I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas, is having a Happy Hanukkah or will have a Happy Kwanzaa this holiday season. I feel very blessed. It’s been years since I’ve had this much time off, much less Christmas off —- a hazard of being a copy editor.

However, I haven’t been bored once. I’ve been visiting friends (including the fab writer/editor Mary Ann DeSantis), traveling (Philadelphia, where I saw former colleague Jaime), spending time with my family and rebooting my yoga practice during my break. Tomorrow, I’m going to a Tweetup (a Twitter meetup). Then, on Jan. 3, I can officially claim my new title of “Associate Editor.”

Life is good, truly.

Then we see the “grand opening” sign as Amir and I drive in that Saturday for the lunch bunch review. Keep in mind, we are only supposed to review places open 4-6 months, and my review was due Monday morning.

Just in case, I secretly took pictures of the food, which was delicious by the way. We pay, and then after we leave, I remember I forgot to pick up an itemized bill. Unless I pick up an itemized bill, I can’t be reimbursed.

After consulting with the food editor, I write the review anyway. Just in case. It’s a good thing I did because there was no backup: The review had to run. Unfortunately, a vital part of the review was missing: Namely the name of the new manager. He had seemed suspicious of me asking about what happened to “Neelam,” so I hadn’t asked as many questions as I would normally.

Since I had to go back for the itemized bill, I thought, “No problem. I’ll ask for it then.”

Only after fighting Bike Week traffic in Daytona Beach — twice — did I realized the restaurant was closed Mondays, but it wasn’t a total loss. I went to yoga

The food editor agreed to let me plug in the information on Tuesday, and thankfully then, it went off without a hitch. The manager was very gracious when I asked for an itemized bill and spoke glowingly of his wife, whom he had been married to for 31 years.

End result? Despite the drama in finishing this “Lunch Bunch,” Amir and I loved “Aavtar” and would eat there again. You should eat there, too.

Enjoy the review here (because it’s only online two weeks):

Copy editor Sherry Mims and her husband, Amir Fleminger, braved the fierce Bike Week traffic on Atlantic Avenue to go to Neelam Authentic Indian Cuisine and were surprised to see a sign saying Aavtar instead.

Manager Vinay Rakesh says his wife, Shashi R. Bhardwaj, took over from another family member recently, but the restaurant will provide the same great food as ever.

How was the atmosphere?

We arrived for a late lunch around 2 p.m. and found the place clean and airy.

Toward the left side of the restaurant, there was a buffet with everything from the always popular Chicken Tikka Masala, chicken marinated in spices and served in tomato cream sauce, to Palak Paneer, a vegetarian dish with spinach, paneer cheese and peas, as well as desserts.

What did you order?

No surprise here — we went with the buffet ($8.95 per person) so that we could get a taste of everything.

After we filled our plates, we found warm naan, Indian bread, waiting for us.

It’s difficult to break down what tasted the best because we enjoyed everything we tried. The Palak Paneer was great, but the Samosa, a pastry shell stuffed with savory spices and vegetables, was my personal favorite. It was also quite spicy, so I was glad we had both ordered water to drink.

Amir had a tougher time deciding his favorite. “I liked all of it,” he said, although he added the halwa, a pudding-like dessert, stood out.

How much was it?

With tax and tip, the bill came to $21.06.

I worked Christmas Eve and Christmas, so my “holidays” were just random days. Random works, especially this hectic time of year. It’s been really nice to catch up on all the things you mean to do but don’t have time for normally (cooking, setting up appointments, Florida Press Club planning — and yes, hanging out with friends).

My graphic designer friend Monica, her husband Kurt and I all went to St. Augustine. (Amir had to catch a plane.) We ventured over to The St. Augustine Pirate and Treasure Museum, where a former co-worker of works as the vice president of media and marketing. (Isn’t it interesting how many fun, creative types you meet when you work in journalism?)

Unfortunately, she wasn’t there, but we enjoyed the museum. It had been moved up from Key West because the town’s more of a partying destination than family one I think it was a wise move. The museum was certainly packed and even had its own pirate! I especially liked how interactive it was.

