dollydavis33's Journals on Buzznet

NYC, LA and back to Dubai

dollydavis33 — 2006-09-22T20:15:06Z

Two Weeks in Sunny, Southern California (and 1 Weekend in NYC)

Okay, okay....I know it's been a long time and I think maybe my mom is the only person still checking to see if there are new entries, but I've finally gotten around to a new post. The reason being is that I've been in LA for 2 weeks! The first weekend was labor day weekend and actually I spent it in NYC with all my girlfriends and my sister, which was so fun and the perfect thing to come home to. That week I was in the office in LA, which was also actually fun because I got to actually help on drawings for another project...a welcome change from my paperwork-heavy job here. During the week I went to see James Brown at the Hollywood Bowl...so cool! The next weekend I got to see my dad, step-mom and aunt in Ventura, then I went camping near Santa Barbara with some friends. I was giddy just being able to be outside; Dubai sure makes you appreciate climates that allow you to be outside without becoming instantly soaking wet. When we got back we went to see Willie Nelson at the Bowl!!! The entire next week was vacation for me, so that I could participate in my capoeira group's festival and batizado, which is an annual event that allows students to move up in level. I went to workshops all week hosted by different mestres (masters) that were visitng from Brazil and then on Saturday I was in the batizado and moved up to a yellow cord!!! yay!! That weekened I got to see my mom and step-dad, so I got to see the whole family on this trip! I left on Monday and as always it was very hard to say goodbye. When I'm in Dubai, it's not so bad...I get into my routine, but going home is sooo great and it's saying goodbye that's always the
hardest thing to do.

Ramadan

It started today and will end a few days before I come home for good, so my last experience here will be Ramadan. I'm actually excited, because I sometimes complain about the lack of culture here, so it will be interesting to have something actually impact how I live my life. So basically it's a time of year where Muslims kind of renew their faith...it makes me think of Lent. They will pray a lot and the biggest thing is that they fast during daylight hours and out of respect everybody else must not be seen eating, drinking, smoking, chewing gum, listening to loud music, dancing, etc. in public. I don't think it's very common, but you can actually be arrested if you're caught doing any of those things! I think they would only do that if you were doing it on purpose, not just as a mistake. Luckily I share an office with a non-Muslim girl, so we can just shut our door if we want to eat or drink anything. My biggest worry is that I'll drink a big bottle of water in my car or something...I'm known for being forgetful, so cross your fingers that I don't end up in jail for drinking water!!

All the expats partied hard this weekend because they won't be able to for (gasp!) a whole month. Since I don't really drink or go out here anyway, that won't really affect me. I'm not sure yet how it will affect me...I'll keep you posted.

Back to the Grindstone

I'm back to work. The only good thing is that the project is moving along and I can actually see my work being built which is great. The work is still the same...it's lots of paperwork and lots of crises that need immediate descisions and answers. It's still effing hot. They say it should cool down soon, but I've been hearing that for a while now. It's still crazy humid too, which is the real killer.

Okay Ma, that's about it...I'll post pictures soon. Love you!

Relatively Speaking...

dollydavis33 — 2006-08-18T01:05:14Z

I have been thinking about this entry and how I want to write something positive about Dubai, so I tried to make a list of things in my head of the positives and this is what I came up with: free valet parking almost everywhere you go, capoeria, SkiDubai (even though I have some environmental ethics issues with it), diversity, good shopping and cheap gas. That's my list. So here is my effort at finding something positive that is a little more substantial than those things:

This whole war between Lebanon and Isreal has made me realize that Dubai is a really tolerant, even liberal place....relatively speaking. The Muslim culture here is conservative enough that women dress in abayas (black robe thingys) with headscarves and veils, but tolerant enough to allow other women (Arab, European, Asian) to wear the fashions of the West. There is definitely a religious and cultural tolerance here, that many other places don't have, but that doesn't stop people from making sweeping generalizations. For example, there is a new law going into effect that says companies have to hire a certain amount of Emeratis. The first reaction that most people have is why? all Emeratis are loaded and don't need to work. The second is that companies would much rather hire Indians or Filipinos because they work hard for less money and Arabs, especially Emeratis, have a reputation for being lazy. Regardless of the generalizations, it doesn't prevent people from co-existing happily. Granted, I haven't seen or met one Jewish person, so I can't quite make the comparison to Lebanon and Isreal, but I do find here, that there is a good deal of respect for Islam from the Westerners and the Muslims seem to accept the Christians.

