I have no title today

I'm trying to get off my ass right now and go for a run. It's not working.

Okay, so, I had a pretty good week. It could've been better, but it also could've been way worse - so that nets out to a win in my book.

Monday I came home from work and Blondie had some serious cabin fever. After dinner, he wanted to head out to buy some coffee so I went with him. It was a beautiful night, the sun was just starting to set - so Blondie suggested a walk to the Hudson. We sat out by the river, people watching, eavesdropping and debating about whether the city across the river was Hoboken (Blondie) or Jersey City (me). I lost.

We also found some free binoculars for your viewing pleasure - the kind that normally you have to put a quarter in. I made the pretty bad discovery that if you aimed the binoculars at our building, you could see in windows - you couldn't see in our windows as we are too low and face the other way. BUT, if people by the river can see into any window, that means that buildings that are close to mine can potentially see in our place. No more naked-walking around the apartment I guess. Sigh.

So half my office was in the SF office for work this week. I had big plans to leave a little early most of the week, but those were thwarted. We have 2 big projects coming up, and sure as shit, both of them had major issues this week that we were desperately trying to work through.

On Thurs, late in the evening, my friend suggested heading to a part of Manhattan called Koreatown for (you guessed it) Korean food. A call to Blondie and he caught a cab to meet us. We went for Korean fried chicken - a different kind of KFC! A huge bottle of Soju and a ginormous sampler platter later, we decided that the only appropriate way to end the evening was with fro-yo (thank god it wasn't karaoke).

We walked into the fro-yo place and lo and behold - they have Cap'n Crunch for a topping. OMG. Soooo good! I have an obsession with cereal but try to not buy sugar cereal because I treat sugar cereal boxes like it's my own personal sized box - I literally can eat an entire box of sugar cereal over the course of the day. But I added that Cap'n Crunch to my pomegranate yogurt and it was so good. Drool.

Friday night, Blondie and I trucked off to dinner where I received a text from Sweetie J. She had flown in from SF for the upcoming week and surprised us!!! She's staying in Brooklyn with a friend, but I met up with yesterday in Central Park for some beers on a blanket. I got to meet her friends from the city - she used to live here - and it was perfect temperature for a day in the park. Blondie stayed back and ended up watching the World Cup game, so his day wasn't quite as good as mine.

We have big plans this upcoming week too - we have a shit ton of cleaning to do today, and I need to get a good workout in and a pedicure. Blondie's sis and her husband and baby get into the city tomorrow. They leave Wed morning and we have dinner plans with Sweetie J and some of her friends Wed night. Thurs, Slick and his woman are coming in from Chicago for the weekend. Saturday night, another meetup with Sweetie J and another friend of ours from SF, Dirty Sanchez.

Now I just have to survive this work week! Blah. Maybe I'll make my good workout a jog to the corner store for lottery tickets.

--K

Crack is whack!

As promised, the picture of the Liberty Bell. Ahem, pssst, Liberty Bell? Your crack is showing!



--K

Chock Full o' ...

I'm coming off a jam-packed week, which interestingly enough, made my work week fly by. That rarely happens, so I'm quite happy with how it turned out. Anything that can make work go faster is 2 giant thumbs up in my book.

On Monday, I got stuck staying late at work for a project I'm on. Around 8 pm, when I was getting ready to leave, 2 of my besties from work suggested dinner. I wanted a burger, 1 of my friends wanted wine, and another one wanted mussels (random all the way around) so we ended up in a Belgium restaurant on the UES enjoying all 3. My girlfriend and I got a little blotto while my guyfriend just laughed at us both and ate all the food.

Tues night Blondie came home from the Land of Cheese! I met him at our cajun place in our hood where we both had a hurricane and a beer, and split some food. It was so good seeing Blondie again - 9 days apart is a lot.

Wednesday night was my 3.5 mile run through Central Park. I run on the treadmill 100% of the time and I'm fine with it - 3.5 miles on the treadmill is always doable. On the treadmill with no inclines in the air-conditioned gym in the morning no later than 7 am. I'm fine with that. Outside? At night? With hills? Um... BUT I DID IT! I'm a slow runner, but I got all 3.5 miles without stopping - and also, I noticed that all the hills in NYC are in Central Park, on the route that our race was on. My times probably would've been about 3-4 minutes faster if the walkers had lined up where they were supposed to - 15000 people entered and all I did was dodge walkers. It was also probably a lot more than 3.5 miles simply from all the weaving I had to do.

