A visit from Mark Mohammadpour

Last night Katie and I had the pleasure of seeing Mark, our friend from high school. Actually, Katie and Mark went to elementary school together. Wow. I didn't meet him till Mountain View HS. Mark is now working for a PR firm in Portland, OR. He was in NYC representing Microsoft among other tech companies. He stayed at this really Euro-style hotel on 58th called the Hudson. We took him to see the new Time Warner building and figured we would go to the West Village for dinner. It was Mark's first time ever on the NYC subway. Had really yummy Italian food and afterward we went to the Magnolia Bakery for dessert--cupcakes of course.
Katie and I had been there many times in the past, but it recently became famous in a very funny Saturday Night Live skit involving the new movie based on CS Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. And yes, they do have incredibly delicious cupcakes. Katie and Mark were overwhelmed by the richness of the frosting and couldn't eat it all, but I was able to overcome the mighty challenge the über-rich frosting posed, eating my ENTIRE cupcake while STANDING UP and ENJOYING EVERY LAST CRUMB. Take that Magnolia Bakery cupcake! Mark was able to pick some up for his client, who had also seen the SNL skit (now making the rounds on the internet) and had expressed desire for the cupcakes. So we helped Mark score some points. We then saw him off on the subway and went home.

I am getting back into the school grind--Mannes classes have been running since Jan. 3, but now Hofstra is starting Monday, Jan. 30 so I will be back to basically full time. Katie is working a ton and working on polishing her interview questions for schools. We'll write more on certain things (such as my comprehensive exams and her interviews) in the next few days or weeks once they are totally complete (for example, I have taken the written exam, but I won't know if I pass until I take the oral exam on Friday). After that, we'll give you the post-mortem. So stay tuned....