Recaps and moving forward

The two days in New York for World Malaria Day events turned out to be really fun. It was jam-packed with things to do and exhausting, but everything went well and I had a great time. It was pretty cool to be camera gal and to be live blogging from the various events, with the help of a coworker posting my plain-text emails and cell phone pics. We had great turnout for our events, I met some great people, and the entire NBN team is proud of our success. Now it’s time to look forward to the rest of the year and kicking off another series of events to lead up to next year’s WMD. I’m getting excited about it!

Recently, a friend of mine launched her own communications consulting firm. She was a former co-worker and now a close friend, and I can’t tell you how proud I am of her. She has a logo and business cards already, and a basic website she is working on to display her services. I’ve offered my help with her email communications, which she’s gladly accepted. Anything I can do to help out a friend and get a little extra practice! She’s now thrown into that bunch of people that I look at and say, “Wow, they’re really taking charge of their lives…I want to be like them.” It’s not that I don’t think I’m doing good things, but I guess it’s that extra step that people take that makes them stand out. I’m glad she has the confidence and ambition to do so and I really wish her all the best. I’m glad I have awesome friends like her. 🙂

I go home in a week and half. I can’t wait. Lately, mom and I have been struggling to arrange times in the year where it works out for me to come home, as well as us to go to Louisiana for a family wedding and the pre-Christmas festivities which we missed last year. Unfortunately, ridiculous airline prices are now preventing us from doing either of them, and we are settling with me coming home for next month and then again for the holidays this winter. Hopefully I’ll see my parents one more time in between next month and then…but we’ll see. It’s looking unlikely with their schedules and mine. It’s so frustrating about the Louisiana stuff especially, as I’ve been looking forward to my cousin’s wedding for years, and I really don’t want to miss another Roussel gift opening again…for now, I’m glad I went down in March, and Mom is glad she was just there for Relay for Life. So funny enough, I had to book my Thanksgiving and Christmas tickets yesterday. Unreal.

But, it’s nice to think that I’ll be seeing my dogs again next weekend, and that Dan will be here in a few weeks. 🙂