New Month, New Hair (A Jen Post)

Wow! It's November? Where has the year gone? Remember when you were a little kid and a year seemed like an eternity. The holidays, your birthday, summer...whatever it was you were looking forward to seemed so far away. Now that I'm older time seems like it goes by so much faster.

Anyhow, enough rambling... let me start off by thanking you all for your nice comments, emails, and phone messages. It makes me happy to know that you all are enjoying our blog and care enough about us to keep reading it. It makes me more excited to post when I know that you are enjoying it. Having said that, please don't be offended if it's taking me awhile to get back to your emails.

In order to keep this post on track I'm going to give myself an outline or as Mrs. Gatewood taught us in English class....a thesis. :)
The highlights of my week that I'm going to share with you are my new haircut, my trip to the UN, my scarf exchange, Greenwich Village, and Old Ladies in department stores.

First NY Haircut

So, my hair was so in need of a new cut. Unless you have short hair you may not understand how bad it was, but my hair had totally grown out of the cut and it made it very hard to style. All week I had been wearing headbands.. which are great and all, but after the 6th day straight the back of your ears start to hurt a bit from the headband. Any how.. ever since I have been in NY I have been stopping people on the street who looked like they had good haircuts to ask them who they go to. Well, last weekend I was at the Benefit Counter at Bloomingdale's and all the girls there had super cute short, stylish hair. The best part was, they all looked different, the didn't all have the same cut and they all had fun hair. So I asked who they went to and they gave me the card of their friend and stylist Jennifer Pinney. Now, I had been going to the same stylist in Sacramento for like 6 years so, it was so it was soooooooo hard for me to find someone new, but I'm so grateful to the ladies at Bloomies because I got my haircut today and I love it.

Here are my before and after pics.

BEFORE

AFTER

Didn't she do a great job! I love it!! It's so fun and sassy and cute! Thanks Jennifer, I can't wait for my next appointment. I'd say I'd refer people to her, but I need to make friends first!

UN Trip

So, one of the requirements of my job is that we get UN press passes. We had a month to get them and were all supposed to have them by Nov. 1st. Guess what day I went down to go get mine? Yep, Nov. 1st! Anyhow, I was jamming down to the UN before work one morning. Which is nowhere near where I live or where I work and on the complete opposite side of the island from both. Yes, Manhattan is an island, something I didn't realize until we moved here.

So, I'm dressed in work clothes with my NFT map book (thanks Barb, we love it) clutched in my hands trying to figure out how to get there as quickly as possible.

I took the A train (which is right next to our apartment) to 42 street (The Port Authority) I walk 3 blocks in this underground tunnel to the Times Square station and took the 7 train to Grand Central station. I get upstairs and am amazed because it is beautiful. The walls are all marble and it looks like it does in the movies. I was so bummed that I was in such a hurry to get to the UN that I didn't have time to look around and ogle. So I go outside to 42nd street and I see all these awesome stores and then I'm even more bummed because I'd so rather go shopping then go to work. I get to the sidewalk and realize that I have no idea which way is east which way is west or which way I'm supposed to go. SO, I hail a cab.

I get in the cab, and say "The UN please." I'm feeling all sophisticated in my cute Ann Taylor skirt and sweater, wool jacket and brown leather boots. I'm thinking he must think, I'm a smart delegate or something and that's when he tells me that I should get out of the cab and walk 2 blocks towards all the flags and that's where the UN is. I felt kind of dumband excited the car.

I proceeded down the street, saw the 1000 flags and realized how close I really was. I walk up to the guard and said, I need to find the press office, he told me to keep walking down the street towards the visitors center. I said, I'm not a visitor, I'm a member of the media he gestures towards the left so, I keep walking down the street and see another guard. He tells me to walk across the street to the credential office. I walk across the street and only see a security guard and road construction. I ask the third security guard and he points me to the other side of the intersection to a building with a blue awning on it that seemed remarkably nondescript. I walked in and a 4th security guard asked me if they could help me and I said I'm hear for my press pass. I must say that it was the nicest group of government employees that I have ever met. They were all so friendly and when they saw my California ID and realized I was new to the city they could not have been nicer.

