the blizz

Ugggggh. I am going crazy from boredom at work. I can get bored at either of my regular jobs... but at least at Fossil there's someone to talk to... or somewhere to walk to. Not here.

So, Christmas happened! We went home on the Tuesday before and ended up staying an extra day because of the insane blizzard that hit New York. It was a great time, though. I hadn't been home for Christmas since 2006 so it was looooong overdue. My dad spent a great deal of time making a DVD of our wedding which included footage that I had never seen before because I didn't know it existed.... like the entire ceremony. He made us watch it immediately. I mean, it was awesome and so nice of him but we were so embarrassed. especially while watching our vows. I had to leave the room because I was so... incomprehensible. Then I cried during Chris's vows... but it was so nice to see the stuff Ben did and watch Greg perform, especially knowing what both of them were going through at the time.

Right after everyone started leaving at like 11pm I checked my phone and saw that I had a message from Delta telling me the flight was cancelled. I looked online and there was no hope of rebooking for anytime in the near future (or EVER, apparently, as I was never rebooked) so we decided to rent a car and drive home. The next morning (Sunday, the 26th) we were getting ready to go to the airport and the weather man was basically telling us we'd die or get stranded if we decided to go that night. We wanted neither of these things, so we called off work 24 hours in advance and decided to go the NEXT day. The drive home was perfect.... until we got onto the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan. At that point it was basically like we entered the movie The Day After Tomorrow. You would never believe the road conditions... and it was 24 hours since the peak of the storm, 18 hours after it had stopped altogether!! It was a nightmare. We somehow missed the entrance to the Triborough Bridge and ended up driving down to the Queensboro, which was nearly impossible to get on to because so many entrances were closed. We also almost got stuck in the middle of 2nd Ave in a snow drift. When we finally made it into Queens it was even worse. The main road in LIC and Astoria had not been plowed AT ALL. We followed car tracks until we got into our neighborhood which was even worse. Abandoned cars everywhere, ambulances, snow piled up 3+ feet at every corner... We couldn't even get onto our street because there was an abandoned van right in the middle, so we had to park the rental car in the middle of 24th ave, drag our stuff through the mountains of snow to our apartment to drop it off, and then get back to the car to return it to Hertz at the airport. I changed into my rain boots thinking "I'm going to be in a car and then on a bus most of the time... I won't have to worry about my feet getting too cold!" WRONG. So, LaGuardia is close enough to walk to normally. Like a 5 minute drive. It not only took 20 minutes to get there, but once we got there and dropped the car off, it took an additional TWO HOURS to get home! We just missed a shuttle from the rental place to the main airport and then I saw the M60 drive by. We ran out, but we missed it, but I figured another would come by soon, which was so, soooo stupid of me. I swear to God only 1 of the buses must have been running on the entire line. We waited outside, after wading through snow, for half an hour before I literally started to think I had frost bite on my toes and Chris made us go back to Hertz to wait for the shuttle. My toes hurt so bad I was almost in tears. After we got the main part of the airport we had to get in the 1 taxi line that was open, which was over an hour long because cabs only arrived every 5 minutes. By the grace of God, after only about half an hour, the girl at the front of the line was also going to Astoria and they asked for any other passengers going that way. We of course jumped on it. I got home, ran my feet under warm water and rubbed them until they started to get itchy and I knew I would have toes another day and wouldn't have to amputate them.

Man. I would not last long in a wintertime emergency situation.

Anyway, so the next day I was supposed to work at 8am and just as I was about to walk out the door, NY1 said the entire N train line had been suspended. It eventually, apparently, came back, but I was an hour and a half late for work. I called, obviously. Since none of the buses were running, the train was our only way out. It's been crazy. Things are getting better but there is still soooo much snow everywhere. Most roads, especially in Queens, have barely been touched by a plow and even intersections like 5th Ave and 42nd street are hard to walk through from so much snow piled up. What I hate the MOST is the fact that you don't know if a puddle is just a little bit of water or several inches of water. I've started dipping my toes in to check.

In better news, the sun was finally out today and I soaked up as much of it as I possibly could while sitting on the train. We also got a blue ray DVD player (which was Chris's Christmas present from me). I can't wait until I have a day off. It's stupid to say that after I just had a whole BUNCH of days off while in Ohio, but that snow drama felt like a week.

And so, we are at the close of another year. Faster than we'll be able to handle, it'll already be July and we'll be complaining about how hot and miserable it is.

sick, dizzy and spectacular

Looks like I didn't keep my promise about blogging more to make up for last month. Right NOW I feel like a lot has suddenly just happened, so I will write about it to remind my future self of when these events took place.

