This year, we're on the top floor of a five-floor walk-up that traps and holds heat for days after the heat waves are over. If it was 96° on Monday, and 79° on Friday, you better believe it's still about 88° in our apartment, with the windows open at the front and the back and the fan on.
Every night when I come home from work, I'm soaked in sweat from waiting on two different train platforms and squishing in packed train cars full of irritated (and oftentimes unnecessarily rude) New Yorkers. Then after the short walk to the apartment, and five flights of stairs, I do everything I possibly can to resist the urge to turn on the air conditioner we have in one of our bedroom windows. Luckily, our (now) smaller apartment has doors to each room and we can shut the door between our living room and our spare room and cool the living room and the bedroom with this one unit. However, if I don't have to use it, I really try not to. Because I fear the electric bill that's coming our way. That August 2012 Con Ed bill will be in my mind until fall, when we can pack up the AC for yet another long, cold, brutal winter. I have yet to decide if I hate Manhattan summers or winters more. Why can't it be spring or fall all year long?
Now that I've wasted all this space talking about the weather, sweat, and bills... something a little more fun?
Let's see... in the past month I've been absent, I...
- finished the developmental edit of Sara's young adult book and resubmitted it on her behalf for consideration! I'm very proud of Sara and her revised novel and I do hope that if my company can't take it, it'll find a much-deserved home elsewhere. Beta readers have confessed to falling in love with the main male character, and I think that's a really great sign for a YA book. Some of my favorite YA books of the past have been the ones in which the main characters have made me swoon.
- [sticking with the YA theme] got my very first YA assignment at work! I'll be conducting the content edit of a Spring 2014 YA book and then another, more senior editor will be doing the line editing and what not. I'm excited about this one, because my main interest (in reading and, I think, writing) is young adult, so the more titles I can get my hands on, the better. If I do well, perhaps I'll pick up my own assignments and acquire a few of my own titles.
- had an "unofficial" one-year review. My one-year full-time anniversary with the company was July 2, so I bugged my director for a review of some sort. Even though "official" reviews are to be conducted for everyone in December, we sat down for a little while and talked. Everything went really well, and I'm more than satisfied with the outcome. I'm now in a better place than I was at my last job, even though I'm working roughly 60 hours a week and doing four times the work. But... whatever.
- received a surprise, handwritten letter from my grandfather, thanking me for his Father's Day card and other sweet sentiments. It ended mid sentence and wasn't signed, but it was cute nonetheless. I wrote back. But have yet to receive a reply. The Pony Express must be slow...
- was able to spend a very long weekend with Matt and my family!
- Matt miraculously has July 4 off, so we were able to spend an entire weekday together. It feels like it was such a long time ago (I honestly can't even really remember what we did), but I know it was much-needed and I think sandwiches and BLTs were involved. Actually... BLTs were definitely involved because we ate them late and left the racks/pans in the sink to soak... for five days. It was not fun scraping the grease off those by myself when I got back from PA. Oh, and we saw a children's movie. Because we're still children.
- On July 5, I went home for four whole days. I haven't been in W-B for that long since before I moved to New York. I was able to finally see Steff and Fred's house (so cute!) and spent quite a bit of time with the family. It was really great to see my grandparents, though circumstances could've been a bit better... On Sunday, Matt joined us and we both burned our pale selves at the pool. We caught up with some friends and made a new one, I came face-to-face with the biggest dog I've ever seen, and we had a lot of fun. It's difficult to come back here after a weekend like that. Not because we question if we did the right thing in moving away (we did), but because we're reminded that those closest to us aren't a simple drive away. It costs lots of money and a fair amount of time to go home, and not being able to just hop in my car and drive three blocks is sometimes difficult for me. And I know it is for him, too, especially since he lived in the house he grew up in right up until he moved out here for/with me.
- started editing a whole foods/real foods/Kosher nutrition book that is totally starting to get to me. Not that I'll ever eat Kosher, but I can see the benefits of it and the whole "eat natural" thing is really appealing. I can never be one of those people who examines every single label for multiple things (looking up calories is hard enough!), but the idea of eating more fruits and veggies is definitely worth looking into. And is probably something I should've been doing for years now. I also started making smoothies! And if you've spoken to me in the last week, you know all about this. Because I feel healthy and proud, even though they're the simplest things in the world to make. Right now, I'm just on a fruit/yogurt/ice kick, but maybe someday I'll experiment with the greens...
