Still here and busy as ever!

October 27, 2009 - I'm still here and busy as ever. I realize I haven't updated since August and for good reason, I swear.

• His name is Justin and he's awesome!

So, I met a new guy and he's wonderful. Very different from my normal type in that he's actually available (emotionally and literally), wants to spend time with me and thinks I'm the best thing since sliced bread. It's fantastic. He is also letting me help him redecorate his apartment, which is great because I'm out of projects in my own apartment and I was looking for some new stuff. He's hating the whole "theatre" thing because he doesn't understand it, but he's trying to be supportive and I give him big points for that.

• I went to ATL to visit my dad.

It was fun, I'm going back for the holidays, he's coming here to see my play in two weeks.

• I was asked to be in a play.

I didn't have to audition or anything. They heard I could speak the good English and that I looked good in a corset. It is called Intimate Apparel by Lynn Nottage and it is at The Heights Players. It opens November 6. I haven't been in a (non-musical) play in 10 or 12 years, so this has certainly been an interesting experience.

• Avon Breast Cancer Walk 2009

I came, I walked, I raised $2000 with the help of some wonderful friends, family and donors. Thank you to everyone who supported me and to Martha for walking with me! 39.3 miles which is over 40 by the time you factor in all the walking at the Wellness Village and the two blocks you have to walk to get your bag when the thing is over. When I finished, I went home, showered and put on boots with three inch heels to go out to dinner, so I'm feeling pretty proud of myself this year. No butt scoots up the stairs for me this year!

• Work has exploded all over every thing.

I swear I've worked through lunch and late almost every day for the last 5 weeks. Our CA office just opened, we're in the middle of doing 2010 forecasting and deciding where our next office will be. At least the NY office is not moving again until at least 2011 - 3 moves in one year was enough for me!

• I went to Maine for a long weekend.

Acadia National Park. We hiked/climbed precipice peak. We rock . It was freezing and Justin kept insisting we get up to watch the sunrise. I got to see some lovely fall color, though and there is a fantastic picture of the back of my head (my pic tails were darn near perfect that day), which I will post if he ever sends them to me. I did twist my ankle coming down the easy trail, though and that's been acting up but all in all, I'm still impressed with me.

My show opens next Friday, my dad is in town the following weekend, my mother is in town the weekend after that for Thanksgiving week, a week or so after that my friend Dallas comes back from her European travels and four days after that I'm in Atlanta for the holidays. Where is all this time going?!?

Can't Believe I forgot...

Don't know that anyone else really cares, but when I mentioned my weight loss a couple of weeks ago, I forgot to mention that I also cut about 13" of hair off. My hair went from being middle of my back, almost to my waist long to being about an inch below my ears long.

It was somewhat drastic, a little impulsive and traumatic. I donated my ponytail to Locks of Love. I'm having dinner with Bruce tonight and he has no idea that I cut my hair (even thought I did it two months ago and he's scheduled dinner and cancelled it like six times since then). That should be fun and interesting!

Day 3 - 7 and then some

August 19, 2009 - The rest of my eating at home experiment didn't turn out the way I thought it would and I'm confused as to whether it was a success or a failure, so I'm going to call it a draw. On Wednesday I had a date and on Saturday I had a date (both with a new gentleman that we are calling Other Justin so as to avoid confusion between him and our friend Justin), so I ate out, but I didn't pay for it, so does that count or not count? Other than that, I bought lunch one day and everything else I ate at home, which is why I am declaring it a draw. If anyone wants to argue with me, please leave your argument in the comments section.

Tomorrow we have the company boat party which will entail me spending 8 hours on a boat with the guys from our offices (both NY & CA) drinking beer before taking a car to the airport and getting on an airplane to go visit my dad for a couple of days. Anyone in the ATL area, we are having a pool party on Saturday! A super huge shout out to my friend Liz who is staying at my apartment and watching my cat for me while I am away. I really, really appreciate it.

In other news I am still trying to fund raise for my Avon Breast cancer walk. I need to raise a bit over $1200 in less than 60 days, so if anyone wants to contribute, there is a link on the left hand side of the screen. Every little bit helps! If everyone who reads this blog donated $5 - well, I'd probably have $5, but it would still help!

Other than that, I am ready for my nap now and I cannot wait to go home and pack for my trip. See you next week!

Day 2: Iffy but okay...

August 12, 2009 - So yesterday I ended up running out and grabbing something to bring back to my desk but other than that everything else was eaten at home. The grilled shrimp I made on Monday night was even better as chilled leftovers than it was originally (note to self - grill and chill that stuff in the summer time, it makes the warm apartment seem cooler for a moment). I was reading an article yesterday about how keeping your apartment a little warmer in the summer and a little cooler in the winter (besides being good for the environment and your energy bills) could also help you lose weight because the slight discomfort of temperature makes you not want to eat. I don't know if that is really true and I can't remember where I saw that article, but I would be curious to know if other people find this to be the case. Happy Wednesday!

