You DID say it was your birthday!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MRS POOH AND SLICK! Hope you guys are having great days, and getting tons of great gifts!!!!!!!

Why can't every weekend be a 3 day weekend?

As a matter of fact, I would like some cheese with my whine. Last weekend was so spectacular it makes me want to cry thinking about it. Why you ask? Did you do anything exciting? Not really to be honest. We were mostly lazy, but it was that feeling of going to bed on Sunday night without dread that did it for me.

So last Saturday we really did nothing. We lazed around, watched bad TV, and just took it easy. Sunday I had enough - I declared to Blondie - "We are doing something!" So he said "Well, what do you want to do?" and my answer was my typical answer (eat). We headed up to 8th Ave and hit up Shake Shack! I've heard about Shake Shack for years now, basically that it's the NYC equivalent of In-and-Out. Blondie went last summer with his sis and her family, and he liked it but didn't think it was mind-blowing. But I wanted to try it - so we headed out on Sunday into the freezing cold (65 degrees and sunny on Friday, 25 degrees on Sunday - go NYC), and hit up Shake Shack for lunch.

The burger was *insane*. I don't know what Blondie ate last year, but my burger was so flipping good - hot, greasy, covered in cheese and special sauce ;) Blondie even said that his burger was a lot better than the last time. We split an order of fries, and we each got our own shake (me = chocolate of course; Blondie = caramel). After lunch, we hit up our bakery for a loaf of banana nut bread before heading home to crash for a few hours.

I headed back out about 3 hours later to meet my coworker for "La Cage Aux Folles" starring JEFFREY TAMBOR and HARVERY FIERSTEIN. OMG people - it was like my wet dream. We had "cabaret" seats which were stage-side seats, and the cast LOVED my coworker. They were all over him like white on rice. Jeffrey Tambor acknowledged him at the very start of the play, and then the drag queens were on him, making eyes at him, singling him out - I felt like the fat frumpy friend (well, if the shoe fits ;) I LOVED the play - it was so much fun, and having Harvey Fierstein be in it (the original author) - it's like seeing a piece of history in the making.

After the play, I went skipping back to my hood, and called Blondie for dinner. Justin Timberlake had opened a branch of his restaurant in our hood and I wanted to try it out (Southern Hospitality). It was actually pretty good. I liked the cornbread and the dry rub ribs a lot, the mac-and-cheese was okay, and the fried chicken was really juicy.

Monday was another lazy kind of day. I did yoga, and then went on a salt binge the likes of which I've not had in about 10 years. All day long I was craving salt, I couldn't get it out of my head. We even went bowling to take my mind off of it - the bowling was fun, and the alley is only a block from our house, so that was nice. Finally I gave in to the salt craving and we headed out to buy chips and dip, and then order in massive amounts of sushi for dinner which I doused in soy.

Tuesday, I woke up feeling like I had kept my tongue in a salt lick all night long. I headed down for my run without any high hopes for it, but actually ended up rocking it out (3.5 miles in 38 minutes is super good for me). Wed and Thurs were also runs, with Thurs run being atrocious. I had to walk half of it at least, just could NOT get my breaths and steps aligned. It was torture.

The good news of it all was that my week went super fast - usually after a 3 day weekend, the week d.r.a.g.s but last week was one of the fastest I've had since I've been in NYC.

Friday night, we made some whole wheat pasta and sauce with a ton of veg in it - I had to carb load because my long runs started increasing this week. It was only 5 miles, but it's further than I've run since I did my 13K last October. I was nervous when I went down to the gym about the run, since my Thurs run was the shit (and not in a good way), but I did really well. It took me 57 mins to run it, but I did run it all, and I felt good about it the entire way. And 57 mins is really only 2 mins faster than I would love for my timing to be. So all around a good run.

After my run, and Blondie's workout, we debated about food. We finally decided to hit up this Argentinian restaurant in our hood - it was so good. I had a glass of sangria, and tuna tartar with a side of red beans, and Blondie had their signature chicken and some fried plantains. I ate bites of his chicken and it was the bomb, but I was also ecstatic with my food. Blondie was really sore afterwards (he climbed all 45 flights of steps in our building on Friday before going to the gym for a 1.5 hour long workout), so we headed home afterwards to just relax.

Today I headed down to the gym again, this time for cross training on the Precor (I hate Precor and haven't done a Precor in about 2 years). It was okay, but only because Sex and the City was on, so I set the individual TV to that and plugged my headphones in to listen. I'm now worked out, showered, and waiting for our grocery delivery to get here. We had talked about going out today but Blondie is in major pain, so I'm not sure that's going to happen.

A couple of notes. This was week 3 for my half training, and my runs were 3.5 miles on Tues and Thurs, 2 miles on Wed, and 5 miles on Saturday - training is going well, and I'm very excited to see Mr Pooh in April and run the half with him!

My second note is that I've somehow got a fixation on beans right now - black and red. They are all I want to eat. Everywhere we go, I'm scouring menus to see if they've got beans somewhere. And it was so bad on Tuesday night, that I decided to make us dinner by heating up some black beans and dumping in a ton of peppers and onions. Any ideas why I'm craving them so much? I eat meat, so it's not like I need the protein. At least I'm not craving ice cream or something very unhealthy.

Hope everyone is well.

--K