Part Drag Queen

Last week was good - a lot of fun, a lot of friends, a lot of drinking. You can't beat it. Or you can I guess, but it would be hard to do.

Tuesday was an early start for me - 6 am again. And the release went horrible. I'm not sure what's going on right now with the team that handles these, but whatever they're doing, it's not good. Calls are supposed to be 1 hour long - ours went for 5 hours, disbanded, and then got called again 2 hours later for another 3 hours (b/c of something the team had done wrong).

"So Tuesday sucked for you?" is what I imagine you are asking yourself. And my answer is "no way in hell did it suck". And this is because, after my call *finally* ended on Tuesday (4:30 pm), Blondie joined me and 2 of my coworkers to go out for free bloomin' onion at Outback! That's right - this past Tuesday was free bloomin' onion day, and we partook. We also partook of many margaritas and beers. All in all, a good day.

On Thursday, Blondie's cousin arrived. They spent the day doing various touristy things, before I joined them for Ethiopian for dinner. The weather was so nice that I ended up walking over to the restaurant from my work (2 miles ish), and then we had a couple of beers with dinner. After that, off to our regular bar for drinks and to say hi to everyone, before heading home for a few more beers.

Friday was about a repeat - I walked over after work to meet them for dinner, they did touristy things all day, etc. However, here is where things took a turn. We were at our local bar on Friday night, when my bar friend who does cabaret/burlesque happened to mention that the piano player's (in her shows) boyfriend was in a Disney drag show 2 blocks from where we were. And then she asked if I wanted to go. Uh, hello. Is the sun hot? YES I WANT TO GO.

The night went downhill from there, as we said goodbye to the guys, trotted our already tipsy asses up the street, and then partied for 1.5 hours with the drag queens as they did their show. I swear, I'm part drag queen. Not in terms of makeup, or hair, or how I look - but in terms of "OMG, I would like to be a drag queen". Imagine getting to be someone else entirely - and then really going out and doing that. I like my life just fine, but I still think that being able to transform completely into someone else has got to be so liberating it's not funny.

I stumbled home around 12:30 am to find Blondie and his cousin throwing a party on the patio (those 2, a lot of beer, and a radio). I joined in, and we ended up getting piss drunk. Finally at 3 am, I turned in, followed an hour later by the guys. Saturday morning was painful to say the least. Blondie and his cousin hit up the Guggenheim in the afternoon while I stayed home to die a little bit. Saturday night, we hit up this bar by us that has amazing views of the city, before heading to our favorite mexican place for dinner. Afterwards, it was back home to relax, watch TV, and drink some beers.

Sunday I headed out early and got my toes back in order (pedi), before meeting up with Blondie and Cuz for lunch and beers at another local bar. This bar is the same one we met Veanne Cox in last year, and as soon as I walked in on Sunday, Blondie and Cuz (who had beat me there) pointed out that the woman who plays Hazel (the new Kenneth) on 30 Rock was sitting right behind us. I restrained myself from being like "woot! Hazel! We love you! Is Tina Fey as awesome in real life as I dream she is????" But seriously - Blondie and I think we're going to hit that bar up every Sunday because someone is always in there.

After our Hazel sighting and lunch (chili verde for me, fried oyster and bacon sandwich for Blondie), we walked down to the piers to see the river. We ran into our bar friends and our building friends out walking their dogs, so we chatted with them for a bit. Then we headed home to shoot some pool in our amenity space, before we finally put Cuz in a cab and sent him on his way to the airport. Last night was spent inhaling pizza, and taking it easy.

Today was a kind of crap day. First off, I hit 5 years with my company - 5 different roles, 5 years, 1 company. Kind of a punch in the gut. Then, my old team approached my new boss and asked if they could petition for me back to help through another release in the next 5 months. So now I have to think about that - I don't want to seem "non team-player" but I also don't want anyone questioning why I switched teams if I didn't really switch teams. Then my laptop died, and it took 5 hours to get it going again. And then, I just went into hate mode. I hated my crowded train home, I hated that it's cold again outside when last week was SO NICE, I hated that I have to walk 1 mile a day regardless of what else I do (.5 miles to subway, .5 miles home from subway), I hated the fact that I'm surrounded by people ALL THE TIME (99.9999% of the time, I'm not by myself - I might be by myself, but I never don't have someone by me). All welled up. And here I am now. Pissed off about possibly having to go back into a role I hated, starving, no energy to work out, dreading a half marathon in 3 weeks.

