Poor Planning

After so much travelling, I happen to pride myself on being able to pack light and right. In most cases I am able to get things down to just a carry-on…I managed to bring only a carry on for my two weeks in France and only a backpack for 2 nights in Minneapolis for work. But on this past trip to Tahoe for work, my light packing turned into a very expensive oversight. I will blame it on the lingering after effects of the plague…I clearly wasn’t thinking when I packed Thursday morning for the trip – work Thursday afternoon, dinner with client that night and work on Friday at the client site.

Being re-assured on numerous occasions that the client was casual, I opted to wear jeans on Thursday and brought a dress to wear Friday. I even brought two extra tops just in case. Unfortunately for me, I hadn’t thought through my options for dinner and upon seeing the client, followed by looking up the restaurant, I realized I was completely underdressed and needed to fix it ASAP. The solution –a quick Google search of shops in Incline Village for places that might sell dresses or dinner appropriate attire.

With a flimsy excuse for leaving work early, I drove like lightening to the nearest store to pick up a much needed outfit for dinner – which was less than an hour away from starting. Thankfully the store was not busy and the owner sensed my dread. Upon explaining the situation, she grabbed all possible options and got me started in the dressing room…I settled on a cute black maxi dress by Free People, that was actually on sale and something I would wear again. The only problem…thanks to my packing skills, I had only brought brown accessories. So what started as just a dress turned into a dress, black shoes, black clutch, black cardigan and colorful bandeau top to spice it up and tone it down (yes, the dress was a little too revealing for work). Two hundred dollars and twenty minutes later I was outfitted for the occasion.

With 15 minutes until the dinner reservation, I made it back to the hotel, got changed, fixed my hair, and touched up my make-up. And while I was 5 minutes late to dinner, at least I was appropriately dressed! Thank goodness for Google and an ample spending account. Too bad I can’t run through those expenses!

The Bubonic Plague

Blame it on the weather, blame it on jet lag, or in this case, blame it on the bubonic plague…my recent trip to New York was not up to par on the damage scale. That is not to say I didn’t have a great time, but let’s just say my normal shenanigans were kept at bay on this most recent adventure.

I had to be in New York for a training for work on Thursday and Friday…which meant of course I took the red-eye out Tuesday night for a day in Brooklyn with Anna, an afternoon of shopping with co-workers and scheduled a return flight on Saturday morning to allow for a Friday night out with Erin. It was flawless in its simplicity. However I did not account on one thing - coming down with the bubonic plague – a combination of stuffed up nose, severe aches and a headache that left me in a fog.

Wednesday morning I arrived at JFK and took a joy ride to Anna and Braden’s house for a morning of fun with the girls. To my surprise and joy, I got the bonus of seeing Braden as well (his hangover from the night before kept him home that morning). It was great seeing the Mark family, catching up like old times, playing with Emery and meeting the newest addition to the family, Addie. Anna and I were even able to channel our old Yoshi days with a sushi lunch and a few glasses of a mid-day red wine.

That afternoon, Braden and I shared a cab to the city – he to go to work at KPMG and me to go to work on 5th Avenue…I had a list of stores to check out and items I wanted to buy. I began at 44th and 7th and made my way downtown through Sample Sales in the Fashion District, Vintage Stores on 25th, the standards of Kate Spade, Anthropology and JCrew between 20th and 10th and ended the trek in SOHO meeting up with co-workers at Bloomingdales. On a normal day, I would have been weighed down by bags and exhausted from the exertion of swiping my credit card. On this day, I was exhausted, but empty handed. Shopping was an epic failure. I even tried to buy shoes to just get something, but I even failed in that…they didn’t have my size. So, when faced with defeat…we ate. I took the co-workers down the street to Dos Caminos for margaritas, chips and guacamole and we continued with Tapas at Boqueria just around the corner. Defeated, exhausted and starting to feel stuffed up, I called it an early night and was in bed by 10:30pm.

