Kentucky, Food Poisoning, Jamaica

I took off for Kentucky 1.5 weeks ago on a Tuesday. I had a connecting flight through Atlanta which made my day a bit long, but it was still nice as all my flights were good. I got to LaGuardia super early so sat drinking mimosas in the sky club before catching my flight to Atlanta, and then hung out in the sky club there (this time drinking wine) before my flight to KY. That night, I met up with the parental units and Brother R and Shugs for some tasty mexican grub before playing a bit of cards with everyone and Mr Pooh.

My mom talked me into doing some Zumba for a workout on Wednesday and I really enjoyed it - including the fact that both my mom and I were shit at it. It made me laugh really hard - everytime the instructors were twirling hips, my mom and I were like stiff full body twirling because our hips don't work that way. After our workout, we met up Brother R and The Sheriff for lunch before playing cards again. After a bit of card playing, it was back to Mr Pooh's to hangout for the afternoon. And then a trip back to the house, and some Shittle Sneezers as well as yet more card playing ended the day.

Thursday was a really good day - it started with some Zumba again, before Mrs Pooh picked my mom and I up. We drove downtown, complete with multiple "where are you?" texts from Mr Pooh to get him. And then it was time for beers and tacos on campus. After our lunch, we hit up Town Branch Distillery for tour of both their brewery and distillery. It was a really nice tour - and ended with me asking if the bottle of water in the distillery was their white lightning.

After the tour, we said goodbye to Mrs Pooh and then mom, Mr Pooh and I headed to 6th Street Brewery for the afternoon. On the way to the brewery, we passed the Sheriff directing traffic at a construction zone and we "woooed!" our way past him. Many beers followed at 6th Street, as well as who had the better story surrounding vicodin (I like-o-din the Vicodin). Drunk grocery shopping followed (what might be a medium jalapeno to you might not be a medium jalapeno to others; also, don't send your grocery list to Mr Pooh because he'll forget about it ;) Dinner that night was with Mr and Mrs Pooh, TCKITWv1.0 and TCKITWv4.0, and mom and dad at PF Changs. And finally, we made a late night drive to the airport to get Blondie!!!

Friday started out with Blondie getting really sick - he threw up that morning so my mom and I skipped our workout as we didn't want to wake him up. Then my sis showed up for the first time that week, followed by Mr and Mrs Pooh. We decided to hit up OCharley's for lunch and were joined shortly after by Brother R. After lunch, it was back to Mr Pooh's where we all ended up walking up to the TCKITW's school and picking them up. More grocery shopping followed - as apparently drunk grocery shopping is not an effective way to grocery shop.

And then... all bets off! Mr Pooh started with shots, and the day turned into a drunken mess. My BFF TT and her family came over and we had a giant cookout, played games, drank ENTIRELY way too much, and just had a blast. After Mr Pooh's, it was back to the parent's house, for some gift giving (THANK YOU!) and then a lot more cards and beer.

Saturday morning sucked - somehow both Blondie and I got up and made it out to the soccer games that day. It was really good getting to watch the nieces play, even though it was freezing outside. At least the cold made the hangover go away faster. After soccer, it was time for mexican lunch, and then playing some more games at Mr Pooh's. We ended the night at the parent's house, slowly saying goodbye to everyone as they left.

And then Sunday. Sunday fucking happened. I got up around 4:30, after only getting about 2 hours of sleep (a massive allergy attack and a monstrous headache had made sleeping the night before horrible). As I started to wake Blondie up, I realized I was about to puke - ran to the bathroom and just dry heaved. I chalked it up to the allergies, lack of sleep, etc. We got packed up and headed to the airport - while on the way, I felt like I was going to get sick again but as soon as I rolled down my window, I felt my much better. I felt okay-ish in the airport, and so we just went ahead and decided to head on home. The flight was pretty dead, so I got a row behind Blondie to myself. And as soon as the cabin start pressurizing, I realized I was in trouble. The longest 1 hr, 20 min flight of my life followed, fighting cramps and nausea the entire way (it was the worst I've ever felt on a flight, and I've been so hungover on planes, I've actually puked on them).

We finally landed in NYC, and were waiting in the aisle to leave the plane when Blondie asked how I was doing - and I had to tell him that I needed to find a bathroom stat. We busted off the plane and hit the first bathroom where I puked my guts out. Afterwards, I felt okay enough and we got a cab home but about 5 mins after getting in the cab, I realized I was in trouble again. We finally made it to our apartment where I spent the next 9 hours expelling from both ends, and the entire following day expelling from the ass. Yay.

