HONK

Hello. 3 posts in a row. I'm on a roll! (I had to literally just look up to see if it was "on a role" or "on a roll". Ugh. I can haz english skilz?)

It was meant to be a low-key week but it really wasn't. My only foray out of the house on Monday was to meet Blondie at the grocery after he got off work. That was it.

Tuesday I did better. I met up with my girlfriends for wine night! All 4 of us went which was exciting b/c normally it's only me, Glitter and English bar friend. But we had our 4th friend (from barkbox hike) join as well. We hung out there for a long time, and were joined by Blondie at one point. He only stopped in to have some deviled eggs and then he headed on home for the evening. Anyway, the point of the excursion was that my English bar friend is now back in England for over a month so we wanted to see her off.

After wine bar, all 4 of us headed back to our local where we met up with the guys for the rest of the evening. Around 10 pm, I decided I should head home and closed out my tab, but by then, my English friends were well pretty toasty and they convinced me to stay (it wasn't hard). And then they bought many rounds of shots and drinks for me afterwards. Finally at midnight, we closed out for real yo. My friend AA (formerly indian bar friend) was outside smoking and even though he had watched us all close our tabs (including his), in the 10 minutes it took to smoke his cigarette, he forgot twice that he had already paid. It was a great night.

Wednesday sucked though :)

Um, after that, we took it easy until Friday, when we received some really good news. Blondie brought home a few beers to celebrate, and then we headed to our local afterwards. On our way to the local, we ran into a building friend and a friend from the bar whom we haven't seen at the bar in forever. Friday night was fantastic. All our friends, including the building friend we ran into, showed up to celebrate with us, and it wasn't until I decided I needed dinner (at 11 pm - should've just skipped it at that point) that we ended up leaving to get something to eat.

We stayed in Saturday, chilling and relaxing and sleeping all day long. Literally. Blondie rolled over at one point and said, "it's 3 pm already!" Haha. Yes, yes it was.

And on Sunday, the official notification of the good news was received, and so we headed out for lunch to celebrate. We ended up in a cajun restaurant in our hood, on their massive 2nd story outdoor patio, with some cajun bloodies and then several hurricanes. Afterwards, we joined up with Glitter and Heinie at Pony for some good laughs and some good beers. And then we headed home, where I collapsed and slept on and off for the rest of the evening. All in all, a good day.

Today it's raining outside. Yuck. But I'm excited for the week. I have plans to meet up with my Sunday bartender at a spinning class on Wednesday and there is some other stuff on the burner that has me ready for what's to come up in my life. I started on my next book, which has me giddy. And I'm ecstatic for Blondie!

I started working out again. I'm back on T25. I figured I'll do Alpha for 5 weeks, take a week off and just try to do 3 miles on the treadmill each day (running / walking combo), and then do Beta for 5 weeks. Last week was my first Alpha week. It hurt. My legs are useless right now. Today I did 25 minutes of T25 cardio and my face looked like a tomato after I was done. Pathetic.

The cat is back to the vet this week as well. He's had some issues the past 3 months with his stomach - some bile vomiting always combined with some diarrhea and I'm a bit nervous about this checkup. The good news is the incidents each only last about 3 minutes and then he has a TON of energy when he's done. Oh well, I'll keep you posted.

Have a great week everyone!

--K

Somehow I got on the "hard" hike

Hello! Happy Monday everyone.

Last Thursday ended up being a really nice day. First up, The Real Housewives of HK (not, not AT ALL), met up in the hood for lunch around 1 pm. This group included me (obvs), Glitter and my English bar friend. We were also joined by the wife of a coworker of English bar friend's husband. Say THAT 3 times fast. Lunch was nice. We each had some cocktails and split some sides, and I had a bowl of lentil soup. That night, I met back up with everyone again at the local. It was a quick night though, just a few beers and then I headed home.

Because on Friday I finally had the privilege of meeting Blondie's work friends! His work took the team to the auto show, and then mid afternoon, the group meandered into our hood and ended up at our local. They are a great bunch of people, and the afternoon flew by. Many beers and many shots (it was also one of Blondie's coworkers last day) occurred, but I kept it under control because I had a day of hiking on Saturday!

