HBC2008

Wow, who knew I could get so many blog posts out of 48 hours in New York.  I mean, really.  But I just have to tell you about our Sephora trip.  First off, Jillian (who is also amazing and talented) used this AMAZING eye liner.  It looked great, felt great and even better STAYED IN PLACE for hours!  We were asking her throughout the makeup session who made what as I know she must have used 15 different products on my face.  But we could not remember who made the eyeliner as we stood in Sephora in Times Square.  We looked around and nothing.  All we know is it was a short, fat hot pink pencil.

We asked the lady and she literally laughed at us but went off and asked this guy that was working.  He said, “Oh, that’s BADgal.  It’s at the front of the store.”  WOW.  Dani, who being much more familiar with Sephora than my Sephora-virgin self, took me straight to the display and found it.  Ta-da.

But, wait, it gets better.  We really wanted this glitter stuff that was on my eye but were clueless.  So we walk back over to him to test him.  I close my eye and say, I need to know where to get this stuff.  He stares at it and says, “Try Make Up For Ever”  And sure enough, there were lots of little pots of glitter right on the bottom row.  We weren’t convinced it was exactly the right thing so I didn’t get any and I actually need to check with Jillian to see if that’s what it was.  But, by golly, that guy was IMPRESSIVE.

*Now patiently waiting for free product offer for the post.*

*Please*

*$20 for eyeliner is a bit rich for my taste*

And by menses, I do mean multiple men.  We were utterly amazed at the difference between men in New York and men in the South.  No wonder some people complain when they come South.   We determined in the South, there are really only a few types of (casual) dressers.

• The jeans and tennis shoes guy
• The shorts and flip flops guy
• A mix of the above.  Like, some guy will wear shorts and tennis shoes or jeans and flip flops
• The Wranglers and boots guy
• The 3X shirt and 5 sizes too big low-slung jeans and tennis shoes guy

That about covers it all.  Scott is a tennis shoes guy with jeans in the winter and shorts in the summer.  I would venture to guess Dani would say her husband is a tennis shoes and shorts guy all year round.  The rednecks true Southern men wear Wranglers and boots (don’t get me wrong on the redneck comment….just go look at Ree’s husband in some Wranglers..there is NO complaining here).

But in New York?  You know what we saw?  A tourist OR a hot local man.  And said hot man was wearing:

• Designer jeans that fit very nicely
• A shirt. Usually a printed tee.  Maybe a tight sweater.
• Or, if we were lucky, he had a suit on but hey, it was the weekend.
• Sometimes a short, well-fit black leather jacket
• Nice shoes..either box-toe dress shoes or cute oxford tennis shoes.
• If it was a bit chilly, a nice scarf
• And usually, the really hot ones had shaved their heads
• And usually they were of some descent that made them tan.  Couldn’t figure out WHAT they were.  Arabic? Mexican? Italian?

And this was the NORM.  Every corner we were going WOW, he was hot, wow, he was hot.  In fact, Heather started snapping undercover photos on her iPhone of the guys.  And if she didn’t have the right angle?  She passed her phone to me so *I* could snap the photo.  It became almost a game and let me tell you, it was a fun one.

As soon as we hit the airport Monday morning, our luck was out and we were quickly greeted by many jeans/flip-flop guys who in their own right can be cute but nothing like a HOT New York man.  And don’t you even second-guess there will be a shopping trip for Scott coming up!

And just for fun, here are just two of them snapped at the #HBC dinner Saturday night.  The guy sitting down had a multi-color scarf on on his way out.  And wow, the second one is still HOT.  Like, Wentworth Miller HOT.

OK before I write this post you have to know I’m usually GREAT at maps and directions in general.  I’m usually NOT the one to freak out when there is somewhere new to go.  Just a little Google Maps and I’m ready to head out.  In fact, I’m usually the one with the map in hand telling people where to turn.  But something happened this weekend.  I think the subway baffled me to the point I could not think straight.  And also the idea of “ish”.  Like it’s on 47th and 8th – ish.  I knew we’d be close but just one or two blocks away seemed to add another 15 minutes backtracking and getting on course.

Take Dani and I’s trip from the hotel to Junior’s.  It SHOULD have only been a cut-through a parking lot from 46th to 47th and down one building.  But I got confused on my little map I had printed and marked the restaurants we were going to with “R”s.  The green in the picture is what we should have done and the red is what we really did.

Basically what happened is I was headed from the hotel (A) to 51st and 9th (C) where dinner was Saturday night instead of heading towards Junior’s (B).  Whoops.  Should have paid attention to my map a little more.  That one wasn’t so bad.  I WAS going the right way IF we were going to dinner.

Our troubles continued though.  We tried the subway on Saturday but the subway map I had just wasn’t clear enough on where you got on the thing and where the thing stopped.  So while I could tell what line to get on, I wasn’t sure how close it would get us.  I was so scared it would land us in Queens or Brooklyn (and getting us lost and wasting time, I presumed) that we just avoided it altogether.  In fact, we actually bought tickets, walked down into the the place, asked a guy and he was like “why are you here?  you guys aren’t lazy, you could just walk that.”  So out we went, wasting our $2.  We didn’t attempt it the rest of the day.

