This past weekend I was in New York with some very special people (see the first thing on my Happy List!), so I decided to spend another weekend away from the laptop, which means you’ll either be hearing about my weekend in a post of itself or tacked onto next week’s Happy List. This isn’t any news to you if you’re following along on Twitter, and you’ll have seen snapshots of my weekend if you’re following along on Snapchat!

1. My mom and little brother Danny are here to visit me!!! They arrived on Wednesday and told me only the day before. Definitely a pleasant surprise for the week.
2. The shower in my summer apartment is finally cleaned! I have a clean shower!! All credits go to my amazing mom. Oh the things moms do for their kids. My mom had told me earlier she was thinking about coming to visit me here in Philly before our family trip to Europe (she just never told me when, until the day before) so I was trying to think of how to accomodate them. Should I bring myself to clean the scary shower? Should I take them to the gym to shower the way that I’ve been doing because I’ve been in denial about my scary summer apartment shower? Anyways, it’s so nice not having to walk to work with an extra bag just for my shampoo, conditioner, body wash, towel, and clean clothes.
3. I’ve missed Friday/weekend/holiday/break night movies with my family. Our house is always stocked with chips, salsa, and sweet corn just for this occasion. The night before Mom and Danny arrived, I bought a pack of tortilla chips and a jar of island salsa (pineapple salsa) from Trader Joe’s in preparation. They had island salsa at one of the workshops at work and I didn’t expect to like it so much!
4. So we were watching a movie and I was like, “Do you want chips?” and Danny was like “We can just eat my chips,” and it was this tiny snack-sized pack of chips that he got for free from the airport. It was the cutest thing. I mean, those little packs of chips are for one person (or really more like half a person). I am so touched that despite the bag having barely enough chips for one person, Danny still wanted to share them with me :’)
5. Even though it’s sweltering hot outside, I’m freezing cold the majority of my waking hours this summer because I spend most of my time at work or in coffee shops, both of which are heavily air conditioned. It’s such a comfort holding a warm cuppa tea in my cold hands.
6. I’ve been given more design/redesign assignments at work! It’s so much fun. I love what I do, my supervisor loves what I do, so I get to do more of what I love! (Or maybe he doesn’t love but he at least likes it enough to entrust me with more responsibilities and is trying to get me to do more design/redesign for other projects and utilise my skill/enthusiasm for web design before I’m done for the summer.) (I mean, I’m not sensational, but I’m working with people who are more into the information research or technical components of the job, so I make up for the design components. There’s definitely so much more for me to learn!)
7. I found a good source to stream Silicon Valley! I’m working my way through Season 2 right now. I’m not sure I should publicise streaming TV shows, so if you’re trying to find a place to stream and wanna know what I’m using, you can message me here or here. I gotchu.
8. Two weeks ago I figured out how to schedule posts on WordPress (it was malfunctioning for me), and this week I’m starting to get the hang of scheduling Tweets (I’m using Hootsuite)! Yaaay, I’m gradually stepping up my blogger game ?. It was really important for me to be able to schedule posts on WordPress because once the school year kicks in, I don’t want to be distracted in class because I’m thinking about hitting that publish button. And now I don’t need to be distracted about publicising new posts on social media either! Well, I’ll still have to think about publicising on Snapchat, but at least Twitter is one less platform to worry about. If you want to keep updated when I have a new post, Bloglovin’ is definitely the way to go! Or you can subscribe through Feedburner and get it directly in your email inbox. Links at the bottom of the page.

What was the highlight of your week?

I want to make an effort to remember the little joys in life, so my 52 week challenge for 2016 is to write weekly Happy Lists.

PS: 28. 27. 26. 25. 24. 23. 22. 21. 20. 19. 18. 17. 16. 15. 14. 13. 12. 11. 10. 9. 8. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.