Addition to previous post

I just realized today, but the lady standing in front of Meryl Streep in the picture in the post below is Carol Kane. Didn't realize she was at the event and was so excited at seeing Meryl up close that I didn't pay attention to who she was with!

The Oscars...almost

I'm postponing my blog of my Easter trip to Dallas for 2 reasons: 1)I'm waiting to receive some super cute pics of the boys from my sister and 2)I had a big night tonight and can't wait to blog about it!

I attended my first red carpet event tonight!! I managed to find some cheap tickets ($40!) to the Film Society of Lincoln Center's annual Gala Tribute and the honoree was none other than Diane Keaton. It was quite possibly the most exciting thing I've ever done and probably the closest thing to going to the Oscars (my dream) that I'll ever get to do! I convinced Joy to go along even though she is not obsessed with celebrities to the level that I am. It was black-tie and it was kind of fun to have a reason to get dressed up. The event consisted of a montage of Diane's films interspersed with speeches from people she has worked with. Tribute speeches were given by Sarah Jessica Parker, Lisa Kudrow, Martin Short, Woody Allen, Steve Martin, Candace Bergen, and Meryl Streep. It was an amazing experience. All the speeches were so thoughtful and funny. Diane gave an acceptance speech at the end that brought her to tears. I loved, loved, loved it!! We didn't get to see most of the celebs up close and our seats weren't that great, but we could still see everyone okay...better than my pictures show. On the way out, I did get to see Meryl very close as she was coming out of the theatre on her way to the dinner (which we opted out of since it was going to cost us an extra $1,200....maybe next year, ha!). Here are my pics...you can see the celebs on the screen, but if you look closely, they're standing in front of the screen!

Sarah Jessica Parker

Woody Allen

Meryl Streep

Martin Short

Lisa Kudrow

Candace Bergen

Steve Martin, who was too animated to get a clear picture!

Diane Keaton, coming onstage to accept the award

Steve giving the award to Diane

Diane giving her acceptance speech

Seeing Meryl up-close (sorry, bad pic)

Joy & I at the event!

Andi & Worley’s Trip

Jennifer and Andi flew up from Dallas on Friday and stayed until Tuesday. I couldn’t take off work, but enjoyed my time with them on the weekend and in the evenings. This was both of their first trips to the big city. We did a lot of the regular things newbies like to do when they visit…Brooklyn, Ground Zero, Statue of Liberty via Staten Island Ferry, Top of the Rock, Little Italy, cupcake tasting, etc…. We also did a couple of things that were new to even me—we saw the front of the house used in “The Cosby Show” as well as the outside of the apartment complex used in “Friends.” We saw the bull down by Wall Street that I had never found before. We also ate at “Tom’s Diner” from Seinfeld which I had done when I came to NYC the very first time back in 1999, but had not been there since. They suggested Coney Island and it just so happened to be the Opening Day for the season. We were some of the first people to ride the Cyclone roller coaster in 2007! It also happens to be the last season for Astroworld, the amusement park on Coney Island, so there were a lot of media there making a big deal of it. We also got to witness the “Polar Bear Club”. I had read about these guys around New Years. It’s a group of crazy people who go swimming in the ocean at Coney Island on holidays or other big events. This was one of those days. It was quite cold that day and I stuck my fingers in the water to see how cold it was—the water itself wasn’t terribly cold, but as soon as I pulled my hand out, my fingers turned to ice! I don’t know how they did it and they stayed in the water for quite a while! They had a leader who was having them do crazy chants…it was quite interesting to watch!

Monday night was uber-special for me! Completely by coincidence, Jennifer and Andi happened to be here for The Bachelor premiere. Last year, we had talked about them coming up for the finale of the last season and it did not work out, so the fact that they randomly picked this weekend before we even knew when the new season would premiere was very exciting to me!! We used to watch it together with some other girls back in Dallas and I miss those nights a lot! We also had Michelle calling in from Dallas to share her opinions with us. Fun times!

Some pics from the weekend:

Andi & I hanging at Top of the Rock



















Worley and Andi with the Bull of Wall Street



















The Cosby's house!



















