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.