even the wild ones get lucky sometimes

Usually when people say you don’t know what you got till it’s gone, they are talking about something profound, like a great love or a loving family. Generally, they are not talking about boys in polo shirts and boat shoes…

This past weekend a few of us headed to Nashville for our getaway of the year. I would love for this weekend trip to someplace different to become an annual occurrence. Nashville was a fantastic city. It was clean, the people there were genuinely “nice” (I HATE that word but it’s true here), and it seemed like there was a ton of stuff to do. Not to mention the whole “We’re in the south, country music” vibe. It was our first adult vacation in a really great hotel with actual events planned throughout. Well at least one. And that’s all that mattered. My friend Caitlin says that as long as she can go home and tell her parents they did one planned thing that didn’t include a bar, then that’s good enough for her. Which is precisely what we did- even though it did include personal coolers.

Our tour on Saturday was called the Nash Trash tour and for anyone interested in visiting Nashville I highly, highly recommend this. It was hands down top five funniest things I have ever been a part of. The two sisters that run the tour on a pink school bus have this whole country comedy routine built into their tour of the not-so-popular sites. By that I mean bars where famous affairs started and the Nashville jail. Our break in the tour was at the Country Music Hall of Fame which shared the same lawn as our hotel. We went back after the tour to explore. It took us 20 minutes to go through the 3 stories of country music but I would say it was worth it just to see all of Elvis’ crap (great crap, Jeanne) and a few dresses worn by Taylor and Carrie.


The nights were filled with moving from bar to bar, ridiculous dancing to country music and losing our voices. As usual, I sang every song I knew and fell in love with the songs that I didn’t, the title being my favorite song of the weekend. One of my favorite things about the city was how much it reminded me of and made me miss the south. The boys were the same friendly, peach-polo wearing, bad-dancing boys that I remember from JMU. They reminded me of Skinny, Woody and James and I didn’t realize how much I missed them until I saw these clones of them. Sigh. It was the best time I’ve had in a while. On the way to the airport, I told Jeanne that the next time we come to Nashville I want to spend a week and then just die immediately after- knock on wood that doesn’t really happen- but that’s how happy I was after that weekend.


It’s not even July and I have had a pretty great time so far this summer. I’m excited to see what the rest of it brings! Stay tuned…

fly right my ass

Why is it that the things that are supposed to be the most enjoyable take the most planning? Weddings, vacations, even going out to dinner. All of these involve picking dates, seeing who’s available and obviously money. It usually is a general rule of thumb that the planning causes a major headache but it ends up being worth it in the end. So by the time you want to plan something else, you have forgotten what a pain in the ass it is. Sort of like labor and delivery. Tomorrow a bunch of us are headed to Nashville and since we have booked our flights I’ve had a personal vendetta out for Delta Airlines.

To make a long, long story sort of short we book our flights to Nashville early and spent extra money to get there earlier in the day and have no layovers. Delta changed it randomly to a flight WITH a layover that got to Nashville 2.5 hours later. So we called to demand better flights. Just fair warning for anyone that needs to do this: talking to Delta representatives will make anyone want to throw yourself on the runway in front of the plane. After many agonizing phone calls, we were switched to a slightly better but not ideal flight. Then finally, this past Monday, I get an email that says that I’m back on my original direct flight. Great except I was the only one that got it and it turned out to be some sort of glitch in the system. So essentially they just sent me a random fake email with fake itinerary just to have me call AGAIN. They really are making me work for this trip. I can’t take credit for the above coloring masterpiece but it pretty much sums up how I feel.

A month after booking my flight to Nashville, I booked a trip for my parents to Chicago. They went through the exact same random flight changes with no warnings and cancellations all over the place. Case and point I am never ever flying with Delta again. After all this switching we ended up being on American Airlines anyway so I guess that’s okay. Time will tell.


After doing a little research it seems that I’m not the only one with issues with Delta. I found endless amounts of blogs and articles on how sucky (for lack of a better word) they are. It just goes to show that a ton of advertising goes a long way. One blog I found had a list of Delta’s slogans that made me l.o.l. for sure. Here’s just a sampling: “Delta: Our pilots are terminally ill and have nothing to lose.”, “Delta: We never make the same mistake three times.” and my personal favorite “Delta: A real man lands where he wants to.”


