After some scheming, my friend Maryanne came up with the brilliant idea of sending drinks up to Tim and Nick. How we would get that accomplished was another adventure, but thankfully a very helpful (and cute) concierge named Chris [after much sweet talking from Maryanne who turned on her wily charm] sent over a waitress, Linda, to take the order and go up. We were going to try to invent a new martini called the Make It Work Martini, a name Kate thought up, but all of us with 2 drinks already in bloodstream gave up and Maryanne decided to send up dirty martinis, because it just seemed so Tim and Nick. Linda, our lovely waitress. looked at us a little wearily when we described our mission for her, but she obliged. We also decided to send up with the drinks a note which Maryanne wrote on the back of her business card, which read, "Chicago loves Tim and Nick. Bon chic tous les jours." The French because we all recalled Tim throwing in French here and then.
After much waiting, what seemed like too many minutes, Linda came back down with a somewhat bewildered smile on her face. She told us that when she walked the drinks into the audition room, Nick and Tim's face just lit up, and they both were so excited when they found out the drinks were for them. They loved it so much they both kissed her on the cheek! At this point Linda also throws in, "that guy with the salt and pepper hair...Tim? Oh, he's so cute!" I almost fell off the chair laughing after I heard that. She actually repeated it several times. She went on about how NICE they were to her and then tells us, they wanted to know who sent up the drinks and they were coming down to personally thank us. I think I did fall off the chair this time.
After a few minutes, there Tim and Nick were in the lobby of the W, live, in person. All of us started squealing, with "OH MY GOD!!!!!" yelled out every 5 seconds. They came up to us, thanked us profusely for the drinks, telling us how they had needed it so much after the long day they've had, almost as if someone read their minds. They had seen over 175 contestants and they still had so much more work to do in reviewing the applications to determine who they would pick to go to the next round. And Tim asked, how did you guess my drink is the dirty martini? To which, more squealing ensued from us and credit was given to Maryanne. They gave us hugs and kisses - I had the awkward hand shake or hug shuffle with Tim at first (it was a near death adrenaline rush for me seeing them and my mind was frozen) and he said, oh, I'm giving you a hug! Sir Tim, what else can I say about him? When I saw Nick, a stream of consciousness came shooting out of my mouth, "DAMN IT I SHOULD'VE BROUGHT MY MY SCENE BARBIE FOR YOU TO SIGN I BOUGHT 2 MY HUSBAND TOLD ME I SHOULD BUY MORE AND MAINTAIN THE INTEGRITY OF THE BOXES SO THEY CAN BE WORTH A LOT SOME DAY!!!!!!", or something like that. Thankfully, Nick and Tim were nothing but gracious and appreciative. They both looked exactly as they did on TV. Exact. One word to describe them, handsome. Another word, dapper. Someone came to get them and they had to go back to work. We said our goodbyes, more hugs and kisses - I myself didn't get a kiss on the cheek, which was a good thing as I likely would've burst like a balloon.
None of us had remembered to bring our cameras and we bemoaned that fact greatly. Then I decided to run back to the gift shop to see if it had reopened and if they sold cameras. They did! We suited up and off we went to get pictures with them. We peeked into the audition room and when we saw Tim, meekly made our request and he of course good naturedly agreed. We started to look around for Nick [oh, only if it had been Andre that was a judge we could've gotten a, "Where's Andre?" out of Tim] but were told by Tim he was out on a cigarette break. Good fortune was smiling upon as five seconds later Nick showed up. We chatted them up a little more, as Maryanne commented to Nick on how fierce Nick's belt buckle was and I was telling him how I just discovered on Bravo that they had a few of his pieces for sale (I digress, but that web site is not exactly user friendly for finding our beloved designers' clothing). Tim got one of the producers of the show [what a hottie] to take the pictures for us and he was an absolute professional, taking care to pick out a spot where there was good lighting. From left to right, Nick, me, Tim, Maryanne, Kate and Camille. We went on our very, very merry way afterwards.
It was a fantastic night, but I do have 2 regrets. First, that I completely forgot my manners and forgot to introduce myself to Tim and Nick, something so elementary like, "Hi, I'm Pam. So nice to meet you." Instead, I squealed and did the handshake or hug shuffle with Tim. And did I mention I was having hot flashes the entire time when I was in their presence? If I wasn't only 31 I would blame menopause. Oi. Second, another friend and mentor, Evelyn, a partner at our firm, who had come with us, didn't get a chance to meet Tim and Nick as she had to leave to go take care of her kids. It would've been a sight to behold 2 super mentoring powers meeting each other [plus, she's an insane fan of Tim's, who did her fair share of squealing this morning as we recounted our adventure to her].
Chicago loves Tim and Nick!
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