We also went to Castillo de San Marcos, the Spanish fort; toured two art galleries; ate at Pizzalley’s, my favorite pizza place anywhere; and took in the St. Augustine Nights of Lights. Altogether, it was a great day, and a great balancing act for working all of today!

In no particular order:

Also, National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo) begins today. Anyone else taking the plunge?

Street performer in Waikiki

The street performer, who had been mobbed the first time we saw him, whispered, “Let’s do this before anyone else sees and comes over. There’s an art to it, you know.”

An artiste!

Well, an artist I am happy to have supported because people who buy newspapers keep me in business. Even if they do use the paper as a suit.

He’s had success selling his holding pattern tutorial for pilots, but after some time, needed a way to get a fresh audience for PilotsCafe. Maybe something to put on YouTube or Metacafe?

That’s where this promo made in Keynote, a software that makes flowing presentations, iMovie, and Audacity, a free audio editor and recorder, comes in.

Yes, that’s my voice narrating again.

I’m rather proud. Both of us were sick this week, but you’d never know it from “Holding Pattern Entries — Figure it out by drawing.”

I can’t wait to do more of these.

What Mom-Mom wouldn’t want me to do would be to get depressed and sluggish. She would want me to continue to work hard.

Mom-Mom and I at the rehearsal dinner to my wedding last fall.

Thank you, Mom-Mom.

So, consider me back–and better. For example, I have a brand new Mac to help me in this endeavor! My old one still sort of worked, but it lost power after 15 minutes, refused to charge unless the phone book was placed on top of it and was five or six years old. Spilling the soda on it didn’t help either.

Lastly, Amir and I just came back from the annual Florida Press Club officers’ cruise. We not only went to Cozumel and had a blast, but also Jennifer (our president), Megan (our treasurer) and I had a very productive meeting to discuss the future of our fine organization. More about that later.

Now, onward!

Copy editor Sherry Mims and her husband, Amir Fleminger, went to lunch recently at Ivy Lane Bistro on South Beach Street in Daytona Beach. It features a variety of sandwiches, soups and wraps as well as specials listed on the chalkboard out front.

The Web site, with its menu online, advertises the bistro as “Fresh, creative nouveau cuisine at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”

Read more about what we ordered, what it cost and what we thought at Go386.com.

A lighthouse in Nassau, Bahamas.

Either Amir or I took this picture when we took a cruise to the Bahamas for Florida Press Club business. (Believe it or not, it’s cheaper to meet on a cruise because everything is inclusive. It would cost much more to pay for food, lodging and transportation to a central city.)

I do love a good lighthouse photograph. I’m sure there will be more lighthouses on my blog.

In other news, I wrote my first negative book review. Stay tuned!

Last night at work, an opportunity arose from a space issue we were having at the paper. And I ran with it! Like most papers nowadays, space for editorial (also known as articles) is limited because of decreasing add review. (Though it seems, community newspapers are doing fine. My boss says that’s a silver lining, but as I pointed out, if we became solely a community newspaper, a lot of jobs would be lost, including ours, because there wouldn’t be as many newspaper pages to design.)

We had to hold a 40-inch (1,040-word) At Your Service column for the print version and put it online because a 3-by-10 advertisement needed to move from A section to the Local section, which happened to be in C, so that there could be more nation/world content. The Local section, containing content from Volusia and Flagler counties as well as from around Florida, only had six pages, including the weather page, so something had to hold. At Your Service was it.

Since we were running a News Watch, a package of briefs (short articles), I included the following to alert our readers to the change:

This week’s At Your Service listing, featuring descriptions and contact information for support groups in Volusia and Flagler counties, is available online.

In order to read the weekly column in its entirety, visit news-journalonline.com.

The At Your Service column usually runs Mondays in The News-Journal.

The thing about News Watch briefs is that–unlike plain unattributed briefs under an “In Brief” label, you credit the reporters who contributed. (Whether we have one or the other depends on both the importance of the information in the briefs and the acting metro editor on the desk.) Thus, in the tag at the bottom of the three briefs under “News Watch,” I wrote, “Staff Writers Patricio G. Balona, Linda Trimble and Sherry Mims contributed to today’s News Watch.”

SCORE! My first Local-section credit. A-section here I come…