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{July 6, 2017} Happy birthday PSM!

July 5th is a very special day! The day my honey, PSM, was born, I’d say that’s pretty special.

I told you about his party on Saturday, now, let me tell you about the man himself.

He’s kind; to his friends, family, animals, especially puppies, oh, you should have seen him when we were on our first big trip, we had been away for almost three weeks and away from Mollie, he got so tickled by this dog in the restaurant we were in, he had to stop and play.

He is a brilliant man, he is a bio-chemist by trade, I looked at his dissertation, its a giant book, even has pictures! Well, they’re images of genes, molecules and genomes, smart people stuff like that. Remember I said I looked at it, I understood the dedication to his mom and the end! It does look very impressive on the book shelf! I do love that brain of his!

And not just his brain, he’s funny, he makes me laugh, sometimes intentionally and sometimes…it just happens. That might be one of our favorite things to do together, laugh.

I don’t know if you’ve realized how well we travel together, score! Let’s just say I not only love this guy, I really like him, and that is saying something!

His interests are so varied, I’m not going to tell you everything, that would be giving it away! You just have to get to know him yourself!
Today is his birthday, a very special day in my opinion…we’ve traveled for two birthdays, big throwdown this year, what’s next?

I hope you recognize the portrait! I commissioned AS, ACS & GES’ sister-in-law, a fabulous artist, to paint a portrait of Mollie, she picked the photo from Facebook and went with it. How fabulous is it!! Lets just say… when I gave it to him, desired effect! Not sure who was more excited or effected at that moment! Me, I couldn’t sit still waiting to give it to him and see the look on his face or him, the look on his face! Thank you AS!

Happy birthday PSM, I hope it was all you hoped for this year. I’m looking forward to spending the next and the next and the next and…

{July 4, 2017} Happy birthday USA! How do you celebrate?

Just to be clear, USA stands for just what you were thinking, United States of America.

It’s July 4th! A great day in our country’s history. Indepence and freedom, that screams volumes! It’s a celebration and a day to celebrate!

Last night we had fireworks, today was a parade and a cookout and for some, more fireworks. How did you celebrate?

We started with a 5k,EJS and ACS ran it, along with LR and a whole bunch of other people. It was a good way to start the day. I did it last year, maybe I’ll do it next year.

We cheered for everyone, I know how much I enjoy hearing the cheering and encouragement, so i was in full form. “You got this!” “Girl power!” “Tutu power!” You name it, we were shouting it!

Then… the parade! It’s quite the show! The race is the same as the parade route, so there is a pretty good crowd for the race, it just grows for the parade.

There was the fire brigade, sirens blaring. Hit or miss on the noise with the kids! But they definitely love the trucks!

During the parade there were different military and service people participating, the last military group… the red coats! The muskets were cool, and loud!

Old cars, roadsters, muscle cars, jeeps, Model Ts, fabulous!

Decorated floats, construction equipment, dance troupes.

You can’t have a parade without live music!

Love the live music!

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Brass band!

Who doesn’t love a steel drum band?

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What a great parade!

{July 3, 2017} And the rockets red glare…

The bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.

Does the Star Spangled Banner give you chills, like me? Make your heart swell, like me? Bring tears to your eyes, like mine? Make you proud to be an American? All that and so much more.

It’s hopeful, full of wonder and promise, that anything is possible.

Tonight, we went to the local high school to watch a fireworks display. I’m sure there were so many going on all throughout the state, and country. Felt like the entire town was at ours. The town does a great fireworks display.

You get there to set up, maybe in the early afternoon, stake your spot, chairs, blankets. Then go home and have friends over, food, drink, fun. Then about 730, start walking to the high school, find your stuff and your friends, catch up, play, collect as many glow stick pieces of jewelry as you can!

About 920, you’re wondering, it’s dark enough, right? Let’s get started! And it does start, with the Star Spangled Banner. And on ‘the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air’ they let off fireworks, perfection!

