First Dates Are So… Interesting?

I should know, I’ve been on enough of them that I should add ‘expert in online dating’ to my LinkedIn profile.

Maybe not.

Going on a Second Date this weekend. It’s kind of exciting/nerve-wracking/scary/fun all at the same time.

It’s been a long time since my last second date. Actually, almost exactly a year. Last year I was miserable, unhappy with the way I felt and looked and lived. This year I consider myself a work in progress– there is still progress to be made, yes, but I feel like a totally different person. I feel younger, cute, fun, confident, happy, and optimistic. It’s a pretty good mental headspace to be in.

Celebratory

This post is a few days late, but better late than never. As of last Saturday I am finished with taking my medication for the DVT/PE I suffered back in June. WOOOOOHOOOOOO!!!

Remembrances

I was reading some news articles this morning about the 11th anniversary of 9/11 and its impact on Cantor Fitzgerald. [CF's CEO Howard Lutnick is a grad of Haverford College, my alma mater.] I can’t quite believe that 11 years have gone by– I can still vividly remember where I was when I first heard that the towers were coming down.

Art class, a brief announcement that some planes had hit in NY, a general query if anyone was from NY. Then, leaving, going back to my dorm, and realizing the enormity and impact of the situation. Watching the second tower fall on my tiny dorm room television. Frantic mental checks to see if I needed to worry about any family or friends.

The rest is mostly a blur. I remember the session that President Tritton held in the Athletic Center, and feeling overwhelmed and outside my own head. The strange silence on campus as traffic dwindled. The slight ping of fear that thrilled through me every time a fighter jet roared overhead. I had mostly forgotten about how my art class responded after that first day. We drew reaction pieces.

I stumbled across a site depicting the gallery show we created this morning. It’s odd how some memories fade, but others remain in sharp relief.

Recap

So it’s been a busy busy busy few months. Let’s recap.

* Trip to Bern, Switzerland was a great time spent drinking way too much beer, catching up with coworkers, and chocolate. Lots of chocolate.

* One day after getting back from Switzerland, I ran my third 5k! Most surprisingly of all, I managed to shave nearly a minute and a half off my previous time. I guess all that beer drinking really paid off, huh.

* The day after my race, Boston had a moment of confusion and thought it was high summer. I spent the day covering myself in sunscreen and watching the Boston Marathon.

* Along with my partner in crime Stephanie, I got to watch Pentatonix perform at the Acapella-palooza acapella concert here in Boston. It was amazing. Even more awesome was the chance to be thisclose to Avi…

* I spent a week and a half in California, visiting the mothership. Turtles, marshmallows and viking hats were involved. Good times.

So now I’m back, and looking forward to a bit of a break over Memorial Day weekend. It’s been quite the whirlwind spring!

Someecards

Someecards is a fantastic site with e-cards for just about any situation you might find yourself in. I saw this one on their site today and thought it was hilarious, especially since this has totally happened to me before. . . more than once!

Dirty Thirty

So. I turned thirty yesterday. Yeah.

Thirty years ago, there was a nasty weekend storm with snow and sleet, in one of the coldest winters on record. On tv people were watching Dukes of Hazzard, Dallas, and Falcon Crest. The top songs and records were ‘Physical’, ‘Let’s Groove’, ‘Waiting for a Girl Like You’, and ‘Why do Fools Fall In Love’. Those tv-watchers were probably wearing peg pants, knickers, warm-up socks, and/or mini-skirts. The average price of a home was $84,000 minimum wage was $3.35 an hour and a gallon of gas cost $1.29. President Reagan was attempting to hold off a new recession, and an airline called Laker Airways went bankrupt.

A lot has changed since then. A lot is actually the same. According to my astrology chart Aquarians are intuitive, sensitive, and kindhearted. I’m gonna say that’s pretty accurate.

Reminiscing aside, my actual birthday was pretty tame. I woke up late, cleaned my apartment, went out to lunch and watched the Superbowl. No crazy celebrations, no balloons, no cake, no birthday song. It’s not how I always pictured my ‘milestone’ birthday but it was oddly appropriate. I guess I’m a grown up now.

OK I feel old now

Sitting here going through my old diaries, and I came across this entry:

March 31, 1996
We got the Internet! (America Online)
My screenname is Bella252. Password. spooky.
John’s name is FyreWax because he was trying to make wax, and it caught on fire. It was huge! There was a big fiasco over that. I can’t imagine why he’d want to remember it.

I am ashamed to admit that it took me a long time to realize that the Internet was so much more than AOL. I also didn’t know what a web browser was for a long time, except I had a sneaking suspicion that it had something to do with spiders.

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.

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!

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.