Ladies' Night

Last night Kim and I got all dressed up to go out to J. Barbaro's ladies' night.  Not red carpet dressed because it's too cold, but nicely dressed--which included heels.  We assumed it'd probably be a good idea to arrive fashionably late, since that's what people on television do, and headed out toward the mall around 6:30pm.

In my head I had visions of lots of fancy, classy ladies wearing designer clothes sipping mimosas and cosmepolitans while browsing the latest men's fashions for their husbands.  I thought it'd be one of those events where I'd have to keep my eyebrows raised the whole time in order to appear like, yes, I'd had plastic surgery too and I would need to be careful not to smile too big because according to Tyra, it makes your eyes squinty and emphasizes wrinkle lines in your face and that's not considered very attractive.

Before heading to ladies' night though, we headed over to Nordstrom to visit Karla, Kim's mom.  Karla is one of those tiny, very fashionable mothers, who, while not a "housewife" herself, probably has a lot of insight on how to deal with those who are.  (And when I say "housewife," I'm referring to women who possess similar traits to Danielle Staub.... just a little bit crazy...)  She helped me get mentally prepared and even more important, helped me realize that my pocked on my blazer was sewn shut and could very easily be opened for use (aka, holding my business cards).

Kim and I then proceeded to head to the party.  We arrived at the storefront and for a moment, wondered if we'd arrived on the wrong night.  There was literally nobody in the store, aside from the workers.  Well, I guess that's a little bit of a lie... there was a couple that was leaving as we walked by the door.  And yes, I did say, BY the door.  We were so thrown off that we didn't even stop in.  Clearly we were mistaken about this event.

After talking for a minute, trying to figure out what in the world was going on, we decided to go eat pizza instead.  However, getting to the restaurant required walking by the store again and so as we made our way to devour a delicious plate of carbs and cheese, Kim asked if I was going to go in.  It felt kind of like a dare, so I did.  In a spur-of-the-moment decision, I decided that instead of networking with the absent fancy ladies, I would network with the store owner instead.  Unfortunately, he was in a meeting, so the sales associate recommended we come back in about a half hour.

To the pizza shop we went.

By this time, our feet were on FIRE, as neither one of us regularly (or even irregularly) wear heels and so the booth in California Pizza Kitchen was greatly appreciated.  I had a 5-cheese and tomato pizza and Kim had BBQ chicken.  They were both extremely delicious.  I probably appreciated it even more than normal too, since I hadn't been allowed to eat carbs or sugar yesterday for my PET/CT scan.

We stopped back at J. Barbaro and very awkwardly were introduced to the owner.  I say awkwardly because when we first walked into the store, we said hello to a man on our way toward the sales associate, thinking he was a customer since he wasn't really dressed too snazzy.  Then, when the associate went to introduce us to the owner, we went back to that same man, interrupted his phone call with his child, and said hello.  Embarrassing.  To make matters more confusing, there was another man in the store who looked a lot like Santa Clause dressed in a very nice suit and if I had walked in there blindly, I would have mistaken HIM for the owner.  I felt like I had no idea what was going on.

Karla hadn't taken her break at work yet so we made our way back to Nordstrom to report on the night and visit with her for a bit and then picked up a movie at Redbox to finish off the night.

Lesson of the night: go big or go home.

And since they hadn't gone big, we went home.