man-cakes

tonight we (todd(my father in law), Cory, and Myself) were watching the food channel which had throw down with bobby flay on. they were making blueberry pancakes. and that sounded good.. we couldn't make our own pancakes considering the paces are remodeling their kitchen and do not have one at the moment. so we went to the valley hotel aka the v-ho for some pancakes at roughly 9 o'clock tonight. upon ordering our pancakes cory thought it necessary to ask the server, a young woman, how big the pancakes are. she told him that they were pretty normal size, but size varies by cook and the morning cooks made bigger ones. then cory asked if he could have big pancakes.. like man sized pancakes.. you see, he was pretty hungry. the server was a pretty sweet girl and said she would ask for some BIG ol' pancakes... and this is what came from the kitchen minutes later...

do notice that the pancake cory is eating is only about half the original size, there are two, the second one is behind his head..and roughly the size of his head. we dubbed these man-cakes, as you can see, no regular boy could consume this monstrous meal.

our coy little waitress came back to check on our progress and cory told her that these were definately man size pancakes (and it was obvious that he would not be finishing them anytime tonight) and in her innocent little voice she said 'are you going to man up?' she was so cute! ha, she made my night, deflated cory's ego, and made the dog happy all in one dish.

i'm alive!

I am not dead like MJ. Just working like a maniac! this is one of the only days off I've had in weeks. I was so exhausted that I took a nap yesterday for 6 hours, got up at 8, ate some dinner, went to the lake for about an hour, got on facebook, and then I hit the sack around 1am and got up today at 9.. I feel like a new woman! It's time to go do something fun.. only problem.. cory stayed up way late last night, probably around 5 playing video games= I'll be by myself on this computer till about noon or 1 before he gets up to go play.. maybe I'll take Zoomie for a walk.

An update on what cory and I are actually doing up here in AK. We are tour directors. We get folks off of Royal Carribean and Celebrity cruise ships and take them up through the interior of AK. We either go by coach or by train depending on what tour pattern we are on. We have groups up of up to 54 poeple.. which is HUGE. I prefer when we get a smaller group around 35 or 40. We make good money, but it is the most tiring job I've ever had.

On my three little days off I plan on sleeping a lot, painting my toe nails, plucking my eyebows, restocking on my toiletries which seem to be ever deminishing. Fishing, camping, hiking, canoing, and I really want to go shopping, I was having dreams about these shoes last night and now I need to design them and sell them and become rich. I really wish it wasn't a dream, I WANT those shoes.

Anyway, sorry I have no pics for this blog. Maybe I'll also post some pics of Costa Rica on my days off.. that was so long ago!

i've just discovered my third eye

i went to my very first yoga class today. it was pretty fun, the instructor was very in touch with her spiritual side. it was kinda funny, we had to picture someone we loved and focus on them and send them good vibes, and then dedicated our practice to the earth. then when we actually started doing the poses it was intense! its called 'power yoga' for a reason! i don't have a lot of muscle strength apparently, it was good though, it felt good to stretch and relax a little. at the end of the hard stuff we did cool down kind of poses and we focused our energy on our third eye. and all this time i thought i only had two. i'm not sure how having three would benefit you at all, unless it could look in a different direction of your original two. i'll look into it. anyway i'm going again tomorrow, as silly as some of it was, i really liked doing the actual poses. and happy earth day!

do you tweet or twitter?

i've been hearing a lot about twitter lately.. i had no idea what it was and so i looked it up. my basic understanding of it is that you just write what you are doing.. at random.. and people follow it, and they're short entries.. and kinda funny. i went through a couple of twitter pages, and its interesting the things people say. i think i might start twittering. not that i really need another internet craze fix right now. i was watching TMZ and they said that if you write something on twitter its called a tweet, but i'm not really sure the correct way to use either twitter or tweet.. anyone know? anything more i should know about twitter before i tweet?

take me out to the ball game!

Yesterday Cory and I went and saw our first Yankee ball game! And it was in their brand new Yankee Stadium, which was very nice! They lost horribly, 4-24, and in the second inning the Indians scored 14 runs... terrible! Most of the crowd left before the 5th inning was over because things were going so bad, but considering it was our first ball game and we were having so much fun just being there that we decided to stay and watch the whole game play out.. it was a pretty fab day.We took SO many pictures! It was sunny and beautiful, almost 80 degrees! Cory and i both got a little sunburned.. a good start for the tan i'm planning on getting in costa rica baby!

play time!!

