Three places that make me look and more importantly, make me FEEL HAPPY!!!

Every woman has places where she goes for herself, to beautify and take care of her body. I have three places I love. They are three places I would recommend every woman to go and I have decided to share them with the people that read this.

Number 1: Before and After, a place where you can do half an hour of “power plate” exercises equivalent to 1 or 2 hours at the gym, strengthening your muscles and working out your entire body, as well as relax. My favorite part of this place is its spa section. After you’re done working out, you may move to the beds in the back to sweat off toxins and calories inside a special capsule, strength your muscles by sitting still and many other, amazing treatments that work wonders.
Location: 1425 Ponce De Leon Blvd, Coral Gables, FL. Tel: 305-443-0888

Number 2: Muse of the Gables, a beauty salon where you can change your hair color as many times as you change your mind and they can always work the magic of making your hair look natural and shiny. Muse is the salon where I have felt more relaxed than ever. I always walk out feeling and looking better. They even serve you the most delicious tea I’ve ever tried.
Location: 1420 Ponce De Leon Boulevard, Coral Gables, FL 33134 (305) 446-9696

Number 3:My facialist’s place, where I can walk in with the biggest and most painful pimple (s) and see it (them) obliterated in a matter of minutes. A place where we talk not just about life or romance, which to women are pretty much equivalent, but we discuss God, forgiveness and other divine matters. How can I not walk out of that place happy when all I read around me are signs such as: “Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world” or “Take good care of your body. It is the only place you have to live”.
Location: Not to be disclosed as requested by the facialist.

Eat, Love, Pray by: Elizabeth Gilbert (The book I loved)

I loved the title of that book. It talks about what I believe are three, fundamental things we all need to do to be happy: eat, pray and love. I love to eat, everybody and anybody who knows me know that. I love to love life. In fact, I think I'm in love with life and all its aspects, sunsets, sunrises, nature in general, as well as the living creatures, animals and humans included LOL. So, no mystery I felt compelled to read that book from the moment I heard its title and so I did. A dear friend gave it to me for my birthday and I enjoyed reading it very much; for that I'll always be thankful to Gigi. Well, I pretty much enjoy all books, but I enjoyed this one in particular because it took me back to Italy, where I had recently been to. It spoke to me about India, where I never thought I would like to go and Bali, Indonesia, where after reading about it I would definitely love to go one day. So, after reading Eat, pray, love I meditated for the first time in my life. When in Bali she learned a meditation that entailled sitting still and smiling. That was all, just sitting by oneself and thinking of positive things, while smiling to yourself.
I tend to write on books, that's why it is not a good idea to let me borrow one if you're a meticulous reader. I like doing what I call living the book, drawing hearts or stars next to the parts I love. These are some of those favorite parts that I marked while reading the book:
"I wanted to be all Gandhi about this. I wanted to be all Nelson Mandela about this. Not realizing at the time that both Gandhi and Mandela were lawyers" (18)
"He was playing a character I had invented, which is somewhat telling. In desperate love,it's always like this, isn't it? In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding that they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place" (18-9)
Her funny way of describing herself: "Given that I am the planet's most affectionate life-form (something like a cross beatween a golden retriever and a barnacle" (20)
"How could two people who were so in love not end up happily ever after?" (22)
"I was beginning to sense that-even though my life still looked like a multi-vehicle accident on the New Jersey Turnpike during holiday traffic-Iwas tottering on the brink of becoming a self-governing individual" (23)
"But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead. That way, you will know God." (27)
"Parla come magni." (87)
"The Bhagavad Gita-that ancient Indian Yogic text-says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection" (95)
In regards to Venice: "Greasy streams of Adriatic backwash nudge up against the long-suffering foundations of these buildings, testing the endurance of this fourteenth-century science fair experiment-Hey, what if we built a city that sits in water all the time?" (100)
"People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ver meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it." (149)
"you gotta let go and sit still and allow contentment to come to you" (155)
"There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history: how much do you love me? and who's in charge?" (157)
"Eventually, everything goes away" (174)
My favorite method of meditation: "sit and smile" (231)
"The Balinese believe we are each accompanied at birth by four invisible brothers, who come into the world with us and protect us throughout our lives.. The borthers inhabit the four virtues a person needs in order to be safe and happy in life: intelligence, friendship, strength and (I love this one) poetry" (251)
About the six elements of her failProof Broken-Heart Curing Treatment: Vitamin E, get much sleep, drink much water, travel to a place far away from the person you loved, meditate and teach your heart that this is destiny" (264)
"I thought about one of my favorite Sufi poems, which says that God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now. I was never not coming here. This was never not going to happen" (280)
"To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced life" (298)
"In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices" (334)

Dear friends

Every now and then a song touches you deeply, makes you reflect on what you've done or haven't done and sometimes it reflects the feelings you didn't know how to express. A friend showed me this song in particular and it reminded me of all of you, yes, it reminded me of you, my dear friends. It's the first song on the James Blunt's latest album. He dedicated it to his friend Simone. It talks of the happy times they spent together when they were younger and how they might not be as young anymore; yet, he is willing to call her "up every Saturday night" so they can "both stayed out 'til the morning light" and sing "Here we go again"....
The song reminded me of you, my friends. It reminded me of the summers 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010, among all the summers yet to come. It brought to mind the summer we fell in love for the first time and the summer we had all broken up with our boyfriends and among our tears we didn't realize at the time, at least not until the next summer, that we were enjoying our single lives and we were going to remember it melancholically when we weren't single anymore.
So to my friends, just like James Blunt told Simone in his song "1973", I would like to tell you that in 2020, 2030 and 2040 I would call you "up every Saturday night" and we could hopefully "stayed out 'til the morning light" and we'll sing, "Here we go again". To me, my friends, we'll always have Bongos and Rey's pizza in summer 2004. We'll always have "malta con leche condensada" at the movie nights and in my memories, we'll still be that age and that happy at that time, cuz we've spent together those time and no matter what happens next, those times are now gone and they're forever ours, permanently unchanged, unaltered. We might get older, but as James Blunt says, "I will always be in a club with you" dancing "I have a feeling" from the Black Eyed Peas and we'll jump and we'll laugh at ourselves and the next day, we'll probably go to the beach and we just might end up at El Polo Norte in Hialeah. We'll always have our first cruise together, the salsa nights, the fiasco nights in which we planned to have so much fun we ended up having more fun in the car than at the places we went to. We'll always have Buenos Aires during the spring time, Boston for memorial weekend and New York in January, 2005. We'll always have that crazy, infinite spinning while dancing, the tears and the laughs. I'm part of your summers as much as you are part of mine. You, my friends, are forever part of my life. I'm blessed to be part of yours.

So here it goes, the song our friend S and I dedicate to all of you, my fantastic group of fantastic friends:

"1973" By: James Blunt

Simone
You're getting older
Your journey's been
Etched on your skin

Simone
Wish I had known that
What seemed so strong
Has been and gone

[Chorus:]
I would call you up every Saturday night
And we both stayed out 'til the morning light
And we sang, "Here we go again"
And though time goes by
I will always be
In a club with you
In 1973
Singing "Here we go again"

Simone
Wish I was sober
So I could see clearly now
The rain has gone

Simone
I guess it's over
My memory plays our tune
The same old song

[Chorus x3]

And though time goes by
I will always be
In a club with you
In 1973

You can listen to the song by visiting youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWeqeQkjLto