The Long Journey Home

New Jersey bound! Who drives a Prius dragging a trailer behind it almost 3000 miles? These weirdos right here

I moved back to the East Coast, so you probably thought that this blog was over, huh? Especially since I mostly started it 5 (!) years ago to detail my new adventures on the West Coast. Well since I can't shut up that notion is out the window, I haven't even come close to running out of things to say!

I left the Bay Area to move back to New Jersey on August 18, 2014. I moved to the Bay Area on August 16, 2009. So I was there for almost EXACTLY 5 years. Around the time I was leaving I was going to write this huge blog post reflecting on my time in the Bay and all of the crazy, insane things I went through, and what it all meant....but then I got tired.

Because I was pregnant.

Yes, two days before Roberto and I left on our road trip to drive cross country back home I found out. It was nuts, it was unexpected, but seriously, knowing me, what else could you expect?

You would expect a random Naderto baby, that's what

I could go into what the last five years in a brand new land, far away from all of my friends and family meant. Even now, after living back in the East Coast for almost two months, I still feel like I'm barely unpacking all that I've experienced. But then I realize something, I don't need to share all that right now BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT THIS ENTIRE BLOG IS ABOUT. Is it a chronicle of my struggles, my musings, my experiences outlining all of the cool stuff I did and the confusing ideas I had as to where my path would lead. So if you want to know what the last 5 years were like, you have pages of blog posts to enjoy :-)

DOOO IT!!!

The gist of it is this though, my five years in California basically beat the adulthood into me. Which is not what most people would imagine when they think of California. Hey, it's the Golden state, full of sunshine and happy chill people that hang out at beaches, eat organically and do yoga all day. Okay some of that is actually true, but I moved to California for one person, and that person was Roberto. I had no other people, no community, no friends! He was it! On top of that I got stuck in the economic downturn and ended up jobless for a year. A whole torturous yet wonderful year where I think I gave myself multiple ulcers while desperately trying to discover my true passions and direction.

And direction came slowly, but it came from all over the place. I became heavily involved in local California politics, then state and national politics. I was elected to be a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, I helped co-found the Black Young Democrats of the East Bay (which to this day is one of the things I have been involved with that I am the most proud of). I served on a gazillion boards, I fought for American Muslim Civil Rights, I organized with South Asian groups, I worked with and taught refugee communities, I ran an inner city program for black and brown youth, I blogged like crazy, I read and wrote poems about and with South Asian women on stage in San Francisco. I joined fellowships. I was appointed to a State Assembly Women's committee, and all this random craziness led to me being recognized on a GOOD 100 list of activists. I made friends, a whole gang of them. I have proof that they exist, they came out en mass for my West Coast wedding. I made a new West Coast mom and West Coast sister. I gained an entire family where I worked, the first time that's ever happened at a job for me.

Some more family I've adopted along the way

I also had my first major mental and emotional melt down on the West Coast. It never got that bad until I was in California, alone, jobless, friendless and just absolutely, completely and utterly lost and broke...oh and did I mention how broke I was?

But  I survived you California! I did! And you made me strong as hell. Now I am incubating a bun of awesomeness, I have a  husband and Prius with over 130,000 miles on it, and two of the most amazing cats in the world to show for my time. I have friends I will never forget or stop loving because of it.

And now I am back home, a somewhat different person, a strangely adult person. Perhaps more worldly, and probably bit crazier than before, but either way, I am irrevocably changed. 

This past weekend, I spent time with a family who adopted me and who I lived with for two years straight after college and before moving to the Bay Area. I had dinner at a home I first visited eight years ago. As I pulled into the driveway of this home I couldn't help but reflect on the 22 year old that showed up to that home eight years ago. That person was so full of fear and confusion as to what the future held. I had been single for almost three years at that point and saw any semblance of a romantic relationship as a traumatic lesson in futility. I came to that home in someone else's Prius. I didn't have a car, an apartment, or a job. I was a lost leaf floating haplessly in the wind. 

My East Coast family

Contrast that to this Sunday. Now I was driving up in my own car, married and expecting, with a full time job, my own apartment and though I am still wracked with uncertainty, I have taken it as a fact of life. None of us really know where we are going, and maybe, just maybe I have started to make peace with that.

