Boys, Professional Life, Travel

Back from Vegas

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OK so I’m long back from Vegas and of course I haven’t had the time (or didn’t want to take the time) to update my little diary here.
Vegas started out with a very stressful day here at work but oh well. Had to pick up some last minute things from a big home-improvement store local to the area so by the time I got back home I had to drive to the airport instead of waiting or a cab. It’s a good thing I only live 15 minutes away from it. In fact that is sooooooo convenient, it almost feels like going to the train station in Germany. The flight was good and after checking into the hotel I met with my two co-workers and one of them was nice enough to walk the strip with me since I didn’t feel like standing around a casino. We walked all the way to the Mandalay Bay from the Imperial Palace and back (must have been like 6km in total). So nice! I was very impressed with all the nice hotels in Vegas!
The trade show was fantastic, too. I had such a good time talking to people and explaining our product to them. I love love love my job. I helped generating a lot of leads and it was just a very nice experience. The best thing though was all the good food. My colleagues must think I’m some sort of crazy person as I kept talking about food and demanded to eat all the time. We ate at the Venetian twice, then at Caesar’s Palace, and at the buffets at Paris and the Bellagio. Soooo yummy. I think I gained about 10pounds ;-). Luckily I did a lot of walking around though so that got it down to like 9 ;-).
I also really enjoyed all the free entertainment like the fountains in front of the Bellagio or the volcano at The Mirage but the best were all the nice hotels. Yeah, of course everything in Vegas is fake but I expected it and the only things that bugged me were the guys handing out all these cards for call girls and the fact that you had to walk through the casinos all the time to get to your hotel room, which made my eyes water. Though the newer hotels were much better with their air filtration.
The flight back was good and somewhat short and once I got back here I headed straight to Chadi’s birthday party. Great food at Luce’s and then a night of fun at HOM until 3:30. Afterwards 4 of us went back to my place for some wine and loads of laughter and at 6 I finally went to bed. What a fun party.
In the afternoon we went to brunch and then just hung out at Chadi’s and chilled, ate some cake and watched the superbowl. I was so happy that the Giants won. Yay!
The week so far has been really busy, too. Loads of stuff to do at work. I stayed until 8pm the other day because I had to finish something but luckily I love love love my job. I feel really quesy about the new visa. Ugh. Not good. I am just sooo worried because I sooooo love my job and Charlotte and I can’t picture myself in a German company where everyone is like Herr Mueller, Frau Meyer…. Yikes!
So Monday I was over at Vanessa’s place and she cooked the best risotto ever. Soooo good! Tuesday I cooked, which in itself is worth mentioning in my blog as I rarely do that…, not sure what I did yesterday, prolly just relaxing, and then today I had sushi with a nice guy. Tomorrow is dinner with Stefan and let’s see whatelse the weekend will bring. I feel like I have a cold coming on – yikes!

Night night people! I miss y’all!

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Culture, Friends, Professional Life, USA, Visitors, Weather

Snow!

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Yes that’s right, we got some snow this week! It only lasted 15 hours but it was fun while it lasted. I hope that was all of winter for me this year but I think the forecast said snow for tomorrow and temperatures on Sunday from -10 – 2C. Fun – NOT! I can’t quite believe that it’ll be that cold but we’ll see.

So anyway, Rich and I had a great weekend here in the Queen City. After a yummy dinner with Stefan at Fiamma’s (service took forever but the food was good) I picked Rich up at the airport and we spend the night chatting and catching up. Good times! To make his trip worth wile, we did a touristy thing on Saturday and checked out Historic Latta Plantation. It was actually really nice with a civil war winter camp enactment and we enjoyed the sunshine out at their lake (yes it was still nice and warm then). A huge pasta lunch warmed us up at home again and then we relaxed some before it was time to head out again. We took the light rail (so cool) to uptown and watched the Bobcats lose against the Detroit Pistons. The game was well worth the 15$ tickets we got but unfortunately the cats lost in the very last minute. :(. But we had fun and continued to Fuel Pizza for dinner and then met up with Giorgio and some other people at Feast and then went to HOM where we danced the night away. Max was in town and he was super nice and dropped us off at home after closing time.
Sunday we strolled through my neighborhood for a long time with quick stops to grocery shop and grad a coffee. It felt so European to haul around groceries and walk around on side walks. Haha. At home we watched The Man of Aran, which our tour guide on the Aran Islands had talked about in Ireland. Interesting movie… Sushi at Ru Sans was a nice grand finale for a great weekend and it was sad to drop of Richie at the airport on Monday.

This week has been good so far. Cooked and watched National Treasure with Giorgio and then went to P.F. Chang’s with Vanessa and there should be more fun coming my way this weekend.

Work is going well. I love the combination of all that creative marketing stuff with the technical machine stuff and I’m learning so much. And good news, my boss wants me to stick around after my internship (yay)so it’s back to working on visa crap. Yugh! So seeing that I might be here for a few more years (let’s hope) I did some credit history building today and opened a savings account as well as applied for a credit card. Not too sure that they’ll give it to me but the lady insisted that we try that first before getting a secured credit card. OK then. What with my student ID good until March that might actually work. We’ll see.

