Some Time Alone

The Drive-In movie theatre night went great. We got there and pulled in just as the sun was setting. Chancho drove Mowgli aka his honda fit so we had a front row seat. Neither one of us had had dinner so we ventured over to the concession stand for dinner. This is what we ordered: One big bucket of popcorn, a hockey puck of a burger, popcorn chicken, two sides of fat fries and sodas. Finally settled into the car with the bucket of popcorn on my lap, with the cardboard case on top so I didn't drop my hamburger all over myself and our sodas precariously positioned in the middle console (the cup holders apparently don't hold cups bigger than small.) the radio starts talking. However, the screen is still blank in front of us. Turn to the left and that screen is still blank, turn to the right and that screen is the one talking to us. We pulled into the wrong section. So we had to reposition ourselves and drive over the right screen. Of course that would happen to us. We got to watch Going the Distance. It was cute. I laughed. That movie was for me the later showing was The Other Guys for Chancho, but we didn't wind up staying. He was too tired coming from a double the day before and working all day that day so we headed home. It's about a 45 minute drive home. I was happy.
Saturday, fight night, was alright. It was great seeing my siblings. I miss them and wish I lived closer to them. The fight was not worth it. In fact the commentators were apologizing for such a lame night. Chancho fell asleep during it and that was when I knew it was time for us to head home. We both had work early the next day and it was a hour and a half ride home. Happy I went though. I'm hoping for a better fight coming up on the 16th!
Now for the next adventure. We're driving up to Boston tomorrow. The Yankees play them tomorrow night and we got tickets! Wooohooo! The Yankees have once again made the playoffs, by some miracle. They have not been playing like the great Yankees, but I'll take it. We were supposed to leave today, but because Chancho had to miss class last week due to work, he can't miss it again this week so we're leaving directly after his class. I'll be going with him to class, or rather, sitting around while he's in class. Too bad I don't have a book for me to read.
In other news my roommate from college who came to visit last month is officially moving here!!! Two weeks away! I am beyond excited. I have to get her room ready for her, paint it, clean it out and buy new sheets. I'm also planning a surprise Welcome party for her. Give her a chance to meet a bunch of people so she has some familiar faces welcoming her. I also am a little nervous as to how this is going to effect Chancho and me. I'm definitely going to have to rework my time management skills because she's going to need a lot of support for the first couple of months that she's here, which means not a lot of time with Chancho. And I already don't get enough of that from him so we'll see how this turns out. I think that as long as we both can set aside one day out of the week where we are committed to seeing one another than we'll be fine. As I keep telling myself, it's just for right now and not forever.
With that being said I need to go pack for our mini vacay!

Quote of the Day: "Every day may not be good, but there's something good in every day."
Listening to: "Better Than" by John Butler Trio

Everything is Bigger in Texas

Apparently, shifting around in the back of Chancho's car this entire week has been this big heart shaped box filled with chocolate! Just waiting to be given to me. This was the first surprise.

Step one: I was told to get in the car. We drove to the train station and caught the express train into Grand Central. It was crowded so we had to stand. Interesting conversation happened while on the train. It went something like this:

Chancho: "Do you wanna do it now?"

Me: "What? No, I don't."  Man standing next to us, glares at us.

Chancho: "Well, okay do you want to wait til the next stop, that way we can get a seat in the back?"

Me: "No. We can wait til later." Man still glaring at us, shifting slightly away.

          Chancho: "Okay, fine. I just thought it would be good to do it now."

He then pulls out his lip medication. He had apparently been wanting me to put his medication on his cut. I can only put it on while he's sitting down and figured since we were on the train it would be more convenient than trying while we were walking in the city. I of course, wasn't thinking anything near that and apparently the guy standing next to us was afraid he might get a show himself. All I could do was laugh.

From Grand Central we hopped onto the subway and got off in Times Square and there we were. We walked a few steps and found our destination. Dallas BBQ. We walked in and they wanted to put us at a table right by the front door, but we both shook our heads no. We wanted something a bit closer to the back. Instead, they told us to take the elevator upstairs. Turns out there is a huge upstairs, just filled with tables. They were a little too close for comfort. I could join in on anyone's conversations if I felt like it. 

