round up

So my birthday came and went. Life has become one blur of events to another. My birthday was indeed a wonderful celebration, bringing together friends from home and work (and missing friends from college). I had a night filled with intense laughter, due in part to my bubbly, crazy, wonderful friend Makenna, who constantly brings joy and fun to any situation simply with her presence. The next night was an absolutely delicious dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, Mim's, with my family. And of course, the birthday weekend ended my favorite way - with ice cream cake. Yum.

Since then, work has been incredibly busy, which I am actually quite thankful for. With the economy in such ruins right now, and with businesses and jobs suffering, I am glad to be busy at work. I am glad we're holding up pretty well. And I am glad to feel fairly safe and secure.

Last night I headed into the city with my friend from work, Kim, and her husband, Steve. We met Makenna and a bunch of her friends at Butter, a very trendy restaurant in the Village, for Makenna's birthday. We had a lot of fun, as always, and ate for hours. Tomorrow is Makenna's actual birthday, so I baked her lemon poppy seed cookies, since she absolutely loves lemon poppy seed cake. They came out really well, so I hope she likes them! I really love baking. This upcoming Fall, I'm considering taking a 10-week baking and pastry arts course at the Culinary Academy of Long Island. It's a continuing education course held on 10 Saturdays for six hours each. Even though I already know a lot about baking, I think it would be really great to learn all the fundamentals and get a chance to really learn how to bake all types of desserts from cookies to cakes to breads. It's a lot of hours spent baking and costs a considerable amount of money, so we'll see how I feel about it after the summer.

This upcoming week includes a really big event for me at work, so it's going to be a bit hectic, but exciting. It's one of my favorite annual events, as well as one of the most stressful, so I'll be both happy and sad when it's over. Wish me luck!

forced break life wrap-up

Life is a bit crazy. Mainly work life, actually. For those of you who don't know, I am an event planner at a school, and we are just jam-packed with events right now. At least one event a week for the next month, and three this week alone. Today, amidst an event, I am forcing myself a break to write a short, little blog post to clear my head.

Other than work, I haven't been doing all that much as of late. We had a crazy snow storm Sunday night into Monday, and I was lucky enough to have a snow day! I was very happy going back to sleep after my 6:15 a.m. alert that work was canceled, drinking hot tea and doing things around the house. I also helped my mom shovel a bit, which was absolutely exhausting and left us both sore for days. And I managed to get myself outside for a little fun with my golden retriever, who had a blast rolling around in 10+ inches of fluffy, white snow.

This Saturday I'm meeting Vic in the city for brunch, and possibly a broadway show. We haven't seen each other in a while, and with her moving to Puerto Rico in two weeks, it might be a while before we can see each other again. (Although I'm hoping to be able to take a trip or two to visit her down there at some point. Yay warm, sunny vacation!) And Sunday I have to work. Boo.

And that is all. Time to get back to work.

here goes...

So I've been wanting to start a blog for some time now, but in all honesty, couldn't make a decision about a title. The title for any piece of writing sets the tone for the entire work. Choose the wrong title and you risk ruining whatever you write after that all-important one-liner. So, as you can see, it's a big committment; one I just could not make. But today I decided to throw caution to the wind and came up with what you see - "work in progress." I'm not entirely sure I'm convinced it's the perfect title, but I think it's appropriate for how I'm feeling and what I'm about these days.

I'm going to break it down, because that's something crazy people like me do. The phrase "work in progress" has all sorts of connotations - continually improving and changing, moving forward, incomplete, unfinished. But if you break it down you see the word "progress" on its own means so much more - according to http://www.m-w.com/ (one of my favorite go-to web sites back in my Lehigh copy editing days), progress as a noun is first defined as "a royal journey marked by pomp and pageant" or "an expedition, journey, or march through a region." Wow, talk about heavy. And as an intransitive verb? "To develop to a higher, better, or more advanced stage." Progress - Great. Wonderful. Perfect little word. So there it is - I am a work in progress and I work in progress. (more to come on that later.)

Just in case I didn't thrill you with the breakdown of my blog title and you're not impressed by my wit, here are some other options I considered:

• cab driver, take me home
• she'll chew you up
• bareboned & crazy
• she screams in silence
  

Any takers? Any other suggestions? I am open to them, but the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced "work in progress" is perfect. Yeah. Progress. Aweeeeesome. (shoutout to mayanot 41!)