Today Can Bite It

Soooo tired today. I feel completely drained - totally worn out. I even wore glasses to work today instead of contacts which hardly ever happens. And then everyone commented on them because I hardly ever wear them. Which made me feel self-conscious that I had them on. There is no point. I'm just rambling.

My week was fairly low-key last week. The biggest thing I had to do was head up to Harlem on Thurs morning for my project. I met up with some of my coworkers around 6:45 am and we took a car up to the project site. We had just gotten set up when I realized that we had an issue with some of our stuff (fun to deal with at 7:15 am on no coffee). We were scheduled for an 8-12 meeting with the team, so it was a frantic 45 minutes before we got everything sorted out. We then dealt with minor issues throughout our meeting time, which is just draining. Blondie ended up texting during my meeting and asked how things were going - I had my typical response "ugh. need a drink". So he suggested meeting at a local bar for food and drinks on the patio that night.

I was in! WOO HOO! I was pretty excited because Blondie doesn't ask often for dates - I got all excited and thought "I'll leave early and secure us a good spot on the patio". Because I had come in at 6:45 am, I was determined to leave the office early that day. We took a cab back to the office on Thurs, getting there around 1 pm. And then because I was dying to be out of there by 3:30 pm, shit happened and I was stuck until almost 5 pm (seriously - I *have* to stop saying I'm leaving early b/c everytime I do, I get sucked into a massive problem. Every. Single. Time.)

It ended up okay though because I still got a good spot on the patio and was joined about 30 minutes later by Blondie. I filled him in on my morning and we got some food and beverages and hung out for a long time talking. We then trucked to Dunkin Donuts for a dessert before hitting up our real local bar to catch up with our bar friends and bartender. After our bar, I was pretty hungry again so we did a 7-11 run; and then went home to stuff our faces and konk out for the night.

Friday ended up being a good day. Me and some of my work friends ended up heading down to West Village and meeting up with Blondie at a bar down there. One of my friends even came in from Brooklyn to hang out (he had worked from home for the day but likes Blondie so much he made the trek in). We hung out way into the evening, and just had a blast. We did a 7-11 run again on Friday night, and the guy checking us out was like "oh hey, I checked you out last night!" Uhhhhhh. Well - that did it; no more 7-11 runs for awhile. OMG. We're in there so much the guy knows us. It's kind of cool though - how many people can say they are regulars at a 7-11?

Saturday was pretty lame - we watched TV most of the morning and then went out to dinner at our local mexican restaurant (full disclosure: we're regulars there also). Afterwards, we finished up Breaking Bad season 2 (finally. yes. we are wayyyyy behind). And Sunday we didn't do anything - I went and got myself a pedicure, and then we curled up in front of the TV for all of Breaking Bad season 3. The good news for the weekend though is that we settled on half of our anniversary plans. We booked our hotel and tickets out to Vegas in Oct - we're going out for 5 days and are planning on renewing our vows at the chapel we got married in. We'll fly back to NY on a Saturday and then we are trying to figure out what to do for the rest of our time off. I'm rooting Montreal; Blondie is rooting Salem. And holy shit - 10 years official. Where did the time go? How did I get so old?

Today was super duper fast - I had a billion and 1 meetings to go to, and now I'm not in the office anymore this week. My Tues and Thurs at my NJ project site got extended to Tues-Thurs, and when I leave on Thurs night, the car is taking me straight to the airport so I can head back to Land of Bourbon for the weekend.

A 1 day early HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the fabulous Mr Pooh!!!!! Have many beers tomorrow and we can celebrate this weekend!

Very tiredly,
K

'Sup?

First off, HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Brother R and Sis!!!!! Hope you both had great days, with lots of bourbon (Brother R) and chips and salsa (Sis).

My last week was very tiring quite frankly. I was on the go every single day of the week, and it totally wore me out. My week started with a super early alarm on Tuesday because I had to do a bunch of laundry, before catching an early morning flight to DFW. I flew down to DFW for a project, and spent 3 hours in the airport after I landed (waiting for a coworker from CA). I worked for several hours, and then spent the last hour monitoring email while drinking a beer at one of the airport bars. When my coworker landed, we got our rental car and then drove out to north DFW burbs to crash for the night. Some totally good tex-mex food, and then a few beers back at the hotel while we prepared for our meeting the next day, and our day came to a close.

We were up extremely early on Wed and drove about an hour out to our project site. We spent all morning meeting with the team there, before I had to pull off and lead a call for one of my other projects. Afterwards, we drove straight back to the airport and grabbed a very quick lunch there, before flying back to NY.

I landed around 9 pm, and immediately caught a cab down to Chelsea area to a bar called Trailer Park (awesome kitschy bar with very very potent margaritas). I met up there with my bar friends, and my building friend. It was a happy / sad night as we were saying goodbye to my building friend. Him and his partner are moving back to CA permanently and Wednesday night was his last night in town. We ended up chatting for a long time, heading out around midnight.

