I woke up today only to find that I had 6 missed calls on my cell phone! Of course, I went into panic mode, assuming only that something must be wrong if I had so many missed calls from the same person. But, to my delight, I listened to the first voicemail and found Mark, the boyfriend of my good friend Kelly, on the other end. He had called "just to tell me" that he had plans to propose to her tonight (!!) and was wondering if I could meet up with them and some other friends and family for a celebration get-together later that evening. Ummm... of course!!

As I was driving over, I began to think of all the things I appreciate about them as individuals and as a couple. In general, I am so overly blessed by my friends - they are indeed people of integrity, ambition, spirit, and - hello! - are so much fun. So, as Kelly always says, I spent the evening "drinking the drinks and laughing the laughs" with a very happy group. It was a smile-y night, to say the least.

I need to keep better tally of what makes me laugh.

Seriously, people, life is funny.

Time to Travel

Well, I have actually followed through on some of my goals for 2009. Not only have I signed up for a PALS certification class, which is more about my professional development, I have created an account on expedia.com and secured two trips that will take place over the next two months. A road trip may be in the works for the end of March (fingers-crossed), and expedia might be getting more of my paycheck come April.

So far we've got...
TN Feb
Cabo March
NYC? April

Any suggestions for May?

Another goal of mine was to get more involved in my community (via nursing?) and I am hoping to start orientation at a free clinic this Tuesday. We'll see what happens with this one - work is picking up and that might make my schedule a bit tougher to work with. No, actually, I should make this a priority. People need help and I don't need to spend all my days off sitting around. Or going on vacation.

Correction from last post:
A friend came to me and said, "I don't get your last post, you know success isn't defined by all that other stuff". Yes, I do. I don't know if I made my point very clear, or if it was just lost. So, to be clear: I know that success isn't measured through possessions, jobs, degrees, awards, etc, etc. But, I kind of feel this pressure "in the real world" to prove myself. And in the "world" proving yourself is often done through showing off these tokens of success. While I do not want to buy into that superficial approach to life, I was feeling a bit weak to it. The blog was sort of a self pep-talk.

Moving on...

I saw Revolutionary Road yesterday and I want to TALK ABOUT IT SO BADLY!!! So, people, hurry up and go see it so I can blog about it and externalize all my thoughts. I feel like it is a movie I need to learn from & I certainly can't do that by holding all my thoughts in! So, go... seriously, do it now. For yourself... and a little bit for me :-)