Oh my god y'all I am a terrible blogger, it's been ages since I posted, blah blah blah apologies.
OK, that's out of the way. Now for an update (maybe bullet-point form will help since there's a lot to post):
-I made my decision (way back in January) to tell my boss I'll be leaving in October. September 30 will officially be my last work day in Denver, after which I'll fly out to San Francisco for my dad's wedding and then fly or Amtrak it back to Denver to pack up and move. Hoping I can persuade my cousin or my mom to help me with the drive to TX. As yet I have NO CLUE what I will do for work once I get to Austin. Exciting and scary at the same time, no?
-I am as usual experiencing an EPIC FAIL on weight loss goals. I even pledged to lose weight with the Biggest Loser Pound for Pound Challenge. It made no difference whatsoever. Sigh. This is a continual problem for me, especially in the springtime, which for some reason is always a really tough time of year for me (there is always a lot of stress, depression, and anxiety for me between February and May). Still, I refuse to give up. I'm keeping my PFP goal but extending the deadline (sorry, Feed America. I will give you some money instead) to my dad's wedding, and probably reducing the weight-loss goal to be slightly more realistic.
-I am ready for warm weather. Like super ready. Don't know if it's the decision to move back to Texas, or just a general weariness with layering my clothes and wearing coats, but I have been ecstatic about every warm day lately. I constantly find myself thinking longingly of sidewalk cafes and cold drinks. Also, I took approximately fifty pictures of flowers and flowering trees while in New York for a vacation, in the manner of someone who had never seen such things before. (To be fair, we don't really have them here. I miss Virginia springs).
-I undertook and mostly succeeded at a Lent vow to not eat meals at restaurants for six weeks. It had less to do with religious observance and more to do with a personal challenge, and I'm proud to say that I broke my vow only thrice (twice for work-related meals out and once due to general Friday evening work-weariness and a need for beer, which led to me giving in on the food front too). This is huge for me considering that I am usually almost totally restaurant-dependent on weekends. It also led to some interesting cooking experiments, including my first ever attempt at cooking chicken (I am squeamish about meat, especially raw chicken, though I obviously have no problem eating it), some delicious turkey chili, awesome pumpkin-carrot-walnut bread which I almost totally invented the recipe for, and many tasty roasted vegetables. It also made me realize that I need step-by-step instructions, and the Mark Bittman Kitchen Express book I bought is way too general because it assumes more competency than I possess.
-I just returned from a lovely weeklong trip to New York City. I had a mostly disappointing trip to the Statue of Liberty (frustrating waits, an aborted attempt the first day, lots of standing around and no access to the pedestal or inside of the statue due to crazy demand, and therefore no chance to reenact Ghostbusters II, which was my dearest wish), but an entirely lovely excursion to Coney Island that involved beautiful weather, great photos, and a Nathan's hot dog from the original stand. I rambled through Central Park and afterward decided on the spur of the moment to visit the Museum of Natural History, where I stared at lots of dinosaur skeletons and then speedwalked through most everything else. I ate at one of Anthony Bourdain's restaurants with Allen, shopped at the hip Brooklyn Flea and then at the Target next door, and listened with great pleasure to the many European tourists that surrounded me all week. I hopped all over Manhattan (and parts of Brooklyn) on the subway and spent unconscionable amounts of money on food and trinkets. At the end of each day I was footsore, exhausted, and increasingly suntanned.
I loved it.
It was my last visit to the city during Marisa's tenure there; she'll be moving to Austin this summer and the next time I see her I'll be moving in with her as her roommate there. I'm really excited about that prospect, but I'm a little sad as well that I'll no longer have a friend living in the heart of the Village with whom to stay, because New York is such a satisfying travel destination. It's utterly alien and yet overwhelmingly familiar. There's something interesting to look at around every corner, and it's impossible to see everything. It's easy to find your way around, even on your own, and you can go practically anywhere on the subway. There are hordes of tourists with beguiling accents, innumerable great restaurants of astonishing variety, and stores upon stores in which to shop. It is, I feel, the closest you can get to international travel without actually leaving the U.S., which is as strong a recommendation as I can offer for a vacation spot. I'll have my hundreds of photos and my ticket stubs as mementos, but I know I'll be drawn back again, maybe on my own, with or without a friend on whose couch I can crash.
So now I face the rest of the spring, the summer and early fall, in which time I'll be extremely busy with my regular workload, and will also need to write my resume, start looking for jobs, test the new database that's being built for my department, plan my trip to San Francisco and find a dress for Dad's wedding, train whatever replacement my boss finds for my job, and attempt to work on my personal goals. It's a bit daunting, and the trouble will be to take things one day at a time while still working on long-term plans. I'll try to be better about posting here when I do encounter success or failure, and if I do anything else that qualifies as memorable or lots of fun.
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