Wicked Cool

My parents gave me tickets to see Wicked in New York for my birthday last weekend. (THANKS MOM AND DAD!)

So, after price-lining a hotel to no avail, and finally agreeing to pay out the *@&#*O&! for a hotel, we jumped on a Bolt Bus and headed up.

Here we are, waiting for the bus, minding our own business and taking arm-extended pictures of ourselves.

We got up to NYC around 2:00 p.m. and headed to our &#*@#* expensive (and supposedly nice) hotel...which wasn't ready for us. So, we headed off into the city with Alpha May, who is a great friend (and great tour guide, I must add).

Here we are taking the classic tourist picture in front of "the Rock." (I prefer to think of it simply as "the place where we may see Liz Lemon.")

After eating a heap of tacos from La Esquina (a Soho favorite thanks to Allie and Jenna) and topping it off with Pinkberry, we headed back to our hotel to get ready for the play.

Side note: We learned, at Pinkberry, that Allie is sometimes really dishonest. Like, for example, she paid for a mini, but when they gave her a small, she didn't protest. Just kidding, Allie, that's not dishonesty, that's just serendipitous (hey, don't you love that movie?).

Anyhow, we got back to the hotel at 7:00 p.m. to iron our clothes and head out to the play. But, as luck (or lack thereof) would have it, our room still wasn't ready. The offered us a drink in compensation (wait, is our time really that un-valuable to you?), and we strongly declined in favor of getting $100.00 off and free breakfast.

So, we changed in the public restrooms, where we tried not to touch the floor with our feet or our clean clothes. And we went to the play with wrinkled clothes. Oh well, it's dark in there, and I'm pretty sure that the wicked witch of the west could care less that my cotton skirt looked like it had been rolled up at the bottom of a backpack all day (oh wait...it was...).

Wicked was really cool. It wasn't life-changing like Les Mis or My Fair Lady, but the theatrics were amazing and it was really fun to see.

We didn't get the obligatory shot of us in front of the Gershwin with the Wicked sign in the background, but we did get the oh-so-necessary shots of us in Times Square.

We checked in to our hotel (finally) at 11:30 p.m. Yep, that's right.

We learned our lesson. Never go to NYC on the same weekend that the Salute to Israel parade is, well, parading.

After our wonderful, and wonderfully free, breakfast, we headed out into the city to do some walking around. Here's a picture of Blake at the public library and of me at Bryant Park. (I thought of doing some sort of model pose in honor of the fashion week locale, but opted for the I-am-looking-confusedly-at-a-map pose instead. Happy?)

It was sometime after this point that Allie joined up with us. And we all got stuck on the East Side because 5th avenue was absolutely packed with Hebrew-singing, drum banging, banner waving Israel supporters.

After finally making it back to the hotel, picking up our bags, waiting 18 minutes for a metro that never came, jumping on the wrong metro, getting off 5 avenues away from where we needed to be, sprinting across those 5 avenues with our backpacks swaying (and large earrings dangling..note to self: big earrings are not good for exercise or related activities), we got to our bus just in time. Just in time meaning that we jumped on the bus, sat down sweatily, and 30 seconds later the driver closed the door and pulled away from the curb.

We made it.

Did I mention that we learned our lesson about never going to NYC on the same weekend that the Salute to Israel parade is, as I said before, parading?

Happy Birthday to Me

Cafe Rio's coming to DC!

http://washington.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2009/11/02/newscolumn2.html

Best birthday news of my life!

Mondays

"In the beginning, the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry, and has been widely regarded as a bad idea." - Douglas Adams

Can I have the weekend back? Even if it brings more sore feet?

Loud and (Un)Clear

How come the crazier you are, the more apt you are to have a megaphone?

O Frabjous Day!

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.' -- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

Have I mentioned that I want to be Lewis Carroll when I grow up?

Blake gave me this cloth bound copy of the book as an "end of the semester" celebration gift.
I love it. I mean, how could you not, it's covered in pink flamingos. And it's one of my favorites. It also adds pizazz to my growing collection of cloth bound books...and is a good reminder that you can get away with making up all sorts of words if you do it with authority.

