spring fling in the city

My trip to New York was very lovely, and included the following highlights:

• All-Day Metro passes. Love them.
• Rachel and A.J.'s beautiful Chelsea PENTHOUSE apartment. I'm pretty sure that if I moved to NY I could afford an apartment smaller than their bathroom. And that then I would have to come over a lot to enjoy their high ceilings and clock-tower views. And the air mattress. (I guess also the company.)
  
• H&M on 5th Ave. Waaaaaaaay better than the excuse for a store they have at the Beverly Center. I got myself a fabulous chocolate brown bra, aviator sunglasses, and a spherical prism keychain. I'm kind of obsessed with the prisms lately.
  
• Visiting the Lower East Side for the first time and eating pickles straight out of the pickling barrel.
  
• The Hills season finale and ensuing debate rating the intelligence level of Whitney, Lauren, Audrina, and Heidi. (Listed smartest to dumbest.)
• Visiting Ground Zero, which is pretty fucking boring.
  
• The MOMA and the Met. This was my first time at the MOMA (my eight or so to the Met which I could live in), and I got very excited at all the REAL LIFE PIECES of art I like. For example, Picasso's Girl Before a Mirror which we studied in my 3rd grade class, and many by Miro and Paul Klee. At the Met they had a special exhibition on Tiffany stuff from the Tiffany house (did you know he had a house?), which are gorgeous, and it renewed my passion for all things shabby and chic. Like pink cereal bowls and flowers and prisms hanging from the windows. (Mentally planning my next apartment.)
  
• Seder at my favorite cousin-once-removeds' house, Amy and Ronnie, where the volume of food far outweighed the company. It was there I experienced the true horror of several tone deaf people "singing" in "unison."
  
• My very first waxing job, which hurt a lot less than I was expecting, but the pain was more than made up for in awkwardness. The waxing lady definitely got more intimate with me than several boyfriends have. Bizarre that people make a living stripping women of their pubic hair. Think about that for a second.
  
• Trader Joes as tourist attraction. The sole NY franchise has twenty checkout aisles, yet the line still winds around the perimeter of the entire store, ending just yards away from its beginning. This line is truly ridiculous. I tried to capture it in a photo, but my viewfinder is only so big.
  

A low point came at the very end of my trip, when it took me fifteen hours to get from Manhattan to Los Angeles. First there was the delay with the plane from its previous location (three hours). Then there was the Getting The Plane Ready for Customers delay (one hour). Then there was the sitting on the runway with fifteen planes in front of us in line (thirty minutes). I kid you not, fifteen. Then there was the hydraulic system that wasn't working (giant moan emitted from all passengers). Then there was the checking of the hydraulic system (thirty minutes), which yielded nothing, which meant we had to deplane. And wait in the terminal for the new plane to be ready (one hour). In the terminal which had no open shops, for it was after midnight.

In case you can't do the math in your head, I'll give you this: The original flight was scheduled to take off at seven pm, and we actually took off at one am.

I know everyone has their own airplane horror story, many worse than mine, but it was just a shitty way to end the trip. Luckily my dad volunteered to pick me up from LAX at four am. As Glenda says, he must really love me.