2009 by the months

So I have a little spare time since I'm confined to the house (well, no big loss there, it's supposed to be uber-cold the rest of the week), so I figured I'd do a little recap of 2009. Even though it's ending in a completely below average way, it was still a pretty darn awesome year for me. We've had our ups and downs but I've enjoyed myself, seen some sweet new places and accomplished a ton of goals along the way.

JANUARY:

I ran the first of my 3 half marathons in Austin and had a huge cheering section waiting for me at the finish. Thanks to all the family and friends who braved the cold-for-TX temperatures to cheer me on. It was also my first time to take Adam home to Texas and he got to meet my brother and grandparents. It, as always, was a really fun trip and we had a blast. In Chicago, it was cold. I don't really remember much about the month other than that, maybe I like to block it out? I was reading in my favorite WGN weather blog that we set a bunch of snow records last Jan so I must have been just LOVIN that :)

FEBRUARY:

OMG... one of the best months of the year. My dear friend Amy and I had been planning our trip to Sydney for months and at the last minute my boyfriend and his best friend horned their way in to our girls vacay. I'll still always wonder just what it was that made Amy say yes. Methinks there was more than a little crush a'brewin on her end. Either way, we had a megablast of a trip, celebrated Adam's birthday while we were there and all rode home together in the new layflat business class seats. It was a trip that will be so hard to top but I think the four of us are going to try one of these days! Luckily, we were able to work on our sweet tans and forget about the cold seeing as how they were setting heatwave records and having horrific brush fires while we were in Australia. Loved every minute of it!

MARCH:

In March, I toted around the pictured above Flat Stanley for my friend Sally's class in Ft. Worth. He was a pretty sweet good luck charm because I definitely had my best ever San Francisco layover while I had him. See, I even treated the guy to Starbucks before I walked him to death (all in the name of training, of course). We also took him to a wedding in Virginia and Adam got to visit DC for the first time and we had lovely times with Amy, including one of the best stories of the year. It involves Carmax and $5. My friend Meredith and her mom also visited Chicago and we had fun showing them our very cold city!

APRIL:

I ran my second half of the year with Amy in St. Louis. It rained the whole race and I wanted to punch her for probably half of it. I did not do well with her attempts at motivation. Sorry, Amo! Perhaps the pasta from the night before really didn't do it for me. We had a fun weekend though, despite the rather dreary weather. We did the Budweiser brewery so that makes up for the fact that I had a totally wankster race. I think this was also right around the time that I started this blog to help document my preparation for the Chicago Marathon. My, how the time flies!

MAY:

I got the swine flu, which was immediately followed by my only international trip of the year to Narita, Japan. I had to lie to the scary Outbreak quarantine people when they asked if I'd been sick recently and I lived in petrified fear for the hour that they inspected everyone on our plane. It was worth it for the sushi though! I also ran a 10 mile race at Soldier Field, which I'll have to put on the calendar for 2010, it was pretty fun. We also did 2 weddings in 2 days in May, followed immediately by Adam getting sick. We had my dad and brother up for a Cubs game and lots of fun around town.

JUNE:

We went to Texas for a week again, this time for my friend Tracee's wedding. My friend, Charlotte (pictured above), and I got to take our then-boyfriends to a real Texas Honky Tonk bar in Victoria and we had a blast. I also moved into Adam's condo in June and my mom and I painted the bedroom in our semi-pro way. We spent way too much money on new (but needed) furniture at IKEA and began the process of becoming settled cohabitants.

JULY:

We'd been waiting months for it but it was finally time for our trip to Boston. My dad's family lives all over the area so we had fun carting Adam around and introducing him to everyone. We got to go to a Red Sox game, which was hugely awesome for both of us! The weather back home wasn't too bad also (slightly colder than we'd have liked but nice enough to ride bikes and get out on the beach). I started settling into my serious marathon training and we also had two local weddings.

AUGUST:

I lost a boyfriend but gained a fiance. Adam proposed at the beginning of the month and I went home to San Antonio at the end of August and got a ton of wedding planning done. I remember August as being a really fun time for us, the weather was nice and we did a lot of outdoor activities. Since I was in TX for two weeks, Adam came down for the weekend in between and we got to do lots of engagement celebrating. Lots of good times were had by all!

SEPTEMBER:

I had my last half marathon scheduled for Labor Day weekend in Virginia Beach, which is also Amy's hometown. Kind of like the Sydney trip, Adam and Brian also decided to run with us. I really wanted to beat Adam but we ended up running together as I had a mega overheat episode toward the end of the race. We had a great time with our favorite couple in VB and I finished about 12 minutes faster than I'd ever run a half before so it was a good day. It was also Adam's longest race to date and I think he enjoyed it. At the end of the month, I went home to SA to just start the dress finding process and ended up finding my perfect dress at the third store. HUGE check off the list!

