September 22, 2008

September 05, 2008

Check it

Sweet! New blog template! No ruffles, but I'm liking it...

Had a super-duper NY weekend over Labor Day... will post pictures and tell tales over this coming weekend when I have a chance to post.

August 29, 2008

Rambling

I'm bored people. It's 11:16pm on Friday night, and I'm stuck at work waiting for my friendly neighborhood artists to finish our final images for a project. When I've been stuck here in the past I've always had a lot to do so I was never bored. But tonight this is not the case. Tonight I'm really just sitting here waiting. So I figured, what better time to catch up with you people. Well, I guess, allow you to catch up with me.

Let's start it off with a picture, everyone likes pictures. Here's me with my friend Natasha's darling baby boy Logan. He's adorable, and terrified! Nice people have told me he's scared of the camera... I'm not so sure. This is a pretty rare picture, I usually don't hold babies until they are a year old, but I was sitting, and he was sitting, and I figured it would have been really hard for me to drop him in this instance... so I took the risk. He's captured my heart because he gives people "The Elvis" mouth, and I think it's hilarious.


Let's see, what else? Are you guys tired of my blog template yet? I'm pretty tired of it. I feel like it needs to be purple and grey. Of course everything is purple and grey right now. If I throw in some pinstripes and ruffles my blog can have the most fabulous fall fashion look.

Update on my becoming a morning person: Didn't stick. I think I got up twice to work out, and then the urge died. I just can't do it. I'm too tired!!! I accept myself as a severe night owl/moderate insomniac and am leaving it at that. Must find more night owls/moderate insomniacs to hang out with. Most of my friends have a bedtime like real adults.

So the tattoo is still sickly awesome. I mean, I just love the thing. I'm not one for wearing my hair up very often, but I want to wear it up all the time now to show it off. I've been stopped a couple of times and told how amazing it is, which is really flattering since I designed it myself. Very very happy with my small act of 31-year old rebellion. Wait, is it rebellion if you parents don't care?

A big portion of the Yankees project was released online today, over a year after we started the project... the new stadium seat selector. It's pretty freakin' awesome if I do say so myself. I hope the fans are totally blown away. We're all pretty psyched around the office.

Not much else going on right now. The birthday is over, so it's back to work, working out and playing with my friends. Getting used to telling the treadmill I'm 31 instead of 30 (I just got used to telling it I was 30 a few weeks ago!). Looking forward to the fall in NYC. Planning our "totally awesome" group Halloween costume and already looking ahead to next year. Figuring out how to use my new camera. Hoping for lots of snow this year. Being inspired for the first time ever by a politician, and actually believing that he might not completely let us all down. Stranger things have happened.

I'm out for now...

August 27, 2008

New birthday pics

Real quick, I've added some new photos to my "31 Ain't So Bad" album from my weekend in Chicago. Had some fun playing with my new camera and hanging out with the fam. You can check out the new pictures here.

August 20, 2008

Pre-birthday fun

There has been a lot of fun stuff going on lately. The latest has mostly been surrounding my birthday (which is still a few days away). Had a great birthday dinner and drinks with friends on Saturday night. Ate dinner at a great Latin American place called Paladar in which they served the food family style. It was wonderful. Then we headed out to a few bars to drink and party and meet up with some other peeps. I wasn't out as late as last year, but I was surrounded by my New York family, and that's all that matters. You can check out the pictures here.

Then on Sunday I picked up my birthday present from my real family, an advanced digital point-and-shoot camera. I've been wanted to get really into photography since I moved to NY, but my little camera just didn't have the juice. Boy does my new camera have it! 10 megapixels, 20x optical zoom, settings customizabl
e to fully manual. And it takes video. For me, there was no reason to go to an SLR at this point. If I get really good and want to be able to go really advanced I'll purchase one in a few years, but this is more than perfect for now! Thanks family!

And finally, I got a tattoo today. I've been wanting one for a long time and could never determine exactly what it should be. Six months ago an idea came to me, a snowflake. It is perfect for so many reasons... they are beautiful, complex, geometric but also organic, represent the season and sport I love, and remind
s me of my favorite childhood memories of playing in the snow with my family at night. But I wanted it to be stylized, and after seeing a swirly snowflake on a brochure while skiing in Colorado in February I was inspired. Based on what I saw then, I designed my own, and really fell in love. So today, as my birthday present to myself, I had it done over lunch (which is pretty funny).

