Oh Christmas Trees

This post is going to have a ton of pictures. You have been warned! First, I thought you all ought to see proof that I do indeed know how to make delicious food. Thanksgiving was quite the success.

My roommates and I went into hibernation mode afterwards. When we did emerge, a few days later, we took a leisurely stroll through Central Park. And guess what? We saw a wedding proposal! No pictures of that, I'm afraid, but if she hadn't said yes, I just might have. It was that good!

Did you know that the Strawberry Fields from the Beatles song actually exist? They do indeed. In Central Park. Right across from John Lennon's old house. There's also this cool little tribute to him right in front of the fields.

And what Christmas season is complete without some Handel's Messiah thrown in there? This picture doesn't really do it justice, but the Lincoln Center is pretty amazing on the inside. I think it was only ten bucks, which is a great deal!

And here we have the Lincoln Center Christmas tree lighting. They have so many of these! I know, the picture is a bit fuzzy. We were pretty far away, and the tree wasn't as big as we hoped it would be. The evening became much more exciting when a random drunk man just plopped on the ground right next to my roommate. He looked happy to stay flat on his back in the rain, but then he got up and started spinning--he made fast friends with a nearby police officer.

 On Tuesday, we went to another tree lighting at Bryant Park. And Ingrid Michaelson (one of my favorite artists ever) sang! Yeah, I was only close enough to take a picture of the huge screen with her on it, but it was so good! Funnily enough, there was an olympic gold medalist there too, skating on the ice, but I can't remember his name.

And just look at that tree!

I went to an awesome burger joint called "The Burger Joint" (very creative) located in Le Parker Meridien Hotel. I not only got a great burger but also a message from the future.

And I had to leave my own mark as well.

And last of all, window shopping. Here we have Tiffany's all bedecked in holiday splendor.

And then Bergdorf Goodman paying tribute to literature.

And not to be forgotten, casualties of the wind and weather. Rest in peace, little umbrella.

Also, as a side note, I'll be doing two more blog posts on here. Stay tuned for more!

Catching up!

In the few minutes before the National Book Awards Ceremony starts, I thought I would go ahead and make a little post on here since it's been quite a while. What have I been up to? Oh, all kinds of things like squeezing into subway cars, dodging small mountains of trash, and (of course) attending literary events!

This was from a while ago, but Gillian Anderson had her book release! Yes, that's right, she co-wrote a book. And get this, it's science fiction! Though she did say that they made a point of not making it Scully-esque.

Here's my semi-fuzzy picture from the event. I haven't read her book yet. It's called A Vision of Fire, and it's definitely on my list of things I need to do.

Flash forward to today: Shabam! And what an epic day it was! It's not every day that you see famous people, but it happens every once in a while. Today, the National Book Foundation had a morning event, a sort of precursor to the National Book Awards tonight. Neil Gaiman and Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicker came to Washington Square Park and gave out free books this morning! I got a hug from Neil who went down the line of people, hugging all of us. And then Daniel hugged Neil, so it's kind of like I was hugged by association.

Here are some of the pictures of the event. It was freezing outside! But so worth it to see these literary giants! They ran out of their own books, but I didn't care. How many times do you get to meet either of these two, let alone at the same time! If you haven't read their stuff, do yourself a favor and check it out.

Also, I've been participating in National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo as it's called. It happened every November, and the goal is to write a book of 50,000 words in 30 days. I'm doing well so far and into the 40,000's now, the farthest I've ever gotten in NaNoWriMo!

In order to keep this post brief, I'll just add one last detail. Though it may surprise many of you, I'm heading back to Boise. Double-take! What? Yup! I'll be leaving sometime in the middle of December and then working on what I want to do next. NYC is a great city, and I'll keep posting while I'm here. More updates will follow!

Whirlwind Weekend

Guess who came to my neck of the woods this week? Ta-da!

My parents!!! Here they are taking a little break in Central Park. We did a lot of exploring together, as NYC newbies must do. Here's a little recap of what we did:

Rowing a boat in Central Park: Very, very nice

My dad did all of the rowing, so here's his workout picture:

We just couldn't get enough of Central Park!

The Guggenhiem: We liked it, and we didn't like it.