I was taken shopping by one of the secretaries in my building to shop for fabric in a cheap area, because she said I would get ripped off. I met her and her sister and their daughters on a Friday. Normally at work she wears colorful clothes but always all covered up with a headscarf, but on Fridays she wears black because it is the holy day. So I go shopping with these four Muslim women all covered up and there's me in white pants and a Mexican shirt with flip flops, but they didn't seem to mind at all! It was really fun. It was interesting, because we were shopping for Indian tops and her daughter and I were looking at the same one. Her daughter is 15 years old and about the same size as me, so my friend picked a large for her daughter and handed me a small. I kind of looked at her and she said "for you, it's okay." She wasn't rude or condescending about it at all, it was just very matter of fact; if you are a Westerner you wear tighter fitting clothes...period....no big deal.

Okay, so that positive thinking just ended because I just found out that Etisalat, the local phone monopoly, has blocked me from using Skype. I'm so mad I could scream. The censorship here is unbelievable! I mean, it isn't even censorship....the problem is that the censorship is left up to Etisalat, not the government, so Etisalat can "censor" anything that may eat into their profits! Now I have to buy a 12 dollar phone card to have a 15 minute call to the US. The censorship issue has been a hot topic lately, because they just blocked YouTube.com and all PC to PC calling programs. I thought I was in the clear because I live in a "free zone" which means I can still access myspace.com, while the rest of the city can't, but that didn't stop Etisalat from blocking Skype! Argh!!!! I'm sooo mad.

One more thing....I just went to the grocery store this morning and I was in the cereal aisle and all the Special K boxes had a big white sticker covering half the box! Apparently, there is some woman, no doubt, on there is a bikini or something. It's totally ridiculous, especially when you look up from the box and see a woman in daisy dukes and a bikini top shopping for cereal!!!

Sorry, I am really trying to find good things to say about Dubai...I'll keep looking.

Back to Dubai

dollydavis33 — 2006-08-03T01:29:23Z

Trip from Hell

Okay, so my company decided to dowgrade my travel business class to something called “premium economy”, but since I made the outrageous demand of being routed through New York so that I could spend my birthday with my friends, I was demoted even further to the dreaded coach. Thus begins my trip from hell. It started off okay, but got increasingly worse.

I went to Portland this last weekend to visit Katie and Mike. I wanted to maximize my time there, so I left Monday afternoon arriving in LA at 6:30. I spent 5 hours in LA with a friend by the airport, which was great because it was perfect weather and we played Frisbee in the park before I had to get back on a plane at 11:30 for a red eye to New York. I got dropped off at 10 or so and got to my gate with time to spare. We boarded and everything seemed to be going fine, but we just kept sitting there waiting to pull away from the jetway. After about 30 minutes of unexplained sitting, we were finally told that something was wrong with the plane and that we just have to wait until they fix it, but that it would be easier and more enjoyable (?!) to sit on the plane rather than in the terminal. After another hour of sitting, they finally said that it would be easier to just bring out another plane and switch planes altogether. So we all get off the plane only to wait another hour and a half for the new plane! We finally left at about 2:30 AM which got me into New York at 11:30, the exact time of take-off of my flight to Dubai. Needless to say, I missed that flight and had to get on the next one, which was at 11 PM. Yay!! 12 hours to kill in JFK airport after getting maybe 2 hours of light sleep. I thought about going into the city, but decided that I wouldn’t even know where to go and didn’t feel up to lugging my bags around. I spent about an hour walking around the terminal looking for any square foot of carpet that I could lay on to take a nap. The only carpet I found was in a cruelly visible, but inaccessible airport lounge. I finally found a quiet area with an outlet to plug in my computer and tried curling up to take a nap. I did sleep for about an hour, but the granite tiles ended up numbing the side of my body. I tried to read, but was too tired, so the rest of the time I just chatted with people online and walked around. The check in counter finally opened at 9, which is when I got dealt the worst of my blows…I was assigned a middle seat. Nothing else was available, not even an upgrade! When I boarded I thought for a second that I lucked out, because the row had four seats across so it was a large guy, then me, then and empty seat and then another guy. I was really excited that I had an empty seat next to me! I should have know it was too good to be true…the flight attendant asked the guy on the end to switch so that a mother and childe could sit next to each other. So now I’m sandwiched between a large guy and a not so small mother and her 2 year old kid. Yay, fat guys and screaming kids! Then when I went to put me seat back, there was a kid behind me that kept kicking my chair, so finally I shoot the mother a dirty look and she was like “put you seat up, the tv screen is too close to his face” Can you believe that!?! So I said…” no. he’s a little kid!”

