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