Cory has been getting home SO early!! On Friday he got home at 2:30!!! PM!!! So we went to Brooklyn and had some pretty gosh darn good pizza and took a walk over the Brooklyn bridge. Here are some pictures of our day...The only bummer thing about going places with just the two of us is that we have to ask someone we don't know to take a picture of us together, and not everyone is a photographer.. (not that I am but..) they kinda missed the top of the bridge, and they caught a guy in a yellow jacket right behind cory. it's better than no picture at all though!

running out of time!

we only have two weeks left in new york!! i'm so excited and kind of sad too! all of a sudden i feel like i need to go everywhere and find more things to experience and take pictures of. today i started my quest to knock off the last couple of items on my list of things to do/see in new york, it was cut short on account that it started raining but here is my day in pictures..
macy's is having a spring flower celebration and the whole bottom floor is covered in beautiful flower arangements.i walked so far to find this building! i don't even know what it's called, i've just seen in before and wanted to see it, and i knew it was on broadway, and it was below times square (because i saw it from the empire state building), so i walked down broadway until i found it. it felt like it took forever, but on the way back i realized it wasn't that far, i think i thought it was really far because i didn't know where i was going. isn't that weird how that works?i'm not really sure what is wrong with people in this city, but there is certainly something wrong. who does this? i laughed out loud when i saw this, it is so wrong on so many levels, i think its just animals, as if that excuses anything.. i don't even know!I thought this was really pretty, i don't know what they're for, it was outside of a church. And i didn't want to end my blog with that last picture!

I slept till 2pm today

"I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?"
-Ernest Hemingway

a walk in the park

In between conference sessions today cory and i went to central park and had a picnic. It was such a beautiful day!
I know, matching your spouse is gross, but we are in New York, and we decided to represent.
I thought this was pretty cool. That's the first real person statue i've ever seen! there were SO many people in the park! It was such a beautiful day and it was really fun. I'm posting more pic on facebook!

an adventure day with my cory!

Cory didn't have to work today! That hasn't happened since we've been in New York! So we celebrated by going to the Empire State Building! Let me just say, LOVE love loved it! Here are some pics of our day...

Before you get the view, they squish you. We could not move we were all packed into the elevator so tight!!
It was a little bit windy on the North side, before we left they had to close it. And this is me being a creeper. That is Steve Wazniak.. one of the Apple cofounders, he got voted off of Dancing with the Stars last week, and we happened to bump into him.. and then we ended up in the same elevator leaving the Empire state, and he and his wife stopped for a beef frank once out on the street.. and I'm pretty sure he was just trying to get us to stop following him, which we really weren't following him, we were just going the same way.. I swear its true.
And to end the day we had lunch/dinner at A Salt and Battery fish and chips place in Greenwich Village. Totally British, owned and operated. It was pretty fabulous. Bobby Flay challenged them to a Throwdown, and lost, it's not hard to see why!
Yes Cory, it was a good day!

Don't you just love New York in the spring?

Today was SO beautiful!! It was WARM outside, I didn't even need a jacket!! Yay for spring! I went for a walk to take some spring pictures and do some spring shopping. Here are some of my reasons for loving spring in New York...
1) When it gets warm most of the little restaurants around the city literally open up the front of their store. The giant windows push to the side leaving the store completely open to the warm air. P.s. that says "thai french".. ?
2)Psychic Reena can now do her palm readings outside!
3) Even though most of New York is cement there are quite a beautiful flowers in bloom!

4) More street performers are out making every day and even different streets unique, these guys in this picture were way rad. The sound was sweet! I should have bought a CD, hopefully they'll be performing again soon.. and somewhere where I can bump into them again!


5)New York is probably just the most diverse place I've ever been, and when the seasons change, so does the city. So far I'm a total fair weather fan of New York and I'm excited to get out more in the beautiful SUNSHINE!!