Sometimes I don't have the energy to fake happy - today is one of those days. Tomorrow I'll probably be embarrassed that I was so pissy about things that normally I love. But today, right now, it's how I feel.

Workouts were good - up until Thurs. Friday was an off day, and then Saturday I was way too hungover to run. Sunday we were hanging with Cuz, and then today - no excuses. Just lazy. Tomorrow I WILL go down to the gym - simply b/c I can't be all putzy when I talk to my new boss tomorrow to give her my answer about going back into my old role.

Okay. So good = drag queens, cousin visiting, spotting Hazel. Bad = my bitchy attitude. Hey, at least good > bad!

--K

Slainte

It's starting to get NICE in NYC right now. This past week had some beautiful days. Monday was an anomaly as I'd say 90% of my office had taken a vacation day. I walked into an office of quietness, and it was a pretty nice start to the week.

On Tuesday, I was walking home - it's 3 avenues from my subway to my apartment, and I had just crossed the first avenue when all of a sudden, Blondie was in face. I was like "whoa! what are you doing here?" Blondie had to run an errrand and since the weather was so nice, he thought we'd go eat dinner on a patio. We ran the errand, and then hit up a bar by us that we hardly ever go to. Blondie had fish and chips, and I had steak sandwich and fries. Afterwards, we stopped and got some more beer and headed home to open our patio door and enjoy the weather.

Wednesday, I did lunch with some coworkers, and then called Blondie mid afternoon to see if he wanted to do a repeat of Tuesday night. Because as beautiful as Tuesday was, Wednesday was even better. We hit up our poison bar, and drank the night away. Everytime we thought we'd leave, one of us would be like "wellllllll, one more round!"

Thursday it started to get cooler, so that was the end of our completely nice days. Friday I was at work pretty late, but it was simply b/c coworkers had come in to chat non-work, and then it was 7 pm. I had planned to get a pedicure on the way home from work on Friday, but by then, I was ravenously hungry, so just had to truck on home.

Yesterday it was beautiful again. I "ran" 8 miles, and then Blondie and I were at our bar by 11:30 am. We hung out until around 3:30 pm, and we came home so I could take a nap. Blondie cooked biryani for dinner (it was sooooo good!), and I made a beer run, so we spent the night sitting on patio, coming in periodically to watch b-ball, eating, and drinking beers.

Today it's pretty out now - it was really cloudy this morning. I just got done working out, and am now eating a scrambled egg, veggie (onions, peppers, cilantro, potato) and chorizo combination that Blondie made. I'm probably going to take another nap this afternoon, but other than that, nothing on tap for the day.

Blondie and I cooked in pretty frequently this past week. On Monday, we made shrimp tacos. I like to take a big bed of lettuce, crumble up a taco shell on top, and then dump the shrimps, peppers, onions on top of that. Blondie actually makes a real taco. Tues and Wed we ate out at the bar - not great, but not horrible. Thursday, Blondie made me my indian eggplant again with chicken. And Friday, we made spaghetti so I could carbo-load for my "run" yesterday. Yesterday I declared it a "break from eating right!" and had corned beef on rye for lunch, and biryani for dinner. Along with 10000 beers, and 2 bags of gummy bears. It was all kinds of awesome.

Workouts were good - again. Monday I did my Insanity Cardio Recovery disc, Tuesday was an hour session on the treadmill - the first 30 minutes were 2 minute walk, 2 minute hill run; and the second 30 minutes were 2 minute walk, 2 minute fast flat run. Wednesday was Insanity Core Cardio and Balance. Thursday was supposed to be another hour on the treadmill but I was hungover from Wednesday. I decided to take a break day, but then when I got home on Thursday night, I changed my mind and did Insanity Pure Cardio (suck) intead. Friday was my real rest day (love) and Saturday was an 8 mile jaunt along the Hudson. I'm so slow right now, I hate every moment of every run - it took me 1:51 to do 8 miles, which is 14 minute miles - which is basically a fast walk. Last year, when I was training for my half, I did 10 miles in 1:55 minutes - so last year, in only 4 more minutes, I was doing 2 more miles. Oh well, as Blondie says - "Babe, you're doing it! Who cares how slow it is!" Today I did P90X yoga disc.