I finally started to feel okay on Tuesday morning, so I went ahead and headed out for the day. I got my license renewed - no shit people, in and out in less than 7 minutes. I was completely blown away. Afterwards, since I had been planning on several hours for this, I decided to not head directly home and instead went and saw "Annabelle". And then on Tuesday night, I met my girlfriends for some wine - I had to drink extremely slowly and didn't eat anything, but it was good getting to see them.

Wednesday was when I was finally hungry again - I had a sandwich for lunch and then Blondie and I ordered in chinese for dinner which we both just picked at. And on Thursday, my English g/f texted and I went and met her for some lunch - we decided to go mostly veggie dishes for lunch as I was feeling like I needed a massive dose of vitamins, so we ended up ordering a bunch of sides to split. And Friday and Saturday we were mostly lazy - I was supposed to go out with friends from my old job on Friday night, but I had thrown my back out during my puking spree and it was hurting enough that I couldn't have ridden the subway so I bailed on them.

The good (EXCELLENT) news from this past week is that Blondie sat down with me and told me he wanted to do something for my birthday, and that ordering in pizza and watching TV in bed was not good enough for a 40th. He bought me a trip to Jamaica instead! We are flying to Montego Bay the Friday before, staying in an all-inclusive, and planning to just be flat out drunk on the actual day itself. I'm looking forward to a beach vacation finally with my guy where he's feeling good - I plan to hang on the beach, read a lot, eat a ton of jerk and seafood (separately and together), and when that gets boring, get in the pool and float my way to the pool bar and order many drinks.

WOOOO. FUCK 40!

--K

I'm baaaaaaaack

Well, technically I've been back for awhile now. So much has happened. SO MUCH.

1) England and Wales - Blondie and I flew to Europe in August for 8 days of touring, relaxing, and seeing our bar friends get married again. We landed in London on a Saturday and stayed through Tuesday. On Tuesday, we took a train to a little village about 30 mins outside of Bath to stay with friends. On Wednesday, we went to Wales. On Thursday, we saw Stonehenge and then Bath, and on Friday we took a train to Oxford and stayed there through Sunday when we caught our flight back to NYC.

The trip was amazing. We did all the standard touristy stuff in London - Big Ben, Parliament, Tower Bridge, London Eye, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Hyde Park, St James Park, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Jack the Ripper walking tour of the east end of London. My favorite things were the Jack the Ripper tour and the London Eye. The only things we didn't get to do that we really wanted to were to see the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace (they changed on Tues but we already had our tickets to go to our friends house at that point) and the jewels at the Tower Bridge ($30 to get in - couldn't make ourselves pay that kind of money to see jewels).

My thoughts on London are it combined what I hated most about SF (the weather) with what I hate most about NYC (the traffic) into a city where everything then shuts down at 11 pm.

We stayed in our friend's village then from Tues through Fri - we took the train up which was really nice and then we spent Tues afternoon just talking and chilling in their house. We went to a tiny town for dinner that night (Bradford-on-Avon; looked like it had been built in the 1800's and nothing had changed) and just had a relaxing day.

On Wednesday our friends drove us to Cardiff, Wales (they were going out further in Wales but dropped us off there). We took a train from Wales to Caerphilly to tour a castle there - that was one of my favorite things from the whole trip. It took us several hours to walk through it all, but it was a really great experience. After the castle, we ate lunch at a pub on the patio overlooking the castle before catching the train back to Cardiff. We met back up with our friends there and walked around Cardiff for awhile, and then back to their house for the night.

On Thurs, we started with a trip to Stonehenge before heading to Bath to spend the day. We did the circus in Bath, the crescent drive in Bath, and toured the actual Roman baths themselves. Afterwards, we hit up Marks&Spencer and drank some wine on a patio before heading back to our friends house.

And Friday, a train to Oxford where we met up with one of our bar friends to start a weekend of debauchery. Way too much drinking our way through Oxford on Friday night, combined with a 2 am McDonald's run (shame), led to a Saturday of feeling like crap. But the wedding was beautiful, the food was amazing, and we danced our asses off at the reception.

