The Fabulous B@ker Blog

Well, hello there. Looks like the B@ker Blog took a bit of a summer vacation. Once again, busyness has taken over, and at the end of each quick day, I am too worn out (lazy...?) to post! The journey since my last post has taken us to Raleight-Durham North Carolina and back, with a visit to Cam, Sue and Ken, and nephew Tony thrown in. Annalisse and I travelled 1,750 miles in six days to check out possible dietetic internship (DI) programs for next year. On the way down we stopped to spend the weekend with Cam ( who is doing better, although disappointed he didn't get the job at Wayfair in Boston - his interests did not meet their needs ~ DUH ~ he's interested in big data and they needed a coding monkey.  I think that probably came through in the interview. LOUD AND CLEAR.), before heading down to Roanoke (well, technically Salem, Virginia), for an overnight with Sue and Ken, and the bonus of spending time with Cousin San. On Monday morning, with Sue and Ken joining us, our fir...

I know the lawns are getting brown. I know it's sometimes hard to sleep at night with all this heat. BUT I LOVE IT! This weekend has been a banner one, with beautiful weather and time spent with good friends. It simply doesn't get any better. The weekend started with a quick trip to Massena for my 35th reunion. I just went only for the Friday night get together, as Mark and I needed to attend our dear friend Kay's dad's memorial celebration on Saturday. Mark could not come along as he can't get away from work (having just taken two weeks vacation), so I started the day in Massena with lunch with my sisters and cousins, followed by a listing of Mom's house with a new agent and a party for Aunt Carol's 96th birthday. Later in the day I joined my girl's (and Ken, Sue's husband) for dinner at Sabad's before heading to the reunion get together at the Massena Country Club. As always, it was great reconnecting with friends (and ignoring those who I ...

Hey, Fabulous B@ker Bloggers, so sorry I've been away. I have obviously gotten out of the habit of blogging, at a minimum on Sundays. How can it be that it is almost Thanksgiving? (TURKEY.) Truthfully, there's not much to tell. The days are "shorter," and  definitely colder, and by the time I get home from work all I want to do is put on my sweatpants and fluffy socks and watch English period dramas on Netflix. (I'm kind of running out...I even had to watch "Jane Eyre," which I really didn't enjoy. I couldn't even finish "Great Expectations.") Of course, there is stuff going on all around me, most of which is not great: Mark's mom is facing an uncertain medical diagnosis, Paris has been devastated by last week's terror attack, Massena is facing upwards of 500 Alcoa layoffs which will be last nail in the coffin for my little town (not to mention my Mother's house will never sell now), and Montreal is dumping 2 billion gal...

Well, I tried to get Annalisse to do a guest blog, but she refused ("I don't like to write!"). I wanted her to tell you all about her productive summer, about which continues to proclaim: I got a lot done this summer! Or, I accomplished pretty much all my goals this summer! Since she won't tell you about her productive summer, I will! She took a Chemistry course that she needed for her major, and got a B+ She saw Ed Sheeran in concert She got her license She worked 100 volunteer volunteer  We visited some Rochester museums She took care of various doctor's appointments And, on Wednesday, she's going to Seabreeze, which she's been wanting to do all summer She packed a lot into three months. Now, onto a productive semester. She doesn't start classes until August 31, but she starts her volunteer coordinator job next week so will be heading back to school on Sunday. Junior year! (P.S. I'm off again this week...and keeping very busy!)

Hello! It's been a while since the last post AND IT'S ALMOST MID-AUGUST. Seriously depressing. I've heard recently that August is like Sunday night, and it is too true. Blah. Change is in the wind as we start to shift back to school, and everybody is a little upset (me: A LOT upset) that summer is almost over. While it's been a very busy one, it's not totally been the "good" kind of busy, meaning we've been busy with work and school. That's not to say there haven't been weekends (and extended weekends) of fun. In fact, just about every weekend has been filled with day trips or trips up north to clean Mom's house. I have had vacation time, though. During my first week off I did a lot of running around, and Annalisse FINALLY had her road test (she passed by a hair...). We did a couple of historic house tours, but Mark and the kids were tied up most of the week with work commitments. I also did not get as much porch reading done as I mig...

