Sunday, July 28, 2013

Ode to the Assholes Who Live Upstairs

Stop fucking having "WOOOOOOOO" parties at 5 am on Saturday and Sunday on your mother fucking balcony.

And now that that's out of the way...

My total project load at work is now 5. I was expecting a new project last week, taking my total to 4, but instead got 2 new projects. And my boss has asked me to mentor the 3 new people who are coming onto the team, as well as help the 1 person who will be doing a project beside me. Part of me is happy that my boss is happy with my work (really happy with it), but the other part of me is like "how in the world am I going to have time to do all this?"

My projects are also spread out around the country - and I have to be onsite for each one of them at various points in the project. I have my NJ/PA border one, one in Asheville, one in Harlem (I guess it really doesn't count b/c I don't even have to leave the island for that one), one in Raleigh, and one an hour out of DFW. I'll be leaving tomorrow morning to go to my NJ/PA project for the next 3 days - it's far enough out that it makes more sense to stay in a hotel as opposed to coming back to the city every night, so I will be doing that. So far it's looking like I will be travelling a few days each week for the next 6 weeks in a row.

Work was good this week - super busy again, but it's ok because it's making my days go fast again. It feels like it felt when I first started, where I would blink and the week would be over. On Tuesday I was at my NJ/PA project for the morning working with the networking team out there - it was a lot of fun (the team is awesome) and we found a big issue that they needed to resolve; so it was super useful that I went out there ahead of this week.

And then Friday happened. It kind of came up behind me, hit me in the head with a baseball bat, and then took off running. My Raleigh project was kicking off officially on Friday - everybody and their brother knew about this, between meetings I attend and emails I send, everyone knows when my projects are a go. My office found a bug on Thurs that they had to fix before Friday (so we could actually launch) but they didn't tell anyone they were going to release code to fix it; they just did it and then sent email after the fact (late at night).

I got up at 7 am on Friday to check on my project - and they were having an issue. It was an easy one to resolve, but it was also one that should've been resolved already. I sent an email to the team and told them to ping me when ready and we would get cracking, and then logged into our portal to get ready, and realized we had a massive issue - the portal shows status of what we have in the field, and my project was solid red. It was also at this point that I saw the email that there had been a release on Thurs night.

I immediately start pinging people left and right - wtf is going on???? In the meantime, I helped the project team on the ground get their first issue resolved. And then I took off to the office and spent the rest of the day in meetings - trying to replicate the issue as well as come up with steps to resolve it. What made it even more painful was we had a company offsite on Friday so everyone started taking off around 1:30 pm to go to that, except for the team involved in the issue (ahem).

I left on Friday night just feeling completely beat down, completely done with everything, completely ready to quit. And so I headed straight to the bar. And then spent the next 5 hours talking with friends, hanging with Blondie, and generally imbibing in some boozy goodness to get my head on straight.

In better, non-Debbie Downer news, Blondie got some excellent feedback this week about his performance! I'll let him fill people in on that, but the news he got shows that his company LOVES him and is willing to invest heavily in him and his future. GOOOO BLONDIE!

Yesterday I took it easy - actually decided to not leave bed the entire day (outside of the gym), but then an old coworker of mine texted - him and his girlfriend were in the neighborhood so I met them at the bar mid afternoon to catch up with them both. It was really good seeing them, and I ended up being glad I did get out of my apartment for a little bit.

Today we are off to Chelsea Piers and Katz Deli to celebrate a friends birthday. I'm already tired b/c of the giant fucking douche bags that live 1 floor above us - apparently it's fun to wake everyone up at 5 am by "WOOO HOOOO"'ing off the balcony, or by screaming FUCK every other minute. So awesome.

Workouts:
Sunday: Insanity Cardio Recovery
Monday: Rest
Tuesday: 2 miles on treadmill in 24:15, 5 min cooldown
Wednesday: 5 miles on bike in 19:38 (2 mins level 8, 4 mins level 13); 5 min cooldown; .5 miles on treadmill at 6.1 mph; 5 min cooldown; weights
Thursday: 2.5 miles on treadmill in 30:45 (suck); 5 min cooldown; weights
Friday: Rest
Saturday: .87 miles on treadmill and then mentally copped out; 10 miles on bike in 38:30 ish (2 mins level 8, 2 mins level 13); 5 min cooldown; P90X Stretching

--K

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Heat Wave

First let's start with some amazing-ness that I left off my last blog post; on July 3rd, Blondie and our bar friends hit up a cabaret club in the lower east side to see a show done to Ziggy Stardust! We went for dinner and then stayed for the show, which featured all different variations of David Bowie songs and looks (not really cabaret-y but still awesome-y). There were some cabaret pieces of the show, but the highlight had to be the male pole dancer. It was honestly the most incredible display of athleticism I've seen - my female bar friend and I were like "oh holy hell that is *insane*", but Blondie and my male bar friend were blown away by the sax that blew flames. A great night all around!

And back to this past week... which was the grossest hottest week I've lived through.

