Cookie Hangover

Me and my man, Drake.

Run. Push ups. Sit ups. Lunges. Yoga. Salad. I was doing so well all week until Heather invited me over to Brooklyn on Friday. We went on a mile and a half stroll with the Drake-man for what Heather called a "life-changing sandwich" at Brooklyn Bread. I had the Italian sandwich on the crustiest, warmest bread ever and yes, it was amazing. I tortured myself on our walk back by peeking into all the cute bakeries and pastry shops we walked by, but I stayed strong.

Then I noticed a place called Chip Shop, which Heather said had fried everything....even fried Twix bars. Fried what??? Now that sounded waaaaaaaaay too good to miss, so we brought the baby into a bar and downed some fried Twinkies and fried Snickers bar. (It was good, but nothing more than glorified funnel cake).


Bottle, check. Beer, check. Fried Snickers and twinkie, double check.


All smiles! Look how much Drake's grown since my last carriage photo!

That night, Dan and I met up with Adam and Nell for a meal at their new favorite restaurant, The RedHead. The place is known for its fried chicken and New Orleans style cuisine, so how could we resist but to eat heartily and happily.

The next day, my former roommates Meagan and Julie came over for our monthly dinner. For the last year, we have been hosting dinners at each other's apartments as a way to eat well and have a regimented time to see each other. Otherwise, the time flies by and we never see each other. It's been working out great, and I like to catch up with the girls on a regular basis.

I decided to make a butternut squash lasagna, salad, garlic bread and for dessert....chocolate chip cookies, my favorite. It's been so long since I had some homemade cookies in my house that I went a little crazy. I ate them while I made them. I ate them while the girls were over for dinner. I ate them when they left. I must of had like 20 cookies in one day.

The next day, I felt absolutely awful. I had the worst cookie hangover of all time. I had no motivation to do anything except sit on my couch and zone out. Even my head hurt. It was terrible. Then Dan started eating the rest of the cookies and I wanted more cookies. I actually started to feel better after eating the cookies, just like an alcoholic feels better after one drink even when hungover. I was planning to throw them away Sunday night but there was nothing but crumbs left.

While I am not particularly proud of our piggy ways this weekend, especially since I just posted about how I have to have crazy discipline in the next few weeks, I have lost a lot of weight since January. My jeans are so baggy that yesterday, just for fun (and to see if I could do it), I pulled them down without unbuttoning or unzipping them. It was sort of weird (Dan rolled his eyes at me), but I have to say, it felt pretty good.

Monday is a new day. Run. Push ups. Sit ups. Lunges. Yoga. Salad.

UPDATE: I weighed myself at the gym and I have lost 7 pounds since January!

Three weeks until my wedding dress fitting.

Until then:

Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run. Run.

Push ups. Sit ups. Lunges. Yoga. Push ups. Sit ups. Lunges. Yoga. Push ups. Sit ups. Lunges. Yoga. Push ups. Sit ups. Lunges. Yoga. Push ups. Sit ups. Lunges. Yoga. Push ups. Sit ups. Lunges. Yoga. Push ups. Sit ups. Lunges. Yoga. Push ups. Sit ups. Lunges. Yoga. Push ups. Sit ups. Lunges. Yoga. Push ups. Sit ups. Lunges. Yoga.

Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad. Salad.

Chocolate cake. Mmmmmm.......chocolate cake.

Perhaps another slice?

Church day

With no disrespect to the Irish (I love the Irish!), I really hate St. Patrick's Day. It has got to be my least favorite holiday. Call me boring, but I have never found the appeal of wearing green antennae shamrocks and chugging green tinted beer at ten in the morning. Corn beef and cabbage? Gross. The city becomes downright obnoxious on this day. It basically stops traffic everywhere for the parade, and when you try to walk anywhere, you get entangled in groups of drunk, green-shirt wearing young folk spilling out of bars. By the end of the day, you have to dodge their puke stains on the sidewalks and listen to them screaming for no good reason. You may think I am just getting old, but I have always felt this way, even when I was 20 years old and spent the holiday in Dublin, Ireland. So usually when it comes to St. Patrick's Day, I just stay home and do my best to avoid it. Maybe I will don a green sweater or eat a green sprinkled cupcake. But that's as far as my celebration goes.

But this year, Dan wanted to celebrate. Actually, Dan decided that the year would not be complete if we did not go to Gaelic mass on St. Patrick's Day. So he put it on our 100 things to do this year list. That's right. For St. Patrick's Day, we would celebrate by going to church. And we will not understand one word because it's all spoken in Gaelic. Who needs green beer when you've got holy communion? And some people think we're not fun!

I admit I was not particularly excited about this task, just as I feel those Sundays when Dan drags me to church (here we were on a Wednesday!), but it was fine. The church was filled with old-school Irish people who all seemed to know each other, and they handed out pamphlets so you could follow along in English. The mass was certainly enhanced by the bag piper, because really, everything is better when there's a bag piper. You did get a sense of community in there, an Irish pride that seemed genuine (and not a get drunk ploy), and so the whole experience made me appreciate the holiday just a little bit more. But don't expect me to be back next year.


Dan in front of St Agnes Church in midtown.


Me checking out the bag piper.

Oscar results

Dan and I never went to our Oscar party but of course we watched the Oscars and played our pool. I was the winner with a score of 18-14. Did you have any doubts?


I thought Sandra looked pretty. I liked the pink lipstick.

Gotta Dance!

Understandably, it's been a surreal week. I am not sure if Dan and I truly comprehend that Tom is gone. Sometimes we'll just be sitting there in our living room, our eyes will catch each others and we will shake our heads in disbelief, thinking the same thing. It all seems so stupid and senseless.