Twenty two minutes later, popping, bursting, spraying, sparkling, its all so magical and wonderful and its over. So good, they left us wanting more.

Let’s start planning next year!

Happy birthday DM!

{July 2, 2017} What’s better than a day at the beach?

Nothing, I say!

Today, GES, ACS, MGS, EJS, dad and I went down to Nantasket Beach in Hull. JK, one of ACS’ closest friends families has a house one block from the beach.

It’s a great older house, great open floor plan that is welcoming and inviting. There is a terrific porch that wraps around two sides of the house, right on the corner where you can see the water wherever you sit.

It’s also a great place to see people coming from and going to the beach, lots of people to chat with, if you want to. Perfect view to see the ice cream man too, if you’re so inclined.

And… best part, a great place to sit, enjoy the breeze, the sounds, the silence, the smells, maybe even take a snooze…

Lunch when we arrived, a few hours on the beach, back to the house to hang out with dad, watch some Netflix, the rest of the family joined, quick showers, then head out for some grub.

Last stop, what’s the perfect way to end a beach day? According to my b-i-l, ice cream. That sounds about right.

A great day at the beach, sigh…

{July 2, 2017} What a day! What a party! What a guy!

Let’s just say, he is totally worth it! I think I did it right!

PSM is turning 50 next week, so a celebration is on order! We had been dating a few months when we started talking about his next big birthday. I asked him what he wanted and without hesitation, he said ‘a clambake from Woodmans’. Ok, that is pretty specific, anything else?

Well, since I asked…Clambake from Woodmans, Fudgy the Whale ice cream cake from Carvel, ice crem sandwiches, a beach, coles slaw, corn on the cob, lobster, potato salad. There you go.

So, I started with a save the date July 1, 2016, with a fabulous and cheesy poem, something I have a knack for. A few months ago, I sent out the evite, with another cute and cheesy poem and the responses started coming in.

Then all of a sudden it was May 2017, time to get cracking! I was looking for a place to have the clambake in Massachussettes and the place I found, Winter Island Park in Salem, Ma, it was perfect. Guess what the beach was called? Waikiki Beach, go figure!

Place, check. It was a great space, wide open, they set up the tables and chairs and even provided the grill! It was perfect. The restrooms were a short walk away and the beach, just past that. Everyone brought bathing suits and towels and enjoyed the beach for at least a few minutes.

Food, check. I ordered the clam bake from Woodman’s, very helpful staff. A few Costco runs for the folks who don’t eat seafood and the sides and chips, watermelons. Some folks brought stuff and the one person I asked to make anything…his auntie L, she makes this awesome cucumber and onion salad, it’s marinated in somethig fabulous and she made plenty, even left overs for me!

Beverages, check. A clambake on the beach really needs a keg of beer, instead of trying to get different cases, a keg of Bud Light. And it’s a good beach beer. One snag, they wouldn’t take my credit card over the phone, what? Ok, two snags, they would not sell a keg to someone with an out of state license. Huh? Ok, so, I asked PSM to stop by with his aunt and uncle to pick up the keg, I felt bad asking him to have to do anything for his own party, but he was agreeable. And it worked out perfectly! They arrived while we were completing the transaction. We would have taken it, but if you could have seen how packed the vehicles were! I should have gotten an SUV! And I forgot to take pictures!

On to the venue…

Help unloading the car, check! Help setting up, check. One advantage of people showing up on time or at least before you, they help carry stuff! GES and I had a Dirty Dancing moment “I carried the watermelon”. The pavillion looked great! ACS and the girls had put up some decorations, streamers and the birthday banners.

The last thing to do to decorate…fill the piatas [I know they are pinatas, but MGS calls them piatas, so that’s what they are!] I had a great idea a few months ago…the 5 was filled with candy for the kids and the 0 was filled with nips, those little bottles of alcohol! let’s just say it was difficult to tell who the kids and adults were when their respective piatas broke!

