Hello everyone! I hope you had a good month in March. We’re already a fourth of the way through the year!

March was pretty good for me, but not overly spectacular. I have quite a few things planned for April so I’m excited to move on! Spring is my favorite season though so let’s not move too fast though.

I started the month by bringing breakfast to work! We rotate for breakfast in my department and my turn finally came! I brought in bagels from Panera for the team and they were delicious. I should probably clarify how often we do this, we bring breakfast the first Wednesday of the month. It used to be Fridays but so many people work from home on that day now that we felt it would be fairer and more inclusive to change it to Wednesday. I love it because I get to keep my Starbucks Friday and it’s such a great midweek treat!

Sister Starbucks officially became a thing this month! So my sister and I work for the same company so we drive in together (we alternate drivers each day) and on Fridays we stop by Starbucks. I used to go a lot more often before she started working there but now that I’m trying to limit how much I buy, Starbucks was one of the first things I cut back on. I still spend a small fortune believe me but so much less than before. Also, they recently brought out a lightly sweet chai tea latte which has a lot less calories. I’m also trying to make healthier food choices so I totally am on board! I’ll have to play around with it though to try to get more chai. I normally get my chai with no water so I might do the same with this one, and perhaps substitute for almond milk but I did want to try the regular one at least once.

I don’t have a picture for this next one so I used an older one that I found. So winter finally decided to make an appearance just as spring was coming to northern Illinois. We got a lot of snow over the course of two days. On Monday the roads were so clean and nice despite the fact that it had snowed overnight. I drove and got to work perfectly fine, although my dad tried to tell me I should ask to work from home. While I can see how he would have thought that I think it would have been silly everyone else made the commute just fine as well.

Tuesday was a whole different story… The roads were not plowed at all! I drove again although it was technically my sister’s turn to drive because 1) my dad works for a landscaping company that does snow removal in the winter so he went to work and took her car and 2) I’m the better driver (totally not an exaggeration, even she would tell you that). If Monday had been an example of a well executed snow removal plan, Tuesday was the exact opposite. None of the roads were clean and while the commute started slow to begin with we soon encountered stand still traffic. I almost wish I had turned around when we got to that point although it might have taken the same amount of time as if I kept going anyway. The reason I kept going was because the spot where we were at is a spot that is fully of bridges (that freeze before other areas) and a large intersection, so I just assumed it was an accident that was causing the back up. Turned out to not be the case and it turned out the traffic had built up so much at that point that it was very slow going.

What I’m trying to say is that this snow and unplowed roads turned my 45-60min commute to a 2 and a half hour commute that day. I’m happy I made it to work because we had a huge issue that really needed to be dealt with in person since I was covering for my coworker who was on a work trip. I was only meant to be covering for a few emails but that issue turned into a huge headache and it would have been a nightmare to deal with virtually. I’m very thankful I made it to work safe and sound!

By the time my sister and I started our commute home, you wouldn’t have been able to tell it had snowed that morning… Ah Illinois, always an adventure.

I talked about this a bit more in my Life and Blog Updates post recently but I recently went back to my alma mater for an information session on their graduate programs. I’m about halfway through my application process now and this week I will give the Letter of Recommendation Form to each person I’ve asked to write one for me (they all said yes because they’re amazing human beings!) and I will write my Statement of Purpose. Last night I couldn’t sleep because I started to write it in my head and I wrote it onto my notes on my phone. That was my Alexander Hamilton moment of the month I think! But I have to move it to my Google Drive so I can proofread it and make it better. I also need to take a look at my resume although I keep it up to date so I don’t think I need to make any changes there and I also need to fill out the FAFSA to apply for financial aid. I will get this done! Fingers crossed they accept me!

And I know I did a whole review on the new Disney live action Beauty and the Beast and featured it in my March Favorites, but I can’t get this movie out of my head! It was so beautiful and was a perfect remake/update to the classic animated film that I love so much.

So that was my month! What have you been up to this month? I’d love to know!

Thanks for reading!