Happy New Year!

Another year has flown by! And it's perfect weather (50 degrees) for standing around waiting for the ball to drop. I haven't made resolutions for a long time, but this year I came up with some that should be very easy to keep :)
1) Prepare breakfast and lunch to take to work. (Ordering out twice a day/5 days a week can take a toll on the pockets!)
2) Walk home at least twice a week-it's literally 30 blocks. Weather permitting, of course. (I'll be the Tina Turner of my age group.)
3) Learn how to crochet.
4) Make Gems by Jewell a successful business.
What are yours?
Here's to a prosperous 2005!!!!!!

The Empire State

The line goes on....

and on....

I never would have guessed that NYC is a vacation destination the week between Christmas and New Year's. I, personally, would opt for warmer weather. But swarms of tourists have descended upon Herald Square. And that means that to get anything to eat or shop or even walk down the street for the local New Yorker is close to impossible. This is a line to get up into the observatory at the Empire State building. It went on around the block. I'm told that there is more waiting once you get up inside the building as well. To top it off, the visibility isn't even great today, it's very overcast. Friggin' tourists! It's been 5 months, I can say that now :)

Merry Christmas!

Well, here's a tip: Never miss your flight 2 days before Christmas!
I have never, ever missed a flight in my life, and to wake up at 7am (there was some kind of mishap with the alarm) for an 8am flight was not a great way to start off the holidays. We kept rolling over and over and under and over on several stand by lists for United. I almost thought that we would have to exchange gifts right there in the LaGuardia terminal! I think the United rep that finally put us on our flight took pity on me with my sad, sad face-I was literally a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Even though we wasted a day of vacation, I'm very thankful that we made it. I was very doubtful that it would actually happen, for a couple reasons: 1)All the flights were OVERbooked. How do you overbook during the holidays? So people who had shown up for their flights on time were getting bumped to later flights. 2)The standby list does not go by who has shown up first. It goes by your mileage you have racked up and the fare for your ticket. So the people who missed their flights that were later than ours but were flying first class and/or had a zillion mileage plus points got to get on a flight before us. I understand the reasoning behind that but it's still unfair as hell! That's why I usually fly Southwest cause not only is it cheaper but there's a whole lot less bullshit involved. Once we got to Chicago, we had a good time and that's all that matters now. I hope you all had a holly, jolly!!

Christian's niece, Melody. Isn't she the cutest?

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Here are pictures around my neighborhood:


My new favorite spot

My train stop 

Yes, it's within steps of my apartment 

My gym (cause the Bally's here royally sucks) 

The tram to Roosevelt Island
What is there to do on Rooselvelt Island, you ask? Not a damn thing!

The bridge to Queens across the East River 

Oopa!

Christian left this morning for Europe. He called me from work last night and said that he had to go to Athens over the weekend for work. Being the Midwesterner that I am, I asked him why he needed to go to Athens, Ohio. Athens, Greece you say? I stand corrected. He was advised to take sleeping pills for the plane and then get a prescription for uppers (the kind that pilots use) to combat jetlag and stay awake during meetings. So I don't know if I'm more disturbed by the fact that his superiors are trying to turn him into a junkie, or that pilots are all hyped up on on some kind of prescribed smack-I mean, how safe is that exactly. So I guess I'm just gonna pray that he makes it home in time to catch a flight to the Chi for Christmas.

A night out for Candy's Birthday

Me, Candy and Amie

Thursday was Candy's birthday. We all met at the Mixx Lounge and it was a good time. But Candy bought us drinks instead of the other way around. She's a liquor distributor for Blavod. It's black colored vodka- very interesting, tres chic. Give it a try!

The beauty of the sample sale

My office is on 34th and 5th, which is fairly close to all the major designer showrooms and corporate wholesale offices. This means that I have access to all the SAMPLE SALES! You can score some awesome designer goods ie, DVF, Jimmy Choo, Manolo Blahnik, Nannette Lepore, for up to 80% off. (So that's really how Carrie Bradshaw was always dressed to the nines!) Warning-There are no dressing rooms so you can check your modesty at the door! Just a large room curtained off with mirrors placed here and there. And this is only for the girls who can stomach digging and pawing through box after box of things tossed about...that's not everyone's cup of tea. This, however, is right up my alley-aahh, the thrill of the hunt! I've decided that it's not so much wearing the clothes that I acquire but it's the act of acquiring them that makes my adrenaline pump. Sample sales are no doubt one of the things that makes this city GREAT!

What I'm Reading

I'm still reading The Source. Come on now, it's just under 1,100 pages!