This summer, both kids have been making great strides in preparation for their respective careers. Cam and his pals Cam has been involved in Bioinformatics research at RIT for 40 hours a week (paid, thankfully), and comes home really excited about his progress and victories related to the project he is working on. Of course, when he explains what he's doing I have no idea what he's taking about. Oh well. Don't you hate it when they get smarter than us? Anyway, he's also involved in beginning his Master's thesis, the proposal of which he will defend in early fall. But it hasn't been all work for him, he's been having fun spending time with his Bioinformatics friends this summer and has developed a real bond with them. It's very nice to see. The RD Intern Then, in addition to her Bio class (in which she got a "B"), Annalisse has been working as a volunteer nutrition intern at  Trillium Health .  For her program, she needs 250 voluntee...

Another summer weekend has flown by...slow down! And how do we wrap up a warm, beautiful weekend? With a turkey dinner, of course...courtesy of my sister, Carol, who is visiting. I'll take it! Turkey in July! Mark and I spent most of the weekend pulling weeds and doing some yard clean-up. I'm very disappointed in my herb garden this year, and actually with a lot of my plants. I planted really sweet yellow, orange and gold pansies at the end of May to brighten up the garden, and they mostly pooped out. So, do I rake them out and plant new? Well, yes and no. I turned the dirt over to get a lot of the weeds out, and took out most of the pansies, but left a few. Planting all those little plants is not my idea of fun, so I will need to decide  if I want to plant new annuals (like a hearty begonia) this late in the season. Adding to my floral disappointment this year, I decided to get red geranium hanging pots for the front porch, remembering a couple of years back how beautiful ...

It's only a little bit ironic that I used this photo since I am not a big fan of fireworks It's the Sunday wind-down-holiday-weekend recap. What a wonderful weather weekend, and a weekend filled with low-key fun. Just in case you forgot: I LOVE SUMMER Ahhh, it's so wonderful. It's still my goal to get a job with summers off. Two more years...when Annalisse is done with college...I'm hoping I can make some changes and figure out a way to not work in the summer months. We'll keep noodling on that one. Anyway, back to the weekend.  On Friday morning, Mark and I got up early and headed back up north to do some more cleaning and packing in my Mom's house. This time, we attacked the basement (damp, yuck) and threw tons of stuff out, and packed up other stuff. We were not able to bring as much back to Rochester as we had hoped, with the plan being to bring the boxes and boxes of housewares and tchotchke back to be donated to the annual Advent Hou...

What's the recipe for a perfect weekend? Ingredients: Eight extra hours off work on Friday  Dinner with a special sister A perfect night under the stars, chatting with friends, and listening to some great tunes at Fairport Brewing Getting up early on Saturday and getting some delicious bagels A trip to Canandaigua to get some sweet yellow, orange and white pansies for the garden, followed by lunch at PUDGIES! A full day of yard work Dinner with the family An evening walk with Pup Enjoy each ingredient as it happens. Add a dash of sunshine, and throw in a thunderstorm or two. BONUS: Realize it's only Saturday night and there's a whole other day ahead! More yard work, and the promise of a nap. What a perfect weekend! Perfect Weekend Post-Script: The wind and rain swept in on Saturday afternoon, and,  LIKE A ROCK the temperature dropped from 80 and humid to 48, with pouring, cold, non-stop rain. WHAT A BUZZKILL.

Seventy-seven degrees today. Sixty-ish and sunny yesterday. Could it be happening at last? Why yes, it must be happening because WE SET THE PORCH UP YESTERDAY! No turning back (except for the occasional rouge snowy day that I'm sure we will still have). Even the houseplants are asking: When can we go back outside! Yesterday's beautiful Sunday topped off a very busy week that took me to New Orleans for the annual NAGAP conference. I had never been, and I think I can now say that I've "done that." It was ok, but very run down and not really my thing. Perhaps if I was a buxom, attractive girl in my 20s rather than a 50-something mother of college kids I might feel differently about the whole French Quarter/Bourbon Street scene, but it was certainly interesting. I think the funnest time spent in the French Quarter is when my friend Kristen, her husband, Ken, and I took a ghost tour on Friday night. It was mostly ghost stories (with no ghosts in sight - HA!), but a...