So Sunday we FINALLY got the hang of it but I had a really bad headache and we needed to carry two bags to the photo shoot so we decided to take a cab.  Door-to-door service right?  The green is what we SHOULD have done on the subway.  The red is our cab ride (straight line) and walk (dotted line ).

I don’t know if that cab ride is exactly right  but it is REALLY close.  What happened is the polish-slavic parade was going down Park (I think) and the guy kept going around the block trying to get through but couldn’t.  He finally dropped us off somewhere around 34th, said we needed to walk a block and pick up another cab, even waiving our $5 tip and apologizing profusely.  But by that time we decided to hike it the rest of the way.  But then I got confused because I thought Park Ave was the same thing as 5th and I didn’t realize 7th and Broadway weren’t the same thing anymore.  Needless to say, we did some backtracking on 28th.

After this, we DID manage to do well on a few trips on the subway. We took the subway back to the hotel from the shoot, made it to China Town and also to dinner near Union Square and then back home.  We were doing SO well and getting things accomplished so much faster.

Until.

The wretched Apple Store trip.  I didn’t know where to get on the subway except for Times Square at 42nd, not realizing I could get on at 49th and taking the subway almost directly to the store so I decided hey, let’s take the fancy little Shuttle to Grand Central Station and head UP Lexington and then just walk a few blocks to Apple.  This is how our trip went.  Green is what we should have done, Red solid line where we took the subway and red dotted line where we walked.

So once again I was confused on this 5th street and Park Ave thing.  The whole “ish” thing came into play again.  We got confused on what direction we were going after getting off the stop at Lexington and 60th causing us to “wiki-wiki-wiki” right in front of some car holding a couple that seemed to be in the throws of a break-up.  Sorry about your break-up AND the disturbance, couple on 60th.  Anyway, it was a DISASTER.  We spent almost THREE HOURS going to and from the Apple Store.

Please, those familiar with New York and its public transportation, don’t laugh too long at us.

I have no idea where to start on telling the stories from this weekend so let’s just start with something fun.

Dani and I had headed out to shop while Heather napped Saturday evening.  We stopped by one of many street vendors who were selling a multitude of things.  This one table had a bunch of pictures from the city and these two pictures caught my eye.  I started staring intently at the guy’s stuff and of course he started making deals for me.

His sign said a 5×7 was $10 and the larger size (pictured above) was $20.  I was flipping through the smaller size and he says “Right now, $7!”  I continued to look, not sure which print I was interested in and he throws out, “For you right now, $6”.  Hmm, you guys know I love a deal!  “What about the larger print?” I ask.  He says $15.  I start looking at the two prints above trying to decide which to take.  The fall one would be nice.  I have a lot of red in my house and I LOVE trees.  But the other shows more of the city and I also have those blue and brown tones in my living room.

He gets them off the board and says “Both of them $20!”  Oh, half price!  I can’t make a decision on one and it sounds like a deal!  I’m in!  I hand him a $20 bill and I was off.  Dani and I continue across Broadway down 46th and head towards Park Ave to shop and wouldn’t you know the next block we pass has the same dern pictures and a sign for $1.99?

Wow.  I am so overwhelmed from the weekend.  It was probably the most jam packed, satisfying, fun, dizzying, exhausting, wonderfully wonderful 48 hours of my life.  I have a mile long list of things to blog about but I know everyone wants to see pictures.  So here is where they are hiding on the Internet…

Here is every single picture we took in New York.  Some very boring.  Some taken just for Emma and Lexi.  Many fuzzy and dark ones.  But a few good ones.

Here are just the photo shoot ones I took.

A few other bloggers are adding their photos from the shoot to Flickr and tagging them with hotbloggercalendar09.

Katja took a great one of me and a chocolate doughnut 🙂  She’s supposed to be uploading more.

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And just for the record, here are the wonderful people that were there this weekend.  I was able to meet most of them.  For those I didn’t (including the HBs that weren’t able to make it to NY), I truly regret our paths didn’t cross and hoping for it in the future!

Sarah and  Jane (The ones who started all this!) Wonderfully wonderful people.  Really.  So sweet, down to earth and REAL!  They make meeting people from the Internet not-so-scary 🙂

Peter Shankman (HARO) Full of energy guy I’m grateful to for picking up the tab Saturday night 🙂

Miss Britt Full of energy and smiles

Poppy and NYCWatchDog We sat across from these two at dinner and had a great conversation…even when he did start talking about Dragonland and our eyes went all glassy 🙂

Jill Notkin, from Alex Casey Baby and The Daily Grind Unfortunately didn’t get to spend too much time with 🙁

Erika, from Chick Shopper Chick So sweet and bright.  She was like sunshine walking around.

Katja, from Skimbaco A talented lady with a big heart.  Very warm and inviting.

Shawn, from Backpacking Dad So in love with his wife it’s almost too much to handle.

Jim, from Busy Dad Mr. GQ. And my new blog crush.

These last three I was not able to meet 🙁

Josh, from The Comic’s Curmudgeon

Riese, from This Girl Called Automatic Win

Francesco, from Francesco Explains It All

Bill Wadman TALENTED photographer and his assistant Meg Wachter

Jillian Villafane, our AWESOME makeup artist. Can I please have her at my house every morning??

And I can’t forget about Jane’s Mom Sharon and her husband Barry

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You are going to be sick of hearing about this New York weekend…this is just the start!