Running

I made a friend a few weeks ago who trains with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Team in Training.  She recently ran the San Diego half marathon, and ran a full marathon back in January.  The great thing is, when she's not running with her team, she does shorter runs during the week, and when we met I mentioned how I wish I had someone to run with.

So this past week she invited me to go running with her.  We hopped onto the Streetcar tracks on St. Charles Ave and ran about a mile and a half uptown, and a mile and a half back, and I really enjoyed it.  We set up a planned interval for running and walking, and I think it made running easier and made me run faster this way.  I can't wait to go running again next week with her!  Running partners give me so much more motivation, and who knows, maybe one day I'll run a marathon.

My Jeep!

My Jeep finally arrived to New Orleans today.  I signed for it at lunch time but the battery was dead.  I got home from work, and it still wouldn't start.  Chiso came by and gave me a jump.  With it finally running we brought it to Autozone to replace the battery... it had absolutely zero charge.  After all that car drama, we finally got it figured out, took it home, and brought my rental back to the airport.  I finally have my car back, and no longer have to drive a silly rental.  I may need to repair the a/c, replace the rearview mirror, fix the antenna, headlight, reverse light, subwoofer, and spare tire... but it's finally here!

I am so happy! (:

Bar Crawls and Friends

Last Saturday I met up with a friend for lunch on St. Charles Ave. for a good salad and a beer.  My healthy afternoon turned into a crazy night.  Since I was already on St. Charles I decided to meet up with my roommate, Ryan, who was participating in the 610 Stompers Bar Crawl.  So I hopped on the streetcar and got off at Fat Harry's where I found hundreds of people with matching t-shirts, mustaches, and beers dancing down the street to their next stop on their crawl.  It was crazy, everyone was drinking, dancing, and just crowding one of the busier streets in the city.  It poured down rain, I got soaked, but that did not stop me from dancing from one bar to the next with the crowd.  It was a lot of fun and I got to make friends with some of Ryan's friends.  Needless to say I did absolutely nothing on Sunday until Ryan convinced me to go running with him.

This past Friday night Chiso and I went out for drinks, and to find out how small this city (world) actually is, we ran into a bunch of people from work.  It was completely random, but we happened to all be at the same bar.  It was a lot of fun, we all decided to hang out together and head down to a late night bar for some dancing.  It's even smaller of a world because once we got there we ran into one of Chiso's co-workers.  It was a completely random night, but a good time in the Garden District that night.

Houston Road Trip

I love when random things happen and awesome things fall into place.  Chiso was driving out to Houston this weekend for a wedding he was going to.  Suzzy had an interview on Thursday and has another one on Tuesday in Houston, and over the weekend was staying with our friends from college, Diego and Nicole. At around 10pm Friday night I decided I'd carpool out to Houston with Chiso and spend Saturday with Suzzy, Diego, and Nicole, then we'd drive back on Sunday.  Five exciting hours later we hit the road and made it there by morning.  We went to breakfast at Taco Cabana, picked up some beer at the store, and relaxed most of the day at Diego's gooorrggeeoouuss house with their two tiny and adorable puppies, Lua and Mia.  Saturday night we bbq'ed, played apples-to-apples, drank beer, and made our way to a dueling piano bar.  It was an absolutely awesome night.  This morning, Chiso picked me up around 10:30 and we made our way back to New Orleans.  The ride out was fine, but the ride back was just a little more interesting.  After two near death experiences, evading the police because "black people don't like cops", and a whole lot of sarcasm, I finally made it home alive.  Needless to say, I had an awesome weekend.

Memorial Day Weekend

This weekend was another adventure.  Friday during work, one of my coworkers mentioned a bunch of them were going on a canoe trip, and I was more than welcome if I wanted to come.  This gave me the perfect chance to interact on a social level with my brand new coworkers.  So Saturday morning I jumped in a car with a few guys I work with, and we drove to Mississippi to paddle down Wolf River.  It was a fun day: paddling, flipping, drinking.  Later that night, after ten miles, we camped on a beach, lit a bon fire, made some hot dogs, and ate everything sandy.  It was a lot of fun.  We woke up on Sunday, and paddled five more miles to the end.  I made a few more friends, met some cool people, and had a lot of fun.

