It's hard to believe that I'm in my last kitchen class of my culinary school career. It seems like just months ago that I started, but it's coming up on two years. There's only roughly one month left in New York and I'm very much going to miss it. It's an absolutely beautiful area; free of the corruption that corporations breed. It's refreshing to be in areas that can easily be described as quaint.

It's been very roughly, about two years since I left my former life for the new life I now have. It's hard to recognize what my life used to look like and reconcile that with how it looks now. It's as if my personal renaissance is nearing completion. Along the way, I've found out a lot about myself, found someone great and really discovered how much life there really is when you actively choose to live it.

On Feb 8th, I'll graduate from the Culinary Institute of America and start a whole new journey and that's completely fascinating and cool to me. I think many people graduate and think the learning is done, but when I consider where I'll be working and what I'll be doing, I realize that I've barely even glimpsed the tip of the iceberg. There's still so much to do and learn.

For the next 30 days or so, I'll be enjoying that internal queasiness that comes with change and I'll be focusing on how much better my life has been the last two years.

PS. I damaged my lens, thus the extreme lack of pictures in the past few months as I await the warranty repair.