This weekend was the epitome of everything that is awesome about Fairport. There are many days when I'm amazed that we are able to live in such a wonderful town. Here's why. Friday the weather forecast called for hot and humid weather, WHICH I LOVE (right, Aunt Sher?), so I told Mark to hurry home so we could walk to Donnelly's for dinner before it got too crazy there. Well, he did, but it was CRAZY, so we decided to go to the Blue Cactus, where, despite their being chronically understaffed, I had a delicious mojito. Y-U-M. After dinner we headed back home, took Pup for a quick walked, called Nic and Patrick and invited them to meet us at Fairport Brewing Company for some outdoor-live-music-patio-fun. FBC has an amazing thing going this summer, with live music every weekend, food trucks, fire pits on the patio, and generally just a fun '80s beer blast vibe. Friday night at FBC It was the place to be on a wonderful, late summer night where we saw tons of people...

Some people will take trips to the beach for their summer vacation. Others will visit the mountains. Me? I will be spending the month of June on my porch recuperating from a double mastectomy and reconstruction. What a fun few months it's been... It all started with a routine mammogram in mid-March which led to... ...additional mammos and ultrasounds, which led to... ...biopsies on both breasts which revealed a very small, very early (3mm) tumor in my left breast, which led to... ...an MRI to be sure there were no other suspicious spots (there weren't - thank God), which led to... ...genetic testing because the tumor was not hormone-driven so there was no logical reason for it to be there, which led to... ...the test results showing that I was one of 8-10% of the population that had the BRCA1 gene that causes breast AND ovarian cancer (I should have bet the lottery...), which led to... ...the recommendation to have a double mastectomy (to remove the breast with the tu...

It certainly seems lately that the only time I blog is on Sundays. Maybe it's because the weeks, in general, are so mundane and boring. And maybe it's because the weekends, lately, have been filled with activity, mostly fun. This weekend was no exception, times 10!!! Sue, Ken and cousin San arrived from Roanoke on Thursday to attend niece Lauren's graduation (and related activities) from RIT this weekend. Rolling in around 7:30pm, they were greeted by a big pot of spicy sauce-n-balls/spaghetti dinner (a really good batch), but first there were snacks and wine on the porch. It was a really beautiful, early summer night. We got caught up on all the news, and rose early on Friday (a cold, rainy day) in order for Sue, Ken and San to attend the graduate convocation at RIT. Then around lunch time, Annalisse and I joined them for the "Order of the Engineer," a really neat, albeit extremely unorganized, ceremony where the graduates take the oath to perform their profe...

The kids drove off in the CRV today at noon for their training week at Camp Bristol. This year Cam is the Shooting Specialist (he had to go for shooting training - an NRA program...don't ask), and Annalisse is a junior counselor. Cam had to take the car because he'll need to go back and forth to Naz this week while he finishes up his Organic Chem class. I guess you could say the coming weeks will be a little like "empty nest in training" for us. Cam will be at camp right through the first week in August (home Friday night, back Sunday morning), and Annalisse will be there five out of the seven weeks as we will be going to Las Vegas from July 10-15, which will cut across two camp weeks. So, yeah. They're gone.  It's a little different than when they used to be gone to camp and we would have our "week of eating out," trying new and old favorite restaurants around Rochester. Now, with college looming, being by ourselves will be more the norm and OBVI...

