ride this morning opposed to the 600ish that I have been burning indoors.

Finally, it feels like its really triathlon season soon.

Again, hope you all are having as enjoyable an Easter or Passover as we are! And as Twitter folk put it, hope you get the egg with Lady Gaga in it.

With two and a half weeks until the first triathlon of the season (New England Season Opener Sprint) and just about two months until the Patriot Half Ironman, I have started upon my least favorite part of training. The building up of an endurance base and the focus on quantity of miles is now wrapping up (hooray!), only to segue (I spelled that right on the first try!) into a quality of miles focus. This means I'm doing a lot more sprints, hills, etc.

On the positive side, I must say I really love how much I am sweating these days. Makes me feel like I'm getting in a really good workout. I also feel like I am getting stronger and faster instead of just putting in the miles. The recent running of the Boston Marathon has also inspired me to work harder. It has reignited my desire to qualify, for reals. I already have my victory dance planned out and it goes something to the tune of this...



Anyways, my weight continues to fluctuate and have in general been stuck at a plateau. I have determined that I might be doing a tad much snacking so I've put my jiggly tush back on the calorie watching bandwagon. Maybe I can finally take off those rascally last three pounds.

Also, to help me to eat healthier in general, I am going to go a week without refined sugar starting Sunday (really, who stops eating refined sugar on Easter?) and I am currently attempting to go 30 days without soda of any kind and limited caffeine. I have successfully survived to day four!

I am proposing that a new holiday be instated in North America. It will be similar to Passover or Hanukkah in that it will span multiple days. I am proposing mid-April to early June. Here is how I propose that it be celebrated.

1. Increased hair length or amount of hair will be how we honor the gods of this holiday. Therefore, no one, male or female, should shave during this time.

She's single, guys!

2. People can continue to go to work and attend school during the day, but all activities be ceased by 7PM Eastern Time (approximately sundown, but probably closer to dinner time...or tea time on the West Coast) in order to spend time with family and friends celebrating the holiday.

3. As the celebration may be too intense for some, it should be broken up into smaller periods of time with a "breather" in between each one. The suggested amount of celebrating time is 20 minutes, with about 17 minutes of rest time. Upon experimentation, 20 minutes of rest was too long, but 15 minutes was not quite long enough. Thus, it was determined that 17 minutes would be best. Each nightly celebration will consist of three 20 minute periods of celebrating.

4. Some may choose to celebrate longer and this will be permitted so long as they continue to follow the "20 minutes on / 17 minutes off" rule.

5. The celebratory food and drink is to include beer in large quantities, six pizzas (one to be consumed every twenty minutes for an hour...the other three are for those who would like to celebrate beyond the required time), and a pound of Skittles per day.

Mmm...rainbows...

6. Frequent prayer to the gods is strongly encouraged. Pray for the unbelievers. Pray for those who couldn't make it through the whole holiday. Pray for each other to stay strong and dedicated to celebrating the holiday every day until the end.

I like to picture Jesus in a tuxedo T-shirt because it says I want to be formal, but I'm here to party.

7. Those who fall away from their faith in the gods and discontinue their celebration of the holiday will be subjected to playing golf until September.

Worked out well for Tiger

8. The final day of the holiday shall be the holiest. After all, its a whole year until we celebrate again. In order to commemorate its most holiness, we shall all drink out of one giant chalise. This will also give much pleasure to the gods of the holiday.

I found this one antiquing today. Would serve its purpose until we could find a better one.

9. And all the people shall say, "Gretzky is Great, but BizNasty is Better"

Not sure if you noticed yet, but I do a lot of traveling. Hardly a month goes by without me taking a trip for one reason or another, with most reasons being for work. Most recently, Ben and I took a vacation to St. Paul, MN. It may not sound exhilarating or tropical, because its not. Although, in comparison to Boston, it did feel slightly tropical. Anyways, we went for the men's Frozen Four. My dad and I started going to the Frozen Four in 2007 when it was hosted in St. Louis. It is held in a different city each year with it being at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, MN this year. My dad enters the lottery for tickets each year. So far, he has gotten tickets in 2007, 2010, and 2011. It's in Tampa next year, so we're hoping for a three-peat.

This year, my dad and my brother, Alexander, attended the games. At this time last week, we were unsure if Alexander would even be attending with us. He was hospitalized with a spontaneous pneumothorax on Friday, April 1 (was not a very funny April Fool's joke). On Sunday, it recollapsed meaning it would take him that much longer to be released from the hospital. Fortunately, they let him go home Tuesday night without any complications. This was great news considering the semi-final games were on Thursday. The bad news is that my brother is the biggest nerd I know. My parents had to force him NOT to do homework on the day of my wedding. Missing school for three days obviously did not sit well with him, so he decided to stay in Kansas on Thursday and Friday to attend school and meet up with us for the final game on Saturday.

