A long over-due update on life in Shirley.

I was talking with the team today while expertly rolling chocolate rugelach (lots of practice makes perfect), when the question arose as to how long we had been in Shirley.

My fingers stopped as my brain started calculating (clearly I need more brain practice). When it hit me that it’s been a month, I was stunned. One. Whole. Month.

And then, I was slightly mortified that I have yet to write a single word about Shirley.
And so, here’s the lowdown on life in Shirley:

The Reverse Commute: Much to my surprise, I find that I enjoy the slightly longer ride in the car to get to work. I have only headed the wrong way on Rt 2 once, although I am so GPS-challenged that it didn’t occur to me that I was heading in the wrong direction until I saw a sign for the exit in Acton. I relish the 15-20 minutes of what I now call ‘vacation’ as I head to Shirley each morning.

The Kitchen: The kitchen, in one word, is holysh*tamazing. Actually, that doesn’t really do it justice. It is, in one word, HOLYSH*TAMAZING. We had our hiccups in the beginning that made it interesting (our big oven was installed incorrectly and set us back by a week and a half & one of our key machines decided to become a drama queen and temporarily/randomly stopped working), but we made it through to the other side without adding too many patches of gray hair. We set up shop, built lockers, built desks, moved shelving and tables around, roller-skated and re-organized, and finally started baking. We are mostly settled in, but still have some straggling boxes of stuff that is waiting to find a home.

The Neighbors: The neighbors are perhaps the best part of Shirley. The people here are welcoming and warm, and fortunately, many of them own a lot of heavy-duty tools and are happy members of the I’ll trade you a cookie for a hammer program.

The Team: Our team here continues to grow, and I couldn’t feel more lucky about every single person who is part of this family. Not one minute goes by when I don’t fully comprehend and appreciate how many people it takes to make this company work.

The Oven: I will close with this little gem. We have a new sheriff in town people, and his name is…

Sorry Todd Hobart…