Aw, the home of Monica & Rachel



















Last season for Astroland















Wait...is that Ariel? Oh, no, just Andi!



















Those Polar Bears are pretty official



















Crazy Polar Bears!

Bears in New York

When I wrote yesterday about last week’s events, I forgot to mention that I went to my first Baylor event. Thursday morning, I went to a breakfast at Sarabeth’s for Baylor alumni young professionals. A girl from my Bible Study helps put Baylor alumni events together so she had encouraged me to go. It was small- not many people. The night before there was a bigger dinner, but I was unable to attend due to class. The breakfast was nice, though. The Dean of the business school and a couple of other people from Waco were in town for the events...basically here to promote alumni involvement. Amazingly, I ran into my old next-door-neighbor from freshman year in the dorm, Ilka. I never knew her too well, but she was always really nice and was in the same sorority as the girls I lived with sophomore-senior year, so we always had some mutual friends. Ilka and I plan to get together later this month. She also told me that another girl from our hall who I didn’t really know at all lives here as well. So, she suggested we have a Collins Penthouse reunion in NYC! That would be funny!
The second Baylor connection I made this week was at work. We got an email last week listing a few recent new-hires and details of their background. One of the people listed was a Baylor grad. I’ve met him since then and it turns out we were the same class at Baylor, both in the business school, and both from Missouri! Weird!

A Gala and the Elephant Walk

I never got around to blogging about my events last week! On Monday night, I had my first “gig”. I helped out at an event my teacher’s company was working on. Usually, her company does entire events…from creation to production. However, for this event, they were doing décor only. The event was held at the Crowne Plaza Suites in Times Square and was the 10th Annual Gala for the National Business Travel Association. There were representatives there from all the major airlines, hotels, travel websites, etc… The main part of the décor was that all the tables and bars were illuminated in blue. It looked really cool once it was all put together. We had a lot of down-time during the event, but they had a cocktail reception room we helped set-up, as well as the main ballroom where they were served dinner. Then, while dinner was going on, we moved everything from the reception room to another area where they had dessert and drinks after dinner. It was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the work as well as the people who were there from my teacher’s company.

A "high-top" table at the Cocktail Reception















The bar at the Cocktail Reception















The main dining room















Flower centerpieces















Dinner Table















The appetizer




















One of the bars in the dessert area















Another bar in the dessert area















More high-tops in the dessert area















On Tuesday night, the Ringling Bros, Barnum & Bailey circus came to town. The circus still travels everywhere by train, but since all our train stations are underground, the elephants can’t get out! So, they walk the elephants into town from a station in Queens. It’s a big deal every year to go watch the elephants march into town. I met Joy and a couple of other people to witness the event ourselves. We had to wait for quite a while and then it only took about a minute for the elephants to walk by—too quick! Also, they don’t get into Manhattan until after midnight, so it was a late night. But, it was still fun and I’m glad to be able to say I saw it!








































My friends Andi and Jennifer (aka Worley) have been here the past few days...look for a blog about our adventures coming soon!

S'Mac!

One of the fun things about NYC is all the novelty restaurants. I met Kristin down in the East Village on Friday night to eat at S’mac. Serving, what else? Mac & Cheese! They had several different varieties. The one I got was filled with brie, nutmeg, fig, rosemary, etc… It was amazing. The menu said it was addictive and it truly was…there was some flavor in it that I couldn’t identify (possibly the nutmeg) that made it sooo good and kept me eating and eating! It was great to catch up with Kristin one-on-one as well. I think that’s happened only one other time since I left the Journey—we’re usually group brunching together. She is definitely one of my favorite people in NYC. Very real, sweet, mature, thoughtful, etc…

Otherwise, I didn’t do too much else exciting over the weekend. My parent’s mutual cousin (I mentioned her in my Christmas blog, here), was in town with her husband so I met them for dinner on Saturday night. They were staying just around the corner from me, so we ate in my neighborhood at Pietresanta—the pumpkin ravioli place. It was good again, but the service was REALLY slow and I was kind of annoyed at that.

