A bit of a disaster

Travelling at Christmas SUCKS. I'm not a Xmas fan anyway, I'd much rather stay around my home and celebrate solo with the one who is Blonde. Mash not liking Xmas with everybody and their brother travelling, and it makes me sick to my stomach.

This year was even worse - we started off by heading to Chicago, and had a disastrous flight there. They loaded us on our plane, and then made us sit for an hour at the gate before they backed us away and parked us on the tarmac for 2 hours, before we got in line for takeoff. Couple that with a mom travelling by herself with 2 kids under the age of 5 sitting directly in front of us, and it was a nightmare. The only saving grace was our flight attendant who didn't charge us for our vodka due to the family from hell.

We hung out with Slick and Pfunk for a day in Chicago and that was fun, and then rode to the Land of Cheese with Blondie's brother. We spent 5 days with his family, and had a good time - we got to meet the nephew (6 nieces, 1 nephew) and see all of Blondie's extended family. We went all over Blondie's hometown, ate some really good home-cooking, and drank a shit ton of food.

Okay, so time to come home - and everyone knows that the blizzard blew through NYC the day after Xmas. We were flying back the day after the blizzard in the evening, and while a lot of flights were cancelled, ours wasn't the morning we were scheduled to fly. So we caught a ride to Milwauke and took the Amtrak to Chicago to catch our flight back. We were just pulling into Union Station in Chicago when our flight cancelled. No worries we thought - let's see what the airlines can do. Blondie called up, and lo and behold, even though it was Monday we were supposed to be home, they couldn't get us back until Saturday.

We didn't agree to that so finally they booked us on a flight to Philly on Thursday, which left us 3 days of hanging out in Chicago. We got a hotel room the first night and relaxed, before heading over to Slick and Pfunk's for the rest of our trip. We got in some trivia and food and booze, and even got up the Sears Tower to see the glass walkways 103 stories in the air.

Finally it's time to go home - we got to OHare where we waited in the longest security line ever before finding out our flight was delayed 2 hours. I almost cried when we landed in Philly b/c that meant at least we were getting home that night - a 1.5 hour Amtrak ride later, we were back in good old New York City, and I've officially declared Xmas "Shittiest Holiday Ever".

We headed over to Jersey on Friday to hang out with our bartender and his family and friends for New Year's. We had a blast at that - we got over mid afternoon and started drinking, and it was just all about good friends and good times. We spent the night before catching a ride back into the city on Saturday. Since then, we've done nothing. I managed to get in a workout today, but have gained at least 10 lbs over the holidays. I'm about to start on my half-marathon training so I'm not worried about the gain, it's just frustrating that I had no control over it while I was gone.

Our week is another hectic week. I'm back for 2 days at work before we take off for Vegas. It will be a fun 4 days hanging out with Blondie's brother. When we are back from that, I don't have vacation again for a long time.

Hope everyone had a better Xmas than us - and stay tuned for pictures from our trip!

--K