- went to my first Comic Con! It was a little one, and it was the last day, but it was still... I'll use the word interesting. We'll definitely go to more, as this is still a shared interest, but I definitely didn't feel like I... fit in. There's a whole spectrum of people who attend these events, and we're definitely at the end that involves not dressing in costume, not waiting in line for two hours to spend five seconds with the cast of The Walking Dead or the Fonz, and not recognizing the names of comic book illustrators. But it was still fun to pass by booths and be like "Oh, look, it's Carl!"
- have run two miles without stopping multiple times! I'm currently entering the last week (Week 9) of the Couch to 5k app. I technically started the last week of April, so it's been longer than nine weeks (repeat work outs, days off, laziness, etc.), but the important thing is that I'm about to finish this program. When I first started it, I really wanted to finish, but I wasn't entirely sure I would. I start a lot of exercise programs, diets, etc. and end up getting too lazy, distracted, or busy to follow through. But I think the fact that I could just stick ear buds in and go and have someone else tell me what to do and when to do it really helped. And also, if you haven't noticed by now (GoodReads, this blog, daily planners, MyFitnessPal, my special dates on Facebook...), I like to record/log things. And the fact that this keeps a record of every single workout really helps me. Since I started, I've walked/jogged (jogs only the past three weeks) 52.3 miles in 12 hours and 54 minutes.
- I am no where near actually being able to run a 5k, which is the disappointing part. My pace is still super slow, and the app only tracks you for a half hour, so at my pace, I can't reach the 3.1-mile target, but as soon as I finish this, I'm going to switch to Nike+ and see if I can eventually work my way up to it. The farthest distance I've run so far is 2.06 miles and that was in 28 minutes. So I have to add another mile or so, so maybe after a few weeks, I can do a 5k in 45 minutes or fewer? We'll see.
- The fact that I'm even disappointed that I am able to jog only two miles without stopping is another point worth discussing. Like... what?! Two miles without stopping? Are you kidding me?! For a kid who hated running two single laps around the soccer field at the beginning of every high school soccer practice, this is incredible. I used to want to fall over and die after those two laps, and now I can probably do forty of them without any issues. A few weeks ago, I was in W-B and I went jogging with my mom. And I think I was on something like, Week 4 of the program, and it had an eight-minute stretch in it. And I kept telling her, "I've never run that long before; I don't know if I can do it." And now... I march home all pissy when I can't beat 2.06 in a half hour. I can laugh at this, so I still have a healthy perspective, but I can guarantee that if I can't get my distance up soon, I will become obsessed. And we will have issues.
- scored a $1 bus ticket to go see Michele in Maryland this weekend! I had been planning to go Friday night into Sunday morning, but when I saw the $1 ticket available for Saturday morning, we adjusted our plans accordingly. I don't think we've seen each other in... definitely more than a year. There was a Dunkin visit when I still lived in W-B and she was in State College and visiting her family, but before that, we haven't spent any significant time together since I went to see her in State College the summer of 2011. I told her the other night that a lot has changed since then, for the both of us. I spent the entire drive to her place that summer blasting Bayside's Killing Time and Something Corporate's Leaving Through the Window and just bawling my eyes out because Matt was in Vegas with his friends and we were pretty much broken up. I was miserable, I was socially awkward (we went to a BBQ; if I remember correctly, I didn't speak much), and I don't know how she and Joe put up with me. I don't even know how I put up with me that summer. Ugh, gross. But I digress... she took me to a discount bookstore and the rest of the trip went really well. I probably haven't read a single book I bought that day, but it's the memory that counts! Back then, she was managing a store in the SC mall and contemplating going back to school. Since then, we've both moved to totally different states, we've both made major career decisions (me to intern, which led to full-time work, her to start working again), and we've both adopted a more active lifestyle, though she's ahead of the game on this one. It'll be great to spend some time together (a whole 18 hours together? if my bus is on time? minus sleep...) and just catch up.