Let's start with the fact that I love being able to walk to my job. I don't pay for subway, I don't pay for car, I don't pay for insurance. I just walk (and sweat). And then the temps exploded this week to where it would be 97 with 40% humidity. Every single day I came into the office today, I had sweat streaking down my arms and legs. Just running down them like I was in the shower. Ewww.

Work was pretty good overall this week - my projects are in full force go-mode, and I think I'm about to get a 4th one dropped on my plate so the week was fast to say the least. I got my performance review on Friday, and it went really well. The president of the company had sent out a note saying "this is the percentage of people who are going to get each rank" which I thought was weird. I have no doubts that companies ahead of time will say "x% of people get the lowest grade, and so on" but I had no idea that any company would ever send that out to employees. Anyway, because they sent that email, I know where I fit in terms of the company and I'm happy about it.

Blondie and I hit up our local bar on Wednesday night. It's literally been too hot to cook, so I kind of melted my way to the bar for cold beers followed closely by Blondie. We sat and chatted with our bar friends for a long time before we decided to eat at the bar so we didn't have to figure out what else to do for dinner. Then Blondie headed on home while I had a mini dance party at the bar with one of my friends. We left around 10:30 that night to head home and it was still disgusting out.

Yesterday Blondie and I both did a really long workout - we thought we would leave the house afterwards and wander, but again, the heat was intense. So we both just crashed out, ordered in some food, and took it easy all day. Today I've got to make a prescription run, do a workout, get our groceries, and get a pedicure. But the heat is starting to break, so hopefully it won't be too bad.

Workouts were as good as they could be this week - the a/c in our gym is busted, so they just have some standing fans in there right now. Every workout you do feels 20x harder than normal because of this.
Monday: rest
Tuesday: 2 mile run in 23:38; weights
Wednesday: brick - 5 miles on bike in 19:10 (2 mins level 8, 4 mins level 12); 5 min cooldown; .5 mile run at 6.0 mph; 5 min cooldown
Thursday: 2 mile run in 24:30; weights
Friday: 28 mins on Precor weight loss program; 5 min cooldown; weights
Saturday: 65 mins on treadmill - 5.02 miles total (way worse than last week - much less distance covered; felt awful - thanks no air conditioning!)
Today: Going to just lift some weights I believe.

--K

Sunday, July 14, 2013

And here we are again...

I have no excuses. I simply have not felt like blogging come Sunday mornings. I start out every Sunday with the best intentions - I'm going to get up early and I'm going to write my blog before Pony Bar. Yet every Sunday, it turns out more like this - I'm going to get up at like 11:30 am, maybeeeeeeeeeee take a shower, and then go to Pony Bar. As I tell my cat (whenever he starts his "meow until the meow-er box runs out" habit) - dat's pa-te-tic.

So hopefully I'm back in the blogging world for good this time, and hopefully it's not a repeat of last time where I blogged and then went away again for 3 weeks.

Onto some form of recap. Wooty Woot!

1) Bowling!!!!
My work ended up renting out the private room of a bowling alley (4 lanes, it's own bar, big screen TVs, etc) and took everyone over for an afternoon of "not work". It was pretty awesome, and not just because the bowling alley was 1 block from my house. I actually really like to bowl - I'm not good at it by any means (any), I just think it's a fun way to spend a day. Top that with getting on a lane with my favorite coworkers, and the completely free open bar, and the day ended up a blast.

Afterwards, a smaller group of us decided to have an after-party, so I trucked over to my local bar and grabbed Blondie and my bar friend, and we headed up a few streets in the hood and hit up a vodka bar. It was the first time Blondie had met this specific group of coworkers and they LOVED him. As they told me - "Your husband is one of us!" meaning he speaks their language (coding, networking, etc). They also LOVED my bar friend - as we ended up taking over the dance stage in the bar and having a massive dance party. Top that off with the 3rd party company we work most closely with paid our whole bar bill - seriously one of the best Fridays I've had in a long time.

Blondie left the vodka bar a bit early to grab empanadas and go home and crash. But my bar friend and I stayed until about 1 am, and then stopped for nachos and margaritas on the way home. While sitting on the patio of the mexican restaurant, my BFF from work came walking by (he had just left the after-party) so we hollered at him and he helped us eat our nachos and drink our margs. The next day I realized I had texted Blondie at 1:30 am - and it said "I'm at mexican!" That's me - so excited for food that I text my husband, who I knew was sleeping, that I was eating mexican. Awesome.

2) Asheville!!!
Last week I got sent down to Asheville, NC, for a few days. It was insanely beautiful down there. As my plane was coming in for a landing, it was just solid green and mountains everywhere you looked. They had just came through a week of storms so everything was lush and bright - it blew my mind. A coworker and I drove up into the mountains and gave a presentation to some people there (the reason I had been sent down). We got there early, and they let us talk early, so we were down over an hour ahead of when we expected to be done which was nice (and the people we presented to were so friendly, just a really great group).

After our presentation, we drove back to Asheville and checked into our hotel - which was a boutique crazy ass hotel (still a Marriott though). The whole thing was like being in some hunting lodge crossed with some bohemian chic accessories. Like the purple velvet couches situated under the chandelier made from deer antlers. Or the gigantic see through fireplace (open on all 4 sides) with the stuffed warthog beside it. LOVE. Also, Asheville has their own creamery, so we checked in to our hotel and then grabbed a seat at the bar for a cheese plate from the creamery (amaze-balls) and some wine (first we had eaten all day as we had early early flights to get into Asheville).