OCTOBER:

We took engagement pictures with the fabulous Steve Koo all over downtown Chicago....

oh yeah, and I ran the Chicago Marathon!! It only took me 17 million minutes but I finished and managed to only walk for a few minutes of the entire race. My family, Adam's family and several friends were out there to support me and I was so humbled and appreciative of the entire experience.

NOVEMBER:

I hosted Thanksgiving in Chicago for the second year in a row, hopefully this will become an annual thing! My dad and brother flew up from San Antonio and Adam's brother drove in from the suburbs to eat with us. We had quite a spread and I gained about ten billion pounds, which in turn drove me to start Weight Watchers on the last day of the month. We were blessed with some decent weather during the month and my friend Brooke came up so we could sign up for the Avon Breast Cancer walk for next June.

DECEMBER:

I celebrated the big 2-8 and we went to finally see Jersey Boys (AWESOME SHOW, btw). We traveled (on paid tickets for the first time in some three-odd years) to San Antonio for Christmas week. And as you know, I got to spend the last week of 2009 bedridden being sicker than I've ever been in my life with double pink eyes, the regular flu (that's 2 flus for '09 if you were counting) and strep throat. Oh well, at least because I was half-dying the whole week, I had the time to write this and to relive some of my favorite memories from the year.

Here's to 2010... we're getting married and planning a rockin' honeymoon so I know it will most certainly be a year to remember.

SERIOUSLY?!?!?!?!

To add insult to my already injured body and soul, I woke up at 3:00 a.m. (again) in a lot of pain. My throat was hurting so bad and I know throataches, I had strep throat probably about 6 times between first and second grade. Anyhoo, it was the third night in a row that I woke up my saint of a fiance and we called the nurse hotline for the second time this week to schedule a doctors appointment for this morning. Basically, I was unable to be comfortable laying down because I had so much drainage in my throat. I used to think I was a healthy person but after this week, WTF, mate?

On the brightside, we went to the grocery store to fill my new prescriptions and it was so nice to be able to go through the store to pick out things I wanted to eat and drink. And to breathe some fresh air, even if it was snowy :)

I did get some sweet Vicadin so I can hopefully get a full night's rest tonight. Either way, I'll be ringing in the New Year with Digiorno pizza and a Vicadin. Good times, good times. Happy 2010!

Like I mentioned before

I got wicked sick over the weekend. On Sunday morning, we had an early morning flight back to Chicago from San Antonio. The night before, we went to dinner with friends (and ironically one of them got sick during dinner- hope you fared better than I, Kev) and out to a bar to have one last hurrah with a bunch of old friends, which was really fun. I was mega-excited at the time because there was no smoking in the bar we were at, which is a hard commodity to come by in SA. We had to have last minute breakfast tacos at midnight because at some point during the week I kind of said suck it to my WW goals for the rest of the trip.

At some point in the middle of the night, Adam woke up and wasn't feeling all that well and he was pretty yucky when we left. I was also pretty nauseous but figured it was just due to staying up late, eating super late, and getting up so early. I don't do too well on no sleep and I wasn't sleeping much for our entire visit, really. But by the time we landed in Chicago, I was definitely the worst between the two of us. I seriously considered taking a cab all the way from O'Hare to home and if you know how insanely cheap I am about taking cabs, that should tell you right there that I was not feeling well at all. When we got to the condo, I made Lipton Noodle Soup and we both got a second wind and managed to unpack and wait for my mom to land from her delayed flight. Her birthday was Sunday and we'd planned to go to Maggianos but kind of nixed the idea because it was freezing and they had no reservations left. We watched a movie when she came in but I fell asleep during it and woke up feeling something foul. I remember saying at one point that I felt exactly the same way that I did when I had what we suspect was H1N1 in May.

Adam's mom and brother came in to the city for awhile and we ended up ordering in Chinese because I was in no position to go anywhere. I ate some rice and green beans because I really couldn't stomach any of the meats. Took Nyquil at about 8 p.m. and went right to sleep. I woke up at some point in the night and I was feeling absolutely terrible. I woke Adam and we called the nurse hotline which is the best way to get a last minute drs appointment with my HMO. I should also mention that on Christmas Eve my eye was incredibly itchy before we went to sleep but I took out my contacts and didn't give it much more thought until Sunday night when I woke up and it was all crusted over. Pink Eye! But that was nothing compared to my fever and body aches. I felt about 15 times worse than my flu in May. I couldn't even get comfortable and back to sleep. We made my drs appointment for the next morning and I continued to toss and turn for another hour or so before we woke my mom. At some point, I finally decided to bundle myself up like the kids in a Christmas Story and go to the Emergency Room. I think I've adopted a policy that if I am too sick to even sleep it's time to seek immediate help. I also was having some pretty bad nausea issues.

