bloggers in the big apple, reprise

there's something really nice about spending a whole weekend in an unknown city without ever getting out a map or asking for directions. i'm not sure what we did to deserve such red carpet treatment, but with the aid of our gracious hosts we were able to accomplish exactly what we set out to do: gawk shamelessly at high-brow new yorkers, eat a lot, and haggle over knockoff hermes burkin bags in chinatown.

it was awesome.

except for the end. which sucked. but i'll get to that later.

the good parts included beer, mexican food, wine, tequila, bourbon, coffee, dim sum, gelato, coffee, ethiopian food, wine, falafel, coffee, bloody marys, cuban food, pizza, diet coke, hot dogs, bourbon, and new england clam chowder. in that order. there was also sm, her roommate (k), mk, js, kl, dh, ea, kn, ak, his bf (j), lh. and there were also purses, sunglasses, pashminas, and shoes.

we wrapped up our weekend at the MoMA where my blogmate repeatedly made me blow the cover of my feigned hipster persona by whispering her names for the avant-garde photgraphs we were inspecting, each time making me laugh so hard that if i had been drinking something it would have come out of my nose. each one had some kind of abstract name followed by the year that followed, such that the picture of the guys standing outside with all their papers blowing all over the place became, "god damn it, 1972." meanwhile i wondered exactly what kind of privileged up-bringing i must have had if my visceral reaction to the galleries upon galleries of impressionist masterpieces was some kind of "geez, not another picasso" eye rolling. occasionally i managed to stop being blase long enough to wonder why i'd missed the memo that one is only allowed at the MoMA if one is a 28 year old 5ft 5 inch tall male who carries a messenger bag, wears converse and frowns alot.

it's a good thing we had fun. the residual fuzzy feeling of hangover plus self-congratulation made our long and rather miserable return to chicago a bit easier to take. for the record, it isn't worth the $400 of airplane voucher to give up your seat on the 2-hour shuttle from laguardia to midway if it means sitting in the airport for another hour to catch an inevitably delayed flight to boston, even if it means a fabulous room at the hyatt overlooking whatever big body of water it is that boston has while you gaze at your blogmate over a manhattan... because of course you'll have to get up at 4:30 to catch the 6AM flight back to chicago which of course is cancelled, resulting in a nearly wordless standoff with the very unhelpful delta agent, resulting in a move to united airlines for a flight back to the right city but the wrong airport. having made peace with that debaucle of course you'd get pulled out of the security line for some kind of special, thorough searching. but at least you'd finally get back to your car, in an economy parking lot whose office smells so much like urine and feet that you'd wish you were back with the angry delta people. but happy to be home.