Hopeful

I have been stressing over school and whether or not I'll graduate for a year now. I just went over the courses I have taken, tallied the numbers and it is a possibility for me to graduate next April!! It makes me want to quote that arthritis commercial, the one where they show someone tying their shoes and ask 'can you do this' .. buttoning a shirt.. 'or this?' .. graduate from college?? "OH YES I CAN!!" Both semesters are going to be PACKED like 20 credits-ish AND an internship with who knows where, but I CAN do it and I WILL do it. I feel like I'm starting fresh at school, we've had such a long break. I feel like its a new day and that I can do this. I want to do it. It's like when you wake up really early on Saturday morning and it's quiet and peaceful outside, the sun just coming up and making the horizon turn a strange yellow that fades into a blue, just before it bursts into brilliance. you have so much you want to accomplish and you just know it's going to be a perfect day.. and it will be. I'm so full of hope!

i don't love it

Everyone has straight across bangs right now, and I've been noticing it a lot more since moving to New York. I think it is an adorable style. Kristal had them for a while and she totally rocked them. I thought that I couldn't pull them off because I have pretty long hair and I mostly saw them on people with shortish hair. The other night on TV one of the judges from dancing with the stars had them, AND had long hair. I decided to try them and after chopping away at my hair this was the result... I don't love it, and I'm starting the grow out stages as I type this. Darn it for all those cute girls who can get away with it! I look like I'm 12!






And I get to wear my hair like an athletic chick who feels she needs to wear her hair as if she is at an athletic even.. ALL the time. GREAT!
So it's not that bad, but I did wear a head band two days in a row, but the serious problem here.. I need a tan! Look at that pasty face!

pinkberry for me, pinkbeeeeerry!

On my way home from returning our videos I decided it was warm enough for ice cream! So I stopped at Pinkberry where I have just wet my appetite for an addiction to this wonderful frozen yogurt. The original flavor is just yogurt flavor, sounds kinda gross, but OH MY, it sure is delish. They have a new pomegranate flavor and that was pretty fabulous too, so I got the original and the pomegranate swirled together with some fresh and ever so tasty raspberries. It wasn't super sweet, but certainly didn't leave you wishing for more sugar, and because it is a frozen yogurt and not cream it isn't heavy and doesn't leave a milky sludge in your throat. IN-credible. Edible. and DE-lectable. Oh and there is a downside to this wonderful treat.. it was $5.50 for the small, which was about, well, small. Not more than 8 or 10 oz. But it is SO worth it! They call the swirl at the top 'pouty' and I don't really get what is pouty about it, but its cute to say!

Just another Star Studded Sunday

After church today we had to have our continuing endorsements signed by the Bishop. And while we were waiting we happened to see John Heder himself attending sacrament meeting in a later ward! We kept peeking to see if it was really him and he noticed us looking at him.. I hope he's used to it because I felt kinda bad after we got caught, how annoying are we?? But pretty cool. Among the other stars we have mingled with at church is the CFO of Citibank, Gary Crittenden, I honestly had no idea who he was, but Cory did and was all excited. But overall church seems to be the same in New York except for our mormon celebs that we have been lucky enough to share the sacrament tray with!

subways aren't really fresh in any sense of the word

Yay! I am so excited for the first time since I've lived in NY for a total of 2 1/2 months now I finally took the subway!! I was so excited I was giddy by the time we got down the stairs. We took the A train to W4th ave and then the F train to Lafeyette, from there we walked two blocks south and took a left turn onto Spring street where we had dessert at 'Rice to Riches' where you can get rice pudding prepared with a variety of toppings. AND it was in the movie Hitch. And sadly because subways aren't the safest way to travel I could not take the camera.. but here is their website.. just in case you would like to look at it.. and it was pretty good! My favorite part was the plastic stick looking things that you ate the pudding with. I should have kept it. We realized that we were in Soho, the gay community, which turned out to be pretty cool and artsy, way cool shops and independent clothing designers.. wish i had my camera, this only means one thing.. I will be taking the A train and then the F train again to this little adventuresome neighborhood.

I found this door when I was on a walk one day.. I really liked it, so I took a picture. That is one of my favorite parts of New York, the simple pleasures I find just by going outside.

sunshine here I come!

