{ See It and Weep }

For those of you who know and love Erin Virginia Thornhill, I was one of the lucky recipients of her time and company while she was visiting last week. We met up for breakfast at Magleby's Fresh (I got the pancakes and she got the french toast, both with berries and cream) and had a lovely chat over our food. My conversations with Erin can be characterized by three things; 1: lots of animated facial expressions and 2: Lots of giggling/amounts of energy and 3: Copious feelings of being understood and appreciated. Now, if that doesn't make for a good conversation, I don't know what does. Even better -- the babe Erin passed along my info to a cute furniture boutique in downtown SLC as a referral to do some graphic design work. How rad is that?! Nonetheless, if you want the scoop on Erin, she is happy, well, and going to go to grad school to get a teaching degree so she can go on to teach high school English. All I have to say is those are going to be lucky kids indeed.

In other news, I am leaving for Ireland today. I'll be posting pictures of places like this in a little less than two weeks.



Only they'll look like this.

{ Old Times meets New Times }

You may or may not know Drew (Barlow) Danburry, but nonetheless, he and I had a friendship hiatus that lasted far too long, and I am glad it's over.

When we were little, Drew's mom and my mom owned a business together (it was an LDS bookstore called "The Bookport" in Southern California). So, naturally, we ended up spending a fair amount of time together on road trips to Utah and apparently, as pictured above in the "then" picture, eating BBQ chicken at the house I grew up in. Sadly however, as life happens, we didn't really hang out past age 12.

So it was a treat to reunite with him a few weeks ago at a house show he came to play in Provo. Kind of funny (and great) to see where 15 years has gotten us. Drew has become an awesome musician, and probably one of the gentlest people I've known. The show he played was pleasantly rad and perfectly intimate; about 40 people seated on the living room floor of a house on 500 east, singing along to the choruses and echoing the "oooo"s of Drew songs. Super enjoyable. I wish I would have gotten pictures of the actual setting, but the "now" photo above will have to do for the memory of the evening. It was a delight for sure.

{ Happy Hour Revisited }

OK. I don't really like to revisit topics two posts in a row, but I thought it worth it this time. Today's photo of the day (as shown above) comes from today's Happy Hour. This is JJ, one of our owners, using the aid of his pants to twist off the bottle cap on his old-fashioned, vanilla cream soda. After unsuccessfully twisting and tugging for a good 3 minutes, someone finally went and found him a bottle opener. Out of fairness though, his bottle cap was abnormally stubborn. But it was funny.

(and, as a side note -- my sweet co-worker Natalie pointed out to me today that the abbreviation/acronym I had written to denote "Happy Hour" on my calendar doesn't actually work.

Natalie: "What does 'HO' stand for, Nicki?"
Nicki: "Happy hour."
Natalie: "Wouldn't that be 'HH'?"
Nicki: "Ya...I just realized that too."

Awesome. I am not proud of this.)

{ Happy Hour at Work }

Have no fear. That's Mike drinking Apple Beer during our first-ever, recently introduced happy hour at work. It takes place every Friday at 3:30 pm at Spencer's desk, and it consists of everyone sitting around drinking drinks for about 10 minutes and chatting. If you ask me, it's the prefect little break on a long Friday afternoon. Last week, as stated, was Apple Beer week; drinks provided by Spencer. Tomorrow it's Natalie's turn -- I think she got us some sort of soda assortment from Costco. Even better -- we have scheduled drink-bringers all the way till May 8th, then I'm assuming we'll start the rotation again. I think it's going to be an excellent addition to the work week.

In other news, I've started camping at work. Well...that, OR I got some camping gear in the mail and decided to set it up to see how I liked it while I was still at work. And, you'll be glad to know, my new sleeping bag IS LIKE HEAVEN! Really. I'm snug as a bug in a rug when I'm in it, and it has to be the softest little bag out there. I will be one cozy, happy little camper in Ireland. Thank you Mountain Hardwear for your excellent material choices and design construction.