Thursday I had another early start as I met up with several of my new coworkers - I was tasked with bringing them to my Harlem project and showing them several of the pieces of the project my team is responsible for. It was a very early start, but the actual work went well. We got back to our office around 11 am, which was nice. I took off around 5 pm that day and headed over to midtown east. I met up with a bunch of my old coworkers for many drinks into the night. It was SOOOO great seeing them, and getting to snark on everyone. Several of us stayed until almost midnight - I love my old work group, and I love that I'm still close to see them on a regular basis. The highlight of Thurs night though had to be the crazy text message conversation I had with Blondie - it was seriously one of the funniest things I've read in a long time - and makes me realize how much I love this guy and how boring my life would be without him in it.

Friday I was exhausted. I drug my ass into work just feeling completely worn down. The day felt like it took forever, and finally around 4:30 pm, I was like "I'm declaring this day done". I had just packed up to leave, when some coworkers swung by my desk and were like "woo hoo! drinks!" And then I was all "woo hoo! yes! drinks!" I fully intended to stay for 1 beer, but uh yeah. If you read this blog, you realize that's probably never going to happen. I think I finally left the bar around 9 pm to head home for the night.

Saturday... up and at 'em early for no reason at all. I finally went to the gym, which was the only healthy thing I had done in a week. I made myself some beans for lunch, and then Blondie and I finally went out and did some grocery shopping. We got home around 4:30 pm, and it was then I realized I had an email that contained some bad news. I won't give details - the bad news is not about me - but my heart is breaking for 2 people right now. As soon as I read that email, I cried a little bit. And then I got into my bottle of bourbon.

Blondie and I ended up having a good night in spite of it all. We cooked in and made salmon sandwiches, and then we popped in some good movies (ahem, well - a really crappy movie and then some good movies) to take our minds off everything. I finished my bourbon and then we had some wine to end the evening.

Sunday was a total disaster. My bourbon / wine party, while a blast while going on, was not so fun the next day. I lazed in front of the TV all morning, trying to not be sick (success). But then Blondie was like "oh hey, bar friend #3 is back from India and wants to meet up for drinks today". So we headed out to Pony - I didn't think I would be able to drink more than a beer, but see "Friday". It was very slow going, but gradually I felt better. Me and my female bar friend and bar friend #3 ended up staying out until almost 6 pm.

Also, I have a thing for... talismen maybe? I like to collect little statues / figurines / etc from around the world (usually from friends travelling to these places and bringing them back). I have a weeping yogi from Nepal (he's supposed to suck the bad energy from the room), a happy buddha from China, a fortune kitty from Japan, an evil eye from Turkey, and now my bar friend #3 brought me back Ganesh the elephant god from India. My collection ROCKS. LOVE.

So today was a super duper fast day at work. They had asked for volunteers to help out one of the NC projects (not mine) and I had put my name down, but my boss told me not to worry about it. Which was good because I'm super f'ing busy on my own projects right now. I literally felt like today it was 4:27 pm before I realized it had started.

Upcoming plans: off to Harlem on Thursday, NJ next Tuesday, NJ next Thursday, and then land of bourbon next Thursday night. So many trips, so little time!

Workouts: Well, pathetic. I worked out on Saturday and that was it. Insert embarrassed emoticon here.

--K

The Highs and the Lows

My week was mostly highs this week, but something happened that made me grateful I'm not in a low period of my life. I have depression, which is something I've known for a long time, but officially diagnosed by my therapist back in TX. Also, I saw a therapist in TX for a good while which I guess I should've started off with. I call my emotional status my roller coaster, because I know when I start going up (and I'm in for a few good weeks of sunshine) and I know when I start going down (and I'm in for a few bad weeks of rain). However, and this makes me lucky, no matter how bad my low weeks are, I've never considered suicide as an option - and this week made me grateful for this. This will make sense in a few paragraphs.

Last Sunday started out pretty well - after I got over my anger at my upstairs WOO HOO-ers, we met our bar friends around 10 am to start an early birthday celebration for one of them. The 5 of us walked about a mile down Riverside Park to Chelsea Piers and spent another hour whacking golf balls from the driving range out over the Hudson. It was actually a great time - because all of us sucked at one point, and all of us had some awesome drives at one point. After Chelsea Piers, it was a cab ride over to Katz Deli for massive sandwiches (Katz's Deli is where the orgasm scene in "When Harry Met Sally" was filmed). We stuffed ourselves, had some beers, and relaxed before grabbing some gelato down the street.

