Cari Stewart

Tuesday night was our BYU excursion to the Empire State Building. So it is pretty huge, or something like that. It is hard to tell when you are in the city how huge it really is because everything is tall, but it is really totally gigantic.

To get to the top, it takes two separate elevator trips. The first one goes up to like the 60^th floor and then you change elevators to go up to the top (I think 86 floors – I could be wrong). The thing that stunk was that it was totally windy and overcast and you couldn’t really see anything. And we went at about 7:30, so it wasn’t really dark yet either. So the pictures won’t blow your mind as I had hoped they would.

Saturday was our trip to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. It was stinking hot, but the breeze on the ferries made it a little more bearable.

If I have learned anything from Hollywood, it is that the Stach-o-Lib is totally huge. Some of you may be under this impression as well; especially those of you who have a fondness for Ghost Busters 2 and Splash. However, this is not the case. It is much smaller than I thought it would be. Don’t get me wrong, it was great. Just smaller than expected

Ellis Island was interesting. I don’t know if I can really describe the feeling there. You would think that it be all joyful and hopeful, celebrating everyone’s arrival to America, but it’s not. It was more depressing than anything. A lot of the museum talks about the all the prejudice that came as a result of the huge numbers of immigrants. And all of the persecution that took place in other countries that made people come to America (the Holocaust). It just didn’t seem like there was much to be happy about during that time. And the building was restored to what it would have looked like in the first quarter of the 20^th Century and it hurt to know that people were held there before they were able to enter the country. It was such a cold and depressing place.

I will say that I am so thankful that I wasn’t the one who had to go through it. I am pretty sure I wouldn’t have made it through.

Last night was the Wired Magazine Party. IBM buys advertising space in Wired, which is why we were able to go. The party was a rooftop party at the High Bar. I don’t think I have ever felt so cool in my life.  This is how it happened ….

We walked up to the building with two bouncers outside. I didn’t know if I was just allowed to walk past them or if I would be killed, so I asked if it was the Wired party. The large men then directed me toward a guy in a long dark hall with a headset and a clip board who asked me my name. “Stewart,” I said like a celeb (but probably like a B list celeb because if I was an A list I wouldn’t have to say my name). “First name?” “Carolyn.” “Ok, you can go ahead.” I was totally on the list.

My two friends and I proceeded down the hall. Upon turning the corner a woman was there with a glass of champagne. I didn’t know what to do; every Young Women’s lesson and conference story was racing through my head. The next thing I knew my friends and I were walking into the party with champagne glasses. Luckily, we knew zero people there. I am sure we looked so dumb because it was obvious that we weren’t drinking them we didn’t know how to hold the glasses like the B list celebs we thought we were. So we ended up just sitting down and putting them on the table for the rest of the night.

The roof was really cool. It felt very beachy with couches and pillows everywhere. It was super cold and windy, though, so we pretty much just sat in the corner of the only covered part. After sitting there for a while, we began to be parched, what with the full champagne glasses and all. So we ordered this drink that this other Mormon girl told me was really good. So I called the waitress over and asked for three cranberry juices with seltzer and a lime. How cool, but totally lame, did I feel? Pretty darn. So she brought us our drink, only to find that it was seltzer water with about three drops of cranberry juice. It was quite painful. But we were parched. What else were we to do? I ended up getting used to it actually, but I won’t be ordering that again.

As we were leaving, we went into the bathrooms, which were totally contemporary and cool. I felt just like Dana Carvey in Opportunity Knocks when he goes into that fancy bathroom. There were guys there to turn on the water for me. There was Listerine, hair gel (why?), spray deodorant, lotion, perfume, and mints. It pretty much changed my life.

InStyle Scratching

InStyle Magazine hosted a party at my work Thursday night. I downed a ginger ale or two while everyone else got their drink on. After I continued to stay sober, I found out what I really want to do in life. There was a DJ there who was teaching people how to scratch and I was all over it. It is way harder than I thought it would be and you better believe I was not good at all. I just listened to it again and was laughing sooooo hard. In my defense, there was other dance music on that was way louder than the music coming out of the DJ’s laptop and I received very minimal training. Despite my poor performance, I have included my scratching for you listening pleasure. Just click on the “InStyle Scratching” icon above the text. Enjoy!

P.S. My new stage name is DJ Liberty Mounten.