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Boys, Friends, Professional Life, USA

What I’ve been up to

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So I was bitching about some of the groceries here so let me just mention that Daisy Sour Cream is really good. I usually don’t like sour cream just like that and only eat it in baked potatoes but Daisy’s tastes like German Schmand and doesn’t have that bitter after taste or that texture that makes you think baking soda is in it. So, yay! Having said that, I cooked twice so far this year, which is still pretty bad (2x in 10 days) but much more than this past month so I’m happy. I missed it! Can you believe that?! I had to cook almost every bloody day at home but I’ve really started to miss it. So I made asparagus with ham and potatoes the other day and tonight I had garlic shrimp pasta with fresh tomatoes and sour cream. Yummy!

Work has been going well. I saved the company some money by changing a booth at a trade show and designed some flyers. I was very shocked when my boss who normally doesn’t really give praise wrote “good job” and my other boss said “good job you can go home early”. Normally they don’t say anything or just a short “cool” so I was very happy. Timing is good for their outcries of praise because we need to discuss my next visa. Yikes!

Had a good time outside of work as well with lots of dinners with friends, a birthday party and my new subscription to Netflix. I’ve missed that! Tomorrow night Richard is flying in and we should have a fun weekend around Charlotte.

Oh yeah something random. About a month ago (actually when we were baking cookies) my ex from high school and early college sent me a message and after replying to him he wrote back this looooong one. Well turned out he and his girlfriend have broken up and now he wants to be friends with me. Don’t really see the point after 5 years of not hearing a single thing but oh-kay, I’m a friendly person. Very strange though. I’m so neutral towards him now, he feels like a stranger so I’m not quite sure how he imagines this whole friendship thing. Naja, lets see.

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Friends, Me, Myself & I, Professional Life, USA

First Week Recap

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So my first week here is over and I feel like I’ve been here much longer considering how much I’ve done so far. Ok so Sunday I got coffee with Chadi and then we went to Giorgio’s until he threw us all out because some girl was gonna come over. Cooked some food and read Cosmo with Chadi later on and then all of a sudden it was Monday morning. Work has been going well so far. There’s a lot going on right now with the new year approaching and some trade shows coming up. Not really much time to learn how to do all that but I’m taking more of a “just do it” approach. But my co-workers are all nice and I really enjoy what I do.
I think Monday night I hung out with my neighbors and we watched some telly and chatted. It was good to see them again after these months. I also went to CVS and bought a cell phone but you had to activate it online and well, my connection here is almost non-existant so I couldn’t activate it. Tuesday I then went over to Chadi’s to take care of that and we watched The Rock – about which I had totally forgotten how nasty it can be. I also got so lucky and got some yummy pizza and super sweet cake from Chadi. Yum!
Wednesday night we hung out at my place for a bit and my neighbors Karl and Ash visited, too. We had to go to Coyote Joe’s then, which is a huge country club (not as in country club but as in music club). Loads of fun chuckeling over the line dancers and then after a few beers we headed uptown to Connoloy’s where we met Manuel and some of his co-workers. A Guiness there and then we finally did what we had intended to do, we saw our co-worker play the drums in his surf band. Fun times but I think I had another beer there so after a quick stop at Forum, which included dancing, we headed to Fuel and the boys made me eat pizza and drink loads of water. I think I actually spilled that one cup. Embarrasing! Finally around 2am we were home but ugh, I was drunk…
Thursday morning proved to be not so nice but not horrible. I went to the bathroom and had to lay down there because I got pretty dizy but after the more or less cold shower I was half way ok. The pizza party at work was the third day in a row for pizza but it was nonetheless YUMMY! Don’t think I did much on Thursday night but yesterday Giorgio and I went uptown and met with Massimo and a bunch of other Italians. I was good and only drank Coke and Sprite because I have this evil cough and my throat is kind of sore….
This morning, TimeWarnerCable was supposed to hook up my internet and TV. They said they were gonna come between 8 and 12 and they’d call half an hour before. So I didn’t set my alarm, seeing that they’d call me early enough. Well at 9 the guy calls and says he’d be there in 10 minutes. Oh-Kay. So that was a quick getting out of bed jump. He tried to set up everything but couldn’t really do it. So at 11:30 he calls his supervisor who then comes out around 12. This guy does all the same things and woopdido, nothing happens. Ahhhh! They said I’d have to talk to my housing society but I don’t even know what to ask them. Nice… So frustrating! And then the guys used my guest bathroom and you know what, the dude not only left the seat up but also left the lights on! Tzzz! Unbelievable! 😉
So the pointlessness of the day goes on. We’ve got a lot going on at work right now and so I was asked to come in today and help them out for let’s say 4 hours or so. Well, I was done after 2 hours, which seems pretty pointless to me considering the half hour drive each way. Oh well. So then to improve the day I got sushi from Harris Teeter – yum! Forgot to pick up bread and tea but OH WELL! In a couple of minutes I’ll grab a coffee with the boys and hopefully I’ll get to see Yung as well. So yeah, I’m keeping busy. 😀 I miss boredom 😉

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