Bloomingdale's San Francisco: The Experience

The last thing I remember after posting that blog about how I was going to play video games until the crack of dawn was watching a YouTube video of a chick doing a very complicated looking hairdo and calling it an "everyday 'do". I remember thinking 'I could never devote that much time to doing my hair everyday...' next thing I know, I'm aware that I'm waking up from SLEEP. What started as a blink turned into a nightmare.

by some strange miracle, I woke up suddenly and, panicking, looked out the window. Pitch black. sort of. oh my God it's not black it's blue! I fly off the bed to my sister's room yelling for the time - it's 6:45a. I'm LATE.

My world comes crashing down. I had about 3 hours of sleep, my eyes are puffy, I'm incoherent, and I'm hyperventilating as I freak out, "I've missed it! I've missed it! I missed the trip!" I get online and find my boss's number in an email she sent, and fortunately they haven't left yet. After a haphazard whirlwind I managed to wash up, blow dry just my bangs, and put on clothing that matched by sheer accident.

*Red skirt, striped shirt, do i match? yes. wait! this is khaki not red! it's ok. still matches.*


I ran (literally. actual running.) out of my cul-de-sac to my van. Honest to God, I didn't even know I could still sprint like that, lol.

I'm praying under my breath (GOD DON'T LET THERE BE TRAFFIC!) and thinking to myself that it's too early for there to be traffic. ha....yea, about that. I got to the freeway entrance at 7:05 and traffic was just barely at a crawl.

Except the HOV...I was so paranoid about being caught that I seriously almost pulled a sweater over the body of my passanger seat and threw a hat on it but decided that was a bit much.

The HOV failed me halfway because there was an accident, so I got there at 7:30 no matter my efforts and I was giving up hope by 7:15.

I was so thrilled when I got there and everyone was still there waiting for me! I apologized profusely and told them the above story. I traveled with my manager (Leslie) and two other winning associates (Jane and Destini).

so we make it to the airport and the flight's been delayed 10-15 mins. We go to print our passes, and of course, Mine won't print. it's ok, we switch machines and that one prints for me. Leslie laughs at me for being a problematic traveler. :p she has no idea.

we get to the security checkpoint, and I must have looked like a terrorist because I got pulled for a "special screening". I walk into the abandoned lane and the lady waiting for me puts on blue gloves. what the heck? I immediately thought of carlos mencia and the cavity search joke. I will stay here in az if that's what this lady is thinking is about to go down!!!!

breathe, it didn't happen. They did swab my hands for gunpowder though, and of course I passed. Then we were put in a special lane for screening where we didn't have to take off our shoes or coats. It was very weird.

We're in the waiting area, and Leslie decides to try for the Starbucks line while the flight attendant gets on the intercom and gives us this long spiel about how there's bad weather in San Fran. After a few minutes she says we have to be in the air by 9:03 in order to make our landing slot, so we line up to get on board. Destini looks at me and says "I think your gel dried up, here's a mirror." Jane laughs at me and compliments destini for always being prepared. I look by my right ear where they point and I have orange colored TOOTHPASTE in my hair!! Too much to just wipe off, I have to get water on this thing and wash it out. OMG. could this get worse? lol. I try to pull as much of it off as I can with my fingers as we all get aboard the plane. Leslie still hasn't appeared from the starbucks line, so Jane calls her and they don't let her board until nearly last for being late. It's cool, we saved her a seat.

As I'm buckling in, still trying to pull out toothpaste, the guy behind me almost drops his carry-on onto my head. I'm like "hey! be nice!" he says "it was a reflex test. you passed!" lol. jerk. anyway, the flight gets delayed another 50 minutes, and we have to sit in there. The lady next to me is coughing and doing some twitchy thing with her hands as she reads off her computer screen. Uh oh. I'm sensing a remake of Quarantine 2. O_O if she starts making growling sounds I's SO off this plane.


