One of the things that has come up recently is that I have joined a volleyball league.  Random, I know.  But, my friend Clare invited me to join because their team needed another person to be able to function.  It is an all girls league, and is the least competitive in this organization — right up my ally, especially since I had not seen or touched a volleyball since approximately the ninth grade.  There a few/many organizations in the city that put together leagues for all kinds of sports.  The most well known is called ZogSports and is mostly a social thing.  People join to meet people and make friends and they run games such as kick ball and flag football.  The organization/league that we are in is more for people who enjoy playing the sport and who seem to have some sort of skill, but our team is very relaxed and seems to want to promote being social as well.  I have gone twice now, the first being two weeks ago, and the second was this week.  The first week was great and I felt that even though I had no clue what I was doing, I would be able to pick it up and catch up a little bit.  But, then this week I felt so out of my league and comfort zone and frustrated.  We were playing a more skilled team, so our “good” players were handling most of the hits, which is understandable, but the whole time I just kind of felt in the way and like the worst player — which is something I don’t want to be!  So we’ll see how the next few games go, we meet once a week and the season is 10 weeks.  I guess I could read up on volleyball strategy online or something??

Another activity that has come up recently is a monthly supper club that we are doing with our friends Diana and Todd.  They are the friends with whom we had Thanksgiving this year, down in Brooklyn.  They invited the same group over to their apartment that was there for Thanksgiving, which consists of me and Ben, another couple Heather and Christian, and a friend Paul.  We headed down to Bay Ridge on Saturday afternoon for an evening of cooking, eating, drinking, and playing games.  This month’s theme was comfort food, which was completely fitting seeing as how it snowed that morning.  Someone made chili, we had lasagna, carrot salad, fish cakes, meat and cheese plate, and more.  I brought the fixins for a chicken casserole/pot pie thing that street used to make at the Soupbowl, but didn’t even end up making it due to the abundance of food.  We played taboo and drank wine and had quite a fine time!  Next month Heather and Christian are hosting and we are doing breakfast for dinner, I’m excited already!

Another fun activity that is yet to happen is a salsa class that Ben and I are attending on Friday evening.  Salsa as in the dance, not the condiment.  We’ll see how that goes….

Here are a few pictures from the past few months:

October finished out with a bang for me; what, with Mamma and Daddy’s visit, then my friend Kym visiting, then going to DC for Halloween… October was quite a success.

Kym’s visit was a lot of fun, and since her birthday is the day after mine, it was a fun birthday weekend.  On the Friday she returned from Boston, we met up with Ben for supper at a fun italian place that I’ve been to a few times before for some wood fire pizzas and yummy wine.  We even saw a famous person… kym saw him and thought he looked familiar, i didn’t recognize him, and Ben identified him as a decorator/stylist who appears on Oprah… go Ben?  On Saturday we walked around and enjoyed great fall weather before getting dim sum in my neighborhood and walking around some more.  We ate in Ben’s neighborhood and had a low key evening.  Then on Sunday I had my birthday get together at Blue Grass Brunch (Nolita House) with Ben, Kym, Diana, and Mark and Teresa (Ben’s roomies). it was perfect and fun and I loved it.  WE then went to a pub around the corner for hanging out, beers, cards, and good times with good friends.  Monday was Kym’s birthday so she and I went out to supper at a little italian place and had a good time just hanging out and talking.  She then flew out on Tuesday morning, back to Colorado!

For Halloween weekend Ben and I rode the bus down to DC to stay with Street for the weekend.  On Saturday we went to brunch and hung around town till it was time to get ready for her big party! She and her roomies hosted a very fun party with scary movies projected on the wall, great decorations, costumes, and friends.  I reused my Snow White costume, which has been making the rounds for a few years, and Ben did the same with his pirate costume — didn’t you know? Snow white ended up with a pirate.. not a prince  On sunday we hung aroud the apartment, picked up some food and watched funny videos and just enjoyed being lazy and relaxing together before Ben and I had to get on the bus back to the city.

