Since Montreal....

Here are some things that have been keeping me busy since returning from Montreal:

- 20 @ 20 with Mindy! The last two weeks of January were when you could get $20 tickets to Off-Broadway shows 20 minutes before they start. We went to see Mike Birbiglia’s "Sleepwalk with Me". I have seen him do stand-up twice since I moved to NYC and I think he is SO funny, yet not too raunchy or too silly like many comedians. Birbiglia has been on a LOT of TV shows lately promoting this…The View, Conan, etc…. so you may have seen him! It is produced by Nathan Lane, so I’m sure this whole experience has been huge for him. Anyway, I was under the impression that "Sleepwalk with Me" was a play, but it was really more like any stand-up act. I loved it though – SO funny!!

- Restaurant Week. Winter Restaurant Week was officially the last 2 weeks of January, but has been extended through February (thank you, recession…no sarcasm this time!). I was in Montreal for most of the "official" 2 weeks, but Lucy and I and her co-worker did make it to Vong for dinner one night. She picked it….her chef brother had recommended it. I read reviews and got a little worried, but it actually ended up being really good. We all got lamb for our entrée - it came in this delicious sauce and with a bunch of fresh veggies…it was amazing! Vong is owned by the same people who own Spice Market, which is amazing, and some other pretty prestigious restaurants here and in Chicago and beyond. Over the next 2 weeks, I have reservations to hit-up Kittichai and Le Cirque…2 restaurants I’ve been dying to go to the past couple of restaurant weeks!!

- Super Bowl Party! What a great game! I decided to cheer for the Cardinals since I’ve always been a fan of Kurt Warner. Although they lost, having a team to cheer for sure made it more fun to watch! I went to my friend Lynn’s apartment to watch the game. She is in my book club and she and her husband moved here around August from Houston. So, it was mainly girls from book club and then a guy Lynn’s husband works with. She lives on the Upper West Side and it was so nice to just be able to walk over from my apartment. She and her husband live in a great building…it felt so new and fresh! And apparently Lisa Kudrow hangs out there because she has a good friend who lives there. We had a lot of fun and great food, of course! Since we’re all from Texas, we went with a Tex-Mex theme and it was delicious! We had queso, guacamole, and fajitas. Tex-Mex is best in NYC when we make it ourselves! I brought Cake Bites for dessert and they were, once again, a huge hit. I took the leftovers to work the next day and people went nuts! I really need to start a business here – they are still such a novelty!

- Discipleship & the Corporate World Seminar. My pastor put on a great seminar about bringing Christ into your workplace. He rounded up some Christian speakers from across the US who hold high positions at some very well-known companies. It was a great seminar! I helped out, so it was a full-day affair for me, but I enjoyed it very much!

- Joy’s birthday party. Danise hosted a birthday party for Joy and we all brought appetizers and Danise made a cake. It was fun and I got to catch-up with a few people I hadn’t seen in ages.

- Church dinner. Occasionally, my church will invite everyone who attends the evening service to go out to dinner afterwards. We go to this pub around the corner called “Shades of Green”. It’s convenient to church, the waitress is really nice, and it has a great back room we can take over. I went with the group this past Sunday and it was fun. I had yummy soup and salad. There were a ton of people there I had never seen before. It’s weird, but this is the service I used to feel like I knew most people at, but lately I’ve been going in the morning more and more and I definitely seem to know way more people there now!

-FRAUD. Things got exciting at work when we encountered some fraud. This has been the 3rd time I've seen fraud occur at companies I've worked at and I love it!! I really need to be a detective or FBI agent or something. We don't think this is an inside job, but someone who did have access to one of our checks, as they printed who knows how many checks with our information on it. Because of a previous incident, we have protection on our accounts, so the money would never actually come out without our permission. It was still exciting. We have received many phone calls from check cashing places or banks that had a person there trying to cash a check from us that looked suspect. These places called us to verify the authenticity of the checks and gave us information about the person trying to cash the check....some of them faxed us copies of the checks and even the persons ID. I was all over google and actually found pictures and detailed information about some of them - my co-workers were all huddled around my computer laughing at me. It was fun! We have since found out that it is some "Mystery Shopper" scam. The people cashing the checks were really the victims, not the criminals.