It’s been a good week. In a nutshell…

• On Monday, one of our new people started at work, and we spent much of the week training her. She’s wonderful, and I think she’ll be a great addition to our group.
• On Tuesday, we spent Girls Night by watching an oldie but goodie, So I Married an Axe Murderer. Best line from a movie ever: “Hard-hearted harbinger of haggis.”
• On Wednesday, the team at work went out to celebrate the arrival of our newest member. It was a nice meal out at Firebird (which I hadn’t been to in ages), and we spent much of the time talking about books, movies, and TV shows we loved and hated.
• On Thursday, I worked from home and got a massive amount of work done. Stuff had been piling up because I’d been spending so much time training the new girl, so it was good to knock out a few of these outstanding projects. I also drank copious amounts of mango ice tea from Caribou Coffee.
• On Friday, there were lots of birthday celebrations.
• On Saturday, my neighbor, Natalie, and I attended the 2nd-ever knit-in at the Crabtree Valley Mall food court. A bunch of us met up for WWKIP day there and realized that many of us prefer Saturday meetups. Thus, this food court scheme was planned, and this weekend, was executed. A good time was had by all, except when the sun kept creeping out through the skylights and shining down on us at the table. It was bright and hot. Ew. I don’t do sun. I also visited with some old friends later that evening. We played 500 rummy. At the point that I won, I was up 400 points over Eva and 480 points over Thomas. I rock.
• Which brings us to today… Sunday… in which nothing has happened, because it’s too damn hot.

The highlight of the week was, of course, my birthday. On Friday, I turned 27. It’s really rather disconcerting, mostly because I don’t feel 27. Not that I’m exactly sure how old I do feel, but still… Of course, people at work kept asking me how I felt now that I was 23… And I think only a few of those making the comment meant it as a jab.

The day started off nicely, as I woke up to receive this gem in my inbox:

Then, when I got to work, I found that my co-worker, Jenny, had brought me a beautiful pillar candle and stand, as well as a ginormous, decadent chocolate cake. We all went out to lunch. (And everyone fought over who was going to purchase my meal… I gave up trying to convince them it wasn’t necessary and let them sort it out amongst themselves. My boss eventually won.)

That evening, my friends Hans and Laura threw a small party for me at their place, where we had a wonderful home-cooked meal and played several rounds of Scattergories. Hans made an especially wonderful dessert – a Mexican chocolate bread pudding, which blends chocolate with a bunch of spices, including cayenne pepper. So good. And so rich. For a little while there, I thought between the rich chocolate cake after lunch and the rich chocolate bread pudding after dinner, I wouldn’t want anything chocolate again for quite a while. By Saturday, though, I had collected myself, remembered who I was, and happily finished off the last piece of chocolate cake.

Hans and Laura, who are always put so much thought into what gifts to give, presented me with a really beautiful new bag:

They new that I’m always searching high and low for the perfect new purse, and so they wandered around Etsy until they found one they thought I would like. And they chose well! It’s wonderful!

My friends Thomas and Eva also got me a very Liz-appropriate birthday gift - a pair of lime green coffee mugs!

In other news, I’ve been mostly taking it easy this summer. I’ve done a lot of reading, and I’ve been trying to keep up with logging and reviewing what I’ve read over on GoodReads.com. I’ve been reading like a mad-woman lately, and on Saturday, I dropped just under $100 on some new books. If you scroll down and look at the bottom of the sidebar on the blog, you’ll see a new plugin I’ve added that shows the books I’ve read most recently. I was tickled when I found that feature. :)

I also worked on updating Dad’s website, BJBass.com. It was in need of some revamping and updating, and so I played around with it and got it set up with WordPress as the back-end. Hopefully that will help him to keep it updated more easily.

I also finally got around to booking a room in Asheville for the end of August, when friends Dina and Chad are getting married. I had initially planned on just booking a hotel room somewhere in town, since even though B&Bs are so popular there, they’re also quite a bit more expensive. How wrong I was! Even the Hampton Inn and other hotels were in the $140-200/night range, so I figured I might as well book at a B&B, where I’d at least get an awesome breakfast included in the cost. I ended up chosing the Asheville Seasons Bed & Breakfast, and booked their smallest room, Endless Summer. It’s cute, it’s green, and they include a $10/night discount for single occupancy, something most places didn’t offer. Seems only fair to me, since I won’t be eating two breakfasts, I shouldn’t have to pay for two. Right? And this place got really great reviews every place I looked. Hopefully it’ll live up to the hype! They seemed really friendly when I called to book the room.

Anyway, that’s about it from here. I had hoped to make today a productive one, but it’s way too damn hot outside, and this heat makes me lethargic. All I want to do is curl up with a book, so I think that’s probably what I’m going to end up doing. You know, now that there’s not any shortage of new books in the house. :)