I was up early Saturday and Glitter and I took a cab to Chinatown, where we met up with 2 of our other friends (yes, also from the bar. I've known them for forever - a year+ at least - but this is the first time they are getting introduced here. I have no nickname for them so they are just "2 of our friends" at the moment). Barkbox organized a hike in Connecticut for people and their dogs. Digressing somewhat but I am a cat person. I like dogs as well, it's not that, but my Tigga is most definitely my guy. And, on that note. You know how much it bothers me when dog people tell me they don't like cats? Or when non-NYC people tell me they could never live in NYC? You don't have to like cats and you don't have to like NYC but you've got (what you got?) to respect other people enough to keep your mouth shut at some points (this is very much directed at two people in particular who don't read my blog, I promise. I mostly just wanted to vent). Can you spell off topic?

Okay, so Barkbox in Chinatown around 9 am, and we split into two buses for the ride into Connecticut. Halfway there, the Barkbox coordinator on our bus got a call from the bus behind ours that our bus driver had never locked the panels on the side of the bus and all the goodie bags they had loaded for the dogs had spilled all over the highway. Barkbox coordinator tells the bus driver who drives for 10 more minutes before pulling over to fix the issue.

Then, my favorite bus driver also took us 3 exits past the one we needed to get off at because he wasn't paying any attention to where we were going. And the bus driver behind ours didn't even have a GPS so he had to follow us as well. But finally, we were in Danbury (home to the prison from OITNB and were Teresa Guiduce is staying). The hike was... unorganized. They had easy, medium and hard trails and my friends and I all suffer from the same problem which is we like to eat and drink and not work out. So the four of us and our two dogs decided to go on the easy trail.

There was no easy trail. Our guide led us in circles and finally was like "oops!" At that point, she told us we could either turn around and head back up the hill or go down a steep hill to look at the water. I was about 5 people behind my friends and figured nobody would want to do the steep hill (because you had to come back up it) so I turned around and headed back up the normal hill. Where I joined right on up with the hard hike people. I'm not sure how that happened except they happened by when I got to the top of the normal hill and I thought I was supposed to go with them. Uh yeah. It SUCKED. I ended up doing the peak hike (up to the top of the "mountain" or "large hill" depending on where you live), and thought I was going to DIE before it ended.

At the end of the hike, you had to cross a large field and that's where I ran into my friends again. They had gone down to the water and hung out and then came back the easy way. I chugged a ton of water when we were done and then the bus took us back towards New York but with a stop for lunch. Barkbox had already coordinated with the place and they had a ton of food ready for us (we think there were about 50 people between the two buses), but it was cash only and Barkbox didn't have cash on them so we had to wait for them to run to an ATM after we were done eating and before we could head back to NYC. Lunch was nice though - it was honestly the best tasting burger I ever had in my life (b/c I was STARVING after my inadvertent foray to the top of the peak) and then it was back into the bus and back to New York.

It was a good trip, just unorganized. But they did stop in our hood on the way back and drop us off instead of making us go back to Chinatown. Traffic was horrible so that was really nice of them.

Saturday night was spent sitting in a hot bubble bath with a glass of whiskey and then eating a ton of sushi. Awesome.

Yesterday I met up with all of our friends at Pony for the afternoon. I thought I'd be fried from Saturday because my legs were killing me on Saturday already but I felt fine on Sunday. A lot of beer and food filled our afternoon and then it was time to head to the Winchester for one last drink. Which turned into 3 last drinks.

Today my legs hurt though, from the knees down. So I cleaned the house a bit and then did a workout. First workout in like 3 months if you don't count the hike. And now I'm going to work on my second book again - incorporating the scene change from book one.

On the going-back-to-work front, I'm rolling forward with something and should know if it's a go by end of next week.

Plans this week include... nothing! Well, I'm meeting my girlfriends tomorrow night for wine night because one of them heads back to England for over a month on Wednesday, but that's it.

Have a good one!

--K

Did you miss me?

So. Totes obvs too much has happened since I last posted *4 months ago* to catch everyone up on it all.

The highlights (these are not in order of importance, I'm just typing them as I think of them):
1) The cat is still doing well! He has stabilized at about 10 pounds, and the vet has told us that he's at a good weight and now we're in maintenance mode! So glad my guy is still kicking his cancer in the ass.

