Catch Up

Sorry for the delay between posts. I'd list some excuses but I honestly have none. I'm just feeling lazy lately.

Sooooo.... here's what has been happening. Last week on Wednesday night, I went with my 2 best girlfriends from work to see the Yankees play. We ended up totally ignoring our seats (nosebleed section) and just hanging out drinking some beers and periodically watching the game. It ended up being a good thing - where we were standing was covered by an overhang, and about 3 innings into the game, a huge rainstorm blew through. We had the ideal watching spot.

The rainstorm was awesome. It's been a long time since I've gotten to experience something like that. San Francisco was straight up Fog City, and in Texas, if you were getting rain, you were probably also getting thunder and lightning. Our rain delay ended up being a 2 hour one, but we stayed through. Probably because we didn't stop drinking and talking. We ended up leaving in the 6th inning, and only because when we went down to the lowest section to sit down, we got busted. Even though there were about 3 people total left in the stadium, they wouldn't let us sit down below. I understand that rules are rules and all, but seriously, my friends are totally cute and they couldn't even talk their way past the security guard.

On Friday last week, we got notification that a project I have put a shit-ton of time and effort into will not be launching. It was a bit of a sad day - not only was I excited to see this project through the finish line, I gave up several summer Fridays for it also, and the amount of work I put into graphs and charts and spreadsheets surrounding this - well, that alone should've made this thing go. Due to the news, I called Blondie on my way home from work and he agreed to meet me at the bar.

We ended up bar hopping our way around our hood (there are 7 bars in a 1 block radius, we hit up most of them), enjoying beverages and food at about every single joint. The good thing here is that there has been a bar that I've been wanting to try since we moved in - from the outside it looks like it should be filled with cigarette smoke, old men with long beards, low ceilings, florescent lighting, and very old carpet. I was uber excited to go in, but it was so weird - the inside was *gorgeous*. It blew my mind - I'd put something in here about "Don't judge a book by it's cover", but I'm not feeling very deep today.

The good news about this bar is that they also run drink specials when NYC teams play - Mets, Jets, Giants, Yankees - $30 all-you-can-drink drafts for the duration of the game. Holy. Shit. People. I'm. In. Love.

Saturday was a "OMG what did I do last night" day. I went down for a long run, and ended up only getting a little over 2 miles before my body was like "okay, you're done". I decided to listen to it - only because I go balls out every day working out - I needed a low-key day. After my run, I lifted weights and did some core work before calling it quits.

We did our grocery shopping afterwards, and it got me excited for fall because of the vegetables that are coming into season. Blondie picked out 2 beautiful beets and we've been enjoying those this week. Okay, so Saturday night, Blondie comes strolling out of the kitchen with a beer, and then it was all bets off. We ended up watching the movie Blow off of Netflix (I love Johnny Depp) and getting a little boozed up - a really great date-night in my mind!

Sunday was spent doing nothing but working out and watching football. I got a much better workout in on Sunday than I did Saturday, and then hit the deck and watched the Vikings and Cowboys win (boo! suck!).

Monday was our not-real anniversary. Due to a mix-up with our paperwork 7 years ago, we weren't officially married on 9/27. But it's still the date we celebrate, as opposed to the real anniversary in 1.5 weeks. We met up at our local steakhouse and split some asparagus, mashed potatos, and mushrooms - we each got our own steak and just enjoyed chatting and watching the rain come down (we were supposed to be at a Mets game for our day but it got rained out). After our steak meal, we stopped for a doughnut before heading home to watch the Packers lose (boo! suck!)

Not a lot of plans this week - a lot of cleaning to do before the lovely duo of Bbbb and Shelbs hit town on Saturday. Very very excited to see them!

Hope everyone is well.

--K

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY CHOMPERS

7 years and 1 hr 47 mins ago today, we tried to make our relationship official. It didn't quite work but today is still our day to celebrate. Love you and your blonde head (and your cat)!