Okay, okay…I know I sound like the most yuppie spoiled brat in the world, but come on, once you go business, you never go back. Plus it gives me something to write about

Portland

Portland was great. I love it there minus the clouds. We picked blueberries and rode bikes and went to a beer festival. It was good to be with Kate. We even got in our requisite fight/debate about nothing. I went to the chiropractor! I don’t know if I have mentioned it in my blog, but a couple of months ago I did a back handspring onto my head in capoeira thanks to my inability to put my hands on the ground and my spotters’ inabilities to spot. I’ve had really limited motion in my neck since then, but never bothered to do anything about it. So we were walking by the cutest little chiropractic office in Portland and the chiropractor was standing outside shootin the shit with his other little shop owner neighbor and it all looked so friendly and appealing that I went ahead and made an appointment. The next day, he took some x-rays to make sure I hadn’t fractured anything and then adjusted my neck. It all went fine and I didn’t really notice any difference right away, but I can tell you that today, even after all my neck tweaking half sleep on the airplane, it feels a lot better! I can look up! It’s amazing.

There is much more to be said about Portland, but a lot of it has to do with my indecision about moving there which leads to big life changing, career changing decisions, etc. so I’d rather not get into that now.

Back in Dubai

So I’m back. I miss home. I think I’ll go snowboarding.

LA story

dollydavis33 — 2006-07-28T11:22:57Z

First of all....my apologies for not having posted for a while, I'm sure you were all on the edge of your seats waiting for another fabulous musing by Dolly. Well, your wait it over.

I hadn't been writing because I was either too busy, too tired, or too boring...sometimes I really have nothing to write about. I have been in LA for a week so I have some things to say, finally. My trip here was pretty smooth. A woman from the LA office came to Dubai to fill in for me while I'm at home, which has made my life sooo much easier. I trust her and know she'll do a great job, so I won't have too much work piled up when I get back. We had a little bit of overlap in Dubai, so my last night we had a nice dinner at the top of the Emirates towers and then I went home, grabbed my bags and took off for the airport. All I have to say is that I love business class, and a tear comes to my eye as I say that because my company has decided to downgrade our travel to save money, so from here on out I'm coach all the way.

I must have done something really bad to someone, because my karma was wreaking havoc on my life first 24 hours in LA. A coworker picked me up from the airport and took me out to lunch. I had been in the same clothes for over 24 hours, so I got some clean clothes and changed in the restaurant bathroom. I sat back down with me coworker, had a nice lunch and left. Only a day later did I finally figure out that I left not only my clothes at our table, but also my wallet. I went back to the restaurant, but there was no sign of anything and nothing had been turned in. The same day I realized my wallet had been taken, I also walked out of work only to discover that my beloved graphite grey, Trek hybrid bike that I loved had been stolen. It was a sad, sad day, which also happened to be Monica's birthday! It worked out beautifully though, because last year on her birthday I had misplaced my wallet and she ended up paying for me, so we decided that we would continue the tradition this year. Mon's birthday party was really fun. We went to the Geisha House in Hollywood for a sushi dinner with Lindsey, Kristen and Anna and then went bar hopping for the rest of the night.

Sunday was the real highlight of my trip...the Flaming Lips at the Hollywood Bowl!! We had a little daytime shindig at our house before the bowl, but because of the heat all anybody wanted to drink was water...can you believe that!? After a few hours of laying around in pools of sweat, we got up and walked ourselves to the bowl. After the sun started to go down, it transformed into the perfect Bowl night. We got there in time to see most of Theivery Corporation, who put on a good show, although I was disappointed that David Byrne didn't show up to sign his part of "The Heart's a Lonely Hunter", but I guess you can't have it all. All I can say is that the Lips were amazing. We were really far back, so we couldn't see everything, but we could hear, so we were perfectly satisfied. Nights like that one make me love LA.