Last weekend was a quiet weekend at home. On Friday I met Ben for supper at a little Italian place for supper, and it was delicious.  On Saturday is was his friend’s Birthday so we met up and watched the Texas game at the bar that hosts all the UT games before going to Dave&Busters for games and then dinner with the group.  I had to work on Sunday, helping my boss with a party she was hosting at her townhouse, including spending a few hours to go meet the caterer and help get the food to the townhouse.  Since the marathon was happening that day, it was impossible to take a car from the west side, where the caterer’s kitchen was, to the east side, where the townhouse is.  So, with Ben’s help , we got the food safely from point a to point b.  The party was a success and i was able to leave a little bit before it was over at 5.  Ben and I met up at our favorite (well… the city’s favorite) ramen place, called Ippudo, for drinks and supper, which was the perfect end to the weekend.

This past weekend Ben and I took the bus to Boston.  We were able to meet up with my friend Caleb and his fiance Maggie on Friday night, which was so fun.  On satuday we spent the afternoon following the “Freedom Trail”, which is literally a painted red line (sometimes brick lane) that you follow through the city that takes you past all the major historic sites.  We went to a nice supper on Saturday night, had a lazy day hanging around and walking around on Sunday — including going to Legal Seafood for lunch and watching a 3d Imax movie at the aquarium

Pictures from Boston:

The rest of my summer played out very well.  I took my trip down to Fort Worth to meet up with Ben in his home town of Aledo, TX.  This was the weekend of Irene… so we wound up getting “stuck” in Texas until Wednesday.  I had my work computer with me, so i was able to “work” on monday and tuesday mornings which was good.  It was very fun to meet his parents and to get to spend time in his home town; it’s always interesting to see where someone comes from! I could see a lot of his mother and his father in him after meeting them.  We ate out a few nights, his mom cooked a few nights, and i was able to cook supper for them one night.  We went to a couple of museums and also went to see  laser show on Saturday night.  I remember going to the same one, a Pink Floyd show, with Katie and Jon when they were first dating at the Hollywood observatory i think.  Afterward we were able to meet up with some of Ben’s friend’s from high school for drinks.  Overall it was a very relaxed and laid back weekend trip that turned into a mini vacation!

Over the past few months my stress and workload had been growing at work and I was becoming increasingly unhappy.  I began sending out resumes and was keeping my eye out for other opportunities, but wanted to wait until September 1 to make any decisions.  It was on September 1 that they had told me they would hire me on as a “full time” analyst — which was basically the job i was already doing, but just giving me the title.  This was to come with a higher salary, etc. September 1 came and, after I asked them about it, they confirmed that I was now a real member of the team, and that i was to get a very small “raise”.  All along I had been viewing the transition as a job offer/hire and not as a raise, so I had been expecting a salary that was commensurate with the job and title…. this is not what I was offered.  So, this confirmed my desire and need to leave the company, as it was blatantly clear that I was not going to be compensated fairly now, and maybe ever.

After a week or two of heavy resume sending, I landed an interview for the position I have since taken as the personal assistant to a powerful consultant and mother.  I work out of her townhouse and am at the beginning of my third week.  The first two weeks were training, and I am now on my own.  Things are going really well, and I think it will be a great 1.5 years, or maybe longer.  I am being payed the same amount that I was given after my “raise” at my previous job, have better benefits, and am very happy!

