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Aug 30, 2012

It's been one of those weeks.

Emotions this week are swerving high and low like a roller coaster.

High: I got a job!

Low: School starts next week

High: I have my own classroom!

Low: That needs to be decorated before next week

High: I'm teaching middle school history! A subject I love!

Low: It wasn't my major nor am I an expert, so I have a lot of planning/learning to do.

High: I will have a salary!

Low: The commute is around an hour and a half each way via the subway/bus system.

High: I get to make my own lessons, management system, homework, procedures, etc, etc.


Low:  What if I'm not exactly ready....and this happens:

 

High: I got a freaking job!







I'm excited and nervous and I can finally say I made it in NYC!

Aug 19, 2012

Photo Dump!

 
I need/want this T-shirt from Old Navy. Ever since I moved to NYC, my mom and sister refer to it as Living the Dream. For example, if I complain about the subways or the people or the smell of the trash on a hot sunny day, they respond to me by saying: Well Laura, You're Living the Dream. It's quite poetic and annoying.
 

This would be some of the delicious food I have eaten this week.  The bowl is full of delicious falafel from Maoz. I piled it high with coleslaw, chickpeas, cauliflower and broccoli and their signature garlic sauce. It is crazy good! The next picture would be a heart attack inducing ice cream sandwich from Cool Haus, an ice cream truck that specializes in homemade cookies and ice cream in unique flavors. This would be brown butter bacon ice cream and chocolate chip cookies. I could seriously only eat half, which was a waste of money, but so tasty!

  

I love the fact that I live in a city where I can walk around and happen upon amazing sights like these!
 



My new apartment! I love it and my roommate and I get along so much better than the last! The first picture is our shoe wall, which is located in the extra bedroom that we use as a giant walk in closet. The next two pictures showcase my awesome painting skills and the new jewelery hangers I put up. I love the clear door knobs against the teal. The last picture is my new dining room table! I have been swooning over this table for quite some time from IKEA and I happily found it for half the price on craigslist. Moving on up!

Aug 13, 2012

Birthday Recap

Birthdays are an interesting part of life. They are this fabulous day where everyone celebrates you because you were born. We anticipate these days for weeks ahead of time when and then the actual day of your birthday arrives, it usually let's you down. Not all birthdays are this way, I have some fond memories of surprise parties and family dinners that involved lasagna, but in reality the hope that everyone of your friends and family members can take the time to celebrate you on your birthday is not realistic. This year I turned 25, a semi-important birthday which makes me officially an adult because I can now rent a car without paying an underage fee. My birthday fell on a Thursday and thanks to Mother Nature, it rained pretty much all day. I also had plans to move that weekend and a lot of my friends were away on vacations.

Instead of letting my lack-of-plans birthday get me down, I decided to go against the norm and plan a birthday celebration for a later date. After looking through my plans for August, I decided to schedule my birthday get together for August 10th because it was a weekend when I had nothing else going on and most of my friends were back in town. It also happened to be the night when the 90's Sing-along was happening at a bar in Brooklyn.

The night started off with a bang with dinner at Do or Dine in Brooklyn. This tiny little restaurant is starting to make a name for itself because of the unique menu and the fact that one of the owners is Justin Warner, the guy that just won Food Network Star.  

The food was awesome and my friends and I ordered a lot of different dishes, such as the fish and chips, the deep fried devil eggs, the frog legs, and the dumpling nachos. There were more awesome dishes, but I forgot them now. We sat outside where they had a lot of tables for bigger parties and the ambiance was really relaxed and fun. Justin even served our table all night and I am really excited to see his show this Fall!

After dinner, we headed to a bar in Brooklyn that hosts a 90's sing along once a month! Can I quickly explain how much I love 90's music. The terrible music videos, the awful outfits, and the catchy lyrics are AMAZING! My friends and I had a few drinks, danced to the Spice Girls, LFO, Oasis, and No Doubt, and we had a blast!

I am thankful that so many of my friends made it out to my birthday because it was a great way to celebrate turning 25. Now I just need to rent that rental car....

Aug 9, 2012

It's OK...

Its Ok Thursdays



It's OK....

to feel unmotivated to do anything today because I don't have to.

that cooking with avacados is the only real thing I plan to accomplish.

that my cat is lonely now that she is the only cat in the household.

to wear the same flip flops each and every day and get a flip flop tan.

to cry when said flip flops break and now you have crazy flip flop tan.

to decide that I don't need an AC again this year. It's already August and I made it this far.

to already be excited for my next house guest when my friend who visited this week only left this morning.

to wonder if my family is ever coming to see me in NYC again.

that my trivia team won last night thanks to my incredible guessing skills about Pixar film characters. (It has nothing to do with the other five categories that my team carried the weight on. I kid.)

that last night I asked the bartender if one of the three TVs could possibly change to the Olympics because you know it's only the US team vs. the US team for the Gold in Beach Volleyball. No big. (yes I know the Mets and the Yankees were playing, because they play almost every freaking night)

to eat coconut pineapple ice cream solely because it tastes like a pina colada but it has way less alcohol. like way less.

to wonder of the Spice Girls could really make a comeback. I know I'll be watching the closing ceremonies and singing along karaoke style.

to love the new crunch bars that taste like girl scout cookies, those things are delicious.

to hate the smell of NYC in the Summer. It's a mixture of pooling water mixed with hot trash slightly elevated by BO with no breeze.

don't get me started with the subway platforms this time of year. That's never OK.

