The Launch

I'm sorry I didn't post last week - I feel like right now I'm a total broken record with my blog posts: "wah, work. wah, early train. wah, tired".

The big news is the site I'm currently on officially totally launched on Friday!!! We compressed our 4 week timeline into a 3 week timeline and seriously busted our asses this past week getting it all done. That's been my entire focus over the past 2 weeks.

2 weeks ago, I was again in NJ. I went out on Monday to do some support, and then headed back to NY on Monday night. I've been missing Blondie and my bed, so I've been trying to force myself back to the city some. On Tuesday though, I decided to stay the night in NJ - so it was back out early Tues morning carrying all my stuff. The train drops me about 1 mile from my site, so it's always a 6:45 am 1 mile walk in the bitter cold carrying my laptop bag, my purse, and on days that I stay the night, my backpack. We did a bunch of work that day - a few small launches - and then a coworker and I headed for cuban food that night.

I woke up that Wed morning and all the TV stations were talking about the massive storm that was blowing our way, getting ready to hit NJ/NY that night. I made the decision to check out of the hotel and not stay Wed and Thurs nights - I didn't want to take the train early those days, but took a chance that my site would close due to the weather. And I'm glad I did. We got snowed out on Thurs and Fri. And seriously, fuck this weather.

I worked from home on Thurs, and then decided to head into the office on Friday - simply because I had gotten an email from one of my other 3rd party sites on Friday morning, and needed to track down people to deal with it. That Friday literally made it 2 days in 6 weeks that I had been physically in the office. It was really good seeing everyone, but I was also pretty exhausted from everything over the past 6 weeks, so I told my boss I was leaving early. He okay'd it (he can be pretty cool that way), and so around 3 pm, I left the office to meet Blondie.

We did an late lunch V-Day celebration, and went for Turkish food - I had manti and Blondie had lamb, and we split falafel and spicy hummus. And wine. And then we decided we needed margaritas, so we made our way around the corner to a bar that has pretty cheap margaritas. And then we decided to pop in our local to say hi - we only stayed for 1 beer, but it was good checking in that night. And finally we headed home to split another bottle of wine while watching TV.

Saturday was also pretty good - we stayed in most of the day, and then our bar friend texted that night that her and her husband were headed to our local. Blondie and I started to head over to meet them, but ran into a building friend right outside our lobby. He had a bottle of rum he was swigging from, so we did some shots with him in the parking lot (we put the ass in classy) and then made our way to the bar. We had a pretty good night - we kept it low key and chill, and left early. But still a great time hanging out with everyone.

Sunday I decided I needed mexican food. So up the street we went with our bar friend for fajitas and giant margaritas. Then we headed back to our hood to go to Pony - but it was super crowded due to the 3 day weekend. We only hung out there for a bit before heading yet again, back to our local. But again, a TOTAL blast. All of our friends were in great moods, everyone wanted to just play good music and talk, and just overall a great Sunday.

And no Sunday dread because I had Monday off!!!! I got up with Blondie (who sadly did not have Monday off) and worked out, followed by a spontaneous apartment clean (if I say I'm going to clean the apartment, I don't. So best not to say it and just have it happen organically - so yeah, once every 3 years I'd guess ;) I crawled back in bed to watch crappy TV but then my bar friend texted for lunch. So I finally got up and met her at a new "food court" type area between our apartments. We split a sandwich and deviled eggs, and a ton of beer, before dum, dum dum - OUR LOCAL!!!! I drug myself home around 5, and was out cold by 5:30. And didn't truly wake up until 4:30 am on Tues morning. So nice.

And... back out to NJ on Tues. I stayed Tues and Wed nights, which I'm grateful for b/c this past week was one of the most batshit insanely busy weeks I've ever had. We went in early, worked all day long (literally didn't leave until after 8 pm one night when we had a 7 am start), and most importantly, got it done. I'm bruised as fuck right now - and my arms are scraped up; I look like I've been in a fight (manual labor part of my role), but we managed 14 small launches in 4 days, which closed out all the launches for this site. I also managed to kick off my next project, located in Detroit, MI - I have a trip there coming up in 2 weeks. Other highlights from the week include the BOATLOAD of sushi that 3 of us managed to eat one night, the coworker of mine who showed up completely hungover and whom I didn't let up on because we had so much to do (hint: he hated me that day; other hint: don't show up hungover when you know how much work we have to do), and seeing a video my company had made about my site (it melted my cold dark shriveled heart).

The bad news about the week was the bug we found - at first we thought it was the network at the 3rd party site, and when I realized it wasn't, I had to escalate it out (on a Friday, no fun for anyone). They were still working on it when I left on Friday night from the site - completely giddy that I was done being full-time onsite, completely giddy that I didn't have to travel to the site at the ass crack of dawn on Monday. And then when I was walking home after the train got back to NY, my VP texted and asked me to go to the site again tomorrow - the team is pushing a fix at 7 am and he wanted me onsite to test. We have other people onsite instead of me, but he trusts me. It's nice to know that he feels that way about me, but also, fuck me.

I crashed early on Friday night, and then Blondie and I spent yesterday relaxing. We hired a cleaning service and they came yesterday and scoured our apartment (it doesn't even look like our place anymore), while Blondie and I were lazy and laid in bed reading. Seriously. We had a woman clean our apartment while we sat in bed doing nothing. Ass. Classy. Us. And then we split a few bottles of wine last night while eating chicken.

Today I got up early and did our laundry (go me!) and then I putzed around in the gym for a bit before putting away said laundry and throwing out the wine bottles from last night. My bar friends are off to Pony but I'm pretty fried, so trying to decide on that. And Blondie's sis shows up toda for a few days - excited to see her! And of course, NJ here I come tomorrow.

Tigga news - he's doing okay. He's super thin - he seems to be eating well but just not gaining any weight. We started feeding him human food which he loves - just anything to pack on 1-2 lbs. But then I noticed he had diarrhea in his litter and he puked up all over the floor yesterday, so we're going to stop feeding him as much human food as we had been. Not sure what to do with him - his next vet appt will be in a few weeks, so am going to discuss our options with him at that time. My instinct says to pull him off chemo and see what happens, but I don't want to do anything to end his life earlier than it's going to be. But I also don't want him miserable and sick for the time he has left. I've also thought that maybe if we get an older cat in with him it might help - like 3-5 years old cat - not a kitten. Just put some spunk back into him - get some of his fire back. And yet I can't pull the trigger yet on this as I don't want to stress him either. At least he still looks pretty bad ass b/c of his half grown in shaved spots.

--K