The next day we took off and toured Biltmore House in the morning which also blew my mind. We hiked down to the house from the parking lot, and we were just chatting and not paying attention, and all of a sudden there was the great lawn with the most massive house I've ever seen at the end of it - my coworker went "Oh. My. God. I just got goose bumps". We made the ticket lady laugh with our running commentary as we bought our tickets - I offered to give my coworker an audio tour consisting of me just repeating "It's a big house. I mean BIG. Like really big". And ticket lady couldn't keep a huge grin off her face. Just a really great trip, and one I get to repeat in 2 months! :)

3) Hair!!!
Perhaps this should've been #1. But I went in a few weeks ago, and chopped 8" of hair off. My hair guy kept saying "there are a lot of women who would hate you for doing this"; but my reasoning is that I don't take care of it. It was constantly in braids or a ponytail. So yes, chop that shit off. It's way cooler, and it looks way better. Should've done this many months ago.

4) BOOK OF MORMOM!!!
On my bucket list for NYC - and finally we went. The Book of Mormon in this situation refers to a play written by the creators of South Park. It has been SOLD OUT since it opened 3 years ago. And it has won every major Tony you can win for a musical. We finally bit the bullet and bought some tickets off stubhub. And went last Sunday. It was worth every penny we spent on the tickets - I laughed so hard I almost peed myself. The musical concerns 2 mormon missionaries who were sent to Africa to convert. One guy was the "good guy" who everyone thought would excel at converting people; the other guy was the "screw up" who ended up kicking ass at converting but only because he lied about everything. I was dying the entire time - so funny. Blondie even bought a show t-shirt he liked it so much (which for a musical is REALLY saying something).

5) 4th of July!!!
This is also a sad thing - but my building friend invited us up for 4th of July for one last chance to view fireworks from his balcony. Him and his partner are moving back to California next month so we won't get to do this next year. The fireworks rocked - again something Macys does really well. I love watching them, and then love people watching as millions stream out of the viewing areas and back up the streets while I drink beer on a patio already at home. And I love living in NYC and the fireworks every year remind me of how much that means to me.

6) World War Z!!!
Just go. Amazing. Swarming zombies FTW.

7) Exercise!!!
I'm on a mission. I have been kicking ass and taking names these past few weeks - from getting 2 miles in at 5.5 mph pace the entire time (that's my normal running pace and I've been having a horrible time trying to get back there); to my first full hour run yesterday in almost 2 years (it felt great, which made me realize that if I can do an hour and feel fine, I'm totes mcgoats not pushing myself hard enough on my 30 min runs during the week); to "bricks". For anyone that does triathalons, what I'm about to describe is not a brick workout - I'm not trying to make it sound better, just not sure what term to describe it with. But basically it's the bike for whatever amount (5 miles, 10 miles, 30 minutes, whatever) and then for me a .5 mile run at a steady pace. So today I did 10 miles on the bike in 38:43 between levels 8 and 12, and then .5 miles at a 5.8 mph pace. It doesn't sound like much I know but it's helping me kill my other workouts right now. I feel good, so I'm going with it. Endorphins bitches, it's what's for dinner.

8) Hooters!!!
Haha. I'm so lame. I've been craving some Hooters for a few weeks now. After my hour run yesterday, it's all I could think about. Luckily Blondie was in (he also did an hour run yesterday), so we walked 1.2 miles up to Hooters (in 90 degree heat with 1000000% humidity - we were soaked with sweat when we go to Hooters; also, does that count for 2 workouts for the day?) and split a bunch of wings and some beers. Afterwards, we hit up a street festival and wandered through there for a bit, before pulling off to go to House of Brews for some mid afternoon refreshments. Then it was home to peel off sweaty clothing, and collapse. And my Hooters craving is now gone.

9) 10 Year Anniversary!!!
Blondie and I have finally decided on our 10-year anniversary plans! We are going back to where it all started and hitting up Las Vegas in October. We are going to spend 4 days there - renew our vows at The Little White Wedding Chapel drive-thru (where we got married); relax by the pool; gamble; drink. And then it will be off to either Sedona or Havasu for 3 days to end our trip. So excited we are going to do this! I'm looking forward to a week off with my Blondie!

10) Upcoming Travel!!!
I have the following trips planned coming up - off the Jersey/PA border 4 times over the next 3 weeks; KY in August; Jersey/PA border beginning of Sept; Asheville twice in 2 weeks in beginning of Sept; AK at end of Sept for MG's wedding; Poughkeepsie (sp?) beginning of Oct for a former coworker's wedding; Vegas mid Oct for our 10 year anniversary; and then not moving for the last 2 months of the year. It's a LOT of travel, but I'm totally looking forward to it!

So that's it. Hopefully I will get my head out of my ass next weekend and not let this blog go 3 weeks in a row anymore. Go me for doing the bare minimum.

--K