After all the flight changes, fake flight changes, complaining, organizing and paying, tomorrow we leave and I could not be happier. We have a great group going and I can’t wait to hang out in a totally different place where we don’t know a single person. Have a great weekend…I know I will :)

officer situation

Life has a curious way of making you laugh in the most terrible situations…


On my way home from work on Friday my mom called to see if I could go meet my sister, Danielle, because someone had broken into her car while she was at the gym. As I pulled up behind her car, I couldn’t have felt worse for her. She was crying and on the phone with the bank trying to cancel her credit card. The perpetrator busted in her passenger side window and stole her wallet. It’s amazing that they didn’t take anything else since her Michael Kors bag was on the seat with her Marc Jacobs sunglasses, her blackberry and her iPod. Plus it looked like Vera Bradley threw up in the back seat. They must have just wanted the wallet and whatever money was in there. Luckily, she only had $6 in cash.


I walked up to her as she was in the middle of her phone call which ended in a few expletives and her hanging up on the Chase representative. As if getting your car broken into isn’t enough of a pain in the ass, you have to immediately figure out what was in your wallet and how to cancel everything. My mom has everyone in our family making photo copies of everything in our wallets at work today.
I made sure that she was okay and asked her if the cops had come yet. She said yes and that “officer idiot” was on his way back with the camera to take pictures of her car. When he returned I almost immediately understood the name calling. Officer Enzo DiPaolo looked about 18 years old, had a Bronx accent that made you think he was from another country and thanks to the stereotypes reinstated by the “Jersey Shore” will now be referred to as Officer Situation. If he had lifted up his shirt to show us his six pack and started fist pumping to some house music I would not have been surprised in the least.


After taking pictures of Dani’s car we followed Officer Situation back to headquarters to “fill out da thing fa da thing”. Awesome. As we walked into the station, Officer Situation 2 greeted us with the “papaas” for filling out. Officer Situation apologized for “all dis retaaded papaa work” that she had to fill out. We both wished my sister’s husband, Steve, was there, who lived in the Bronx for 30 years, so that he could translate the conversation between these two goodfellas. After filling out the paperwork, Officer Situation sent us on our way and promised that “if I find these mooks I’ll kick da aaases”. Okay bra.


It’s not often that in a situation like that you want to hold back laughter like you’re in church but that was the case. After a little wine and some Longford’s Cookie Monster ice cream, Dani started to come around and ended up being thankful that Officer Situation was the one to show up to her car that afternoon.

wedding weekend

Today was the official “I’m getting too old for this shit” day.

I cannot believe that this weekend came and went as fast as it did. Last week was the big build up to Dani’s wedding on Friday. Wednesday we had the rehearsal dinner which was held at Ciao in Eastchester. It was really great and we had an unbelievable amount of food. Thursday everyone woke up and hit the gym for the last time before the big day.

Friday morning came and the girls headed to Evangelista to get all of our hair done. I loved the way mine came out. I haven’t gotten my hair done for something since prom and I was a little nervous because my hair is not easily tamed. But it lasted pretty much the whole night which is a lot to say because I definitely did my fair share of dancing and sweating. Hair was followed by makeup which was done my an artist from the Laura Mercier counter. Her name was Val and she was great.

After that, our day officially began. The ceremony at the church was great. It felt like it went by quicker than normal. The priest that did the mass was someone that me and Dani worked with at Westchester Country Club. He really made the mass original and his homily was so funny. He used a bunch of Dani’s facebook statuses as points in his homily. It was awesome. Then came pictures at Untermeyer park followed by the reception at the Fountainhead…

I don’t think I have ever danced so much in one night. As soon as they started playing music the bride was out on the dance floor along with everyone else. It was so great to see everyone and I really felt like everyone had a great time. I know I did. After the Fountainhead we headed back to the hotel where everyone was staying. We continued our dance party and when the cops showed up because they got a report of a “riot” outside the hotel, they just joined in. That’s probably one of the top 3 moments of the night.

Saturday was the post wedding BBQ which I slept through half of and Sunday was the Yankee game and Memorial Day bbqs rounded off with a trip to Nugents. Needless to say my Monday was spent mostly in the pool recovering. I told my sister that after that weekend I would be okay with dying on Monday.

Today at work has been a real challenge. It has been a real struggle to get through anything and since I was out half of last week, everything is testing my patience. I need a weekend to recover from my weekend…