It's Been A While

Anyone remember this song by Staind?

Welp, it has been a while since I updated. Life has been busy. And pretty dang fun! It's impossible to recap everything that's been going on the past few weeks, so I'll just give a few snapshots:

We celebrated Andy's birthday with lots of wine and apple picking at Nashoba Valley Winery! I made these amazing cake batter blondies with chocolate chips to bring.

I made a version of this INCREDIBLE chicken salad with the apples I picked. I ate this almost every day for a week and never got sick of it. I followed the recipe pretty much to the T except I skipped the raisins and added some red onion.

I've been hanging out with this little pup at my kickball games! He's my fave.

I went to my final Sox game of the season. The Red Sox actually won this game and it was a gorgeous day.

This picture makes me laugh.

I watched the supermoon eclipse from my rooftop.  It was pretty wonderful.

I went to Philly for a work event. I visited City Tap House for some brews and a delicious burger.

Our event was catered by Iron Chef (!!!) Jose Garces. The food was soooo good.

We also had special music guest G. Love perform. He was such a great guy and his music is pretty sweet.

After Philly I went straight to New York and spent the weekend with family. I ate lots of delicious food (as usual) and we went bowling!

My dad was an expert. Look at that form!

I was not as good.

I came back to Boston ready for a busy week. I went to my first Yelp event in a long time at Fleming's. I got this awesome throwback hoodie from '08 for being one of the longest yelping Elites at the event!

The next day was one of my favorite days of the year: the tasting for one of my biggest work events! Here's a sneak peek:

One of the best parts about kickball on Wednesday evenings is the beautiful sunsets on the walk over...

I randomly bought a papaya at Trader Joe's the other day and when I cut it open millions of these black seeds poured out! And guess what? I don't really like papaya. I actually think it tasted like savory Mexican food -- like the aftertaste of a burrito or something. Apparently lots of people hate the taste of papaya.

I finally got my hair cut and colored again. I was cracking up at myself under this cone ead-esque dryer.

It feels really short but I'm into it!

I attended my very first progressive dinner with the Blog & Tweet Boston group! More on that in another post.

I have sort of figured out why I hate fall so much -- I hate the transition between wearing summer clothes and fall/winter clothes. This year I bit the bullet and spent some money ahead of time so I'd be prepared. I bought the haul below plus a pair of jeans, a new pair of work pants, a few pairs of tights, a blouse or two, black boots and brown boots (I needed to replace both). This has seriously made my life so much happier and easier!!

These shoes are my roommates...I love them.

This isn't a great picture but I loved this whole outfit for work!

I attended one of the coolest, most interesting events of my adult life: Our Convention. It was hosted at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the Senate which was absolutely gorgeous. After a number of keynote speakers, we broke up into groups of 30 based on the "pressing social issues Boston is facing" of our choice. I chose health. A panel discussed the issue broadly, and then we broke up into smaller groups for some design thinking. The problem my group identified was a lack of collaboration across sectors in the health sphere (hospitals, community based organizations, policy makers, etc.). We had to come up with a creative solution using the design thinking progress. I was worried about being in an intellectual setting again and feared that I wouldn't voice my opinions/feel like I had anything to offer. In reality, I was talking nonstop, felt extremely valuable to the conversations, and my group actually went with my original idea for a solution! This made me REALLY want to go back to school.

So that's about it, with a couple of other non-photographed activities mixed in, including visits to two new nearby restaurants: Coppersmith and Worden Hall.

Life has been treating me pretty nicely lately!