The windows at Sak's

2008 Tree at Rock!

Random picture time! This is Serendipity!

It has been a few weeks since I have blogged and I have to say that I have had some much needed rest and relaxation in Tejas! My feet are almost speaking to me again and I have a renewed spirit (which actually means that I am not a total grump getting on the subway). January is a tricky time in NY. This is the beginning of the annual hibernation. It has been pretty cold for a month now and this is when people start to disappear from the streets. It is easy to get down with it getting dark so early as well as the fact that everyone is starting to come down off their high from Christmas. Not to mention that my roomie is leaving to go out of the country for 10 days so that will leave me and LuLu alone! It is okay though, I have a plan!

I am going to keep myself really, really , really busy this month! I am going to spend my weekends visiting the local museums as well as skating in Central Park, as well as purging crap I have collected in my room over the last year. So hopefully my plan will carry me through to at least Feb and it will keep me busy as not to do the other thing I love to do in NY… shop!

I’ll keep you posted on how all of that goes.

I will also have more random pictures coming!

Kim

My family was in town last weekend and it was great! We did all the magical things you do in the city when it is Christmas time. This year we went to the Rainbow Room for dinner. It was perfect, a clear cold winter night and we had a table with a view of the Empire State Building as well as the rest of the city.

The tree is much better than last year’s! I will post some pictures after Christmas.

I’m out! Going to bed, it was a long weekend!

So friends, it has been a few weeks since my last blog. I went back to Texas for Thanksgiving and the last week was busy getting back in to the swing. It is cold in NY!!! Today it was 32 degrees and really windy.

Nothing really exciting has been happening but Friday night I did get to help out with a black tie event at Cipriani’s. For those of you not familiar with Cipriani’s it is a well known banquet hall in the city. It was formerly a bank in the 1920s http://www.cipriani.com/cipriani/Locs/42main.htm. The atmosphere is amazing. My roommate works for the Boys and Girls club here in NY. It is a nonprofit organization that works with mentoring kids. They have an annual Christmas Ball to raise most of their money for the year. AlyG asked if I would help with the event and I was glad to. Each ticket is $1,000 in addition to a silent auction as well as a live auction. I have to say that it was pretty awesome. One couple donated $50,000 to a scholarship to the Boys and Girls club.

I helped with the live auction. When someone raised their paddle to bid on something I (with a handful of others) had to tie a balloon to the donator’s chair. Wait for it, wait for it… Yeah, that’s right I had to give people balloons! Sometimes I think God enjoys giggling at my phobias. It was okay though, no balloons were harmed in the process of the auction.

All in all, it was a pretty spectacular evening!

Well, I think I will get ready for bed now. Talk with you later this week.

Kim

A few weeks ago I was explaining to a group of people how if there was a movie about my life it would be called, “You’re not going to believe this” because crazy things happen to me and what’s crazy about these crazy things is that there is usually someone else there to verify what happened!

Last week I experienced another one of those crazy things that could only happen to me! A friend and I were eating lunch in Madison Square Park across from my office the other day. There is a place in the park that serves the best burgers and shakes and people line up in front of it about an hour before lunch time and the line windes around the park.

So Ellen and I are sitting down to each lunch and it is like a freakin petting zoo, the birds and Squirrels in this park are very used to people. It is almost Winter so all the wildlife are storing up for the cold weather. This means that they are pretty muh collecting anything they can get their paws on. This includes the food that Ellen and I are trying to eat! We spent the entire meal shooing the critters away. Suddenly I go to take a bite of my lunch and I feel something on by back. I suddenly realize that a squirrel has jumped on my back in hopes of getting some of my food. Of course, I jump up screaming as Ellen sits there with her mouth open and her eyes as big as I have ever seen them. The squirrel jumps off my back and scurries away as a crowd of people waiting in line begin to laugh.

“OH my gosh, I can’t believe the squirrel jumped on me” (Me) “You handled that much better than I would have” (Ellen).

So there you have it, I can add that to the list of crazy things that have happened to me!!!!