Sunday we caught a bus back to Heathrow, hung out in Virgin Atlantic's lounge (yay for being platinum on Delta - free access to the club), and then finally got a very long flight home. Where the lady in the row 1 up and across from me had her giant turd of a baby (this kid was out of control) puke all over her 2 hours before we landed. And the smell... just lingered... for 2 fucking hours.

2) Astoria, OR - Landed on Sunday night from London, and turned around on Monday morning and caught a flight to Portland, OR. Drove 2 hours out to Astoria and spent the week there with coworkers prepping for training a new group of users on our product. The area was beautiful but I was suffering tremendous jet lag all week. We worked through until Thursday, when training ended, and then I drove back to Portland to spend the night.

3) Alaska - On Friday, I caught my flight to Alaska!!!! OMG. Alaska was FUCKING AMAZING and if I didn't suffer from SAD as well as a hatred of all things cold, I would 100% want to live there. I met my cray cray uncle and aunt at the airport and off we went. We drove around on Friday, looking for moose, and just going up and down the water there. On Saturday, we drove to Talkeetna (the town that has a cat for a mayor) and hung out there before taking a charter flight over Mt Denali - the weather was so clear that day that we had amazing views, something that hardly ever happens. And on Sunday, we drove to Seeward and took a charter boat through the fjords for a day of glacier viewing and wildlife watching (Orcas, gray whales, sea lions, seals, all kinds of birds, etc). Sunday night we saw a moose with horns (!!!!!) and then on Monday, I boarded a flight back down to mainland US.

4) Northern CA - On Monday, I caught a flight to Seattle and then to San Francisco. I met a coworker there and we drove up through the redwoods to get to our site for launch week. The week was a very stressful one - for a lot of reasons. I was missing NYC, my cat, and Blondie like crazy. And I had reached a point with work where I knew I needed to not travel for a bit. So that Friday, after a long week of dealing with issues onsite, I called my boss and gave my notice.

5) Back to NYC finally - When I gave my notice, I told my boss I didn't want to travel anymore for work in the last 2 weeks. So it was back to NYC for me. I spent the week doing handoff on the remaining projects I had, and making sure everything I had been working on was up to date, and then that was it. I had given a 2 weeks notice, but they said I didn't have to come back for the 2nd week which was really nice of them. It's so weird not having a job, and I'm now actively looking again. I just didn't want to be fat and miserable at my job, and then turn 40 on top of it. I could handle 2 of the 3 but not all 3. It's a mid-life crisis I guess. Since I've quit my job, I've felt pretty good. I've been hitting up the gym like crazy again, cleaning our apartment, taking care of the cat, doing grocery shopping, cut off about 25 feet of hair, just getting my shit in order. It's been cathartic. And I'm grateful that Blondie gave me the go ahead to take some time and just get my head in a good spot again.

6) Miscellaneous - I've been catching up with friends again which has been nice. Not only my bar friends, but I've been able to meet up several times with friends from 2 jobs ago, as well as still seeing friends from this job I just left.

Blondie and I saw "This Is Our Youth" on Broadway for our 11 year anniversary a couple of weeks ago - it's an amazing play, and Kiernan Culkin blew me out of the water. If you live in or plan to be in NYC, I'd 100% recommend it. After the play, we did a dinner at a cajun place in our hood, and were joined by a bar friend for awhile which was nice.

I met up with my girlfriends this past week for a wine night in our hood - I hadn't seen my one friend since England (she just flew back a week ago), and the other friend has been busy cleaning up stuff at her job (she gave notice also and is going to join me on the "what are we doing with our lives" train I'm riding right now). So a good wine night with friends was exactly what was needed.

Blondie and I went to see a friend from 2 jobs ago do a burlesque show this weekend also! I had a blast, Blondie not so much. The actually had a dancer who could make her pasties go in opposite directions - I cheered that girl on like crazy. Blondie preferred the ones who were a little more refined (think dressed like a flapper, a classier strip tease type thing) but I liked the ones that were obviously having fun.

And we're off to Land of Horses, Bourbon and Tobacco next week to see my family again. The horse races are going on so we'll be doing that, as well as just catching up with people, doing a cookout, and I'm sure, playing some cards.

7) Tigga - Tigga now weighs 10.1 lbs!!!! This is HUGE progress from where he was a year ago, and our vet feels like we've turned a major corner and that he is 100% beating the cancer!!! GOOOOO TIGGA!

Recaps are now back. Sorry it took so long to get this post done. I just felt like I needed some time away from my life for awhile.

--K