Day 1: Eating at home.

August 10, 2009 - Day 1 of eating at home is going very well. I had breakfast, lunch and dinner all at home. For breakfast I had a cinnamon raisin mini-bagel with butter, for lunch I had tomato basil tuna on whole wheat crackers and for dinner I had shrimp kabobs marinated in lemon and thyme with panini bread and olives and for desert I am having champagne sorbet with raspberries. I went to Whole Foods after work and stocked up on enough food to feed a small country. I could probably keep all of Brooklyn in fruit for a week. No reason not to eat at home now, though. Woo-hoo!

Eating At Home vs. Eating Out (which is EVIL)

August 6, 2009 – Since my birthday I’ve been making a concerted effort to get my financial house (so to speak) in order. I’ve started putting money into saving every month and watching my spending. By and large, I’ve been pretty successful. The one place where I have consistently and predictably fallen short is eating out. In New York it is easier to eat out than it is to buy groceries and eat at home. Here are my theories on why this is:

• No car: You have to carry everything and/or take an unwieldy and completely ugly cart.
• Time: It is hard to find everything at one grocery store (we don’t have a whole bunch of large grocery stores here unless you are lucky enough to live near one of the Whole Foods or Traders Joes, which I don’t), so you end up having a lot of specialty shops. I have a little grocery store near my house that is okay for basics, but you don’t really want to buy meat of any kind there and you have to check the dates on everything or there is a good chance you’ll go home with milk that is so old it’s practically cottage cheese.
• Time Part II: Once you get home, the last thing you want to do is prep and cook a meal, and here since they deliver EVERYTHING it’s even easier to justify ordering in.
• Climate Control: There are certain things you just can’t make in NYC in the summer time if you live in an apartment without central AC. This includes many baked goods, breads and pastas, and more.

However, I eat more healthy foods when I eat at home and I really actually enjoy cooking, so this needs to change. This weekend, I am going to sit down and plan out meals for the next couple of weeks and try and eat at home AND take my lunch to work at least 5 out of 7 days per week. I will chronicle that here so that someone (anyone?) can see how I’m doing with this. I will attempt to update this on Sunday, August 8, 2009 with my menu for next week. I will be taking a brief hiatus from this experiment on August 21 – 25, 2009 when I go visit my dad (also, if anyone knows someone who wants to feed my cat while I’m gone, that would be great!).

I'm not dead!

July 14, 2009 - I'm not actually dead, although I know lack of any communication with the outside world may lead you to believe that I was. In actuality, it's been a crazy and ultimately good couple of months. I lost 17+ pounds, finished working on the show, Bruce and I decided to part ways, mom came to visit, Dallas and Randy stopped back in the states for a bit, and I dog sat for my boss' dog.

I will attempt to fill in the glaring holes in time, but I can't necessarily do that now, I just wanted to say that at the moment, things are pretty good. Have a great day!

I Love My Local Bar

So, one of the best things about living where I live is the local bar.
Everyone that goes there is local and most of them have been around
for decades. Everyone knows everythig about everyone and you can order
Chinese food directly into the bar and eat it with your beer (in fact
it was one of the bar tenders that turned me on to the best Chinese
food place in my neighborhood). It is very Cheers-like on that
everyone knows your name (and everything else about you).

Sent from my mobile command center.

Please let me know what you think...

April 29, 2009 - So I've been having the thought lately that I "need" a logo - a personal brand - so that when I make home/hand made gifts and things like that I can include a tag or a card that has personal meaning to me. However I'm having a lot of trouble thinking of what that logo should be. So I'm taking suggestions. Please leave your comments (if you want or e-mail me directly) - what would your personal brand or logo be and if you were to recommend one for me, what would it be?

Good-Bye, April Showers!

April has been a much busier month than I had originally planned. I started and finished my first baby quilt, the show I’m in is starting to really gear up and the weather here is finally starting to get beautiful (and it’s NOT RAINNING!).

So here is a picture of the lovely baby quilt I made for my coworker Henry. It’s based on the book '10 Little Rubber Ducks’ by Eric Carle. My mother designed it and I put it together. Right now that book is my favorite children’s book and since they had a little boy (they named him Luke Henry), the color scheme seemed to work well and at least somewhat match the décor they picked out for their nursery. I am very pleased with the way the quilt turned out (although, in the way of these things, all I see are the mistakes!).

I am currently in a production of Show Boat that is good in that it keeps me from being a lump on my couch, but I forgot how frustrating community theatre could be. If we ever started on time, I think I might drop dead from the shock. I was so fed up with us starting late, that I decided if I ran late yesterday (I had a trip to the NY Aquarium with a couple of friends – the sea lion had better timing than the theatre folks), I wouldn’t worry about it at all. I was 35 minutes late to rehearsal and we still hadn’t started yet. The show sounds pretty, although at the moment it still looks a damn mess. We have 53 people crammed onto a black box stage that is about the size of the reception area in my office (which is a good size for a reception area, but a bad size for a stage to hold 53 people). When/if I get them, I’ll post pictures of my completely hideous costumes.

