Did you see my pink glove on The Today Show?

Of all of the places that I have been on this sweet earth, my favorite city on the planet is New York. Nothing compares to the energy, the people, the shopping, or the restaurants. Since I graduated from college, I have been able to go to NYC at least every two years, and each visit is filled with amazing memories and some star sitings. This time, we saw Zach Braff walking on the street.

There are some cloudy memories as well such as Holly dragging me out of bed at 6:00 am after three hours of sleep because she knew I wanted to see the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, or me cajoling Joy and Holly up to dance on the Bar at Coyote Ugly at 2:30am after going to see a Broadway show, or some guys running out of a restaurant and inviting Joy, Tara and I in for a drink because they saw us walk by and their hormones flew. But that is another lifetime and another blog post.

Last Sunday at the end of our trip to Connecticut, DG and I left Hadley for the first time ever to spend the night with her Nana and Papa. We took Metro-North from New Haven, CT (or New Halen as DG likes to call it) into Grand Central Station in NYC. DG got us a screaming deal at The Algonquin Hotel in Midtown.

We were there for only 24 hours, so we had to make the most of our trip, visiting friends, eating, and doing all the fun things that I love to do around the holidays like look at the Sax 5th Avenue window and check out the hub bub in Rockerfeller Center. One thing I have never done is go to the Today Show plaza during a taping. Because it was only a few blocks from our hotel, around 9am, after checking out, we decided to do a walk through.

From an empty corner, we could clearly see Meredith Vieira inside doing the morning news. Sadly, Matt Lauer, Ann Curry, and Al Roker were on vacation. However we did get to see Lester Holt and Amy Robach as seen here in the pictures.

The camera man even filmed our side of the plaza, all of us screaming and waving for an opening seque back to the news. I think maybe my glove was in the shot.

LYLAS

A week ago today, Joy, Mark and Aidric flew in. ::sniff:: I had no idea how emotional I would get seeing my best friend with her new three month old baby. He's such a sweet precious little peanut. And he looks so good in his new blanket! I can barely remember when Hadley was that age and it makes me sad. Ahem, does this mean it is time to have another baby? ::shiver::

We got out once a day to hit the town and we even managed to head downtown on the light rail one day. This was perfect as Aidric is not a fan of taking naps, so he was quite up and alert with all the visual stimulation in downtown Denver.


As evidenced in this picture, Hadley had a bit of a crush on Mark. I think perhaps it is her first crush.

Joy and I had some time to reminisce as well when I pulled out the box of notes that we passed back and forth together in High School. I have so many notes from so many different people, and I have no idea why I've saved them, other than they represent an era of my life. An era of Tears for Fears and Paula Abdul. My favorite part of the notes is that instead of them being signed BFF, they are signed LYLAS. Any guesses? It stands for Love You Like a Sister. I might start using this in my chats to see if I can bring it back into the mainstream.

One year, I went all Project Manager on the notes and separated them by person filing them in large manilla envelopes. Can you say excessively detailed???


We had some good laughs, and watched video of our high school graduations, proms, day after proms, and Christmas caroling. It's always fun taking a stroll down memory lane.

Happy Happy Joy Joy

I've written about Joy so much on this blog that she has her own Label. Click on the label at the end of this post to see everything I've written about her in just the last 2 years.

You can review the story of our love here. She is my beffy, my BFF, and my BFITW3. We got married the same year, and the day I had Hadley, Joy found out that she was pregnant! Are we completely connected or what? Yes the story would have been better had we both conceived on the same night, but stop being so creepy, gawd.

I'm just so excited that she and her husband Mark and their three month old baby Aidric are coming to visit this week-end. I want to hug and cuddle him and nuzzle his soft furry head.

We delivery

My brother sent me this article today about how Beijing is trying to Anglicize the city in the next 16 months prior to the Olympics arriving. It makes me wonder if they are lost in our translation of learning how to "smile more", "clean up" the English on their menus, and learn at least 200 English phrases.

It reminds me of a Chinese Restaurant that was in Meriden, CT where I grew up. For the 8 years that I lived there, they had a 2 story sign outside of the restaurant that said "We Delivery". We used to giggle every time we passed it. Later, after I moved, I learned that the sign had broken and finally they had to replace it with a new sign. Guess what they put back on their new sign? WE DELIVERY. Had it become such a symbol of broken English that they decided to keep it? I'm not sure, but I do know a lot of restaurant owners will not be able to get away with this in Beijing as now they are asking people to report mispellings, I mean misspellings.

Class Thesbian

My dad got me started in Community Theater in 1985 when he tried out for Woody Allen's "Don't Drink the Water" and landed the lead role. I went to every rehearsal to hang out and wait with baited breath to say my 3 lines as the role of the Countess. I think they consisted of "Ummmm", "Oh Charming" and "Yes Fascinating". Father and daughter then went on to star in "Dracula the Musical" as a big stretch, father and daughter. Then at the tender age of 16, I played the lead in "A Bad Year for Tomatoes", as a washed up 40+ actress who wanted to get out of the hustle and bustle of Hollywood. All of this gave me the courage to join the drama club at school during my junior year. There was quite a ruckus when I went in and scored the role of Nurse Ratched in "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest" over all the other ladies. Oh the DRAMA.

Through myspace, I recently got in contact with Ted, who played Randle McMurphy, the male lead in Cuckoos Nest. Click here to see a picture of us right before that production. In our senior year book, I am giddy to have been voted by my peers as Class Thesbian, a title few understood. *Huh?!? Is that when you like, like girls and stuff?" Needless to say my pursuits of becoming a famous soap opera actress on Santa Barbara ended shortly after high school when that show was cancelled.

The Chocolate Club

THE CHOCOLATE CLUB 1987
In High School, there was a group of 6 of us that were great friends. A clique you may say. A marching band, top of the class, side of geeky, not the most popular clique. At one point, and I may need some help from ladies here, we starting calling ourselves The Chocolate Club. This picture, taken in Ellen's basement, may have been our only meeting.

Twenty years later, all the ladies attended Joy's reception in CT. Roxanne took this picture, and though I was not there, through the magic of graphic design, she digitally added me to the picture. *smiles*

THE CHOCOLATE CLUB 2006