We survived Hurricane Sandy. The Albany area actually didn't experience much of the storm at all...it was extra-breezy one day, and there was a little bit of rain. We never lost power...business as usual. Prayers go out to those on the east coast who had it much, much worse than we did.
I'm on a mission to make friends. I've made some work friends, and we have some church friends, but I miss hanging out with the girls back home. I went to meetup.com and found a "fabulous girlfriends" group that was eating at the Cheesecake Factory two weekends ago, so I went, and it was fun! Met a lot of ladies around my age, and had a couple "hey, we should hang out" messages after. Sweet. I've enjoyed the Albany area so far, I really like my job, and (of course) I love hanging out with my husband. I think establishing some girlfriends up here is the missing piece! I had a post about this on Instagram and someone commented that I should read MWF Seeking BFF, about a woman who went on a similar quest. I'm about halfway through it now...she vowed to go on a new "friend-date" every week for a year...definitely too ambitious for me, but I'm taking baby steps!
I gave a presentation to our government regulating agency. I was pretty nervous, but it was just an update about some work I've done and they seemed to receive it well. Got good feedback from my managers afterward, too. I definitely have my moments of insecurity on the job sometimes, so this was a good moment :)
We bought a washer/dryer set. We have a laundry closet in the apartment, but we've been using the building's coin-operated laundry room...I griped enough about "I don't want to trek outside to do laundry when it's snowing", so Brad agreed to get a washer and dryer before the serious snow came. So we went over the weekend, and found a set on sale at Lowe's. Done. It arrives on Friday...I'm pretty excited to not have to battle over the one good laundry room in our area (every building's laundry room has just a single washer and dryer...the building next door becomes like a rainforest and makes everything feel damp, the building across the parking lot takes two dyer loads). Maybe this whole subject isn't very blog-worthy, but I'm happy.
It snowed just a little bit last week. Around 8:00 (some night last week) Brad texted to say it was snowing there (at his grad school in Schenectady) so I went outside, and sure enough, light little flakes. They didn't stick, and it was done pretty quickly, but...SNOW! I'm going to treat it with childlike excitement as long as possible.
We've been married for a whole year. That's the biggest update! We celebrated our one-year anniversary yesterday. Since I don't get to see Brad until he gets home from grad school around 10:00, it wasn't a very excitement-packed celebration, but we had cake! Knowing we'd be moving to New York this year, we didn't even try to save our top tier after the wedding last year. But I got a "top-tier-ish" spice cake from a local bakery, as a substitute. Probably tasted better than if we had tried to freeze the top tier and take it on a four-day trip across the country.
Aww
These glasses set the stage for his proposal, then they became our toasting glasses at the wedding!
Probably one of the few times we'll ever bring out our cake serving set again, so it had to be momentous
We do a lot better when we have Lois guiding us on this feeding-each-other thing
(See?)
So many great memories from that night...so happy to be married to my best friend. Looking forward to all the years to come!
On Thursday we'll have a date night that consists of more than eating cake and going to sleep...we're going to see Wicked at a local theater! (not heading down to NYC, but I hear it's Broadway quality). Sadly this Friday isn't one of my Fridays-off...and Brad has a test at 10 am...but hey, sometimes it's fun to stay up too late "on a school night".
