Quick thoughts

First, had a business trip to Miami yesterday. Meetings ended early and we couldn't change our flight up, so had a nice late afternoon along South Beach. Dinner and a drink at the Clevelander, walk along the sand and feet in the water. Perfect weather. Perfect working Monday.

Our holiday party on Saturday was great. Had some of our closest friends over and so nice to have them all together. Hollis & Neesha -- I went to college with Hollis (one of the very very first people I met) and absolutely adore and admire his wife Neesha. Lauren and Mike -- I've written lots about them. I coached Lauren, she introduced me to Derek, I worked with Mike and introduced him to Lauren. Manny & Wendy -- Manny is Derek's best friend, they've known each other for close to 20 years. He was the best man at our wedding (and Wendy was like the honorary maid of honor -- without her, my sister would have failed miserably at the job:)) -- just joking Billi!) and is my go-to guy for just about anything and everything. Manny considers me the voice of reason when it comes to Derek, and for that I love him. They are our family. They brought almost 3 yr old Preston, who is a gem. Outgoing, funny, polite, a riot. And then there was Kate and Aidan. Kate is actually married to Toby, but he was out of the country for work (they both do lots of international work - and actually met while working in Africa while Kate was getting her masters). Aidan is there 20 month old son, who adored Preston and had a great time. Kate and I lived on the same floor of graduate housing during the 1st year of our masters programs at NYU and then together as roommates thereafter. She is also amazing! All in all, fun time. Although I will say - my ploy to get people UPSTAIRS (and use all the space we have on the second floor) --putting food and gifts upstairs -- failed. People went up there for 2 minutes, but then we were all congregated downstairs (mostly around the table). Such is the nature of parties:)

And finally, www.pandora.com. I have loved this site for close to 2 years now. I love it. You enter a song and/or musician you love and it creates a station for you with similar songs/musicians/sounds. It is awesome. I listed to one of my favorite stations that I have created - my "James Blunt" station that plays nice, mellow, love-like songs -- today and remembered that I must keep spreading the word about how awesome this site is. I have like 25 stations that I love and I am usually impressed with the songs the site picks for me and how much I like them (and how alike they are - despite often being frmo different genres of music or from musicians you wouldn't normally associate together).