i thought fat camp looked fun

i like to eat. im weird though, i eat all the time, but i hate big portions. except for dessert lol. anyways i was supposed to go on a walk tonight with my friend, i wanted to walk her little puppy but she had to work late. so i decided to make food - i know i shouldn't replace a walk with a sugary dessert but i did

i made banana split. 

one banana, vanilla ice cream, blueberries (my favourite), strawberries, chocolate sauce and butterscotch

it was perfect.

i love dessert. 

jimmy eat world concert tomorrow! :)

busy brain

ive been so stressed lately that i can't sleep. well to be honest im not sure if its stress, maybe its excitement but it feels like stress. pain in stomach, mind racing, not hungry you know, stress related stuff. but i dont know why im stressed. i guess there are many possibilities. for one, im not sure what im doing next year. i applied to college for a post grad program, got accepted, i accepted the offer but im not sure if its really what i want to do. its not my first choice in programs, the program i really want is full. i haven't heard back from the university either. ideally id love to do my masters degree, i think. umm two, stress could be work. i need to find a second job, i dont get the amount of hours i would like where i am currently working. its perfect during the year but annoying during the summer. really i should probably enjoy the lack of hours i have, lots of reading and gym time. three, stress could be that one of my best friends, tia, is getting married in september.. im part of the wedding party and there is soo much to do and i probably should help more than i currently am.. this is a good stress though, im soo excited for her! showers, dresses, celebrations and presents! im pumped for it all! oh or maybe im stressed cause i need to clean my room and go buy a some new room furniture at some point. and im not a pack rat at all but for some reason i have accumulated a collection of old novels and textbooks i dont want to read or use anymore. i need to find a shelter or something of similar sort to give them to. as much as i love used bookstores id rather give the books to a shelter so they can form a small library, so people dont have to purchase books i have already purchased. plus, most books i keep, except for those old series books that i will never read again, could make for a good library lol. for some reason finding a place to put these books is stressing me out lol.
another stress is my kinesiology certification. last year i became a certified kinesiologist and to keep the certification i need to keep up with seminars, workshops and readings to accumulate a certain amount of points (its like any medical doctors, teachers, social workers etc, have to do regarding their own certifications). anyways, the seminars/work shops are expensive and they are all over canada, hard to get to. if i dont keep up with them i loose my certification and it will be much harder to get the certification later when kinesiology becomes more recognized as a medical field in itself. ahhh
i wish i had a cottage lol. cottage life always relaxes me a bit. can't wait til the end of june!..
i think its probably just one of those weeks where everything seems to enhance its significance all at once. really, no matter what i decide to do next year i will be supported by family and friends, and as long as im doing something im taking a direction other than nowhere.
just some random things going on in my brain lately.

may video post

end of may here and i just thought id post a song from an amazing band.

the civil wars - poison and wine. this music has feeling. the song is stunning, its touching and really pulls on your heart strings. 

enjoy :)

random thoughts

i was watching a movie yesterday called me and orson welles. it was not a very good movie, slow moving and all, but it made me want to live in 1937. i know thats a specific year, but okay too early in the 1930's and im facing the worst of the great depression and i dont know much about the 1940's. the movie was based in 1937. imagine living in a time where your social life included only face to face conversations, live theatre productions were entertainment and the local paper was where all news came from. type writers typed document, mail was delivered only by the post man, with stamps and most likely hand written. their lives seemed to lack complexity - when really i think it may have been completely the opposite, lacking simplicity.

i hate technology and i love technology. i guess its a love-hate relationship. technology seems to make everything simple but due to the absence of perfection, technology highly complicates life also. the convenience of having email and saving the second messenger is counteracted by the common occurrence of miscommunication (because emails lack expression, tone and personality). oh and did i mention complete lack of face-to-face social interaction which as humans, we need. storing everything onto a compact electronic machine, lol or laptop, although saving storage space and trees is actually fairly risky - computer failure is way too common. and cell phones! i can't imagine living without my blackberry but at the same time i absolutely hate that i depend on it. i used to remember the phone numbers of people i commonly called, now i enter a number in my phone and never make an attempt at memorization. i probably can't even match a number to a person, sad as it may be. another thing i hate is how facebook and twitter are must haves! invitations to events, communication with distant friends and/or classmates is all done using these social networks.