We finally take off, and they bring us our complimentary soft drinks. I don't want a coke, I want a fancy free drink, so I'm looking at this thing called a "tonic" but that sounds too much like medicine, so I order something called a "Mr. & Mrs. T bloody mary mix". That's some sort of juice I'm guessing, but the red looks slightly coagulated and the top is completely clear. hmm. well, it can't be bad, they just made it and they wouldn't give me something rotten. ugh. it's probably tomato juice. I hate tomato. I ordered it though, so I'm going to suck it up and drink it. I take a mouthful of apparently extremely RANCID sprite. But my boss and coworkers are on my other side and I didn't want to spit it back into my cup because that would be SUPREMELY un-classy and I've already given a rather bad impression of myself.
I swallow it and my mouth is burning. I tap the flight attendant and tell her, "I don't want this, what is it?" she says, "oh, you asked for a bloody Mary though?" "yea, I don't know what that is, I thought it would be like a juice and soda mix?" she laughs and says "Then this must have been quite a shock! It has quite a lot of vodka." O____O <- my face. I was in shock. no more adventure for me please! I asked her for a Shirley temple, and she makes it with cranberry juice and sprite. We land in san Francisco, and it's POURING rain. What we consider Flash Flooding here in Az, but it's beautiful! There's so much color in San Francisco, and it's so green! If there's one thing that draws me to California it's the vibrant life that goes on there. The vegetation and the people and the buildings, everything seems to say "live here!" and one day I really will! here's the first couple pictures I took. sorry for the quality! it was with my Nintendo 3ds. :p

Our driver Daniel was very cute, talked in this beautifully smooth voice, and drove like Vin Diesel in Fast 5. He was clearly experienced at his job, I would've been in a panic driving in that much water and traffic. He got us close to the building and we ran inside. We were finally here!!!



The Bloomingdale's was unbelievably beautiful <3 I wanted to rush to a bathroom and fix up but instead we met with the store manager first thing. I was a hot mess. my bangs were starting to curl up at the ends, the toothpaste left my hair grainy looking, and the wax I had applied to keep my hair from frizzing was not doing it's job. He was very professional and polite though, and we all felt very welcome. He gave us a quick tour of the store, and advised us on good eats in the area. It was about noon at that point, so we had exactly two hours to shop before lunch, because we needed to leave by 3 to make the return flight and avoid traffic. I went straight to the fancy bloomingdale's bathroom, rinsed out the grainy toothpaste and straightened my bangs. (I happened to have brought a tiny itty bitty straightener with me.) There was no saving the rest of it, so I stuck it up in a bun with a pen and got back on the sales floor. Here are some shots I took of the sales floor :)

I returned a pair of shoes I had ordered and tried on a million pairs of shoes, but nothing fit! The front was too narrow or the shoe was too big in length. Finally I gave up and hit the clearance handbags. No luck there, I was determined to get something Tory Burch though! I went through all the wallets and bags and just couldn't find something I liked. I walked away for a bit and hit the beauty area and in the end I bought the lip gloss from a lady that gave me beauty advice for about 20 mins, haha...




Jane and Destini found me wandering around Marc Jacobs' booths and told me we have 15 minutes before we had to be upstairs. I hadn't bought anything yet! So I went on a quick run back to wallets with them and Jane helped me choose two wallets to compliment my crossbody bags. Here's quick pic of my fabulous purchases courtesy of Bloomingdale's!

A Michael Kors crossbody, a Marc by Marc Jacobs crossbody, a Tory burch wallet, a Michael Kors wallet, Acqua di Gioia by Armani parfum, Chloe parfum, a bobbi brown lip gloss, and a pair of Enzo Angiolini pumps that didn't make it to the picture because I gave them to my sister for her bday. :) I ordered most of this to be shipped to my house, but the wallets and gloss I got at the store.



lunch was delicious, we ate at Straits, a Japanese restaurant on the 4th floor of the mall. Looked like this:




we had salmon and tuna sashimi so fresh that I would swear they caught the fish not 10 minutes before serving it! I didn't get a picture of the food but here is Leslie and Destini :) about to dive in to the cuisine!




our flight back was pretty uneventful, the flight was delayed an hour but we made it back in peace. :) This was such a fabulous experience, and I'm so grateful to Macy's for making it possible for all of us! <3