My Home Team

adminCorey Lambert, Coreylambert.com, friendship, goodbyes, memories, new jobs, Square, travel, Uncategorized%s Comments

This is my home team.

My middle-of-the-night, no-matter-what, through-thick-and-thin, help-yourself-to-a-glass-of-water-without-asking-when-they-come-over people.

Home team member Corey is making a big move to San Francisco to take an incredible job opportunity.  I snapped this picture during his going away party on Saturday night.  We have been friends for 21 years, since the day I invited him over for “band practice”.  We were 5 and none of us could play an instrument but we were forming a band, goshdarnit.

My mom tells me “the Band” lasted for about 15 minutes before we all ran out to play.  My dad tied Corey’s shoes so he could join us on the jungle gym.

Over the years, the 6 of us have lived all over: New York, Chicago, Italy, South Africa, and London, not to mention the glorious college towns of East Lansing, Ann Arbor and South Bend, respectively.  While adding San Francisco to the mix is fantastic (new place to visit!), I can’t help but tear up a little- for the last 2 years, we have all been Chicagoans and therefore, able to have that everyday, stop-over-at-the-last-minute kind of friendship.  That being said, I could not be more excited for Corey and his new adventure.  Corey is a big deal kind of person and he is going to do very, very big deal things in San Francisco.

Corey, I love you and I am so wildly proud to be your friend.  Best of luck on your new adventure!

Saturday Morning Pie Making

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Today was the 4th Annual Friend-Family Thanksgiving, a gathering of Chicago chums to break bread and share a feast of all feasts.  My best friend Holly was in town from Atlanta and our contribution to Friend-Family Thanksgiving was apple pie.  After making a pot of our favorite coffee, we set to  work:

We quickly perused the FoodNetwork.com and came up with a game plan: Cut apples.  Add sugar, cinnamon, and more sugar.  Put in crust.  Simple and easy but since it was the first thing we did this morning, it made Holly and I feel super domestic and productive.

We pushed our culinary pie prowess a bit and got creative with the crust, going with a lattice crust on one pie and cut out hearts and stars for the other.

30 minutes in the oven and an almond glaze later, we were ready for Friend-Family Thanksgiving.

I am so lucky to live near to my closest friends and am even luckier that they enjoy eating, drinking and making merry as much as I do too.  It’s the start of the holiday season and my heart is as fully as my belly.  Which is really, really, really full.

 

The Search for Halloween Costumes

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I am on the hunt for the perfect Halloween costume.  And by perfect, I mean something I didn’t come up with 3 days before October 31st.  Last year, I celebrated my 2nd favorite holiday with a ride on Trolley with 35 of my closest friends.

4 hours riding Trolley all over Chicago, with strategically located bathroom stops (Mickey D’s in River North was the best–super clean, super big, and there were even escalators).  It was a blasty but Ryan and I need to up the ante with our costumes this year.  My friends are really creative and we got our butts kicked in the costume department last year:

Yeah, those are t-shirts depicting us at Lucy and Charlie Brown.  Not a terrible idea but lamesauce execution.

The Halloween Countdown app on my iTouch tells me that there are 33 days until Halloween.  We’ve got to go big this year.  To say Ryan is a competitive guy is an understatement so I have been given an assignment: 8 costume ideas for us by end of day today.  No small task considering that the only thing I can come up with is painting ourselves blue and being Avatars.

Ohh, I long for the days in college when all I had to do was sluttify a Disney character to have a totally stellar and praised Halloween costume.  When they say adult life is so much more complicated, I had no idea it applied to Halloween costumes as well.

My buddy Corey does Daily Booth and posted this question the other day:

Among the responses were Fruit, Lady Gaga, Mario and Luigi, Lady Gaga and more Lady Gaga.  I highly doubt Ryan will rock Lady Gaga, even if I told him she wore meat to the VMA’s.  Some friends of mine did Mario and Luigi a few years ago so that’s out.  So I’m at ground zero.

Help!  Please give me great, creative, funny and not-too-hard-to-put-together costume ideas!