Papapapapapoker face papapapapapoker face

I reckon that only Sarah Root can hear me singing the title of this blogpost - hehe.  The line is from the song (that is surprisingly called) Poker Face by Lady Gaga. She's a good mood elevator especially cranked loud at 6 in the morning :) My roommates are out of town so why not!

What is cooler, though, is that I am going to The Lady Gaga concert on Monday at House of Blues with Gail. I meannnn it's a pretty big deal. Aside from getting married, it'll be the highlight of 2009. HAHA :) 

These next few days are what your early 20s are meant for. 24 is still early 20's right? haha. So let's drum roll my schedule for the next five days... drrrrrrrr (thanks for the spelling of a drumroll Christian):

Thurs Mar 26 (tonight): Dinner at Bacco in N. End for Kayte's bday where the pasta and red wine will pour like waterfalls. Cherry cherry boom boom.

Fri Mar 27: Running Castle Island 2x with the prettiest house music lover I know - Sarah Root. Then making dinner with a bottle (or two) of wine for Steph and anyone else who cares to join. Let's have some fun this beat is sick.

Sat Mar 28: Oral Surgeon consultation appointment at 9:45 then driving to Long Island to go to Pickle's gala that she organized for the Health & Literacy Foundation. Just dance.

Sun Mar 29: More LI fun with Dee Dee Pickles and Seb too! Driving back to Boston at some point. Groove, slam, work it back, filter that, baby bump that track.

Mon Mar 30: dheofh&#^$*@!:\jdhd LADY GAGA CONCERT!!!! I love this record baby but I can't see straight anymore. 

Tues Mar 31: Year end celebrations with all my coworkers at Kitty O'Shea's. We just like to party, like papaparty year bang bang we're beautiful and dirty rich.

Okay well I'll let you know on Wednesday whether or not I've survived! Oh and I think I have to run some miles within there as well.  Definitely will be a feat in itself! And baby when it's love if it's not rough it isn't fun.

This post is creative.  Too bad only Gail and Sarah will "get it".  :)  

Wooooooooooooot!

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happy days - i've been promoted!

I am now writing to you as a Senior Web Marketing Specialist at Experian QAS and I couldn't be more excited about it!! I had my annual review on Friday and (if you can't already tell) it went really well. All my hard work has paid off and now there is only more hard work to do ahead and I LOVE it!

I will still keep most of my present responsibilities but in addition I have sole control/management of our Canadian site with a revenue target and even my own budget. It's really exciting because we haven't put as much effort into the Canadian site over the past year so in my eyes there is nowhere to go but up! :)  I am thrilled by this new challenge. I am now held against search engine driven lead targets to the US site as well. Hoping to knock the numbers out of the park but it'll take hard work.

Needless to say I will have PLENTY to keep me busy before Christian gets here. I actually wanted to start working right away and work over the weekend but unfortunately I had to work at the bar this weekend and it tuckered me out a bit. That will now happen less and less I hope.

I spent Sunday Funday with Gail and Kayte - I made (with Kayte's culinary extraordinaire help) whole grain blueberry/choc chip pancakes and a egg white scramble with spinach and feta. Yummm. We took a team trip - I say team trip because I seem to remember some team cheering on our walk - to Awesome Nails. Kayte had an awesome experience with an awesome manicure. Gail and I, on the other hand, had our arms nearly pulled out of their sockets and received less than mediocre manicures. Oh well :)

Friday Kayte turns 27 - her golden birthday! A big group of us are going out on Thur night for dinner in the North End. Mmmmm Italian food!! Should be good fun!

If you were looking for a status update on my legs just know that they are still attached to my body but are hating me more and more by the day.  They're counting down the days until the half marathon is over! ;)

That's all for now! 

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happy spring!

I haven't blogged in awhile, apologies.  It's been a hectic week coming back to work.  My boss was out of town as well so that just meant even more work for me.  Not so bad to be so busy after leaving Denmark, though.  Makes the time pass quicker.

I got a good distance run in on Wednesday after work with Gail. The weather was SO nice.  Perfect, I dare say.  A little windy running on the Charles leg of the run but not too bad.  I am glad day light savings has gone into effect!  Today marks the first official day of spring!  Too bad it's so cold in Boston today.