At work, we opened our LA office on April 6, 2009. It’s been interesting getting so much of that set up remotely. We’re still working out a few of the bugs, but I hope to have all of that resolved by next week or the week after. Things in my office are going very well and we recently hired a new guy named Colin and I think he’s going to do very well here. (We had a different new guy who lasted a grand total of 12 hours – which is not quite a record for us, but is close.)

I’ve been meaning to start training for my walk, but the weather (torrential downpour) and my laziness have been conspiring against me. I’m hoping to walk to the theatre at least once each weekend while the show is running to begin my training. I did get a bit of a kick off yesterday – the couple I went to the aquarium with parked so far away from the actual building I swear we walked to Russia to get to their car (maybe it only felt like Russia because all the signs were in Russian and all the people on the street were speaking Russian – one of the neat things about New York is how people can basically transplant their whole culture into one section of town and it makes you feel like you’ve crossed the street and ended up in another world).

Speaking of the walk, the fundraising has started and is moving along slowly but surely. If anyone is interested in donating or helping to fundraise, please let me know and/or click on the link below. I’ve pledged to bake a batch of cookies for anyone who donates $100 or more and I will ship them anywhere in the continental US. I have a feeling once the show closes, I will definitely kick that aspect of my life into high gear. I’ve been keeping out a packet change collection box at the office and we’ve already raised over $40 in less than 2 months – just from pocket change! Can you imagine? It’s pretty awesome.

Please click here to DONATE!

That’s pretty much everything that’s been happening with me. More to come (and hopefully with pictures) as we move into dress rehearsal and performance!

TGIF (seriously!)

April 3, 2009 – Sorry I didn’t update yesterday as promised, the day sort of got away from me. My birthday ended up being pretty good for a middle of the week birthday. I got into my office and the boys had surprised me with not one, but two bouquets of flowers and a couple of wrapped presents. It was very much appreciated and certainly unexpected. Bruce sent me a lovely bouquet of roses (two dozen beautiful violet colored roses) and my mother sent me a bouquet of gerbera daisies. By the end of the day my office smelled like a florist shop and it was lovely. I didn’t really get to do anything that night because I had rehearsal, but Alicia brought me cupcakes so that was pretty awesome. Can’t go wrong with a cupcake (or three as the case might be). Tonight is when we are really celebrating. My friend Justin’s birthday was the 31st and my coworker Winston’s birthday was the 2nd, so we are all having a joint happy hour today after work to celebrate and then I think a couple of my friends might be going to Flute for a champagne night cap. Weather permitting, of course – right now it is raining like hell outside. Have a wonderful Friday!

Happy Birthday to Me!

April 1, 2009 - It's my birthday again (30 for the 5th year in a row!). This year I got a veritable garden at my desk and it smells like a flower shop in this place. Here's what I've got:

From left to right they are from Bruce, my mother, the guys in the office and the guys in the office! Here is my garden all together:
I'll post more about my birthday tomorrow when it's all finished. Have a great day!

I'm Alive!

I know I haven't updated since before the holidays - I know, I know. Shame on me. Daddy and Richard were in town for the holidays and they were a lot of fun. Since then I haven't stopped running. When I returned to my office, my boss decided we were moving in three weeks, so I had to plan and execute the move of our entire office within three weeks. It was one of those situation where anything that could go wrong did go wrong, but we got into our new space (5 times larger than our own space) and now there is a little island of calm for me and no neighbors for the boys to annoy.

Also, I will be doing a show with The Heights Players. I'm chorus person number five in Show Boat which I'm hoping will be awesomely bad. Not because I don't think the people are good, they actually are, but we are doing the show in a tiny, tiny black box. I can jump up and touch the ceiling. So it should be an interesting experience. I haven't done a show in about 2 years and I haven't done a show with this company since just after I moved here, so I feel a bit like I've come full circle. My friend Alicia will be doing the show with me, so that will be a good bonding experience for us. We haven't done a show together since we played the Gemini twins in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in college.

Speaking of bonding experiences, Alicia and I will have plenty of time to bond over the next year because besides doing the show together, we are also doing the Avon Walk together this year. No one is more surprised than I am that I really wanted to do the walk again this year. I couldn't walk for a full 24 hours after the last one, but having made it through the whole thing was a real accomplishment for me and I am very interested in seeing what that experience is like this year. Dallas is off traveling with Randy and won't be back in time to go on the walk with us or do the fundraising, but Alicia expressed some interest, so we are going to try and get a team together and make a difference. On a more personal note, this year, besides walking for breast cancer, I am personally walking for Bruce's brother Mike who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. There aren't a lot of walks or anything like that for pancreatic cancer, so I'm just adding him into my thoughts and prayers for this.

So that's my basic update and I'm going to try and get back on top of my updating. I'm off to make pulled pork and maybe some animal crackers. Have a wonderful day!