January 2021 – LongLegsBigCity

Long Legs and other Personal Problems, Miscellaneous

2020 Recap and Accomplishments

January 21, 2021 4 Comments

It’s January, which means RESOLUTION TIME!! Now, I understand it’s January 21^st so I’m a bit behind, but if you’ve been following along for a while, you’d know I actually hate resolutions. What I do love, is goal-setting. In the past few years, I’ve been keeping a list of goals in my bullet journal. Flipping to them periodically has helped keep me focused.

Unfortunately approximately 80% of my 2020 goals were unachievable because, well… ya know. Did I work out at 10 new fitness studios? No. Did I attend 100 bootcamp classes? No. Did I visit 4 new countries? Nope, not even one. Did I spend less than $400 on buying lunch for work? Sorta… because I didn’t actually GO to work for 5/6 of the year.

Anyway, I prefer not to talk about all of the goals I didn’t achieve. Yesterday was the beginning of a fresh start for our nation and for me. We are now focused on positivity. Therefore, I’d like to recap some of the amazing moments and achievements from 2020. Not all were planned, but I’m still proud of them! I invite you all to celebrate your 2020 accomplishments, big and small.

I Got Promoted

This is huge! Technically, I got the promotion in 2019, but my boss retired at the beginning of 2020 and I took on the reigns of the entire department alone. If you didn’t know, I work in career services so to say that my job was tough during 2020 when EVERYONE was seeking work and facing furloughs and pay cuts? Well, that would be the understatement of the century. It was hard. There were days when I felt 100 hours behind. But I did it! I was even rewarded with a raise.

I Got Engaged

Again, HUGE. Did we pick a date yet? No. Are we planning a wedding at all? Also no. Does it make living in a 500 square foot apartment with my fiancé any easier? No again. But I do have a gorgeous rock on my hand, and it looks FABULOUS in photos. Sometimes I look at it sparkling in the fluorescent lights and it makes me smile.

I Learned How to Do My Own Manicures

This may not be on par with the engagement and promotion, but it’s pretty darn cool. No one ever sees them IRL, but I do get comments about them sometimes on Zoom. Also, I started a 4^th Instagram for my nail photos, ManisInManhattan. I was looking for some home hobbies, and I found one plus I learned a new skill. It’ll probably save me money someday… after the initial investment of buying all the supplies.

I Achieved Net Zero

Speaking of saving money, somehow I achieved Net Zero. This is a massive feat if you know anything about my student loans. Not only did I achieve Net Zero, I surpassed it by many many miles. How? By barely spending any money. Getting a promotion. Not eating out. Not traveling. Not paying student loans thanks to Covid forbearance. Compound interest in my 401K (and maxing it out for the very first time!). Sure, I wish I had been traveling and eating at restaurants instead of saving money. But since I couldn’t, I am excited to have a much bigger pot for compound interest for the coming years.

I Kept Up with My Bullet Journal

In 2018 I gave up and swore off my Bujo. Then I tried it again in 2019 and liked it a bit more but also slacked. In 2020, I thought it was important to keep up with journaling for my sanity, to mark the difference in days, the passage of time, the seemingly endless weeks and months. Now, I appreciate my own tenacity because someday I’ll be able to look back on this crazy year and understand my headspace. I wasn’t perfect 100% of the time. Sometimes a week went by when I didn’t write at all. But in general, I kept up and made it 148 pages to December 31^st. Not only did I use it as a journal, but it let me track lots of stuff like these last four achievements.

I Published 26 Blogs

My goal was historically 2/month, so I achieved that. Also, it was not easy to write blogs when you DID NOTHING AND STAYED INSIDE EVERY DAY. Hopefully I didn’t bore you guys too much. Mommy, are you still there? Are you my only follower?

Some weeks I kinda fell behind, but that’s ok!

I Watched Movies I Had Wanted to See

Last year, I started the year with a massive list of movies to watch in my Bullet Journal. When I heard we were going to quarantine, I ordered a DVD player from Amazon, and I took 4 DVDs out from the library. I even brought them with me to Texas. I slowly made it through 84 new movies. That’s right, 84. I got through many on my list, like the Godfather, Casablanca, One Child Nation, Steel Magnolias, Frozen, and My Best Friend’s Wedding. And also watched some movies I didn’t plan to watch but loved nonetheless, like Ugly Dolls, The Princess and the Frog, The Social Dilemma, and 21 Jump Street.

My to-watch list. Look at all those check marks.

I Read 61 Books

That’s right guys, SIXTY ONE. 20,665 pages according to Goodreads. Back in 2018, I set myself a goal to read 4 non-fiction books a year. In 2020 I read 14! I also discovered audiobooks. I mean, I knew what they were before 2020, but I was never able to focus on them. In 2020, I took so many long walks that audiobooks were the perfect way to escape my endless thoughts and Twitter doomscrolling. I absolutely love them now and changed my reading tracker for this year in my bullet journal to track these.