Home has been a very winding road back, but the person who showed up to this home eight years later would not have been this person today without my five years in California. You've left a mark, West Coast, home may be where the heart is, but I realize that my heart is actually scattered, amongst people I love all across the country. And maybe I wouldn't have it any other way.

Not Your Typical Wedding Love Letter

Marriage #2 to husband #1!

Two weekends ago I got married for the second time to the same man, my dear Roberto. Honestly it was an amazing love story. Not just a love story between him and I, but a love story of me and the amazing people who joined us on that day.

This is a love letter to those people...

As I have grown older, I have found myself ruminating on love more and more. It is something I reflect upon quite frequently, love in its many forms, the way we love different people and different relationships and how love and memory can be so intertwined. Roberto and I were officially married last July in my hometown in Northeast Pennsylvania in Wilkes-Barre, PA. It was a very sudden wedding, I like to say that it was a shotgun wedding without the baby. My parents were so thrilled to find out that some guy was willing to marry their crazy daughter that they threw together a wedding less than two months after my engagement. They invited 100 of their neighbors (mostly other Bengali folk) and boom I was MARRIED.

Yes, it was cray-cray, I just wanted an excuse to use the word cray-cray

It was a fun weekend, an absolutely insane one, but fun. The problem was, almost none of my friends were there. About 5 good friends of mine managed to attend, but most other people I loved weren't there to spend my special moment with me. I wanted to share my love with my friends, and for me that meant, another wedding, well...two to be exact.

This meant that we were going to have a West Coast Wedding celebration (and an East Coast one...eventually). In May, Roberto surprised the crap out of me in Alamo Park  with an engagement where about 40-50 friends of ours came out of the woodwork to descend on me in a park in San Francisco to see Robert propose at the site of our first date weekend. I was shocked, I cried and wore red flannel (yup I was so surprised that my engagement pictures will forever be immortalized with me dressed as a scrub).

Apparently, Roberto likes scrubs

That was an amazing moment, and I wanted these friends to be part of our wedding celebration.

So lo and behold, two weeks ago we threw our West Coast Wedding Celebration. It was Naderto's wedding celebration, a horrible amalgam of our names clashed into one. We even hashtagged it (#NADERTO). This celebration was honestly one of the most beautiful, poignant and best memories I have ever made. Roberto built a beautiful alter with his bare hands (in the rain, I may add), and decorated it with beautiful red and yellow flowers. My mentor and West Coast mom, Mary and her equally awesome Dave graciously offered up their home for the event, even though Mary's eyes widened when I told her 150 people had RSVP'd. Countless friends offered to help set up, bring food and drinks and join me with so much excitement on this day.

Our alter, made by the groom

And the day of the celebration, it rained. It was gray and windy, but almost everyone still showed up, yup, Mary was still stuck with about 150 people (sorry Mary!). We did a vows ceremony with our monsignor, Gabriel presiding over our words. Gabriel's wife, and my dear friend and twin, Maia, had basically wedding planned the entire event, we couldn't have celebrated our love without the love given to us by this amazing couple.

Us with Gabe and Maia. Members of the Salvadoran wives club with our lucky husbands ;-)

Everything from that day was possible due to the help of others, it took three of my girlfriends, Barnali, Sabiha and Preeti to help me put my sari on (I'm a failure as a brown girl, I cannot put a sari on my by myself for the life of me), and even my mother commented on how beautifully it was put on. And honestly, coming from a Desi mother, that means a lot.

My beautiful bouquet =) Photograph by Jennifer Davis

My bouquet was put together by Mary's daughter, Charlotte, and our breathtaking wedding photography was done by Mary's niece, Jennifer. Our celebration wouldn't have been possible without the contribution of all of these friends, and I will never forget what they did for me to make my day so special, ever. My friend and artist, Sabreena Haque of Ritual by Design did my stunning mendhi.

My beautiful mendhi by Ritual By Design

My friend Nadine, handmade truffle chocolates for dessert. My best friend Nwe not only got us appetizers from her local Burmese community, but had her boys help me out to fundraise at my wedding for my organization, NAPAWF (National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum), they went around with a box asking people for donations for this organization under our name.

