NY Stories

Flew to NYC last night for work. Except that my luggage did not. Which meant that I had a meeting with 60+ people today from the News organization (producers, journalists, that sort of thing) and I was literally wearing my sweats and Uggs, or what I had been wearing for the previous 30 hours. Awesome. You might be wondering, well, dumbass, why didn't you just go shopping or stay at your hotel until they found your luggage? Easy. I met everyone downstairs this morning, my plan being that I would drop them off at the meeting facility at 7:30 and then would take the car, go back to the hotel, and wait until the mall opened at 9:30, shop, then return to the meeting by 10:30. Great plan, except that it was thwarted by being gently "encouraged" to join the jam-packed meetings as-is at least for the morning sessions. When those were finished, by then it was lunch, and so, what the hell, why not look like ass all day long? Important Business Lesson #5,639,034: When flying out of town for some big meeting, ALWAYS carry something in your travel-on that can double for work clothes in a pinch. That, and NEVER fly through Chicago.

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Quick story about the crazy cab ride I took last night from some guy who walked up to me at JFK and offered to beat the price of Yellow Cab (whose line was 100 people long) -- I accepted his offer because at 17 degrees outside, I couldn't think straight. It reminded me a little of the time Tera and I were meeting up in Austria only she missed the connecting flight and I ended up in Salzburg w/ no place to stay and all the hotels/hostels sold out. I accepted an invitation from some guy I met in the train station to stay at his friend's B&B (though in a separate room). We ended up taking a desolate ride across the border into Germany and then walking about a mile to the B&B. In the morning I woke up to him standing in my room. I screamed, he left, blah blah blah.

In fairness, this is New Jersey, not Germany, and the cab ride wasn't *that* dramatic. The point is, I'm safe, and that's good, but I I'll admit I've made better decisions in my day. The cab driver turned out to be decent enough, if you don't count the drugs/Red Bull cocktail he uses to drive 24-hour shifts (nice), and assuming you ignore that he pulled the old bait-n-switch on the price and nearly ran out of gas on the way. Seriously, the gauge said 0 miles of gas left. I was texting Renee at the time to be like, "Dude ummm my cabby is about to run out of gas and there are no stations in sight" when he caught me texting and asked me not to tell my friends "'cause it's embarrassing for me." Uhhh what?

As I said, I'm safe, I now have my luggage, am ridiculously tired and have so much work to do but having just got back from dinner with no intelligible thoughts left, am choosing blogging instead.