but think about it.. how often do we stress out about technology related things, whether it be phone bills, not receiving texts, missing an episode of your favourite tv show, someone tagging you in an embarrassing photo, or an assignment not sending to your professor properly. do you think life was easier back then? it may have lacked some of the stress we have today, but it lacked convenience. nonetheless, i kind of wish i lived back then. i wish i received written letters not emails, face to face conversations instead of phone calls, i wish we watched plays on stages not films on screens and ate meals without tv shows on. i wish everyone walked around the cities instead of taking cars, and had photo albums on shelves in their rooms rather than photo albums on facebook. dont get me wrong, im grateful for what i have, i was just thinking.     

odds and ends

just a few more pictures summing up nyc

battery park 

basically battery park is where you catch the ferry to liberty island (where the statue of liberty is) and ellis  island. some education for you: ellis island is where all immigrants trying to get into the states would go to (or there is also a place in texas somewhere - apparently more strict). people from all over the world - hoping for freedom - packed up their lives, spending all the money they had and hopped on massive ships packed with people. each ship stopped at ellis island and dropped off the hopeful potential immigrants. once there they waited in long lines, women and children forced to separate from men, to become deemed worthy or not worthy of entrance to the united states. these individuals went through mental tests and brutal medical examinations before they were granted entry or not. if granted entry into the united states they had to do money exchanges and wait in lines to be fed. there is a whole museum on ellis island all about it.

this "sphere" once stood in the plaza between the twin towers of the world trade centre.

it now rests in battery park, still intact but damaged (with dents and holes) from the debris of the september 11th terrorist attack of 2001. there is an eternal flame inside the sphere as a memorial to the victims of september 11, 2001

magnolia bakery - hectic hectic place.

inside trump tower

this brings an end to my nyc posts.

its a lovely city with way too much to do.

old school style

my friend meagan and i went on a roadtrip to cambridge old school style.

yup thats right, we used google maps not gps. ohh and we totally got lost. how people got anywhere before gps boggles my mind lol. the place it led us to didn't even exist, it was a house. soo we kind of failed at the old school thing and took out the gps. we were looking for the old town.
with experience road tripping to small towns my advice was to type in antique shop into the gps (or bookstore or chocolate place) since majority of all small towns have them. we put some antique treasure shop into the gps and sure enough it brought us to the little town with shops we were looking for. we got some cupcakes and bubble tea, walked around and headed home lol.. i love little towns

little red velvet cupcake - it wasn't very good. 

i was disappointed.

definitely much of the reason i love the summer.

good things come to an end

 the last day in nyc did a bit of shopping. our cab was coming around 12 to bring us to the airport so we didn't have much time. we went to nbc studios although we didn't get a chance to do the tour and walked around 5th and 6th. packing was sad.

 i had to take a picture of the giant poster of daniel radcliffe

obviously we had to stop in the hershey store.

that was my trip. i loved every minute, rain or not.

sundays in new york city

sunday deserves a good breakfast. i was totally up for grabbing a scone and a coffee at starbucks but apparently everyone else was looking for more of a sit down sunday breakfast. we ended up going to a place right on 5th across from central park. this was not my kind of restaurant, basically the menu was any kind of eggs possible or $20 pancakes/french toast. oh there was also a baby bear porridge. if you know me at all you probably know what i got. after breakfast we walked around central park for a few hours. 

central park

i took dozens of pictures 

after walking through central park we walked around 5th avenue and did a bit of shopping. we walked around union square and on broadway around 12th and 13th there was the massive strand book store i mentioned. i loved it.. it was a pretty amazing bookstore, book shelves up to the ceiling. i bought three books, the scarlett letter, the virgin suicides and paint it black.. lol now im excited to finish water for elephants so i can start reading one.