--K

Here comes the fall... and the tornados

The weather has certainly taken a turn towards fall here in NYC. It seemed we went from high 90's with high humidity to mid 70's with no humidity, in the space of 3 days. There was no in between. I even asked some coworkers to make sure I didn't like, you know, miss 3 weeks of weather in the 80's. But I haven't. Apparently this is typical. Oh yay. It's time for winter again.

And, BTW, I hate winter.

Okay, so on top of the chilly weather, we've also had a spate of rain. Like 3 weeks of it. It's rainy or cloudy every single day. And on Thurs this past week, we had a *massive* storm roll through, and with it, 2 tornados. Queens and Brooklyn were wiped out, but we were lucky since we live in Manhattan. I spent Thurs evening, about 20 minutes, watching the storm out my window at work - it was intense. I haven't seen anything like it in 4 years. The sky went super dark, and then it lit up bright white and the rain came in sideways it was blowing so hard. It lasted about 25 minutes, and it was over as fast as it started.

The rest of the week was good other than the weather. On Wednesday, we said goodbye to one of my favorite coworkers. We did it up in style, and met up for Korean Fried Chicken and Soju one last time. A pitcher of soju turned into, um well, a lot of soju. And beer. And then Blondie and I decided we didn't want to go home so we ended up the bar until about 1 am. Thursday was suckity suck balls. But we had a blast.

On Friday, I went with a friend to a korean marketplace a friend of mine had told me about. It was like heaven on earth. They had so much good shit - I picked up some marinated short ribs and ribeye, some spicy noodles and some pot stickers. I talked myself out of the srirachi peas, still not sure how I did it - but if I would've bought them, I would've eaten them all. In about 5 minutes.

I walked home from K-town that night, and just appreciated living in the city. Blondie and I cooked up the ribeye for dinner, and we have our short ribs for tonight now.

Yesterday I got up and headed down for a run on the treadmill. I decided it was time to up my mileage so I plugged in 5 miles for my goal - and it rocked. I felt great for the most part, and finished in a pretty good time. I was pretty giddy afterwards - my runner's high was off the charts and I drove Blondie bat shit crazy b/c I couldn't stop chattering away. That's my favorite part about running - to be honest, I hate running but I love the runner's high afterwards.

After the run, we headed out to the first annual OKTOBERFEST on the Hudson! That's right folks - it's time for my favorite holiday. We met up with some friends of ours, people watched the day away and enjoyed some kick ass beers and brats. Although I have to say, Blondie makes a mean brat and his brats have it all over the brats at the fest. After the fest, we headed to our local bar for a few more beers before heading down to a mexican "restaurant" I had been wanting to try. By "restaurant", I mean a grocery store with about 3 tables in it - but the food ROCKED. OMG. It was so good. I had chorizo and potatos, and Blondie had carnitas with cactus. We couldn't stop eating off each other's plates the food was so good. And the salsa was killer hot - I kept saying "is this shit really hot?" and Blondie was all like "nah, it's all good". We were pretty blotto at that point, so I have no idea if the salsa was that hot or if I was just being an idiot.

Luckily I didn't try to speak Spanish to anyone. Also, the people at the restaurant were so nice. We were picking up some coconut water afterwards and she told us to try a different brand b/c it was much better. We also got some chorizo to cook at home and Blondie tried a mexican dessert which pretty much tasted like easter candy. Which I love. We will be back to that place.

This morning I woke up hung.over. I waited about an hour to make sure my system was done revolting before putting in 1+ hours working out. I got all the leftover booze out of my system and feel much better. We had our groceries delivered today (lazy lazy lazy) and are set for the week.

Now for some football.

--K

A Hot Date with Beer and Doughnuts

Low key week... Loooooooooooooow key......

On Thursday, the clouds started rolling in and the temperature started dropping - it was one of those days where all you want to do is go home, climb into your pajamas, order a pizza and eat it in bed while watching TV. Unfortunately, on Thursday, there was a going away party for one of my favorite people at work. So I didn't get to put my plan in action. But it was okay because I wanted to be there for my buddy - she's an awesome person, so funny and smart, her projects always went on time and went well, and she can drink me under the table.