Happy Thursday! Stay cool, stay clean, and stay out of NYC until at least October.

Aug 8, 2012

GUR

Last Saturday I participated in The Great Urban Race. The GUR is a scavenger hunt throughout the city, complete with brainteasers, puzzles, trivia, and random physical tasks to complete. The entire race is supposed to take under five hours to complete and you work in teams of two or four. As a team, you have to dress in a theme or dress alike to race and you also have to stick to gether because most of the clues required a team picture as proof. My team decided to dress in theme and since we are fantastic, we chose Games as our theme.

We have Candy Land, Connect Four, Trivial Pursuit, and Twister!

When the race began at 12, we quickly got our clue sheet and headed to a grassy patch of land to plot our route. We took about 30 minutes to figure out the addresses of locations and determine which route to take. We started the race and I felt like we were making decent time. Some of the things we knocked out in the first hour were: we had to head to a Duane Reade and buy two items to donate to a charity that was waiting in front of the store, then we had to take a picture with two Yankees fans, we also had to take a picture with a food cart, we visited he American Folk Art Museum to count the windows on one of their sculptures, and we had to get a wrapper from a McDonalds. Then we headed across town and during the next few hours we visited a cupcake shop, a toy store, completed a task with a pedometer in Bryant Park. There was one clue that wasn't making sense to us and we spent a lot of time trying to figure out where a certain book store was because the book store we thought was the answer was not at the address given. After checking with a few other teams we figured out that WE were right and the GUR staff had made a mistake on the sheet and put Eighth Street instead of Eighth Avenue,  which makes a huge difference in NYC.



We then hit another roadblock when we couldn't find a yoga studio. We eventually decided to skip the clue and just move on (you are allowed 1 skip). On the way to the next clue we happened to stumble upon the yoga studio, so that was a happy accident. 

 
 
We then made our way to a magic shop where I ate a meal worm and broke my favorite flip flops (unrealated events, but both happened in the magic shop). Check out this awesome picture of me and my mealworm skills:
 


After a stop at the show store, we then got on the subway and headed to the book store which was the book store we had thought of from the beginning but thought we were wrong about. We completed the puzzles there and then headed for the finishline because we were able to skip the last clue due to not skipping any before hand.

We arrived at the finish line is 4 hours and 33 minutes. After crossing the finish line we got bananas, water, and a medal! Then we had to wait in the checkpoint line for the staff to check in our pictures and business cards. We ended up having one incorrect answer and they give you a 30 minute penalty for that. However, since they made the mistake on the book store question they gave everyone that clue whether you had figured it out or not and did not give us any extra credit for realizing their mistake and still getting to the correct location. Thus we technically finished at 5 hours and 3 minutes which means we don't even get told what place we were in because we went over the 5 hour mark.

 
We still finished, got our medals, and didn't die in the 90 degree heat. It was fun and I think I am ready for next year, now that I fully know what to expect!

Aug 1, 2012

July happened, rather quickly.


I know that I am always saying that time has flown by, but I seriously mean it when i say that JULY FLASHED BEFORE MY EYES. I feel like it was just June 28th and school was ending and now it's August 1st. I am slightly concerned that I cannot even recap July because it was so busy.

For work I got to:



  1. go row boating in Central Park
  2. go bowling
  3. visit the NYC Transit Museum - yes I pretended to drive a fake bus.
  4. go to Coney Island
  5. go to the Natural History Museum   
  6. see animals at the Bronx Zoo

For fun I got to:
  1. go to DC over the 4th of July
  2. rides some rides at Dorney Park in PA when I spent a weekend there
  3. take a weekend to surround myself in music at Firefly
  4. see the NY Philharmonic play in Central Park
  5. sing like a fool at a 90's music sing-a-long
  6. watch some of the Olympics
  7. go and see Bring It On: the musical on Broadway
  8. participate in the MP3 Experiment

For myself I:
  1. turned 25. New York may have decided to have a monsoon rainstorm and ruin my outside plans. The day ended up not being that exciting (aka I cooked a turkey burger and watched reruns of Law & Order) but I'm making up for it when my friends and I celebrate next week.
  2. moved into a new apartment. I moved twice in the month of July, so that was really fun. I am thrilled to be out of the horrible situation I was in last year and then I thought I had found a place, but things changed on my roommate's part and I had to move again. I was frustrated with it at first, but now that I have moved, I am really thinking it was meant to happen. My new roommate is much more like myself and I think we are going to actually be friends and not just room neighbors. Plus, the place is bigger and WAY closer to the subway.
  3. painted my nails a lot. It is my new way to de-stress (I get it from my sister)

In August (I can't believe I just typed that, I have officially been doing bucket lists for a year) I want to:

Go to a Museum that I have never been to
Eat brunch out with the girls
Eat better and at home more
Post at least 17 times this month
Explore the new neighborhood 
Make some of the crafts that I have been swooning over on Pinterest for months
Get my room unpacked, organized, and make it feel like I own it