Source: life-love-laughter.tumblr.com via Trish on Pinterest
I can’t stop thinking about my trip last week. It was pretty awesome. Yes, I used that word way too much while I was there (sorry, J!) and I’m still using it to describe everything I experienced.I arrived on Saturday from rainy and dreary Seattle (complete with a Venti Starbucks soy hot chocolate and PEOPLE magazine) into 80 degrees in Manhattan. Shedding my layers, I caught a taxi and called my fellow agent, J, to find out where to meet. She was wandering with her family around Madison Avenue, so I sweet-talked the cab driver into pulling up to a very busy corner (Madison and 59th Street to be precise) so that J could hand over keys to our walk-up apartment. For some reason the super couldn’t meet us in the afternoon, so J took the job of getting to the city early and grabbing our keys. And then my taxi dropped me off at our place just off Central Park West, within view of Central Park North. Fabulous! The soaring brownstone was built in 1881 and was three floors, five bedrooms, 12-foot ceilings, walk-in closets, and a gigantic eat-in kitchen with marble counters and stainless steel appliances and a private back garden and private roof terrace. This place was bigger than my suburban house!
I hauled my luggage up one flight of stairs and then gave up and collapsed into a chair to wait for my mentor and boss, E, to arrive from another airport. She and I walked through and oohed and aahed, claimed bedrooms, dumped stuff and then headed out to find dinner and wine.
We jumped on the subway and I got to eat at the Shake Shack, which is famous because Erika eats there every time she’s in NYC, and it is as good as it looks. Yum. And then we found a wine shop and grabbed a couple of bottles of sweet red and then got a text from J and her family that THEY had also grabbed wine and were at the apartment waiting for us to come back.
So we jumped back on the subway, walked a couple of blocks, and spent the rest of the evening relaxing and laughing and having a very good sweet red (Luigi is the brand; delish!). We crashed into bed the next day with no plans until late morning.
Sunday, I woke up with blisters. My feet swelled on the plane (I wore tall boots! Shoot!) and so I knew that I needed different shoes when I met up with my friend J (not my fellow agent J) for a tour of Central Park and the Met. I found a nearby shoe store that sold Birkenstocks and after a leisurely morning unpacking and relaxing, I took the subway to this store and walked out the door with a nice pair of sandal-looking Birks. My feet were so relieved. And then I grabbed lunch at a luncheonette chain right next door. Tuna fish sandwiches taste so good on Sunday mornings, I swear.
J met me at Columbus Circle (the southernwest corner of Central Park) and we walked all the way north to the northeast corner where I got to experience for the first time in my life—The Met. Awesome! The Egyptian exhibit brought me to tears. I have dreamed about seeing that temple for so long. I couldn’t believe it was real. I kept reaching out my hand to touch it and then the nice museum man would shake his head at me and I would draw my hand back. Ha! I saw Monets, Van Goghs, Matisse, and on and on and on. My refrain for that day: Awesome. Yep, J is so patient.
And after several hours wandering thru that gigantic museum, they were closing and I was late for a dinner. J put me on a cross-town bus (yikes!) and I caught the subway and came home to find J (my fellow agent) resting and reading. We put on our walking shoes and hoofed it up to V&T Pizzeria and Restaurant and met up with EMLA clients. E joined us from later after her meetings ended and we all took pictures and laughed and had a great time. I love my agency! Fantastic people!
And then we all collapsed into bed because the first of five days of meetings loomed on the morrow. I lucked out, however. I didn’t have to be at the breakfast meetings for three of the five days. And so I got a later start than my colleagues and thus, had to figure out where I was going to meet them the night before. I only had a bad morning on Thursday, when nothing went right, but I wasn’t late, even after getting on the wrong subway line!
So I got to wander through Union Square, buy fresh applies, drink more Starbucks soy hot chocolate, and then join in on the first of the day meetings. We met dozens of editors—from Disney, to Little Brown, to Scholastic, to Sourcebooks, to Simon & Schuster, to Random House, to Sterling, to Egmont, to Penguin, to HarperCollins—from imprint to imprint to imprint. It was awesome. Yep, there I go again.
After 16 years in this business, this was my first trip to New York City to an actual publishing house. I’ve been in publishing houses before, but this was New York City—publishing central! It was like walking into a house I’ve always lived in, walking into a group of friends that I’ve always known (when really I didn’t), walking into a world that I’m so used to, there wasn’t even a flicker of anything unusual. Of course I was nervous! Who wouldn’t be? I ate lunch with the Harry Potter editor, for pete’s sake! But it was so familiar and like a favorite pair of shoes to slip into every time. It was awesome!
And after five days, it was done. I called for a town car, got up in the middle of the night to catch my early flight, bought the new PEOPLE magazine and another Starbucks soy hot chocolate and headed for home. And then freaked myself out by reading a PEOPLE magazine recommended book that was about a plane crash and a spooky door in someone’s basement. Not a great plane read!
And I’m home and still thinking about it all, still savoring it, still excited, ready to go. I’m looking to sign my first clients in the next few weeks as an agent-in-training. It’s an exciting time.
Yeah, it’s awesome!