Déjà vu

After of fun filled day in New York the day before, I decided to do it all over again, just the same.

I woke up early turned on the Today Show and got myself TV ready while watching. Then I grabbed by trusty two-sided Utah Themed poster and headed back down to the Plaza at Rockefeller Center to be part of the Today Show…again.

This time as a special favor to my feet I just wore my running shoes. In New York City, that makes you a quitter. You can’t believe the crazy shoes the ladies of NYC are wearing. I hope there are a lot of people going into podiatry because there will be a big need in NYC soon if there isn’t a huge demand already. These ladies feet will be all but broken in a few years.

I was excited when I got there to find a smallish crowd. In just a matter of minutes I was able to worm my way to the front and was on camera right away. The morning team, Matt, Meridith, Al and Ann were all out on the plaza.

It was really fun to see Al Roker bopping around talking to the crowd and performing for the camera. Ann Curry spent the most time of any of them talking to the crowd. She’d talk to anyone, but she never got close enough to me to have a conversation. I wanted to call her out in person for being so awful to Dr. Laura last time she was on. I mean really Ann don’t displace your maternal guilt on Dr. Laura. She’s just the messenger.

Meredith had long conversations with a few in the crowd and took pictures with them, but when she was done she split quick and was inside without any hesitation.

Matt, as you might imagine was very dignified with the way he mingled with the crowd. He didn’t go out of his way to be overly friendly. Just enough crowd pleasing to be socially acceptable.

I have admired Matt for a long time. He reminds me a lot of my brother Randy. I really wanted to meet him and have a pic. Unfortunately he never came very close to where I was standing. Did I let that stop me? No. As he was making his way back into the studio I yelled out to him. “Matt, please…do you have time for just one picture?” To my surprise and complete pleasure…He stopped, turned and came over to me and actually posed.
I threw my camera to a couple girls I had met from Chicago and they snapped this awesome pic. My proudest moment of the trip to this point. Me and Matt. All my television dreams were coming true.

Also on my list of photos to nab were…Me and Lenny. If you don’t know who Lenny is, he’s a crowd member who has not missed a day standing in the crow at the TODAY show in more than 7 years. He’s practically part of the morning team. They regularly talk to him and stand near him when they introduce new segments.
He looks a little bit old on camera, but in person…he looks way older, like he is probably 85. He was so skinny and frail. He was very pleasant and was more than happy to pose for several photos with me. Nice guy. Watch for him next time you see TODAY.

Here is me and the girls I met from Chicago.
Together we were a force in chanting to the talent to get them to come to us. We got the camera guy to come pan across us and I was once more able to wave and tell my children hello from New York, this time with a microphone. It was just for a split second, but they did see and hear me.

The Chicago girls were super excited to see Selena Gomez and I tried my best to beckon her over to us so I could return the favor and get her pic with them…but no success.
She came close to us, but didn't pose. Her people kept her too tightly under control to mingle with strangers.

After all the talent went back in, I headed back to the hotel for a 10 a.m. nap (No kids). Steve came back around noon and we packed it up and headed out of our swanky mid-town hotel. Next stop was my cousin Lynette’s apartment on the upper west side of Manhattan.

We decided to take the subway since it would save us about $50 and we only had to make one transfer to get there. No biggie right?
Wrong. If you’ve ever dragged all your luggage through the subway in the middle of July, you know how big of idiots we were for attempt this. We were successful, but by the time we got to her place we were both soaking wet with sweat and starting to turn on each other. Not really, but we were very relieved to not be dragging luggage through the subway anymore. If you didn’t already know the subway is HOT in the summer. Dreadfully HOT. Unbelievably HOT.


I do have to say people continued to be so nice and helpful to me. I don’t think I carried my bag up or down the subway stairs more than once because nice gentlemen always asked if they could do it for me. Isn’t that surprising? I did put my feet on the seat in the subway once and a stranger told me I was “filthy.” I was a little surprised, but I got over it. Everyone was very nice to me. Steve on the other hand. . . at least twice he was given intentionally incorrect directions. He was also harassed by one metro card salesman.

Lynette’s place was nice and quite large for a Manhattan apartment. She was gone for the week, so the doorman let us in and we had the place to ourselves. Thankfully it was air conditioned. After our subway adventure we did what it took to cool down in her apartment. I’ll spare you the details.

After the cool down process concluded, we headed back via subway (much easier w/o luggage) back to mid-town where we ate Greek Food from a street vender.