After two long days of training, I was mentally ready for a break and even more so, a proper catch up with Erin…we were set to meet up after work at her place for pre-game drinks, dinner just the two of us and then meet up with everyone else later that night for drinks and possibly dancing. The only snag in our otherwise perfect plan… what started as a head cold had progressed to the bubonic plague and even the bucket-size dosage of Sudafed and Tylenol Cold couldn’t keep it in check. Within 30 minutes of being at Erin’s I had gone through an entire box of Kleenex to match the bottle of wine we had drunk. We ended up heading to Tribeca for dinner where the conversation ran almost as freely and quickly as my nose…we called it a relatively early night at 11:30, beating her boyfriend home who was expecting the normal hot mess to arrive at 3am.

Bubonic plague aside, overall, it was great to catch up with friends and it was a nice reminder that I love New York not only for the craziness that it can hold, but also for being home to some of my favorite people.

On the Road Again

After 3 long months of not really travelling, I am finally back on the road, and man it feels good. It is nice to be out and about again seeing the world and getting out of the rut of daily life … although I am sure it also has something to do with Martin being gone and me not wanting to be alone and/or having to clean the house.

The first two Mondays in June were spent in Lake Tahoe’s Incline Village for work, meaning an overnight stay on Sunday night to make it in Monday morning. Lake Tahoe is not a bad place to be in June…that is unless it is June 2011, with record snow fall and required snow tires or chains to get back to the airport the first weekend in town…. Although the snow capped mountains and snow dusted beaches lining the crystal blue shores made it seem even more beautiful and serene.

In sharp contrast to the first weekend, the weather cleared up the following Monday… so much so that I managed to get a horrible sun burn after only an hour in the sun while reading my book on Sunday afternoon… It was bad enough to keep me from the casino bar/restaurant and required me to order room service instead to avoid scaring the other patrons. However, the snow and sunburn couldn’t ruin the trips me…I really have missed the clean hotel rooms, large comfy beds and the glass of champagne on check always helps to set the vacation, err work, mood.

I am off to New York on Tuesday night for “work” again, meaning a full day of friends and shopping on Wednesday, work Thursday and Friday and then dinner and drinks with friends on Friday night!

Men, Women and the Job Market

Just recently, while planning for an upcoming weekend with all of my college girls, I had a huge realization. Of our group of 7 girls (6 with significant others) none of our men currently have jobs. That is not saying they aren’t trying. Most of them are currently and actively looking for jobs after either having been previously laid off (Erin’s New Yorker), in the process of switching careers (Ange’s hubby), recovering from injury (Neff’s man), in between seasons (Jo’s new ball and chain), a few years hiatus (Dana’s better half) or not are legally able to work yet (yours truly).

I am not sure if it is just the economy or the type of guys we choose, but 6 out of 7 seem like pretty high odds. As my mom puts it, we are a group of strong, independent women. As Ray, my brother in law puts it, women had the 18-20th centuries, it is the man’s turn now.

The 5 Minute Catch Up

It should be no surprise that I am horrible about keeping up with people (although Facebook helps immensely) ...and apparently that has now flown through to keeping up with this blog. There has just been so much going on and the stress of it all has killed all of my creativity. And the more overwhelming my life has become, the more daunting it seems to update this blog on the past few months.

But just recently, with less than 10 minutes of a cab ride to home and 7 minutes of battery life left on my cell phone, I was able to have a proper catch up with Erin…it had been 5 months. And it was during those CNN-like rapid-fire questions and answers that I realized that what this blog needed was a 5 minute catch up to get everyone up to speed so we can start again.

So here it goes:

In November, Martin quit his job thereby speeding up his move over to California. At the end of January, Martin made the trek across the pond with his 2 bags and high hopes of getting a visa and job, finally ending our 18 month long distance relationship. February was spent with me working day and night and Martin trying to get settled into his new life in San Francisco. March continued with little luck on the job or visa front for Martin, me starting to re-evaluate my life as an auditor and weekends spent looking for houses ala House Hunters on HGTV. In April we were rejected from 2 house offers and no big news on our “lofty” goals, but our relationship continued to settle into normalcy. And finally in May, we were able to sort out the visa situation for Martin (meaning Martin had to head to Germany for the processing), had our third and final offer get accepted on a house meaning Martin will have a project to work on (more on that to come) and I have transitioned into a new role at work.

With the ambitious goals set out for us in February - visa, job, job and house – I say we are doing surprisingly well. Hopefully things will start to settle down soon, especially once Martin gets back home and we move into our new place.