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.