There's always room for glitter

After my flight to NY, Julie picked me up at the airport and we walked around and ended up at Henri Bendel where Julie had her makeup guy produce some pretty fierce eyes for her to recreate at a New Year’s party in Miami. He used tape to make very straight lines by her eye.



We ate dinner at Mary’s Fish Camp and it was soooo good. We ate lobster knuckles that are hard work to get into. And I also ate a lobster roll, which is a garlicy breaded sandwich thing with lobster salad inside. It’s necessary for me to eat like this because I have to fill up my good food tank before suffering trough a month of tuna and ramen from my suitcase.

Today we went to Times Square and stood in line to get tickets to see Katie Holmes in All My Sons. We ran into Elmo on the way..


And this Hello Kitty statue..


Waiting in line was crazy and they routed you back and forth across the street for a couple of blocks and it was impressively well organized. The police officers manning it will discretely hit on you if you so much as make 1/8 seconds worth of eye contact with them. The play was really good and dramatic but ended very sadly. We sat in a little booth like this..


It was restricted viewing and we had a clear view backstage. I was really excited to see Katie Holmes. She is so tall and skinny and pretty.

Afterwards we went to the Hello Kitty store and I got a little bag to put shit in and a massive lollipop for Shafaq.

Then we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. It was such a nice view at night and these pictures don’t really do it justice. Sooo pretty..

Christmas

Kelsey's new Elmo’s Restaurant..


Disney Princesses Vanity..


My mom still gets a kick out of filling up stockings with candy and oranges and soap for us and she thought her choice of stocking for me was exceptionally funny. I'm the fancy one there in the middle...



My cousin Gracie and I fried some chicken on her Nintendo DS. I liked the cooking game the most but she had to get me through the hard levels like bread slicing.

Jim Brickman

I received tickets to see Jim Brickman & the NC Symphony as a graduation present but when he comes back through I will pay to see his tiny little piano playing self! It was so wonderful. I mean, it’s not like I was a lonely little girl sitting in my bedroom listening to his songs on Delilah while planning my wedding in which my bridesmaids would wear spaghetti-strap, lavender, floor-length dresses, or anything. I wasn’t that little girl at all. But his performance was really nice and the new Durham Performing Arts Center is huge!

Hi

A lot has happened lately! I didn’t post anything for a while because I was so concentrated on school. My last exam was a really hard disease genetics test and it required my full attention.

Sunday was graduation day! It couldn’t have been any more perfect of a day. The speaker was Dr. Valerie Ashby, whom I had for Organic Chemistry. I listened very intently and it was really good... you should read it. I especially loved the fact that I could relate to the classroom references she made... like poor Venable Hall and how her exams are "insane". At the end we filed out up the stairs and I jumped over into the line beside me so that I could walk up to my mom and grandmother.



The past couple of days have been restful, but now the real fun is beginning… Tonight my aunt is going to meet me at work and take me to dinner. The Tobacco District is so cute right now with all the Christmas lights! I’m anxious to walk through. Then tomorrow I’m taking my grandmother and mom to see Jim Brickman at the new Durham Performing Arts Center. It’s a holiday music special and my joy is going to come from how happy this is going to make my grandmother.

More to come later..

I know I've been MIA but that's because SOOOO much has been going on. BUT, I'd like to point out that yesterday, on the second anniversary of this blog, and quite possibly one of the most wonderful days ever, I graduated from UNC!!!

...Yummmm.. water from the Old Well!

Such a tragedy

My beloved camera has decided to kill itself. The screen is just black. It’s not black like its dead; it’s black like I’m in a pitch-black, dark room. Like it WANTS to show an image, but it can’t because it’s too dark. Then when I take a picture, all it shows is that black darkness. I tried re-setting it, talking to it, reasoning with it, beating it (kidding). I loved this camera so much for so long and then I finally received it as a gift… seriously, like A FULL YEAR after we first met in Best Buy.



I really love my electronics too! Especially this camera! I think I love it more than I love my iPhone because I invested so much time in wanting it. The iPhone.. I was just like “I think I need that” and then the next day I got it. But this camera… that was some serious time spent lusting! To me, digital cameras are like underwear. You always have to have your own. I am going to take her to a couple of camera stores and see if they know something about it that I don’t. My friend also has a Sony Cybershot and his did the exact same thing. It would cost $141 plus shipping charges to have her fixed by Sony. I could just put that towards a new camera!

Scrambled Pancake

This morning when I woke up it was all cold and rainy outside so I decided I was going to make a pancake with the spoonful of mix that we have left and then watch Face the Nation and stare at the Christmas tree and this is what happened...

