Princess of the World

So one of the reasons that I haven’t posted much this summer is that work has been eating up my whole life. Actually, that’s only partly true, I haven’t been posting much because work was nuts, I’m pretty lazy and the longer you leave it the harder it is to post. Anyway, don’t make a big deal of it internet. We’ll never fight again ‘kay?

The short story of the whole summer is I have been promoted and am now the Manager of Events at the square. Hurrah!

The longer version… I started as a Seasonal Event Coordinator at one of the City squares here about two and a half years ago. Through the power of persuasion (Boobs! Wine! Fantastic competence and appropriate resume!) I convinced them I should be full time and they agreed and made me a permanent position, so for the last two years I have been a full time Event Coordinator.

When the old Manager left in May I took over his position (as the Acting Manager) whilst continuing to do my old job. Still all of my events to shout at and cajole, but now a squillion other things at the same time. It was pretty nuts and I worked my ass off with not enough hours in the day to get things done (except for mastering the margarita, there seemed to be enough hours for practicing that). It was a frantic summer for everyone in the office and everyone worked their butts off to get us through.

Many, many people (like STOP already people!) applied for the job when it was posted a few weeks back so I’m thrilled to have gotten it (and I had to apply and interview for it like everyone else, thanks City regulations, that’s awesome of you). It was a logical step in terms of my career progression and when it looked like the opportunity might arise I grabbed it with both hands and worked like a mother fucker to make sure my skills were shiny and my eyebrows plucked (that is not true, my eyebrows are, uh, Rubenesque?)

But now my weeks are less frantic, my days a little less endless and come January I’ll have a chance to sit back and think about what this all means, what I can do with the extra hours in my day and with a little more routine.

Top of the list for next year:
A trip to Mexico with my lover in the winter, to sit on a beach and drink tequila and read trashy books.
More tennis lessons so I can serve the stupid ball with a little less humiliation.
Weekends away at a cottage in summer with lili and other delightful masters and margaritas (ha!)
Good hair, SURELY it’s my year for good hair.
Have a fan-fucking-tastic 5th wedding anniversary with my sweet ass husband.

I know there’ll be so many more adventures and I look forward to discovering them. It’ll be another busy year (when is it not?) but I’m looking forward to it. Can’t. Fucking. Wait.

Feel the Ruben my friends, believe in the majesty...

So, we did this weight loss pool thing based on this article from the NY Times in February. I sent it to GB and bish bash bosh! a bunch of us fatty boombas (all from his work except me) put in $50 each and whoever lost the greatest percentage of weight in 8 weeks won all the money. It was a great kick in the ass for summer as most of the winter I didn’t wear a coat, I just rolled my fat wherever I needed it to be and it kept me warm.

I lost 20 pounds in the 7.5 weeks. I did it by exercising a lot and eating well (it’s pretty much rocket science, I don’t expect you to understand). 63 visits to the gym in that time and my first 10km run through the City.

My goal with the run was to trip up the Kenyans and take home the gold. Unfortunately they ran it in slightly UNDER half the time it took me to run it so I didn’t get a chance to trip them because I never saw them. I did trip a random tourist who was wearing a Richard Pryor tshirt, just to prove I could. I also had an excellent rabbit to chase in the morbidly obese man in bright red shorts who managed to be in front of me the whole fucking race. Seriously. Obese. Terrible red shorts. Kicked my ass. I ran it in 1 hour and 41 seconds. A miracle of some sort I think. By kilometre 9 I decided that the man in the red shorts was probably Gwyneth (fucking) Paltrow in disguise again, this time for some sort of thought provoking and suicide inducing blog entry.

I had a running partner with me too, which made the whole thing much more fun. She is a teeny tiny Japanese lady who, based on my rapidly declining and her ever increasing energy levels throughout the race, somehow sucked out my energy in some sort of Japanese ninja vampire thing and used it to her advantage. Cheeky.

In all seriousness I’m really really proud of myself, especially given I hadn’t run for two whole months due to my ridiculous geriatric type knee injury. The night before the race I found a miracle thingy that enables me to exercise without crippling knee pain due to having wonky slack jawed yokel knees. If you have tracking problems, please buy this. It helped me a lot. GBe took these but there’s not many as we were running SO INCREDIBLY FAST THE CAMERA SHUTTER COULD BARELY KEEP UP. I look like I’m about to eat Irene in at least two of the five photos.

The pool has been over for two weeks now. I didn’t win, some dick took up Atkins (which he is claiming is a good healthy weight loss)(seriously whipped cream okay, brown rice bad? Please. That guy is a heart attack in bad east coast jeans, 39 pounds in 7.5 weeks? Come on). (Also, despite the tone of this post, we like him even if he is a (really, really skinny) jerkface). He lost an incredible amount of weight and I just didn’t have it in me to eat any less and I couldn’t quite bring myself to not have a glass of wine on the weekend. Is all good. I am still working out every day (one day off a week of course), but it’s SUCH a joy not to go to the gym twice a day. Holy moly that was hard work. I look pretty good though and I hope to sleep better and to make it through the summer feeling a little less exhausted after a 65 hour week.

Tomorrow morning I meet with Eurotrainer. He’s a trainer at my gym who seems to do horribly unpleasant things to his clients, all the while looking on with long, wavy flowing black hair and a miscellaneous European accent. I feel like I’m gonna be doing some push ups and he’ll be quietly explaining how Serbia is going down because he’s gotta plan…

Work is suddenly bananas again. Not much to say about that yet. Hours have crept back up and I already have nearly a week in lieu time built up. Am hoping by the end of summer I have three or so weeks in lieu plus vacation time? That’ll cover my trip to Australia and a week off for when Daaaaaria comes. Daria’s coming! Hurrah! I’m practicing my margaritas already.

Alright. I broke the drought on blog posts. I can write again soon now. Thanks for coming by! I’ll update again this weekend with tales of gardening (by gardening I mean stabbing those little squirrel plant ruiner motherfuckers with my rake and hanging them on the fence so the other little fuckers learn) and Eurotrainer. I can’t quite come up with the perfect name for him yet, Euro-something. Trainer isn’t quite right. I am trying out The Eurovision. Suggestions?

This smile is because I ate fries for the first time in 2 months. All of the fries.