Me: This Mojito is has like no alcohol in it.

Colin: Are you kidding me?

Me: No. Seriously, did you see how fast I sucked that one back? I need another already.

Fast forward 10 minutes…

Me: My aesthetician was telling me the condos in Santa Fe sell for $500,000. For about a 500 sqare foot place. That’s crazy, it’s like $100,000 a square feet, I mean, $100 a square feet, I mean, $1000 a square feet.

Colin: A square feet?

Me: Yeah, Isn’t that crazy?

Colin: Really Jess? A square feet? And you’re trying to tell me those Mojitos have no alcohol in them?

So we’re in Santa Fe for a few days. We decided we needed a vacation. On Thursday. And we were here by Saturday. Life is good.

This town is incredibly beautiful. Three distinct cultures merged into one, creating a feeling of a sort of European city in Mexico. The food is fantastic, and the drinks are even better. Also, I may have spent entirely too much money on turquoise jewelry. Whoops.

When we got here on Saturday, we checked into our hotel, a place that we deicided to stay at despite it’s ridiculous price tag. Upon checking in we discovered that the room type we had booked wasn’t available, mainly because they didn’t show us as having booked that type of room in their system. “Okay fine”, we said, “we’ll take whatever”. Well, we got up to the room and loooked around and it was tiny, not at all what we were expecting. We grabbed all of our luggage and trekked back down to the front desk. I slammed the keys down on the counter and stated, “This is unacceptable, we’re leaving.” You see, I’m Italian German, a combination resulting in a terrible temper. Colin hid in the corner while I went on my tirade, prefering not to be near me because I embarrass him when I get that way. The staff were so helpful and so understanding. This place certainly has excellant customer service. They did everything they could to make us happy. In the end they put us in the room we had booked for one night , which was as long as it was available, and upgraded us to a suite for the remainder of our stay. Satisfied, we took our bags up to our new, much larger, King room, and left the hotel to go explore the town. When we got back, there was a bottle of champagne waiting for us with a note from the front desk apologizing and wishing us a great stay. Incredible.

Long story sort of short, we had to check out of our room the next morning and re-check back into our new room. Well, the person staying in our room decided not to check out until 3 o’clock, well past the 11 o’clock check out time, making our assured 12 o’clock re-check in impossible. We walked aroung all day, we got drunk on Mojitos, we shopped, and it still wasn’t time. My feet hurt. Colin was getting cranky and I was getting pissed off at the hotel all over again. When we were finally able to check into our enormous-bigger-then-our-condo-suite a valet was sent to bring up our luggage.

Valet: So you guys had to wait awhile to get into your room, huh?

Me: Yeah, It sucked. I just wanted to come sit down, We had been wandering around since 9 o’clock this morning and my feet really hurt.

Valet: Well, you know it was because a celebrity was staying in here, right? She didn’t want to leave.

Me: What? Who was it?!

Valet: Well I guess I can tell you since she’s checked out now. It was Julie Andrews.

Last night I slept like a baby. In an insanely comfortable bed. The same bed, in fact, that Julie Andrews didn’t want to leave.

In honor of Julie (yes, we’re on a first name basis now) I leave you with a view from our balcony of the hills of Santa Fe. You know, alive with music…

(Did you hear Brittney in your head when you read that? Cause that’s what it sounded like in mine.)

Big huge exciting news for the week month.

Yours truly is going to be in Good Housekeeping Magazine! Yes, my housekeeping skills are so very above par that the publication dedicated to all things domestic has honored me with a story.

Actually the real story is much less glorifying and more or less just bizarre. Last year around October, I was reading a story on msn.com about cell phone companies tacking hidden charges onto phone bills in the hopes that their clients won’t notice and will just pay it. Well, this story hit very close to home for me because last March I received one of these hidden charges under the guise of a “handset upgrade”. Normally I’m the type of person who doesn’t look at their bill, I just auto-pay without thinking. But for some reason I decided to take a gander at it that day.

“$36-Handset Upgrade” it stated. Now $36 isn’t exactly a lot of money, but in the grand scheme of my regularly $150 phone bill, that’s an extra 25%. So I called my phone company and complained and eventually after yelling and screaming at the incapable on the other end, it was removed. There was a lot more to the story, but if you want to find out all of the nitty gritty details, you’ll just have to buy your own copy of the October Good Housekeeping.**

So anyway, I’m reading this story on msn.com and I feel the need to share my story with the blogger-type journalist who wrote it. I posted a comment with nary a thought and went on with my day.

A few weeks later I get an email from him asking if I would mind doing an interview with him for an article he’s writing. Of course the narcosis in me was happy to oblige. We spoke over the phone, I relayed to him all the gory details of my single-handed quest for justice and that was that. He mentioned that GH might pick it up, but I kind of wrote it off. I checked his blog a couple more times in the next few months to see if anything had been written about it, but as the days went by my interest waned and I forgot about it.

That is, until this past Friday.

I opened my gmail to find an email from him waiting patiently at the top.

“I hope you remember me. I interviewed you a while ago about cell phone charges. Good Housekeeping is picking up the story and they would like a picture of you.” ***

I may have squealed a little. Not only is my story going to be in a magazine, but now my picture is too?! And then the panic set in, ‘a picture? Of me? But I haven’t exercised in months, and my face is currently going through some weird pubescent thing, and oh my god how many people read Good Housekeeping and will see my picture? What the hell am I going to wear? What if it doesn’t come out okay, after all I am NOT photogenic. But more importantly what if I sound like a bitch in the article?’

After my mini meltdown I called my family and gave them the news. I spread the gossip around the office. I called friends on the other side of the country and bragged. Hell, how often can I say I’m going to be in a magazine? And this weekend I went and took some pictures.

At least I look okay. As far as sounding like a bitch, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time, and it’s probably closer to the truth anyway.

**Which actually comes out in September. Mark your calendars.

***Not even kind of verbatim. I don’t know what kind of legal issues surround emails, but he knows about my blog and if for some crazy reason he stumbles onto this entry, I’d prefer not to get sued.