With my NAPAWF sisters and my donation box

When I walked down the aisle, with Mary giving me away (yea girl POWER!), I couldn't even look at the crowd that was waiting for me. I was too overwhelmed by their love for me and Roberto, I was too overwhelmed by them coming out on a rainy day to be a part of this. During my vows, I laughed, cried and honestly forgot what I actually said (thankfully there's video), but was moved the entire time by having everyone there.

You know you have the best co-workers in the world when they come out to party for your wedding! My organization, CHAA (Community Health for Asian Americans)

My awesome SEAYL youth came out, because they are the most awesome youth ever

With my Black Young Dems! Co founded this group with some of these people 2 years ago, and look how far we've come =)

I'm not sure if everyone understood how significant this event was for me. Yes it was a celebration of love, but it was also for me, a celebration of my four years here in the Bay Area. I came here literally ONLY knowing Roberto, the guy I made this crazy move for. As I moved around our packed party, I mingled with the different people in organizations I've worked with, from different jobs, to political movements and groups. All of them were part of a transformative chapter of my life.  Each one of them shared a memory and experience with me, I honestly cannot believe that I experienced so much in these 4 years. My friendships and relationships are a testament to these lives I've lived in the West Coast.

After cheerful and tearful toasts, after dancing and drinking, after gifts and hugs, I know have this memory forever. It is a very important memory of love, the love I share with Roberto and the love I shared with each and every person who joined us. Thank you ALL, from the bottom of my heart.

I love you all, thank you to my my friends for loving us back!

PS. If you want to check out all of our wedding pictures by the wonderful Jennifer Davis, here they are!
Nadia and Roberto's Wedding Photos
Nadia and Roberto's Black and White Wedding Photos 

An Unforgettable 2013...

Every year is different for everyone, some people have been happy that 2013 is over. I'm never happy that a year is over, I'm pretty indifferent either way, but I have to say that for me 2013 has been a monumental year in my life. After having some major struggle years in 2010 and 2011, and an in between year of 2012, this past year really saw me take off. Many of you may know that Facebook has a sort of "year in review" timeline option, I finally looked at mine and here's a sample of my "Top Events" of 2013.

 

Alright that was my year, see ya!

Just kidding, but these were definitely highlights from a year full of them. Getting engaged and married within such a short period of time (we were officially engaged in May and got married in July, craziness!) was a whirlwind for sure. It was a wave of family, love and emotion that picked me up and took me for an unforgettable ride. In the end, my wedding in July was one of the happiest memories of my life, full of friends, love, laughter, tons of bling, and more laughter. 

Yup, this was my wedding in a nutshell

My sister is the one that made my wedding happen, and though it increased her blood pressure significantly, I couldn't have asked for a better sister and friend even though she wanted to toss me off a cliff by the time my wedding actually happened. I have to also give so much love to my parents who accepted Roberto 110% after finding out that we wanted to spend our lives together, despite him coming from a different cultural and religious background. Though he did convert to Islam of his own volition, it still boggles my mind that after 20+ years of hiding boyfriends and hyperventilating at the thought of my parents ever knowing that I had some romantic interest in the male species that they would be so loving and accepting of him as their new son. I also reflect on my friends,  who came out of the woodwork to join in with my last meeting wedding insanity. Though I could only invite a handful of friends who could have actually made it do it being so last minute and the wedding having limited funds, I will never forget how my best friend, Taz, who I've been friends since I was 4, drove up 15 HOURS one way (then back) to be there for me. She literally drove 30 hours total to come up to Northeast Pennsylvania and be driven insane by my family. That's true love. 

TRUE LOVE

My other homeboy for life, Arshad, also drove up for hours upon hours from Florida to join me. That's real friendship, and their presence there along with my dear friends from childhood and college on my special day was one of the most beautiful things I ever experienced in my life and I will never forget it.

Of course the last person I thank and reflect on is my husband, my Roberto. We were together for 4 years before our wedding, and he was the Chewbacca to my Han in this entire whirlwind. When he proposed to me in Alamo Park in San Francisco by surprising me with so many of my family and friends there, neither of us could even accept the engagement because we were so choked up. I cried like a maniac, only because I was so happy that we would be together...and that he locked that ish DOWN with style.

This is me making my ugly crying face when Roberto proposed

He accepted my family, my culture and religion I grew up with so graciously, and has made my parents so happy. It's funny how a relationship can progress beyond your wildest dreams, but ours did. We worked on our challenges together, we went through a cross continental relationship, losing jobs, gaining cats, hiding our love from my parents due to a fear of their non acceptance and multiple moves to be together. He is my partner in crime and I cannot wait to start 2014 with him as my Mr. Hussain.