Note, one book is missing from here from March, woops! (It was I Like to Watch and it was terrible)

I Discovered New Ways to Move My Body

It’s no secret I like to work out. Unfortunately, my two workouts of choice were teaching Spin classes and attending group bootcamp classes. Both of these were not options in quarantine. So, I had to adjust. First, my mindset. Maybe one day I couldn’t motivate myself to do a burpee. Ok, NO days I could motivate myself to do a burpee. But at least I could go for an hour-long walk. I got to know the Texas subdivision very well. I listened to podcasts. I listened to music. I zoned out. According to my Fitbit, I only didn’t make it to 10,000 steps/day 14 days all year! And 6 of those days were pre-Covid! That means I walked 10K+ steps 352/366 days. 96% of the year. If you don’t count the days pre-Covid, it’s 285/293… 97%! I walked a LOT. 5,019,509 steps according to my Fitbit. Five million, nineteen thousand, five hundred and nine.

I also danced. I discovered the freedom of moving my body to music. Dancing like no one was watching because… no one was. Well, Chris’s nephews sometimes but they already thought I was crazy. I did so much dance cardio; it became my escape. I’m moving next week, and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to continue my dancing because I’ll officially have downstairs neighbors, but I’ll keep you posted. I did buy a Peloton so I’ll have to tell you all about that, too!

So many things to blog about. The Peloton, the move, the new apartment, maybe I’ll beat my 26-blog-post record.

What did you all achieve in 2020? Anything unexpected? New skills? Tell me in the comments!

Big City Living

NYC Outside Date at The Vessel

January 15, 2021 1 Comment

The holiday season is over, but unfortunately the Covid season is not. In fact, it’s worse than ever. You may remember I was crowd-sourcing ideas for social distanced date ideas back in May. I don’t think we had any idea we’d be needing those into 2021, but here we are.

We came back to NYC from Texas back in September, and while I do love the fall and winter here in New York, it makes outdoor dates more complicated. You can’t exactly sit on the ground in a park and have a picnic. I mean you can but it’s not as comfortable and requires many, many layers. Last month, I tasked my fiancé with finding us a date idea. Not only did he come up with one, he came up with two and we did them both!

I hereby give you permission to copy us. When you can.

First, we went to The Vessel in Hudson Yards.

Pros: This is the perfect pandemic date. It’s outside, beautiful, and it’s crowd-controlled because you need a ticket.

Cons: You need to reserve a ticket online and there is a limited amount. Also, in case you don’t know what it is, it’s a spiral staircase. It’s comprised of “154 intricately interconnecting flights of stairs — almost 2,500 individual steps and 80 landings.” This is only a con because I did this after leg day and had already walked 15,000 steps when I was presented with this date night. Thankfully, we paused a LOT to take photos.

Pro: Amazing views of the river and the city. Really, it’s breathtaking. Also, it’s free! You only have to pay if you want a “flex” ticket, meaning you can arrive any time during the day. Otherwise you’re assigned a time slot.

Cons: It’s actually closed at the moment due to some sad events and they are not sure when it will open again.

This was a perfect date in my opinion because it was an “experience” and it was something brand new. I love experiencing things together for the first time. I feel like that’s the most meaningful and fun date, and if you ever go back, you always think about the first time you went.

I had never been to The Vessel before, and I hadn’t even been to Hudson Yards! Hudson Yards is just a very pretty indoor mall. Since we are trying to avoid indoor anything, we didn’t go inside. But it looked beautiful lit up in Christmas lights. I assume the lights were for Christmas but maybe it’s a year-round thing? You’ll have to go and tell me.

For Part 2 of our date night, we walked from Hudson Yards to Bryant Park. This walk in and of itself could have been part of the date night, too. It was a 35-minute walk, and we walked by Macy’s to see it lit up for the holidays. There is something so magical about NYC in December. I don’t think I’ll ever get sick of it.

When we got to Bryant Park, I was on the hunt for ice cream I saw on Instagram. Yes, it was about 30 degrees with 40 mph wind gusts (those were a little scary on the top of the Vessel). But I am a firm believer that there is no such thing as “bad weather for ice cream.” Anyway, there were supposed to be these churro cone ice cream thingies called chimneys or something. We did not find them. But it was still magical. There were people skating on the ice rink, and despite being a little too crowded for my liking, I’m happy to say almost EVERYONE was wearing a mask correctly. Over mouth and nose, y’all. Come on. We’ve been doing this for 9 months now, I know you know.

We didn’t ice skate but we did people-watch.

