The funk.

I have been in a bit of a funk lately, hence the lack of blogging. What fun is to write about how depressed I feel?

I am not sure what stirred on this bad mood (I am trying to sort through it myself) but it was made worse because my day job went easy breezy to stress overload this week. A VIP--very important project--had me working like crazy all week, including Friday up until 9 at night, leaving me with zero energy or motivation to do much else this weekend but nap and be glum and watch movies.

One of the movies this weekend was The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, based on the true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the former editor in chief of Elle magazine, who had a stroke that caused his body to be paralyzed. He wrote his memoir by communicating with a blinking left eye. Pretty incredible. And makes you feel like an ass for being depressed about anything. Things can always be worse.

Highlights of a Kunka Wedding

Before we leave New York City.
Going to the airport on Friday morning, having the cab driver ask us, "What airline are you taking and having Dan answer, "American.....er.....Delta." It ended up being Delta, but we only found that out after we looked on my computer and realized we were in the wrong terminal (there are two Delta terminals at Laguardia).

I nearly KILLED him. But I do love him.

The Rehearsal Dinner.

Kunka, the groom, nailed the powerpoint presentation.


Jacey, the bride, wore a traditional Polish robe with plastic dolls attached to ensure fertility. Mom? Is this for real?


Dan made this expression for 30 minutes straight while speaking with this gentleman.


Dan's friends, making fun of his upturned collar fashion sense.


Dan and me, dodging questions on when are we getting married/moving back to CA?

The Wedding Day.
Before the wedding, while the groomsmen played games and watched baseball, Matt and I went for an amazing prosciutto and mozzarella sandwich in Chicago's Little Italy. No pictures taken, but the meal, the conversation and company were a highlight.


Some of the smaller members of the wedding party.


The new Mr. & Mrs! (And yes, that is Kunka wearing his wedding band on his pinkie. A golf injury a few weeks ago made the ring finger swollen; the ring unwearable.)


See me with the women of Los Angeles. See me not wearing white. That's right. Decision was made. I was happy with it.


The reception took place at the Italian American Sports Hall of Fame. Dan was into it.


It had a nice view of Chicago. Looks can be deceiving, but no, I am not pregnant in this picture. It was very windy which made my dress balloon with air, and I ate 6 cupcakes the day before remember? Just look at the view, okay??


Let the party begin!


The crossword in the children's activity book had one important word: Squeen.


Dan & Dan.


Dan ended the night eating this at the after-party. If you think it looks bad there, imagine how it tasted. He ate the whole thing. I do love him for that.

The Chicago Cupcake Crawl

Oh yes, we did! While Dan went record shopping, my college pal Lindsey and I spent Friday afternoon scouting Chicago's best cupcakeries.


As organized as ever, Lindsey mapped out the cupcake trial.


Spumoni and deep chocolate blueberry lavender flavors at "Cupcakes." We both loved the light creamy frosting but the cakes were a little dry. Spumoni was lovely. Blueberry was a little strange.


At Molly's Cupcakes, we sampled the strawberry shortcake and the Ron Bennington's--a delicious dense chocolate cupcake filled with peanut butter, topped with a chocolate ganache and butterscotch. Ron was my favorite in the crawl (I even picked one up for Dan) and I think Lindsey favored the strawberry shortcake.


At the Martha Stewart recommended Swirlz, we had the Banana Nutella and Malt Madness but were so over-sugared by that point that we barely finished them. I thought the banana was real nice.

While most Manhattan cupcake shops focus on creating old-time favorites (overly sweet standard what-your-grandma-used-to-make flavors), I noticed that the Chicago shops cared more about diversity, offering more flavors than I ever imagined.

The verdict: Molly's is tops in Chicago, though I know I still have a lot of experimenting to do in this town. There are more out there to try. We had to cut our tour short because we ran out of time. A great reason to come back (and of course, to catch up with Lindsey again which is always a real treat.)


I don't know what this means, but I like it.

Sweet dreams.

I have been really unmotivated about everything lately. Working. Exercising. Eating healthy. Socializing. Blogging. Strangely enough the only thing I do find some motivation for is writing which usually is not the case. But even that has its days.

The thing is I haven't stopped doing these things. I still work, exercise, eat healthy (for the most part), socialize, blog, write. I just don't feel like it all the time, and I am dragging myself through these activities.

On top of all this, I am craving sweets like you wouldn't believe. I am trying my best not to eat them (although my friend Heather was hazing me with M&M's at work the other day). They all just seem so tempting, and I think it's because I am bored and tired and sweets seem very exciting in the realm of my day-to-day life. It doesn't help we have a cupcake party at work every day and that there was an open bag of M&M's within arm's reach sitting on the conference room table during my two hour meeting this morning. I did not take any but it's haunting me still.