then we walked along soho, noho, greenwich and along canal street, insane change in atmosphere there.

so around 4:30 we figured we should get something to eat.. ohh i forgot to mention we had bought tickets to see rock of ages at 7:30 pm. subway back to times square, we asked the concierge what restaurants she recommends. ended up going to a little italian family owner restaurants called ecetera, ecetera. very good food. then off to broadway!

rock of ages wasn't my first choice but it ended up being pretty good. 

i thoroughly enjoyed walking the city.

and i love bookstores

and im pretty sure coffee was part of our everyday - it made me happy.

new york.. new york..

i want to wake up in the city that doesn't sleep ♪  

oh that new york new york song by frank sinatra played all the time and now its in my head. 
saturday called for rain, but luckily for us it turned out to be an absolutely gorgeous day. we walked to grand central station, got subway passes, hopped on the subway and went to battery park.

grand central station is pretty cool. like it has coffee shops and bakeries down below, tiled floors, huge chandeliers and thousands of people.

once we got to battery park we went to get tickets to get on the ferry to see the statue of liberty and ellis island. we pretty much waited in line for an hour and a half to then go through security and then finally get on the ferry. it was extremely hot even though it was only 10 am. i got a sunburn on half my forehead lol.. since my bangs only cover half. oh and not only did i get a sunburn, my camera died while waiting in line! lucky my sister brought my dads camera with us, she let me use it for the rest of the day..

 the building with the crane - its about where the twin towers were.

from the ferry.. the water really isn't so attractive lol

after getting back to battery park we were insanely hungry, it was around 2pm. we decided to walk along the brooklyn bridge and walk around brooklyn. i had asked one of my friends before i went to ny, what is a must-eat-at restaurant when in nyc - his answer, gramaldi's pizzaria. i trusted his answer (for one: he goes to nyc religiously, two: i had also read about it somewhere). it was in brooklyn anyways so we decided to go for a late lunch. ohh ps: the line to get a table was about an hour wait, but if you like pizza id say its worth it. it ended up being an early dinner.

then we hopped on the subway again, went back to the hotel and went to the rockefeller centre. we figured top of the rock would be best when it was dark. and of course the city looked gorgeous, even though it had gotten a bit foggy by then! after that we went to magnolia bakery to get some cupcakes. umm they were good cupcakes, but for a bakery known for their cupcakes i was extremely disappointed with their flavour selection. what the eff kind of bakery doesn't have red velvet cupcakes. i wasn't going to eat an entire cake by my self!!!

alright so after seeing the city from the top of the rockefeller centre, and easting cupcakes we went back to the hotel. my aunt and i decided to change and go for some drinks. it was only 10:30 and it is the city that never sleeps right!? lol i wanted to try a manhattan, everyone warned me i wouldn't like it, but i got one anyways.. i am stubborn sometimes. 

i dont even know what is in it.. but i know it wasn't very good.. 

im pretty sure its rye, vermouth and some kind of cherry

i love this city..

by 'this' city.. i mean new york city. its a perfect city and i can't wait to go back. i took tons of pictures, which will do most of the talking, but i still want to mention many of the highlights of the trip. so friday we got to jfk airport around 11:30 am.. the flight was only about 50 minutes and the time flew by since i got to watch an episode of criminal minds! 

arrival at jfk!

we got to our hotel around quarter to 1 dropped our bags at the hotel and started walking around the city. oh get this, our hotel was on 44th between 8th ave and 9th ave. times square is on 7th ave, running from about 42nd st to 49th st. incredibly close! anyways it was a bit frustrating at first because we didn't really know where anything was and adding to that it was pouring rain! we initially planned seeing the statue of liberty that day - that definitely was not going to happen with all the rain. we decided instead to go to the guggenheim museum and the met. both are art museums which i actually love!
i much preferred the guggenheim museum, its more abstract art, less portraits. it was a pretty interesting  looking museum. the metropolitan museum was huge! you could have spent an entire day in there and you probably wouldn't have gotten through the entire museum. but there was some interesting art in there..