We were hoping to go to the funeral in Dallas, but the airfare prices were beyond our means, so we were glad when some of Tom's friends put together an impromptu wake at Chez Josephine, one of Tom's favorite restaurants. His father, mother, sister and twin brother were in town, so it felt comforting to pay our respects and have a drink with all of Tom's friends--he had so many. For a man who loved weddings, Tom hated funerals so having the occasion at the restaurant seemed fitting, especially since the waiters who were serving us actually knew who Tom was and said he was so great. Yes, Tom was the type to become a restaurant regular at a classy French joint, so it is perfect.

With Tom gone, it does seem to be the end of an era. Tom's roommates are probably giving up the apartment on Waverly at the end of the month (which was coincidence that their lease is over). We had so many great memories in that apartment, not to mention that it was the site for Dan's weekly poker game. Tom was kind of the center of poker in that group, so it's uncertain if or where the game will go on. And regardless, when we get together, apartment or no apartment, poker or not, it will always feel like there is someone missing.

To bring us some levity this week, Dan and I decided to go to our first dance lesson. We're not planning to do a formal first dance at our wedding, but we do want to look good on the dance floor, especially since most of the music will be New Orleans style, so we decided to take some swing dance lessons. Even though learning how to dance is on the 100 things to do list, let the record state that this was all Dan's idea. I had suggested a few months ago that we go away for the weekend, and he said, no, I want to use the money on dance lessons. He did all the research and booked our class. Not that I am complaining. I love it. My insta-love stems from 15 years of dancing school as a kid tied into my love of Gene Kelly and Hollywood musical dance numbers. It's my fantasy come true. I always wanted to be one of those girls in that old-school Gap khaki commercial.



Dan is such a perfectionist that I think he was little irritated that he didn't know how to dance after the first lesson. I hope that he doesn't get too frustrated because I like him as my partner. I think it's embarrassing that most Americans don't know how to dance (me included). I think it should be taught in schools along with foreign languages as a requirement. Dan wondered out loud if any of our other guests knew how to dance properly besides the older folk and the Europeans and then we remembered: Tom. He sure knew his way around a dance floor. At Kim and Nien's wedding, he asked Kim's mom to dance and I had already warned my mom, "hey, there's going to be this guy who you don't know who will ask you to dance."

We'll try to make him proud.

A real gentleman

I am sad to write that our friend Tom died over the weekend. He was 28 years old.

Tom was celebrating his birthday on Saturday night, as usual, with a party at his apartment on Waverly Place. It was a pretty low-key event by Tom's standards. Usually his parties are packed with tons of people, but this one was fairly mellow--maybe 10 people total. Dan and I hung out on the couches, had a few drinks and then left around one in the morning. About an hour later, Tom decided to fool around with a fire extinguisher and shoot at some unsuspecting people walking on the street. He went on the fire escape, lost his balance and fell six stories to the ground. The ambulance came right away, but it was too late. He didn't make it.

We heard about Tom the next morning, and now, even 24 hours after hearing the news, I still can't process it. How could this happen? Being one of Dan's poker buddies, Tom definitely became an important part of our social circle in recent years and we saw him all the time. How could Tom be gone, and in such a crazy way?

I never met anyone like Tom before. He was raised in Texas, and he prided himself to be a Southern gentleman. He was incredibly courteous and gracious in an over the top way, always giving compliments and doling gifts and going out of his way to make everyone happy. He loved to host parties and treat his friends to dinner. He was the one who took us out to The Yacht Club to celebrate our engagement and had a hand in organizing many gatherings and celebrations, including Dan's birthday at Peter Luger steakhouse.

A true romantic, he was planning to move to Paris this summer. He told me the night of his party that he wanted to go there and fall in love with a french girl. That was the sort of thing Tom would say with complete sincerity. He would tell me all the time how much he admired my relationship with Dan, and anytime he would come over our apartment and I would cook dinner for us, he would act like it was the most amazing thing in the world. The next day, he would always write me a thank you note. He was a very classy guy.

He loved weddings and asked about mine constantly. That night, as he often did before, he told me how he wanted to help out the day of the event, whatever I needed him to do, even if it was picking up our guests at the airport. Dan and I had talked about how we would ask Tom to help out, and last night, when I considered for the first time that Tom wouldn't be there, dressed in his seersucker suit and his signature flip flops (the ones he wore both summer and winter), I finally cried for the first time.

This morning, I found his email invite to the party in my in-box:

march 6th marks the anniversary of the fall of the alamo. where 186 brave texians died after a collective YEE-HAW was said.

it is also my birthday. please prepare your wits, liver, and regret for an epic party. for it will be my last in new york, as I intend to move to paris this summer.

we will drink at waverly for most of the night, and may head to highlands bar at 150 west 10th street if we get bored around midnight.

tom

p.s. as a random side note, my notary stamp expires on march 13, 2010. it would be hilarious if anyone brought documents for me to sign at said party.

We never made it to the Highlands and as far as I know, no one brought anything to sign.

When Dan and I were leaving the party, Tom gave me a box of Italian candy he bought on a recent trip in Rome (he always remembered my sweet tooth), and shoved an entire bottle of Jaigermeister in Dan's hands to take home, just because. Tom walked us to the door, and Dan asked him if they would be playing poker as usual on Tuesday. "We'll talk about it tomorrow at the Oscar party," Tom called down the stairs. That was the last we heard from him.


Tom, on his recent trip to Italy.

I can't believe you're gone. We'll miss you.