New York days 1 and 2: Truly Outrageous!

Hello friends! Well, here I am - sitting in Shilo's apartment in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. I want to try and blog as my trip moves along because that seems more fun (and manageable) than having one huge superblog when I get home.

First of all - a word to the wise. While red-eye flights seem like a genius idea when you buy the ticket, they're not. Don't do it. On Friday night I left Salt Lake City 11:30 p.m. MST and arrived at JFK in New York at the unholy hour of 5:05 a.m EST. Sleeping on the plane is encouraged, but nearly impossible. I mean it's a plane. In reality, how can you actually get a good night's sleep? Plus, it's not even a good night's worth if you do get it because the flight is only a few hours long, really. Anyway, the point is, when I got to Shilo's apartment at 6:00 a.m., I was so exhausted that the thought of starting my day frightened me. I had basically been awake for 24 hours. Shilo was also exhausted because, hello, it was 6 a.m. So we took a "nap," which really meant go back to bed until we were well rested enough for the upcoming night.

Once I was coherent, we went to brunch at this delicious French restaurant in Park Slope called Moutard. It was delightful. Then we came home and showered, etc. so we could head over to our friend Amber's apartment to get ready for Halloween!! Generally speaking, Halloween is an extremely stressful time for me because the pressure of a successful costume eventually crushes me. But this year, Shilo informed me that she, Amber and I were dressing up as Jem and The Holograms (you can google it). It was truly outrageous.

Yeah, I'd say we pretty much nailed it.

Shilo as Jem

Me as Shana

Amber as Aja

Our nails match our outfits. Just sayin'...

Jen and Sean dressed up as Katniss and Peeta. They dressed their baby Julian as bread. GENIUS.

So we transformed ourselves for like three hours at Amber's apartment (which included exactly three fake eyelash application meltdowns) and eventually made it to the Brooklyn Ward's chili and pie cook-off where approximately one person knew what we were dressed as. Then we made our way to a party in Manhattan where approximately NOBODY knew who we were, except for a hot gay couple on the train who declared themselves our biggest fans. THEN we made our way to the West Village to walk around and get something to eat at 1 a.m., where so many people knew who we were and gave us shout-outs even if they didn't know that it made our night and completely validated the three hours it took us to get ready. We even made rock star boyfriends through the restaurant window.

Outside a guitar shop in West Village

Shilo eating buffalo wings at 1:30 a.m.

It was a great night and SO fun. And let's face it - we look amazing. Oh yeah, on the train-ride home I spotted a hot cowboy (and I mean HOT) who Amber promptly stole from me. She started talking to him and they got off at the SAME STOP. We found out he is actually a cowboy dressed as a cowboy which loosely translates into I want to marry him. He turned out to be gay. So now he is Amber's new gay BF, so I guess they were MFEO. And that was our Halloween!

Today we dragged ourselves out of bed to get ready for church, which was hard after going to bed at 3 a.m. After church we went to Amber's to get the rest of our stuff that we left there last night and eat the remnants of an apple pie. Then we came home and made burgers for dinner, which were delish thanks to Shilo's patty-making skills and my patty-flipping skills. Then we went down and watched the Park Slope Halloween parade which was awesome, but it was really really cold outside, so we came home and had hot cocoa and cinnamon yogurt-covered pretzels.

Days 1 and 2: successful. Stay tuned for more!