A+ for effort

In my plant class everyone has to do a project that is 20% of our grade. Mine is on the species Paulownia tomentosa, also known as The Princess Tree. We are graded on content and creativity and I have been very obsessed with wanting my introductory slide to have the tree with a tiara. This is what I came up with:

Life is just one big adventure, so have fun with it!

That’s what my horoscope says today. I don’t know how I feel about horoscopes, like if I believe them or not, but it’s still fun to read when I get bored at work. And I found this one particularly ironic, as I applied for a great big adventure today. It’s an internship in Uganda that I probably won’t get. (I have to say things like that so that I don’t have my heart broken when things don’t work out). But I have an interview for it Friday morning at 9:00am and I am so, so nervous because I want to do this so, so bad!

Last night was a really big night for Democrats in NC. When I woke up this morning, NC still hadn’t reported whether or not Obama or McCain took the state, but I guess it doesn’t really matter now. But we did elect our first female governor, Bev Perdue. And I saw this donkey on 15-501 yesterday...

Halloween

I went to Greenville for Halloween with plans of being a teacher. I didn't really feel like putting forth much effort, and it was kind of last minute, so being a teacher sounded good to me. But I ended up looking like Sarah Palin so I just went with that instead. I was a very classy, nice Sarah Palin but if I would have thought about it more beforehand I would have made her not so decent.



I worked hard to dress Jamie as a Guitar Hero character and we did a really good job! She was hot!



We just hung out for a little while before TRYING to go downtown to look at costumes but it was way too crowded and we turned around. I feel like I'm too old to be dealing with all of the naked drunkenness. There were some elaborate legos that I appreciated and a troll. My camera crapped out so this is all I have.



And I found a fellow Palin. She had a baby which I thought was a great idea. I should have done that!

Mmmmmball

Yesterday I went with my family to a Pumpkin Patch in Youngsville.

Kelsey was so cute because she thinks that everything that is round is an "mmmmball" and everything that has fur is a puppy. But I wanted her to be like a precious little pumpkin princess (or whatever the equivalent is of very adorable little girls who cooperate and sit still amidst pumpkins) so I could take some cute pictures but she was this hat-hair, pumpkin-tossin’ mess…



My mom quickly reminded me that when I was a kid I threw up on people I didn’t like so I needed to lay off. But I didn’t stop trying…





Tomorrow we are going to the fair and I think I will wear my Barack n’ Roll t-shirt. I wish I were going to the James Taylor for Change (& Obama) concert on campus tonight but I’m not. So sad.

ten/three

Last night I went to see Nights in Rodanthe and I really loved it. But I felt so soo bad for every man or manly girl there because I know they probably wanted to stab their eyeballs.

So before the movie started I had about 15 minutes to do nothing so I decided to go to Urban Outfitters. I bought this Barack Obama tshirt.



The tshirt says “Barack and Roll.” And I cut those bangs myself this morning. I think I did a good job but they are a little long. I’m scared to cut them any shorter because I don’t want to make any regretful snips. Maybe I’ll work on them more later.

But I did see this cute Hello Kitty toaster that I think Julie and Shafaq would appreciate.

First day of Fall :-)

Saturday morning I woke up early and found pictures of plants online for THREE HOURS. I make flash cards of the plants that are on my recognition lists each week.

Then I went to a little family gathering for my grandmother’s 80th birthday.







Kelsey is starting to talk more. Last week I taught her how to say Obama. She likes to say “ducky, doggie, puppy…” and then if you throw a new word in at the end she’ll say it.

Hmmmm

Today’s flora lab was better and more interesting. There were a lot of pretty flowers to look at but the plants are never as interesting as my classmates. Last week someone collected a batch of pokeberries and went home and painted a picture of pokeberries with the ink from the berries.

See... pretty.

A leaf is a leaf is a leaf

I have a lab in which we hike for three hours through the woods looking at leaves. Then we spend the next week memorizing the plants for a quiz. Then we do it all over again.



I took some pictures of some of the plants with my iPhone. It’s really hard memorizing the leave structures and the venation. We have approximately 35 plants on each quiz. The TAs go through the woods and pick the plants for our quiz, then we walk around and write the Latin name of the plant, family, and the common name. It’s difficult because you start to memorize the picture, and then when you see the plant on the quiz you’re like “okay, what the hell is this……” But photos like this will help..

Kal Penn

How did I miss this? I love that little Indian dude and I would have been so excited to hear about his love for Obama. I wasn't doing anything better on Sunday, either.

Yummy goodness

Look at this plate of sushi. It was so beautiful and delicious and the most amazing edible birthday present ever! I love pretty things that you can eat. I didn’t mess with that Wasabi roll because wasabi makes my eyeballs burn, but the other stuff was so good.

Note to self:

Never travel with small children ever again.