2) The moms are well!
2a) Blondie's mom was diagnosed with colon cancer last year, and had surgery in January to remove the tumor. She came through like a champ and is now officially cancer free. Blondie took a week and went back to The Land of Cheese to help his mom. I'm glad he was able to do that for her.

2b) My mom has had heart problems for years and in February, they performed heart surgery on her to help stop her problems. I went back for over a week to the Land of Whiskey, Tobacco and Horses, to help her out. She was in a lot of pain for a lot of days, but was well on her way to recovery when I left. She had a quick trip to the ER after I got back to NYC for a skin infection, but is already back at work!

3) My book. My book. My dirty filthy book.
Well. Folks. My first book has come back from my editor. I'm in the process of cleaning it up, which is surprisingly way harder than writing it initially, and have a minor change to make to the setting of the novel, but other than that, I should be GTG by end of April. I'm excited. I'm nervous. I'm ready. My editor's comments are: I don't use commas correctly, and I like to do things like incorporate invalid simultaneous actions, wandering body parts, and multiple points of view in the same paragraph. Said in a whiney voice: "writing is hard guyz!"

My second book is done as well, but I will have to modify it some to take into account the setting change from my first novel. And my third novel is about 90% done. Again, a few changes there as well. I'll have one more book in that series and then I get to start on my next idea (so excited!)

Mr Pooh was da bomb and made me an avatar for my writer's page and social media sites - I owe him big time! And Glitter did my book cover design - so awesome. What would've probably cost me over $200 between the two ended up costing me nothing. You guys are the best!

4) Work. I think it's time I headed back. I've been wavering about this, but I think getting out of the house will be good for me again. I have a tough decision about something in regards to this, but once my mind is made up, I'll let you all know.

5) Visitors! I had a friend from DFW visit that I hadn't seen in over 8 years, Blondie had a friend from college visit, and I had 2 old coworkers from SF come visit. It was nice getting to see some friendly new (old) faces again!

6) Packers / Wisconsin / UK - Every single one of you loses? And now only do you lose, you lose to New England, DUKE (come on now, really??!?!?) and Wisconsin (better, but not good).

7) Party Trolley - we rented a trolley for a friend's birthday party and had it drive us around the city while we drank copious amounts of alcohol. It was a lot of fun, and if we ever get the families back at the same time (like we did at Blondie's birthday), we're thinking we should rent one again. We took the trolley to Mother Burger (mexican bulldogs) and Trailer Park (margaritas), but otherwise, just drank while driving on the streets of New York. We had a driver from the trolley company. The people that were drinking were NOT driving.

8) New pizza place in da hizzou. The owners of my favorite bar in the city (Pony) and Mr Pooh's favorite bar in the city (Landsdowne) opened a new bar right beside Pony. They serve wood fired pizzas and craft beers, and the first day I managed to get Blondie in there, they bought us each two drinks and gave us a t-shirt. My new favorite Sunday activity is Pony for snacks and beer, followed by Kiabacca for pizza and beer. And I wonder why I'm fat again? ;)

9) Free concert courtesy of Blondie's work! Blondie won free tickets to see Three Days Grace a few weeks ago. We went in about 10 minutes late, but still had a blast. The band itself was a little cheesy (not the music, just the way they interacted with the crowd during downtime), but overall, it was what I needed after a stressful day dealing with something else!

10) Tex-Mex food crawl - Glitter, Indian Bar Friend and I did a tex-mex food crawl over Easter weekend. We started at a place in Gramercy Park (YUM) on Friday, then dinner at a new place in the hood on Saturday (food = good; service = not good -> 3 hours from sit down to leaving and there was only 4 of us), and then Blondie and I ordered tacos on Sunday. Best! Weekend! Ever!

And all the other stuff that comes with living in NYC - hanging with my friends; bar friends, two old jobs ago friends, last job friends. You name it, it's been happening. Movies, restaurants, wine nights with my girlfriends. Hanging with Blondie and just relaxing. Going hiking in Connecticut this weekend.

Things are good! Miss you all. And now that I've got a grip on the editing of my first book, I'll post regularly going forward!

--K