Christmas & Kelly Choi

Christmas and New Year's were great, even if I they did sneak up on me. Since this whole crazy thing started back at the end of September, I completely missed the whole transition into the holiday season. Usually we cook a bunch of stuff for our Thanksgiving dinners with our families. This year we cut back a lot on what we were able to contribute. Then, there wasn't much opportunity to go Christmas shopping so I just made sure that my nieces and nephew and brother had gifts and my sister took care of everyone else for me. On Christmas morning D & I had our traditional Christmas breakfast of German apple pancakes and champagne. I think it was the first thing I cooked post-surgery (we were 3 weeks post-surgery by this time). We didn't have gifts for each other. It was enough that we managed to get our Christmas tree up! That night we realized that we hadn't even taken pictures (usually we take pictures together while opening presents), so we snapped one shot right before bed. The day before New Year's Eve I was getting my final fill at the doctor's office so once again I was not at all thinking about the holiday. Also, since it was still kind of messy out from the winter storm, we didn't have definite plans and weren't sure we wanted to leave the neighborhood. We ended up at the neighborhood restaurant where D's friends celebrate every year. We had a fabulous dinner and ended up staying to watch the coverage of the ball drop with everyone. It turned out to be a nice evening. Two days later, we visited some friends who just had their first baby. An adorable tiny little girl who they brought home on Christmas Eve, just in time for Christmas & New Year's! Though scaled-back a lot, we ended up having a pretty nice and stress-free holiday season and got to spend lots of time with family and friends.

Yesterday was my first day back at work. I hadn't been happy about it but it really wasn't bad at all. I went to lunch with my three girlfriends from work. We went to our favorite little Japanese place. While we were sitting there we noticed that a girl and a couple camera guys had come in and were setting up lights and a demo in a corner of the restaurant. It was Kelly Choi! Kelly Choi is apparently the host of Top Chef Masters but I know her from the food show I used to watch after work on NY1. I was super excited, as was one of my friends, but our other two friends just thought we were nuts. Excited friend waved over our server and asked him to see if Kelly wouldn't mind taking a picture with us. She was happy to oblige so we went over and Not-So-Excited friends came and posed with us so as not to appear so obviously unimpressed! (Kelly was insanely tall & thin and made us all look ridiculously short & pudgy, so I was asked to please cut out everyone from the pic, should I decide to post it.) Today, it's Day 2 back at work and my first day back at the gym. Zumba!