Here's how our night went: 

Welcome! Have a ginormous drink. I chose the Blue Hawaii (pina colada)

Chancho picked the Strawberry Long Island Iced Tea

Then came my dinner. Spare ribs, Chicken, french fries and corn bread. Yes, I ate the whole plate.

Chancho's dinner arrived soon after mine. Chicken, fried shrimp, french fries and corn bread. Yep, he too finished the plate clean. 

Round two of drinks

I opted for a regular size. Still pretty large in my book. I also switched to a Strawberry Daiquiri

And here ends our dinner. This is what our table looked like 2 hours later. Oh and those blue tubes on the table...Those are the shots of vodka that came in our drinks.

After being afraid to stand up after drinking so much, we stood our ground and took off for the movie theatre. Thankfully it was right next door. Valentine's Day was the movie that he picked out. The theatre was packed. We had a guy sitting behind us that thought he was in his living room. He commented on EVERYTHING. I really could have done him harm. He didn't even have anything witty to say. There just wasn't a filter on his thinking. It was like he forgot that thinking meant to keep it inside your head. Other than that though, it was an okay movie, not the greatest and I wouldn't buy it, but it was appropriate for the date. 

From there we traveled back home. I loved it. It was perfect. A great night out with just the two of us. We were able to laugh and be ourselves, we didn't discuss anything heavy and we made it a fun night out.

I can say that this is one "holiday" that I don't mind celebrating, not on the actual day.

Listening to: "I Can't Help Falling In Love With You" by Elvis Presley

Quote of the Day: "I love every little thing about him. The good and the bad. They all make up him, and he's all I want." - Jacqueline Kelly

Date Night To Come

It's been a pretty hectic 2 weeks. Chancho and I haven't seen a lot of one another, except for the few precious moments here and there. Not a lot of quality time. I'm itching to have some alone time to catch up and reconnect. Perhaps tonight will satisfy that itch, but most likely, I'll have to wait til tomorrow. I've put Chancho in charge of creating this date night. He really only needs to call and make reservations, but we all know that sometimes that can be too much.
We received a gift certificate from our dear friend Zach's parents for the holidays. It's to a restaurant called Alaroma. We both have never been, but it's right down the road from Chancho's place. Figured we'd give it a shot, plus how can we pass up a free meal?? From looking at the website, it seems to be an Italian restaurant and we must have driven past it at least a hundred times. Hopefully it can turn into a good night with dressing up and ending with a movie. And on that note....Chancho did decide to delete the Netflix account. I was devastated to find this out. I watch movies online all the time from there and I am addicted to the seasons of Law and Order SVU. I had been watching it from the beginning and only made it to the end of season 2. We'll be renting from the RedBox instead now. It is a lot cheaper (dollar a night!), but not convenient. I think he secretly didn't want to watch the movies I put on the list. They'd just show up and he'd have no say in them. At least now we have to have a discussion about which movie we'll be watching or a good old fashion game of rock, paper, scissors will suffice.

I'm starting to feel a lot better. I have most of my energy back. I'm still coughing up my lungs here and there and my nose is running all over the place, but I can get out of bed and do what I need to do. I was lucky to make it to work and back again without making a mess of myself.

Listening to: "The Joker" unplugged by Steve Miller
Quote of the Day: “Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others.  If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter which fork you use.” ― Emily Post

Geocaching

It was a ridiculously busy Monday for me today. First it started with a quick visit to the dentist for Chancho. He's finishing up his last visits for his root canal. From there we took a trip to CUNY John Jay, the best criminal justice college in NY. Chancho is signing up for graduate classes, they're free through the lovely NYPD. It was a long drawn out trip. Chancho didn't make an appointment to meet with the guy so we had to wait for him to be free, but people kept showing up for their appointments so we got pushed back. Finally some other guy decided he would be able to chat with Chancho and it turns out that he just needed to fill out an application and we could be on our merry way. We also were able to fit in our movie night, or rather movie day. We watched I Love You Man. It is definitely a guys movie, but yet still funny and entertaining when in the right mood. The movie ended so early that we had so much time to kill. It was really the first time that we had free time to do whatever we wanted. Some guitar hero was played, but that didn't last long at all, our fingers started to cramp up. Here enters our new found hobby: Geocaching.

"Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online. Geocaching is enjoyed by people from all age groups, with a strong sense of community and support for the environment."

I learned of this through my brother, I've heard of him talk about it over and over again, but never really understood it or thought that it would be something I would want to do. However, in the middle of boredom and spontaneity we set out on our first Geocaching adventure. These are normally supposed to be done during daylight ours, but we figured we'd give it a shot in the dark anyways. The way it works is that off of the main website, after you sign up, you are able to see all of coordinates that people have hid their geocaches, or treasures. I wrote a few of these coordinates down that were nearby our location, thanks to their nifty finder tool. People that hide these containers can write whatever they want along with the coordinates, a clue, history, facts or tips. The first set of coordinates that I punched in had this clue along with it "face the guard and re-tree-v it." We got to the location thanks to our GPS and searched around a bit, but didn't find anything. I think that if we had flashlight it may have helped. It was just a road and off to the side was a guard rail and some trees, but nothing else. Normally these are done in the woods and off of trails in parks, but I guess because we do live in a growing city we have to use what we have. Not giving up so easily we punched in the next set of coordinates and continued on to our second find. It brought us to a park in the middle of the city and from where I was standing it was telling me that it was in the fountain. The fountain was empty, they turned it off for the season, but we didn't see anything in there. I'm not really sure what we were looking for, as they don't tell you, but I think that it usually is a lock box or something that can hold paper and a pencil so that you can write something down once you find it or leave something behind. None the less we didn't see anything. That's when we decided to call it a night. It was cold out tonight and we definitely weren't prepared for it. At least we were able to try it out and it was fun. I think we'll need to get a hand held GPS rather than a car one so that we'll have a better idea as to where we're supposed to be standing or walking. It was fun, if you're into doing things outdoors, you should give it a try and it's something that the whole family can do. It's a treasure hunt on a much larger scale! I cannot wait until we can do a longer one in the woods and actually find something.

Quote of the Day:  "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there."

Surprise Party

Today is a good friend's birthday, tomorrow is the actual get together to celebrate, but his loving girlfriend decided to have a surprise party tonight so that Chancho could make it! I'm very happy that he gets to celebrate with everyone. I can't wait to see the look on his face. He gets out of class and has to take the train home, so we'll all be able to be at his house without him knowing. I love surprising other people! It does however mess up our plans, but at least it's for a good cause.

We were supposed to do a dinner and a movie courtesy of Applebees. I'm not sure if other cities do this, but if you eat at Applebees they give you a discount on movie tickets. Normally, we wouldn't need to do that, but recently the movie theater we go to hasn't been honoring the $1 movie tickets with a NYC police badge. Which really is a bummer, it was such a great deal. The only catch is that you have to wait 2 weeks before getting the discount. It is good for the LEO and a guest. We've been to two movie theaters now and they both denied us. They're saying that it's only good for the local departments. I think all LEOs should be honored. They're doing the same thing as the local departments. Plus, I don't want to go to a movie theater in the Bronx.

Anyways, we'll be doing dinner and shopping for a birthday present instead. Hope you all have a great night!

Quote of the Day: "If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't do it any differently." – Playing by Heart

Duvet Day

I got called from work today and they asked me to stay home today. I am a little bothered by it, as I do need the money, but I can't hate having an extra day off. Although I was looking forward to going to the mall today for some Baby Yogurt. Baby Yogurt is my new fix. It's this yogurt that is frozen. It can come in plain, strawberry or chocolate. Every day they have a new flavor. On Friday it was mixed berry. It comes in the regular 3 sizes, small, medium, large. Along with your choice of flavor, you get 2 free toppings. The toppings they have are a wide variety. I always get strawberries and blueberries. So here I am at home and I have yogurt in the fridge so I put it in the freezer thinking that this would be somewhat similar, but I take it out put some granola in it and take a large bite and realize that it the yogurt had gone bad. There goes that idea.

Unfortunately the weather has turned to fall and I'm not sure what to do today. If the yogurt being spoiled is any sign as to how this day is going to be, I might as well just curl up on the couch, pop some popcorn and pull out the movies. Here's to a lazy day home!


Quote of the Day: "Your hair may turn gray, your skin may wrinkle, but you're never too old for romance" - Golden Girls