When we arrived the first time, they let us go up to the sky bar, the VIP area to get warm. But when we arrived the second time in the limo, they didn’t.

There were easily a hundred people, maybe more, in a crowd waiting for one guy to check their ID, their names, and let them in. It was very orderly, except when one of the models from the show wasn’t allowed to get into the sky bar. Then her boyfriend hollered out “They won’t let the models in.” and someone came up to help. (Several someones came to help.) Several people had bad views of the boyfriend. I just thought he needed some help and got it.

Crystal, another wife, talked with R and her hubby and I for a bit, but then they were engulfed in shooting, since her husband won the shoot.

One of the judges comes up and talks to R about some good ways to get shoots, telling him about a workshop he and his date are giving in May. R really wants to go. (Big surprise.) They talked about what a good workshop is and how to tell that it is a good workshop.

After BotB2, R knows the difference between a good workshop and a bad one. One photographer, whose work R really admires, was having a workshop. So R emailed him and asked if he would be teaching his techniques, or any techniques, at the workshop. The upshot of several emails was that the workshop was really just an opportunity to shoot beautiful women, not an opportunity to learn more about photography. He didn’t attend, obviously.

So we’re waiting there, in the cold, talking a bit. And this beefy guy in a suit comes into the crowd and starts talking loudly. “Okay folks. Let’s get out of a bunch. Let’s get into an orderly line. We don’t want to look like a bunch of hoodlums for the TV cameras. We want to look good.”

I don’t know what everyone else thought, but what I thought was not nice. “Buster, I’ve been waiting here for an hour to get into a room I could have been in the whole time if we hadn’t gone for the limo ride. My husband is one of the cast and so are all these people and we can just wait here, quietly, but in a bunch, without your help.”

I don’t know if I would have refused to move, but I didn’t move when he started trying to organize people. Right after that J came up and said, “let’s go.” All of the cast/crew folks went to the front and got in.

I hadn’t brought an ID. (It was a party!) I know. It was a party at a nightclub. I should have had my ID. I just didn’t think about it. I’d have thought they could see I was old, but J had to vouch for me to get me in. I don’t know if it’s legal, but I think it would have been silly to turn a 44 year old woman away for lack of a picture ID. Especially since I know some of the women from the casting calls were using bogus IDs. (One girl flashed her Costco card to get in.)

Then we sat in a tiny room, or stood mostly, for about an hour waiting for whatever to start.

I ordered a screwdriver. When it arrived it looked like muddy green water. I was a little apprehensive, but it tasted really good. My plan had been to have a drink or two every hour, to keep from being bored, but that was the only drink I had all night.

R left to go to the bathroom and, though I didn’t know it, he left his margarita with me. Since I didn’t know it, I didn’t pick it up or watch it. I think it was still sitting where he put it when he eventually got back upstairs, but if it was his, it had been there over an hour and who knows what could have been put in it. So he didn’t even have one drink the whole night.