front of MET - staircase from gossip girl? its kinda looks like

after the two museums we walked around the city, went to planet hollywood for dinner (my aunt really wanted to go) and then we walked through times square. 

times square looks much better at night than during the day i've realized

city that never sleeps.. 

it was an insanely busy day and even with the rain i enjoyed it. i definitely wouldn't recommend planet hollywood for dinner but with the new york pass each person saved $10 off their meal. saving money is always a good thing. 

nyc here i come..

ive packed. i have outfits planned, im bringing only clothes compatible with weather over 15/20 degrees, heres hoping. my camera is charged. i have a book, im reading water for elephants. my ipod is charged. make up, brush, sunglasses, birks all packed. passport ready. im waking up in less than 8 hours. my alarm is set for 4am -  check. actually every alarm in the house may be set for 4 am lol. we are flying from buffalo, much cheaper.
im excited. i'll be taking lots of pictures and eating a lot of food.
have a nice long weekend! i hope the weather is nice here in hamilton for everyone going to see the fireworks..

back to the 1960's

look at this amazing camera!

i have this fascination with antique cameras. ideally i want a polaroid instant camera but a 1960's looking film camera will do. have you ever been to urban outfitters ? they have so much interesting looking furniture, cameras and electronics.. i kinda want it all. just saying..

countdown: 2 days until i leave for nyc!!

wake me up when its summer..

im starting to think summer is not coming this year and as much as i love the fall and winter im not so fond of the spring. its too rainy. all may its been rainy and may is half way over. whats with that!!?? when does the summer-like weather usually come.. is that in june usually? i hope so.. i want to go  camping and cottaging with friends and i want to sit outside and read. i want to go hiking and on walks at night with my sister. i want to go to the beach, despite hamilton lacking sanitary swimming water, i still like the beach. i want to go on roadtrips and photograph interest things. i wish i could put my jeans and sweaters all away in my closet and take out my shorts and summer dresses, flip flops and birkenstocks. its days like today, weather absolutely miserable beyond simple description, that makes me miss the perfect sunshine of south beach.

sometimes i miss the summer dresses and beach hair perfection of miami beach

countdown: nyc

5 days until i leave for nyc! you know what sucks? its supposed to rain all 4 days we are there, 30% chance of rain. kinda lame but there is soo much to do there im sure it wont get to us. rainy days do make the best photos :).
anyways, like i said before, my sisters and i were asked to choose three things we each wanted to do. i gave my list of three. both of my sisters chose seeing a play on broadway as one of their three, one requests a musical (which i love too) and my other sister requests a comedy. i think it best we only see one play that satisfies both requests.. it shouldn't be that hard. i would love to see lion king or wonderland but apparently both stop playing on may 15th.
im excited to go to central park. its pretty, i like parks and obviously i need to take a picture by the friends fountain. i want to see the brooklyn bridge and get a manhattan at a bar in manhattan. i want to see the cute town houses and just be jealous of everyone actually living there. we are not making this trip a shopping trip - this disappoints most people - id rather experience the city. i can shop anywhere.

greenwich village - imagine!

i copy hairstyles

i was watching 90210 yesterday, the newer one, and there is this girl named ivy in it. she had a neat hair style. its called the fishtail.. its kinda like a braid but looks cooler. i always wear braids.. its like a lazy hair style lol. so i decided to attempt the fishtail..

 it probably would have looked better if i had longer hair.

(here learn how)

countdown: 6 days til i leave for new york city!

dont need convincing at all..

today is the 13th. i leave for new york city on the 20th. im so excited. ive been to NYC twice before but neither time did i really get the best experience with the city. the first time i went was in grade 12 - it was a school trip. the teacher planning the trip didn't actually think any of us actually wanted to see a broadway play or you know go to any museums. he made the trip completely a shopping trip - oh and we saw a baseball game but mostly shopping. pretty dumb if you ask me. the second time i went i was with my friend and her brother - he wanted to go black friday shopping. our plane landed in NYC at 5pm and it was leaving at 5pm the following day. we shopped a bit and then went for dinner and a bar at night. i was fun, but i still didn't get to experience one of the worlds 'must-go-to' cities.
so this time im so excited. im going with my mom who absolutely loves the city. she has an idea of what to see and what it worth doing in the 4 days we are there. so we bought new york city passes - basically they are fixed priced tickets which allows you to see/do as many as 55 attractions/sites within three days. my sisters and i (dads not going) were each told to choose three things we really want to do while we are there..
the three things i chose were:

- the guggenheim museum - id choose that over the MET

- time square - ive been but its one of those things you have to visit each time you are there

- strand bookstore - this is an 18 mile long used/new bookstore with over 2 million books! that is unbelievable and my kind of place! its on broadway so we will definitely come across it.

  this amazing city! im soo excited.

so my mom and sisters were each asked to choose three things they wanted to do. my mom mentioned something about magnolias bakery (that place the girls on sex and the city like to hang out).. ohh i totally dont need convincing if that is one of her choices. i like bakeries. 

countdown: seven days til nyc! seven days!!

ugh..

what the heck blogger! blogger went under construction or something and just deleted my last two posts. iit was in some read only mode for two days and then it just deleted my posts. this is lame..  frustrating!!! what so from now on do i have to save all my posts in case this happens!..

what do you wonder?

want to know what i wonder? okay.. at this moment there are approximately 6.92 billion people in the world, i could be more accurate with the number but im not quite sure which website is the most accurate. the US has approximately 311 million and canada has approximately 34 million. toronto has over 2.5 million and hamilton has around 500 thousand, rough rounding. isn't that amazing? who even started that saying 'small world'? i think they had their demographic stats wrong or possibly they were crazy. the world isn't small and its not calm. the planet may spin in silence around the sun but the lives on this planet are far from silent or uneventful. this world is busy. all the 6.92 billion people in the world all having their own lives, their own brains, their own routines. they exert their own actions and thoughts.
okay so.. again, hamilton is not that big of a city.. but i think the number is still significant to the people who live here. 
today i was walking around downtown and i went to visit my dad at work. my dad works in one of the tallest buildings in downtown hamilton. while i waited for my dad to finish up his work for the day, i just waited by the window. staring down at the city actually made me wonder. how can so much go on in a fairly insignificant city in a relatively unpopulated country? hundreds of cars were piling out of parking lots (it was around 4:30/5 when everyone was leaving work). cars were moving slowing on the main streets and i can imagine the speed, or lack of, drives the anxious people insane as they are trying to get home. im not even sure if they were going home or who they would be going home to, maybe their families, their friends, their pets. i just know the streets were busy and the mall was busy. the city was busy. and even when everyone goes home, i dont think you leave the busyness. its always there.
ahhh its insane. there are so many people and so many different thoughts, plans, routines, interests, experiences. no one person can live the same life as someone else. can we understand anyone but ourselves? even if you find your life calm or boring, its not life in general that boring. its not your city, country or town thats boring and calm. the city is busy and everyone is significant in making it busy. maybe if you find your city/life boring you are just too self centred to realize how busy it actually is. everyones thoughts, their energy, their actions - none ever silent or lost.   
oh wow..its strange what staring out a window of a building overlooking the city does to my brain. i like thinking. 

im such a tourist

one of my best friends meagan lives in toronto. i like toronto. i think i was meant to live in a big city, im fascinated by them. the sky scrapers, the varieties of unique shops and the people, i love it all. yesterday i went to visit meagan and i practically dragged her around the city for six or seven hours. i totally had a list of things i wanted to do - like i was some sort of tourist. really, i've been to toronto hundreds of times. my goal is to learn the city so i dont feel like such a tourist lol. its an easy city to get around with the subways, street cars and buses. there is this convenient little day pass you can get for $10 per person and you can ride the subway/street cars/buses as often as you like in that day (on weekends is $10 for two adults!). 
anyways we met at union around 11 am and started the day with starbucks - grande bolds please. we just walked around the eatons centre, then we went to the st lawrence market. if you have never been i suggest you go. there is definitely stuff to see there.

