Boys, Family, Friends, Me, Myself & I, USA

Happy Birthday!

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Oh what a happy birthday I had! Thanks to y’alls for sending emails, cards, voicemails, packages and for calling! You’re the bestest ever! :-*

I was going to celebrate into my birthday a bit but I felt like I had a fever on Friday so I figured it’d be better to skip that. Saturday morning I had to get up quite early to attend a wedding with my neighbor Ash but I did manage to talk to my Dad and my Mom and Step-Dad who all called. Also got to open the first gifts. Yay! 🙂

Ash’s friend’s wedding was very nice. Really small in the backyard of the groom’s parents. Soooo nice! I totally need to get married in my Mom’s garden or find a guy with a nice yard ;-). Food was great, people were sweet as only southerners can be and the ceremony was short and sweet. People got casual right afterwards leaving Ash and I a bit overdressed (compared to shorts and flip flops for the groom e.g. ;-)). Around 2pm we cruised back home and since it was my birthday Ash circled around uptown a bit just because I love Charlotte so much. Hehe!

At night I went to the Cheesecake Factory with Tasha, Birgit, Vanessa and Ash. Poor Ash had to sit through tons of girl talk but I think he took it quite well if not even enjoyed himself…. Food was alright. I mean we normally go to places where they cook better than there, kind of a strange decision to go there for my birthday but I wanted to get a slice of cheesecake from there. The cocktails were good, though!! 😉 I got the sweetest gifts from the crew and they all sang happy birthday with the waitress (for some reason no other waiters were there to sing that late…). We got out of there around 11 and seeing that we’re all old now we just decided to call it a night and party some other time.

Sunday I didn’t really do much to be honest. Ate my birthday cheesecake, did laundry, read, chatted with my stupid, hot neighbor, tidied the house a bit and then got an invitation to dinner from David to make up for his forgetting my birthday. Perfect since I was too lazy to cook and didn’t feel like eating out either. So I drove to Ballentyne and D cooked mussles and then some fantastic grilled salmon on spinach salad with cranberries, pine nuts, goat cheese and a balsamic vinaigrette. YUMMY!!! He said he didn’t have desert except for some M&Ms but then he actually whipped out an ice-cream cake with candles and the whole spiel! Wow! Too bad we don’t have chemistry going on between us! What a man! Watched a bit of golf and then I drove back up to my place seeing that I was getting tired (again, I’m getting old…). (Next day he wrote me “sorry I tried making out with you” I was like “huh? you tried to make out with me?!” “Big time!” I am sooo oblivious… Won’t recognize anything until it hits me square in the head.. duh…. Need to be more attentive to detail…)

Yesterday Giorgio and Massimo took me out for my birthday lunch and I came home to even more cards and packages (thanks you guys!!!).

Friday is going to be my birthday party so if you’re in the area, stop by!! 🙂

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Me, Myself & I

7 Weird or Random Things

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* link to the person who tagged you – Thanks Kim
* post the rules here – DUH!
* share 7 random or weird facts about yourself (7 is a lot… let’s see if I can come up with that many. I know I’m random and weird enough but still…)
* tag 7 random people at the end of the post, linking to them (I might not do that… be warned)
* leave a comment on their blog so that they know they’ve been tagged

1. You know that email that gets forwarded every once in a while about how many insects you eat in your sleep and stuff. Well one of the “facts” in there says you can’t lick your elbow. Well, I can!

2. I have my mouth closed when I apply mascara. When I was young (like maybe 10) I was shocked at the faces that people made when they rubbed their eyes so I tried to make it a habit to keep my mouth shut when I do weird things with my eyes.

3. A lot times I close my eyes though when I brush my teeth.

4. I have weird eyes, they have soooooo few eyelashes, it’s not even funny.

5. My toes are kind of weird, too. The ones next to the big toe are kind of growing over the big toe. Kind of annoying and probably not healthy either and definitely weird.

6. Sometimes I’m really happy when something mildly bad happens to me because I think it counters all the good stuff that is happening. When something great happens to me I sometimes get worried that it only happened to make up for something really bad that’s going to happen. So when something bad happens like my car getting towed I’m thinking OK that was bad but not devastating as in I don’t want to rejoice too soon (like over my visa) because something bad might still happen and then that mildly bad issue is that and I stop worrying. Yeah kinda stupid but not much I can do about it.

7. Sometimes I hear my cell phone ring even though it’s not ringing. Oh the stress of being reachable all the time. 😉 Go figure there are more than enough times when my cell in fact rings but I don’t hear it. Psycho!

Seven people to tag…. Uhm, Miriam, Anke, Eunice, David in FFM, Tanja, Richard, and Alex in AL. There, share your neuroses with us! 🙂

Night night!

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Boys, Friends, Me, Myself & I, shopping

Sanna Sleepy

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Hello Peeps!