My family, Roberto and I after getting our marriage license

Outside of the awesomeness in my personal life 2013 saw great leaps and dreams fulfilled in terms of the work I do with social justice and in my professional life. Around the time I got married, I received wonderful news that I had been selected for the National Governing Board of a women's organization I admire immensely, NAPAWF (National Asian Women's Political Forum). I joked with the Executive Director of NAPAWF, Miriam Yeung, that I think was more elated about joining the board than my own wedding (sorry Roberto!). But it has been life altering for me to be on a national board, working with women all across the country to advance the rights and voices of Asian Pacific Islander Women in a national context. I could not be more thrilled about this.

NAPAWF ladies and I lobbying on Capitol Hill for Women's Reproductive Rights!

In 2013 I also joined the board of the Asian Pacific Islander Caucus of the California Democratic Party, my first time on any state political board, it was also cool to actually be voted into the position (which means that people temporarily lost their minds and actually picked me). This year, I also saw leaps and bounds in an organization I helped start, the Black Young Democrats of the East Bay, which was chosen as our county's "Democratic Club of the Year". Not bad for an organization which started just 2 years ago as a vision of promoting Black young leadership in the East Bay, California. I am always so proud of them and am honored to be part of their leadership.  

Black Young Dems will rock your activist socks off, and look good doing it

This year saw me doing intense outreach to marginalized communities on behalf of the Affordable Care Act, it has been a challenging journey that has been well documented in the press, but I am grateful for the opportunity to reach out on a grassroots level to make healthcare information more accessible.

  A collection of thank you notes from Asian American Studies students at SF State University for an Affordable Care Act presentation I did there

Though 2013 has been better for me than most years in recent memory, it also brought the loss of a person whom I cared about a lot.  I know that getting older will only bring more loss like this, and it is not something I am looking forward to. In April, my dear friend Polly passed away. I wrote about her in my previous blog post. She had health problems for awhile, but her death was sudden and unexpected for me. Though I miss her, I have gotten to know her family after her death and feel a sense of peace knowing that she was surrounded in life by so many who loved her dearly.

Grateful to have had her in my life

2014 is due to arrive very soon. In the past two weeks Roberto and I have crossed three state lines to spend the last vestiges of the year with our family and friends. I am so grateful for having his family be MY family, as we spent the best Christmas I have ever had in upstate New York. I am so grateful to have family that have accepted me wholly within their fold and I cannot believe that overnight I have so many new people who will part of my life forever. In these waning hours of 2013, I will be spending NYE with my mom at a brown peoples party aka a party full of other Bengali people that my parents are dragging my husband and I to. Still, I am happy to spend it with them, though at midnight I won't be able to give Roberto a kiss (too scandalous in these circles).

Having a pajama fam jam with Berto's family, my sister and her boyfriend in upstate New York

This year will be a year of transition since I am going to move back to the East Coast this summer. This is something a few of my friends know, but it will be news to some. This decision has been a long time coming, in a sense I sort of got "stuck" out West due to a terrible economy and had wanted to move back much sooner. Though I moved out to the Bay Area 4 years ago with love and stars in my eyes, I knew that the move would be temporary, that in the end I would come back home to the East Coast to be with my family and settle down (well as much as someone like me can settle down).

Woohoo! Jersey! Jersey!

I could not be more excited for the New Year, to move back to a home that I have missed so much for 4 years. I admit that though I am a bit overwhelmed by the prospect of moving across country again, I know that it is just another step to having my dreams come true. Here's to 2014, a year of having dreams come true!

HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!

A Season of Love & Remembrance

What does a Brown, Muslim girl know about Christmas really? It wasn't something my family celebrated with me as a kid, though I have a sneaking suspicion that my mom really, REALLY wanted to celebrate it but was just hiding that fact. She used to tell me that it was a "Christian" holiday and so as Muslims, it wouldn't be right to celebrate, or get a Christmas tree. Yet, she would buy Christmas ornaments like crazy (this wasn't helped by the fact that she worked at a Department store and got crazy discounts on all things Christmas). Since we had no tree to hang the ornaments, we would hang them around the house randomly with thumbtacks.  I remember when I was 9, I wanted a Christmas tree so badly that I ripped a branch off a pine tree near my home, stuck it in an empty flower pot and hung up paper ornaments on it that I drew with crayons. It was the saddest Christmas tree ever, Charlie Brown ain't got nothing on a confused Christmas loving Muslim kid.