People arrived all afternoon, the grill got fired up and people started playing hackeysack, frisbee, futball, playing on the playground, go down to the beach, talking, laughing and basically fawning over my fella, it’s his day! His friends and family were so thrilled to be together to celebrate his birthday and to see him! It’s been a few months since he’s been back on the mainland in Boston.

Food, check. SM, PSM’s brother put on his grill master hat and heated up the charcoal, about fourty minutes later there were burgers, dogs, veggie burgers, buns, all ready to go. Time to unleash the clambake. Lobsters, steamers, corn, chowder, chicken, coleslawy, melted butter, we had it all. Everyone dug in, adults, kids, all ages. some of them even wore lobster bibs!

There was more eating, drinking, music, merry making. So much fun.

Piata time! The kids went first, MGS was first, of course! Three kids later, they were all very happy. Grown ups next. PSM took one good swing and hooch for everyone!

Cake, check. PSM had very fond memories of Tom Carvel and his ice cream stores and that voice! And what he asked for, Fudgie the Whale, one of the Carvel signature ice cream cakes. And ice cream sandwiches. I found a place on Staten Island for dry ice and dad was fabulous to pick it up on Thursday, Fudgie the Whale and flying saucers and transported them, to LaLa’s, then to GES’ on Friday. The amazing thing…between the dry ice and ice and ice packs, that cake stayed in the same shape until this afternoon! It was soup when I served it, but it made it in one piece! Thank you dad!

Speech, check. Yes,PSM was the centre of attention, his favorite thing! I said a few words before the piata, about him and thanking everyone for being there to help celebrate this awesome man, and then we sang happy birthday, it was perfect.

After food, cake, piata and song, there was more hanging out, talking, beach, games, then all of a sudden it was about 5:30/6pm and we were all getting hungry again, so fire up that grill and it didn’t take too long, the brickets were still warm. So, about 7:30pm, it was another round of food, good,less to take home!

Oh, there was another snag with the beer…the first tap stopped working, someone went to get another, that didn’t work. Third time, someone came to get the keg and brought us a few cases of beer. When we packed up, some folks got parting gifts!

By now, it was almost 9pm, everyone who was still there helped clean up, fold chairs and throw away trash and pack the cars. A lot of thank yous and goodbye hugs. Then it was over…GES and i took the coolers back to Woodmans and headed home.

I have to tell you, it was a great day. The location was perfect, the weather, wow, perfect! The food, perfect, the guests, perfect. Everyone said they had a great time and it really felt it. Only one or two people couldn’t make it, but everyone that was there was just right, it made me so very happy to see everyone and how much they love and like PSM and how happy he was by everyone that was there.

I can’t wait to show you his last present, I gave it to him when we got back to GES’ tonight, but I’ll show you on his birthday.

Thank you to everyone who made my fellas day grand. I love you all.

{June 29, 2017} An adventure and a new vegan restaurant, wow!

So… life is an adventure and I live it every day!

Today’s adventure is brought to you by the letters y, u and m!

It started with a restaurant suggestion, Ambitabul, vegan Korean, great! Korean vegan, who knew! http://amitabulvegan.com/

Then it was get an Uber to the restaurant. GPS said 1.18 hours, ok, that works. Almost every time we meet for dinner it can take an hour or more, so no problem.

I get in the car and the Uber driver says Libertyville? I say sure, sounds good. I have no idea about the names of cities in Chicago but I should say the areas of Chicago or Illinois, as it were. So I don’t know if you remember one of my first classes way back when with this project I gave the address to the driver didn’t say the name of this city and ended up at a vacant lot and when I said this doesn’t look like, I name the city, he said that’s a suburb of Chicago! Whoops.

So on this point, lesson learned make sure you know where you’re going! So back to our story… we are driving, driving, driving, highway, getting farther away from Chicago, I ask, where are you taking me?!

We are getting close to our supposed destination, I double check the address…um… my driver, a fabulous woman named Keele, I’ll talk about her in a minute, she says, I know that area, that’s near where my parents live… back towards Chicago!

