What a great day! It’s a jam-packed day of shopping, food, and sports! We start our morning like every other…with a nice cup of homemade coffee. Let me just tell you, thank God for mom sending me a coffee maker and coffee. Brett and I use it daily to get us going in the morning!
Today, we wait around for our Thanksgiving boxes because they have frozen food in them. They don’t come for a while, and of course, I get inpatient. So, we leave. We stay around Midtown because guess what? The talent coordinator from Sports New York e-mailed me and set Brett and I up for a tour and the chance to sit in on a live broadcast at 5:00! Brett is way pumped and I am too! The broadcaster is beautiful! ;)
But onto serious business—shopping. I take Brett to stores we don’t have in Iowa. What’s the point of shopping at stores you have at home? Let’s make his money worthwhile! I am the cheapest person alive, and Brett’s not. Needless to say, he got quite irritated with me because I wouldn’t spend $30 on a shirt. I told him, “You just wait until you have to pay your own bills and it’s either $30 for a shirt, or a weeks worth of groceries!” I’ve become quite practical since hitting the real world. I want to go back to where money was no object! Ya’ know, when I was about seven! =)
Anyways, we get some great stuff! Now it’s time to head to Sports New York! We get there and she shows us the control room, which is insane! It seems so confusing and intense. I have some friends at Drake that are studying broadcast journalism, so all I could think of was them when we were standing in the room with thousands of buttons, head sets, and flat screen tv’s all along one wall! We meet the broadcasters and we head into the newsroom.
It’s a broadcast of the “round table.” A group of four guys sit around, talking about the Jets, Knicks, and the Mets. They also make general statements about other teams and about the sports in general. The whole time, out of the corner of my eye, I see Brett nodding or shaking his head whenever the broadcasters make a comment. He is totally in his element and loving it! We also get to meet Damien Woody—a linebacker for the Jets. He is huge! All I could think of was, Well hell, if this beast of a man was running at me, I’d throw the ball away too and run like hell! Now I know why quarterbacks are always sliding under the tackle. They’re not wimps, they’re smart! Why do men feel the need to put themselves in a position where another can crush your bones with one swift swipe? No way! I think I’ll stick to cheerleading! ;)
After SNY, we head to Little Italy. We make a pit stop at Bryant Park where there is a holiday pop-up shopping area, if you will. Stores from around the city make a pop-up store in the middle of the park, where they sell everything from bath and beauty products, to jewelry, to candles, to vases blown from liquor and beer bottles. Check out their website! We get some pretty nice Christmas gifts! Check us out on the carousel. I had a rabbit, Brett had a frog! Hehe!
Now…we are on our way to a part of town where Brett is going to be in heaven—Little Italy! The one eating area he had to go to while visiting! Little Italy has shrunk in size over the years, so you only have about a six block stretch of Italian restaurants, bakeries, cheese shops, cigar shops, and souvenir stores. Now, six blocks sounds like a ways, but in Little Italy and the Village areas in general, the blocks are the same size as they are in Iowa. They get smaller the farther downtown you go. Yay! That’s good news!
So, we make our walk up and down the streets, perusing menus and being hassled by Italian, mafia men in their polyester suits and slicked back hair. Yes, they really do like the people in the movies! We land on Giovanna’s Restaurant. They offer us a free glass of wine! How can you pass that up? Okay, all I can say about the food—YUM-O! So amazing! Brett got his traditional manicotti and I had lasagna. Check out the pictures below! It was fun! It’s a small, quaint restaurant, with a live singer. She was singing love songs, so every time she walked past our table, we both put our head down because we didn’t want her coming over and singing to us like we were dating. Awkward.
Dessert was just as good! Again, check out the pictures! I had a homemade cannoli and Brett had Spumoni. He got it because of some movie quote him and his buddies always say. It was pretty good, but my cannoli was better!
It was such a good day! Brett had most of his “must dos” accomplished in today’s series of events! It was great! Tomorrow is a big day, so we go back and get some rest. We still didn’t get home until late, but it was all worth it!
Note to self: Watch more movies to learn movie quotes. When your brother only has conversations with you, where his vocabulary consists of movie quotes only, you need to be able to follow. When you spend more time saying, “I don’t know where that’s from,” you know you have a lot of catching up to do. Or simply, your brother needs a life! =)