Mamma and Daddy were able to come for a visit this past weekend, which was SO FUN.  They got in on Friday afternoon and were staying very close to my work.  I went over and met them at their hotel for a little bit of hang out time before going to meet up with Ben at a new restaurant that i’ve been wanting to go to since it opened, called Saxon & Parole (http://saxonandparole.com/).  Saxon and Parole are two Kentucky Derby winning horses, and the whole place is stable themed, which horse blankets stall doors, the works.  The food was delicious and the atmostphere was very fun.  We had a great mushroom mousse dip for an appetizer, mamma and i both had asparagus with eggs, bacon, and hollandaise for supper, ben had lobster, and daddy had steak.  We had great wine and conversation as well.  On Saturday I met M&D at their hotel and we had a relaxed morning before meeting up with Ben at the Nolita House for our usual Blue Grass Brunch.  We then walked around SOHO and down a street fair on Broadway before stopping by my apartment to take a little tour and then heading back to the hotel.  We met Billy and Stephanie and Ben at Marseille (http://www.marseillenyc.com/) for supper, and it-was-divine!! we were seated at a perfectly sized round table – very conducive to conversation, both at the whole table, or among pairs.  The food was delicious — I had white onion soup to start and a grilled salmon with beets and horseradish sauce, yumm.  Other highlights from the table were daddy’s moules frites (mussels and fries), stephanie’s artichoke raviole, and mamma’s blue cheese salad.  Then we made our way via stroll to the theater for Wicked! The show was SO fun and it was such a thrill to get to see it.  Our seats were perfect and the night couldn’t have been better.  On sunday we went with billy and stephanie to a nearby diner and had breakfast before some walking, we went into St Patricks cathedral, that i had not been into since our family trip to nyc when we lived in boston, before heading back to the hotel.  mamma and daddy grabbed their stuff and headed to the train station.  it was a whirlwind trip, but SO fun and I am so happy and blessed that they were able to come and see my city!

Then, today, my friend Kym arrived from colorado for a visit! she is here till next tuesday.  She is going to Boston tomorrow till probably friday, and then will be here for the weekend. we have some fun plans for the weekend, but i’ll share those afterward! love to all!

i flew into Denver and took a shuttle to Frisco, which is about an hour from Trail West, where Kym was able to come pick me up.  It was so good to get to spend the week with her and staying at her place was great, it was so quiet and a great retreat.  I was allowed to pretend like I was a horse wrangler again, going and helping for wrangler breakfast on wednesday and thursday.  the 4:45 wake up was pretty easy since that is basically the same as my work get up time when you factor in the time difference.  I was able to work a few days but without the stress of being in charge, so it was really enjoyable and stress free.  One evening I went with some friends to a music festival in town, on saturday a group of us went to breakfast at a cafe in town like we used to do every saturday last summer, we went to a rodeo dance, and and sunday kym and i watched movies all afternoon

it was great to be somewhere that even the people that i had never met before were open and loving and interested in my life.  it seems that in the city, people are normally just nice because they should be.  people seem to avoid personal level interaction, leaving everything at the surface.  i don’t know if this is because no one cares or if no one wants to offend anyone with opinions or what, but i definitely realized how much i miss real conversation.  luckily i do have a few great friends in the city with whom i can talk about reality, but it was great to be surrounded by it for a few days.

since then i’ve caught up at work, things are pretty calm at the moment, which has allowed me to foster some great working relationships with the clients that i’ve been managing.  there are some further developments that i am going to wait to write about on here since this is a public blog, but if you are interested just send me an email and i can fill you in!

i am actually getting ready to head out of town again (i’ve been all over the place recently!!) to meet up with Ben in Miami.. oh yeah.. did I mention he has the month of august off (paid vacation at that)?  He is transitioning from “A to A”, or analyst to associate for us non finance people, and it is customary at his company to receive a one month “sabbatical” during this transition.  He spent his first week in Capri, Italy and spent this week in Nice, France.  We’re meeting in Miami for the weekend, where he’ll stay a few days past the weekend before going to San Francisco to visit a friend for a long weekend before heading home to Fort Worth to see his parents, when I will meet up with him again for the weekend.  I am really looking forward to seeing his home town, and, of course, meeting his parents.