After my race, we stopped at Cold Stone so I could get a small Strawberry, Mango & Banana Sorbet mixed with gummy bears, before heading on home to order in a grilled cheese sandwich.

Thurs night and Fri night, we stayed in. The week had caught up with me, and I quite honestly, have something going on with my stomach. It started on race night where absolutely nothing sounded good - and nothing still sounds good. I'll be ravenously hungry but the thought of eating makes me want to vom. Hmmm... I hope it's not the precursor to some stomach flu.

Yesterday Blondie and I took off to the LES - we headed to Ippudo for ramen. This was Blondie's first visit, and my second one - the soupy ramen actually tasted good to me, so that made me happy. And Blondie LOVED it. I have a feeling we will be making a lot more trips down to visit.

After the ramen, we walked a few blocks over and toured Merchants House - it's an 1800's house, the only one left like it in NYC, completely restored to what it looked like in the 1800's. It was spooky and eerie, and also, the most haunted house in NYC. The whole house gave me chills. Every step you took, a floorboard would creak. The basement was freezing cold. The bedrooms where people died were boiling hot. The tour was amazing, but I was also glad to get out.

From the haunted house, to the oldest bar in NYC - McSorley's Ale House. Definitely a sight to see (from sawdust ALL OVER the floors to old-timey pictures ALL OVER the walls), and after more beers there than we intended, it was out to hit up a "Save the Lower East Side" festival that we had seen on our walk over.

Afterwards, we caught our train back to our hood and hit up our fish market for some tasty delights, before heading to the farmer's market and meat market.

Then it was home to collapse.

Today we are about 3 seconds from heading out to see the A-Team. We did laundry and a workout already this morning, and have to run an errand in Times Square after our movie, but then we are done for the weekend.

Hope everyone is doing well.

Finally, not only a big HAPPY FATHER'S DAY to the sheriff but also wishing TCKITW the happiest 5th birthday anyone can imagine!!!! I miss you sweetie and hope you are doing well!

--K

Shattered

I had my corporate challenge tonight. Even though I have no issues running on a treadmill, I haven't run outside in about 10 months.

It didn't matter tonight - I have been busting my ass hard at the gym and in working out in general, and it showed. I ran those 3.5 miles outside (not inside like usual), at night (not morning like general) and killed them.

I'm very proud of myself. And it was SO GOOD to have Blondie back and see him cheering me on as I rounded the corner into the home stretch.

Go me!

--K

Phew!

The week is over. I'm grateful. I had a blast last weekend in Philadelphia, but definitely am glad I'm in downtime right now.

So my week started with Blondie catching another Amtrak to Chicago. His dad came down from The Land of Cheese and picked him up, and he's been spending the week up there. He'll be back to NYC on Tuesday. I miss my Blondie. It's boring without him here. My cats are definitely not happy that they are the only ones I get to talk to at home now. They'll be trying to sleep, and I'm all in their faces going "Tell me about what you did today!" An eye will crack, a mean face will be put on, and I will not get the hint.

My week was pretty low key. I had a bad day at work - one of those days were you look around your office (or cube or wherever you sit/stand for work) and wonder how in the f'ing world you are going to survive another 30 years of work. Luckily, it was just one day that I felt that way, but coming out of those moods takes a lot out of me.

I swear I'm not trying to be a Debbie Downer today. So I'll give you some good news from my weekend. Yesterday started off with a really good sweaty workout, and then I headed up to Times Square to see SATCII. My lunch was a bag of gummy bears, and it was everything I wanted.

AND THEN, to make my day even better, my friend from Philadelphia took a break from her hubby and kids, and took the train to NYC to visit me. We had a couple of beers and some dinner, and then walked over to Broadway to see MAMMA MIA! OMG. MUSICALS. Everytime I see a musical, I'm like "okay, it doesn't get better than this." And then I see another one, and realize it does get better.

After the play, we headed to the UWS to Magnolia Bakery for cupcakes, and then I rode with her back to Penn Station for her to catch her train home. It was soooo good seeing her!

Today I got up and putzed around for a bit, before finally heading down to the gym. I have a race in Central Park on Wednesday so I wanted to time myself for the distance I'm going to run to give myself an idea of what timing I'm looking at. It actually wasn't that bad. I'm completely worn out now though.