Sunday, I did some shopping. I had to have a white dress shirt for an event on Monday night and I didn’t own one! I also headed out to Brooklyn to check out a children’s store I had read about and I needed another baby gift for a friend. The store was really cute—didn’t have as many clothes as I had imagined, but what they did have was cute. They also had some really cool looking toys that I’ll have to keep in mind for future gifts for Ryder. It was a beautiful day, so I took a stroll along the Promenade and saw 3 bride & grooms out there taking wedding pictures.

I’ve done a couple of fun, unusual things this week…will blog about that when I have time to upload some pictures to go along with it!

My roommates

In response to Nicole's (my cousin) last comment, I decided to write a post updating everyone on my roommate situation. I used to be afraid of talking about other people on my blog, but it would be pretty difficult for them to run across it, so I think it's okay. Nicole is right, I don't talk about them much, but I really don't even see them too much. (Nicole, you'll hardly see them when you're here, I'm sure).

Sharon is a pastry chef-- works from 3:00am til whenever she gets done. Sometimes, she's coming home from work at the same time I am even though she goes in 6 hours earlier!! Her job is really stressful with long hours and when she's home, she's usually sleeping or watching movies on the couch. On the weekends, she gets on a slightly more normal schedule, but otherwise, we're pretty flipped. I think I would like her a lot if we had the chance to hang out more. She's cute and some of her interests seem similar to mine. But, she's very dirty- that's the one thing I don't like about her. She cooks a lot and leaves the kitchen a disaster!! There are other gross things that I can't even mention on my blog. I seriously never knew that girls could be so disgusting. And I'm not a neat-freak (some of my old roommates will vouch for that, I'm sure)...Sharon is just really, really bad.

Cathy is interesting. I thought I liked her at first, but she has turned out to be a bit overwhelming. She became a Christian about 5 years ago and apparently has been going through an identity crisis ever since. She talks about it ALL the time. In fact, it is pretty much the only thing she talks about. For instance, when my mom was here for several days in October, she ran into Cathy only twice and both times Cathy went into her whole identity crisis situation. Basically, she just can't figure out how to live in this world as a Christian...she worries and stresses about it a lot. She just got a new job at a PR firm, but otherwise had basically been unemployed since I moved in (I guess her parent's were paying her rent). Anyway, the main reason she didn't have a job was because she didn't know what God wanted her to do. So, she didn't really even try to look for something else-- waited all those months doing absolutely nothing everyday until a job was literally placed in her lap. Really??? I mean, yeah, I agree that it's important to pray about big decisions (like where you're going to spend 40+ hours of every week), but to do absolutely nothing, put your life on hold for 9 months? I don't think that's ever God's plan for us...He tells us to "live IN the world." I think most people would at least get out and do SOMEthing-- volunteer, get a part-time job, something!! It's overwhelming because I just don't know how to help her when she says the same things over and over and over again. Honestly, it has made me wonder if she really understands what faith and trust mean. I just think that as Christians who are seeking God and his will and being obedient to that, we find (or actually are given through grace) freedom from those worries and stresses. We've placed our trust in something that we know is perfectly good and right, we've "cast ALL our burdens on Him." I know she spends a lot of time in the Word and in prayer-- much more than I do- so, I haven't been able to reconcile how she remains such a worried person about making sure she's doing what God wants her to do. I know part of it is just personality. Anyway, maybe I'm being too judgemental here, but the longer I hear about it the more I get annoyed! So, I've gotten in a bad habit of avoiding her the best I can. Not very Christ-like of me, I realize, and I do need to spend more time praying for her and about how I could be more helpful to her.

Sorry for the rant, sometimes a blog is good for that!! That's basically the synopsis on the roommate situation. I often think about moving out on my own...especially now that I know all these girls in my Bible Study with super-cute studios. But, a studio in Manhattan would be about a 50% increase in rent for me and I just can't make much sense of that. Moving out of Manhattan or into Harlem where places are more affordable is also not appealing. We have a really nice space (for NYC standards) and our neighborhood is very young and full of fun restaurants, so that would be hard to give up as well. So, for now, I remain in Hells Kitchen...