The Ritz Carlton Chicago

During the last week in February I worked an event for the Firm.  This was held at the Ritz Carlton downtown.  I haven’t been there in years, but the conference center was perfect for our guests.  The crystal ceiling chandeliers added a classy touch.  Everyone enjoyed themselves!  I stayed out as late as I could, but eventually I needed to go home.  I’m glad everything went smoothly!

A Harmonica Hoedown!

Trying to recap my February events since March is already flying by.  I can’t believe it’s the First Day of Spring!  We barely made it to 40 degrees but it’s a start to the right direction.  I’m tired of being cold and I do not want to be sick again.

For the most part, February was low key for me.  For this year’s Valentine’s Day-gift-to-myself I purchased another Valentino pendant to go with my gold necklace.  I lucked out with my first initial!

My friend wanted to meet up with me since we haven’t caught up with one another this year so far.  She wanted to see her co-worker perform in his band at the northside bar called Martyrs’.  His band was an all harmonica ensemble and this was a Harmonica Hoedown!  They were very good and the people loved it!  Afterwards, we caught up with her friend and heard how he got involved with the band.  It was a lovely evening indeed!

Chinatown Brunch

Hello everybody!  I’ve been having a hard time sharing my blog posts to my Google account.  Apparently they are eliminating some feature and I have a feeling it’s the one where I can share on multiple platforms.  Regardless, I’m going to do my best to tweet my posts and hope people follow me on there as well. 

A lot has been going on, but needless to say, it’s been a bumpy road.  My bedroom still has the bad odor coming from my closet wall.  Back in January it slowly faded away, but then came back late February after a bad snow fall.  My landlord was advised and he checked out the strong stench.  

The odor does go away after 2 weeks, but depending on the weather, it came back again for the 3^rdtime.  With Spring showers coming ahead soon, I am worried I will be forced to leave my beloved apartment of close to 10 years.

What made things more frustrating is that I booked another trip before the 2^ndoverwhelming stench episode.  At that time the smell from January had gone away and I thought it was a one-time deal.  I figured maybe it was a dead rodent caught inside my wall.  My mother had warned me though that if the smell returned it was most likely sitting water.  Any who, now that I booked my trip I have to take my landlord’s word and see if he will have a roofer take a look at it.  If things don’t work out I will have to figure out my next move. 

I booked a trip to Paris and then I am going to meet up with my friend and her family in Istanbul.  It was a spur of the moment thing, and I’m very scared/ excited about it.  Lol.  The recent news of plane crashes has not helped with my nerves.

I was doing pretty well laying low this winter.  I got a chance to save some money and pay down the balance of my cards.  That’s when I rewarded myself with my trip.  Traveling is what I rather do anyways, and I felt good about keeping up with my finances. 

Back in February, my friend invited me to join her family to brunch after church.  We all headed down to Chinatown the weekend after the big Chinese New Year celebration.  We were surprised there were still festivities going on.  It felt good catching up with everyone.  This winter was a long one for us!

The Age Of Aquarius

I’m not going to lie.  January was a long month, and winter is not giving up anytime soon.  I’m having travel withdrawals.  I basically stayed in the living for a couple of weeks while my bedroom aired out.  At first I didn’t mind because my room doesn’t warm up as much as the rest of the apartment.  Chicago had some frigid temperatures.  I was fine sleeping on the couch as long as I was cozy.  But I DID miss my bed.  

I have also been determined to build my savings.  I did some overtime for work, and that felt good as well.  I just want to save some money before I book something.  I’m getting the travel itch BIG TIME.

Towards the end of January, our friend from Michigan was in town to celebrate her birthday.  It was going to snow a lot that day, and luckily me and my friend  got to the suburbs in good time.  We were one of the first ones there.  Other people showed up little by little and our party grew bigger.  There are so many changes coming up for everyone.  I’m curious where this year will take us…

New Year’s Eve 2018

I am recapping New Year’s Eve.  I knew offhand I wanted to do something low key.  I have over the years gone to:  hotel parties, clubs, bars, celebrated in Miami, went to crowded house parties, you name it.  And I’ve had a blast.  But due to the high volume of work parties, birthday parties, celebrations and get-togethers I’ve experienced over the past 3 months, I was too burnt out to do anything big.  I was relieved my aunt (who will be retiring soon) wanted to host New Year’s Eve at her place with my uncle.  Since they will be relocating out of the country, I knew this might be one of our last get-togethers at their place.  I said yes.

I did my yearly ritual of walking around the block with a packed suitcase to promote more travels this upcoming year.  I know it sounds crazy, but I did not want to miss out on any opportunity not to book something.  I just want the universe to see that I’m serious!  Lol.  I also stuffed my pockets of my sequin blazer with euros and U.S dollars to promote wealth throughout the year.  At dinner I carefully ate my 12 grapes to promote luck, and felt good about not missing anything important.

The ONE THING that did make me nervous was that I did some cleaning around the apartment.  I’ve read two sides to this, one that you SHOULD have a clean apartment to bring in the new year, but the other debate said not to because you might accidently lose something since you are in the process of “getting rid” of stuff.  Who knows?

I had a lovely evening with my family (much better than Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve).  Maybe because we were sharing stories with my aunt and uncle who were in Mexico during the holidays.  I brought some party favors and they were a hit.  I’m glad everyone was happy. 

Aprés le noël soirée

Since the holidays fell on Monday and Tuesday, work resumed that Wednesday.  It was nice having a 3 day work-week.  My brother out of the blue texted me that my Dad’s wife wanted us to come over for dinner.  It wasn’t expected, but I figured I should go because I wanted to see my Dad.  Well it turns out that he wasn’t going to be at the dinner.  I was upset at first.  I had other errands to run and I made the exception on the hopes of seeing my father.  The next day I thought about it some more.  I told my brother in the future, I wouldn’t mind having dinner with my Dad’s wife but I couldn’t guarantee that I could make it to every one of them.  Sometimes the internal dynamics of blended-families gets complicated because you are not aware of who you should be devoted to.  It leaves me and my brothers confused and we sometimes hurt people’s feelings trying to figure out what to do.

That Friday I had dinner plans with my friend who was in town.  She was trying to get a group together and settled on Café Con Leche restaurant in Logan Square.  Some of her friends that showed up use to work together at a retail store that is no longer around anymore.  It seems that my friend was having a blast seeing everyone.  I need to visit her out at the East coast one of these days.

Christmas Eve 2018

I’m FINALLY posting about the holidays!  Lol.  Since I’ve been laying low so far in January, I think I should be able to catch up to January posts much sooner.  Lately I’ve been reading a book about French culture and I am intrigued!  I’m hoping to finish some chapters this weekend.  I didn’t realize MLK holiday was this upcoming Monday, so this would be a perfect opportunity to do that.  This book has made me realize that I’ve been missing out on some of my travel experiences.  For the most part, I’ve traveled to get things off my bucket list.  But I’ve noticed when I come back home, I feel that I had a void that I couldn’t figure out.  Once you encounter a new place, it becomes something bigger than you!  The good news:  you get to enrich your life with new experiences.  Reading about France and French culture has made me want to go back and venture out to other regions.  After all, France is about the same size as Texas! 

Back on Christmas Eve, I watched what I ate throughout the day because I knew I was going to have a feast later on.  My brother and mother came to pick me up, and we rode off to my aunt’s place.  My mom made a dish as well.  I felt bad because my aunt and her family were rushing a bit, but it was ok since we knew we were going to have a long night ahead of us.  Unfortunately, some of our family members were out of town, but we made the most of our little group.  It was nice seeing my cousins open up their gifts.