Finally, the weekend.

It's been a hellishly long week. I worked late every night this week and still brought work home save for Tuesday night, when the consultants on one of my projects took us out for a fat cat dinner at George. The project working team was established in the spring and I joined not even two weeks ago in the latest phase, so I lucked out on this dinner - the food was great and the wine just kept on coming.

Anyway, after the crazy-busy week of meeting after meeting, I had the added stress of a presentation to give to my group in our monthly status meeting yesterday morning. Public speaking and presentations have never been my strong suit and I was nervous and anxious before and during but it turned out better than I expected. I had 30 minutes on the agenda and followed my scripted notes fairly closely. I shared with my group the learnings from the course I took in the summer on building business cases and the material generated more discussion than I had anticipated, so 30 minutes became 60. I wasn't quite sure how the presentation went but the feedback I got from my big boss in particular was good, so I'm glad I did it.

More meetings followed after that and finally the work day was over. It'd been a long while since my last condo update and since S&W moved midtown, I don't linger downtown after work or have a reason to head down on the weekends to check up on it - never mind that I've been swamped of late.

So, when S suggested midweek that we have dinner Friday night to catch up, I asked that we meet downtown so I could stop by the site to see what's what. I hung out at Chapters to unwind with some fashion and gossip mags until S called to say that she was on her way down to meet me at BLVD. Here's the latest on the site, on approach from the east:


...and from the west:

Still no walls yet, but it's coming along.

S, W & I had a drink in the second floor lounge at Czehoski and then headed over to its sister restaurant, Coca, across the street for dinner. It was so nice to be able to relax with friends and not have to think about work for awhile, even though I brought it home with me for the weekend. sigh.

I woke up this morning and practiced for my mandarin oral test today and then went to class, for some reason, completely exhausted. In fact, I'm pretty sure I looked like hell, and volunteered to test first so I could get outta there and head home to nap at first opportunity...which I ended up not doing after all. Instead I spent the afternoon sorting through all the crap on the loveseat and dresser in my room and now I'm vegetating in front of the TV watching the third season of The West Wing on DVD because all the shows I'd taped during the week were messed up because of the delayed change to Standard Time. Grr. So no Gossip Girl, no NCIS, no Private Practice, and most importantly, no Ugly Betty. I be sad. :(