The rest of this week has been pretty laid back. Since all of my work responsibility is in Dubai, I have a bit of a hard time trying to occupy myself in the LA office. I have been trying to help on other projects and stuff, so it's been nice to do something different that the routine I have in Dubai. It's been good to have a loose schedule especially since I'm bus dependent now. I made it to capoeira only a couple of times, but I paid my batizado fee, so I'm looking forward to that in September!

Tonight Mon and I take off to Portland for the weekend mainly to visit Kate, but also to scope out the living and working situation up there for a possible move in the future. My life is so up in the air right now, that I have no idea where I will be in a year, but my plan at this moment is to be in Portland. We'll see...

Okay, I'm off!

Almost There!

dollydavis33 — 2006-07-07T01:26:51Z

I've been counting down the days until my next visit home, which is now 13 days away...yay! I'm really busy at work so the time is flying by, even if it's stressful and tiring. They have moved all of the architect's team and me into two rooms on the first floor of the trailor. I share the smaller room with two girls. I used to have a window right over my desk and now we have one window with the blinds shut because the sun shines on one of the girls' computer. So I have no sunlight and the girls like the AC at about 60 degrees and it blows towards my small little corner. I have to wear a jacket at work and I'm still cold. Work has been getting more and more demanding and I've had to stay late at the office more and more. It's actually not so bad, because I actually get work done, when nobody's around, plus I can turn the AC off. The only thing is the mice....they come out at night, once it's quiet. I don't really mind them, but I have been reading this book called Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail, and there are rats that attack people! The book is a memoir by Malika Oufkir who was put in jail along with her mother, 2 sister, 1 brother and 2 maids for a crime her father committed. It's a really good book...the writing isn't anything exceptional, but the story is pretty amazing. I also keep laughing at myself for my choice, but I would recommend it. It's an Oprah book. Okay...enough Oprah book plugs.

My last entry was after I went skiing (or maybe after my first snowboarding lesson...I can't remember), which was fun, but got pretty boring pretty quickly, so I took a snowboarding lesson on Sunday and I have another one today. My first lesson was a beginner lesson that never left the bunny hill, which was fine by me, but I'm excited for the lesson today, because it's Level 1! alright! I'm taking my camera this time, because I know I'm long overdue to post some pics.

I can't wait to be home in 2 weeks!!!!! whoohooo!!

Coming home is all I'm thinking about right now, so I'm afraid I don't have much to write about. I will let you all know how my snowboarding lesson goes. Ciao!

Ski Dubai!

dollydavis33 — 2006-06-29T12:01:51Z

Ski Dubai

I've been really, really busy with work lately, plus there are some other consultants in town from Los Angeles, so I've been hanging out with them a lot. Somewhere in there, I did find time to finally get down to Ski Dubai! I went with one of the consultants and a friend's boyfriend who was in town. I had seen Ski Dubai plenty of times, because it's at the mall that is closest to my house, so it's pretty hard to miss, but I had yet to step inside. From the mall there is a two story atrium with restaurants all around so that you can watch all the skiers. Actually, from the mall you can really only see the snow park which is really cute because it's all the people who haven't ever seen snow, so you get to watch them feel cold and play in the snow. Plus there is a little hill with innertubes for sledding.

The facility is really nice, you buy this card and it serves as your locker key, equipment checkout, entrance ticket and lift ticket...it's all very high tech. After you pay, you go pick up your snow pants, jacket, diposable socks and boots. You go into a locker room and get dressed and then pick up your skis. After you have all your gear you walk through a turnstyle and go up an escalator, which was sooo scary! Getting onto moving steps made of sharp blades of metal with slippery, clumsy, plastic boots doesn't sound like a good idea to me, but my only other option was stairs, which didn't look especially safe either. Needless to say, I made it up and down the escalator without incident.

Then there is a revolving door to get to the slope! Once I stepped through, I was immediately shocked at how cold it acutally is. Now I know that sounds like a no-brainer, but you really can't imagine how cold it is, when you're looking at it through glass from a nice, climate controlled atmosphere. The best part was that you could see your breath! It's been so long since I've been anywhere that cold!

We headed for the lift where your little card scans and opens a turnstyle for you and you get on the lift. You can get off the lift about halfway up, which is the beginner's slope, or you can keep going to the top. If you go to the top you have two directions...one is like a green and the other is maybe a blue. We went down the "green" side for our first run and quickly moved on to the "blue". The runs were pretty easy, but I have to say that the snow and the surface is pretty good!