how amazing is this! vanilla buttercream cupcake coffee beans!

haha i had to take a picture of these!

so we got lunch at the st lawrence market. then we walked along bloor and college, went in some shops, took some pictures. we got some custard tartes from a bakery :). delicious! it started raining, which kind of sucked, but oh well. i was looking for a used bookstore on college, but we ended up getting on the wrong subway train which actually worked out cause i knew were another bookshop was! it was called Eliots bookshop. the man there is fantastic.. i would ask about a book and he would say the author or title in a matter of seconds! perfect. i bought 4 books.. for under $30. 

next stop - bubble teas from an asian food place on younge.

around 5 or 6.. we headed back to meagans house, got some groceries. our challenge was a cupcake taste test. we made red velvet cupcakes from scratch and duncan hines chocolate fudge cupcakes with icing we bought.. blahhh.. 

oh.. our red velvet cupcakes were better.

ohh then we went to bring cupcakes to some friends while they studied and we watched criminal minds. it was a good day. 

the day also consisted of ice wine, which was pretty good, and hanging out with a pretty cool looking cat with folded ears (his name - duffy)

however, note to self - dont wear pumas. my legs were in painnnnnnnnn..

a hundred million suns

i would just like to take this time to discuss a band. there is this band called snow patrol and i pretty much think they are the most amazing band ever. if you know any song by them you probably know the song 'chasing cars'. anyways, the bands not new, the most recent album was released umm maybe 4 years ago but they are still my favourite. a hundred million suns - cd title. best cd of life.
okay so snow patrol is that music that you can listen to in any mood. literally i just drove home from work singing it at the top of my lungs (im kind of a loser like that, but i have fun). the music makes me think and i like to think. gary lightbody has an amazing voice. oh and they are from ireland. first of all i love accents. second of all, thats the one place i would die to go.
three songs i advise you listen to:
- please just take these photos from my hands
- engines
- shut your eyes


to be completely honest. picking only three was one of the hardest things i had to do. 

im busy avoiding being busy

i just want to read. please dont bug me about it. you might think its boring, but i think its relaxing. has summer started already? it seems to be lacking sunshine but im completely serious when i say i want to bury myself with books and drown out reality. i guess drown is not the correct choice of words since there is no submersion in fluids of any sort, but im assuming you know what i mean. yes, i know i also have a part time job and a social life to attend to and i will accommodate these, but im completely content reading. i promise you im not depressed and im not trying to avoid anyone, i just like books. 

this is kind of a rant. why does summer have to be so stressful for some people? it should be relaxing while we're young right? when i have a full time career i wont have as much time to relax. recently i've been surrounded by people who need the entire summer planned, with weekdays and weekends full. i dont like it. it is starting to stress me out, ergo i choose reading over reality. lol just until i can't do that any longer. im not boring. im completely up for camping and coffee or drink dates, just dont stress me out about plans!
i still miss the sunshine ♥

election day

since i was 18 i was told to vote. the federal election in which i was first allowed to vote my dad told me i had the right to vote so i should use that right. i was irritated and stupid. im pretty sure i picked the first name that was listed. i had no idea what the party i voted for represented. i know i have the right to vote, but i have the right to do a lot of things i dont do. like i said, i was stupid. wait.. i have the right. my dad was right. if you have the right to do anything, do it! and because you have the right, care about it! when it comes to voting in the federal elections, you do realize this does affect you right? sure, one vote may not make a significant difference, but if everyone thought that way, there would be no possibility for change or difference what so ever. take initiative. inquire. discuss. research. even if its just an hour out of your day, one day before election day. find out what the different political parties are about and what the candidates want for the country. listen to the debates if possible. know what is important to you and understand who may be more likely to bring about the certain changes you want with in the country. this is your country. 
me. im not politically savvy - if thats what you call it. its something im working on. politics are important, i know this. i know who i am voting for and definitely more than 1 hour went into my decision.
tomorrow is election day in canada. 
please vote smart.