At the Vessel, people kept taking their masks off to take photos, and there was way less of that at Bryant Park. They did have “igloos” meant for Covid safety, or as Chris called them, Covid Cages. Pretty much virus incubators. People seemed pretty thrilled to get in them, though. Count me out.

After some more walking around, we grabbed an Uber (cracked windows) and headed back home.

10/10 for this date. It was outside, fun, festive, and safe. Or at least, as safe as it gets if you leave the house in a big city. Plus, it was FREE and we were home by 8 pm to cook dinner and drink wine in the living room. Have you guys been to The Vessel? Did you find the mystery churro ice cream cones? Tell me what you thought!

Miscellaneous

NYE Party in the Living Room

January 4, 2021 2 Comments

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! We were all looking forward to 2021, and I’m hopeful it will be better than last year. However, we were still stuck at home for New Year’s Eve. TBH I hate NYE. It’s always overhyped and ends up being worse than you imagined. It ends in fights with your significant other, sloppy drunks, vomiting, fried food indulging, and beginning the new year with a hangover. Not my favorite. If you’ve been following for a while, you know I MUCH prefer Practice New Year’s Eve. It leaves my real NYE open to run races in the below-freezing temps. But none of that was happening this year. No parties, no races, etc. Personally, we didn’t do anything festive for Thanksgiving or Christmas. There was no turkey cooking, no tree in our living room or twinkling lights. I was canceled from the Macy’s Parade.

I wanted to do SOMETHING for New Year’s Eve. I started brainstorming my favorite parts of the holiday. Watching Rockin’ New Year’s Eve on tv (RIP Dick Clark) with friends, eating lots of hors-oeuvres that are fried (shoutout pigs in a blanket), drinking yummy drinks, kissing at midnight, wearing sequins and taking lots of photos. When I reflected on my favorite things, I realized the only thing we COULDN’T do was see friends. So, I set about to make the rest of those things happen.

First, a stop at Trader Joes for many, many fried frozen appetizers. Unfortunately, they were out of pigs in a blanket, but I got truffle flatbread, mozzarella sticks, buffalo chicken popovers, spanakopita, and LOTS of dips. Not to mention the makings of a charcuterie board. After about $70 in food, I figured it was probably enough for 2 people. Spoiler alert, we only ate about 20% of that food. But it was fun to have choices. And leftovers.

Pandemic Food Spread, never far from hand sanitizer

Next stop, Party City. I only came up with this idea last-minute, so I went to Party City on December 30^th. It was pretty picked over. It seemed I was not the only person with this idea for an at-home party. I picked up a few things that were leftover, including a hat that was broken so they gave it to me for $2.50. SCORE. It was good as new with some hot glue gun magic. When I found an over-the-door streamer thingy, I knew it would make the perfect backdrop for my “photobooth.” They only had blowers in packages of 24 or more left, which gave me hope that people were not having large gatherings. I waited on the blowers with hopes that I could buy some off the street, in addition to more photobooth props, and I was right! The morning of December 31^st, I was first at the table of vendors on the corner, so I got my first pick of pre-packaged and individually wrapped glasses, blowers, 2021 masks, poppers etc. I was almost ready. All I needed was an outfit.

I wanted to take full advantage of our stay-at-home NYE and wear an outfit I’d never wear out. First, a dress that barely covered my bum. It was 100% sequins, which I’d totally wear out. But it was too short to dance comfortably in. Perfect for photos and couch-eating. Next, shoes. In New York, you always need shoes you can walk in. I have thrown away most of my heels. But I kept these crazy knee-high boots because I couldn’t part with them. They live in a bin deep in the recesses under my bed. They were the perfect addition to my outfit. It’s only 9 steps from my bedroom to the kitchen/photobooth. Don’t ask how I know this. I walk this route often. I could do 9 steps in these boots. Spoiler alert again, I switched into slippers at 10:30 pm.

And to top off my outfit: LIPSTICK!! If you live in New York, you know why this is in capital letters. I haven’t left my house without a mask in months. So, lipstick is not something in rotation. Makeup in general, but definitely lipstick. But it seemed like a festive addition to this not-opening-my-front-door outfit. Chris and I got ready separately so we could surprise each other with our outfits. He came out in a very snazzy suit freshly shaved.

We took a LOT of photos. I drank four berry Moscow mules and added as much vodka as I wanted. And spent $0 on booze. I sat on the couch, danced around, counted down, and got my midnight kiss. First (but not last) engaged New Year! How did you guys spend your evening? Did you dress up or stay in sweats? And most importantly… which of you guys bought all the TJ’s pigs in a blanket??

2020 Recap and Accomplishments

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NYC Outside Date at The Vessel

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NYE Party in the Living Room

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