I finally call WIS, and I am laughing hysterically, so is Keele, and rightfully so! I tell her what happened and I’m not sure if she stopped breathing laughing so hard! I’m just glad Keele didn’t drip breathing from laughing so hard! None of us peed in our pants, so I think that’s a bonus!

WIS graciously agreed to wait for me, so glad she did! Turn around and away we went!

Now, back to my fabulous driver and new bff, Keele! It’s amazing how you can know someone two minutes and you’ve known each other’s lives. By the time we parted company, we covered dating, marriage, dating websites, Vegas, families, travel, work, um, what’s left?

When we finally got to the restaurant and parted ways with my new bestie, she would have been a perfect fit for the evening! Maybe next time!

Now… on to dinner, oh my! I started with date tea, wow! That’s all I have to say! We asked for the recipe, the only way were getting it is when the owner retires and writes a cookbook… not for at least 15 years, what? Ok, we just have to go back! The tea was made by boiling fermented dates, it was sweet, no sugar added!! It was like drinking liquid dates, wow!

I started with veggie dumplings, light, crisp on the edges, fabulous. I could have just eaten that, but I was hungry. I had soup with veggies and noodles, they did have a soup with the dumplings, next time! WIS had a noodle dish with a little kick.

We finished with ice cream and a red bean cake. We saved room for it! Truly wonderful! Even the names of the dishes were clever, 9 Ways to Nirvana Noodle Soup, fun!

We closed the place down. I took my leftover soup, we went for a drive, looking for a good place for an Uber to pick me up and saw some really cute places around Chicago.

Uber to the hotel, my driver was very thankful for my leftover soup. I have to say, lovely man, but not the same as Keele. I hope you have the pleasure of her company one day!

{June 27, 2017} Movies in the Park

One of my favorite things about summer… Movies in the Park.

I’m sure most cities have this, you go to a local park, sometimes a parking lot, maybe in a mall, and they have a giant screen they project movies on.

People bring picnic or snacks, anywhere from a bag of popcorn, sandwiches to some folks going all out, tables and chairs, wine, cheese, apperizers, full meals. It’s what you make of it.

Tonight, DLP and I joined JM, another coworker, or I joined them, they have done this together before.

The movie this week is Julie & Julia. This is based on two books and true stories. Paul Childs letters to his brother and Julie Powell’s auto biography, about how she decided to cook all of Julia Childs’ receipes, 524 in 365 days! It was quite the undertaking.

I loved this movie the first time I saw it and nothing changed. It was fun hanging out and doing something a little different.

Bon appetit!

{June 21, 2017} Amsterdam…Day 5

Today, not many photos, the big thing today…The Anne Frank House.

My day started with a chuckle because my honey, PSM, called me at 622am local time, no worries, I had been awake for over an hour, but when I mentioned what time it was, he felt terrible! I laughed because they other day we said, this is great, we are exactly 12 hours apart, so no math required, only to put an AM or PM behind the numbers and it’s worked out quite well. But when he works those too long days, brain goes out the door! So, we’ve been talking on his way to work, while I’m on my way to dinner! Ah…dating, traveling, time zones…

ACS, EJS and I walked over to dad and LaLa’s hotel for breakfast then to was a short detour while ACS went back to the hotel for something. Eventually we made our way to the Anne Frank House. This is a place you definitely need a ticket for and it was the first thing LaLa got before our trip, they really recommend getting tickets a few months in advance and they were right!

What a sobering experience. There is no furniture in the house, just photos and explanations of who and what. You saw the people they lived with, the few rooms they had, the door with the bookcase that hid the entrance to their hiding place, this is what EJS found most interesting about the house.

The stairways were narrow, the floors creaked and you really got a sense of just what it could have been like and how you might have tried to imagine if you could have handled it. The windows were covered, just think about it, you can’t speak, make a sound, look out of a window for two years.