I left the office wearing my new UN press pass and the 3rd security guard stopped me and asked to see my ID, told me it was a cute pic and then asked if I new how to get back to the subway. Maybe it was the map book clutched in my hands that led him to believe that I didn't.

Anyhow, the UN was huge!!! It was lined with tour buses and I so wanted to be one of the people going on the tour. Instead I had to go back to work. I can't wait until I get to back and use my ID to get inside. That will be so cool!!

My Scarf Exchange

One of the coolest things about NY is all of the street vendors. Fruit, handbags, scarves, jewelry...you name it- they sell it. I've been, wanting/ needing a scarf for awhile now and after I left my haircut on the Upper East side of Manhattan I decided I was going to look for one. I saw this scarf stand with a sign "$10 for a cashmere scarf." They had a ton of colors/ patterns and I couldn't decide if I wanted a cream & yellow colored one or a red & black one. I was going back and forth and bought the black one. About an hour later, I was in a department store and looked in the mirror. I was wearing my red wool pea coat w/ my new black & red scarf and I realized I had made a horrible mistake. I should have bought the cream colored one!

I went back to the scarf man on the corner of 59th and Lexington and said (while giving him that puppy dog look that I do so well )"excuse me, but I was just here about an hour ago and I really regret choosing the black over the cream, any chance I can exchange." He couldn't have been nicer and said he builds customers not his wallet and I could do whatever I wanted to. Sweet! I now have a cute new scarf.

The bummer though.. when I got to 59th and Madison there was a street fair on Madison Ave. from 59th street to 42nd street and they had a ton of scarf stands and they were going for $5 each. I saw the same scarf I had paid $10 for a few minutes ago going for $5. Lame, huh? Oh well, I bet those vendors were not as nice as my scarf man! I will definitely be going back to him for any future scarf needs that I have.

Greenwich Village

Well our loyal blog readers voted a few weeks ago and you picked Greenwich Village as our next neighborhood to explore so we went to dinner there on Friday night. I found this really cool restaurant called INNLw12. The name sounds weird, but it's really cool. It's basically called "The Inn" and it's on the corner of a street actually called "little west 12th st." How cute is that? Anyhow, it's run by a Canadian and the have all Canadian beers. Mike was in heaven. The also have Poutine, another Canadians dish which is really good and really bad for you. It's basically french fries smothered in something we had the ones smothered in Beef tips, red wine sauce and blue cheese. Ok, I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.

Anyhow, the village was really cute. The streets were paved with cobble stone bricks.. the light fixtures had that quaint old town feel to them and the people were all foreign. Lots of Europeans there and all the women had real Louis Vuitton's. No fakers! Anyhow, we'll have to go back during the day sometime. It was really nice. We're going down there next Friday with my sister and Gabe to see a comedy show at this place called 'Comix'. We're seeing the Sklar brother- they're hysterical. Watch this clip. TV friends you will especially like it! No offense to my KCRA buddies, but it sooooo reminds me of Tripple Doppler Radar and Live Copter 3!

I'm so excited for my sister and Gabe to come next weekend. They'll be our first real visitors!

Older Ladies in Departmet Stores

Have you ever shopped at Loehmann's before? Well, at Loehmann's they have this thing called "the backroom." It's for woman only and everyone just changes there in front of everyone else and it's normal. Well, as normal as it can be, I always have felt kind of weird there.

Anyhow, 3 different times since I have been in NY now, old woman just start taking off their tops in the middle of department stores and try stuff on. Isn't that strange? And it's not like they are even wearing a tank top or an undershirt. They strip to their bra's! Seriously, it's the most bazaar thing. It happened once at Ann Taylor, once at Bloomingdale's, and once at this discount store called Filene's. It's so strange. The woman I've seen do it are usually 65 or older and overweight. I guess when yo get old you can do whatever the hell you want!