We get to do it all again!

My friend Lisa Miller just spent a couple of nights with me this week.  Lisa and I go waaaayyy back .. ADK housemates, part of the Southern Scholarship Foundation at FSU.  Us girls got together in Tallahassee this past June -- first time.  Apparently we needed about 30 years to find husbands, get married, raise kids and then throw them out of the nest.

Lisa Kalel, Laurie Craig, Sherry Hampton, Tina Herbert, Claudia Ward - Tallahassee, June 2013

Lisa had business in NYC.  She went to her meetings, conducting work from her virtual office, had impromptu face-face meetings (one of my favorite things about living here) and slept on my couch.  I learned so much from Lisa in her short visit, such as how to make 'country comes to the big city' work for her. Her enthusiasm, energy is contagious. Lisa starts every day with "we get to do it all again!"

With Lisa here, she didn't let me get away with my typical laziness.  We walked Central Park in the morning, took the stairs, and I got her to try my green drink - Juice Generation's Get Your Green On.  Juiced spinach, kale, pineapple, green apple and mint.  And no Lisa, that wasn't the one that tastes like grass.

(We did get locked in my APT and had to call the doorman to open it from outside.  That almost happened once before.  Lisa had trouble letting that go, talking about fires and insurance risk.  I just taped over the dead bolt and told her not to turn it again.)

We started Tuesday evening with dinner at Bocca di Bacco on 9th Avenue in Hell's Kitchen.  A very Italian waiter walks up and Lisa starts rattling off bits and pieces of several items and then asks him if he can just put together a sampler plate of all these things.  "I don't really care what it costs".  Yea, I am kinda stunned, then she tells me, "Sherry, the menu is really only a suggestion.." (Really?  I never knew that! ;-) We had an antipasto plate with several cheeses, fig jam, roasted beets, crab cakes and snapper cooked with clams and mussels.  The food was delicious and the whole experience was really fun.  Even the waiter seemed to enjoy it.  The bill was only about $60 (w/o wine) and Lisa left a nice tip.  She said most the time doing it that way, they rarely overcharge.

Next stop was the new Broadway show Kinky Boots -- just won the most Tony awards including Best Musical.  Normal folks like me can't even get tickets.  Leave it to Lisa - only the best.  I wouldn't know where to begin describing Kinky Boots other than it is easy to see why it received so many awards .. and we learned so much, do you know the difference between a transvestite and a drag queen?

A whirlwind 24 hours. And we get to do it all again!