I think after months of being so strict and disciplined in all aspects of my life, I want to rebel. I am getting sick of being so good. Good can be so boring sometimes.

Which may be why on the day before we leave for Chicago for Jacey and Dan's wedding, I am daydreaming about the cupcake places I will visit when I am there. Dan has been thinking about all the record stores he wants to visit, I am thinking cupcakes. He has his thing, I have my own.

Okay, so it's not everyone's definition of rebellion, but me and my friend Lindsey who lives in Chicago, we initially talked about hitting one place, but now we just might have a mini-Chicago cupcake crawl.

Some of you may know that last summer, my sister Annette and I had a cupcake crawl in Manhattan. In one afternoon, we ate cupcakes from six different places and while it was one of my favorite days ever, it was a LOT of cupcakes in one day. Things got very...sweet by the end. Lindsey and I will be more moderate (I need to fit in my dress--white or not, I am still undecided, so I will pack them both). We're thinking about checking out here and there.

I am terribly excited. Let the rebellion begin!


Annette and I during our Manhattan cupcake crawl in August 2007.


Goodies that went in our tummy.

Not diet food.

Today I went out for Mexican food for lunch with the girls at work. I said I would go as long as I did not eat the chips.

I ate the chips.

Note to self: Don't eat the chips.

Because it makes you feel tired and crappy and bad.

This blog post serves as a personal reminder. Because they taste so good, but the effect is always the same.

Isn't it a form of craziness to always do the same thing over and over and expect a different result?

Late Again.

One thing about me that might be surprising to others is that I am often late to work.

In my normal life, I am beyond prompt. I am the type of person who goes to the airport two hours early, who leaves for the movies an hour early, who meets a friend 5 minutes early. In Europe, I hung out in many a train station because I arrived way too early. It usually causes me much stress and anxiety if I am running late or keeping someone waiting.

But then back in high school, when I first got a license and could drive to school, I would always find myself running late getting ready in the morning. My grandma would bail me out with "Sorry Yvonne is late today" letters that I would draft myself and she would sign. The attendance woman at school was my brother in law's aunt and the nicest woman, so it all worked in my favor when I came in 15 minutes late every so often.

College, I was always on time to class and I hardly skipped. And my first few years in the working world, I came in early and stayed late trying to make a good impression to my bosses.

But then something happened. I started working out in the morning and walking to work and while most of the time I came in 9:02, many a time, it was more like 9:09 or (gulp) 9:18. I never got in trouble for it because I got my work done, but then other people would get called out for being late. Seriously.

That was my old job. Now that I am freelancing, I have to be more professional but I admit I have gotten a little lazy because the horrible 6 train (which makes my commute either 15 minutes or 45 minutes--one can never tell) and we have summer hours where we have to come in at 8:30 which means I should be waking up at 5:15 am to go to the gym, but I actually only get up at 5:30 am because I can't handle 5:15. Yeah, ONLY five thirty. Do you feel my pain?

Yesterday my commute took forever (I left late and no trains came for hours, and the ones that eventually came were packed like sardines.) I tiptoed to my desk at 9. Yowsers! I don't even have have a phone to tell these people I am running late either. I didn't get into trouble even though I totally deserved it because this has been becoming a more common occurrence lately but I had massive guilt so I was in work today at 8:22 (while still managing to ONLY wake up at 5:30).

And it's quite possible that today's the longest work day that ever existed. I looked at the clock expecting it to be 11 and it was 9:01. So this is how it feels to come into work on time. It's horrible.

30 Days of Unreachability?

So I told you all that my phone was breaking. I don't know what happened, but one day one of the hinges was missing that attaches the phone together, but for weeks I was still able to talk into it, even when it got worse and I had to hold the two sides of the phone with both hands so it wouldn't flop open all together.

Yesterday I went to charge the phone and the screen went completely black and there was no reviving it. Crap.

Like most New Yorkers, I use my cell phone as my regular phone so I don't have a house phone. Besides email and my semi-permanent work phone, my cell phone is the way people can get in touch with me. I admit that I am not a huge phone talker (90% of the time I don't even hear my phone ringing and don't pick up and I can be horrible at calling people back) but there is something weird about suddenly have this void in my life.

Okay, so I should just get a new phone right? Problem is: I want to get the brand-new iPhone and it doesn't come out until July 11. This whole time, I was hoping to deal with the broken phone for a month but now it seems that the broken phone is now the dead phone. Totally different story.

Can I go one month without a cell phone? A month where I will be going to Chicago. A month where Gerda and her family from Belgium are visiting us in New York. A month where I might need to find new freelance work (though this might not be true.)

As my friend Heather at work says, "They did it in the 90s."

Dan, who has a blackberry through work, let me borrow his phone today just in case I had to call someone. Too bad I don't know anyone's number.