Yes, I promised this recap quite some time ago. Yes, I then went totally AWOL on my blog. Yes, I suppose that this means that I hate you all. But, I am back, to atone for my sins. With pictures! So many pictures…

When we last met our heroine, she was back from a spur of the moment trip to NYC. And she was rather hungover. And phone-less.

I (eventually) un-hungovered up. And I also (even more eventually) got my phone back. But then ennui set in and I didn’t post anything about my trip. There was also a small matter of a trip to CT for not one, but two weddings. So, yeah, I’ve been a wee bit busy.

Now, with my apologies and half-baked excuses out of the way, I present…

NYC! In pictures!

When we got to the airport, our plane was not there. So, we spent some time hanging out in the lounge area. Where there was free coffee. And free cookies. You can’t go wrong with free cookies. Someday, I want to be rich and famous so that I can have free cookies whenever I fly. Sure, I’ll be rich and able to afford my own damn cookies. But they taste so much better when you don’t have to pay for them. I don’t think that the calories count either.

We passed the time by looking at an aviation map and having flight path rules explained to us.

I swear, my eyes only glazed over a little. No, that’s a lie. They didn’t glaze over at all. What can I say? I’m a nerd.

Then, we went out to the plane. The other best thing about flying on a private plane? No security checks. I didn’t have to take off my shoes or anything. And I didn’t have to leave my AK-47 at home.

Random shot of our plane:

The other best thing about flying in a private plane? No liquid bans. I brought this whole bottle of water onboard with me.

Good thing, too, because I got parched as shit up there.

Here are some more random photos:

Our pilot, Baker:

Me, wearing a cool head-set and looking a bit like a pig:

Some random aerial photos:

The flight was quite smooth. This is evidenced by the fact that Danica totally fell asleep. Me? I spent the whole time watching out the window and then grabbing my arm rest when we had the slightest bit of bumpiness. Yes, I am that flier.

Baker’s flight instructor, Rudi, was very sweet and seemed to enjoy ferrying our stupid asses around. Unfortunately, Danica appears to have the only photos that we took of him. I hope to rectify this at some point. He really deserves to be immortalized in blog form.

Lens flares make all pictures of pretty girls in front of planes 100% more awesome. This is a scientific fact.

The other best thing about flying in a private plane? Free candy in the airports.

Yes, I am a sucker for free sugar. No, I will not apologize for it.

We took a car service to the train station. Then we took a metro north train into the city. I attempted to call everyone I know in NYC to see if they wanted to go out with us, but nobody answered. Except for my sister. Who has a two-year-old. Which apparently makes it very difficult to go out drinking at the last minute. Something about lack of a babysitter and chronic sleep-deprivation and all that. She did promise to come out with us next time we show up in NYC on a spur of the moment trip on a private plane.

I am sooo holding her to that.

So, yeah, I’ve got friends who don’t like to answer their phones. Or I don’t really have friends (Danica accused me of this).

“Sure, Hope, all of your friends are randomly not picking up. Why don’t you stop calling information?”

Oh well, who needs friends when you have a practical stranger who decided to fly you down to NYC for a night of drinking? We went to meet Baker’s wife at a tattoo parlor. She was getting a very awesome bug tattoo done on her foot. Apparently it was very itchy.

I resisted the urge to get a bunch of spider-webs tattooed on my elbows. Or “Mom” tattooed on my bicep. Or “Kristian 4 EVA!!” tattooed on my chest (bonus points if they spelled his name wrong). Instead, we paged through the books and I reconfirmed my desire to never have any fairies tattooed anywhere on my person. Or anything tribal. Or any cartoon characters.

(but the tasmanian devil is just so klassy!)

After the tattoo business was over, we got down to serious business. And my serious business, I mean copious amounts of drinking. We met Baker and his wife’s friends at a bar called Rodeo, where they apparently are good friends with the bartender. Just as an FYI, free drinks + friendly bartender = FAIL. And by FAIL, I mean hangovers are really not that fun. Although, we did have a good time with our new friends. I even drew on one of their toes.

He drew a sad face on one of his toes. I felt the need to counter balance this with a “grinning like a stupid idiot” face on his other toe. And then I felt the need to take a picture of this. Oh, tipsy logic, you never fail to amuse me.

At some point in the evening, we made our way to Baker’s place where we printed out our bus tickets. Except that we printed out the wrong page (EPIC FAIL!) (more on this later). We also checked out Baker’s awesome a/v equipment. And by “we,” I mean “Danica.” I used this opportunity to take a little nap.

