Viva Las Vegas

2200 miles from home and it still feels like home. We've missed you Las Vegas!

On The Road Again

Hello! Let's catch up shall we?

Dallas trip went exceptionally well. My colleagues and I started out at one of our sites on Monday (we had 2 sites down there) and spent all day there. We had a few hiccups on Monday - but that was due to a massive code release that had gone out on Friday, which none of us were expecting. A bit frustrating on my company's part, but we managed to work through it without too many issues. We celebrated Monday night by hitting back up BW3's - my driving coworker dropped me and my other friend off, and we had many beers to start while watching football. When my driving coworker showed back up, we migrated out of the bar and into the dining room for dinner. It was really nice having a celebration night - and having the first day over with was a relief.

Tuesday we were back at the same site. We did a follow up round of monitoring to make sure everything was okay from Monday. It was a bit more boring than Monday, but I could live with that. For dinner, the 3 of us headed to Texas Roadhouse and then relaxed in our hotel bar, making fun of newscasters we were watching on the TV.

And Wednesday was our last day - we went to our second site finally and hung out there for the day. My 1 coworker left early as he had a 5:30 pm flight back. My other coworker and I left around 4 pm to head back to the airport and we made such great time that I came through security and my first colleague still hadn't left yet. I decided to fly on his flight and went up to pay the standby fee and my debit card got declined. I called Chase before we boarded and they had a hold on my card - it turns out someone somewhere had managed to get my number and had been trying to buy a bunch of crap with it. Chase is pretty awesome in that they caught it super fast, and then immediately credited what had gone through. But having to deal with it in the first place sucked hairy balls.

I landed on Wed night (Delta ran a special - travel from LGA to DFW during certain 3 week timespan and get 5000 bonus miles - I flew twice to DFW in that timespan, so 10000 bonus miles for the win!), and got home late - finished up with Chase finally, and then crashed out with Blondie. Thursday I decided to just work from home, as I needed to physically head to my bank to deal with the debit card scenario and get a new one. The day went super fast, and then before I knew it, it was 3 pm and time to head to the airport *again* for a flight to Arkansas.

We flew down b/c Blondie's bro MG was getting married. Our flight was pretty nice - on time and fast. The airport we flew to was "Northwest Arkansas Airport" which still makes me laugh because it's just so vague. Anyhoo, we landed and our BIL picked us up and dropped me at the hotel before Blondie and him headed to MG's bachelor party.

Friday was our fake 10 yr anniversary - I was up way before Blondie so I walked a little down the road to a Starbucks and just hung out and relaxed. Blondie called when he got up and then came down and met me. We enjoyed a few hours with some coffee, just chatting - Starbucks had a patio and the weather was beautiful so we took advantage of it (and also, yay, Pumpkin Spice Latte!) After coffee, we headed back to the hotel and ran immediately into one of Blondie's other brothers and his family. We chatted with them for a bit and made plans to meet for lunch, before heading back to our room to shower up and rest.

Lunch was with the entire family - we went to On the Border for some mexicany goodness - many margaritas were had to round out our lunch, and it was nice getting to chat with everyone. Afterwards, I went with my 2 SIL's to the hotel pool. We took the kids swimming (they took the kids swimming, I sat on the side with my feet in the pool) while everyone else headed for the rehearsal. We met up with the group again at the rehearsal dinner, and I got to meet MG's wife for the first time.

Saturday was the wedding - and it was also the day that most of the nieces decided they liked me. Most kids don't trust me - I'm not very comfortable around children, and I think most of them sense that. But on Saturday, it was like "woo hooo! Kerri!" - so strange, but it was pretty cool also. I had one of Blondie's nieces on my lap the entire time for the ceremony - and then when she had to pee, she made me take her. After the ceremony, it was back to the hotel to chug a few beers before heading to the reception. A lot of dancing happened, me with all the nieces (again, I don't know what it was) primarily, and then the wedding was over and we sent MG and his wife off into the night.

And then, it was time to celebrate one of Blondie's other brother's birthday! We left the kids with the grandparents, and took over the hotel bar - 4 hours of drinking and chatting and eating popcorn, and all of us were pretty hammered. Which led to an awful flight back on Sunday - I was so nauseous I couldn't deal, but at least the flight went on time, and fast.

This past week was pretty quiet. I'm in a downtime at work right now which was most definitely needed. All of my projects are launched, and while some new ones are gearing up, none are in-flight right now. I spent the week taking it easy, working on smaller tasks that I just hadn't had time for. Thursday my work threw a big happy hour - I wasn't going to go, but my BFF from work convinced me to come for "just 1 drink". And then it was 5 hours later, and I was happppppy heading home.

Friday I had off work and me and Blondie met up with an old coworker, and took the train up to Poughkeepsie for the day. We were headed to see a friend from my old job get married - we met at Grand Central and bought some beers for the train, and then spent the entire 2 hours chatting away. And the wedding was awesome! Poughkeepsie is beautiful and the people invited were my favorite people from my old job. It was so good seeing everyone, and Yippers looked so beautiful. Also, they had "appetizer hour" which was one of the most amazing things I had ever seen. I ate so much I couldn't eat dinner. A slew of dancing followed, and then many drinks back at the hotel bar.

We caught the train back to NYC yesterday and spent the rest of the day relaxing. We finally finished Breaking Bad last night - at 2:30 am. Once we started, we couldn't stop - LOVE THAT SHOW. And today... I have to get a pedicure, and that's all that's on deck.

Plans - MORE TRAVEL. We leave Tuesday for Vegas for 5 day, and are going to renew our vows on our real anniversary day. We come back on Saturday and then have 3 more days to do nothing - we cancelled our Salem plans and instead are going to tailgate on Sunday with our bartender and his crew (maybe see the Jets game, maybe not). Monday and Tues will be spent just doing whatever we want. We also booked travel to SF for the first week in November - we got hot plans to hang with a couple of different people out on the west coast. It's a short trip - in on Friday, back on Monday. And after that, if I don't see a plane the rest of the year, I'm fine with that.

--K