Healthy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone! It is a beautiful day here in Boston, and I am excited for a fun weekend ahead. I apologize for the lack of a day post and short post last night. I have been writing a lot of work-related stuff but also spending a lot of time brainstorming on how to move my life in the direction that I think I want it to go. Or to discover directions I never knew about, something that seems to be happening a lot since I started blogging!

Yesterday was a looong day that started with a great walk to work through the South End. Walking to work this time of year is the best, no more hot sticky arrivals. Instead, I start out a bit chilly and after walking a few minutes am perfectly warm, comfortable, and awake from breathing the crisp air.

My walk to work looks quite different than it did last summer when I wrote a post about my daily journey. Its so lovely! Depending on the route I take, I pass a different variety of stores and restaurants, and I LOVE Foodies Urban Market. It has a great cheese selection, all sorts of gourmet items, and is the only place so far that I have found Nasoya Creations chocolate tofu deliciousness.

Once again, I will leave the work day out of my recap and skip right to dinner. After work I drove (which I rarely ever do, and remembered why last night!) out to Waltham for dinner at The Chateau, a family Italian restaurant with decor circa 1970 and good old American Italian food. It was JUST what I wanted.

I met up with four of my former co-workers from the best job I have had so far in my life. My second job out of college was close to four years working in a variety of different roles for a non profit professional association that developed all sorts of member resources and events. Our team was the best. We had a ton of fun, worked extremely hard, laughed until it hurt and really built the organization. Through that job, I got to travel to lots of fun places like Scottsdale, AZ, London, Brussels, and Santa Fe, NM. It was the complete springboard of my career into marketing communications, public relations,and events because I had such supportive co-workers who really cared about each other’s happiness. It was great until a new figure entered the picture. This individual quickly changed the entire culture of the organization for the worst, and things quickly fell apart. Despite the fact that I left that job over two years ago, I have stayed in touch with my friends and it was great to see them at dinner last night!

Today was spent cleaning, a completely necessary evil. We have been big time slackers on the housework front, and I really wanted to get it done before I start traveling next week.

I love a clean kitchen.

When we finished cleaning, we had massive salads out on the deck. It was so warm!

The salads had butter lettuce, grape tomatoes, pinto beans, beets, and pickled vegetables with a Good Seasons dressing mix on top. On the side I had  pint glass full of TJ’s Super Red Drink. I would like to bring a zip loc bag full of the drink powder with me to San Francisco, but I am wondering if it will cause a big security problem? Maybe I will just buy the packets of Emergen-C for the trip.

My friend Raija is arriving in about an hour, and we are going to get ready for dinner and drinks out tonight. Dinner is at Les Zygomates, and then we are heading to the South End, maybe to Stella or The Beehive.

Before I go. . .

The random integer generator winner of the Healthy Halloween giveaway is Abbynormally! Please send me an email at traveleatlove2009@hotmail.com with your contact details, and I will have Angela send your order directly to you! Congrats and thanks to everyone for sharing their favorite Halloween movies! I love The Great Pumpkin, Rear Window, Vertigo, The Excorcist, Blair Witch Project, and so many others, but I actually have had to stop watching things before I travel for work. Otherwise I find myself in a hotel room terrified and unable to sleep with visions of scary-ness dancing in my head.

Have a great, safe night everyone! I will have a full recap of tonight plus a recap of our Boston blogger lunch tomorrow!