After the grand tour/nap time, we hailed a cab and headed to the bus station. Where the not so friendly bus attendant refused to accept our confirmation page and forced us to buy a second set of tickets for the 3:30am bus. Even after I over-enthusiastically went on and on about how fabulous her hair was. Isn’t that breaking an unwritten girl rule? “Thou shalt not screw over another girl who has complimented your hair.”

Whatever, it was three in the morning and we needed to get our asses home. Greyhound had us in a vice grip and they knew it. Fuckers.

We made it to the bus where I, in a fit of selfishness, took the window seat and passed out but good. Danica had the unfortunate experience of spending the majority of the trip being tapped on the shoulder by the drunk guy across the aisle from us. Did I mention that our seat were next to the bathroom? For some reason, she still wishes to be my friend after all of this.

We pulled into Boston at about 8am and Kristian came and picked me up. Can I tell you how much I love that man? It takes a special kindof boyfriend to say “Sure, fly to NYC with some strange guy and spend all night drinking. I’ll pick you up early on Saturday morning when you’re completely hungover and smell like stale booze and a Greyhound bus (which pretty much smells like stale booze, but in a more concentrated form).”

Have I mentioned that I love that man?

So, that’s my trip in a nutshell with several poor quality iPhone pictures. I hope that it was worth the wait.

I’m back from NYC and I’m a wee bit hungover. And I can’t post any pictures, because I may or may not have left my phone there and it’s not getting mailed to me until Tuesday. Yeah, it was that kindof night. I’ll post a full entry about the craziness that was our Friday night, but I suppose that I shouldn’t keep you waiting any longer for an explanation about why we were down there.

I think that this trip might have been one of the most spur of the moment things I’ve ever done. Basically, we had a training through work and the trainer flew himself to Boston for it. During the course of the day, one of my coworkers made a joke about going to New York for the night and he said, “sure, why not?” She didn’t want to go by herself, so I graciously offered to take a free flight to NYC with her.

I know, I’m such a giving person.

I’ll post a full update when I have pictures to share.

Lisa, I’m going to torture you a little more. Full story when I have more to type on than an iPhone.

I am about to get on a tiny little private plane in order to go down to NYC for the night. It’s madness, I know!

I promise pictures and stories tomorrow.

But not the dairy kind. No, I am addicted to cheesy tv shows. The ones that are so incredibly over-dramatic, you’re embarrassed to admit to people that you watch them. Yes, I used to watch Crossing Jordan. Yes, it was unbelievably over the top. Yes, it often made me cry. Shut up, I found it to be very cleansing. It was like an emotional enema. Sure, it was over the top and you felt a little guilty for allowing it to get to you, but it provided a nice little opportunity to let whatever was really bothering you out. At the end of the hour, you felt like something had been flushed out of your system and you went on with your day feeling a little bit lighter.

Have I mentioned this before? I feel like I’m repeating myself, but I can’t find another entry in my archives. I suspect that I may be going senile.

Anyways, I loved Crossing Jordan and I miss it. Nothing else on tv is quite so over the top. Unless you want to start getting into Lifetime Movies and I just do not want to go there. That’s a bell that you can’t unring. And even I have my standards.

Why am I telling you all this? Because a couple of nights ago, Kristian and I watched a tv show and it hit a raw nerve and made me cry. And very much not in a good way. I enjoy shedding a few tears on the behalf of fictional characters and then moving on with my life. Full on sobs? Not so much my bag, baby. I’m not entirely sure why I felt that show so deeply, but I imagined myself as one of the characters (always dangerous when it’s an episode designed to be a tear jerker) and then I couldn’t stop crying. I think that Kristian thought that I had lost my mind. Maybe I had. I still felt drained and weepy an hour later.

In the interest of not spoiling the end of an episode that someone might want to watch later (the sad bits were all in the last 5-10 minutes), I’ll just say that somebody died and that somebody had a significant other and I somehow managed to put myself in that significant other’s shoes. And it felt very, very real. I’m not entirely sure why. I think that it might be because I’ve been reading this blog lately. A blog that is about losing your partner. A blog that is very much the definition of not cheesy or over the top but is, in fact, very poignant, sweet and strangely uplifting (I am constantly inspired by the fact that Matt is able to function. I would still be in a catatonic state if I were him).

I suppose that my small glimpse into the real life of a man who has lost his wife and who is making the best out of an incredibly shitty, unfair, fucked up situation just made watching the drama unfold on tv just a little too real. Kindof like how dead baby jokes probably aren’t all that funny to people who have lost a child. Ok, bad example, dead baby jokes aren’t funny to people who don’t have a fucked up sense of humor like I do. Also, I haven’t lost a partner, so this is all just me being really, really oversensitive. But you get what I mean.

I should probably consider getting a season pass for something lighthearted and fluffy. Actually, I should probably just watch less tv.