Yesterday we had a potluck lunch at work with my department (clearly I own it, haha jk) and the finance department.  I made "Danish" meatballs - Frikadeller.  Too bad they were more like Tanzanian meatballs.  They did not come out as hoped.  I couldn't find ground pork (half of the main ingredient in Frikadeller) anywhere in the store.  Then my breadcrumbs were seasoned, which they shouldn't have been.  Oh well, some people said the really liked them.  Maybe they were just being nice.

I'm going to pull a Kayte here and give you a recipe.  Christian makes these best but he never measures anything.  Based on my recent experience I urge you not to do the same - I think you have to be a Danish citizen to get the precise feel for the amount of ingredients without measuring.

Frikadeller (the word sounds as cool as the food!):

Ingredients:

1/2 lb Ground Veal/Beef

1/2 lb Ground Pork

1 small to medium Onion finely chopped

1 1/2 cup milk

2 tb flour

1 cup bread crumbs (plain duhhh)

1 egg

S & P to taste

Instructions:

Ready for this?  Mix all of the above REALLY well with your hands (you know you love that squishy feeling...)

Warm a pan with a little bit of oil/butter in it.  Use a tablespoon (the kind that you'd see in your silverware drawer, not the actual measuring one) to spoon oval shaped (spoon shaped) balls of the meat mixture.  Fry the meatballs on each side until cooked all the way through. 

Typically served with potatoes and red cabbage and some gravy.  Though, Christian and I serve it with Tzatziki - YUM!

Voila!  

What do you think?

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back stateside

I wrote some of this as I was flying home and some on the T to work this morning.  :)

I'm am really sad to have left Christian. You'd think that after seven years of saying goodbye I'd be used to it, but unfortunately it's a hard thing to get used to.

The great things about my trip in no particular order:

• Not getting out of bed before 10 am on any given day
  
• Drinking red wine every night
  
• Home cooked meals prepared by chr's mom, chr's dad anddd chr's grandma
  
• Waking up next to Christian every morning
  
• Running outside in the forest, around the lake and around the castle
  
• Tubs of Ben & Jerry's
  
• Did I mention yummy food?

No, as you can see I had a really relaxing time spent enjoying time with Christian & his family. Hoping our runs every other day prevented me from gaining 20 pounds, haha. Hmmm. This week will be fun - missing Christian and starving myself! ;)

Let me also quickly explain to you how much I abhor the Icelandic language. The author of the book I'm reading right now, Eric Weiner, described the sound of Icelandic perfectly, "like seals barking." OMG! It didn't help that the seal flight attendants were miserable individuals, either. Though with their country collapsing more and more each day who can really blame them.

I know everyone is really anxious to hear a wedding update. I cannot give you an official date but can tell you that we're aiming for the 2nd weekend in September. It may be earlier, it may be later but I won't know until April timeframe. So vague, I know. I hope you all appreciate my (slightly Type A) personality and know that this is highly frustrating to me. So as soon as I know, you'll know.

In terms of what it will look like - well I have three loving aunts that have offered their yards. Once we have a date we'll go from there. If the date has to be later than the 2nd weekend in Sept (I will jump) it will probably have to be inside and we'll have to work it out.

Once again, I TRULY appreciate all your support and patience throughout this process. We are trying our best to find a plan that gives us what we want but what we need, as well. Bear with Mr & Mrs Type B and Type A (respectively). :)

Until then I am burying myself in work, training for the half and trying my best to keep optimistic. Also trying not to die along the way (mostly per my second point above). As always, I will keep you posted.

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live and direct from denmark

So turns out that while my spoken danish is a little rusty my Scandinavian looks are still strong.

On my flight from Iceland to Denmark I sat in an exit row and received the low down on my responsibilities all in Icelandic. I just nodded. I also was next to an Icelandic giant whose arm was touching me at all times. I almost tweaked but went into the brace position and fell asleep for 90 percent of the flight. 

All in all I slept like 6 hours on my way over here (including 30 mins in Reykjavik airport like a bum gaurding all his belongings). So I was pretty proud of myself.  Advil PM did the trick.

The first thing we did when I got here was go see Hans (Christian's best friend) and Malene's baby, Nicholas (left).  Nicholas is now nearly a month old and is such a precious PEANUT!!  So cute, even though he cried when I held him the first time.  He warmed up to me and promptly passed out in my arms, which of course I loved!!