And wowzers, that will take us to September! Within a few weeks, I will have been living here for a year! Whodathunkit

Here are a few pictures from my Colorado trip.

oh, and in other exciting news: the first 4 seasons of mad men are now available on netflix streaming

A few months ago one of Amy’s friends in Clarksville reached out to Nick about her July birthday, wondering if there was anything in particular that he could think of that would make her happy and feel special.  Nick, in turn, put Leslie in touch with Michelle, Street, and me to help plan/brainstorm ideas.  We were able to suggest some ideas, including one in which we would all make our way to Clarksville the weekend of her birthday as a surprise.

After a few months of planning and plane ticket buying, Street, Jenny, Michelle and I met up at the Nashville airport last friday afternoon for a surprise birthday weekend for Amy.  Michelle drove from Lynchburg, so she was able to pick the rest of us up at the airport and drive the rest of the way to Clarksville (which is about an hour north).  We got into Clarksville around 3 and were able to go to Walmart, the party store, and liquor store and make it to Amy’s house around 4:30.  We were planning on showing up behind a big bunch of balloons with groceries for supper and champagne… this is where the complications began.  We had already diverted a quazi-disaster by having a friend of amy’s cover for a babysitting job she had accepted for Friday night (this involved many many emails/texts/phonecalls, all while trying to be as discreet as possible).  So, when we showed up on her doorstep, rang the bell, and there was no answer… we were not quite sure what to do.  We again called on her friend Leslie to help out who called Amy (who was running errands) and said she needed to bring something to her house asap.  At this point, we had been hanging out in the car/standing in the heat in the driveway for quite some time and had decided we should go ahead and open the case of beers we had bought .  So, Amy pulled into her driveway as the four of us tried to hide behind her other car parked in the driveway… all sweaty and overheated with beers in our hands — we’re classy girls .  She of course saw us and jumped out of the car as soon as it was in the driveway.  There were a few tears, lots of laughing and hugging, and an overwhelming sense of satisfaction.

We spent the evening hanging out at the house just catching up and having a great time together.  We cooked a yummy supper of steak, corn on the cob (which has been one of my favorite things to grill this summer — rubbed in butter and either old bay or lowry’s and wrapped in foil), and hearts of palm salad.  We sat out on her porch and chatted the night away.

One of the first things that had been planned during the preliminary phases was for Leslie’s across the street neighbor to book Amy for babysitting on Saturday morning so she wouldn’t make any other plans.  Rather than showing up for babysitting, she showed up and at Leslie’s house was a rented pontoon boat and a few of her friends from Clarksville (we followed shortly after).  We loaded up in the cars and headed to the lake for the day.  Leslie’s husband drove and put the boat in the water for us, then sent us on our way around the lake.  We puttered around for a bit and found a quiet cove to stop and eat the lunch that Leslie had packed.  We then headed across the lake and found another spot to anchor and spend the afternoon chatting, reading magazines, and swimming.  (This is the part irish blooded people who have been sitting at a desk all summer start to look like they are akin to a lobster or other redskinned/shelled animal.  One of my lingering souveniers was a pretty distinct set of tanburn lines…  )

On Saturday evening we picked up some take and bake pizzas and salad ingredients for a low key supper on the couch watching tivo’d episodes of jeopardy before getting ready and heading down to Nashville for the evening.  We went to a few bars, including a line dancing place called the “Wild Horse” which was a lot of fun.  Nothing like getting out on the dance floor and having someone tell you what you’re supposed to do!!

On Sunday we hung around the house for the morning just chatting and drinking coffee before cleaning and packing up.  We made our way into downtown Clarksville and had lunch at the go-to pizza/brewery.  After some post lunch by the river pictures, I hopped in the car with Michelle and she dropped me off at the airport on her way back to Virginia.

It was such a fun weekend and it was so great to be able to hang out with the girls for the first time in what seems like forever! I will post some pictures soon.

Love

Yes. No. Yes. No. I don’t know…

I think i like the idea of never not finishing a book. I don’t want to be one of those people who always has ten books they are “reading” because they can’t finish one. I want to finish what i started. It’s about perseverance people!