On Friday, the weather was the exact same - and it was also first full day Friday back. Le sigh. Fortunately, I have a hot blonde husband who listened to me on Thursday about what I wanted to do. I came home that night and he made me a big plate of spaghetti and garlic bread, and we crashed out while watching TV. Then, to make it even better, at about 10:30 pm, Blondie turned to me and said "hmmm... want to go get some wings and beer?" Well OF COURSE I do! We headed out 1 block to our tiny neighborhood bar, and spent a pleasant couple of hours before heading home. I had just enough beer to put me into a deeper than usual sleep and it rocked.

Saturday I woke up a bit worried. I had a 4 mile run scheduled for the day and I thought maybe wings and beer would affect it - and it did - but in an awesome way. I had one of the best runs I've had since I started back on it - it was one of those runs where the breath and the strides align, and I bounced along at a pretty good speed for the entire time. It felt AWESOME. I had a huge runners high after.

I went back up to our apartment when I was done working out, and bragged all over the place to Blondie, before we headed out to do our grocery shopping. We both agreed that all we wanted to do was drink some beer and watch some college football (go Badgers!), so we picked up some 6-ers and headed back to the apartment to veg. 4 hours later, we were out of beer, so Blondie had to go out and get some more 6-ers. We ordered some street tacos to be delivered, and got pleasantly drunk by ourselves. We rule.

Yesterday it was another crap day - we both did a workout in the morning, before heading out at lunch for beers and sandwiches before hitting up our local Dunkin Donuts. Um. Oops. I had 8 chocolate donut holes and 1 glazed donut, but OMG, so worth it. We hit the 2 hour window yesterday where it didn't rain, which was good for us - we ended up watching it pour out the window all afternoon before cheering on Green Bay to a victory.

Today it's another crappy weather day (Jets delay anyone?) - I soaked myself trying to get home from work, but am happy I'm here and dry. Blondie made chicken and rice and veggies for dinner (yum!) and now I'm about to get a granola bar. The Jets are winning thus far, albeit slightly. And Monday is over. It could be worse.

--K

The essence of NYC

A Salt and Battery fish and chips shop - a tasty tasty lunch in Greenwich Village. Picture taken by Blondie.



--K

Killing Bill, drinking Bailey's

What a perfect week... I'll start with that. I got some good news at work this past week - I won't fill in details, but just say that it does involve both my boss and my coworkers showing that they are impressed with how I'm doing.

On Thursday, I headed to my eye doctor's appt - it was my first one in 4 years, but I hadn't been going since my eyesight hasn't changed at all. My eye doctor confirmed it - if anything, he said my eyes have gotten a slight bit stronger. But the bad thing is that I have inflamed corneas, and he wants me to stop wearing my contacts to let my eyes heal. I can't do that - I work out everyday and I sweat like crazy too - if I had on glasses, they would just slide down my face. But I have committed to changing my contacts monthly, and taking my contacts out as soon as I can at night.

After my eye doctor, I swung by my pedicure place since it was still early evening. Got a bright pink pedi, which is pretty cool - it's like watermelon or something. It's such a good color that one of the girls sitting beside me asked me what color it was, and what bottle I had used, because she wanted to use the same color.

So now it's Friday - 1 pm rolls around, and I get out on time (le sigh, last one). I met up with Blondie at a new bar in our hood that we've been wanting to try. We had seen it being worked on/constructed for a few months, and since the name of it (The Pourhouse) was the exact same name as one of our fav bars in TX, we decided to give it a whirl. We weren't expecting much as they had only been open about 2 weeks, but it turned out super freaking awesome. They had great drink specials, and the food was typical bar food but turned up about 5 notches. We stayed for a few beers, before heading down to Rudy's for a cheap pitcher.

