Miscellaneous

Mystery Date Night

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My boyfriend has many pitfalls, the main one, of course, being that he has an emoji for a face. But recently he has been KILLING the date-game, and I must give credit where credit is due. You may remember less than a month ago, when he surprised me with 4th row tickets to see The Book of Mormon in preparation for our trip to Utah. TBH, I didn’t think he could beat that.

He has asked me early last week for a “date night” on Friday. Color me impressed. That was already a huge improvement. Pre-planning a date? Allowing me more than 3 days’ notice to put it in my always-full social calendar? I was excited.

Friday morning, he texted me while I was at work and said, “I checked your calendar. You don’t have anything tomorrow morning, right?” That’s right, ladies and gents, we share Google calendars. We are the COOLEST couple of all time. But honestly, I don’t know what we would do if we didn’t; I have too many things going on! Luckily, I had nothing going on the next day, since the UF Football game was canceled due to Hurricane Irma.

Anyway, my interest was piqued. A date that requires no plans the next morning? Were we going on a trip? We don’t have a car! Were we going out super late? Sleep No More? He knows I get scared way too easily for that shiz.

I got home from work and he told me to pack a bag. SO EXCITING. I packed an outfit, a gator outfit for the next day (it doesn’t matter if they aren’t playing, #InAllKindsOfWeather), a swimsuit (you never know) and some makeup. Then we headed out to our chariot (aka our Via, SIGN UP WITH MY CODE emily5s6e for $10 off!) and he still kept it a mystery as we headed downtown. I cheated a little by looking on the Via’s GPS, but all I cleaned from my snooping was that we were going super far downtown.

We arrived at the Hilton Millennium hotel just as the sun was setting. My emoji-bf has many great qualities, one big one being he is a Hilton Honors Gold member, so we got the highest room available, on the 48th floor. The room was overlooking the Freedom Tower, the 9/11 Memorial reflecting pool, and the Oculus. I’d argue there is no better view within Manhattan. The best view of Manhattan is from New Jersey, but really, WHO GOES THERE!? The view of the Freedom Tower could not have been more timely, the weekend before 9/11. 16 years later and I still have so many feelings.

We settled into our room in the third-best Hilton Hotel in Manhattan, and checked out the room service menu. How do I know it was the third-best? Because emoji-man was very upset when he looked it up and found out. Turns out the Waldorf Astoria is #1 and The Conrad is #2, in case these things matter to you.

Anyway, the emoji-BF decided on this mystery date because of an Amex offer (more on his and my credit card churning another day), which said that if you spend $300 at a Hilton Hotel, you get $350 back. FREE MONEY! MY FAVORITE KIND! We needed to figure out a way to spend $40 more to get the offer, so we perused the room service menu for items to “fit the bill,” literally. Unfortunately, this is NYC and room service, a lethal combination. Nothing on the menu was that cheap. So we started looking for other options.

We decided to dine at Osteria della Pace, a southern Italian restaurant inside Eataly. The food was delicious and I had a glass of no. 139 dry rose cider, which was sort of like a sparkling rose champagne. Yum! What is one of the worst things that can happen while dining downtown within one of the World Trade Center buildings? OH YEAH. THE ALARM CAN START GOING OFF. And sure enough, it did. In the middle of appetizers, the lights started strobing and an announcement started. I’ve never seen New Yorkers shut up so quickly in my life. It was quieter than a subway at 5 am when everyone is still asleep. The only problem was, no one could understand the announcement! It was static-y and the guy speaking had a very strong accent. After about 30 seconds of heart-pounding panic, we heard one word, “disregard,” and there was a collective huge sigh of relief. Besides that, dinner was DELISH.

We decided to stop at the newly-opened Oculus on the way back to the hotel, since we had never been there before. We actually had no idea what it was, besides that it looked like an exoskeleton of an ENORMOUS animal. And that is cost a sh*tton of money to build (first budgeted at $2 billion, but rose to $3.9 billion by the end). We entered, and I was immediately dizzy. It’s crazy-looking! In between fighting people for a space to take a selfie – this is a V popular place for selfies, go figure – we realized it was a train station. It connects the NJ Path to the NYC subway. As I said before, I clearly never go to NJ since I did not know this. It smells there. Ok, it smells in NYC, too. But I digress.