Then it was a mile walk back to West Village, where we stopped at a random bar for some drinks - and it turned out to be awesome. One of my bar friends is English and the bar we stopped at was called GMT. Perfect. We had many mixed drinks there, so tasty. All of us were so full from lunch that fruity punchy drinks were in order. Around 3 pm, we headed to me and Blondie's favorite bar in the area - which also had a full list of beers from England (not planned, not thought about - just totes worked out). And we spent the next 4 hours imbibing there before taking a cab back home. All in all, a great day.

Monday I took a car service out to the NJ/PA border where I spent the next 3 days. I got there before any of my coworkers, and spent an hour with the networking guy, touring the site, and running various tests. Afterwards, I met back up with one of my coworkers (who had arrived while I was running around), and we got to work on what we were really there to do. We got done early, but I had to join a 2 hour conference call, so we had to sit at the site while I took that. Then finally, it was back to the hotel to check-in and collapse for an hour.

Dinner that night was a German restaurant - it was really tasty, and it was good getting to see my coworker (who lives in DC) and just chat with her. While at the restaurant, my coworker from FL texted and he had just landed and was on his way. So I met up with him when he got in town, and we went to the bar for a bit. It was an early night though as we had 2 days ahead of us to be geared up for.

Now for why I wrote my first paragraph. I got texted very late on Monday night from one of my building friends, and I didn't receive the text until Tues morning. Someone jumped from the 29th fl of our building on Monday, off his balcony, directly above me and Blondie's apartment. He landed on the 2nd fl sundeck, 8 stories directly below our unit. Obviously, he is dead. Blondie saw part of his body - he didn't know anything had happened on Monday, and stepped out to enjoy the view early Monday evening, and thought some jackass kids in our building had tossed a mannequin as a prank (the body was covered with a sheet, but the wind had blown part of the sheet off the arm). The 2nd fl is now closed, and completely ripped up in the area where he landed. It turns out 2 women were hanging out on the sundeck when he landed - they had to go to the hospital because they saw it happen and couldn't cope.

Why I wrote my first paragraph - I can't even imagine what that kind of pain is like, when suicide becomes an option. As someone who has the (HIGH) highs and the (low) lows, I thought I could kind of empathize with what people go through when suicide starts to seem like a way out. But I can't - I got back to our apartment on Wed night, and leaned over our balcony to see the damage to the sundeck, and there is just no way I could bring myself to leap (in any situation). My heart goes out to the person who did jump and his family and friends - I don't see this as selfish (and again, I've not had a family member of friend commit suicide, so I don't know if my mind would be changed if that happened), but as a way to end pain that nobody can endure. And my heart goes out to the 2 women on the sundeck, and to Blondie and everyone else who happened to be looking down that day, and to anyone that saw it happen.

The rest of my week was excellent though - my project went off without a hitch. Tues and Wed were spent just marveling at how well everything worked. The team that met me there were amazing, and I'm just relieved that things went as well as they did. The team headed out to dinner on Tues - we went to this excellent beer house in the middle of nowhere NJ, and enjoyed some beverages to celebrate as well as tasty grub. And on Wed, I caught a ride back to the city with 2 coworkers who had come out for the day to NJ/PA to work with various members of the project site we were out. I couldn't have asked for a better project, both in terms of staff at the project site as well as staff from my office

Thursday I went into the office and saw some great emails - the project team from NJ/PA site had sent an email to me and my 2 coworkers telling us how happy they were with the project and with us, and asking us to forward onto our mgmt staff. My coworker had sent to his boss, and she forwarded it to my boss, who forwarded it up the chain. Everyone is so happy with how things went - I even have an email from the president thanking the team on everything. We just need to keep it up now - as a startup, we have to make things work well from the get go. So now the pressure is on.

Thursday night I went out with a few coworkers - it was a completely last minute idea. We started with some drinks in the Times Sq area, but then split up around 8. However, one of my coworkers wasn't quite ready to go head home, so we spent another few hours in my neighborhood - we got to talk personal life, etc, and I feel like I got to know this person really well. So a good night in all!

Saturday was a lazy day - it was completely overcast and gross, so I went to the gym and then laid in bed watching eps of House of Cards and reading. All day. We had some wine delivered on Saturday night (too lazy to walk 2 blocks to my wine store) and then watched silly movies all night (Napoleon Dynamite, Real Genius, etc). Today it was gorgeous, so we headed out for some food and then took it to the park and had a picnic. Then I came back home and collapsed for a few hours for a nap.

My week this week involves a flight to DFW on Tues, coming back on Wed night, and a trip to Harlem on Thurs. It's going to be fast and furious.

Workouts! Sucked! I was not motivated in NJ, and then was exhausted (it was draining worrying about my project) when I got back.
Monday-Friday: None. I'm sad but I'm not sad.
Saturday: 3.1 miles in 38:09; 5 min cooldown; weights
Sunday: 10 miles on bike in 36:09 (2 mins level 8, 4 mins level 13); 5 min cooldown

--K