When you realize it was all worth it

This week has been one of those weeks when I look around and have to pinch myself.

I love that this city has started to feel like home. I have multiple groups of friends, I have a real job with a real commute, I have an apartment that I dig with a roommate that I am friends with. I can recommend restaurants to people when they visit from out of town and I know the shortcuts to take when I need to get across town quick. I can give directions when a stranger stops me on the street and I feel that urge of anger when tourists walk super slow on the sidewalk.

I embrace the cool crisp Fall weather and I love the sound of the traffic outside of my apartment when I am drifting off to sleep at night. I can tell you the difference between the Lower East Side and Murray Hill, I know which train to take without actually looking at a schedule (unless I'm in Brooklyn, then it all goes downhill.) I have favorite places to hangout and routines that I follow. I know where I can get the best greek pastries in my neighborhood and the restaurant that allows you to bring your own beer.

I seriously don't know why I ever thought this giant city wouldn't feel like home, but I did. I thought I would get eaten up with it's expansive girth, I figured the subway map would become a fixture in my purse (It never did! Thanks HopStop!) I am pretty sure that my first year of job exploration and tourist filled adventure allowed me to become familiar with so many aspects of the city and I would not do it any differently if I had the chance again.

I know that I have so much more to learn and experience, but for now, I am home and I like it.

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....

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!

Firefly Music Festival 2012

Last weekend was one of those weekends where you have so much fun that you can't possible put down everything into words and have it sound as fun to those reading the words, but I will try anyways.

This past weekend was the Firefly Music Festival in Dover, DE. My friend Jenny, her cousin Jacob and myself decided to make the journey and attend the inaugural festival. We knew it had an amazing lineup, we knew we had a plot of ground for a tent, and we knew that we needed a buddy system. Other then that, we went in with not a whole lot of expectations. There were rumors floating online, but since it was the first festival no one really knew what security would be like, how strictly the acts would adhere to the schedule, or if there would be decent priced food, etc.

Friday 10:00am -We loaded up the car (quickly and unorganized) and headed out of the rainy dreary Manhattan towards Delaware!

  We made a pit stop in Jersey to buy some forgotten goods (aka a sweatshirt) and repack the car since there was no rain when we stopped.

Heading over the Delaware Memorial Bridge! 

Our trusty passenger, preparing for the weekend.

 

Dover Downs Stadium. We may have missed the exit and had to ask for directions. 

Wristbands secured for the weekend. It's like we're superheros.

4:30ish - Tent up, car somewhat organized, rain still falling, ready to head into the festival.

The entrance on Friday.

We stopped by the John Legend set.

We headed to Walk The Moon. They were fabulous! If and when they come through New York I definitely want to see them again.

The would be the Silversun Pickups (aka Jenny's favorite band EVAH) She may have made her way to the center of the crowd in the first few rows while Jacob and I wen tin search of food.

 

Friday night's headliner was Jack White. Apparantly, none of us took pictures of him. It was sorta rainy during his set and his sound messed up in the first few minutes, but after a brief temper tantrum that involved sitting down and throwing his boot iff, his show was good. This is officially the second time I've seen Jack White live and he has thrown a temper tantrum both times. Maybe it's his thing.

Then we headed back to camp. It was about a 25 minute walk from the festival to the campsite and I expected the party to be much louder and crazier then it was. People were pretty tame Friday night, but it was rainy and freezing!

Saturday begin with an epic band and ended on a super high note: 

Imagine Dragons - I have a lot of pics of them because they were who I was most excited about and they delivered. I love that they are so new to the scene and they were super humble about their music and support from fans. I want to see these guys again too! 

Just hanging out between sets. Jake and I were twins with our striped shirts. #FFFF

This guy may have had too much fun, too early.

This is Trampled By Turtles, I liked them a lot and they have a folky sound to them. Saturday also brought Awolnation, Cake, and Grouplove, The Cold War Kids.

Saturday night's headliner was The Killers. Going into the festival I didn't think I was a big fan of theirs, but I soon learned that I knew everyone of their songs, but just didn't realize it was them. The show was phenomenal. They had fireworks, confetti, an amazing set list, and good showmanship. I was really impressed with them and they didn't throw temper tantrums.

On Sunday, we started the day with showers (we had to pay $5), a trip to McDonald's (we walked hoping to secure an outlet to charge our phones). The day had such a good line-up that we forgot to take some pictures. This is Death Cab for Cutie.

 We also saw: Penguin Police, Girl Talk, The Head and The Heart, Reptar, Bombay Bicycle Club, and Tinie Tempah. A few times we split up to watch conflicting sets, but the schedule was pretty great the whole weekend. 

Sunday's headliner was The Black Keys. Considering it's only 2 guys, they were also pretty awesome. I liked them more than Jack White, but not quite as much as The Killers.

They had a disco ball drop from the stage ceiling and when the lights shined on it, it appeared to be FIREFLIES! Clever event planners!

 

After The Black Keys, we made our final trek to camp with 30,000 of our closest friends.

Monday morning involved lots of cleaning up, tearing down, and repacking. This is my least favorite part of camping. During this part of our morning it was mentioned that we should make our way to a fast food joint that we don;t have in the city. Sonic and Chick-fil-a were mentioned.

Success! As we were driving we hit an intersection with both a Sonic and a Chick-fil-a, so we hit both up because when on a road trip, eat like it.

Overall, the weekend was awesome. We had fun, listened to some amazing music, and I experienced a music festival which I never imagined myself doing. I liked camping (we will camp again next year, even if Jenny thinks she is getting a hotel), I would totally pay to take a shower again, and I thought you could tell that the organizers had spent a lot of time planning out the festival. The maps and schedules were great, the food was decently priced (for us New Yorkers anyways), the cooling down stations were pumping cold air, and the music was fantastic. I am excited to see the line-up for next year because I would like to go again. If for some reason that doesn't happen, I can always say that I went to the very first Firefly Music Festival.

Not everything was birds and rainbows...later this week I'll post about the things that I didn't like so much.