What a week.

I finally put away our Christmas decorations last Sunday, so that certainly was a good way to start the week.

Then, I took Tuesday off so I could go here:


Dressed like this:


To see this:

Being a part of history, with my brother by my side: Priceless.

On Wednesday I met Jean from Renovation Therapy for lunch. I had won an auction on her blog that supported Katy Hughes and her mom in their quest to erase "homeless" from their bios. Not only was I happy to help out in some little way, I was even happier to receive a heartfelt thank you from Katy's mom that made me feel even better.

I had also bought a great vintage casserole dish from Jean's Etsy shop, so she schlepped that to lunch, too...packaged all pretty and stuff:

Just look at how she wrapped my coasters! Makes me want to run to Michael's to buy fancy paper cutter thingies:

Here's the casserole...

It's in such great shape!

I can't wait to find something fun to bake in it for a bloggie show and tell!

There were also a couple of surprises...

A fab-u-lous vintage coat she scored in Florida that fits me like a glove (well, fits me like a coat, really):

And the book she just finished that I mentioned I wanted to read:

Bloggy buddies really are the best. ({{Sniff.}}

I've also been amazed by the nice things people have said about me lately (maybe there have been people who have said some not-so-nice things about me, too, but it's probably behind my back so I just don't know about it. ;-).

Sheila, The Quintessential Magpie also awarded me with the fabulous Proximidade Award earlier this month. Sheila cracks me up, and anyone who can put a genuine smile on my face is aces in my book. I've gotten emails from Sheila that have given me deep belly laughs. So to Sheila I pass the Lemonade Stand award that came to me from Blondie's Journal.

Blondie called me a, "real Jersey girl," which brought a smile to my face. As a transplanted New Yorker, I was slow to embrace moving "to other side" after college, but now I embrace all that is NJ -- from the Jersey Shore (home to the shore house, naturally), to Bruce and Sinatra, to gigantic slices of boardwalk pizza. Hooray NJ! And hooray, Blondie! She's relatively new to blogging, and has jumped in head first. She has posts that inspire, posts that are sentimental and posts that just make me smile -- like the one I read today where she talked about her spunky teenage daughter, who "has also, without any regard for her safety or good hygiene, rode the dolphins in a smelly pool while vacationing in Mexico." HA!

So to Blondie goes the You Are Truly Beautiful Award.

Maureen at Mom Times Two gave me a You Are Truly Beautiful Award. I had never heard of the award before, but love the sentiment. And I love Maureen's blog, and her wittiness (case in point: I still laugh at this photo caption of her infant daughter. Click over to see for yourself, and for a good chuckle) and kind heart. For Christmas, she gave the most thoughtful gift: She donated kids' PJs to The Pajama Program on behalf of her family members. Wow. I hadn't heard of this charity before, so was happy to see it's headquartered right by my office in NYC --and I am definitely going shopping to help them out.

Maureen's right: Who knew the Internet could connect complete strangers?

So to Maureen I award the aptly named Proximidade award above, originally from Sheila.

With that, my post has come full circle. :-)