Democrats cover your ears! Uggggghhhh, It is Obama overload in this city! In the last six months I have only seen one piece of flair supporting McCain. I honestly can not find a single McCain button but to be honest I don’t think I could wear one anyway in this city! I truly think that I would get jacked on the subway. I understand that people have their own views but EVERYONE in New York assumes that you support Obama!

I went to hear Councilwoman Carolyn Maloney last week as she addressed the Junior League to discuss her new book. Let me say that again, I went to hear her talk about her new book. I did not however go to hear her bash Republicans, Bush, Mccain, Palin, Pro life, or anything that remotely resembles anything conservative. This woman, while I think she has done many good things for womens’ rights, spent an hour pretty much making fun of most things I believe in! Thanks lady but maybe you forgot that some of us in the room did not agree with your opinion.

That’s all I’ve got to say about that! Oh and its is mighty wintery in the city today. I heard it was snowing in some parts of NJ.

Okay friends,

The last few weeks have been busy! AmandaB came to visit a few weekends ago! We went to one of the restaurants that is on my “to do” list while living in NY! Pastise is a popular place here in the city. The locals love it because of the food and atmosphere. It is in the “Meat Packing District”. It lived up to its reputation, great food and atmosphere! All in all, it was a fun filled weekend!

This past weekend I did a Playground Improvement project with Junior League (One of my requirements for the Fall). Each year the JL adopts a playground here in the city. For that entire year JL works with the playground to repair roofs, clean things up, painting and garden. This year we are working with Tony Dapilito’s playground.

Last Spring the ladies did quite a job making the playground safe and fun to hang out in. Last weekend our job was to make sure that everything was still looking good. My group was assigned to planting. Me thinking, “that seems pretty easy and safe, I have not gardened much, it can’t be that hard”. The playground keepers explained that we would be taking out the flowers that have already bloomed and planting Tulip bulbs for the Spring. “First you will plant the bulbs in the planter boxes and then we will move over to a little patch of fenced off grass” Again, doesn’t seem so bad. “oh and just be aware that we tend to get rats in the playground but they are little and there really shouldn’t be many, maybe one or two”. Me thinking, “uhm, what, what was that?”

We finish the planter boxes and are then taken over to the little grass patches. The playground keepers hand us shovels and ask us to dig some holes for the bulbs. So we begin to dig and about 2 minutes in the earth splits and one of satan’s messengers pops out! This rat looked nothing like Stuart Little, this thing was HUGE! Have you seen my roommate’s dog, the rat was about LuLu’s size and he ran around trying to get away from us! And how do you think the girls reacted, we ran around screaming trying to get away from him!!! Then, the playground keepers began running after the rat trying to hit him on the head with the shovel to kill him. Did I mention that this occured about 4 more times in the next 20 minutes? Did I also mention that after the first nasty beast came from the bowels of the earth I um decided “screw the tulips, the weeds look just fine! Yeah, the shovel quickly went to the playground keepers and all the other girls had the same reaction! It is one thing to see these disgusting rodents running around the subway tracks (at a safe distance from the platform) but it is another to have them popping up at your feet.

We ended up finishing the planting in the boxes and then went on to painting. All in all it was a very traumatic day!

So some of you know that I joined the New York Junior League this Fall. There are a few big events each year and this past Friday was Homecoming! Basically this is a kick-off party to get the year’s events underway. The theme was “Flashback to the 80s”. The party is hosted at the JL headquarters on the Upper East Side. The Headquarters is actually one of the old Astor homes. Each floor of the headquarters had different stations. There was the dance room, the movie room showing movies such as Footloose, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink and then there were other rooms that you could just hang out and talk about things that are “Grody to the Max”. I just have to tell you my friends, the 80s fashions were in full swing!!!

My outfit consisted of:
Jeans that were tightly rolled (I believe we called it Pinch rolled) with florescent pink sox. I had on a big sweater with my denim jacket. To top it off I had my hair in a side ponytail with a florescent band. I had on some pretty awesome blue eye shadow and liner as well as lip gloss and big purple heart earrings oh and um bright florescent yellow fingernail polish!