I dare say it was the best Gyro of my life. We sat on a granite wall that surrounded a fountain and ate our lunch. We were lucky enough to be able to share it with 40 new friends, all pigeons.
They sat at our feet and ate each and every scrap that fell. As a special favor to my new bird friends, I threw pieces out for them to eat.

Next we did at a little more shopping at H&M, and then headed right over to claim our seats for tonight’s taping of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Since only I was able to go the night before, we went again together. I was well versed on Late Night etiquette and knew all the rules.

In an effort to not stop or stand in prohibited areas, we headed to the lower concourse of 30 Rock to wait for the show to start. While we were sitting at a food court table not eating, out walked a very causal Ann Curry. She wasn’t wearing any make-up or fancy clothes. She was just carrying a bunch of papers. No one but me recognized her. I called out to her and asked for a photo. At first she said no, but I had already thrown the camera to Steve and he was in position to snap the pic.
She reluctantly agreed to a photo. Since she was so gracious, I decided against the lecture I had prepared about being nice to Dr. Laura.

We magically appeared in the right line for the late show at just the right time and were not scolded by an NBC Paige at all this time. We got good seats for the show and the guests were very interesting. Steve Carell and Selena Gomez (she was making the NYC rounds today) The musical guest was Hale Storm who we had never heard of, but was very very impressive.

Jimmy Fallon was hilarious and the Roots were again fantastic. We decided we are big time Roots fans now and we now love everything about Philadelphia. Jimmy sang an oil spill protest song about tar balls where he warned beach goers not to swim in the ocean due to the risk of getting tar balls in your mouth. During his 3 minute song, Steve and I were featured in a three second close up shot. We had heard him sing this song twice at home and loved it. We were beyond delighted to have him sing it again live for us.

As the show concluded we felt really awesome about the experience we’d just had. Steve Carell was hilarious, Selena Gomez was great, even the band was awesome. After all the satisfaction, it got even better. Jimmy made a round of the theater and gave me a high five on his way past me. I haven’t washed my hand since.

After the show on the recommendation of my hairstylist we went to Canal Street where supposedly knock-off designer hand-bags are for sale. We got off the subway and walked up the stairs where we were met by a dead fish stench from a "fresh fish" market so bad that I instantly started dry-heaving right there on the street.

Notice the trash can in the upper right corner of this picture--trash spilling out everywhere. That's what this whole neighborhood looked and smelled like. It’s amazing how neighborhoods in NYC separated only by a half mile can be so very different. There was literally six inches of trash on the sidewalk that we had to wade through. Canal Street is China Town and Little Italy. It was very yucky.

We walked into one little shop and it looked like a regular little junk souvenir store except that all the shelves were unbelievable loaded with cheap junk from China and all the isles were full of merchandise too, about 8 feet high. There were all these little Asian shop ladies who gave us a stink eye like what are you whities doing in here, it was stinky and dirty and they hated us, so we promptly turned around and left.

Once we got there I remembered how very little I care about purses and designer handbags. They also were selling jewelry that I actually do like even though I don’t like to wear it (I just like to have it and collect it), but I expected it to be cheaper so I didn’t buy any.


We walked around not really knowing what we were supposed to be enjoying in this neighborhood until my feet got really sore.

Just at the point where my feet could take no more we found a dessert bar claiming to be America’s first Espresso bar, Ferrara’s. We sat down at a table to look at the menu. A $9 piece of cheesecake I can swing that. But wait…I just noticed the take out menu where the cheese cake was only $4.50. So we sat outside on the bench and ate what was definitely the best cheesecake of my life.
Steve had what he said was the best Tiramisu ever made. So with that it made the trip to Grossville worth it.

On the way back to the Subway Grandma called us and we talked to the girls who were getting ready for bed. No one seemed to care that much yet that we were gone. What a relief.

We rode the subway back to my cousin’s place where we stopped at the little grocery store in the corner of her building and bought a couple apples, a yogurt and 2 red peppers to eat for dinner. This may not surprise anyone, but you can’t get good produce in that city. One of the apples was rotten on the inside and the pepper was let’s just say…sub standard. It made Wal*Mart’s produce look like a farmer’s market.

We packed up one bag to take with us the next day as we made our exit from the city and entrance to upstate country. We stayed up as late as we could to try and see ourselves on TV during the Late Show, but I fell asleep too soon.