Thursday morning, Ben and I flew out to St. Paul along with a plane full of other Boston hockey fans. There wasn't a whole lot of time to burn before we had to head over for the games. We made our souvenir purchases as soon as we got there as they usually run out quickly. The first game put UMD against Notre Dame. It initially seemed like an evenly matched game, but UMD pulled away for the win in the third period. The next game featured UND against Ben's Michigan. Being an Ohio State alum, I was rooting for anyone who played Michigan. Also, UND had a solid team, so I just figured they would win the whole thing anyways. Turns out, after a lucky goal and solid goaltending for Michigan, they advanced to the final game.

On Friday, my dad had to drive back to Kansas to pick up Alexander. Ben and I worked out in the morning and then spent the most part of the day at Mall of America and Ikea. We were told it was the largest Ikea in America, but I'm not sure it was that much bigger than the one in Boston. I love shopping, so I loved the mall. However, it wasn't as impressive as I thought it would be. Primarily, its big because it has two of every store that comes in a typical mall and there are roller coasters in the middle of the mall.

On Saturday, we all got our frozen custard fix (the rest of the country really needs to hop on that band wagon) before heading over to the MOA again. My dad and Alexander aren't as big into shopping as I am, so we went to the Frozen Four festival for a while before going to the game. As I had hoped, Michigan lost in overtime to UMD. Overtime didn't last very long, but you could tell from the get go that Michigan was tired. You knew it wasn't going to be a very long overtime. And unless there was a miracle, it wasn't going to end in Michigan's favor.



Our flight home wasn't until Sunday evening, so Ben and I just hung out at the MOA just to waste time. We got back to the great town of Boston and were greeted with a bustling T ride. We were confused as to why the T would be so busy on a Sunday night until we got closer to home and realized that a Red Sox game had just ended. They had just won their second game of the season. Unfortunately, its their eighth game overall. Glad I'm not a Sox fan...

...or this could be me every day.

Now, to wrap up social networking...for now. Lord knows that there will only be an infinite more to come.

I used to like Facebook back when it was exclusive to college students only. Recently, it has become too much like MySpace. Anyone and their mom can join. And they do. There are kids too young to walk, but apparently old enough to access the Internet and type up a profile. Pets can have a profile. And like I said, moms are on Facebook. Seriously, can you really have the full college experience if your mom can check up on you at any given moment with the click of a button? Forget drunk statusing.

But that's really the least of what irritates me about Facebook. If one more person invites me to play Farmville, Ima kill all their digital sheep. Seriously folks, I didn't move from the Midwest to Boston just to be bombarded with more dairy cows.

Is this what social networking has come too? What happened to good old wall postings and picture tagging? Do we need to plant fake corn and raise fake animals together to reconnect or stay connect to friends?

To continue on the Facebook tangent, I saw The Social Network for the first time a couple of weeks ago. Man, it really makes Mark Zuckerburg out to be a douche. Who starts a business with their friends and then runs away and keeps all the money for themselves? He then acts oblivious to what he did wrong when confronted by his friend. Granted, I have heard that he really isn't that much of a jerk in real life.

Regardless, you gotta give the man credit. He invented (and with the help of some friends) built Facebook from the ground up. That includes all of the coding and programming. I can't even imagine what a huge undertaking that is. He definitely earned every bit of the money he has.

Nonetheless, I am super jelly belly of him. I am not jealous that Zuck (yes, we're on a nickname basis now) can invent things. In fact, I have invented many things myself. For example, I invented the fashion trend of wearing a long sleeve shirt underneath a short sleeve shirt.

Not me, but I was this much of a fashion fail in middle school

I also recently invented a fun little gadget that one day Steve Jobs will be writing me 7+ figure checks for one day. However, my idea was shot down faster than a plane in a No-fly zone by my tech geek hubby. My idea was for wireless earbuds.

However, I have no technological savvy beyond the ideas, so I clearly couldn't build these on my own. I recruited the help of my husband only to be told immediately that its "too complicated". And besides, someone has already invented wireless headphones, so my idea isn't really all that novel. He still wouldn't help me even though I bitched about how big and bulky wireless headphones are and that us athletes/cool people would like something a tad more aerodynamic like wireless ear buds.

Anyways, I am super jealous of the fact that he could do all of the work to create his invention. If the next million dollar idea consisted of eating, sleeping and working out, my wealth would grow faster than Charlie Sheen's Twitter followers. I would host a show called "The Apprentice" and Donald Trump would be a contestant.

Until that time comes, I will go back to the studying that I should have been doing all along instead of writing a really long blog.

Oh, and follow me @RachelleRae. Its almost April and I only have 28 followers. 1000 by the end of the year is looking really far off right now.

Note: I will be MIA next Friday for Famous Friday, but in two weeks, check back for "My Family: The Movie"