MNet Ladies\’ Travel Blog

Ladies and Gents, everybody is officially home from NYC and after several sixteen hour sleeps, mostly caught up on sleep. This means: PHOTOS!!!

In the wee hours of Monday the 31st, Laura, Brandi, and I made it back to PA after a stop at Denny’s for food and a stop at a WaWa to get a picture of Laura. Once at my house, we pretty much crashed. Brandi left later that day and Laura and I swam and ate – gasp! – real food, thus ending our diet of ramen, bagel bites, and taquitos.

At about 5 am we left for the BWI Airport AmTrak station. I forgot my ID but was still able to get on the train, thankfully. We did plan to stay awake and pretend we were on the Hogwarts Express, but alas, we slept through most of the ride. When we got to NYC, we met up with Shawn (Laura’s AWESOME friend) by the Paramount and then went for McDonalds. Specifically, at a two-story McDonald’s restaurant. I should have taken pics.

Shawn and Laura went off to site see and since my feet were dead from Vegas, I parked my butt at Hotel Pennsylvania to wait for the lovely, wonderful, Speth to check us in at the Paramount. When the time came to go check in, we had a neurotic cab driver. Speth sat in the front seat and Laura, Shawn, and I took the back. When Speth tried to talk about the hotel with us, the driver literally freaked out. “Do not do this! Passengers in the front seat must not talk to passengers in the back seat! Passengers in the back seat can talk to other passengers in the back seat but not the front seat! It is disruptive! It disrupts me! It is dangerous!! Do you know how many people that has killed?”

It was REALLY hard not to laugh. Anyway, we got to the hotel and our room was aproximately the size of (and Emerson will like this analogy) a cereal box and had a creepy painting for a headboard. The bathroom was marginally larger than the closet and had no lock, yet it was easy to get locked in. The toilet was like a demon and the sink looked like some sci-fi urinal. The shower curtain was touchy-feely, thus we left the curtain open to shower. (NOTE FROM LAURA: Jess may have showered curtainless, but I’m a bit more modest.)
Meeting up with everyone in NYC was amazing and I miss everyone already!!! I can’t wait until the next time we all get together. (I shall spare you the angst!)
As for the readings, I was bad on the first night. I slept through John Irving completely and being the biggest Stephen King fan ever, it was my duty to nod off a couple times during his reading. So sue me. Personally, I can’t say the first night was that great. It was okay, but not spectacular. Some of the questions for Jo were wasted on inane things like, “If Muggles had the ingredients could they make potions?” GRRR!!!!

The second night was EXCELLENT. The audience was better and more responsive, I was awake the whole time, all three authors improved in their reading (they read the same pieces both nights), I found that I nodded off more during Stephen King on the first night than I thought I did, John Irving is hilarious and I need to read some of his novels, and Jo is just… wonderful. I loved her shoes, her voice, her… just everything. Jooooooo! (Sorry for the run on!)

As you’ve probably heard, Dumbledore is… DEFINITELY DEAD. MWAHAHAHAHA. TAKE THAT DUMBLELOVERS.