Now that I’m a permanent employee again at E&Y [not a floater] the people I work for in Insurance Tax have given me more work. Hurray! I love a steady stream of work, but sadly it does take away from my Blogger entries and surfing the Net. How to balance love of Blogger with work, they’re both important, but the latter is more so. [Work pays my salary & the former does not.] Which is why I haven’t updated any of my own personal news lately, as it’s been busy at work and I like to reflect over my “entries” before posting them. Okay, okay … enough rambling and on with the news.

I have finally attempted, with a blender, to make my own Hummus over the past weekend. All things considering [one of which was obtaining Tahini] it turned out pretty decent and tasty. Since the weekend I’ve been able to printout several other different recipe variations of Hummus off the Net. Of which I will try out down the road. At the local health food store I picked up some wonderful sesame/brown rice crackers that go so well with Hummus. Yum! I also tried to make homemade pizza on Sunday and that turned into a disaster. [Back to square one on that bit … sigh]

Saturday was an interesting day … I was invited to attend the one year b-day party of Anni and David’s daughter … little Rachel. I know Anni thru E&Y and now she’s with KPMG. Rachel is now toddling all over the place and has a delightful, bubbly personality. Though like all babies, with lack of sleep, they can get cranky [more on that later]. Since the party was taking place out in Long Island, Anni said I could ride out and back with them. Very sweet of them. Pickup time was scheduled for 10:30am and when they hadn’t shown up by 10:50am I called her cell phone. They had troubles with Cosco [ie: b-day cake] and there was traffic on BQE. They finally showed up at 11:15am and we’re supposed to be at restaurant before 12 noon. Sadly that never happened. Had to make a few pit stops before arriving at the Palm Garden [Indian restaurant] in New Hyde Park. Guests were showing up as Anni, David, Shiny, Reggie and I were decorating the area for party. Anni’s family and relatives are all nice people who treated me kindly.

After awhile we headed into the buffet with Anni and Reggie telling me which foods I could eat, since a lot of Indian dishes can be spicy. I ended up with a veggie/rice, chicken and a spinach/tofu dish that is soooo yummy, plus special pita bread. Anni and I also partook of an Indian drink that is made with mango and yogurt. I had rum put into mine and let me tell you it was damn tasty. WooHoo! After much eating and socializing it was time for little Rachel to blow out candles on her cake. I helped out with taking pix of the whole group [borrowed someone’s digital camera]. Cake was good, but way to sweet. At one point the children grabbed balloons and had a mock balloon fight with Anni’s younger brother Reggie. [He’s such a cutie.] We finally cleaned everything up and left the restaurant at 3:30pm. There was talk of going to Jackson Heights to do some shopping, but we made a lengthy pit stop at Anni’s cousins home. By the time we left there it was close to 5:30pm and Rachel was getting very cranky. At one point she got “sick” all over Anni, so that changed plans of shopping to going home to Brooklyn. They dropped me off at an F subway stop and then had to change to G. Finally arrived home around 7pm. Overall it was an interesting day.

On Sunday my father and uncle were heading down from upstate NY with my new telly and several other items. Did some laundry and cleaned my apartment before they showed up at 11:15am in a rental car [Toyota]. I was all set to go buy them pizza for lunch, but upon arrival they weren’t too happy with NYC or the piles of snow blocking parking. They stayed long enough to bring items into the apartment, utilize the bathroom and take a look around my digs. Dad told me on the ride up to Westchester County from Brooklyn my uncle commented on the cosiness of my place. After they left I unpacked the items they brought and figure out how to hook up VCR to telly. Didn’t work out well, so will need to purchase new cables. Oh well………