My American Idol journey has officially begun! We arrived in Miami on Sunday morning after spending 7 hours traveling from San Francisco to Houston to Ft. Lauderdale and a short drive to Miami Beach. Spent a little time shopping, a little time eating and a lot of time commenting on the stifling humidity on our first afternoon ever in Florida. But alas, after only 4 hours sleep in the past day and a half, we were ready for some sleep in our nice air conditioned room. So we wondered back to our hotel and went to bed early. Besides, Monday is American Idol Registration Day and was to be a very early morning indeed.

In case you are unfamiliar with the Audition process it goes a little something like this:

Registration Day (get a wristband and a seat ticket for Audition Day)
Audition Day (The Big Day - Audition in front of one of 12 producers)
Round 2 (Audition for 2 Executive producers)
Round 3 (with Paula, Simon and Randy)

You would think that everyone gets to audition in front of Paula, Simon and Randy by the way its shown on TV, but with 10,000 people auditioning in every city, that would take forever.

As we expected, Monday started early... 3:45 am early. But already it was 82 degrees and humid in Miami. Thankfully my stylist hooked me up with some really good anti frizz creme, otherwise I would be looking at sporting an afro for the rest of my time here.

Our Taxi driver was curious to know what was going on there so early in the morning, as he had been getting so many calls for pickups to the American Airlines Arena this morning. After telling him that it was American Idol, he professed his desire to audition only to be frightened away because he doesn't sing any English songs. I told him that he should give it a shot. He then proceeded to break out into enthusiastic Pakistani song. Everyone's got a dream.

Arriving at the Arena, you could already see quite a crowd forming and a few camera crews lingering about the front of the line. No doubt there were already people hamming it up and singing for the cameras at 5:00 am, but without my coffee, I was in no mood to put on that type of show.

We met some fun people in line after egging on a group of girls belting out a Christina Aguilera tune.(hey - if they lose their voice and can't compete, its not my problem!) and shared in the agony that is standing, getting up early and the joys of crowd paranoia (you know, when a crowd just starts moving up for no reason? Security had to keep moving everyone back because people kept thinking that they were going to get let in.)

Finally at 6:20 (earlier than I expected) they opened the doors to the registration area. We were all herded through a small opening in the barricade, up the arena steps into the lobby where we all waited just a bit more to get the wristband and a seat ticket into the auditions on Wednesday.

We find that the Wristband can't be removed, can't altered and can't get wet. Not get WET?! We are in Miami during August with mid 90's forecasted through Thursday, its humid and I am literally 30 steps from the beach. This puts me in a bit of a predicament, does it not?

So after discussing ways to cover the wristband (some suggest a baggie taped to your arm, others say to put packing tape on both sides to seal it, some want to laminate it - which would cause you to take it off which we all know is out of the question.) we head out for a fun filled day in the Miami sun.
A dip in the warm ocean, a big margarita and my butt planted on the beach would put a perfect end to this already exciting day. Now if I could just find a baggie and some packing tape. . .