Last night I bought tickets to Costa Rica and I am SO stoked!! I've seen pictures, and have a pretty good idea of what the country looks like. The main things I want to see/do when we're there is
1 climb a volcano 2 go on a jungle hike 3 see a toucan 4 see a monkey 5 see their desert 6 take surfing lessons 7 go snorkeling 8 sleep in a hammock outside 9 lay all day on the beach with a good book 10 listen to bob marley and caribbean influence music all day every day 11 wake up before dawn and watch the sunrise on the most beautiful beaches ever 12 be a hippy 13 not care 14 ride a zip line through the jungle 15 white water rafting... i'm sure there are more things that we will do once we get there, but this is a pretty good list to start with! And until then I'll be scouring the internet for more ideas and imagining myself on beautiful beaches with my cute husband!
If any of you guys have any suggestions for things we should do let me know!!

RAAAAaaaaarrrr... more tinfoil

So Matt brought to my attention that while it is a pretty cool thing to know about the locks on the tinfoil box, there seems to be some amazing facts that the forward failed to mention.. so here is my brainstorm of other really cool uses for tinfoil that the forward could have mentioned to make it a little bit more interesting..


like a giant lawn decor dinosaur that is sure to make you look even more white trash, or if you have a filling and bite tin foil it hurts really bad, or if you put it in the microwave it starts a fire, or if you put it on your head during an alien attack the aliens can't read your mind, or if you line your bathtub with it it's really uncomfortable to stand/sit/lay on naked in water,(and probably so even if you were standing/sitting/laying on it naked out of water) or if you cram a bunch into a container of hydrochloric acid and cap it, it makes pretty sweet bomb, some countries worship tinfoil, and i read somewhere that in Novogadratica they are going to build a tinfoil temple to the tinfoil gods, which is pretty weird because i'm pretty sure NASA invented it.. or did they? I also watched an episode of Maury Povich where a woman had a phobia of tinfoil, and in case you may be suffering from the same phobia here is a website that I found helpful .. so its not really that exciting, but it is tin foil, i mean how exciting can it really be? hey maybe if your japanese mud art project doesn't work out you could cover THEM with tin foil and then they would shine forever!
if you happen to know of any other life altering uses for tinfoil please let me know!
p.s. this was not intended to sound sarcastic even though it does, I'm just really bored, and sadly as hard as I tried, these were the best ideas I could come up with.

22 years of foil and still learning new things

I've never been a huge fan of forwards, but my mom sent one to me that has changed my life forever. Tin foil boxes have a lock on the ends of the box!
Now when I'm getting tin foil out of the box the whole roll won't come out, which has become a part of life that I had learned to live with! And that is not my man hand poking in the lock, i stole it from the forward. Did you know about this?

just for laughs

I was just on Youtube watching videos of Demetri Martin. I'd have to say he's my favorite comedian because he is smart funny. The dude is a genius. I do not like Dane Cook, and I have given him many a chance. Crawling around on stage and making weird noises and faces isn't very funny to me. And his jokes have the f word in them too much, and they aren't very funny.. not my style. Anyway if I knew how to put a link in the text I'd put it here so you could watch Demetri, but don't click there because it's not a link.

say it loud, say it proud!

I feel that being in New York has helped me become more assertive. I am a pretty shy person around people I don't know and tend to be pretty soft spoken. If someone is doing something that I don't like or is bothering me, I'm more likely to try to ignore them instead of saying anything. Pretty non-confrontational. Well today I spoke up for myself and made myself heard. Here is my story...
Every day at about 4:00 pm to 5:00 pm the traffic on my street gets really busy. This is a residential street and it is illegal to honk on it (and New Yorkers are pretty fond of honking). As traffic backed up one of the motorists was honking relentlessly and it was really starting to get annoying. Like honking is going to make the traffic jam go away! Without thinking I stood up walked over to the window and identified the perpetrator as a middle aged, well dressed man driving a silver Mercedes Benz who was standing outside his car, door open, laying on the horn. I ripped open the window and before I realized what I was doing I was yelling! "HEY!" he didn't turn, but surly he heard me, it was a loud yell, "HEY!" ok I know he heard me that time people inside their cars were looking at me. "STOP HONKING!!!!" Although he refused to look at me, I know he heard me because he shook his head in disbelief and didn't honk again. VICTORY!!! I stood their and watched until finally traffic started moving again. I realized I missed my opportunity to get photo evidence of this honking whore, but I still snapped a picture of the traffic for kicks. For those of you who have troubles speaking up when someone is imposing on your rights I encourage you to speak up for yourself! Let yourself be heard and take what is yours! And it feels pretty good!