After our selfie, we went back to the hotel where we watched parts of 3 different movies on 3 different HBO channels. Remember life before HBO Now and Netflix? Where you had to tune into a movie in the middle? Those were rough times. Anyway, we also ordered a bottle of wine to reach our $300 minimum. The bottle was $45 (we are SO fancy), but with the extra added fees, it was $62. Those hotels are fee-machines. Oh well. We didn’t even open it, but we sure felt fancy getting it to our room! If anyone wants to come over to our apartment to share, no guarantees on quality.

We went to sleep and planned to wake up to swim in the pool. Unfortunately, the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry, i.e. we overslept. We packed our bags up and headed down to the checkout.

After following my Snapchat/Instagram story and seeing the hotel view, no less than three of my friends texted me asking if I was getting engaged. To set everyone straight, I definitely did not get engaged. But I DID have an awesome night with my emoji-faced boyfriend. And for the record, mister, you have officially set the bar incredibly high if you ever do plan to “pull out all the stops” in the future. WINK WINK NUDGE NUDGE. I sure hope you have another Amex Offer in the pipeline! In maybe a year. Or maybe more. 😉

Morning view of the majestic Freedom Tower.
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Big City Living

September 11

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It’s been a rough few weeks. We’ve got pandemonium in Washington, DACA was repealed, massive fires in the west, Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma; I ALMOST forgot that today is September 11. But I didn’t forget. Because I never will.

I was reading You’ll Grow Out of It over the weekend, and the author was talking about how she knew her relationship was the real deal: they “talked about where they were on 9/11 (the deepest conversation you can have with another person).” And it’s true. For everyone in our generation, it was a defining moment. It’s like how my parents’ generation always know where they were when JFK was shot.

I don’t want to make this a long post, but I felt like I couldn’t let this day go by without paying homage to what it is and acknowledging this day, my first September 11 since I started LongLegsBigCity.

I was in my freshman year econ class when the first plane hit. I didn’t believe it when my friend said what happened. I remember laughing and hitting her on the shoulder, telling her to stop f*cking with me. I was in English when the second plane hit the other tower. This time the TV was on in the classroom so I couldn’t deny it. I will never forget how I felt that day. Stunned is probably the best word. I grew up in New Jersey until I was 10, but then I moved to Florida. I had so many friends and family in the northeast, and I had walked by the World Trade Center many times. But at the same time, I was in Florida, so far away. It didn’t seem real. The one thing I distinctly remember was watching the news all day. It had been a half day of school, so starting at 1 pm, I was glued to the news. I had so much homework to do. School was in full swing because it started mid-August in Florida, and I was in the Pre-IB program, which meant basically that I did homework or was in class all but 5 hours of every day, when I took a short nap. But I couldn’t bring myself to do any work. I remember seeing people jumping from buildings on the news, on repeat, over and over again. And I thought to myself, “these teachers can’t possibly expect me to do my homework, can they??”

I have now lived in New York for 8 September 11’s and it does not get any easier. The mood is somber. The people are quieter. I haven’t heard a single mariachi band on the subway yet today. People are on edge. My friend told me that there was an unattended baby bag in the elevator of Deutsche Bank this morning and there were police all over it in under a minute. Even with the Freedom Tower standing proudly above all other buildings in the city, something is missing. Every time I watch Sex and the City (more often than I should admit to), the opening credits show the twin towers and it reminds me of what is missing.

It has been 16 years since that day. This year marks the year that I’ve officially been alive longer without the twin towers standing than I was alive before they went down. Seems crazy. Seems like yesterday.

But there are two good things about this day: It reminds me that we have risen above and we are still here, living and thriving in the best city in the USA. And it is also a day of unity. It reminds me that there was a time that we stood together, before all of the current craziness in the world. There was a time when people talked to each other on the subway, not just out of fear, but out of solidarity.

Today, try to be nice to someone. Or to one more person than you would on any other day. Give someone (correct) directions on the subway, even if it means taking out your earbuds. Swipe someone into the train with your unlimited metrocard. Smile at a homeless person. Give someone a 25 cent banana from a street fruit seller. And of course, never forget.

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