Maybe if more of the museum had been open, we would have liked it better. The modern art section was interesting, but there was one floor with Picasso, Van Gogh, Monet, and Manet. Those were very, very nice. It was a good place to stay dry from the rain too.

Other activités that we did: eating!! Oh yes, we had some good food. We had great Italian at the Isola on Columbus (I got to speak with the owner in Italian!). There are some great croissants at La Toulousaine. And of course, we had to get some pizza.

The . . . not so good food that we encountered. This one was my idea: Ice-cream filled doughnuts.

It sounds great, right? I mean, how could you go wrong with ice cream and doughnuts? It's possible. It was good for like one bite, and then it was all just too sweet. Plus, my ice-cream was falling out of the other end :( sad. My dad enjoyed their advertisements though. They were trying to make doughnuts seem healthy. Come on, it's a doughnut.

Also, we went to this other restaurant that seemed like it would be nice and charming, called Elizabeth's (I think). It could be that we just ordered the wrong food. You never know. Appearances can be so deceiving!

Broadway plays: Awesome!

Wicked and Phantom of the Opera. I would go again this weekend if I had that kind of money! I didn't take a picture inside the theater where we saw Wicked, but here's the Phantom of the Opera.

I know these are the shows that everybody sees when they want to see Broadway, but they're so good! It's totally worth it!

Then there was Governor's Island. I've already talked about it in another blog post, but it was nice as well. Here are some of our pictures:

And last of all, the 9/11 Memorial, which was also very nice. The sky that evening was just fantastic.

It was indeed a whirlwind weekend, and it was fun. Hopefully we'll get to do it again the next time they visit!

Don't you love New York in the fall?

I finally get to say it: "Don't you love New York in the fall?" Name that movie--go!

I stepped onto the metro yesterday, and bam! It was like fall fashion hit overnight. Apparently everybody's got the same schedule but me . . . still, I have been just waiting to say that phrase ever since I decided to move here. I've been thinking of bouquets of sharpened pencils all week. Might have to get me one of those.

Today marks the end of my Barnes & Noble era. It lasted just a little over a month. It was a good place to work. I laughed a lot with my co-workers, but then I also got annoyed at a lot of people. You've got to have both, I guess. And by the way, everyone who is not nice to the hard-working people in cafe-like jobs will get lumps of coal at Christmas. Just saying.

On to more adventures! This picture was taken at Eataly, where yes, they do indeed have shelves upon shelves of cheese (the good stuff). It was a little like stepping back into Italy. They had all of these Italian brands, and of course it was all really expensive. So I just got a bit of gelato. Loved their pistachio!

Now you're looking at the next picture thinking, what the heck is that?

Okay, the picture's not that great, but it's a restaurant under construction on Broadway. Guess what restaurant??? Fratelli la Bufala!!!! Legit Italian pizza! Beautiful. I will cry if they ruin it.

Also, a girl that I know swears that this is a transformer.

Do you see it? Kind of? Maybe? I guess if a transformer were to live anywhere, it would be here in NYC.

And last of all, I went to the 9/11 Memorial on Monday. If you're coming to NYC, you should see this!

Here a just a couple of pictures that I took. The water seems to fall forever. And right in the middle is that black hole, that square. The water pours into that, and you can't see the bottom. In the lower pictures, you can kind of see a few names carved into the stone where the light shines out. Since tomorrow is the 9/11 anniversary, I thought it was fitting. It's a beautiful monument as well, day or night. The museum is nearby too, if you're ever in the area.

Roaches and Raccoons

I moved yesterday! Labor Day was indeed a day of labor as I made sure everything was packed up in the morning. I was able to move and then make it to work at 10:45. Who makes their employees work on Labor Day??? Mine, I guess. Oh! I have some other great news: I got a new job!!!!! I haven't started it yet, but I'll start in the middle of September. I'll still have the internship at the literary agency, which is good. I'm excited!!

Anyway, this was me saying goodbye to Fort Tryon park right across the street from me.

I played one last song on the guitar and then locked the door behind me. On to the next! My new place in the Upper West Side. I like it, but it's like a different city. Everybody's speaking English, and I'm not the only white girl around. There is a huge Dominican community where I lived before. But there's a pizzeria on the corner that I can't wait to try out, and there seem to be a lot of good places to eat. My kind of place :)

I've already checked out the library, and I like it a lot. Interestingly enough, it's in the same building as the Mental Health Department. It's probably kind of a pit stop. If you know you're going in there, might as well pick up some books first, right? That's totally what I would do.

