And ..... I'm Off!

It's almost midnight and I'm not done prepping and packing and - How the f**k do I get this big ass hat on the plane???? - but either way, come morning, I'm boarding a plane for Louisville to attend the 135th Kentucky Derby.

It's supposed to rain like hell but I don't care. Just seeing this American spectacle up close is going to be a treat. I'll be posting 3x on BlogHer starting on Sunday, May 2 - just as soon as I return from touring the Maker's Mark distillery - but also posting a barnload of photos on my Flickr stream.

I'll try to Twitter as much as I can though I'm having some awful technology challenges right now. Basically, I need a full tech makeover that is out of my grasp until I get a job. I might as well be using smoke signals and carrier pigeons. Wah.

I also had to enlist the help of Erin Saboe of Go-Go Chapeaux here in Denver. She's a Derby veteran and a pro milliner. This time of year, she's like H&R Block in mid-April - super busy. Yet she still took a lot of time with me to solve The Hat Problem.



Again, I don't have a ton of cash to spend on a fancy Derby lid but she and I worked through every possible option out there that would work with both my dresses - one a springy green and the other a hot pink-almost-purple. I don't know how many times she began a sentence with, "How about if we ..." but it was highly appreciated.

In the end, I had my mother FedEx me an old bridesmaid hat that was being used as living room decoration. It came to me dusty, somewhat misshapen with some erroneous wayward brim decor. Together, we cooked up a plan and poof! The hat I wore to watch Kim marry Tony had gotten a timely makeover.

Looking forward to stepping into the unknown, being highly over-stimulated and simultaneously inebriated.