So, right now I am sick. I knew I was going to get sick-- everyone around me was sick-- but I was trying to hold out until today to do it. I did not succeed. I woke up on Tuesday and had I been scheduled to work anywhere that day I would have had to legitimately call off because I was just soooooo sick. My whole body hurt, I was so stuffed up and DIZZY... I could have dealt with everything else but the dizziness was too much. I have been loading my system with vitamin C, zinc and tylenol cold medicine. I still have a ridiculous amount of snot. Sometimes it clouds my sinuses and makes my eyeballs hurt but right now it is mainly staying in my throat, lungs and nose. It's actually made breathing kind of hard at times. The snot mixed with how COLD it is. On Tuesday night my throat swelled up and I could barely swallow.... luckily that hasn't happened as bad since. It was bad. I didn't want to get sick before my last Rockababy class of the year but I did... and I barely made it through the FIRST class without losing my voice let alone the second. But, I seem to be getting better (knock on wood) so hopefully I won't get sick again until.... well, never.

My poor kitty had a tapeworm. She must have come with the tapeworm because she definitely didn't have fleas when we got her. We took her to the vet on Tuesday to get it taken care of. It was the only thing I did on Tuesday. Tapeworms are really not that bad... it doesn't really affect kitty's general health too much and they're REALLY easy to get rid of... the only thing that is super gross is the terrible little "seeds" that are shed from the tapeworm and are left anywhere she sat. I mean... seriously. Gross. I had been vacuuming the floor, carpet, couch and bed like EVERY DAY because I was so super grossed out by these things. I noticed them immediately. Chris said he probably would have never noticed them which is even grosser. While at the vet he showed us that one of her teeth is WAY bigger than the other ones which is some kind of exposed gum thing. We're not sure what it is going to mean until they can take x-rays but we don't have money for that right now. They said it should be fine but we'll have to look into it further in a couple of months.

A couple of weeks ago we found out Praire Home Companion was going to be playing at the concert hall I work at on Christmas Day... the first Christmas in 4 years that I will be in Ohio for! I went crazy because just the previous day I saw that they were playing all over NYC this month and I mentioned how I wished they would come to our hall. Well, they are coming but I won't be there. So, I went crazy. However, I expressed my dismay to our booking manager, who used to be the touring manager for them, and the next day they offered her free tickets to the performance at Town Hall but she already HAD tickets so she offered them to me! It was amazing that I had off because I ALWAYS work on Saturdays but this was the one night I didn't have to work. Chris was able to get someone to cover his shift at the last minute and we had the best time. The seats were 4th row center and Elvis Costello was on the program... and he performed right in front of us! It was the best. Not that I listen every week but I've been listening to PHC since I was like 7 years old. I think I actually remember the very FIRST time I heard it. It was great. I am really, really happy we got to go.

Last night I walked in the door after I got back from Rockababy and Chris said, "Ok. I made food for you and then we have to go." The first thought I had was that there was some kind of emergency situation in New York. The second was that we had somehow offended our landlord and were getting kicked out. I was too sick to express any of these fears, however, so I just looked at him and said "why?" He then handed me a piece of paper of some kind of ticket he had purchased. I stared at it for a long time. It had an ad for Cirque Du Soleil's Wintuk. I was even more confused. I said, "We're going to see Wintuk?" I mean, sure, I'd go see that, but I didn't know why he'd purchased tickets for it. I wondered if maybe someone gave them to him at work. Then, finally, he pointed to the actual TICKET part and it said we were going to

THE RADIO CITY CHRISTMAS SPECTACULAR!!!!!

I have wanted to see the Rockettes my entire life. They always played in Cleveland during Christmas and I never got to go. I think they are AMAZING. We obviously didn't go last year and I had kind of resigned myself to the fact that we were not going this year because, I mean, it's already halfway through December. So, when he pointed to the title my voice got really high and I said, "We're really going?" He said yes, I ate the rice and chicken and then we went to the most spectacular show in the entire world. It was unbelievable. I mean, whatever, it's crazy and it's there to make tons and tons of money but it is AMAZING. There is no way anyone could deny the "spectacular" in the title. Everything about it is spectacular. It is the DEFINITION of "spectacular." First of all, Radio City is amazing. It is literally what I think of when I think of Christmas. It's what you'd EXPECT Macy's to look like, except Macy's is TERRIBLE and ghetto and you walk in and you immediately want to walk back out or start to cry. I mean, I walked through those doors and my mouth was hanging open. I don't know if I've ever said "wow" so many times in my life. We were sitting in the last row of the 2nd mezzanine but it was great because you could see everything. This theatre holds nearly 6,000 seats. Unbelievable. They do like 4 shows a day, too! It's crazy. So, anyway, the show was incredible. The girls were amazing (I challenge YOU to take 39 of your friends, line up in a perfectly straight line and then spin that line without there being a huge bend somewhere), the special effects were amazing (there was 3D, flying, snow and the best tech I've ever seen) AND there were sheep, a donkey and camels. WHAT MORE COULD YOU ASK FOR???? If you want to be artistically challenged by thought-provoking theatre, this is obviously not the show for you.... but if you want to see the most amazing, spectacular show in the entire world.... there is no other option. I wish I could be a Rockette.

We are leaving on Tuesday morning for Ohio. This is really the first visit since Thanksgiving 2009. Yes, we were there for 2 days in February and I saw my parents for 6 hours in August when we moved our stuff, but neither of those really count since we were there for other reasons than just visiting. Now we will VISIT!