Wednesday, July 30, 2008

life is busy!

hello fellow peeps. i've had a few complaints about not staying up to par with this blog. i do apologize but this bitch is busy! anywho, where do i even begin?! well, first i'll start with the roomie update. i interviewed quite a few ladies and honestly none of them were really that exciting. we had arpita, some chick i didn't know her name, amanda, natalia and katie. the first was kinda boring but i would've taken her, the second was a big fat NO, amanda is an aspiring actress/model and natalia is from russia and works for a hedgefund. the last two were fine but didn't really click with them at all. however, katie was awesome! she works for rebecca taylor and a new restaurant in tribeca. she's a hard worker and a partier, the only two things that matter i guess... this was obviously a huge accomplishment since rent is due in two days, nothing like waiting until the very last moment. with all of this hard work of course i had to go out too! i must say i haven't been drinking at all the past few weeks so my tolerance is nothing short of pathetic. i'm just gonna say it, i'm a wuss. wow, i feel so much better now (pat on back). my first night out included a lovely thai dinner with ms. katie egan at republic in union square. i then sauntered over to the gramercy park hotel to meet up with my friend cat where we then ventured off to Still. It was kind of collegey/young professionaley but with good beats and decently priced drinks. we were just chatting it up until these random puerto rican softball players came and talked to us. i know, it seems strange but i also met australian softball players my last night in madison. either way, i pathetically attempted to speak spanish and got some free drinks. debbie from brooklyn (new york accent inserted here) also invited us to the softball game the next night but we conveniently had to "work" and missed out. then, on saturday i again hung out with cat on the upper east side for some wine and cheese. we finally headed out to madriver (also the official badger bar, yay!) around 1:30am and partied away until 4. even though this was on the upper east side it reminded me a lot of wisco. our feet were sticking to the floor and they were blaring good dance beats amidst highly intoxicated youngens. on sunday i could barely get out of bed. i think the most i accomplished all day was opening up my computer to order food on delivery.com (amazing website btw), walking to the door to pick it up and eating the deliciousness of happy palace's crab rangoon and moo shu chicken. by the way i just took a 20 minute break to eat the cheese fries i ordered with a fruit smoothy to make myself feel "heatlhy". they were both super tasty, thanks for asking. well, nothing else too exciting to report friends and you're probably bored out of your minds by now after reading all of the things i've eaten/drank this week. peace out until next time! i promise and even pinky swear not to wait so long until the next post.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

mary's got a...paint gun

Why hello der. Again, I am still alive even after today's "team building" paint ball excursion. I must say I really had no idea what to expect. I got expert advice from the pa and the old boss but I feel like nothing could have really prepared me for this adventure. After eating a chicken salad from Burger King I was all hyped up to get this paint gun show on the road. Of course Enterprise was all out of SUVs so five of us crammed into a Kia Rondo (yay Korean cars!). I was sitting in between two six feet plus guys with very little room all the way to Staten Island (the other five peeps rode in the boss' Mercedes Benz). When we got there it was actually kind of kewl because we had the entire place all to ourselves. Once we got all of the gear on I was having a serious "bad ass moment". I had the protector vest, face mask, belt thingy with extra ammo, paint ball gun in hand and of course my pink and red sneaks. This lasted all of about three seconds until one of our IT guys who is seven feet tall and full of tats appeared with a camo tank and his very own paint gun. The newbies were team captains so I carefully picked all of the athletic peeps to be on my team which clearly was a mistake. A lesson for all of you just because you are in shape does not mean you are good at paint ball. The other team had the "bad ass" guy, a former military guy and a couple of real sharp shooters. Word on the street and Yahoo answers says that paint ball can hurt. Um, this is an understatement. This picture does not show the gigantic bruise that surrounds it. I have three enormous welts on my legs and one on my arm. We lost almost every game which means we do the other team's laundry and buy everyone drinks (good thing the managing partner was on my team) and no skirts for me for at least a week. Despite all of those things I'm going to have to say I had a great time. It truly was a "team building" experience and I ain't too bad of a shooter myself. :) Yay for it almost being Friday!!! Peace out!

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Errr!

Of course it wouldn't be a move to New York if everything went exactly as planned. The job has gone well and the move was pretty much seamless. Lots of work but nonetheless went off without a hitch. Today was a rather long day at work which forced me to skip out on the symphony at Central Park but good thing because my now former French roomie left a note that she would no longer be living at our place effective end of July. Apparently she had no problem packing up her stuff and decided to leave to move somewhere else with a French friend. My other roomie and I thought this was all pretty rude and especially since she saw absolutely nothing wrong with this. We freaked out for about 5 minutes and then decided to post it up on Craig's list for another search for a new roommate. Of course I embellished and made our place sound like a palace in the East Village. I literally described it as, "ROOM IN BEAUTIFUL EAST VILLAGE APT. AVAIL. IMMEDIATELY". I should have gone into marketing or something. With my writing expertise we posted this at 7:56 and already had someone look at the place at 9:30pm tonight. She also just arrived from Paris so we passed on her. However, we have had quite the array of people that have emailed me. Let me just go thru the list of people we've had thus far. Let me also remind you it's only been 3 hours...the Paris girl aka Nesrine (no more!), Gulfen - a woman with a scholarship from the Turkish government who is meeting up with her husband in the US (um, no thanks!), Uri - a 30 year old recent male Harvard grad (way too smart and stuff), Antonello - an Italian architect and his engineer friend to share the room and want to improve their English skills (ugh, definitely not), Tracy - 30 year old female professional that just moved to the city from Chicago (meh) and alas Odette - 24 year old female working for Marc Jacobs/Bloomingdales and a recent city girl all the way from San Diego (me likey Marc Jacobs). Well, you can probably guess we're interviewing the last one on Monday. I have an "open house" from 2-4 on Sunday just in case. Nonetheless, a very productive evening my friends. I'll keep you posted on the future roomie! Peace out!