What is it about Rudy's that attracts drunks to me and Blondie? Of course since Rudy's is super freaking cheap, it gets the drunks. But how do those drunks end up right by us every single time? We actually watched cops come in and tell the bartender to stop serving someone because he was so trashed, and then a second guy comes stumbling up beside me and asked the bartender if they sold near beer which made me about pee myself laughing.

After our pitcher, we took off to the cheap grocery to get our shopping done - smartest decision we made that day. For dinner on Friday, Blondie grilled up some kielbasa and onions. SO GOOD! Friday night was interesting - at about 9:30 pm, we heard this monster crash from somewhere in our apartment. The cats flipped out, we flipped out - it was unnerving. It turned out that the racks in our closet fell out of the wall and everything came tumbling down. Once we figured out what had happened, we got to laughing, but before that, it was just "WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?!?!?"

So Saturday rolls around, and I felt so lazy. Couldn't decide if I wanted to work out or not - finally decided I needed to - so decided to work out in the apartment. Just as I was putting on my sneakers, our doorbell rang - it was maintenance there to fix the racks. So I drug my tired ass body down to the gym instead and ended up doing 4 mile run. That was it though - my body hit a wall and I didn't want to hurt myself, so I didn't lift any weights.

After the gym, I went back up and "helped" Blondie put all of our stuff back on the racks. By helped, I mean, I got a shower, ate breakfast, poked a few boxes around, and then collapsed on the floor. He loves me, let me tell you.

Saturday afternoon, we took a 2 mile walk (on top of the 4 mile run) down to Chelsea to check out High Line Park - it's an old elevated rail line that the city has converted into a beautiful park. It was gorgeous - so beautiful. Also, completely crammed full of people. We walked through the park, and then headed over to this fish and chips place a friend of mine had told me about - A Salt and Battery. OMG - it was some of the best fish I've eaten, although the chips were awful. I had cod and Blondie had pollock. I was covered in grease, vinegar and ketchup when through.

Yesterday was the textbook definition of Sunday Funday. We did our workouts and then headed up to Brazilian Fest on 6th Ave. We only stayed for a little bit, long enough to split a sausage and drink some lemonade, before heading back to the Pourhouse bar (from Friday) for some pitchers. We split some chicken wings - some of the best wings I've had - and 2 pitchers. Just as we were about to head on out, our bartender bought us some shots. I had tequila, Blondie had a Jaeger bomb. Then of course we needed another pitcher. And some mozarella sticks. And then we struck up a conversation with the 2 guys sitting beside us - I apparently renamed them at some point, and went back and forth between their "nicknames" and their real names all afternoon.

After all 4 of us were good and drunksie (like really drunksie), I decided I needed doughnuts, and they decided to go find their girlfriends (who were wandering around Brazilian Fest). Blondie and I started back to our house, but then I had a brilliant idea for tacos, so we hit up our little taco stand. I decided I absolutely can speak spanish, so ordered everything that way - I'm so embarrassed today - it was literally like "Uno carnita y uno chorize con papas y...." you get the picture. After our tacos, we got our doughnuts, and then we came home - where apparently I went straight to bed - at 5:30 pm. I don't remember any of it at all - I just know I rolled over at 7:18 am this morning and felt 100% great. I run on sleep deprivation most of the time, some kind of sleep disorder that I've never figured out - so last night was exactly what my body needed.

Today I did a workout again, and then Blondie and I made some eggs and coffee with Bailey's for breakfast. Now we've got Kill Bill Vol 1 in, and the patio door is open to let in some gorgeous NYC weather right now. We have no other plans, and I'm super excited to not move the rest of the day.

Hope everyone is doing well, and enjoying a labor-free Labor Day.

--K

The Cutest Kids In The World

TCKITW, the original, and TCKITW, v4.0 for your viewing pleasure. LOVE THEM SO MUCH! Best nieces anyone could ask for! Well, them and Blondie's nieces!