Today we went to brunch at Christian's dad's restaurant and ate delicious European cheeses and cured ham and crepes... yummm.  We went to momma duke's house next and decided to have a family fitness afternoon, haha.  Or so I deemed it.  Christian and I went for a run to the lake (right) and around and back while his mom and brother took a walk.  It was raining all morning but cleared up in the afternoon; I'm so glad I got myself to get 30 minutes of running in afterall.

I picked up a book in the airport called The Geography of Bliss.  Because I was like a drunk homeless person flying over here I didn't read much of it yet.  Read a few pages last night and it seems really interesting.  It's kind of an epilouge of a writer in search of all the happiest places/cultures in the world.  I'll keep you posted should it continue to keep me interested. :)

Tomorrow I am running around the Queen of Denmark's summer castle (left), which also happens to be where the Crown Prince of Denmark lives with his gorgeous wife and two beautiful little boys.  I am, of course, determined to "run into" (maybe not literally) any of these family members.  I will let you know how it goes.

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i miss megan focaccia

Well it has been an interesting couple days at work. This post is dedicated to Megan Focaccia (haha). Sooo Megan no longer works with me at Experian QAS and I think I may have took it harsher than she did.  We had a date last night at Sonsie and like 3 espresso martini's (best I've ever found in Boston) and 4 glasses of red later - I'm at work without her and she's sleeping off the dehydration. ;)

Megan and I have, however, registered officially for our first half marathon. Boston's Run to Remember on Sunday, May 24th. Unfortunately you are not invited to watch us (me) sweat and die. Instead, you are permitted to arrange an after party that involves things like margaritas, nachos, cheeseburgers, pizza and funfetti cupcakes. HAHA I solely run to be able to eat whatever it is I want afterwards!!! ;) JK

I leave for Denmark tomorrow woop woop. The weather doesn't look particularly enticing or conducive for outdoor running which I'm a little nervous about but hopefully my loving, supportive fiance will lock me out of the house until I run my miles :)

So I LOVE that I got more than two votes (forced both my coworkers to vote in front of me - RIP Megan) on wedding options!! I somehow wish I could figure out who voted what, haha. It's a pretty even split if I do say so myself... hmmm will let you know what we come up with.

I would like to tell you that I now refer to the wedding as "our hippy wedding" and have decided flipflops will be worn!!! The more and more I think about it the more and more excited I get because this new wedding revamp is SO much more my style. Did I love the idea of a castle wedding? Of course. But is it truly me? Not really.

This is about me and Christian and this wedding is for me and Christian, nobody else. Obviously we want to share our joy and love with everyone but it by no means has to run us flat broke in the end.

Ohhh yay planning our little hippy wedding is so much fun in my head all day. Can hardly wipe the smile off my face to concentrate on real work!!! :) :) :)

...it would also appear in rereading this post I didn't take tylenol this morning but happy pills by mistake? haha

so here's the plan...

First and foremost I apologize for not blogging in awhile or getting a wedding update to you sooner. As most of you know, plans have changed!

I had two different draft posts sitting around all week but decided against posting both of them for various reasons. Regarding immigrations its best I bite my tongue.

I can tell you that if we did go ahead and get married in Denmark on July 4th, Christian wouldn't be able to travel to the US until his green card application went through which takes 12-14 months. No way to start a marriage if you ask me!!

We are still getting married this summer but it will be here in the US and it will be a quite small celebration. Details yet to be confirmed. Christian will have to wait a total of 5 months or so before he'll be able to work in the US and/or travel back to Denmark.

Needless to say it'll be an interesting first year together but I have no doubts that we'll persevere. I do know that I need a pay raise! ;) Hopefully that will happen making things slightly easier those five months.

I do want to thank everyone for all their love and support. It has meant the world to me. I gained such valuable insight from those who I look up to the most. Thank you Aunt Angela and Sarah - my guardian angels it would seem sometimes. You both, amongst others, helped me see things from a fresher perspective and find a silver lining.

So now its your turn to help me with what a small low key wedding in Pennsylvania looks like. I am thinking it will be some kind of Justice of the Peace ceremony but perhaps not exactly city hall. Then just a small gathering of family and close friends.

Anyway, thanks again to everyone for their patience and understanding. Love you all!

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