as you may have noticed, if you are even still reading at this point, we took a bit of a hiatus over the summer. my busiest three months at work are may-july, and i quite simply did not have the time or the energy to keep up with this blog. now that those months and summer conferences are behind us, however, i do want to begin giving time back to this project in the coming months. this blog has always been an escape for me, an opportunity to focus on something first and foremost for myself, and i have missed it these last few months. i am working on the posts i should have written over the summer and have some new things on the horizon, but in the meantime here is a little life update for you:
another year of summer conferences are behind us. the bulk of my job is coordinating summer leadership conferences for rising 11th and 12th graders. spring was spent interviewing and hiring summer service members, orienting parents to the program, and getting last-minute materials together. june and july brought two weeks of training and six weeks of conferences, and while they were exhausting they were also a lot of fun. it is always amazing to me to see students who didn’t previously know one another come together and work toward making lasting, systemic change in their communities. i am glad to have some personal time back in my life and to be able to see my friends again, but it is always a little bittersweet to have summer come to an end.
i rang in my 35th year. i am not one to hype up birthdays, and this year’s was exactly perfect. christina and i went for a walk in overton park and had an impromptu breakfast at barksdale where our sweet server stuck a candle in my hotcakes. after resting for a bit, we had brunch at the beauty shop with alex, ryan, and jessi, followed by a birding adventure through central gardens and cooper-young. we spent the afternoon on the couch and then had dinner with my parents and brother at la guadalupana. the day was low-key, centered around food and friends and family, and included ample time for naps, which is really what my perfect day looks like.
maggie, katie, and i will be tearing up europe in november, and other upcoming fall highlights. the biggest thing i am excited about this fall is a european adventure with two of my best girls. maggie is living it up in europe – and working, i guess – for 6 months, so katie and i decided to suck it up and go see her in november [needs must, after all]. we are going to spend 10 days living it up in budapest, prague, and vienna, with vienna affording me the additional opportunity of catching up with my beloved gugi. in addition to that i have the cooper-young 4 miler in a month, our fall event at the end of september, the start of the orpheum’s broadway season, and football season.
i joined a gym. words i never thought i would say, let alone type, but never say never i guess. in an effort to do more than run, we have joined the kroc. i did a personal training session a few days ago to figure out what i need to do to complement my running, and my goal for the time being is to get back to the gym once a week until it becomes a part of my routine. two months of cafeteria food have taken their toll, and with the kroc being walking distance i don’t have a lot of excuses for continuing to be lazy. wish me luck.
35before35 is over; it’s now time for 40before40. it feels very strange to type that, but that’s where we are. i didn’t get to as many of my 35before35 things that i hoped to, but it was a fun project nonetheless. now we move on to 40before40, which is daunting but something to look forward to. my hope is to have my initial list posted in the coming days which will be followed by the first item i crossed off. keep an eye out for updates!
and with that, we kick off a new season of writing and posting. let’s do this.
xx
queen veen on the scene 
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