I've also decided to do something I've never done for my birthday every year. Something I've always wanted to do, but never had the guts or the money or whatever. I felt really free and exhilarated when I did the blue hair last year, and feel the same today. So many times in my life I haven't done certain things because I wanted to fit in, be professional, or just act like a grown up. Forget it. Life's way too short. When
I thought about what to do next year, skydiving was the first idea to pop into my head. Maybe it'll be something else, but who knows. Stay tuned and find out in August of next year. I hope one day to accomplish my all-time greatest dream, to go heli-skiing. But that takes a lot of guts and money, so it might take a long time!

Without further ado, the tattoo:

More pictures are here.

This weekend I fly home to Chicago to enjoy a low-key weekend with my family and am really looking forward to having dinner on my birthday with them in Greektown. Mmmmmm.... birthday baklava! I'm only sad to leave the amazing park weather expected for this weekend in NY, but that's okay, I've been jonesing to get a little hit of Chicago for a while. Stay tuned, more tales to come.

July 22, 2008

Celebrity sighting

Finally! A really big celebrity sighting! Tonight I was on the Upper West Side after watching The Dark Knight in IMAX (awesome) and after the movie I was walking down Broadway complaining to Mary how I never notice celebrities, when the guy below walked on by...

Hell yeah! Liam Neeson! He was hard to miss, he's really tall and very distinctive. This is a big'un for me, I just love him. I don't know anyone who doesn't. It was very cool.

Morning Person - Entry #1

Kill me.

Because of all the activities that go on in the summer, many of which pop up the day of, I have been missing more workouts than I like. I'm still doing 3 a week, but I'd like to be at 5. So last week I decided to become a morning person, and that I would begin my transformation yesterday.

To ease in I got up an hour early yesterday but didn't work out. This morning I got up an hour and a half early and did. Have you ever wondered if it's possible to fall asleep while riding a bike? I pondered this very thing this morning as I fought the urge to close my eyes on the bike. I determined that it probably was possible, but that if it did happen at least I wouldn't fall off since it's a recumbent bike.

So now it's 7:29, during a normal week I would begin the 20-30 minute game I play with my snooze bar in one minute. Yet here I am, sweating above my keyboard after having already worked out, fighting the urge to climb back in bed. The only thing really stopping me is the sweat.


Perhaps in the Fall when events die down I will dedicate myself to battling my impending caffeine addiction.

July 13, 2008

It's my liiiiiiiiiiiiiife!!

That's right, I'm singing Bon Jovi. I'm singing Bon Jovi because I was lucky enough to be given four VIP tickets to the concert in Central Park on Saturday night. If you don't live in NY you might not have heard (or you might have) they gave a free concert in the park in celebration of the All Star Game being played at Yankee Stadium this week. If you've been following along on the blog you've figured out by now how I got the tickets.

I brought with me three of my favorite Bon Jovi fans; Jackie, Lindsey and Mary. Because the tickets were VIP we were able to stroll right in to a separate area in front of the stage and park ourselves with a great view. We only arrived 2 hours before the show, which was nothing compared to the 45,000 people sitting behind us. They played for a full 2 hours, and it was amazing. We alternated between drooling and screaming for the entire time... sometimes both. We couldn't help it, Jon's just hot. It was a perfect show. They played exactly what you wanted to hear. Check out this video to hear the crowd singing for him!

There's really only one word to describe the evening: EPIC. There are certain events that only happen once. Just a handful of bands have played the Great Lawn. It doesn't happen every year, and only the greatest have the honor. There are other great bands, big parks and free concerts in the world, but none will ever again be Bon Jovi in Central Park. And I was there. I was there singing and screaming with some of my favorite girls. And we could even see the stage. It's something amazing when you understand the significance of a night while it's actually happening. I expect we'll talk about "that night we saw Bon Jovi in the park" until we are quite old. It was one of those nights that only happens in New York City with your New York family.

To top the weekend off, I headed out Sunday afternoon to Riverside Park to see a free performance of Much Ado About Nothing (my favorite Shakespeare play) with Jenna and Mary. It was a beautiful park venue with maybe 50 people in attendance, just sitting around a rotunda watching the players. Perfect company, perfect weather, perfect performance. So New York.

I'm starting to understand why people put up with the smell and the anger and the expense of living here. I wouldn't trade this weekend for anything, and I've never been happier.