I went to NYC and all I took was pics of the library

Despite seeing family and Deltas, the only pictures I came home with are of the New York Public Library.





I hope the BPL doesn't think I'm cheating.

Best. Lobster. Ravioli.

In Boston, my fav restaurant was/is the Altantic Fish Company. They put lobster in everything, most wonderfully surprisingly the ravioli and mashed potatoes.

Tonight at my TriDelta reunion dinner (where I failed to take a single picture) at Maria Pia, lobster ravioli was on the menu. Obviously, I had to have it.

Oh. My. God. It was the best, most lobster-y ravioli I have ever had. I believe it was only about 5 pieces of ravioli but they were large and each one was jam packed with lobster.

Usually things made with lobster, in my experience, are mostly everything else and very light on the lobster. Not these bad boys. You could tasted every ounce of lobster and it was amazing. It was honestly better than any lobster ravioli I ever had in Boston (or anywhere else).

In addition to fantastic lobster, I had lovely company at dinner. I saw Erin who was TriDelta president when I rushed, Suzie who was one year ahead of me and Kristin who is/was among the members of my pledge class who I was attached to the hip with throughout college, most especially senior year.

They are super fun ladies and it's so very interesting to hear the direction life has taken all of us, yet to still be able to have such an easy, comfortable dinner together, almost like we never left college. Erin works for the NY Post and is getting married this summer. Suzie is a fancy fancy corporate lawyer in Manhattan. Kristin is a physician's assistant in Jersey. And of course, you know my married-in-Austin-nonprofiteer-at-heart story.

A great last night in the Big Apple. I've learned so much at my workshops and am looking forward to getting back to Austin and implementing it all at work. Oh yes, and I'm looking forward to getting home to my hunky hubby and perfect pup. They are totally the best.

New York, Here I Am!

Yesterday I flew to NYC for Social Media Week. From a work perspective, its going very well. We hosted a panel today that I thought went off without a hitch.

Other than work stuff, there's two things I want to tell you about: misc random stuff and my dinner out with my cousin, Alan, and his girlfriend, Alex.

Random Stuff

• I should have stuck to my guns when this past summer I decided to quit Newark Airport. Sigh, maybe I'll have learned my lesson now, one power outage later.
• The evening news anchor on ABC here in NYC has some serious Texas hair...like bigger than most Texans. You go girl.
• I forgot and since getting here, have remembered what always made NYC "not my city." You can't see the sky. Have you seen the Texas sky? Its huge. Alan agrees, the Texas sky is bigger than any sky. But in New York, skyscrapers get in the way and you can't see it. Strange since I KNOW the sky is up there someplace.
• I also forgot how much I love being in a city and just walking everywhere. Even in the cold temperature, I've loved walking everywhere all the time since I arrived. I've not set foot into a cab since I made it to my hotel and I'm loving it. I plan on doing the same thing tomorrow.
• So much I've forgotten since leaving Boston, and among the list the glory of a cold sunny day. I remembered that I liked these but I forgot just why and how they felt until today. Something about the seeming paradox of cold and sunny just really does it for me. (Note: possibly not a paradox to everyone but in Texas it is cold or sunny, rarely to never is it both.)
• A Starbucks on every corner. We have a lot in Texas but the walking city gives whole new meaning to "a lot."
• The sound of trains running regularly. I don't mean the train whistle like I could occasionally hear from my old Austin apartment, but the regular vibration and noise of a steady subway or commuter rail. I'm staying at a very comfortable hotel but being just about a block outside the heart of Times Square, the subway is present and is a pleasant reminder of the exciting, bustleing city all around me. I love the energy it suggests!
• AT&T blackhole. Very poor cell service apparently because the whole city has iPhones and the network can't handle this. I remember this happening in Austin...for one weekend, ACL. Not every day life. As Ross said, this can't be good for business.
• Seeing the scene outside my window as the back drop for multiple mainstream news shows, including Nightline which just came on my TV.

I think that covers random.

Now dinner with Alan.

My cousin Alan (from the Lowe side) lives here in NYC and works in the film industry. He's kinda a big deal; his name shows up in film credits. Since we don't see each other all that often, we made certain to grab dinner while I was in town and I was able to meet his mystery girlfriend, Alex. (I call Alex the mystery girlfriend because 5 years into their relationship I still had not met her but in fairness, she does live in NYC and I'm in Texas; kinda far. Further, Alan's parents swore she existed so perhaps I should have believed them.)