As it turns out, NYC is just teeming with wildlife, aside from us humans that is. Some of us are pretty wild too. I have not seen a skunk today, which is good. I think whole skunk families live in Fort Tryon Park. In the past two months I have seen many more skunks than is comfortable. Even one skunk is a little too much. But, now that I've moved, it's roaches! Not in my apartment, thankfully, but I've seen some big ones on the street today. Also, I saw a raccoon in Central Park. I went walking around the north side of the park and ate half of my sandwich. The raccoon came right up next to the fence and almost climbed over, then he just turned around and left. I was within two feet of him though. Maybe he likes mozzarella too.

I wanted to get a cool picture of Central Park in the evening, but it's kind of hard to see. This spot is called "The Pool." You can see the reflection of the lights in the water. Sorry, I didn't manage to catch the raccoon in a picture. He was gone before I could do it.

Oh, on a different note, I wanted to mention that Ingrid Michaelson's mother died this past week. I normally don't keep up on musicians or famous people at all for that matter (don't want to be a creep!) but since I've been mildly obsessed with all of her music for the past six years or so, I thought she and her mother deserved some space in here. Her song, "Far Away" is one of the first that I learned on the guitar, and that summer I think all I played was Ingrid Michaelson. If any of you want to learn more about her mother, here's a link that she posted. http://www.statenislandmuseum.org/about/elizabeth-egbert/

Here's to you, Ingrid, and your mother. This song is one of my favorites.

Taxis and Toilet Paper Rolls

I'm overdue for a post! I would have done one sooner, but I got a little bit sick this past week. It wasn't anything too bad, though I might have made a miniature leaning tower of Pisa out of used kleenex. But I think somebody must have heard about it because guess what I saw on my way to work today? This beauty!

Take a good look! I didn't have much time, or else I would have gone for a closer look. That is the Empire State Building made out of the cardboard tubes from toilet paper and paper towel rolls. It was fun to see, but I'm glad it wasn't my job to put it up.

Well, I had my first taxi ride last week. My roommate got to do a stand up comedy performance, so I went to that. She did a really good job! And then after we went out for a bite to eat to celebrate, it was about, oh, 2:30 AM. I haven't seen too much of the NYC night life because I really love sleeping when it's dark, but it was kind of fun to see how much happens in the city at night. The only thing is that the subway moves waaaay slower than normal. I was right outside of Central Park, waiting for the train to come that was going to crawl towards the north side of Manhattan and get me home in maybe an hour, maybe longer. I figured that maybe it was the best time to hail a cab. So I did! I was home in about 20 minutes, and I really enjoyed traveling above the ground and getting to see all of the lights. Taxis are pretty nice at night.

Oh, and this is a picture of me working at the literary agency! I've been going through all of the books in the office and making an inventory. All of those books on the table with me are ARC's, which stands for Advance Reader Copy. It's like printing off some of the books before they're entirely ready so that people can get a taste of what it'll be like when it's printed. Of course, you have to figure out what to do with the ARC's after the book is printed. Still, this is a much better problem to have than not having any ARC's because your books aren't being printed. No complaints from me!

That's life so far! Signing out on the east coast, goodnight!

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Libraries are for Lovers

I got a library card this week!

Borrowing books from the library saves me space and money (both of which are very important to save in NYC). And, of course, I immediately put eighteen books on hold. I thought about going to some random events around here, like this Potter Con that I heard about, but when I saw my big stack of books, I just wanted to find a comfortable spot to read.

It really is amazing just how much I can read now that I'm not in school! Just to give you an idea--in the past month-ish, I've read the following books:

 

 

 

 

These are all of my pictures that I'll be putting up for this week. I'll try to take some more while I'm out and about. But going to and from work, I tend to be in the metro for an hour or two each day. It gives me some time to read before work. Seriously though, reading all of these books during school would have taken me forever. And this doesn't count the couple of manuscripts that I've read for my internship. It's a good thing that I like books.

I guess this makes for kind of a short post this week. I have Wednesday off of work, so maybe I'll get to do something else then. Stay tuned :)