I have to say that our experience at the ER was pretty seamless. We got right in (into a nice little Negative Pressure Quarantine room) where I was diagnosed with Pink Eye and the flu. They hooked me up to an IV and gave me some super strong ibuprofen and I was feeling better after about 30-45 minutes.

*note, at the present time I want to kill our crappy internet provider because I was done with this post but our internet went out and this was all it had saved but it will probably end up being less long winded so that may or may not be a good thing, you decide*

Anyway, they made me feel better at the ER, which lasted for about 5 hours after I got home. Yesterday almost every bad symptom was back, only worse. I was also unable to keep any sort of liquids down. Sometime during the third quarter of the A&M bowl game, we decided to head back to the ER. Another day, another prick in the arm for an IV. At least I have matching arms now and so far, the bruising has been shockingly benign. They gave me fluids and more strong Motrin and decided to do bloodwork instead of chest xrays like the night before. All the stuff came back indicating I had the flu instead of meningitis or something more serious, phew. I was not excited hearing words like "spinal tap" being floated about. After that, they gave me the choice to go home or be admitted as observation. Obviously, I chose to go home because I have major issues getting comfortable and sleeping in hospitals. Who doesn't, right? I also have mega IV issues, both night I was feeling like they were leaking and made multiple people check them because I could have sworn I felt it dripping, on both arms.

I also managed to give myself pink eye in the other eye. I'm telling you, I was a complete (and still am a partial) disaster. Today, I'm at a normal sick person level and can function enough to type all this so I feel a vast improvement. However, I have to throw out all my eye make-up, which is SUPER annoying because I just bought some expensive mascara from Sephora 2 weeks ago. Luckily, I had already earmarked a significant bit of Christmas money towards new eyeshadow at the MAC counter, as I was completely out of my favorite color. Que sera, sera.

I am also missing the Addams Family musical tonight with Adam and Mom and a nice dinner. Plus, this also means no New Year's Eve party for me so it's looking like we'll be watching the VT bowl game and Dick Clark from home, which is probably better so I don't infect the world with my diseases. That's been basically my post-Christmas ER extravaganza of experiences. Hopefully your post-Christmas has been better!

Sick Day(s)

I have pink eye (got it in one eye and managed to pass it to my other eye myself.... lovely) and the flu. And apparently they are stingy with the TamiFlu in Chicago unless you are dying (and my two emergency room visits must not qualify as dying).

So here I sit, pretty miserable, but at least it's a major improvement from yesterday and the day before when my entire body ached so bad that I couldn't get comfortable enough to sleep.

And I think I'll be investing in the flu shot next year!

Our Christmas.... and I'm going off the reservation

Yesterday we left for San Antonio for almost 8 days of what will hopefully be glorious weather. Considering that it really doesn't ever snow there, it will feel glorious to us no matter what. Plus, we don't really have to walk anywhere even if it rains every single day. I'm going to soak it up because we'll have a long winter awaiting us when we return home.

Enough about all that! The past two years, I've been flying over the Christmas holidays. My first year, I was SO BLESSED to actually get my Christmas wish list trip (we were allowed to preference our top three layover locations during xmas week) and I got to go to Beijing. I was packing the night before we left and realized that I'd be arriving home late in the evening on Christmas Eve and be guaranteed a few days rest when I got in. I would have about 1 hour to wait for everyone to deplane, clear customs and race to the gate of the last flight home to San Antonio from DC. It was a pretty tall order but I figured I'd give it a try. The first thing I did when we landed was run into the lavatory and called the hotline to see the flight status. Luckily, it was delayed about an hour so I knew I'd have enough time. After a brief snafu with a cranky customs man (hey bro, it's not my fault you're working Christmas Eve), I made it to the gate and on the flight, in first class no less and seated next to one of my co-workers. Even though I was jet-lagged to the max and had hardly slept a wink over the entire 4 day trip to China, I enjoyed chatting and drinking wine almost the whole way home. I got in to SA around midnight and enjoyed a surprise Christmas Eve with my mom and brother and got to be at the big Christmas dinner at my grandmother's house. I think that will always go down as one of my favorite Christmases, partially because I got to be home as a last minute surprise but also because I think Christmas Eve is my favorite day of the year and considering that my Christmas Eve began around noon the day before when I was still in China and ended up being about 36 hours long was so cool. I was buying last minute gifts at the markets (the Chinese don't really celebrate the holiday but they kept saying to all of us, "Oh, today is your special day!") when everyone back home was still sleeping. The whole thing was so exciting that I didn't have any time to think about how exhausted I was.

