I just got from the weekend in Kansas City. You know, the vacation destination of the century. I'll write more details later. Until then, you can read up on Sarah and Jo's blogs. Also, Sarah posted her pictures here.
The highlights:
1. Staying in a hotel that was also a shopping mall. Not a boring, stupid mall. But an awesome mall with a Crayola store and the coolest toy store ever and a day spa to get my hair and nails done. Seriously, we arrived Friday night and did not leave the mall until Saturday night for Matt's wedding.
2. Matt and Stephanie's wedding. It was the first non-family wedding I've ever been too. As it turns out, without a full Mass, weddings can be really short and sweet. Basically string quartet plays, girl walks down isle, ceremony follows: "Will you, will you... dad gives away... love, honor, cherish... kiss the bride", wham bam, 15 minutes it was over.
3. The reception. Lots of dancing, some wine drinking, some more dancing, and yummy spinach dip and wedding cake, some more dancing. The DJ had to kick us all out at midnight because of blue laws. Bizarre.
4. Swooning. Why swooning? We had an entire Major League Soccer team staying on our floor at the hotel. I mean, seriously, lots of really sexy, really good soccer players.
Now, for a little "How To"...if you want to get him:
into your hotel room in the middle of the night, follow these simple steps:
Step 1: Go to Nick and Jo's hotel room and swing the door wide open (their room was across the hall, rather than next to, his door).
Step 2: Primp for a wedding, giggling and talking really loudly by the mirror by the wide open door.
Step 3: Flirt with his Dad as he comes by.
Step 4: Yell through the door "Good luck on the game" as you leave for the wedding.
Step 5: Spend all wedding talking about cute soccer players during all breaks in dancing. Check game score using t-mobile phone.
Step 6: Rush back to the hotel, thinking the team would win the game and be partying.
Step 7: Be surprised when all is quiet at hotel. Put ear to soccer players' door and hear them talking quietly inside.
Step 8: When it becomes apparent that players aren't leaving the room, slide a note under the door congratulating them on win.
Step 9: Have Nick exchange a few words with players, feel very stupid when you find out they actually lost.
Step 10: Go to bed, giving up on soccer players. Put on pajamas.
Step 11: Be very surprised when soccer player calls you and ask where the party is. You offer to have a pajama party. No joke.
Step 12: Soccer player arrives in room.
The crazy thing was, our conversation was very odd. We would ask him some question about what its like to be a globetrotting soccer star ("So what do you during the off-season?" "Um, practice for the National Team, hang out."... "Have you ever met M.H.?" "She's cool. Really ripped."). Then, he would ask us about the space shuttle ("I know lots of people work at NASA, so I'm sure you get this a lot, but you're not actually rocket scientists are you?" "Um, yeah [shy smile]... we are." ... "What do you need to figure out about how the space shuttle flies?" "Well, entering the atmosphere is really fast and really hot, so you have to plan your entry really carefully...").
Besides shop talk, there's was obviously also flirtation involved. But it was just random shooting the breeze for two hours ("Would you rather walk on the moon or spend the night with a person of your choice?"). I think Sarah was the only one who actually realized how famous he was while we were talking. Jo and I were just enamoured by the exotic-ness of someone who was an athlete and not a nerdy engineer sitting in our room without his shirt on. Now that I actually look it up on the Internet, I realize I might as well been having a conversation with Michael Jordan or David Beckham. Well, maybe not that much of a star, but pretty close to the top of his game. And I guess he probably doesn't get the chance to have conversations with girl-rocket scientists a lot, so maybe it was even. Though we don't get paid nearly as well.
http://www.pilesofrock.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/801