They scream too much. They're cute when they are quiet but they're only quiet about 20% of the time.

But the beach was fun. I would have liked to stay a couple more days by myself. I spent the evenings sitting on the beach alone messing around on my phone. I really liked that alone time. During the days I didn't do anything of real substance besides one small fishing trip in the ocean on a boat.


This is Kelsey being super cute


And this is the tangled mess I created when fishing. I don't know how but my line got tangled with two other people's and they had to work to get it undone while the poor fish just chilled there.


My brother caught these two fish at the same time. The top one is a black sea bass that was too small to keep and the bottom thing is a sea toad.


That sea toad creature was ridiculous looking.


I caught this black sea bass that was deemed a "keeper". The mate on the boat talked shit to me for not knowing how to hold a fish and I almost threw him overboard because this was a new experience for me and I have never caught or held a slimy fish before (except for the one I dissected in biology lab) so he just needed to shut up and leave me alone.


Dolphins..


I took this picture of a pretty sunset with my iPhone.

At the beach..

I am sitting in the hotel lobby with a bunch of work-a-holics sucking up the internet. I look like I'm doing important things but I'm definitely not.. BUT I can drink coffee with the best of 'em. I know that I am electronically dependent. I have everything that I need for survival. 1.) Laptop. 2.) Blistex. The original plan was just to check my email but then I read Julie’s blog and got caught up uploading this so that I can listen to it when I get deathly bored tonight. I think it is a Professor’s last lecture about following your childhood dreams and living your life optimistically and I know that I will love this so much and probably cry like a big ole’ baby just like she did. That will be the second time this week I have cried like that and I am embarrassed to admit that but sometimes life’s situations are owed that type of emotional release. I’m totally okay with that.

Sooo.. yesterday I fell in love with my iPhone. Deep, ultimate, desperate, unconditional, cannot live without you, fuck up my entire life, never leave me, forever and ever LOVE. This happened when I was sitting on the beach and I received an email and I was able to respond RIGHT THERE. And even take a picture and send it. Then I was informed of the quality. If my phone and I were a Disney movie that would have been the moment where it put the glass slipper on my little foot. It was beautiful. Then my brother threw sand at me and I hid the phone in the cushiony, safe part of my bag and left it with my mom to stand guard over. It’s that special.

I took these pictures with it..


This is me on the pier


And my brother and Kelsey.


And Kelsey eating sand because we don't feed her. Kidding.

Laaaaazy

Everyone keeps encouraging me to be a lazy bum now that summer school is out and I have stopped resisting and embraced the laziness. Thursday was a brutal exam day and that deserved celebration so Friday night I had a sushi feast at Mt. Fuji. Mt. Fuji is my favorite sushi restaurant and this is the first time I went when it wasn’t half price so I didn’t have to wait forever. I am getting really good with chop sticks, but I give up on the slippery pieces and just use my fingers. It was so beautiful I didn't want to eat it.. but that only lasted about 5 seconds.

Then Saturday was uneventful but Sunday completely made up for it. I have been working all week trying to get my hands on an iphone. It was necessary for me to obtain this phone before going to the beach with my family. I was starting to get very worried about the possibility of spending days with them without any form of auditory escape. I’m not a proud AT&T customer but since that’s the only way I could have the iphone, I’m sticking with them. My relationship with them is like an unhappy marriage with 3 kids in middle school. I complain about them a lot, but I’m not leaving. And the Customer Services Reps in the stores talked so much shit to me over the past couple of days. They told me I wouldn’t find the phone any where and that just made me crazier about getting one. So here is what I have to say to them..



We waited in line for only an hour and a half, and when we left the apple store there was about 100 people waiting outside. I was probably 10th in line so I'm glad we got there early.

Then Jamie and I went to the pool but it was cloudy and cold..



And we're still dorks and hold our noses when jumping in.

It's been a while..

Going to summer school is like drinking water from a fire hose. I hope I never ever ever have to do this EVER again. That’s why I haven’t updated in a while. That and there’s not much exciting going on.

So it’s July 5th which means that yesterday was July 4th, which made me remember the best July 4th ever on a sailboat in Coronado Bay. I was probably 16 and the fireworks over the bay were so pretty. Six years later July 4th was spent eating Chinese food and trying to watch Pulp Fiction (for my Film class) while listening to huge thunderstorms outside. So today a lot of people are without power, including my workplace, so they sent us home. Now I’m STILL trying to watch Pulp Fiction but I don’t like it.

So since there’s not much going on, here’s some random pictures I took this weekend..

On a walk through downtown Thursday night..















And at the pool yesterday with my neice..





And then I found this brave, lifeless mouse in the filter so I was ready to go..