hmmm...

i'm not sure how i did this, but i am now following my own blog. this way i can't miss any of my own posts.

new york on saturday

Cory had to work today, and I'm getting pretty tired of waiting for Saturday to roll around so we can do something fun and then not getting to do it because he has to work, so I went for a walk today by myself and these are some of the things I enjoyed in this very busy city. . .
Just a cool billboard on my way to the park. . . Central Park is really fun, and beautiful. This is the second time I've seen this gold dude, I had to be sneaky to get his picture because they charge you! Definitely worth the risk, if I had a job on the streets of New York I would choose being a human statue too, just so I could paint myself gold.

Just when I feel like I'm getting the hang of this photography business, or at least I've figured out our new camera, some guy on the street tried to tell me something about the lens, like he would know.. that's something about New Yorkers, they think they know everything and that you should not only listen but take their advice immediately. . I say mind your own business! I don't mind the advice as much as I mind the whole talking to strangers business, didn't they ever go to first grade?


This on the left is the Central Park Zoo, and yes, those are sheep, and a llama. They also have a very nice cow exhibit, and chickens.. oh boy, I always wanted to see chickens in real life!! Now all of my wildest dreams are fulfilled and I want nothing more. But seriously that is what they have in their zoo. . hee hee! I laughed out loud and I was by myself, could have been awkward but in New York you're not crazy if you talk to yourself.




ROAAAAARRR!!!

Anyway that was my walk in NY today!

FAILURE

I can't think of a reason why I decided to take a person's advice who I knew was quite possibly certifiably crazy.. but i did. the guy at the post office a few posts back? yeah, well I guess i thought it couldn't hurt to try out the rose water deal he told me about. i checked a few health and beauty stores and no one carried it, so since the roses cory got me for v-day were about to die i figured i would make my own. doesn't sound very challenging right? well the only 'recipe' i could find online called for a pressure cooker, a brick, and ice.. none of which i had. so i decided to use a pot, boil water and put the roses in it, and then fill the sink part way with cold water and set the pan in it after i was done cooking the petals, didn't sound like a bad idea. After the water started simmering i put the flowers in the pot. Thinking that soon there would be a beautiful aroma filling the apartment i put the lid on the pot and started filling the sink with cold water. Crunching on a celery stick with some peanut butter i started smelling this horrid smell of all smells. Buuuhhh, I almost threw up and my gag reflex is not very sensitive. I opened the lid to the pot and the water was brown and the petals of the roses were yellow brown.. sick! OH the SMELL! oh my heck, i thought i put roses in the pot, but it sure smelled like someone took a nasty dump in there. Operation rose water is now over!

Ferdinand

Remember the mouse that lives under my couch? I've been pretty paranoid about the stupid thing since I saw it last week, leaving stuff out to see if it eats it, keeping an eye out for mouse poo, anything that might solidify that it actually lives here and wasn't just dropping by for a visit. I didn't see it for a long time since the first time so I kinda started to give up on it when yesterday out of my subconscious mind I thought I saw a mouse in the corner of my eye, and it turned out to be nothing. Which made me start wondering if I had really seen a mouse to start with.. but I was pretty sure that I had. And then today it happened again. I was sitting here on the couch and the nasty little rat ran out from under the couch and the second I jumped it went right back under it. What could it possibly be surviving on under there and why does it have to live in MY apartment? I don't really like killing things, I feel kind of guilty when I kill bugs, but it must be done. After I finish my homework I am going to have to go buy a mouse trap and set it under the couch. The worst part about it is that I have started calling the mouse Ferdinand, which makes it hard to think about killing it. And then the fact that our apartment is so small that I will know the exact moment I've got him because I'll be able to hear the crack of the trap as it snaps his little neck. Why am I being such a girl about this? Ugh, it must be done.

someone be my rude filter!

hey i know this girl who married someone who's last name is Horton, would it be rude to ask her if she hears a who? i don't talk to her very often and was only friends with her because i knew her sister.. sometimes i can't filter myself, but i really want to ask her. .. .!

bulldog puppies!