The excitement starts at :29 Well, both kids' formal education has come to an end. Everything from here on out is "optional!" (Not really, but still an interesting thought.) Last night was Annalisse's graduation. After a year of basically being weepy everytime I thought about graduation I was actually pretty cool, calm and collected when the event actually happened. I remember thinking the same thing about Cam's graduation two years ago - I was a basket case in the months and days leading up to graduation, but did a pretty good job keeping it together at the ceremony itself. I spoke with a fellow mom afterward who echoed the same sentiments. Weird, huh? The ceremony was admittedly long with not too many inspiring speakers. It didn't seem as engaging as Cam's graduation, but that was probably because of the really dynamic speakers and special video they showed during his ceremony (see right sidebar of the blog). The new principal, who has bee...

The whirlwind continues. On Friday after work (at the College, we get out at noon on Fridays), I picked up the kids and we traveled north for a much needed visit to see Mom. She's been in the nursing home for several months now and my Auntie is there as well, so we were able to have a nice visit with both of them.  Mom is always a little confused when I just "appear" in front of her - I'm not part of her every day life and she has a hard time understanding the context of me just walking up and saying hello. Where did I come from? When did I get there? And I think it also takes a second or two to know that it's me. She hadn't seen the kids in a while so she really didn't know who they were, but when we told her I think it was also hard for her to believe how grown up they are. Although it hasn't been all that long since she's seen them, with their busy lives they don't come along for visits as much as they used to, so it's been a wh...

Today Annalisse had her last final - Health, which she said was easy. Let's hope she had a successful week academically with her English and Political Science finals on Monday, and today's test. She's happy to yell from the highest mountain "I'M DONE WITH SCHOOL!!!!" Of course, killjoy that I am, I remind her she starts back up again in September. Still, pretty exciting stuff!! Onto this weekend's Senior Bash and next week's graduation celebration!! It's all fun from here, kids!

A Gaggle of Grecos. Is that a legit collective term? This weekend was another totally memorable one. Is it possible to fit worlds of fun into just three short days? Yes! And it was wonderful!! Hosts of friends and relatives descended upon Fairport this weekend for the double whammy celebration for Annalisse's last downstage show and Fairport Canal Day s, our village's yearly arts & crafts festival. The really special thing about the weekend was a visit from my dearest friends, Sue and Ken, and also having both my sisters come for the festivities. At work we are now on half-day Fridays, and let me tell you, last Friday morning was the longest in recent history. I was counting the minutes until I could be free since I knew I had a lot of prep for the weekend, not to mention massive cleanup at the house resulting from the installation of new windows. (Which, with each room, has caused a total move out of all furniture and other stuff. When complete, we need to mop the fl...

Whew! Another stressful week is coming to an end. Annalisse made it through her three tests and thinks she did ok/good. We got her five week grades, and she's sitting at between an 80-84 in Bio (even though I think we're in week six or seven by now), so that was a great end to a stressful week. Cam came home from RIT yesterday and it's a laundry/stuff-o-thon in the basement. I'm trying to clear out the piles of clothes, towels, sheets that need to be washed and packed back up, and at some point this summer I will run all his kitchen stuff through the dishwasher. I've got some time (even though we all know how fast the summer goes). I think it was a pretty good year for him and he's ending on a high note. Not all his grades are in yet, but it he thinks he'll end up with B's in everything except Sociology, where he's expecting an A. The "B" in Discrete Math II will replace the "D" from winter quarter, so we'll have to see how ...

Here we are again, coming down to the wire with five weeks left of another senior year...if we make it that long. It's been a tense time of trying to keep Annalisse focused on finishing up her coursework (AND PASSING), and it's not been fun. (Who ever said parenthood is fun? Those baby showers and all that cooing over how cute they are in the beginning is definitely a fantasy.) I distinctly remember this same stress two years ago, except that with Cam it began at the beginning of his senior year (and got worse with his early acceptance to RIT), and with Annalisse it's taken a while for senioritis to really take her into its steely grip. Keeping my "eye on the prize," I remember how all my cares dropped away as Cameron walked across that stage at graduation - "we" had made it through! (Although the anxiety started again soon enough when August rolled around). I cannot wait until June 20 when Annalisse does the same. I hope she has a restful and fun ...