The cool thing about the turnstyles at the lift are that they tell you how much time you have left, so you can compare from one run to the next and figure out how long a run takes. We averaged about 7 minutes and I think about 5 are spent on the lift, 1 at the top chatting and taking pictures and the probably 1 minute, if that, going down. After about 5 runs, it gets a little bit old. That's why I've decided Dubai is the perfect place to learn to snowboard! I've signed up for a lesson this Monday...I'll let you all know how it goes.

I wish that I could say that I have pictures, but I'm waiting to get them from the guy I went with...hopefully I'll get them soon.

Every once in a while I have a really great Dubai experience. Yesterday I was driving home a little bit later than normal and my drive home is along the outermost road of Dubai, so it's really like a highway. It was right around sunset and all the big trucks were pulled over on the shoulder and the drivers would be beside their truck on their pray mats praying. It's really beautiful to watch them pray.

I promise to post pics as soon as I can.

Farewell Janet!

dollydavis33 — 2006-06-16T00:56:11Z

Last night was a sad night for me. My best Dubai friend left for good :( I'm very excited for her though...she's flying back to Dublin to meet up with the man of her dreams and then move to his new home in London. As much as I'm happy for her, I don't know what I'm gonna do now! Who will I go out with? Who will I talk shit about Dubai with? Who will I practice my Irish dancing with?

Yesterday I met up with her and we did some last minute souvenir shopping in Karama (the el cheapo shopping district) and then we had some really cheap but really good Indian food. Of course we didn't plan the night very well, so we had a mad dash to her apartment to close her suitcase, stuff it in my car and dash to the airport. We had a quick goodbye at the airport and of course I got emotional and started crying. But like I said, I'm really excited and happy for her. So I got home at about 11:00 and decided that I shouldn't be sad and that I should go out, so I met up with some co-workers and my roommate who were at the same bar. I'm glad I got out and I had fun, but I do have to say it woulda been a million times more fun with Janet.

Okay....enough sadness. Let's see....today is Friday and I am going to meet up with a woman from my office and we are going to go to Bur Dubai (neighborhood with lots of gold/fabric/Indian stuff shopping) and she is going to take me to fabric stores so that I can pick out fabrics for her sister to make me Indian style tops. She is Indian and she told me that if I go alone I will not get the right price for the fabric, so she is going to help me. That should be fun:)

It's freakin hot out and I'm getting cabin fever.

Driving if Dubai

dollydavis33 — 2006-06-02T09:33:46Z

1. All the locals have big white SUVs with totally blacked out windows, sometimes even including the windsheild! I've found out that the car has to be registered to a woman for the windows to be completely blacked out...like an extension of the veil. Either there is some way around that, or all the men register the cars in their wives names....probably both are true.

2. In the Gulf News, every day or week, I’m not sure how often, the have a section on the second page called Crash of the Week. It’s a photo of the worst accident in the city for that day or week. Nest to the photo, there are stats like Number of Deaths, Number of Injuries, Traffic Impact, Cause of Accident, Cost of Damage, etc. I haven’t decided how I feel about this yet…in one respect I think it’s really good for people to see the actually accident and see what horrific consequences can come from bad driving, but on the other hand I think the way it’s presented makes it look like a baseball card and you could collect them and see who has the most deaths and injuries…it’s more of a spectacle than a serious subject.

3. Leave it to me to not realize there are traffic cameras all along the roads on which I regularly speed. And the worst part is that since there are no mailing addresses you only find out if you have penalties when you go to register your car! I want to know how it is supposed to curb speeding when you don’t get a penalty until a year later? I’ve never seen the cameras flash, so I don’t know if I’ve ever bee caught. I also don’t know how sensitive it is….I mean you could be going 1 kilometer over the speed limit or 30….I have no idea how much it takes to get a ticket. So now I’m really worried that I owe thousands in fines…ugh.

4. I have yet another driving related headache to look after. Apparently if your rental car gets even a scratch or dent on it you have to call the police and file a report. I did get a dent in my car like the third week here, but didn’t know about this rule. I was parked, went to a movie came out and had a dent on my hood. I know that there was a white monster of an SUV parallel parked facing my car, so I’m pretty sure he pulled forward, banged my car, didn’t think anything of denting my little dinky Peugot and took off. So I have to go park somewhere and call the cops to report it...what a pain.

