Be Mine

I’ve developed this thing where I’ve been staying up all night in hotel rooms.  And as many nights as I spend in hotel rooms, this is not a good thing.  I think the light from my laptop does something to my eyes and makes me not sleep. Too much coffee to compensate.  Too many room service dinners.  I have become so lazy.  But hopefully that cycle ends soon.  I have a couple more weeks of work traveling, then a patch in April, but between/after that I am looking forward to regular life.  Or at least a different regular life. 

What else has been happening?  A couple of Tuesdays ago we went to this amazing party at the Andaz Fifth Avenue.   It was in this huge open kitchen with two story high walls made of glass and chefs’ stations and bars scattered throughout.  We drank whisky and red wine and ate cheese and crusty bread and delicious cured meats.  The next day we ran up the Empire State Building and I will always remember the way that rush of cold air felt at the end, and the way the lights played on the snow as it swirled upwards.  I wanted to stay outside forever, frosty frozen sweat on my temples. 

On Thursday I went to work, home to change, and then a fashion show in a fake fur coat and floor length transparent dress with a black slip underneath. Whitney Port was there and so was the boring girlfriend from Entourage and the pretty but creepy girl with the huge eyes from America’s Next Top Model All-Stars was one of the models.  After that we cabbed it cross-town and went to this terrible party at the Museum of Sex.  The exhibits were blah, the drinks were blah, the bodypainted models and fake dominatrixes (dominatrices?  dominatri?!) were blah.  I liked my outfit though and felt it was appropriate at both events. 

I had to go to Connecticut for work on Friday, and didn’t get home until around 10pm.  The next day I slept in, went to French class, then out to dinner with my family.  My mom likes the Italian lady Lidia Bastianich from the cooking shows and she wanted to go to her first restaurant, so I made a reservation when Lidia herself was supposed to be there.  My whole family decided to tag along and then Lidia wasn’t even there in the end.  Oh well. It was lots of fun anyway.  I had burata cheese with truffles, proscutto, and an egg for an app then some crazy platter with every kind of grilled fish for main.  My mom had cheese and pear ravioli, my sister had grilled fish and my brother had wild boar.  I don’t remember what my dad had because he is the only one who doesn’t share.  My sister and I went out for a drink afterward – we did a shot of coffee flavored tequila and drank a bottle of light beer each.

On Sunday I went into the office to do some prep and then get on a plane for early meetings on Monday…blah.  Trip was productive at least and I got home early on Tuesday. I came home to a clean house with candles and balloons all around.  So nice!  I got unpacked, did work, showered, went to get vajazzled for a Valentine’s Day surprise.  They blew the crystals on with some sort of airgun (maybe for spray tanning?) and I’m not going to lie, probably the first twenty times I took down my tights to pee I had a moment of "WTF is on me?!?" But overall it was cute and fun. As another surprise, I had ordered a case of wine with personalized labels from some wine club in Portland, Oregon – I put a photo of us from the recent Paris trip with our names and "Valentine Vintage 2012" on the label. 

I had reservations at Catch which I was so excited about, new fun place right in our neighborhood by Hung Huynh from Top Chef.  I’d called ahead to see if I could drop the wine off ahead of time and they’d serve it to us when we came in for the reservation so it would be a surprise, and they were so nice.  We walked in and everything was so amazing.  He loved the wine and was so surprised…the best thing was that the actual vineyard name of the red wine was S’s mother’s maiden name which is very uncommon and total accident!  To eat, we had great oysters and shrimp cockail to start, then I had grilled mahi-mahi and S had grilled swordfish.  We finished with some coffee, port, and then this warm cookie box with all these fresh baked cookie and brownie things. 

It was raining so we got in a cab and went to this party at new bowling alley in Hell’s Kitchen.  We drank champagne, took pictures at a photobooth, and took in the (bizarro!) scene.  There were girls in thongs body-painted like jungle animals walking around and then it got even weirder at one point there was a lingerie "fashion show" where the girls walked up and down the bowling ramps like it was a runway.  At one point they ran out of clean champagne flutes so the bartender gave us bubbly in cognac glasses.  Works for me!  Went home, flopped into bed – overall a kind of strange but very very good Valentine’s Day.

The next day I had to work, got back late, worked the next day, then the next but left a bit early to have my makeup done.  The girl did me all crazy with these super-smoky eyes with tons of eyeliner.  I liked the look but it was super extreme.  Rushed home, threw on a cocktail dress and heels and headed out to a fashion show.  Another weird one, in this fantastic old hotel ballroom but the clothes were just atrocious.  We got sushi afterwards and I had to wash my face for like fifteen minutes to get all that eye makeup off.  The next day we went to French class, then home to get food/change before heading out to another show.  This was bigger and truly truly cray.  

I put on this below the knee shiny crocodile embossed leather pencil skirt, high boots, black teeshirt and feather shrug.  Curled my hair and did a modified version of the smoky eye from the day before and I still felt a little underdressed.  There were mass amounts of eastern european Amazons decked out to the fullest – like the cast of Russian Dolls, but even more over the top.  The show itself was crazy too…in addition to ridiculous clothes there were two opera singers, acrobats, ballet dancers, a pair of ballroom dancers, and a gypsy singer/dancer who was actually ridiculously good.  Madness all around - I loved it!  We took the subway home, made grilled cheese, watched hulu, and went to sleep.

On Sunday I slept in and then had to get up and get packed up and head out.  Bah.  Last night I had grilled salmon and cookies and milk from room service and stayed up until 4am when I had to be up at 6:30am.  At least my inbox is clear, this is rare for me.  Today was productive, got work done, came back to room and ordered a cheeseburger and fries.  Healthy living!  Right now it is 11:47pm EST and I am on OD writing this.  I wonder how much longer I’ll be up?  Tomorrow is my last day on the road, back late tomorrow night, then the day after that is our anniversary.  Another busy week ahead!

Entry Tally:
References to Reality Television and/or Cooking Show Personages: 5
References to Body Painting and/or Vajazzling: 3
Alcohol References: 9
Food References: INFINITY (okay, 21)
References to Cuddling Baby Tigers and/or Adopting them as pets: 0  (Waah.)