Mid-November Update

Busy Lizzie. Lots has happened since I last posted.

Greg came to visit last weekend. We had a blast. He arrived around 10:30 on Friday night. I had fallen asleep reading and awakened to a kiss. He's good! ;-)

We had a delightfully low-key weekend. After a pizza lunch on Saturday we went for a walk through Central Park. It was an absolutely beautiful day. We stopped in the 70's to see the Frick Collection, (a small museum) which was interesting, then continued all the way to the bottom of the park. We went over to Saks to look at Christmas cards, then Greg gave me a tour of the New York Yacht Club's Midtown clubhouse. (Which, incidentally, is where we will be staying on our wedding night!)

After walking for over three hours without sitting, we decided to take the subway back uptown. Somewhere in the course of conversation I learned that Greg has never seen "What's Up, Doc?", which is one of my favorite old movies. We stopped at Blockbuster, (oh, the incompetence we encountered there!) but sadly they only had DVDs... no "What's Up, Doc?" We wound up renting "Cocktail" instead, then picking up some groceries around the corner.

We had a really nice, low-key evening. We made dinner at my apartment (yummy fajitas) and watched half of the movie before calling it a night. I think I'm turning into my Mother- I fall asleep in the middle of movies all the time now, just like she does!

On Sunday, Greg took me to breakfast at The Barking Dog; a cute little restaurant downstairs from my apartment. We watched the rest of "Cocktail," and I had a great time frustrating Greg by guessing the various twists in the movie. (Sorry, but '80s movies are predictable!!) :-)

The Christmas card hunt hadn't been very successful on Saturday, so we ventured into the drizzly Sunday afternoon to try again. It didn't take us long to run out of patience shopping- it was wet and we weren't finding anything, but going back uptown didn't make sense, as Greg had to leave for the airport in about two hours. The solution: use the internet at my office!

Surprisingly enough, we weren't the only people in on a Sunday- there were a few people there working on a new business pitch. Greg got to meet Audrey, our EVP, after two years of missing her by a few minutes. I like Audrey- it's nice to work for a person who enjoys what she does, does it well, and genuinely cares about the people who work for her. Anyway, we finally found cards we like, and I'm hoping we can get a discount on them through a certain sister!

After we left the office, I went with Greg to Penn Station, where he was catching a train to the airport. It's always easier saying 'goodbye' when I know I'm going to see him again in a week and a half! He got on the train, and I headed up to Juilliard for rehearsal.

The first part of rehearsal was for a small subset of the choir, so when Courtney came in a bit later, she told me that Greg had sent her a message asking me to call him when we were on break. I checked my phone when the conductor was working with another section and found two messages. The first read "You got your wish. My flight was cancelled. Can I spend one more night with you?" The second said "I'm at Lincoln Center. Give me a call when you get this." Well! I put down my music, left my bag, and left the room! I actually sprinted through the halls of Juilliard's third floor as I called Greg- he was at the Barnes and Noble across the street! Hooray! He met me on the corner of 66th and Broadway, and I would swear that the people around us must have thought I hadn't seen him in months! (I was a little happy!)

Greg sat through the last hour of our rehearsal, the only noteworthy part of which was that our conductor lost her voice in the middle of the rehearsal. Judy is a very, um, well, she has a strong personality, and she talks, um, yells alot. Well, at the beginning of the rehearsal, I had been talking with one of my fellow sopranos about "Once Upon A Mattress." For those of you who know the show, it was as if a mouse had devoured the hawk! (Let's see- who would get that? My parents, Allie, Keith, Jamie, Ellen, and Kate. No... no, wait... Kate never saw Theatre Workshop's shows- she only went if she was playing in the pit! :-P ) Anyway, I don't know if I would have made that connection if I hadn't been talking about the show a few hours earlier, but it was fantastic: the "Queen" COULD NOT SPEAK! She was actually using pantomime to talk to the choir!! Ha!!

After rehearsal, Courtney's fiance Tyler drove us all back uptown. I may have been in a fantastic mood, but Greg was (understandably) upset about the flight. I made an easy dinner for the two of us and we went to bed early. He left my apartment at about 3:30 the next morning to catch a 6:00 flight back to Charleston. Poor guy- travel is tough enough when everything goes as planned, but twice as draining when flights get cancelled- you can't help but wind up frustrated and tired.

Last but not least in the Greg section of this post: my fiance has fantastic taste in jewelry. We celebrated my birthday a little late this year, but it was worth the wait- he gave me a beautiful white gold necklace with a blue topaz- my birth stone. It's very, very pretty, and I absolutely adore it!

Whew! All that for two little days! Yeah- sorry about that! Here's the rest of the update:

I sang in a benefit concert at Carnegie Hall on Monday night. The cool part: I was on stage with Marvin Hamlisch, Liza Minelli, Maureen McGovern, Judy Collins and some other famous people. Oh, and the New York Pops. The lame part: our call was at 7:30, we warmed up at 7:45, we went on stage at 9:00, we STARTED singing at 10:15, and we left the stage at 10:45. Yeah- it was what my Dad would call a long walk for a short drink. How is it that charity events ALWAYS wind up being PAINFULLY long?!

Teresa, J.J., Mom and I saw "A Chorus Line" last week- whee!!!! My ticket was a birthday from Teresa and Hap. (How cool is it to have in-laws-to-be that can find the perfect birthday gift!) The show was really well done- they've recreated the show exactly as it was performed 30 years ago! I've read a lot about "Chorus Line" over the years, and it was so cool to finally see it performed live! I thought I was an expert on the show, but there was music there I didn't even know existed!! After the show, Teresa and J.J. were really sweet/patient and waited with me outside the stage door. I'm really glad we stayed- most of the cast signed my program! It was a really fun night- very special!

We've booked the band for the wedding, but photographers and florists are still up in the air. Yikes- we're getting down to the wire! I tried on my dress a few weeks ago, and my first real fitting is this Saturday morning, followed by a meeting with ANOTHER photographer.

I'm starting to get ready to move back to New Rochelle. I'm hoping to move by the end of the year, maybe even before Christmas, but we'll see.

I think that's about it. T-minus five months to the wedding, and work has been super busy, so who knows if I'll be able to post more regularly than I have recently, but I'll try. Hugs to all!