April

Hi! Halfway through May, I've finally stopped reeling from April. For all its busy-ness, it was really a good month. It kicked off with three days in Montreal for work, which was a fun last hurrah with Charlotte before she quit the company and headed off for three months of fabulous traveling during her unemployment before business school, of which I'm really quite jealous. Anyway, after enduring some long working dinners (great food that arrived too late to be fully appreciated), we got to have a nice lunch at a Paris-style bistro in Montreal. I hadn't been to Montreal since college, and it really is a fun city. The falling dollar makes it not-quite-as-attractive as it was five years ago, but great shopping, restaurants, and general charm make me want to go back.

The next weekend was the "weekend of showers." I went to Boston for a wedding shower for Laura, hosted by two of her mother's friends at their beautiful home in Concord. Mom came too, which was fun! After that shower, I sped back to Albany for Kendra and Ryan's baby shower. Their friends Nikki and Dan threw a great co-ed shower, a combination of beer and baby games that appealed to everyone. No one will quickly forget Ed's pictionary drawing of baby's first step…

For the third weekend in April, Dan and I DROVE to Atlanta for Kate and DC's wedding, stopping to stay with Naomi and Donny in Maryland on both legs of the trip. The ceremony was in a beautiful church, and the reception was a blast. I think Kate and DC may win among our friends for best wedding band. They had this amazingly charismatic frontman who got the crowd going and somehow got both Kate and DC's fathers wearing sunglasses and getting down during his rendition of Twist-and-Shout. Paul and Effie still win for best-guest-appearance-in-a-Ghostbusters-costume, and I think that Kate was a little disappointed that no one showed up in costume, or even half a Ghostbusters costume. One other notable feature of the wedding reception was that it was in a cool old mansion (the former home of an old Coca Cola executive, I think), and that groups split off into their own little rooms for dinner. That meant that our friends ended up alone in a room for dinner, with the unfortunate (or fortunate?) consequence that we got a bit silly and ended up posing for prom pictures…

The guys (beards are in...)

The girls

Victory!

DC makes Kate laugh

Kate and DC's dads are the Blues Brothers

We got back from Atlanta on Monday, and on that Thursday afternoon, I headed south to Miami for Laura's bachelorette weekend. The condos that we had rented were right in the heart of South Beach on Ocean Drive, and directly across the street from the beach. On Friday, we had brunch at a great little café right by our condos and then spent the day lounging at the beach, before the big night out. Saturday we did the brunch-beach thing again, and then had a little shower for the Laura at the condos before heading out to a cool rooftop bar (we lounged on red waterbeds!), and then to Nobu Miami for dinner. Nobu was incredible – I ate some of the best food of my life, I think, especially his signature dish—black cod with miso—and some tempura rock shrimp with an incredible creamy spicy sauce. Miami really felt like a wonderful vacation – it was great to reconnect with some friends from college that I had lost touch with and to spend more time with some of Laura's post-college friends from Boston that are such nice people.

The girls lounge on red waterbeds!

Enjoying black cod at Nobu

Laura and I at the condo

Three days after returning from Miami, I finished my spring semester at RPI, which marks about the halfway point in my Master's program. Since then, things have started to slow down (except for a trip to DC to present my paper and a quick visit to Boston for Laura's last shower before she walks down the aisle!). Dan and I are headed to Martha's Vineyard on Saturday, for a two week stay before Carolyn and Josh's wedding, and I can't wait.