So... last year, I knew it was going to be pretty darn hard to top that and sure enough, all hell broke loose weather-wise so pretty much no one got their wish list trips. I spent my favorite day of the year (Christmas Eve) sitting for hours in the Denver airport waiting for a flight to Newark with a ton of extremely cranky New Yorkers. Our trip fell apart and instead of making a ton of money for flying Christmas day, I only got a little bit of holiday pay (because it's based on flight time) and ended up home in Chicago on Christmas night. I remember calling Adam and just being so upset. I told myself that I'd do whatever possible to have Christmas off in the future because it was such a bummer the way things turned out. On the lucky side, similar things ended up happening to one of my roommates and another one of our training classmates so we went and had dinner at a Chinese restaurant that was open. It was fun, don't get me wrong, but it just didn't have that Christmas feel to it. Plus, I had to work the next day and it began a string of the worst four days I had ever experienced while flying. But that's neither here nor there. :)

I'm determined to make up for last year by really taking the time to appreciate being home this year. It's been a long time since I was able to go to Christmas Eve church and do the candle-lit rendition of Silent Night. We have family friends that always have a party after church and it is definitely one of the highlights of Christmas Eve for me. I'm so excited to be able to share all of our traditions with Adam this year too. I hope that last year is the last time we ever have to be apart at Christmas because it SUCKED! We're having Italian food on Christmas day (my pick- YES!) and I'm sure there will be desserts and cookies all week.

So, I'll probably be MIA unless anything absolutely hilarious happens while on our trip. I hope everyone out there in the blogosphere has a fantastic holiday week and I can't wait to see my SA friends who happen to read!

Spotted on the Train...

Yesterday I made it my personal mission to ride the CTA Holiday Train. Basically, it's this train that is totally tricked out and only used for a few rides during the holidays. It was making a round trip run during the afternoon rush yesterday. I looked up the schedule and made sure I was in the right place.

I mention that the train was tricked out but I must explain further. Imagine if the TV show Pimp My Ride got ahold of a train with one mission and one mission only: to make it crazy with Christmas. This thing is floor to ceiling INSANE! The poles are wrapped like candy canes! The seats are not upholstered in regular CTA blah, rather in Christmas fabrics! The ceiling is lit in red and green! There is an entire car replaced by a flatbed that Santa rides on (and mind you, it was 34 degrees at the time yesterday meaning that the precipitation we were getting was a fantastic mix of rain, sleet and snow) out in the elements (on the line we were on, there are about 10 subway stops going through downtown so I guess dear Santa gets a small reprieve)! They have people coming through handing out candy canes! The thing was full of kids having a total blast!

It was pretty darn cool. Although, I must tell you that I more enjoy accidentally seeing it go by or at a stop that when I'm not prepared for it. The sight of all the lights, music and general hoopla is enough to warm my soul when I come across it unexpectedly. When I looked up the schedule and chased it down, I think I lost a little bit of that feeling. And no matter how awesome the inside of the cars looks, it's nothing compared to the sight of that beast from the outside...

Holy lights, CTA! And that is just part of one out of seven cars (and don't forget the flatbed trailer with Santa). It's like a mini-parade in the middle of the commute.

Heading away from us in the tunnel... off to make some other people smile!

Tis Da Season, Indeed!

I walk by this decorated door quite frequently and I always think to myself, "Tis da season, indeed!" I adore whoever a) decided to decorate the door in the first place and b) decided to get all ghetto with the holidays. The odd thing is that it's actually a decently nice apartment building so I smile a little on the inside every time I see it and I've been meaning to take a picture of it to share with you, dear internet.

I took this outside the 7 story Macy's downtown (aka the original Marshall Field's... RIP to the best store ever). They always do it up nice for Christmas and it makes me feel really festive to walk down State Street. Plus, all the trees are lit with blue lights all up and down State and it's strikingly beautiful. I'll have to remember blue lights when I have a yard to decorate.

This was at the Hokie Holiday Party last weekend and I have to say, it's making me question my desire for pot lights for the ceiling in our future house. They're really cool and modern (especially the ones that have fading switches) but the lighting is gawdawful for pictures! I really thought I looked better when I walked out the door. Maybe the freak rain/sleet storm we got caught in on the way to the party (that resulted in a 5 block cab ride and me almost throwing down with a Lakeshore high rise jerkface that thought he was too cool to wait outside for a cab) had something to do with it?