This Christ­mas was cel­e­brated in Cleve­land with my fam­ily and Brian’s par­ents. We drove to Cleve­land on Christ­mas Eve. We went to Mass and then had a pajama party and opened our gifts from each other. Lucy and Bailee, my brother’s dog, enjoyed open­ing the gifts the most and made sure that every piece of wrap­ping paper was shred­ded. Christ­mas morn­ing we enjoyed brunch at my sister’s house while look­ing at all the gifts Santa brought the boys. We then had din­ner at my par­ents’ house and enjoyed more fam­ily time. The next day we went to Cha­grin Falls and walked around the town and then had din­ner at Bravo. The rest of our stay was rather relax­ing and included a nice din­ner with Danielle and Louie on Mon­day. We headed back to Chicago on Tues­day and that night we saw our friends Chris, Trayce, Mark and Dave at Chris & Holly’s. Brian and I both had the week off between the hol­i­days so we were able to enjoy some relax­ing days off once we got home. New Years Eve was very low key and we had din­ner at Sepia, one of our favorite restau­rants. We had some drinks after din­ner and were home by 10:30 to ring in the New Year with Lucy! We hope every­one had a great hol­i­day sea­son and we are wish­ing every­one a Happy New Year!

A few pics from this year’s Zoo Lights.

We’ve always thought our pup was cuter than aver­age. For more than a year she’s graced the About page of the PAWS Chicago web site. And today I received this email:

From: Dan Kim
Sub­ject: Lucy?
Date: Decem­ber 16, 20107:20:43PMCST
To: Brian Drum

Is that Lucy?

Turns out our lit­tle girl is being fea­tured in the pro­mo­tional mate­r­ial and web site for Team PAWS Chicago 2011 train­ing pro­gram. This pic­ture was taken while she and Jaclyn waited in the PAWS hos­pi­tal­ity tent for me to fin­ish the 2010 Chicago Marathon. Maybe we need to think about get­ting her an agent…

We have had great weather this week­end so we took Lucy to North Pond in Lin­coln Park so that she could run around. She saw some ducks, fetched her Fris­bee and a twig and played some ball. She loved being able to run free in the grass! Even though we thought we wore her out she was still full of energy when we got home but we all had a great time!

For almost as long as I’ve lived in Chicago, I’ve been think­ing and talk­ing about run­ning the Chicago Marathon. So this year I took the plunge and reg­is­tered to run as a mem­ber of Team PAWS, to train for the marathon and raise money for the shel­ter where we adopted our dog Lucy. I was wor­ried that fundrais­ing would be dif­fi­cult with the reces­sion going on, but it went really well. Thanks to the gen­eros­ity of my fam­ily, friends, and co-​workers I was able to raise $1255 for PAWS Chicago.

One of the perks of run­ning with Team PAWS was train­ing with the Chicago Area Run­ners Asso­ci­a­tion — an 18-​week pro­gram that increased in mileage from just 15 miles in the first week to nearly 40 miles a week towards the end. But since I had never run any­thing longer than the Sham­rock Shuf­fle 8K (about five miles), I spent twelve weeks grad­u­ally increas­ing my dis­tance just to be pre­pared for the marathon train­ing. All told, I prob­a­bly ran 500 miles this year.

Race Day

The big day finally came — Octo­ber 10, 2010 (10−10−10) and the only way I can describe it is “hot.” I felt it early and slowed down, walk­ing almost every aid sta­tion and drink­ing and soak­ing myself with water every chance I got. Jaclyn and Lucy met me at sev­eral pre-​arranged points, which helped keep me moti­vated. Some­how Lucy knew to look for me in the mass of run­ners, and Jaclyn said Lucy would stare hard at guys who looked like me. She’d get so excited when I finally came by, and try to jump in my arms.

A lot of the race is just a blur, as I really just had to turn my brain off and con­cen­trate on putting one foot in front of the other. I would fin­ish my long (16−18 mile) train­ing runs feel­ing great, with no dif­fi­culty, but this was totally dif­fer­ent. Luck­ily, when I got to mile 20 of the marathon, I got a sec­ond wind. Even bet­ter, my good friend Michelle was wait­ing for me at mile 21, and jumped on the course with me to fin­ish out the last 5.2 miles.

When we reached the sign for mile 25, I could see that I had about twelve min­utes to fin­ish with a time under 5 hours, and I was deter­mined to do it. So I left Michelle behind, gave it every­thing I had, and hauled ass to the fin­ish line. And later that day, I got the email with my offi­cial time of…

5:00:35

So there’s a good chance I’ll be doing it all again next year. I really enjoyed all the train­ing and run­ning has been a great way to stay in shape. I met some great peo­ple along the way and I’ve found that I’m more relaxed and gen­er­ally hap­pier when I’m run­ning on a reg­u­lar basis. Now that I’ve got the first one out of the way, I’m already look­ing for­ward to another marathon. Plus, I’m almost guar­an­teed a new per­sonal record!