I feel ya Charlie Brown, I feel ya...

Now as an adult, I embrace all things Christmas. Perhaps not the insane consumerism, but as a holiday I love it! To me it's not religious as all (since, well I'm as secular as you can get) but just another fun holiday where I get to do fun things, get a tree, exchange gifts and eat myself into an unhealthy BMI number.

DON'T JUDGE ME!!

Okay, I'll be honest, the holidays do bring out more for me. It is  time for me to remember to count my blessings, to spend quality time with loved ones and reflect on the year that was before New Years.

The hardest thing about this year has been losing someone I love. That is always the hardest thing in life to me, always. My dear friend, Pauline Cabello, or as I knew her, Polly, passed away this past April. The saddest part for me is that I didn't even know she passed away until October, an entire 6 months of her not being on this planet with me having no idea. I only found out when I decided to hit her up to check out what she was doing for Dia De Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) this year. I usually spent the day with her, and when I turned to her Facebook to see what she would be doing I was met with message after message of people missing her. My heart completely broke. I was immediately wracked with guilt that has still not left me. HOW could I NOT know that she was gone? Though we didn't talk every week, we usually saw each other a couple of times a year and kept in touch rather frequently on Facebook. She always liked my statuses and photos, and we messaged each other. We even messaged each other about 2 weeks before she died, with me complaining about traffic tickets. Maybe that's why I didn't think she would pass away so soon. Her health wasn't great but her death was sudden and in the blink of an eye she was gone. It was a blink that I missed.

Polly and I at a Dia De Los Muertos festival in the Fruitvale, Oakland CA in 2011

Pauline was older than me, almost a grandmother type, but she really had a young soul. Her energy and positivity just radiated from her, she was always so active. It was hard to tell her age because she had the energy of a twenty-something! I met her through my husband, whom she met while they were both in the ceramics program at a community college. My husband had just gotten out of the Marines and was having  tough time adjusting back to civilian life. She came into his life and encouraged him in his art and in leadership. He became President of their college's ceramics guild due to her encouragement. He told me that she was there when he needed him, especially during a time when many people weren't. That will always mean something to him, I hope that Polly realized that.

Painting Polly's face the last time I saw her <3 comment-3--="">

She came out to all of my husbands art shows, shows that even his family didn't come to, but she was there, every time. Though I didn't know anyone when I first moved here, she was one of Roberto's friends who immediately embraced me and was so genuinely sweet and friendly to me from the first time I met her. We struck up a friendship through Roberto but continued it on our own. I will always remember my last memory of spending Dia De Los Muertos with her last year at an event she organized. There was music, hot chocolate and a beautiful exhibit, all of which she organized. I remember painting her face for her, she was so excited to have me do that. When I celebrated that year, I never imagined that a year later I would be mourning her as a loved one who had passed, as another person whose name I would commemorate during the day of the dead.

With Roberto at his last art show

What also hurt me is that I didn't get to join in any of the memorial celebrations of her life. I didn't have any mutual friends with her outside of my husband, so no one could let me know. I was grappling with lost, crying randomly at night wracked with guilt and sadness at not seeing her again. I was especially sad because she never got the chance to see Roberto and I get engaged and married. She would have been so happy for us, she was so supportive to us and loves us so much as a couple.

So I was happy to find out that a group of friends of hers would have a small celebratory holiday gathering where she would be honored.

I joined the gathering this past weekend, and am so glad I did. After someone passes on, closure and commemoration is really for the living, a way for someone to come to terms with their sadness and address the pain they have inside . What I loved the most about the gathering was that it was full of fun and laughter, just like Polly herself. I was able to meet friends of Polly who knew her from when she was a teenager or even younger. I met her family, including her sister and daughter, and was told great stories of her childhood, like the time she punched out bullies on behalf of her little brothers, her time as a roadie and her time being a "Lush Woman" who joined in these parties. I was able to see another side of Polly, I was able to see her again through her loved ones, and that was very special.

