Girls Night Out

We wanted to go dancing Saturday night, so we went to this new country place in town. It was interesting to say the least. We had a guy that kept bugging us to dance, Denise got kissed, I got asked if I wanted to meet this guy's friend Clint, and when I say that was ok, he said I must be gay! The live band that was playing was a lot of fun, but it's a little strange to see country bands wearing baggy jeans, baseball caps and sketchers! Kind of ruins your normal impression of cowboys in wranglers, boots, and cowboy hats! :-)

Mandy and Denise

Denise always has this disgusting way of reminding me how badly I need to be on a beach getting a tan!

Jennessa is back from Iraq and killing time until her boyfriend gets back, so she had a free evening to hang out.

This was shortly before Denise got kissed on the forehead, the cheek and then the lips by the guy that took our picture! Thankfully she knew him, but it was still unexpected and uninvited!

Out there or In Here?

This is the view from my hotel room. Michigan is supposed to get 15 inches by midnight. The snow has let up for a little bit, but it's definitely trying to get to 15.
I think I'll stay within the confines of my cozy WARM hotel room! When I get on the road I seem to run into disaster. I now remember why getting off the road and managing seemed so appealing! :-)

Sick of Driving in Bad Weather!!!

Ok, so within the last week I have been in multiple scary driving situations!

Last week when we had the 50 mile an hour winds I made the mistake of trying to drive home from Chicago. It was terribly windy and blowing but I was too stubborn to stop and stay over because I hadn't brought any clothes with me. I kept pushing it and then when it got bad I was past all the places I could stop to actually find a hotel to stay at. I called friends and familly for moral support and scared them half to death as I would gasp when my visibility went to zippo. I've never wanted to cry that much when I've driven before. It literally would be fine and then you couldn't see anything at all. When you're coming to a complete halt on the interstate, it's a little freaky to know that someone may come barreling into you from behind. You couldn't even see the lines on the road. It was as if you had just driven into a white wall. Freaky!

So now that I'm hypersensitive to this drive, two days later is when Chicago got 9 inches. I stopped the day early because I wasn't about to get stuck in that again. I stopped the day at noon and a 45 min drive still took me close to two hours. I may have been driving like a grandma but I wasn't taking any chances!

Superbowl Sunday, I was driving home from Morton and the roads were slick. Weird day for weather. It's odd to have thunder and lightning when there is like 6 inches of snow on the ground and then sleeting. So as I'm driving back I can tell my wheels are slipping and these idiots passing me keep kicking up crap on my windshield making it harder to see. I was about a half hour late to pick up Whit from work. A half hour drive took me well over an hour!

Then yesterday, from start to finish it sucked, but the drive to the hotel was the worst part. The longer I drove the harder it rained and the colder it got. By the time I got to the hotel, the rain was freezing on my windshield. I looked at the weather today to find out that the weather is only supposed to get worse, so like my subject said, I'M SICK OF DRIVING IN BAD WEATHER!!!!

Two White Crew

We went out to Biaggi's Saturday night because Ash and Jenn's husband were at a concert and then we all met up with them later on. Here are some pics from the evening.

Ash and Jenn at dinner.
Not sure why my face looks twice the size of Holly's in this picture! It could be because I'm almost invisible with the lack of tab these days!

Jenn and Ash just switched spots. At Daddios waiting for the husbands to arrive. Two White Crew was the band playing and they were interesting to say the least! They are a cover band that sings 90's wrap music, which is kind of funny to see two white guys do!

Me and Tyler. This was before he ditched me for some random girl that was there with his friends! :-)

Denise and Tyler, Denise was at the concert as well and met up with us afterwards. There were apparently some pot smokers sitting in front of them and she said she felt like she was high from the second hand smoke!

Old roomies, I miss this girl! We don't get to hang out enough anymore!

It Never Fails!

I don't know if you can see how long this hallway is, but this is at the VERY end of the hallway at the hotel I stayed at last night. This happens about every time I get to a hotel. I check in and they give me my key. I go hauling down to my room which for some reason is ALWAYS the last room at the end of the hallway(my settings must say I don't want to be near the elevator or something), and I'm dying to get in the room to use the restroom after a long drive. I go to open the door and the key doesn't work. Now I'm faced with a dilemna. Do I leave my suitcase, laptop bag and purse in the hallway and just run down to the front desk(I mean seriously who would steal my stuff at 1am), but I always have that, well you never know feeling........SO I turn around, drag all my bags back down the neverending hallway, and go back to the front desk and explain the situation. Then they apologize for me having to come back down to the front desk and I have to act like it's no big deal and like it's the first time it's happened. I'm half tempted to start checking in and just telling them before I ever go to the room the first time that they need to reprogram my key because I can about guarantee that it will not work when I get to the room! :-)

Last of the New York Pics

I hadn't downloaded all of my pictures so these are the last of them!

There is nothing worse than getting to the Rose Bowl, getting blown out by USC and then having it blasted across the jumbotron in New York for all the city to see! :-) (U of I vs. USC)

Times Square at night.

If only we had been in this spot the night before!!! Note to self, find out more information in advance before trying to see the ball drop in Times Square! Rookie mistake!

So if Whit has to wait too long for the camera to go off, you start getting these faces out of her. So this picture took a couple tries to get it right!

