Pittsburgh, NYC and Madonna

This is my first week back at work after a few crazy weeks over in the Northeast.

I had a conference in Pittsburgh that is basically like a little bit of Vegas every year. Everyone has a good time. This year it was in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh was kinda cool. It's a pretty cool downtown area and everything. Our hotel was the Hilton but it was an OLD Hilton. The rooms kinda sucked....the funniest part of all is that we have this hospitality room every year. Well, we were too loud this year and they were stupid enough to put our room next to other guests' rooms and so we got kicked out of our own hospitality suite!! Then beth and i went to a different room where they were hanging out and we ended up getting kicked out of there too!

The first full crazy night is always hilarious at the conference...this year was no different. We had a welcome reception and everyone drinks and dances. After that was done, everyone, and i mean everyone from the conference went to this nightclub called "Touch." When we got there they were still having a drink special...everything was one dollar. So you can imagine...there were four of us trying to all buy rounds so we immediately had 4 drinks each! Then it was just craziness from that point on. Dancing, drinking, etc. They had people swinging from swings like it really was Vegas only the women swinging were not cute at all. hahaha. At some point in time, a drunk woman stepped on my foot (my foot that only had on heels as well) with her stiletto heel...the next day my right foot was all black and blue. It still actually hurts! :( Here are some pictures of us at Touch...we took the place over and probably made them a month's profits in one night.



Friday night pretty much did me in and for the rest of the conference i took it easy on the alcohol!

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After lots of late nights and early mornings, Beth and I left Pittsburgh to head to NYC. Beth hadn't ever been to the Big Apple, and since it's my favorite place I thought we needed to go while we were fairly close to it.

We got there midday Tuesday and parked the car in a really good garage called Imperial Parking that didn't charge us too much at all. In fact, it was cheaper than parking in a lot of big cities! And the guy was super nice to us and took good care of Beth's car. After we parked, we walked over to Times Square and looked around. We also went to see Grand Central Station (one of my favorite spots) and then hopped on a subway to the World Trade Center site. We also walked around to see the financial district and Wall Street. We then went over to Greenwich Village and ate dinner at a sushi place. After that, we went back to get our bags from Beth's car and drug them across Manhattan to my cousin Shannon's apartment on the upper east side. Um, that part wore us out more than the entire day's events. Shannon lives in a studio apartment. She pays well over $1000 per month for something that is probably twice the size of my office. Beth and i were so wiped out. We slept on the futon that Shannon had and she cranked on the air so we were FREEZING. I kept waking up thinking "i'm so cold, i'll never go back to sleep" but sure enough i was exhausted so i did fall asleep again. :)

The next day we woke up and headed over to Central Park. We got to see the "Imagine" thing that was placed in the park after John Lennon was killed in the 80's. I didn't know this, but there's a guy who puts flowers around the Imagine thing every day ... and he arranges them to form a peace sign...here are a few pictures of it.


After we knew we could check in to our hotel, we went back to Shannon's and got our bags and took a CAB over to our hotel on 46th in the heart of the Theatre District. The hotel was pretty cheap for NY standards (thanks to beth and her hotwire skills) and was in a great location for us. We didn't know what the room would look like...it was tiny!! basically a bed and a bathroom and hardly any room for our bags! but it was funny and we laughed about it. The room was about 6 feet wide.

After checking in, we had some pizza at John's Pizzeria a few blocks away in what used to be a church. Pretty cool, and great pizza. Then we decided to try our luck with scalping some tickets for the Madonna concert. We got down to Madison Square Garden and there was NO ONE selling tickets. Beth mentioned that sometimes there are still tickets available for concerts even when you think they're sold out. So we went inside to the ticket window. There were seats available...for either $365 each or $65 each behind the stage. We decided to buy some for the next night and thought if nothing else we could not tell someone they're behind the stage and sell them for $100 and make a profit. Well, they're smart at the old Garden. they stamped "LIMITED VIEW" in huge letters on each ticket. So we were screwed on that deal. We decided that if nothing else we could just stand up during the concert in various locations...we thought that was our only choice really....more on this later.

That night we went to henrietta hudson's, this bar that i went to with Amber once...that's the time i threw half a bagel out of the window and we were getting back to my parents house at 6 a.m. yikes! This time, Beth was designated drunkie, so i was in good shape! haha.

The next day we went on one of those "get on get off" bus tours that took us to upper manhattan. it was great! I got to see a lot of the city that I hadn't seen before. We saw St. John the Divine Cathedral in Harlem and we got off at a Harlem stop to walk around, shop and see a little bit of the Apollo Theater. We also got a glimpse of where Jay-Z lives and where Michael Douglas lives. We had a seat near the front of the bus on the top where the tour guide was. She got mad at us for talking! Who doesn't talk on a tour bus? I didn't understand that. She was weird anyway. And NOT funny. Then we ended up walking down some of 5th Avenue and saw Rockefeller Center. By now it was about 4:30 so we went to take showers and get ready for the night. My parents had given me money for Beth and I to eat out on them one night. We went to Del Frisco because that's the place my dad had mentioned. Well, we didn't know that it was goign to be crazy packed that night! We had to wait and got served at a table in the upstairs bar (there's a longer story to this about me stalking a guy at one of the tables waiting for him to leave so we could take the table). Anyway, even though we had to wait a while, it was great food and a good price. and our desserts were AMAZING! After that, it was time to see Madonna. I already couldn't believe i was going to be seeing Madonna but you know, i was not sure what to expect with our tickets. Well, it was a tad after 8 and she hadn't gone on yet. So Beth and I get to our seats which didn't seem all that bad. We could still see where she would have been part of the time. So now it's like 830 and she hasn't gone on yet. Beth and I look across to see a HUGE section of seats that are empty. So we decide to move there. We were a little worried someone would check our tickets, but there was NO ONE checking tickets. And these were the GOOD seats. probably the $365 tickets. No one made us leave the entire concert. Madonna went on at 9 and it was crazy! I was going nuts. And when she'd come out on the front catwalk, we were probably 60 yards away from her. It was incredible. I'd put it in my top 3 concerts...the other two being Elton John and the Jimmy Buffett/Alan Jackson/George Strait concert that only happened once ever. That got over at 11ish and Beth and I went to Jay-Z's bar to meet a friend of hers. Pretty nice place. Good snack food. We didn't see anyone famous, but some young bankers tried to talk to us and tried to impress us with their love of money. Boring!

The next day we got up to wrap up our trip. We went to see the Statue of Liberty and South Street Seaport. We also tried to do a little shopping down on Broadway but that was unsuccessful because we were on WEST Broadway. Wow...I can't get over my dumbness on that one. But oh well, I can go back again sometime. :)

Overall, a great trip. I love New York, so it's hard to not have a great trip there. I must admit, though, it was nice to sleep in my own bed and actually GET some sleep. That's all for now!