NYC Sept. 8 - 10, 2001

This is one of my all time favorite photos ever. (It was taken on the evening of September 8, 2001.) Not because it looks like Ben and I are wearing a headpiece but because we were all laughing and smiling and just happy to be happy.

We are standing outside of the Paramount Hotel. We had just left the bar and you couldn't take photos inside the hotel lobby or the bar much less move the furniture in the bar because each piece had it's place and you messed up the design by moving it around...blah, blah, blah...so we took our picture outside before we headed over to Splash. (I seriously doubt if Philippe Starck would have known we messed up his design!) :-)

Prior to meeting up with Greg, Sean, Jim and Ben, I went to see 42nd Street and I pretty much tapped danced my way over to meet the bois. It was good meeting place before we did other things that evening.

The short story behind this weekend:

• On my 37th birthday, live on the east coast, at the beginning of the 830A segment, Katie Couric says to me, "Oh. I thought you were 40 or something like that." To which I replied, "No but I'll be back." So I had to go back in '01.



• I went to NYC thinking I was going to spend the weekend alone which I was fine with but I was surprised by the bois. It really was a fun weekend.



• Katie didn't talk to me again. Greg had enlarged a photo of me (at age 5) and put my face on tongue depressers and handed them out to the crowd. At one point Al Roker asked a lady, "Whose face is that?" Matter of factly she says, "Timmy." Al says, "Who's Timmy?" She says, "I don't know."



• Due to a storm that had blown in on the evening of 9/10/01, I had a flight delay out of EWR back to IAH. I got back to IAH really late and didn't get to bed until around 200A on 9/11/01. Greg and Sean had also departed NYC and Jim and Ben were coming back on 9/11/01. One of the last things Jim said to me before we said our good-byes was, "I wish we were going home tonight." I said, "I wish I was staying another day."



• Due to what happened on 9/11/01, they were stuck in NYC for the rest of the week and ended up driving back to Houston. They were supposed to be at the New York Stock Exchange early on 9/11/01 to rub the bull and watch them ring the bell but they overslept and had no idea what was transpiring not far from the apartment they were staying in. I was sitting on the couch in my Lucky boxers with bed head and bleary eyes watching everything transpire and was frozen but was able to call them and pretty much make no sense as I was yelling and crying.

The question was asked the other day, "Shouldn't we move on and stop acknowledging 9/11?" My thoughts lean toward letting people deal with it in their own way. I still get choked up because I had just been there. The fun and frivolity of the extended weekend didn't matter anymore.