Take 2

Now she's watching the wannabe broadway stars that pretty much forced us to give them tips after their mediocre performances! :-)

Ok, it only took four tries!

New York

We just got back from New York and here are some pictures from our trip!

This was our first night in New York. Whit and Kate were pretty well rested, but after driving to the airport at 2:30am that day and running on an hour of sleep, I was a little beat. We ate at Vincent's in Little Italy. Not exactly the best Italian I've ever had but the atmosphere was fun! There was a VERY loud band that came in and played for us and then practically begged for tips! They weren't that good! :-)

We wanted to go to Serendipity but the wait was about two hours so we killed some time. We found a pretty Christmas tree along our time killing, but the picture doesn't do it justice.

Kate felt left out because she said she didn't have a buddy since my friend Mandy met up with us. This is Kate and her imaginary buddy! :-)

Mandy and I in front of the Christmas tree.

We had to get the famous frozen hot chocolates from the movie Serendipity. They were amazing! I had a peanut butter one and it was awesome! The place was so cute! Definitely worth the two hour wait!

Waiting for the Subway after some haggling in Chinatown. I was successful with a Dolce & Gabbana knock off purse.

Kate was so excited about getting this watch for cheap in Chinatown and then five minutes later it broke! Thankfully we were able to fix it, but this is her lamenting over her purchase! She wanted to return it, but I told her I didn't think they had a return policy for stuff you buy on the street! :-)

We shopped in Soho and even though we couldn't even afford a keychain in this store, Whit and Kate were still excited to see one!

Whit got separated from Isaac on the Subway and got stuck between these two.

The subway is a little creepy at midnight!

We got to ride in a limo from our first hotel to the second one. Kate and I were a little excited!

Whit and Isaac...... not so much! Kate and I think they look constipated! Maybe that was the problem! :-)

View from the top of Rockefeller Center

Kate is aparently an angel in this picture and that is the Empire State Building between us

I accidentally poked Kate in the eye!

Not sure why we thought this huge oranments on water were so cool, but it seemed like a good backdrop for a picture! :-)

My two favorite morning show hosts, Matt and Meredith.

Our favorite Office characters, Michael and Dwight

The Christmas tree in Rockefeller Plaza. We thought about ice skating until you had to wait in line for multiple hours and they wanted to charge you $15!

This was when we were being herded like cattle on the way to Times Square to watch the ball drop.

This doesn't show how close we were to people and how if you were clausterphobic you would not have done well in this situation! :-)

What is it about New Year's that you actually think hats like this are cool at the time just because everyone else is wearing them? :-) We got as close as 46th street to the ball dropping(we needed to be at 44th), but the cops made us move and we didn't get to see the ball drop at all. Kind of a bummer!

I at least got this picture before they made us move

Kate and Isaac spying on our neighbors!

Kate and I showing off our free hat and gloves we got down at Times Square

We couldn't resist the tacky glasses!

We couldn't see ANYTHING at midnight but we weren't about to be in the room when the ball dropped so we at least went out on the street outside the hotel so we could hear the noise, fireworks and confetti dropping.

Not sure if those glasses will get another wear but they seemed worth the $4.50 a piece during our impulse buy! :-)

On the Staten Island Ferry taking the free route to see Statue of Liberty

Amazing how orange my hair looks next to Whit and Kate!

It was a tad windy! :-)

If you look really really closely you can kind of see the Statue of Liberty behind us!

Darci

Whit and I got the biggest kick out of how Darci kept shooshing Isaac as she was watching her video. The part we didn't get captured on video was her batting Isaac away with her hand. It was really cute!

Update

So the scammer wrote me back and told me how offended he was that I was calling him a scammer. That he has a family and a wife and that this is legit, and he's worked for the bank for 10 years! As if any of this was supposed to change my mind! I let him know that I had checked him out online and the bank that he said he's from is linked with scams from Nigeria and that if he's offended that I think he's running a scam, that he should take it up with Yahoo as well because they apparently think so as well! Of course, now he's been mute! :-)

Distant Relatives

So I keep getting these e-mails from random e-mail addresses where they tell me that I have a distant relative that died in some kind of fatal accident. Usually plane crash, car wreck, diving accident, etc. Then they proceed to tell me that I am the next of kin and that there is this large sum of money due to me. I never respond because if I actually knew of this family member it would mean something, but this latest one I just decided to respond because I was bored.

I told them that I found it odd that I have so many distant relatives that coincidentally keep dying in fatal accidents and they all want to leave me a bunch of money. Seeing that I didn't know who this person was, that they should take their scam to some other sucker who might actually believe it.

Funny part was is I actually got a response back. They tried to tell me that it was totally legit and that they've worked for this bank for 10 years and that there was 17.5 million dollars to disperse and they'd split it with me 50/50 for them putting it all together. That they'd need to come to the states to finish the paperwork and I would have to help see out the transaction. I was dying! I had totally seen this scam on Oprah AND Dr. Phil! So I wrote back and said I don't know how naive you think I am, but I watch Oprah and I know exactly what you're trying to do. Plus if I actually had a relative that wanted to leave me money I'd want a 100%! Why would I ever split it 50/50?

So anyway, like I said, I was bored but I had to laugh that they actually responded!