This week I have another release on tap on Tuesday which means a 6 am start time (and hopefully an early leave time). And Blondie's cousin arrives on Thursday for a few days. Looking forward to getting to hang out with him - I keep forgetting he's in his 20's as when I first met him, he was 12, and then's what is burned into my brain.

--K

This is my title

My week went from extremely low points to extremely high points - which was good. Starting off shitty on a Monday, left the week nowhere to go but up.

Monday was horrid. My project went live 2 weeks ago, but this past week, we were exposing to the world 1 new piece of it for the first time. All code was in place for it, but then the business head stopped into my office on Monday with some questions that I couldn't answer. I needed my tech lead to assist on it. The business head was very concerned about some aspects of what we were doing, and ended the conversation by letting me know that if things didn't go off stellar on launch day, it could be grounds for dismissal.

Oh yay. Oh fucking yay. This project that I loathe, and that I've managed to launch by sheer determination only, that the business lead screwed up in every way, shape and form you could possibly screw up on, is now possibly going to get me canned.

I panic'ed in my office for 15 minutes, and then dug down. The next 3 days were spent getting questions answered, finding out what testing was behind, finding out various crappy aspects of the systems we use which stopped us cold from all the testing we needed to do, etc.

On top of that, on Tuesday night, another team came by to say they were having problems getting their program changes tested, so I offered to help, and when I ran a few tests, I realized that everything we had put in for my shitty program launch was missing. Tuesday night was a LATE night getting people rounded up to answer "WTF happened here?"

Wednesday was a late night also - we tried to move mountains to get finalized testing done for the "get you fired" launch on Thursday, and finally at around 8:30, we threw in the towel, walked over to the SVP's office, and let her know what was going on - we are confident with what we've seen that everything will be fine tomorrow, but just in case...

I was on the verge of an anxiety attack on Wed night. I couldn't sleep as I was so worried about what was going to happen on Thurs. It was nice though, because I had to be at work at 7 am to make sure everything had gone okay, so I was awake around 4:45 am, and was able to get a workout in before heading to the office. 5 of us came in on Thurs to run final tests, and to be able to start an emergency call if things didn't work.

And everything worked beautifully. It literally went off without a hitch. I couldn't believe it. It was bliss as I realized everything was okay. We did a celebration lunch, and then I bailed at 4:30 pm to meet Blondie at poison bar to celebrate - it was also 70 degrees in the city, so it was so nice to be off work early and being able to sit on a patio and enjoy the weather. We had a few beers there, before heading over to Southern Hospitality for dinner (JT's BBQ restaurant) and then hitting up our normal bar to round out the night.

I was in a fabulous mood at that point, and while we were sitting at the bar, my phone rang. It was my friend Slick. I have 2 BFF's in this world (outside of Blondie), and Slick is one of them. He's getting married in Sept, and he called just to catch up on how everything was going (he was my apartment mate when I adopted Max, and Max and Slick loved each other, so he wanted to see how I was doing after Max). Then he said he had a question to ask - and he wanted to know if I'd be a "groomsman" in his wedding (I'll be wearing a bridesmaids dress, but standing up on Slick's side with the rest of the guys). I'm so happy - I love his fiancee, and Slick and I have been BFF's for 13+ years now, so I was all like "YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" I'm so excited to be able to standup and support them in an official capacity.

And then Friday - the 2nd issue we found on Wed, I was able to drive that to resolution. We got everything wrapped up on that on Friday night - all the code that I wasn't seeing was actually checked in, but there was also a bug that had been introduced which stopped everything from starting up properly. So while we were the "heros" for getting the issue resolved, my office was also the ones that broke it in the first place. Woot.

