Thank you!!

Thank you to everyone who sent me a comment on my last post, or sent me a text or instant message on Facebook.  I felt all the virtual hugs on the second Anniversary of Tony’s passing, and it’s because of all of you that I was able to get through the day.  That, and I was actually super busy at work on Friday.  My boss was out of town so I thought I wouldn’t have much to do, but I got assigned an associate, and she was busy and I did some overflow work.  I did finally get into the office gym, and I’ll show some pics on another post, but for a free gym, it’s really nice!  I even left work late and texted Hannah and Jacob that I’d be home later than usual, when Hannah asked me if I wanted to meet her for pizza out.  Um, you don’t have to ask me twice!

They had Fat Tire on tap for $4 – um, yes please.  This was the local restaurant that Tony and I use to frequent often, and every time I’ve gone in since Tony died the owners seeks me out, gives me a big hug and asks how I am doing.  It was nice.  Jacob stayed home with the dogs because they had been alone most of the day and we brought him back a burger.  We ended up sharing a table with a nice couple because the place was so busy – I sat at a six top and since it was just Hannah and me, we said they could sit on the other end of the table.  Turns out their daughter was one of the servers there and it was just a nice relaxing evening.  I went to sleep content.  Not going to lie though, some of your comments that I read during work when my phone alerted there was a comment, almost brought me to tears, but in a good way if that makes any sense. 

When I got home Hannah had flowers, a card, a bottle of wine and a necklace as a gift.  So sweet – thanks Hannah!

I went to bed pretty early on Friday night, because I was working the One of A Kind Show at the Merchandise Mart.  Holy balls, I had no idea how big this event was, and kept thinking how much my Mom and Aunt Martha would love going to this event – no wonder it’s 4 days long because it would literally take you 4 days to see the 600 different vendors there, from all over the world!

We were in the 1000 row, but the rows went all the way to 8000.  This was how it looked when the vendors were setting up.  Not fifteen minutes after the doors opened, this was what I saw:

I got a lunch break at 1:30 and went to the food court on the second floor of the Mart.  Not going to lie, my legs were going to the Billy Goat burger line – the burgers smelled really good and I haven’t had a Billy Goat burger in the longest time.  But I stuck with my guns and got a spicy chicken salad at a Mediterranean place – I don’t even remember the name of it, but it wasn’t very good.  It was a “build your own” bowl kind of place.  I got brown rice on the bottom, “spicy” chicken, topped with choice of veggies and greens and dressing, which I got the tahini dressing.

I am not sure how a fast casual restaurant was able to make every ingredient of a salad taste exactly the same.  The rice had no flavor, no seasoning, the chicken, which you can barely see, was so finely chopped that it utterly dry, not spicy at all (Christine, you’ll be happy to know that I on my last 10 packs of the sriracha packets you sent me 2 years ago when Tony was in the hospital – sriracha to the rescue!) and the tahini sauce didn’t taste like anything.  Such a drastic difference from the Roti salad I got last week near my office – that salad was so flavorful!

There wasn’t enough time to even get my money back, but note to self – never go back there.

It was a long day.  I left at 8:00 on Saturday morning and didn’t get home until 7:00 p.m. The city looks so pretty at night.

It was another early night on Saturday because I was doing a pasta shop class in the morning.  My shift started at 9:00 and it was a three hour class.  It was full (20 people!) so there was a lot of mis en place I had to do, but we knocked it out.  I actually stopped at 7-11 on my way to work to pick up a string cheese, yogurt and fruit.  I ate the cheese and fruit for breakfast while I was getting everything together – the fruit was actually really good and not bad at $4.29 for a 16 ounce container.

Chef Lisa was in charge of the pasta shop.  She has such a passion for food, and teaching – especially food from her Italian heritage. 

Since it was such a big class and all the stoves were used, it did take three of us a full 90 minutes to clean the kitchen up.  It been snowing a bit during the class but didn’t seem too bad.  That’s because the temperature was around 37 degrees in the city and it was mostly slush and rain when I left work.

Well, the further I started driving west to where I live, the thicker the snow was coming down and the slower the traffic got.  It took me nearly 2 1/2 hours to get home from work. 

I didn’t mind though.  I had the holiday Christmas station on and sang really loud in the car on the drive home.  It’s our first snow of the season, which is very unusual for Chicago – looks like we probably got 6 inches?

I still haven’t done a full grocery shop since I worked all weekend, and made a quick pit stop at Jewel to hit up their 50% off meat bin.  As luck would have it, they had t-bone steaks on sale for $5.99 a pound – usually they are $11.99 a pound!   So I bought one for me and one for Jacob – we both ended up with leftovers because these were nearly a pound each.  I think I may be having a steak and egg white omelet for breakfast today.

I actually didn’t eat anything but my string cheese and fruit until dinner, so I was really hungry – I am sure I didn’t even hit 20 points yesterday, which left me for points for the wine Hannah bought me

I hope everyone had a great weekend – have you started Christmas shopping yet?  I’ve only bought two gifts so far, so I need to get a plan together.  Working 7 days a week doesn’t leave much time.  But the kadults and I are going to focus on the meaning of Christmas and not all the stuff.  My Mom is going to my brothers for Christmas, so it might just be the three of us Christmas day which would be amazing.  We could just lounge around, drink lots of coffee, stay in our jammies and watch movies all day. 

Alright, time to get this show on the road – happy Monday – make it a great day!