There were a few messages of hope throughout the house. In her room, you could see the photos of movie stars and cutouts from magazines that she had taped to the walls, to give her a little normalcy in what only could have been an insane situation.

Anne doesn’t just keep a diary during her time in the Secret Annex. She also writes short stories and collects her favourite sentences by other writers in a notebook. Anne hopes for her diary to be published as a novel after the war. That’s why she starts rewriting it. But Anne never manages to finish it. She’s discovered and arrested before she completes her work.
Her father is the one to publish her diary and after reading it, discovering her true feelings about and things, says something very telling that I’m sure many people feel about their children, we don’t truly know them.

One of the things I remember ACS saying when he went the first time was how difficult it was for him as the father of a young girl. I can totally understand that statement as I am sure so many of us do.

The statement that impacted me most was something Emma Thompson said in a speech at the Anne Frank House in 2006: The only thing we have to remember is: all her would-haves are our real possibilities. All her would-haves are our opportunities. And the book’s a flame, a torch, we can light our own candles and take them and illuminate our hearts with the incandescence of her spirit.

Just wow.

After the Anne Frank House, we went to lunch on a canal, go figure! We had so much to discuss.

We walked after that, back to Central Station where we took a canal cruise, not as good as the one the other day, but we learned a few things.

Then it was on to dinner at a fantastic Thai restaurant near the apartment, a stroll back to the hotel for dad and LaLa, apartment for the rest of us.

What does tomorrow hold? I can’t wait to find out!

{June 20, 2017} Amsterdam…Day 4

Madurodam. That’s it, Madurodam.

What a place! An entire city built of miniatures! I’m not taller than much, so pretty cool! Dad had been there about 47 years ago, it’s built up a little since then. For EJS, LaLa and I, it was a first.

It was a train and then a tram trip to get there. A first for EJS, some great experiences and firsts have been had!

It was opened in 1952, each item featured are 1:25 scale replicas of famous Dutch landmarks, historical cities and large developments.

The buildings, trees, cars, people, all created with such fabulous detail. When you take pictures from certain angles, toy can’t tell its not “life size” until you see a person or baby stroller go by.

Madurodam was named after George Maduro, a Jewish law student from Curaçao who fought the Nazi occupation forces as a member of the Dutch resistance and died at Dachau concentration camp in 1945. In 1946, Maduro was posthumously awarded the Medal of Knight Fourth class of the Military Order of William, the highest and oldest military decoration in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, for the valor he had demonstrated in the Battle of the Netherlands against German troops.

This was a tribute started by his parents and the entirety of net proceeds from the park go towards various charities in the Netherlands.

Back to Amsterdam, regroup, dinner and rest… tomorrow is another adventure!

{June 15, 2017} A great work outing

Tonight, after work, I went out to meet coworkers and the client for a happy hour.

I don’t know why they call it a happy hour, it lasts a lot longer than that!

Had a really good day training, after a tough training session at the gym, good questions, responses, engagement by the participants. One of the students even and me to stay after class and help her, that felt great!

Then it was off to happy hour! I got there and on my way to say hello to DLP, I was stopped to chat, then I went to get some food, with the intention of going back to the drink I ordered, I started talking to someone wasn’t very familiar with, as I’m usually in the field and he’s in the office during the week.

We talked movies, kids, tv shows, movies, Star Wars and you know what that means to true fans…quotes, sounds, memories, laughter and much more! Really great to not talk about work with co – workers!

We were joined by MS, then AK and talked about movies, kids and business travel, that was a big topic of discussion! Get a bunch of road warriors and you can’t get away from it. It’s nice to have common stories and interests. And…SG is Lifetime Diamond with Hilton, wow! That means ten years of Diamond status…ah..a girl can dream!

Then it was off to the next happy hour, we were very happy! Stayed for a while then off to the hotel. I had to pack and get ready for tomorrow!

I can’t wait to tell you what I’m doing or better yet, where I’m going! Pictures, stories, fun to come!

This picture is my idea of a happy hour

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