On August 28^th, Amardeep and Arash got mar­ried! Brian and I went out to LA for the wed­ding and stayed for a long week­end. We arrived on Thurs­day and met my par­ents at the air­port and then headed to In-​N-​Out Burger for some lunch. Dur­ing the day we drove up as close as we could get to the Hol­ly­wood sign. Thurs­day night was a pre-​Anan Karaj cer­e­mony party at Amardeep & Arash’s place. The women were able to get the tra­di­tional mendhi put onto their hands for the cer­e­mony. Fri­day morn­ing was the Anand Karaj Cer­e­mony at Ver­mont Gur­d­wara which was in Los Ange­les. We then trav­eled to Costa Mesa that after­noon where that evening we attended the wed­ding rehearsal and din­ner. We had a great din­ner and enjoyed some drinks with great friends! Sat­ur­day was the wed­ding cer­e­mony which was out­side the Orange County Per­form­ing Arts Cen­ter in Costa Mesa. The whole day was beau­ti­ful with the sun shin­ing through­out the day. The recep­tion was held inside the Orange County Per­form­ing Arts Cen­ter where we every­one enjoyed the com­pany of the beau­ti­ful new­ly­weds and some Pun­jabi danc­ing! Every­one danced the night away! To end our great trip on Sun­day night Brian and I enjoyed a deli­cious din­ner at STK with my parents.

Below is a brief note to the couple:

Thank you for ask­ing me to be a part of your spe­cial day. It meant so much to me to watch my best friend marry the man of her dreams this after­noon. This day came so quickly and I hope the both of you were able to take the time to enjoy each moment.

I have known Amy since the fourth grade when she was new in our school and I was so envi­ous that she became friends with one of the other girls. Even­tu­ally, as the fourth grade went on we become friends and from then on is his­tory. We did every­thing together from cre­at­ing a dance together to the Loco-​motion in the fourth grade at recess and then per­form­ing in for our teacher to going to the same col­lege together and expe­ri­enc­ing what life had in store for us. It is amaz­ing that we have come so far and live so far from each other but still are so involved in each oth­ers lives. That is exactly what I would call a True Friend. I believe this after read­ing a poem that Amy wrote in high school called “True Friends”. I found this poem in my year­book while going through it before our ten year reunion and I think it says it all!

A true friend lis­tens to what you say
Life’s a sculp­ture, friends are clay
Friends are notes to life’s great song
A melody that car­ries you along
Whether it’s joy or fear
When­ever life is hard, they’re near
In a world of dark­ness, friends are light
So thank your lucky stars tonight
When life gets hard and goals seem far
It’s then you’ll know who your true friends are

This poem not only rep­re­sents Amy and my friend­ship but also rep­re­sents the friend­ship that she has with Arash.

So here is to Love, Laugh­ter, and Hap­pily Ever After! Con­grat­u­la­tions to such a won­der­ful couple!

On June 26^th, our friends Nicole and Brian got mar­ried and Jaclyn had the great honor of being one of Nicole’s Matrons of Honor. We drove on Fri­day to Cen­ter­ville, Ohio where the wed­ding was held. We enjoyed see­ing every­one at the rehearsal and had a great night at the rehearsal din­ner. Sat­ur­day was their big day and it couldn’t have been more beau­ti­ful. We spent the night cel­e­brat­ing the happy cou­ple, enjoy­ing time with friends and danc­ing the night away at the recep­tion. We were so happy to be a spe­cial part of Nicole and Brian’s spe­cial day!

On May 25^th, I started my new job at Holly Hunt. It was per­fect tim­ing and I started shortly after we returned from Italy. I am the Fur­ni­ture Cus­tomer Ser­vice asso­ciate for the Chicago show­room. The job and the peo­ple are great and I am learn­ing alot. Although I was doing res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial design before, I am now work­ing with the design­ers when they have issues with the fur­ni­ture they ordered. I feel this job is mak­ing me alot more well-​rounded when it comes to the design indus­try. I am very happy where I ended up!

On April 10^th Brian and I attended Jes­sica and Luciano’s wed­ding in Ohio. Although it was rain­ing and snow­ing on Fri­day the skies cleared and the sun came out for a beau­ti­ful wed­ding day on Sat­ur­day! The cer­e­mony was at Assump­tion Church and the recep­tion was at Fire­stone Coun­try Club in Akron. I was hon­ored to be one of the brides­maids in the wed­ding. Every­one had a great time and the wed­ding was beau­ti­ful! It was great to see fam­ily and friends, many of which I haven’t seen in a very long time. Con­grat­u­la­tions to Jes­sica and Luciano! We wish you love, laugh­ter and hap­pily ever after!

Since get­ting our Canon 50D for Christ­mas, I’d esti­mate at least half of the pic­tures we’ve taken have been of Lucy. Can you tell we love our lit­tle pup? But recently Dog-​a-​holics offered a pet pho­tog­ra­phy ses­sion for $20, so we took advan­tage of the chance to get a fam­ily photo and some glam­our shots. What do you think?