--K

Last of the summer Fridays

We're coming up on the very last summer Friday of the year. OMG. It's going to be awful. That first full Friday back feels like it takes 25000 hours to complete. I know, it's a pity party at my house and everyone is invited. I'm so whiny about this aren't I? Instead of enjoying 12 weeks of half-day Fridays, I'm focused on going back to what most everyone else does every week.

Okay, enough about summer Fridays.

We made our trek back to the Land of Cheese last week - we took off on Monday night, delayed due to rain in the NYC area. Landed late, and got our rental car for the hour drive to Blondie's hometown. We got to enjoy some quiet time with some of Blondie's family when we finally hit his area - his sister and her family, and his mom and dad.

Tuesday we got up and headed out for a run - I run all the time on a treadmill, and my first trek outside in several months was this day. I was slow, but still pushed through - the humidity was pretty bad, but the weather was slightly cooler than expected so that was nice. After our run, we headed over to Blondie's brother's house to meet their new baby girl. The same day that Blondie's grandma passed away, Blondie got a new niece also. Tuesday night was the wake, and while it was good getting to see Blondie's extended family, the reason we were there was no bueno.

Wednesday we went for another run, before heading over to the funeral. Blondie was a pallbearer, and I'm glad he got to do that for his grandma. After the funeral, we headed over for a buffet lunch with everyone - this was the best part of the day. We all sat around eating, chatting, drinking some beers, etc.

But no rest for the weary - as soon as lunch was done we were in the car headed back to the airport, where we were delayed once again, finally landing in NYC very late Wed night. We headed back to our apartment, repacked, took care of our shithead cats, and turned around 3 hours later to catch a flight to KY.

My family picked us up about an hour north of the city they live in, and we headed up a little further to get my uncle from a private airport (he has his own small plane and a pilot's license - he lives in Pennsylvania but flew in for the day) before heading to Kings Island for the day! It was a blast, even on 3 hours of sleep. We rode every single ride, drank some beers, downed some steak fries, and convinced my mom and sister to ride a water ride with us.

We got back to my parent's house late Thurs night, and fell straight into bed. Friday I was up and at em early - met Mr Pooh for a long run. He got me running pretty fast, so my timing was really good this time. Then it was back to his house for some more workout, before meeting up with everyone for lunch. Afterwards, what we do best - drinking, and card games. OMG - so much fun.

Around 5 pm, we headed out for happy hour and to meet up with my BFF in the whole wide world (squee!) and her man for a visit. The planned 1.5 hour HH turned into 4 hours of debauchery, before we ended up back at my sister's inhaling pizza and playing some dance game on her Wii. I about peed myself laughing at certain points.

Saturday was another day to go go go - we again met for lunch before heading back to Mr Poohs to play cards and drink again. We did a cookout on Saturday night, and I got to show TCKITW v4.0 some of my tats - she was fascinated by them. 1.5 years old and I think I've already convinced her to get one eventually.

I do have some pics of TCKITW and TCKITW v4.0, just need to download them. But it will happen and we can all breathe in the cuteness that are the 2 nieces.

Okay, so back to NYC on Sunday where I laid in a ball all day and poked my fat belly while complaining about how much I ate over the past 3 days. No amount of running counteracted what I did to myself.

Monday I felt drugged at work - it was all I could do to get through the day, and it's just today that I finally feel okay - but that might be due to the coffee I had this morning also.

Tomorrow I have an eye doctor's appt to take care of - I ripped one of my last set of contacts in KY, and can't stand wearing glasses everyday. And then Friday, I'm out the door as soon as that clock hits 1 pm. SUMMER FRIDAY! Blondie and I are going to meet for some lunch and beer. We are still trying to figure out what to do the rest of the weekend... Wicked? Avenue Q? Met? MOMA? Shake Shack? South Side Seaport?

So many choices, so little time...

Sorry for the delay in posts - last week took a lot out of both of us, and I wanted some time to decompress before filling everyone in.

Happy Almost Labor Day!

--K