January 2020
Oh man, where do I begin? Seems like a silly question given this post is called January 2020, but given the current state of the world I think it’s valid. Current me is in the last days of April. The burning questions bouncing ceaselessly around my mind are “When is this going to end?” “What will be on the other side?” There was no preparation that could have been done as of Jan 2020 and I still don’t have the answer to those questions. The month didn’t start off with any indication of how abruptly and significantly things would change.
As of 12:01 am January 1st of 2020 I was standing next to my husband of less than a year. He was sitting at the Oleana bar, where I work. I love my job here. It’s the first time I’ve ever worked at a Mediterranean restaurant and the food is incredible. I’ve also never worked with such a wonderful collection of strong, capable, and empowering women. The entire staff as a whole is one of the most cohesive teams I have the pleasure of doing what I love with. Hospitality.
When time allows, we walk to the big gold balloons in the main dining room that have been hung in celebration and take our turn posing in front of them. I’m still in my uniform, happy to be where I am, when I am, and with the people I’m surrounded by. I think back to where I was at the strike of midnight the year before and am happy I am no longer there. Excited about having just finished a bang-up mish-mash of weeks that was non-stop travel, house guests, working, and moving to a new apartment, I happily think of my upcoming travels.
A week later I am on a plane to New Orleans. I am so stoked to see my long-time friends from Kansas, and to eat and drink my way through the city with them. We are celebrating one of their birthdays and the first vacation in years for the other one. It’s 3 fabulous ladies in fabulous NOLA who are so thrilled to be spending time together. It’s not super hot, it’s slightly over cast and just a tad drizzly, and it is amazing! If you are looking for good food, New Orleans is your spot. Good drinks however, are hit and miss. Perhaps more on that in a different post.
The rest of the month is filled with work, lots of work, and lunch dates since my nights are spent at work. Theres a theme here! Somehow I manage a happy hour with friends and since Sunday’s tend to be the only day off that my husband and I have together, we cherish that day. Several weeks prior I had signed us up for the Beat the Blerch half marathon thats in September. It was our goal to start running, now that the move and array of traveling bookended by house guests is (mostly) over. September seems so far away and if given the chance to run or not run, I usually tend to error on the side of not running. So I need to start running now if I am to be physically capable of running the entire 13.1 miles, later. That my goal. I’m gonna be honest. I don’t think I ran once in January. I was very busy planning the next trip! It’s a pretty big trip, so I guess I can’t be bothered with running when Europe is so soon in my future.
January ends just like it began. Life is clicking on just as I prefer; an endless stream of work flowing into friends flowing into travel. Moving to a new apartment during the holidays was just the right amount of added stress that helps someone like me be ultra productive in ways that I want to be. It was full of the things I love the most. Oh and we got some house plants…finally! We had seen a headline about another SARS virus somewhere in the Wuhan province of China. Nothing to be concerned about for where we are planning to travel.
