Lessons Learned from the Brooklyn Home Show Pt. 1 Evil is a Foot!

I stayed up very late the night before tagging items and double triple checking everything. I live in New Haven CT and was driving with my roommate to Brooklyn NY for this show. So I wanted to be absolutely sure I had EVERYTHING. I went to sleep at about 3 am, still not entirely done with everything.

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I woke up and raced to get everything together. We had hoped to be out the door by about 1:30 to beat any 5 o'clock traffic. Are leaving time - 2:30. We stopped and got gas, picked up a fresh made vegetable platter to serve as part of the show's refreshments and then got some lunch for the road. And OFF we go!



#1 - The first sign of things to come. Matt and I go to Burger King. I need some tots dude! Cheesy tots! Hell yeah! Oh, no. Nope no cheesy tots. Hmmmm. So I got a veggie burger from Burger King and some fries. I take a BIG bite since I hadn't eaten anything yet. Ewwwwww! I pull out a long coarse black hair that is cooked into my veggie patty. Errr, guess I'm just eating some fries. I later stop and pick up an energy drink and some Combos, the lunch of champions.

So we continue on. It's now 3:30 and it's starting to rain. It's cool. Maybe it will let up. Maybe we will still miss traffic. I told Michelle I'd be at her place around 4 or 5 so we're good.



#2 - 5:00 hits. It's down pouring and we are in bumper to bumper non-moving traffic on the Hutchinson Parkway. We slowly make our way to Brooklyn. Every highway we get onto via Mapquest has tolls that are $4.50 a pop. We spend about $13 just getting to Brooklyn. At 6:30 we finally get to Michelle's nieghborhood. HOWEVER Mapquest lovingly neglects the whole one way street thing and we drive in circles until about 7 pm. FINALLY making it to Michelle's apartment! Yay.

#3 - Michelle is the nicest girl in th world. Very kind and soft spoken. I immediately adore her. Matt and I discuss how sweet she is on the way to the car to unload. As soon as we reach the car, it down pours! Like a freaking tsunami is coming kind of down pour! Argggh! We try and do this super fast. I grab a bunch of bags, and pull out the plastic bag containing the veggie platter. THE BAG SPLITS! Fresh veggies roll down the sidewalk of 11th Street in Brooklyn. Dirty rain water is splashing into the tray as what's left of the vegetables lays on the ground mocking me. Giving me a giant veggie middle finger. The platter was around $20. I had at that point wasted every penny so far spent. I throw a little tantrum in the rain and pull it together before we drop off at Michelle's apartment. It's just not my day.



#4 - We leave Michelle's and take a sigh of relief. We head toward my best friend Aimee's place for a little RnR. It's only 7:30 at this point. We hope to make it to her place by 8:15. But fate and Mapquest had other plans!
We get lost. VERY LOST! We go from 278 to 95 to 478 to 87 and back again. They all say the Bronx! Mapquest does not help in anyway. Everything on the directions is wrong. We stop at a very scary gas station in a very scary neighborhood and ask for help. I get on the phone trying to reach Aimee but for some reason my calls to her won't go through. I instead call my friend Ty. He goes online and tries to find us better directions from where we are.

WE FINALLY GET TO AIMEE'S somewhere between 9:30 and 10pm! She and her hubby Ben give us hugs, booze, Manhattan cable access and a great story about the Foot of Death. A joke her brother came up with while watching a tv mini series on Ted Bundy. The Foot of Death is the highlight of our night. Thank goodness for gooooood friends!

STAY TUNED FOR PART 2 COMING TOMORROW!