Alan met me near my hotel and led me through the NYC maze a few blocks to a swanky restaurant in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Yes, that's right, the Met, iconic NYC museum. The Modern was fa-ancy. Anthony Bourdain and the whole Top Chef crew would have been impressed. As you might guess, it was a very sleek modern decor, not too fussy, lots of straight clean lines.

The menu suggested ordering items from each of the menu's three pages but our trio decided something from two of the three pages would be sufficient.

Before I tell you about the magnificient food, let me tell you, Ross and I don't really do fine dining. We're your typical glutenous Americans and we like our plates heaping with mashed potatoes or dripping with cheesey enchiladas. However, we rarely finish the full meal when we're out so really, would probably be fine with the petite portions of fine dining. But all that said, the food at The Modern was magnificient but I can't resist commenting on the presentation.

My first course was a DELICIOUS wild mushroom soup with ravioli. The soup was rich but not necessarily thick, just dripping with flavor. The ravioli were fried which surprised me. I'm not sure if I was supposed to put them in the soup but the looked like they would taste off the charts good if submerged in mushroomy deliciousness. I was right. Funny element: I got three ravioli. Three. Who serves three ravioli when they are half dollar size? Stupendous restaurants like this do.

My second course was, in true Cheryl seafood loving fashion, the grilled scallops. They were brought out to me with a little garnish of spinach and cabbage. Um, yum. And then just as I'm devouring it with my eyes waiting for my fellow diners to be served their food, the waiter fills the (oversized with an comically large lip) bowl with...are you ready...fuschia puree.

Fuschia.

When have you ever had fuschia in your dinner? I never have but holy cow, I could do it again. It was outstanding! And I can't use any word besides fuschia to tell you how it tasted. That describes it perfectly.

Once done with my scallops (again, three), I was feeling fairly content in terms of food consumed and quite dandy overall in terms of quality of food. I start to wrap things up when Alex tells me that this place is known for it desserts and that of course dessert isn't even a question: we are having it.

I figure, what the hell, why stop with fuschia doused scallops, bring on the dessert. It's not every day that this Texan visits NYC. In that true spirit, I ordered the cheesecake.

My cheesecake with mango sorbet was delicious, interesting and citrusy. But what I wish I could share with you is Alan's dessert. I don't really know what it was but it included chocolate and caramel and was named Something Something "Dome." His personal tribute to the Astrodome. It was served on a white rectangular plate. Chocolate dome (literally) on one end, scoop of ice cream on the other and drops of chocolate syrup and squares of gelatin carefully dotting the middle. Dotting the plate. I thought you only saw that on Top Chef!

I took out my phone and took a picture.

Call me provincial but this fine dining experience just made me giddy with New York-ness. It was so outside of my normal every day lovely Austin life that it actually transported me into the chic urban environment that is the Big Apple. And it was FUN.

I had a great time, not only eating and giggling over perfect, thoughtful presentation, but also chatting with my cousin and getting to know his girldfriend. We talked about everything and nothing at all, vacations, work, parents, weather, etc. The normal chatter of people who know each other well-ish and are having a great two hour plus meal.

An excellent night out in the City indeed.

Our next 30 years

Tomorrow morning I am meeting with a financial planner from UBS. We're going to discuss all of mine and Ross' financial goals forever. You know I'm a planner. I love to plan. And I love to reach goals. And I really love to save money. So a plan to save money and reach our goals should be right up my alley.

And it is but it also sounds a little ridiculous. I mean at age 25 I'm going to set our goals for forever? Yes, yes apparently I am.

So what's on the list? Allow me to share

• Forever home
• Kids' college
• Ranch in West Texas
• Beach condo
• Self-sufficient retirement
• Not giving up everything else in life

We've talked about timing for most of these. The forever home will be in a couple years. I figured for kids' college (geez not even pregnant nor done with my own college expenses), if we do a little consistently for their whole lives, they'll have a nice little savings when they get there. Ross wants to buy the ranch in the next 5-10 years (specifically he'll tell you 7 years). Once we have the land we figure we can slowly build the house. And the deal is when we sell the forever home when we are old, I get to take that money and buy a beach condo. Oh yes, and we want to do all this without giving up the little things like weekend trips and dinner out.

