How lucky can a girl get? :-D. I started the day with a two-hour staff meeting. During the meeting, I saw one of the therapists hovering suspiciously near my desk (because, if you recall, my desk is right near the conference room). When I got out of the meeting at 11, I found this enormous container of soup waiting for me!

Thanks, Nitza! The soup was HUGE and chunky and full of spices and seasonings and smelled like sofrito, mmmm. It was obviously too large for me to have all at once, so I decided I should set to work making a smaller container available! Yogurt to the rescue:

In addition to 1/2 cup of yogurt, the mix also contained chopped banana, chopped pear, nutmeg, cardamom, and a sprinkle of kashi golean crunch.

As soon as the yogurt was gone, I rinsed the container, filled it with a cup of soup, and put it in the fridge to rest for a few.

No sooner had the soup gone into the fridge than Myrna came zooming up to my desk with a dramatic whisper, “Sarah, I have CAKE.” Uh oh. (Side note: It was still only like 11:12 am at this point.) She unloaded her prize onto the infamous conference room table (again, right next to my desk). The cake was left over from a Dora-themed birthday party her daughter had gone to at Chuck-E-Cheese. Look at the cute Dora sticker on the foil wrapping!

And colorful frosting! I cut myself 1/3 of the piece she brought in (that piece over to the right) and split the other 2/3 between Jessica and Belkis so I wouldn’t be tempted to eat it all:

(If you can’t tell, that is pineapple filling between the layers, mmmmmmmm!)

I also licked the foil:

It turned my lips blue and my teeth pink. Whoops.

We had another meeting at noon. My supervisor, Heather, had promoted it as “bring your own lunch, and we’ll have some extra snacks and desserts.” Uh oh again. As per her instructions, I brought my own lunch. A cup of Nitza’s chunky soup (or at least it was a cup before the container tipped over completely in the bumpy microwave and lost all of its broth):

This soup was so hearty and delicious with those big chunks of meat and veggies. (And I had enough to bring two more cups home! Again, who’s the luckiest girl in the world?)

I also brought along the two-layer lunch I had packed. The top layer was three stuffed kale leaves:

And the bottom layer was a chopped tomato mixed with fat free feta:

And then there was the snack spread: baby carrots, tortilla chips, red pepper strips, french onion dip, salsa, red grapes, green grapes, apples, hershey’s kisses, chewy chips ahoy cookies, etc…. My agency seems incapable of doing food in a small way (which is just fine with me :-D).

I was impressed with the selection of fresh goods, so I made myself a produce sampler platter of peppers, carrots, salsa, apple slices, and grapes. I had two small plates that looked like this (note the child-sized pretend oven I was using as a table in the background):

I was quite satisfied after all of that (understandably), so I contented myself with 1/2 a cookie because it was right there:

There were tons of snacks left over at the end of the meeting, so of course I swept all of the remaining produce into a plastic bag to bring home (along with half a jar of salsa):

Back up at my desk, though, some unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on your perspective ;-)) things happened. Both of my afternoon visits rescheduled which meant I didn’t need to leave the office for the rest of the day. Good for catching up on work, but dangerous for the temptation that the conference room table often brings! Within moments, Rosalie (the one who missed her own work anniversary party with the mocha-frosted chocolate cake) made a triumphant return to the department with this “taste of heaven on earth”:

It was an extra chocolate crumb cake that had been donated to the advocacy department downstairs. Ahhhh! And it went straight to the conference room table with me hot on its trail. There was a layer of chocolate cake on the bottom, the thickest layer of crumb topping I’ve ever encountered on top of that, and dark chocolate drizzle over the whole thing:

I had just prepared myself a little bowl of tortilla chip crumbs (because the leftover meeting snacks ended up on the conference room table, of course), so I cut myself a piece of the cake and threw it on top of the crumbs. And then, because I live on the wild side, I mashed the cake up into the crumbs for the ultimate salty sweet experience (I also mixed in a teeny bit of peanut butter, but shhhhh, don’t tell):

Before I ate the cake, Jessica and I cut up the rest and made sure that everyone in the office got some, regardless of interest, because I wasn’t about to sit with the rest of that thing taunting me all afternoon! Once the cake was distributed, I sat down for some quiet time with my bowl.

I can’t lie. I felt a little bit ill after all that.

I needed something salty. Good thing I had chips and dip mere inches from my mouth. I scooped up the remaining chip crumbs and the dip-covered spoon (I covered the rest of the dip and put it in the fridge because no one needs that hanging around):

And because I just can’t win, the salt left me with a craving for these:

And then it was time to go home! I booked it out of there fast before I could do any more damage. Though I guess I’d already kind of seen to it that there was no damage left to do …

On the way home, Pura offered me half of her tangerine. I accepted because my mouth desperately needed a taste of health!

Thank goodness this internship coincides with my half-marathon training. I would be in BIG trouble otherwise :-D.

I’ve got a sushi dinner lined up with the Brooklyn girls tonight. I’m not particularly hungry, but I expect to find a way around that …