thank you thank you!

With my life currently being ruled by this record-breaking winter weather and having had each and every week of January become disrupted thanks to said weather, I feel like I haven't done a whole lot of quality posting lately.  I think I lost my zest somewhere between blizzards number two and three!  In fact, I barely feel as though my head is above water these days, especially with blizzard number five raging outside right now.  Yet somehow amidst my struggles, I recently got passed along not one but two blog awards - thank you so much to Karen at Stairstep Boys and to Cathy at Check It Off for including me in the award love!  Truly, this was such a nice lift during an otherwise dreary stretch ... thank you both so much!
Two weeks ago, Karen passed along this award:

And then last weekend, Cathy passed along this award:

It's funny because last July, Kerri at Pleasures of my Life also passed me this same 'versatile blogger' award ... so I'm already prepared to list "7 interesting things about myself"!  I'm going to repost my list as is - I have a few new readers since July, plus it's kind of cool to go back and see where my head was 6 months ago ...

1. I love to travel and have been to 40 states, most of which were visited in a single cross-country road trip I took when I was 24 years old.  I'm still a road warrior now and have taken my kids back and forth from Massachusetts to South Florida several times - nothing better than the freedom of the open highway in front of me!
2. I was a LOST-a-holic and now that the series is over I'm ready to resume my other all-out tv addiction: Mad Men ... honorable mentions go to Modern Family and 30 Rock. (*editor's note: of course, by now Mad Men is over, too ... it was a very dark season with one humdinger of a finale and now I can't wait for July and season 5!) 
3. I majored in French and lived in the South of France for a year in college.  incroyable!!
4. As part of some sort of wacky 70’s philosophy, I skipped Kindergarten and went straight to 1st grade after pre-school ... add to that the fact the I have an August birthday and it means I graduated from high school at 16 and started college just after my 17th birthday (and thus, college graduation at 20) ... that one goes under the category of "but it seemed like a good decision at the time" ... oy!
5. I have a really hard time with explosive noises … thunder, fireworks, guns, etc. … all WAY too loud for me - I'll avoid at all cost.  No idea why, but it's very real - anyone ever had a dog who whimpers and cowers during a storm?  Yeah, that's me.
6. I have one of the most complicated family trees of any person I’ve ever met: marriage/kids, divorce, remarriage/more kids have been constant for 2 generations above me. Add to that the fact that my (briefly married) mother and father had a 24-year age difference and then even the generations become blurred. Double oy!
7. I have been at the front of every Madonna concert in Boston since 2001 (Drowned World, Reinvention, Confessions, and Sticky and Sweet) – 8 shows in all and an unspeakable expense, but with my best friend (who flies up from North Carolina) as my accomplice I wouldn’t trade a single one.

Thanks again to Karen and Cathy ... it was fun to post about something other than s.n.o.w.!!!