I think we can do it...maybe...but it won't be easy. I'm hoping that the planner tomorrow will say "Y'all have ambitious goals but by being a little crazy and starting to work toward them now, you can do it."

Then our craziness will have paid off and I'll feel less crazy for trying to plan out the next 30+ years.

Snow: My Savior

Yesterday I had a pretty good day. After work, I ran to do some quick Target shopping. On the way home from that, I was talking to my hubby about our Friday night plans when he said nothing too crazy, he had that thing all day Saturday. I laughed and told him that thing, as in baby Blake's first birthday party, didn't start until 3 p.m.

BAM - he did not mean the baby's birthday. He meant another day of umpire training. All day.

First, I was bummed because I had just bought the baby's present and was now going to go to the party alone. Total suck. Then I was double bummed because he works Sunday and I leave for NYC on Monday. And then I was down-in-the-dumps, grouchy, triple quadruple times a million bummed because I realized how long it would be until we were both home again.

14 days.

That's right, we were looking down the tunnel of 14 days without one of being in the same place and awake for more than 4 straight hours. DEPRESSING. So much so that I poured a glass of wine and called my girlfriends. Lucky for me when I talked to Nichole she was at my exit so came over to share the wine and whine.

Fast forward to 7 a.m.

Coming in from a run in the snowy yard

SNOW. Glorious glorious snow. And glorious email from HR saying the office won't open until 10. Followed by even more glorious emails from my whole team declaring it a work from home day. We're all good Texans and know we don't know how to drive in snow. No reason to risk lives.

Hubby gets home and says its a darn good thing that everyone declared a work from home day because he sees scary accidents and loves me and I wasn't leaving the house today to drive no matter what anyone said. So there.

I can't tell you how happy this all made me. Yes, I worked for the vast majority of the day (confession to coworkers: I did take a kinda lengthy lunch that included a shower and cooking of actual food, and I might still be wearing PJs [yes I put them back on after my shower; I saw no reason not to]) but it was so nice that even if I was working, hubby was just in the other room. We had lunch together and all my water breaks included a smooch.

It's been exactly the break in the long stretch of conflicting work schedules that I needed. I'm so thankful for my reasonable and flexible job....and for snow.

Fiery Red

At work recently I did a personality test. It was really hard. For each question there were four pairs of words, you had to rank the pairs as most like you, least like you and in the middle on a scale of one to five.

Anyways, today we got back the results and I am Fiery Red. As is probably no surprise to any of you, this means I'm results-driven, possibly a little controlling, task-oriented and fast-paced. My motto, according to the test, is "Do it now."

The results were frighteningly and brutally accurate, from my strengths to my weaknesses, especially the ones I know I have and am frustrated that I have. (I mean nobody wants to admit being a bad listener right? But I probably talk too much to qualify as a good listener.)

The funniest part was in the "weaknesses" category it literally said...are you ready?

It said should not go into china stores.

Uh hello, random. But agreed, I'm sure I'd break everything in sight.

Now back to the "Do it now" motto. I knew it was true from the get-go but just now Ross and I had a classic example of it.

The ceiling light in my room isn't working. We thought it was just the bulb but that doesn't appear to be it. It's been out for a few days and with the short winter days and lack of natural light, it's driving me crazy. I come home from the gym tonight and tell Ross my plan of action (which includes an upgrade to the lighting and thus, $$). He asks questions. I answer questions. He explains that X part of my plan isn't optimal. We go round and round and round. We're both getting a little frustrated at this point. Ross says let's deal with it later. I say "no, now."

Hello, my name is Cheryl but you can just call me Impatient.

I have to admit, it was the classic example. I hate putting off decisions. It just means I have to think about them again later. They loom over me. Ross is not this way. I work through a decision quickly and vocally. He works through decisions a little slower (as in he prefers more than two minutes) and mulls over the options in his head. I suppose they both have their benefits and drawbacks. I get things done but I don't always take the time to think through everything, even on simple things. Ross thinks through all the options but incurs decision-making jet lag.

I mostly enjoyed the personality test we did at work and have to laugh at its amazing accuracy. I wish we had access to it for Ross. I'd like to see where on the color wheel he is in relation to my Fiery Red. And if he's allowed to go into china stores.