Lush women party! Coz they keep it real!

Thank you to all of Polly's friends and family who responded to me and let me into their lives with Polly. It really means the world and gives me some sense of peace. Like I mentioned before, Polly was an artist. I loved seeing her proudly display her beautiful and creative artwork during the displays I attended. Her family let me know that I could take one of her pieces to keep, to always have and remember her. That means a lot to me, I hope to always display her work, and when someone asks me about it, I can tell them about her and what she meant to me. This way she can always live on, through my stories and memory.

I will never forget you

I love you Polly, I am so sad that you aren't with us to celebrate the holidays. I am sorry I won't see your positive smiling face. I will miss all of your invites to fun events. Thank you for the support and memories, Roberto and I will never forget you!

Happy Holidays to her family and to all of you and your families this holiday season.

Love,
Nadia

Friends are family you pick

I remember the day I officially moved from New Jersey to California. I barely made my flight, I was so late in fact, that I wasn't even allowed to check in my luggage and had to run onto the plane. As the plane pulled away from Newark airport, and as New Jersey grew exponentially further and further away, I burst out crying. I just couldn't stop. Roberto was sitting next to me and was dumbfounded. I'm sure he was thinking that he was bringing a certifiable nut with him back to the Bay Area (and he was absolutely right). Anyways, I bring up this memory of mine to relay the reasons behind my tears. I of course was lamenting the fact that I was leaving behind my family on the opposite course, but I also shed tears for all of the friends and the amazing life I had on the East Coast. I was excited and happy to follow my dreams of having an adventure in San Francisco, but I was heartbroken as well thinking of all I was leaving behind. Plus I seriously had the most kick-ass goodbye party EVER.

evidence of kick-ass good-bye partaaay

My friends were the reason I had this amazing life, and as I am currently back in the East Coast running around like a crazed hyperactive chicken as I travel to four states due to conferences, job interviews and visiting my family (both biological and adopted), I am still amazed at how well my friends take care of me. It's really something special when a person opens their home to you, hands you an extra key and tells you to come and go as you please. Or when a friend takes me out for wine and gourmet lamb burgers after an 11 hours intense interview process just to help me relax. Or drives me and a carload full of people to another state to enjoy an all night spa. Or let me crash at their place at 4am because I'm obsessed with how comfortable their sisters bed is (don't worry said sister is out of country). And when I get taken to a Korean BBQ buffet and am not allowed to touch the bill. Or when a family lets me crash on their couch for as many nights as I want, just as they did for two years (long story, for a future post one day). I just feel continuously blessed and overwhelmed by the love shown to me, It really makes me feel like extending my arms like Stretch Armstrong to envelope my buddies in a huge super bear hug.

GROUP HUG!

And boy have I been getting FED. Back in California, I'm on the unemployment diet, which usually consists of starvation, Ramen noodles, and coffee (oh and occasionally pasta). But HERE my god, I've been taken out, been given home cooked meals and been able to express my gluttonous self to the fullest. Yes it's great but I think I will be needing to buy spanx soon to fit into my clothes for my conference. But I do I enjoy all of this "soul" food, and getting fattened up on some love.

my "I need Spanx" photo

The point is that I feel super duper lucky. I'm not writing this post to brag, I just want to express my gratitude for having these amazing people in my life. I remember that in high school, the highlight of my life was going grocery shopping with my mother on Saturdays. Yes, that was the extent of my kickin social life back then. I remember taking pictures of people I sorta kinda hung out with in class just so I could look like I had real friends. But now I have REAL friends, as opposed to the imaginary ones, and that's probably why I can't stop taking pictures. (imaginary friends also don't photograph as well). Sometimes I still get shocked that people actually want to hang out with me. Funny how that doesn't get old.

So I just want to say to my buddies that YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME. Just like I wrote in my title "Friends are like family you pick" and I am so glad that I got to pick you dudes and dudettes. I also need to include my sister who happens to be my family and friend. If I were picking out a dodgeball team, she'd be my first choice for sure.

I'm sure some of you reading my blog will see this, so you should just know that I love you all to ooey gooey pieces, and to my friends who pretend to read my blog, I love you guys too =D.

Peace from NYC, off to Washington DC to spend some fun times with my dear friend Tom and other eclectic mixes of characters. Can't wait!!