Every there was in totally rad 80s stuff! I saw a few girls in Units as well as a few guys in Miami Vice suits. The night was Awesome!!!

I am trying to get my hands on some pictures so stay tuned.

Friends, I had a “you not gonna believe this” weekend in the Hamptons last weekend! So a group of us drove out on Sat for AlyG’s friend Kerri’s birthday. There were seven of us chicks! Once we got out there we hung out at the house for a while then it was time to hit the town. Things pretty much wind down after Labor day there. Lots of places close for the winter so your choices for dining and fun are limited. Kerri’s friend Stan (also known around town as “The Mayor” although not actually the mayor) lives in West Hampton and he suggested we go to a place called “The Patio” where there was an 80s band playing that night. So the 7 of us get ready, call a cab aka a beat up old van with a driver that was probably too old to drive and head to The Patio. We walk in and quickly realize that we are the youngest people there and that 80s band is more like an oldies band. We are already there and so we decide to stay for dinner and drinks. It was actually pretty fun, we danced and met the locals and kind of added some life to the place. By about midnight we decided we had all the fun we could handle with the baby boomers and asked where we could go for a little younger crowd. Stan said that pretty much everything was closed however, there was some music coming from a building a few blocks over.

That was good enough for us! We walked down the street, followed the music and into what looked like a sweet little cafe. As we walked in we suddenly realized that we were the only people there who spoke English. It was Mexican night at the local cafe and all of the local migrant workers were kickin back and drinkin a few while they listened to the Bueno band. I would say there were about 30 men and one woman at this place. Our group decided this was the best it was going to get at this point (about 1:00 am) so we decided to take advantage of the music and dance! After about 20 minutes of all the people staring at us a few guyes came over and danced with us. At this point a fight almost broke out between what looked like the Cripps and Bloods (Local Hampton chapter). Once the tempers died down it was back to watching the white girls dance. Oh yeah, did I mention that there was a guy in the middle of the room passed out on the table? So after about an hour and a weak attempt at trying to bridge the language barrier we decided we had enough and called a cab (actually it was the same old guy with the beat up van) to come pick us up! We got home and everyone pretty much went to bed.

A family friend came to the Big Apple Labor Day weekend and we did as much as you could do in NY in 4 days! Follow me on this; The Met, Top of the Rock, Today Show, Macy’s, Central Park, Bus Tour, Canal Street, Shakespeare in the Park, Hairspray on Broadway, Serendipity, Dylan’s Candy Bar, Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island. I think that about covers it!

It was great having someone familiar to talk to on the subway, the bus, walking down the street and eating dinner.

On a different note, I was on the Tyra Banks show Monday. I can’t remember if I already blogged about this but a quick overview, was eating lunch in the park with a coworker a few weeks ago and walked over to see what they were filming and the camera people asked us a few questions about our opinions on our body image and what we think is attractive. They aske me what my favorite body part is and I told them I thought my feet were cute. Don’t laugh, I have seen some pretty jacked up feet on the subway. Okay, I am just going to get off that topic because I could go on and on and I really should just blog about that topic on its own! So anyway, I guess they showed our footage on the Tyra show this past Monday because one of my clients emailed me Tuesday that she saw me on the Tyra show. So there you go, I was on the Tyra show talking about my cute feet!

Today I went on an appointment with a client. At the end of the appointment the client said to me, “You are not from New York…” I said, “no, do you detect an accent?” the client then replied, “no, South Jersey, you are from South Jersey?” “uh NO! Dallas”. I have quite a few people who tell me they know I am not from New York but no one has told me they thought I was from South Jersey. After riding the subway back to the office I started to realize that this was not exactly a compliment. As soon as I walked into the office I asked a few of my colleagues what it meant when someone thought you were from South Jersey. Let me just say that it was pretty clear by the expressions and snickers that South Jersey is not my first choice when people are trying to guess your background.

It must have been the bright pink fingernails, the wad of gum I kept popping and the big 80’s hair I had today OR that this man wasn’t exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer.