Two weeks of clothes in a carry-on. Boom!

Enjoying the time waiting for my flight.... Cheers!!

The unpacking has slowed down a bit. I've unpacked, but have not yet organized everything around the house.  I have some friends who are in the process of moving so I was able to give them all my boxes. for their move.  Win win! 
I'll eventually get to the organizing, but in the meantime, I've been cooking again now that my kitchen is perfect. Here are some things I've made. 

I've been home for a week now.  I can't believe how quickly the week flew by. I thought I would actually have some down time to relax but I've been on the go non-stop. Mostly I've been unpacking, but also, I have been booking travel plans. I couldn't believe how much time this took, especially applying for a foreign visa (fingers crossed I receive it in time). Another thing that took a lot of time was getting my wine collection back into the wine cabinet and logged into my Cellar Tracker account.  I decided to label each row and column (just like Excel!!) so that as I put each bottle of wine in there, I will log exactly where it is in the cabinet. This took about three days since I had to log each one by hand. In total, there were about 20 cases of wine that I transported from the wine storage locker to my house. Having this database online is extremely convenient. I also organized my wine glass collection in the walk in pantry with labels.  Yup, wine nerd. 

A fun little outing I had was taking my parents to the Huntington Library & Gardens for their Members' Summer Picnic concerts.  My parents very much enjoyed themselves.  We went to King Taco in East LA to pick up food, and went to the gardens. It was a lot of fun! The band was an old time fiddle group called The Sausage Grinders. 

One of the trips I'm very excited about is going to Vermont to see the fall colors with my friend Jane.  Jane lives in DC, so we are both flying to Vermont and meeting there to see the fall colors. We found a little B&B to stay while we're there.  This trip is fully booked with flights, lodging, and car rental. Can't wait to try the maple syrup!

A friend of mine was in the area this past weekend, so she asked if she could stop by my new place. She came over, and we went to the downtown area of my city. I haven't explored too much, so I'm not 100% familiar with what's around here.  We went into this nice restaurant to have some appetizers. It was already about 9pm when we went in, and it looked like a fun place, lots of people, young crowd.  While we were enjoying our food, the restaurant staff began to move tables, rope off an area and then a DJ came in and started blasting music. This place was turning into a club!! As people came in, some started dancing in the designated dancing area. My friend and I talked about how it has been at least 15 years since we had been to a club. After 10, people were coming into the restaurant/club in droves. We left shortly after, but it was very interesting to explore my town a bit.  Nice to know I'm walking distance to some amazing nightlife!

​Until next time...  Cheers!

This year, most of my time was taken up by purchasing my new home. It is new construction, so the purchase lasted 6 months while the home was being built. I was constantly going to "visit" the new house and checking things out. At the same time, I decided to take a class. So I had busy season at the beginning of this year, my class studies, and buying a home.  I had to move out of the house I lived in back in April in order to get it ready to rent out. I moved out and all my furniture and boxes went in to a storage unit. I have a wine cabinet that holds about 360 bottles, so all the wine went into a wine storage facility as well. I would go and visit the wine about twice a month. It's like my child. So in the meantime, I have been living with my parents. My new house closed escrow in late June, but I did not move in because I made changes to the house such as flooring, plantation shutters, and a custom closet. All this work took about a month. My furniture moved in to the house the last weekend of July. Every day, I would go to the house after work and begin unpacking boxes. The first thing I unpacked was the kitchen. This past week, the custom closet was installed, as well as the plantation shutters.  So finally, I moved in my personal belongings this past weekend.  With the help of my brother and his wife, we transported all the cases of wine from the wine storage facility in two cars to my new house to be stored in the wine cabinet. My wine is home!! :-) So this brings me to my first night at my new house. It was GLORIOUS.  If you know me, you know I love to cook. I did not cook while I was living at my parents' house because all of my kitchen tools were in a storage unit. So last night, I bought groceries and made myself a bone in rib-eye steak with sauteed mushrooms. I also enjoyed a 2015 bottle of 100% Mourvedre from Paix Sur Terre winery from Paso Robles. It was a wonderful first night in my brand new home.  I still have a ton of unpacking to do, but I have plenty of time. If you want a home-cooked meal and some wine, feel free to stop by and help me unpack a bit! Ha!  
​I'm home.  :-) 

I spent the last four years working for a great company with an excellent team.  I feel heartbroken to leave, but I know this is the next step I need to take.

For my last hurrah, the whole Accounting & Finance team took me to Dekkadance at the Intercontinental Hotel. We are a team that loves to eat!  Here are pictures of my team in Downtown - I'm sure going to miss them!