The rest of my day is going to look like this: 1) eat fruit (I hit the farmer's market yesterday afternoon between the movie and my friend visiting and had a little bit of a love affair with the berries); 2) watch TV (is 'Bethenny Getting Married?' going to be as good as RHONYC?); 3) watch scary movie I downloaded off of Netflix; 4) make fajitas for dinner (I also had a love affair with all the peppers and cilantro yesterday at the farmer's market). Yum. Food.

--K

Go Flyers in the City of Brotherly Love!

What did we learn this past weekend? Well, we learned that one should not wear a Rangers hat to a city where their hockey team is in the Stanley Cup finals. We DEFINITELY learned that.

We also learned that my entire knowledge base of Philadelphia is based off of the movie "National Treasure". What can I say? I got my masters degree in Math, and my last history class was World History that I took when I was in the 10th grade.

Philadelphia was gorgeous. It has literally been about 20-25 years since I've been there (am I getting old or what?), and I don't remember much other than how hot it was when I was there last. That, and the horrid train ride in from the city my dad camped us in for our vacation. Apparently it's a LOT cheaper to stay outside of the city. Who'd thunk it? ;)

The birth of the US

We did a little bit of everything while there. We started out by getting tickets to tour Independence Hall - the only pre-planning event we had to do. Everything else was walk-up and free (with the exception of the Betsy Ross house - which quite honestly, was boring - my official opinion is "skip it").

We started by touring the US Mint. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but the tour was quite interesting. It was kind of cool to see all the coins being made.

The outside of the Mint

After the Mint, we headed to Betsy Ross house - our admission was $3, but it wasn't worth it unfortunately. With the exception of the girl who pretended to be Betsy Ross in one of the rooms, and who had to answer all kinds of questions from the nutter in front of us - it was kind of boring.

Betsy Ross House

Ross house - I like the shadows in this picture

After the Ross house, we headed over to the postoffice that Ben Franklin was postmaster at. That was actually really cool - it was still an active postoffice with this wee little museum on the 2nd floor.

Post Office. And the back of Blondie's head

From the postoffice, it was just a few steps to the underground Ben Franklin museum. They had portraits up of Ben, his wife, and his son - and I got to laughing so hard - it honestly look like they painted Ben, put him in drag to get his wife, and then shrunk his body to get his kid. Seriously, is this a fugly boy or what?



We then hit up the Old City Hall - this was exactly what it sounds like. It kind of reminded me of a library - the smell and the floors I guess are what did it.

Library? Is it just me?

Independence Hall was our next stop. It was at this stop where I realized my "National Treasure" connection to Philly, and also where we realized that we were about the only adults without school-aged kids in tow. Our tour guide was not great, it was seriously like "where you from? Rhode Island? Oh, I went on a fellowship to a school there. Professor X was all kinds of awesome. Have you heard of Professor X?" And Blondie and I were like "W.T.F?"

Independence Hall, aka where Ben Franklin hid his glasses

The room where the Declaration of Independence was written

After Independence Hall, it was time for CHEESESTEAKS! So yummy - we got them from a street meat vendor, and they rocked!

Lunch was taken in a park right across from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (similar to Arlington, but from George Washington times). We checked out the tomb afterwards - it was quite a beautiful monument, and rather peaceful, until the hordes of 5th graders (wearing their class of 2010 t-shirts????) descended on the park. Yes, let's do it - let's have a whistle blowing contest in the middle of basically a cemetary!

No whistles here

One of the last stops on our tour was to see the Liberty Bell. I enjoyed the murals in the building leading up to the Bell, and then it was cool to see it again. Blondie has the pictures of the front of the bell (with the crack) but he's off to the Land of Cheese (Wisc) for a week so I have to wait until he returns to be able to post that one.

The Back of the Bell

Peace Out Dalai Lama - part of the murals

We were dead tired after all this, so a few beers in a tavern were needed before hopping a regional train to visit our friends who live about an hour north of Philly. They have a gorgeous house in the middle of nowhere, and a set of beautiful twin boys (5 years old) who took a serious liking to Blondie. Our time spent with them was relaxing and peaceful and full of good company (and food and beer).

Long story short (too late!), we'd definitely go back. I think our friends are going to be sorry they extended an invitation to us.

--K