Wish me luck!

Man Oman!

dollydavis33 — 2006-05-31T07:15:00Z

In order to get the trips home that I wanted, I have to do a 10 week stint here, of which I have 50 days left! If you enter the UAE on a tourist visa, then you get 60 days and you can pay a fee for a 30 day extension, or you can leave the country and re-up your tourist visa for another 60 days. I knew that I would have to do one of the options and I'd rather go to Oman than just pay a fee, so I seized the opportunity when Janet's parents and sister came to visit and wanted to go to Oman!

The trip didn't go exactly as planned, but it wasn't really planned, so that's not saying much. I have a halfday on Thursdays which Janet doesn't, but she was gonna leave early so that we could head out. She ended up not being able to leave until about 4:30, so we didn't get on the road until 5 or 5:30. We didn't really know what we were doing, we just followed the signs to Oman.It took about 2 hours to get to the border where you have to make several stops to get and exit visa, get Omani insurance, get an entry visit, save little scraps of paper to give men with guns later...you know, the usual. It took a while, but we got through it and headed on to Muscat, until we realized that it was another 3 or so hours to get there (Janet and I didn't do much research before we left). So we saw signs to a place called the Sohar Beach Resort, so we decided to head for it. I knew we had chosen the right place when I picked up a matchbook with the town motto, "Sohar, So Good!" written on it.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful, but I had a great time with Janet, her sister Laura and their parents.

I will upload the pics on Saturday because I left them on my computer at work...sorry!

Random Thoughts

dollydavis33 — 2006-05-18T06:31:10Z

Weekend, for reals!

Great news everyone...in September the UAE is transitioning from a half Thursday/Friday weekend to a Friday/Saturday weekend!! Now, I am getting a little ahead of myself, because I haven’t actually found out if this applies to me. The change is for government entities and schools, and I work for a private development company so who knows.

Eureka!

Did you know that almost anything grows in sand? I didn’t. When I moved into the villa, my roommates were attempting to grow a lawn in the backyard which was basically a large children’s sandbox. Aside from my environmental beliefs that one should not try to grow grass and other water-guzzling flora in the middle of the desert, I just didn’t believe that the grass would grow. But now, amazingly, we need a lawnmower! It would actually be nice to lie in a soft field of grass on a scorching day, but our lawn does have its downfalls. Yes we have grass, but the sand (and rocks) that were underneath did not just disappear, so when you walk with bare feet it’s very hard and rocky and not very comfortable at all! I was looking forward to being able to practice capoeira out there, but I’m afraid I’ll land on a lump of hard sand and hurt myself. I would’ve rather we pave the area so that we could at least utilize the space….no one even spends time back there except to water the grass.

The grass experience made me realize that all the landscaping I see is done in sand! I can’t believe it. There are flowers, bushes, trees….everything. I did see some workers lay a thin layer of soil once, but it’s sand right underneath! I am impressed by the ability for plants to grow in sand, but I also thing that it probably creates a huge waste of water. I just image the water running straight through the sand, instead of absorbing it, so they just overwater like crazy. This is all just my hunch….no real knowledge about any such things…so I could be completely wrong and sand may be a very common and very good planting material!

Roundabout madness!

I used to think of roundabouts as a quirky little British export, but it turns out they are no-foolin around, cut-throat, intersection madness. The roundabouts provide me with a much needed daily dose of adrenaline to liven up my day and I think I am rather adept at maneuvering my way through them. Once you get in the circle, it’s a no holds barred fight to get to where you want to go…no lanes, no signals, just the hope and determination to make it across. I don’t know exactly know why the traffic light system was vetoed. Again, I am just an observer and have absolutely no expertise in the subject of traffic management, but the roundabouts don’t seem to be helping at all! The chance of an accident in those things is sooooo high! I go through three major, 4 lane roundabouts each way to work and I always see at least one accident. They’re usually just fender benders but they totally stop traffic. The roundabouts go hand in hand with the abundant use of the U-turn here…but that’s another blog.

Happy Birthday Amanda!

For those of you who don’t know…it’s Manda’s birthday today! I’m sending her a mental hologram of an Angel Food birthday cake with a little bit of homemade frosting and strawberries. Mmmmm, it’s good. Dig in!

Ciao for now!