Sunday, July 13, 2008

i'm still alive!

Greetings again friends. I've been really slacking this week with the posts but believe you me it's been a rather intense and busy week. My new job is almost exactly like my good ol' Gateway days...(sarcasm inserted here). I just went through a 5 day crash course in computer lingo and training on how to sell computer stuff and services. It was like college all over again studying until the wee hours, getting quizzed on what you learned and even giving presentations already. I also started on the phones trying to get people to buy stuff from me. We have to keep track of every move we make so they can run weekly reports on us to track our progress. There is no time to slack off, no random coffee meetings, no personal phone calls and definitely no 2 hour lunches. However, the people are pretty kewl and everyone seems to really know their stuff. As i suspected a very work hard, play hard environment. Naturally, Friday could not come soon enough. I had a tasty meal with my friend Matt and then planned to go out with Cat on the Upper East Side. I was pretty much delirious from the lack of sleep during the week but decided I'd woman up and go out anyway. It took me nearly 45 minutes to get up there via subway and when I got off I decided to look into my purse for my id...and it wasn't there! This is the second time I've done that this year!!! The last time I was on my way down to Milwaukee with Casey to visit her "cousins" and realized I didn't have it half way down there at Johnson Creek in the middle of a snow storm. We had to turn around and then drive back...3 hours later I was just delighted Casey still considered me her friend and didn't leave me by my lonesome somewhere on 94. This time around I was too tired to go back out so I just went to bed instead. This was a good thing since I went to Long Beach in Long Island all day on Saturday. It was great, you take a train at Penn Station to Long Island, about a 45 minute trip for only $14.00 (round trip). Immediately when i got off the train, my friend and I proceeded to get a whopper jr. meal at Burger King and upgraded to a chocolate shake, the perfect bikini diet. Long Beach was packed with peeps. We didn't realize we had to pay to get on the beach and we barely made it. I had to pay $10 in all crumpled up dollar bills. The weather was absolutely gorgeous and some of the peeps my friend knew there also came well stocked with beer of course. Half of them were Badger alums and still know how to clearly party. Between BK, shotgunning beers and laying out in the amazing weather I felt pretty awesome. We all stayed out until the 7 o'clock train came so naturally we got more food to go and one of the guy's sandals broke so he walked up and down the street looking for a place to buy replacements. The only thing he could find were kid's flip flops for $4 so his feet were hanging off the end of the them...and he decided we needed an 18 pack of beer just for the train ride back. Needless to say he looked rather ridiculous. So, my friends a great first weekend in the city. This week at work we're doing a "team building" activity and paint balling in Staten Island. Let me also remind you the VP of sales is flying in from San Fran and there are only 2 girls and about 10 guys that work in the office. If you have any advice on how I don't get my arse kicked please let me know. Peace out!

Sunday, July 6, 2008

what up nyc?

Hello! I've finally arrived in that place called New York City. E! and I arrived Wednesday afternoon exhausted and anxious to explore. I am living in the East Village with all of the young, trendy hipsters within blocks of a park, police dept., NYU campus and tons of restaurants and kewl vintage shops. Next time you see me I'll be all trendy and telling everyone to go green. Well, that might be the case if i wasn't working in the financial district. I walked down to the office (took me almost an hour) through Soho of course and thought it was pretty kewl when I got to Wall Street and saw the NY Stock Exchange. Then, E and I realized my office was just one block down in a huge building. I'm up on the 21st floor so I guess we have a pretty good view of the city and of course all of those cute businessmen running around in suits. Other than that I've been running around everywhere getting stuff for the new pad and exploring all of the cute neighborhoods. We went to Soho (obvi) where the shopping was out of this world, Union Square, NYU Campus, Murray Hill and of course Korea Town. In between our meanderings around town I have met some pretty amazing people. I have French and Puerto Rican roommates. One of them arrives on Monday from Paris but her friend Florence stayed here a couple of nights and was super nice and amazingly stylish. I'm assuming she will be the same as she starts at Parson's in the fall. The other roomie, Dami I finally met today. She just graduated from Parson's in fashion design and is currently looking for a job. She gave me the big scoop on Project Runway since they've filmed at Parson's pretty much every year she's been there. Heidi Klum is a diva, Sarah Jessica Parker and Debra Messing were super nice, and all of the students can't stand any of the contestants on the show. All of the assignments are the actual curriculum Parson students have that semester and the drama is all real. She said you haven't seen anything until you've actually gone to Parson's, it's 10X worse than the show. Oh and she's a shawty just like me and a total neat freak so we'll get along quite well. Whew, this is a long post, so much to write. I'll leave you with a few of my favorite and worst moments. Worst - already stepped in dog poop while E laughed at me, wah and excited to see the fireworks at dinner only to have a huge tree block our sight of anything...I could hear them though. Best - Exploring and giggling with E, new apartment, meeting new peeps and my picture in front of a massive billboard of my future bf - david beckham. I'll write ya with the dets on the new job this week. Peace out!!!