Baked Oatmeal

Recipe for Deliciousness

Ingredients
-2 cups oats
-1/2 cup almonds
-1/3 cup brown sugar
-1 tsp baking powder
-3/4 tsp cinnamon
-1/3 tsp ginger
-1/8 tsp nutmeg
-1/8 tsp ground cloves
-1/8 tsp kosher salt
-2 cups milk
-1 egg
-2 tbsp melted butter
-1 tsp vanilla
-1 tsp maple syrup
-4 cups any fruit (I like bananas and blueberries)

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees
2. Grease an 8″ round pan
3. Spread fruit in a layer on bottom of pan
4. Mix together the dry ingredients
5. Spread oat mixture on top of fruit layer
6. In the same bowl used for the dry mixture, whisk together the remaining (wet) ingredients
7. Pour milk mixture over oats
8. Bake 35 minutes or until oatmeal is set.

Time Travel

Even though today is a Monday, it feels like a Sunday. I woke up late, enjoyed 2 cups of cinnamon coffee, caught up with some friends and family, went to the gym, came home and cooked. It also probably didn’t help/hurt that I spent last night with Steve, Meredith, two bottles of wine and a cup of peanut butter chocolate frozen yogurt.

As I was chilling on the couch watching House Hunters and waiting for the pot roast to finish, I decided to browse through some of my old diaries. I admit that since I started blogging more regularly, I have been neglecting my diary-writing a bit. But even though I really love blogging, especially for the way it allows me to connect with others, there are still some things that are too private or personal to write about on the internet. Or, at least that’s my opinion. And back in the day when I still had dial-up, I didn’t even know what blogging was.

It was so interesting reading things that I’d written when I was 23, 24 years old. There were mentions of people that I have no idea who they were. There are detailed descriptions of interactions that I have only vague memories of now, 5 or 6 years later. It reminded me that although sometimes I do think it would be nice to be 25 again, the person I am today is made up of all the experiences, moments, laughter and tears that I’ve accumulated up til now.

Saturday Night in the City

I can’t remember the last time I was going out on a Saturday night with a boy I liked. It’s a little nerve wracking. Frankly, I’m not used to this. Here’s hoping I don’t say or do something stupid…

Hello, hello

Can I just say how refreshing it is to have someone call when they say they are going to call? And be genuinely interested in talking? It’s… nice.

Change is in the Air

It’s a new year. A new me? I went to the grocery store today and my basket was full of … vegetables! Potatoes, peppers, garlic, ginger, fruit, it was a really lovely sight actually. And my dinner tonight was quite delicious. I’m trying to ensure that my fridge is full of healthy, good food.

I had a fantastic weekend complete with sleeping late, hanging out and catching up with old friends (the best kind), Facebook stalking, dinners out, lots of coffee, movie watching (I highly enjoyed myself at Mission Impossible 4), cooking, laundry, and also a promising boy. Weekends like this are the best.

Thursday Night

The best part of my day wasn’t:
*Realizing I hadn’t left my cell phone at home after all
*The lovely email in my Inbox this morning
*Beer and sushi at work
*My date after hours at the Trident Cafe (one of my all time favorite places in Boston)

It’s right now, sitting on my couch in my PJs, a bowl of popcorn and Revenge on the TV. Is that sad?

Well Hello There, 2012!

Happy New Year! I can’t believe I have to start learning how to write 2012 now. I still remember being in grade school and having difficulty replacing the ’87 with an ’88. That was a long time ago.

2011 was a mixed-up year. It was filled with some incredible highs:
-Travel to India
-Graduation from business school with two masters and an intact sanity
-Summer vacation, for the last time in my life
-Finally moving into a grown-up apartment of my very own
-Starting a new amazing job, and getting a steady paycheck once more
-Running my first 5K

and some incredible lows:
-Poor health
-Feeling cut-off from my friends; realizing some people were not who I thought they were
-The day after my 29th birthday
-And some other things which I won’t detail here.

Overall the pros outweighed the cons of the past year, so I guess I can’t complain too much. I wrote some things that I didn’t like about 2011 down on slips of paper and burned them last night. Two of the slips were named ‘fear’ and ‘complacency’. Without setting any specific resolutions for this year (I don’t really like resolutions, because I think they’re made to be broken), I hope to be more conscious about not letting these two things take me over.

So far 2012 has been wonderful. I have watched movies, hung out with friends, cleaned my apartment, hung pictures, unpacked boxes, cooked, caught up on reading, and have just been happy. If the rest of this coming year can be like this, it will be a great year. There will be bumps in the road (in only 1 month I turn 30, ugggghhhhh … really not looking forward to that). But I definitely have high hopes for this coming year. Here’s to you, 2012!

Market Research

I started off in my very first job as a market researcher. This was back in the Dark Ages of internet searching. Google wasn’t the only kid on the block by any stretch of the imagination. I used to regularly visit Yahoo, Google, Netscape, Internet Explorer, Dogpile, some Genie web browser, and a bunch of others that are no longer around. Even though many of these sites no longer exist, my market research skills are still pretty sharp, 8 years later.

Of course, these days I’m not using my skills to do as much company work. It’s more of a personal service. And boy have I still got it… it’s SO much easier to stalk people from the comfort of your living room! Who would have thought that cutting my teeth on market research reports for random government agencies would still be so relevant to my life?

Photographic Proof

This is me. Running a 5K. I was in the homestretch– as they say, so close yet so far away. I could see the finish line and all I wanted to do was slow down and walk, but I was determined to finish strong.

This is me. Super excited after finishing my 5K. I had just fallen over because I overbalanced the first time I tried to show my excitement in a pose. I am a klutz.

December

Back in the dark ages when I first had graduated from college and was working at my first grown up job, I had a work colleague. Well, he was more than that. Anyway, he had a way of summing up his feelings which I always found very amusing: ‘le sigh.’

That’s the best way to describe my mood today, towards the end of a very long December. Isn’t it funny how you can try and try and work so hard, but still only end up one or two paces beyond where you first started?

I suppose progress of any sort shouldn’t be sniffed at. But thinking back to my 23 yr old self, life was so different yet in many ways things haven’t changed that much, at all.