the new yorker

You may be familiar with a frequent character in my blog, Jeanenne, one of my freshman year roomies and a fellow Australian abroadee. She is also one of the first New Yorkers I met, & I had the distinct pleasure of staying with her fam on Long Island the summer after freshman year.

Ah, youth.

Well, this year, as Labor Day rolled around, J-Rod mentioned that she was going to the US Open and said she might have an extra ticket. After I checked my booming social calendar, I realized I had several major commitments, so I politely declined. Then Beyonce got all preggo and had to cancel our weekend in the Bahamas, and I was like, fine, Jeanenne, stop begging me, I'll come.

Because we are "adults" now, we did "adult" things. Exhibit A: wine, cheese, and salami galore at Eataly.

No chairs here. Everyone stands. So chic.

We ventured to Magnolia Bakery and had a peanut butter cupcake and a chocolate cupcake. Cupcakes are so underrated.

Cupcake line-up.

When we weren't eating, we were sleeping. Rephrase: I was sleeping. When you wake up in the 5s and go to bed in the 10s, it's really hard to stay up past midnight! Did you hear me, mother?! I understand you now! The moments I did manage to stay awake, however, were pretty badass.

The US Open is quite an event. I have never watched tennis, ever. Last year I took a beginning tennis class because it was second semester senior year and I wasn't trying to do anything useful. While taking the class, I learned that 1) tennis is exhausting, 2) hitting the ball with both force and accuracy is difficult, and 3) St. Louis has very few comfortable-weather days between February and May. Just kidding - I learned that last nugget of wisdom February of my freshman year when I left my dorm wearing shorts and flip flops and came home in the snow.

But I keep up with the news, and the Kardashians, and I knew this event was major. High brow, fancy pants stuff. I mean, Mercedes Benz was a sponsor. People who drove their Mercedes got free parking. Vince would have squealed with joy. Anything to save money.

We saw a bunch of matches. Women's singles, women's doubles (I love you Sania Mirza), mixed doubles, men's singles, and men's doubles. But my fave match, featuring my future husband (one of many, to be sure) was Tecau and Lindstedt playing some angry Italians.

Our Romanian children will be superathletes.

What I expected to be the grand finale of our night was only the penultimate (vocab word) experience. We cheered for John Isner, the tallest man on earth. Johnny won. It was awesome. It was here that I fully realized that what makes tennis so bizarre is that the fans do their raucous cheering for about five seconds, and then you have to abruptly stop as the next serve begins. Talk about pressure, playing in complete silence. I felt like a true WASP, watching tennis over Labor Day weekend, clapping in silence. I knew I had it in me.

Isner was fun, but we then saw the most intense back-and-forth match in history (in my history of watching tennis) between Sam Stosur and some Russian chick. No, not Maria Sharapova, don't you know anything about tennis?

We love SS because she's from Brisbane, Australia, and if you want to know why I love Brisbane, you should read the rest of this blog because it is essentially a love letter to Oz. Stosur pulled through, we heard the accent, we cried because we miss Australia, etc. Fast forward a week and Stosur beats Serena Williams in the finals and wins her first US Open!!

Even though I am a true Bostonian now (does it scream "I'm definitely not from Boston!!" to buy that ubiquitous B hat? yes? too bad, I'm doing it anyway), I had a lovely time in New York with J-Rod. My next goal is for her to invite me to an A-list movie premiere in NYC. Start planning, Jeanenne.