Friday night we ordered in Mexican for dinner - I had enchiladas and Blondie had chicken in chipotle sauce, and we took it easy for the night. I think I went to bed at like 9 pm as I was so exhausted from the stress of the week. I woke up yesterday, and the 70 degree weather was gone - it was 30 degrees with wind gusts of 20 mph. I debated about running, but finally Blondie talked me into it. I'm behind like crazy on my training (February happened, enough said), so I know I can't miss any days at all right now. I headed out into that freezing cold weather - I was numb within 20 feet of leaving my building. I did 7 very slow miles (1 hour, 36 mins) and then hit the shower for a 30 minute long steaming hot shower.

We lazed around all day yesterday after that, before getting dressed up and heading down the street to a new bar for my bar friend's birthday. She found this place that has crazy beautiful views of the city, and we had several cocktails there before eating in their restaurant. The food was so good, and Blondie and I are going to hopefully take Mr Pooh there (at least to the bar part) when he comes to town. Blondie had salami platter as appetizer, and lamb shank for main; and I had grilled octopus for appetizer, and pork chop for main. After dinner, we hit up another bar down the street and had many beers to end the night.

I was hung over this morning, not enough to be sick, but enough to be "blah". Blondie went and got us Subways for lunch, and then around 11:45 am, I crawled back in bed and didn't wake up until 3 pm. I felt okay then, so I did 2 hours of workout. We had food delivered this week, so dinner for us was mango, pineapple and hummus. We've got a netflix to watch tonight, so that's our evening plans.

We cooked in every night this week, except for Thurs and Fri (a record for us!). Last Sunday, Blondie made salmon and I made spinach. Monday it was chicken, asparagus and stuffing. Tuesday we made homemade tortilla soup and used the leftover chicken from Monday. And Wed, omg Wed, Blondie made me a killer indian eggplant recipe and we combined that with some baked tilapia. The eggplant was soooooo good that I bought another one this week to make again.

Workouts were good - Monday I did my Insanity Cardio Recovery disc. Tuesday was 1 hour on the treadmill - doing 2 minutes walking, 2 minutes running up a 3.0 grade hilll, followed by a ton of weights. Wednesday was Insanity Core Cardio and Balance disc. Thursday was 3 miles - 2 minutes walking, 4 minutes running (at 5 am - I even got to the gym before they opened it). Friday was rest day (knocked this one out of the park). Saturday was 7 miles in 30 degree weather with a windchill that dropped it into the teens. And today was P90X Kenpo and P90X Shoulders & Arms discs.

Weather is starting to get nice here in NY - this week is supposed to be all 60+ degrees. St Patrick's day is Saturday - I have 8 miles scheduled for that day, and then maybe we'll just drink beer all day. :) Blondie's cousin shows up next week for a few days, I have my half marathon in April which will bring my PA friends to town, Mr Pooh is here beginning of May for Blondie's birthday, and then it's off to NOLA for Slick's bachelor party. Blondie is headed back to Wisc for 1.5 weeks in June, and I have to figure out when we are hitting up KY. Mr Pooh has his kid text me every so often, and she laid the guilt trip on me this week "When are you coming back to Kentucky?" What a cutie she is.

--K

From bad to eh with some good tossed in

Monday started off with a bang. My "not looking forward to it" project went live. It actually went pretty smoothly, the launch of it. I was surprised. I was expecting 25-30 medium sized issues, and we instead dealt with 3 major issues. The call took 4 hours, which was 3 hours longer than SLA, but about 9 hours less than what I was steeled for. And it's live. My loathesome project is live.

I got off work around 5 pm and met Blondie at our poison bar to have a few drinks to celebrate. We had a good time, just relaxing and enjoying the music. Note: we've been to our poison bar about 50 times since we've lived here, and it's just in the last few visits that we've noticed how good their music is. I don't know if it's Pandora or someone's iPad that they blast, but lurrrrrve it. Monday was overcast all day, and a little chilly, and it was getting dark, and then Creep came on. Just suited the mood.