Well, I'm great at making up (accidentally?) incomprehensible words, but I just need to work on the whole "with authority" thing.

Police Beat

If you haven't had to make your way through a herd of bagpipers and haven't had to listen to a group of burly, be-skirted men emphatically use the f-word to defend their favorite baseball teams, then you haven't truly experienced Police Week.

Post Script

P.S. I realize my last post sounded a little full-of-it. I didn't mean for it to. I'm just really happy that the semester is over and that my hard work paid off.

Oh, and I got caught in the T-Rex of all thunderstorms last night on my walk home from work. I was soaked up to my waist. I was also wearing light stone-colored pants. Neat or not neat? You tell me.

Oh, and also, the other night --after I'd just told Meg that I usually try to eat pretty healthily-- I went home and ordered a pizza for dinner. Blake and I downed the entire thing.

So I am a half-drowned, full-of-herself liar. Whoops.

Who would have thought?

Let's all breath a collective sigh of relief. Or, more appropriately, let's all give a collective shout for joy.

Although my semester isn't officially over until next Wednesday, I've turned in every assignment, dotted every i and crossed every t. I'm done. And my professor sent me an e-mail with a big fat A to prove it.

Hooray for being done with my first semester of graduate school!

Notice how I said first semester. Well, that implies there's more to come, right? Well, who knows what I'll do next...or when I'll do what next....but for now I'm just planning to enjoy having more free time and spending every second of it with my Blake.

I'll be the first to admit it. I'm a wimp. And this semester has been hard. Really hard. Having a full-time job and being a student (even part time) is exhausting! I like my free time. I like my Blake. I like my TV shows. Heck, I just like having a clean bathroom.

So we'll see where the next month of decisions leads leads me: more applications or another semester off.

I'm trying to keep as many doors open as possible. I'll be volunteer substitute teaching an English class at the public library. I'll continue to be working with several EFL students on writing, and I'll be working on my French as well. I've got a great thing going with an EFL student I met during an observation. He's an attorney from Senegal who moved to the US three months ago and is working on his English at breakneck speed. We decide on a topic, he writes a short paper in English, I correct it and give suggestions, then I write a response in French for him to correct.

(It's going really well -I'm glad you asked-...except for it's made me realize that I've lost a substantial amount of my French. It's coming back quickly, but I definitely need to make myself keep it in more constant use. Alas. Here we go.)

Anyhow, I am also planning to work with some of my former students on their writing, so that'll keep me busy enough. I am continually amazed at the "if is English, I like to learn all" attitude of my students. (Holy cow, everyone, the American dream is real!) I am also amazed at how much I love teaching. Who would have thought?

And for that matter, who would have thought I'd be moving to and living in DC, marrying a wonderful Blake, living in our very own house, working at Georgetown Law, and going to graduate school at Georgetown....really, who would have thought?

Not me. I didn't think. But I couldn't ever have thought up anything better...

iLife

I had a dream last night that Blake and I were walking downtown and I saw a man that looked exactly like me. I pointed him out to Blake and said, "Looks, he's my iMan."

Apple has taken over my subconscious.

Just a beautiful day in the neighborhood

Well, it's been beautiful in our yard lately. The azaleas were in full force, the grass was green, and the trees were in perfect shape.

Proof:

That is, until disaster struck on Monday night and one of our biggest trees suffered a massive "natural disaster" of the left branch.

Proof:

See, there's Blake's face poking out from all those beautiful branches.

We were/are pretty upset. It was a huge branch and it provided us with a lot of privacy. Goodbye branch. Goodbye privacy.

So, Blake is out there right now putting his trusty (small) handsaw to use. Did I mention that the handsaw is small and the branch is most certainly not? We'll see how this goes.

Proof:

(sigh) Oh the joys of home ownership.

Awww Shucks

As it turns out, it's not the smartest idea to eat yogurt with a fork.

I've got a (precariously placed) spot on my pants to prove it.