Boy, am I tired! Have been going to bed way too late this week and of course getting up early to go to work is just a big annoyance. 😉 Last night I think it was 1:30am, Tuesday 1am, Monday 2am, Sunday 1am… you get my point. And I slept alone all these nights so it’s not like anybody kept me awake. Last night I actually went out to dinner and then to the Irish pub uptown for a beer so that at least was a good excuse to go to bed late. But hmpf… not good… need to go to bed early tonight! (Have been saying that for at least the past 5 nights… oh the busy life…)

Last week was nice with sushi with a girl I know from when I studied here and then I introduced her to my guy friends and we had a fun time uptown. She totally stole my position as favorite German 😉 and is hanging out with my friends alone now, which totally wasn’t the plan. The plan was to reconnect with someone so when the guys do their things we girls could hang out. Uhm yeah. That didn’t work out so well I guess but maybe we’ll get a cute couple out of that one and I have a female ally, so, fine.

I hung out with David a couple of times, nice pizza from Brixx one night and then we spent Sat and Sunday together, miniature golfing and chilling at my place. Kind of strange for me to spend that much time with a person you don’t really know much about. OK so I spent that much time with my guys when I got here even though I didn’t really know them much but that was different. I think we’re still trying to figure out the other person so we’ll see where that goes.

An old friend from my high school year in New Jersey 1998/1999 was in town this week and thanks to facebook we got together for coffee and a little breakfast snack at Caribou Coffee. Sooo cool to catch up with eachother’s lives and to meet Janet’s friend Bill from Roanoke, too.

Sunday after being inside with nothing to do all day I was very glad to go out to dinner with my friends at night. Mezzanotte (the brick-oven pizzeria at Providence Plaza by Cotswold in Charlotte, NC (just for the heck of people that google it)) was ohhhh so yummy and reasonably priced. Fantastic gnocchi and then we went to the movies and watched Vantage Point. Fun!

Tuesday I ventured out to Southpark Mall to find a 1 or 2 cups stove-top espresso maker after not being able to find one at the mall here near I work (all they ever have are the big 6 cups capacity) (but however I did find Anthropology and boy that was a fun place to look around at – though *cough* too expensive for my taste). So, the smallest coffee maker at Southpark makes 3 cups so I’m hoping that Massimo can bring me a small one at half price from Italy and if not then heck I’ll pay the 20$ for a 3cup maker (ok it’s not the money that I mind that much, it’s the fact that the more water it holds, the longer it takes to get coffee (geee, all this writing about coffee just shows how tired I am ;-))).
Aaaanyway, I did not get a coffee maker from surlatable but I continued my hunt for something retail therapy worthy because for some reason I was kinda blue and entered the sacred haven of Steve Madden. Found a nice pair of shoes (so cute). For some reason I still didn’t feel ueber happy though and that evil apple store magically drew me in. 2 minutes later I walked out of there with a pink iPod nano and thankfully then I did feel good enough to leave the mall with a happy face. Yay retail therapy! 😀
Stopped by at Vanessa’s for a cup of echinazea tea (yum!) on my way home.

Last night the gang plus Chadi’s brother who’s in town and I minus the date (as he felt anti-social last night) went to a somewhat traditional Japanese restaurant, Musashi, that was frequented by real Japanese. The food was great and afterwards we went to that Irish pub like I said. Fun times but man, I need to get to bed early tonight!

So yeah that’s what’s been going on with me. Hope you’re all well! :-*

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Me, Myself & I

Bye-bye Two Thousand Seven

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Eight more hours of 2007 are left here for me and it’s time for the traditional year-end blog entry. It has definitely been a year of changes just like some astrologer on TV had predicted a year ago. The first half of the year I was in Ireland, which was a brilliant experience. The island and I never really hit it off but looking back it was cool to see so much of it and I hope to go back and visit at some point.
I finished university and with that came soul searching for what I want to do in life and where the job hunt would take me. I am unbelievably thankful for how life took it’s course in that area. What are the chances, I visit a friend at a trade show in my home city that is only held every 2 years. He introduces me to his boss who wants my resume, I fly out to Charlotte for three weeks in the summer and get a job offer. Despite all the hurdles in the way, we managed to get a visa for me and wow, now I am here in Charlotte and I really like my job and the city.
People had always asked me what I really want to do later on and I was never quite sure. The only thing that came to my mind was to go back to Charlotte. Feels kind of strange having achieved that goal now. What’s next?! Well, getting a longer visa, which might be another pain (though out of fairness that should be super easy now after that last pain in the butt visa ;-)).
Other than the antagonizing visa fight, this summer and fall I was blessed to spend a lot of time with my friends and family (maybe sometimes too much with the family ;-)), which was awesome. Sadly, my grand-mother passed over at 79 years but there will be a new addition to our family early next year and I can’t wait to see the little one.
New year’s resolution? Hmmm, I don’t really have one. Speak more Italian, look less scary when I’m hungover at work, cook more, join the YMCA, meet more cute guys, the usual….

Happy New Year’s everybody, I hope it’ll be a good one!

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