Last night, I met up with a couple new friends for some drinks and crawfish.  I had my first crawfish experience at Lucy's in the Central Business District (CBD).  It was scary at first because I felt like it was looking at me, but in the end they were absolutely delicious.  My roommate Ryan met up with me, and took me for my first Bourbon St. experience.  So far.... Bourbon St. 1 vs 0 Ashley.  It was a fun night, but a super rough morning.

So far though, I think I've caught the bug.  I had a very fun second weekend in New Orleans.

Getting to New Orleans

So if you’ve ever read either of my last two blogs, you’ll know that I grew up in NJ, went to college in Philadelphia, moved to Los Angeles for grad school, moved to St. Croix USVI to work, got laid off from my job cause the plant shut down, and left the island.  So here I am now, in my forth location in only two years, but I think this time will be a little more stable.

My job at Hovensa ended on April 20^th, and the next month was nothing but vacation.  I stayed on the island for a week and just soaked up the last bit of how amazing that place was as much as I could.  Even though there was a lot of packing and goodbyes, it was still a great week filled with diving, eating, drinking, beach lying, and relaxing.  I left on the 30^th for home in New Jersey, via the Philadelphia International Airport, which turned out to be the best place I could come into around 5:30pm, since Dollar Dog Night at Citizen’s Bank Park started at 7pm.  Sarah picked me up and we went to the XFinity Live Center while we waited for Amanda to arrive.  The three of us went to the game, ate our fair share of hotdogs, drank our fair share of beers, and got home just around midnight.  I was so happy to be able to spend the first few hours of being home with my sisters.  I miss them a lot all the time.  The rest of the week was filled with catching up with family, catching up with friends, adventuring in Philadelphia and New York City, and one more baseball game.  Then it was off to San Francisco and the town of Mountain View, California.  I stayed with my soul-mate, Lisa, since we can never (and should never) be separated, which was so much fun, then caught up on my last night with Melissa from USC.  I arrived back at LAX, where I said my last good-byes to the City of Angels not even a year ago, Friday afternoon.   I had forgotten how insane the traffic is in that city, but I quickly remembered.  First order of business was dinner with Carson, which was a very sad good-bye in July, because I wasn’t sure when I’d see him again.  I was very excited and very happy to be reunited with such a good friend.  I got to meet up with all of my favorite USC ChE PhD kids Saturday night, which is just what I needed after not seeing all of them for so long.  The grand finale of my cross-country vacation was a reunion with my California roommate, also known as Jesse, also known as Rooms.  I definitely missed him so much, and it was so nice to see his mom, meet his new girlfriend, and just enjoy LA the way I used to with him.

I got to New Orleans on Tuesday, May 15^th.  Spent the week exploring, apartment hunting, and meeting new people.  Already on Wednesday there was something interesting going on.  I met up with Chiso from St. Croix and his friend and her friend for an outdoor concert downtown.  Apparently, there is always a different festival happening every other weekend in this town.  I think I’m going to love it here.  Chiso helped me move into my new sublet on Saturday, and my roommate seems decently better than par, which further enhances my expectations to always have cool roommates.  So far, this city has a lot to offer me.

Side-note: Nola is a good city to move to after living on an island with no open container laws.  The transition is so much easier.

I started work on Monday for ExxonMobil in Chalmette, which is approximately ten minutes outside of the city.  I’ve made some friends, met some cool people, work with some nice engineers, and am having an overall good time adjusting.  This weekend I’m actually going on a canoe trip with some coworkers and their friends.  I guess those details will come next.

In general, The Big Easy is an easy city to live in, and I’m definitely going to have a lot of fun in this festival town.