colds & reunions

I caught a cold on Saturday... I know when I caught it too. The evening of my 20th high school reunion. I tried to keep it under wraps so that I felt ok for the dinner.

I attended a small school so I knew it was going to be fun to re-connect with my class which had 29 women in its graduating class. Here are some factoids:
- out of 29 women in our graduating class, 11 showed up
- 7 of whom are married.
- out of those 7 women, 6 of them have children
- we all grew up in New York - 4 of us have settled here, the others are in L.A., CT, MA, MD, MA, GA, CA and our exchange student from England settled there too.

The women who were not able to make it are scattered along the California coast, East Coast and a few landed in Ohio, Colorado and Wyoming. How funny that we all still sound the same and haven't really changed that much in personality. Our school is not the same internally anymore as it was renovated about 5 years ago. However we all still have fond memories of our school.

easter and baking

It was soooooo hot today at work. There was no air-conditioning on the 1st floor. The air was thick and dry. The 2nd - 6th floors had cool air. The temperature outside reached a high of 77 degrees however inside it felt like 90! Ugh... It made us all feel sluggish and our customers didn't like it either.

I finally hired a full-time person to take the Sunday - Thursday shift which hopefully means I can take back my Sunday/Monday days off... He started today and worked for 4.5 hours. It's a bit overwhelming for newcomers as there is a lot of information to take in, however he said he was fine with the information so far... He probably will not be left on his own for a week or two... We met on a benefit committee 3 years ago. He has no retail experience however he's got an outgoing personality and is raring to go.

Tomorrow is Easter and the store is closing at 5pm, thank goodness. At least this way I will only be 2 hours late for Easter dinner. I just baked a chocolate chip cake. Dad is baking an apple pie! We will have lotsa dessert tmrw.

It's time for me to turn out my cake from the pan.

sunny days are not too far off...

It's 12:08am Monday morning and I'm very tired yet somehow I keep myself awake until at least 12:30am because I cannot turn off my brain. This weekend I worked both Saturday & Sunday and will also be working tmrw. This is what happens when one has not staff... that's ok, lesson learned.

I'm thinking of bringing my laptop to work so that I can do some real work while waiting for customers to show up. It would be great fun if I could connect to someone's wifi... hmmm... I must not let it distract me from cursive and our customers... and how to secure my laptop to the desk is another thing to think about. Maybe wrap ribbon around it and one of our boxes of stationery so that if someone tried to take it I would hear it fall... Or just place it in the middle drawer... now i am getting even sleepier... time to shut off the computer.

cheers for now.

have you ever been to Cape Town?

The highlight of winter 2006 was our trip to Cape Town, South Africa for a childhood friend's wedding. My father didn't go however my sister, mother and I spent a glorious 8 days in Cape Town. I didn't realize that it takes a day to travel there and back so I would have extended the trip to 12 days if I had known...

We spent 3 1/2 days touring Cape Town, 2 1/2 days in Hermanus where the bride's family has a beach house and 3 days in Franschhoek (similar in feeling to Napa Valley, C), where the wedding took place. We knew the entire groom's family and all of the bride & groom's friends so it seemed like a continuation of summer dinners out on Long Island just a few more miles away.

More to write and with photos... Must dash off to work now!

Fridays rocks!

It's Friday, WoooooooHooooooo! I am going into work at 2pm so I can play catch up at home. This is what is on my mind right now:

We are in the throes of soliciting donations for the 11th annual Zero Tolerance benefit happening on June 6th. Every year we have a chinese raffle/auction and this year the responses have been amazing. Now it is time to get started on putting together a collage of all the company logos who've donated product. This will be hung at the entranceway and cocktail area of the benefit to get our guests excited!

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It's been a crazy month being short staffed at the store. Thank goodness traffic is slower this past month so having one person on the floor has worked out ok, though slower traffic means slower sales which isn't good... I've been putting in a lot more hours however since I love managing the store it's fine with me to be there all the time. Though come summer this has got to change... It is very difficult to find good staff.

soundtrack music

Thursday, April 5th - I was on the subway going home and as the subway crept from the tunnel to the outside, "Suite" by Rachel Portman from the movie "Mona Lisa Smiles", began playing and as I looked around the car, with the apt buildings swishing by in the background, I realized how fitting the music was to the scene before me:

An older gentleman wearing a cap, three women and a youngish man, were all in a row sleeping with their heads all slightly bowed towards their chest. There were 6 of us, scattered throughout the car, either sitting or standing, listening to our ipods and 3 people took out their cell phones and began texting whomever. The subway car was silent, no extra loud music, no talking, just the whispher of the subway as it slowly entered my station.