Cory and I have been discussing what kind of a dog we'll get when 'someday' finally rolls around and for now I think we've decided on a bulldog. They're so cute when they're puppies and so horrifyingly ugly when they're older that they're still cute! Now we have to think of a name for him, I think Darren is good, Cory likes Steve, like that commercial... we'll just have to see someday!

oh what to do?!

I recently discovered something about the apartment building that I live in. Emily will probably find this more disturbing than anyone else, well Mom might think its bad too. But remember the bamboo sticks that make noise at night from the asian sex torture someone is performing in my building? Well it came to my attention today that it is not hooker asians making the noise, it is little mice that live in the floor boards. Shocking, I know. There are so many of them that together they make creaking noises when they all run rampant in large groups pillaging the apartment building for food. I was minding my own business today watching 5 episodes of 30Rock in a row when a furry grey mouse that could have been cute but under the circumstances hideously horrid rodent ran out onto the rug from under the chair and a 1/2 that I was perched on. Shocked that this throne that I have spent the last 3 weeks lounging, and the hide-a-bed that my mom slept on for a week is the very same hiding place for this little rodent! Eewwwrrrrgggggrrrraaaaaahhh!! So what did I do? Well, I meant to scream but what came out sounded more like a groan-squeal-gasp-suck-in-air-close-my-eyes-I-can't-believe-
what-I-just-saw-take-a-deep-breath-get-a-grip-it's-only-a-mouse-you-
pansy-what's-the-super's-number-?-get-off-the-couch-get-off-the-couch -GET-OFF-THE-COUCH!-!-!-!...whimper.... and the little thing darted back to where it came from before I could get my body to respond to my thoughts. Then I had to make sure it hadn't chewed its way through my new shoes because murphy's law would agree that the only logical thing for the mouse to chew on would be my new shoes and nothing else. I was able to make a heroic effort to cross the floor to the closet and verify the safety of my shoes. But now I have to figure out how to kill it. Any suggestion? And how could I honestly not know that there are mice in here when I've been home by myself for 3 weeks now? I'm so disgusted!

New York crazies

The crazies that walk around could possibly beat smoking for my least favorite thing in NY, but they are much less prevalent than the smoke that pollutes the air I'm attempting to breathe. But seriously yesterday I had 1 near run in with a crazy guy, and a real run in with a slightly crazy guy. The first near run in was when I was on my way to the laundromat and the guy walking in front of me passed this old man and the old guy started shouting unintelligible craziness at the guy who to my knowledge did nothing to this man. The guy in front of me looked at the old guy, kinda paused a second and then kept walking as the old man continued to lecture him in a language only known to himself, I was a little nervous to pass him, but he calmed down and started walking along his way as if nothing happened by the time I reached him. Weird. Then later at the post office the guy in line behind me told me how beautiful the "asian faced" girl was behind the plexy glass, and how his GIRLFRIEND from Ugaslavanokia or somewhere is so gorgeous and perfect, and, oh she's his girlfriend by the way. Then he proceeded to ask me what I do for my pimples and that I need to use Rosewater and I can get it at this indian voodoo place just around the corner.. thanks man, I'll talk you up on that one. True story and all in the same day, and this is a really cool picture of the monument in Washington Square park!

my bum is on your lips. .. .

ok, so i wasn't going to put this picture on my blog because Cory thought it was. . disrespectful? well, its a replica of the statue of liberty's face, and yes, my bum is on her lips. Sometimes I just can't help it.

Bring me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses..

Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island day!! The statue of liberty is way huger than I thought it would be! It was really cool even though they don't let you go up to the crown anymore. Ellis island was a little depressing because aside from the main building all the old buildings were falling apart and had busted out windows and were totally neglected. I'm writing Bill Gates a letter and informing him of this tragic issue of our nations historical monuments neglect. We'll see how that goes.

too much fun

We spent the morning in the park, it was a lovely but cold day. Central Park is beautiful covered in snow! And we had so much fun at Wicked we went to another show, this one was an off Broadway show, but it was just as good! The Marvelous Wonderettes received two thumbs up from Gentry and Pace!