And this is why i will end up going a month without reading ANYTHING. Sometimes i just don’t like the book i’m reading (gasp!), and therefore don’t want to read it! This means i just stop reading since i don’t want to not finish.

Which is worse–not finishing the book? or not reading because you don’t want to not finish the book?

This is the question i end up having to ask myself — and then i start a new book.

I don’t know how, but i completely missed the month of june in blog world…. totally just slipped away! Well, June was a good month, went by very quickly, that’s for sure.  May ended on a great note with Cincinnati, but also on a not so great note as it became apparent that our apartment was not only ours, but we were sharing it with some friends.  these friends being the things that cannot be spoken of — the pesky plague of the city (coughbedbugscough).  This discovery was made by Emily who had only just moved in the week before.  Needless to say, much of the beginning of June was spent dealing with this and getting it taken care of.  It meant washing/drying/bagging all of my clothes, wiping all other items down and putting them in sealed bags (I now have an excess of vacuum seal space saver bags ), and tidying up.  This was a long process, and helps you realize how much stuff you really do have.  After a short struggle with our landlord we were able to book a great pest control management company.  Luckily the city requires that landlord pay for the extermination — which came to a wopping $2250.  I shelled out quite a bit of money between laundry, dry cleaning, bags, cleaning supplies, etc, but it would have been way worse had we had to pay that bill too!  The guy who we used was awesome, he calls himself the Urban Hunter — Greg, i think i found you a new profession.  and heck, at 220 a pop you could make a killing! Anyway, they have to do two treatments, about two weeks apart, and our second was last weekend.  I was never bitten/never saw any evidence in my room and this has continued to be true.  Emily has not seen any more evidence or been bitten since the first treatment, hooray!

The second half of the month was a little less hectic/stressful.  The past few weeks have involved a lot of cookouts/grilling sesssions on Ben’s roof with friends and his roommates.  There was also a BBQ festival in madison square park with live music and i even got some pimento cheese!

Work has been going well and i feel well suited to what i’m doing and have been learning a whole lot about the business world.  I am hoping that they will hire me into my position officially in the fall, so everyone keep that in your prayers! being hired as a BA would mean i would be payed more accordingly for the work i’m doing and provide some certainty around what i’m doing both in work and life!

The next months of summer are going to fly by — i have a lot of fun stuff coming up! I am going to Colorado for the last week of July to visit Trail West, then Miami for a weekend in August, and then to Fort Worth at the end of august with Ben.  Sprinkled in there are a few concerts and a lot of fun!

Oh and for the 4th, we went with some of Ben’s friends (who are my friends too, i should just start saying our friends) on a cruise on the Hudson river — which is where they set off the big fireworks show! it was so fun to be a part of something so new york! something that most people watch on tv i got to see up close from a boat!

Here are some picures from the recent past!

on saturday night we went to a comedy club which was really fun since i had never been to one before.  i felt like it was the intro to seinfeld!

we flew back during the middle of the day yesterday, so it was relaxed and easy going. we got back to nyc around 4 and had time to hang out and take it easy during the evening.  it’s always nice to get back from a trip and feel rested and refreshed rather than tired and worn out from travelling.

overall it was just a really great weekend and a great break from the city.  three day weekends are also great because it means tomorrow is wednesday and we’re already half way through the week! yahoo!!

haha just kidding…

Things have been busy here between work and play and life!  Spring has finally come, though i’m thinking it qualifies more as summer.  very muggy and wet.  it rained all of last week and just was not very pleasant, but this week has been far superior and has allowed for some lunch time walks and sitting in the sun.

This is just a short post to check in, i do realize it has been a while.  I will try and post next week with some pictures from the past few weeks, as well as an update about my trip to Cincinnati this weekend! Ben and I are going to Ohio, random, i know, but there is a big food festival and live music festival all weekend, and i’m looking forward to being out of gotham for a few days.  :)

Love you all!