After poison bar, we hit up Pony Bar. We actually managed to get seats at the bar (7 pm on a Monday and we got seats - I couldn't believe it). We each had a few pints and dinner. Blondie got the sandwich I ordered last time - so good - fried oyster and bacon; and I got sausage and sauerkrat covered with crispy bacon. After stuffing our faces, we hit up our normal bar for 1 last drink to finish celebrating.

Then the day went downhill. We got home around 8:30, and as Blondie is about to open the apartment he asked me "You had a good day right? Your celebration was nice?" and I was all "yeah, of course". And then he said "Ok, because something happened today that's probably going to ruin it". And I immediately knew we had gotten Max's remains back. I lost it. Still in the hall, in the space of about .5 seconds, I was full on crying. The box is just so small - I look at it and I think how much fur Max had and I can't figure out how that burnt down into that small of a box. Monday ended horribly. I couldn't get a grip, and I cried all night long.

Tuesday was back to work with horribly swollen eyes. The adrenaline from fearing the launch on Monday wore off, and as the day went on, I felt worse and worse. I ended up bailing early on work, and had to call in sick on Wed. Finally on Wed night, as I couldn't get my coughing to stop, I decided to try and workout to break up my congestion. I did an Insanity disc (the recovery disc) and felt like I was breathing through a cocktail straw the entire time. Thurs I drug myself to the gym and did a 3 mile interval (2 mins walk, 2 mins run) - and did it in 36:49. Which for those keeping track (me), meant it was about 1.5 mins faster than if I just ran the whole thing.

On Thurs night, a friend of mine from work came over. He knew Blondie and I had a rough couple of weeks, and he thinks Blondie is awesome, so he offered to cook dinner for us. My friend is Indian, grew up in Africa, so he made us homemade chicken biryani. It was so freaking good - we couldn't stop eating it. I inhaled my plate. We had several bottles of wine, and played some cards also that night. It was a super super incredible gesture on my friend's part, and I'm glad to have him as a friend.

Friday sucked. It was a long day, and I was excited to have it done as I had to work all last weekend. But around 3 pm, we had a sev1 called in for something with my program. I didn't think it was a sev1, but the people who called it in thought that. So we had to fix it. Which meant an 8 pm end time. Now, that's not so bad. In general. But I was just so done with this week - the stress of the launch call, getting Max back, relapsing with my sickness, and I just was fed up. I came home in a filthy mood.

But because of that, I was up early on Saturday - stress from work jacks up my sleeping patterns something fierce. So at around 8 am, I headed out for 6 miles along the Hudson. I'm very slow and took some walking breaks, and came in around 1:26. Slow. Slow. Slow. It was nice though, b/c it was chilly and misting, so hardly anyone was out. The fog was in horrible, and you couldn't even see across the Hudson to Jersey. So it was just me and my thoughts - I didn't even use my MP3 player. For 6 miles, I got to let my mind wander. I thought about Max, I thought about my life, I thought about NYC, and I'll be honest, I thought about how much I hate running.

I got home and was showered and back in bed before Blondie even woke up for the day. After he got up, we ended up doing a massive grocery shop, so we can make meals in everyday this week. And then I took a nap in the afternoon. Around 5 pm, our bar friends texted and we met them for a few beers and to hang out with their new puppy. They brought the dog into the bar, and we had a great time taking silly pictures of him. Afterwards, we headed home to grill up burgers, onions and mushrooms, before popping in Rum Diary to end our night. It was the first day since Max died that I felt generally eh and not on the verge of a breakdown.

Today I hit the gym and did 45 minutes on Precor before about 45 minutes of weight lifting. We grilled more burgers for lunch, and Blondie is going to make salmon and spinach for dinner.

The good thing about the week is that we got our tickets bought to New Orleans for Slick's bachelor party. He's having a non-traditional bachelor party, so I'm invited. Blondie and I are excited about this trip, and we're staying an extra night so that we can have a night in NOLA by ourselves.

The great thing about the week is that Mr Pooh bought his tickets into NYC in May. The weekend before we go to NOLA, Mr Pooh will be here. It's also Blondie's birthday, so we are going to have a celebration weekend. Truly looking forward to that! We had such a blast with Mr Pooh last year, let's hope we have the same amount of fun (or more) this year!

--K