Why Opera could actually be Reality TV

So after all the nastiness of the week, I was very VERY happy to meet up with my friend E for our evening of ...

Seeing Carmen at the Met!

Can I just say how excited I was? I definitely have a list of things I want to do in New York and seeing an opera at the Met was near the top! Now, obviously, we got all dolled up (because duh, any chance to wear nice clothes after bumming it around in grad school) and even hit up a fancy bistro (Epicerie Boulud) beforehand.

Yes, I was definitely camwhoring it up in the fancy mirror at E.B. while E. was off somewhere. Also, I loved my outfit (and I finally got to wear my beautiful silky-smooth red blazer! I mean, it's hard to wear it in the hot and humid NYC summer because of all the unladylike sweating ... and I mean, I can't wash it or anything because then I'd have to iron it out and well, I'll be honest - I'm not going to be doing that). Unfortunately, my nice black Steve Madden heels died after this night by splitting along the seams (which is apparently hinting at that fact that my feet are too fat? Wow. Have to rethink some things now ...). But the blazer lives on in unwashed glory!

Also, this was my first time seeing the interior of the Met and can I just say, OH. MY. GOD. It's just so gorgeous. When I wasn't people watching (and that was also a very fruitful endeavour - my God, people have some VERY nice clothes here ... and also some questionable ones), I was definitely admiring the decor.

I mean, would you look at those chandeliers? Magical. And inside the theater? Also very spacious and very beautiful.

Now let's talk about the opera itself. Here's the thing - Carmen is fucking sexy. It is basically a 3 hour stripping-sexy dancing-singing extravaganza. I mean, that lady was so sexy, I wasn't even sure what to do with myself afterwards ...

Here's the basic plot:
Carmen is a sexy sexy factory girl/gypsy. Everybody wants her. It's not surprising why.

So she gets into a bit of a girl fight with this other factory girl and they have some good old fashion girl-on-girl cat fighting. Interested now?

So this lovely soldier Don Jose has to arrest her except Carmen does her thing and he kinda falls in love with her.

It's really too bad, because he's quite a good boy and he used to love this sweet little thing called Micaela but surprisingly he forgets all about her when Carmen does her thing. He also loves his mother, about which he sings a surprisingly disturbing and long aria. Freud would've loved it.

So Don Jose runs away with Carmen to live as a bandit in the mountains (and kids, this is why, when you want to ride off into the sunset, you better pack a lot of money with you for that rainy day). Then Escamillo, who is this super schnazzy matador and actually almost hooked up with Carmen before she left with Don Jose, appears.

 

By that point, Don Jose is uber-clingy and slightly paranoid, and Carmen dumps his ass. Now, she's quite a little player during this whole little drama, all 'I want you, no, now I don't want you, oh run away with me, no go away now' so basically, she was quite a bitch.

So it's no surprise that in typical dramatic/operatic fashion, a whole bunch of people end up dead.

Remarkably hard to tell. Now throw in some crazy gypsy dancing, some sexy handtowel washing, some more stripping and you've got Carmen! (Basically if she were here now, she'd have her own reality show on E and would be rivaling Kim K for sexy-fame and Lilo for her crazy-girl reputation).

I didn't even notice the time flying by (even though usually, 3.5 hours of sitting would have me looking at my watch every 5 minutes). By the time we left, the whole city was lit up and gorgeous, so obviously, we had to take a few photos. Or like a hundred. Camwhore for life!

Can we just talk about how shit-tastic some weeks are?

Thursday and Friday this week were absolute shit shows.

I just wanted to slog through and get to the fricking weekend. You know why? (You probably don't want to know, but I'll tell you anyway).

I have had this stupid huge assignment looming over me all week so I spent all day Thursday coding.

No, that's not me. I have long hair. Otherwise, it's pretty accurate.

I even came back to the lab after class to keep working on it. And then I basically ran home, grabbed dinner, ran to the shoe repair place to drop off my new shoes to get adjusted and ran to catch the bus to go to rehearsal.

And this is where the shit show starts. I mean, I was already tired and brain dead and just exhausted by that point. And the bus didn't come. So I had to run to the bank and grab some cash to pay for a taxi.

The rehearsal itself went a bit long (but it was good!), so I only got out at 9:45pm, and for some reason the bus didn't come for another 30 minutes, and by the time I made it home, it was inching closer to 11pm ...

... and that's when I found my favorite part of the day - I lost my keys somewhere! Yay. This is excellent news to find out when its 11 at night and you're locked out. Now thankfully, my roommate let me into our apartment, but I couldn't get into my bedroom.

So I called the super and I waited. And I waited. And then I waited some more. Finally, he showed up an hour and a half later (aka, it's past midnight now and I'm seriously crashing from being up since 7am and running and work and rehearsal and everything).

And the fun part is, I had to wake up early on Friday as well for a meeting. So I woke up (slightly braindead though). Thankfully, my friend covered the meeting, but instead, I got to spend the WHOLE morning (a good 4 hours) running around in the torrential downpour that was Friday trying to find my keys (by visiting every single place I had been the previous night) and then trying to find my super (because of course the phone number he gives us is not a mobile phone) and then trying to get a new set of keys.

Joy.

I then spent the next 4 hours in the lab with wet feet (because hey, the campus is built on a hill so trying to get to the building at the highest point means walking through FLOODING RIVERS for fifteen minutes), trying to finish my assignment.

Flooded lawn in front of my building.

You-can't-see-it-but-it's-flooding.

Oh and as soon as I submitted it, I had to run off to meet E. So basically the first 20 minutes of our meet-up were spent venting, pretty much like you read above.

Okay, now that's off my chest I may actually post about all the fun stuff that happened since :)

Cafe Review: Chocobol

I figure, since I pretty much spend half of my life in cafes (scientific fact, right there), I may as well review some for the fun of it (and for my own reference; sometimes I can't remember which ones are good before I've had my coffee ... and since I'm going to the cafes for the coffee ... well, you can see that there's a problem).

Last night I once again met my friend E in the Lincoln Center area (man, I will soon know that place like the back of my hand!) and we wanted to grab some coffee. (Except that this time, she had coffee and I didn't! WHOA. Mind blown, right there).

It's this super cute place called Chocobol. Now I'll be honest and say that it was edging towards expensive on a cafe-price scale (Tim Hortons/Dunkin Donuts is at the bottom, 6-10$ cups of restaurant coffee are at the top). But man, was it cute!

Definitely going there again!

The rest of the evening was sadly not as exciting. I had my weekly Trader Joe's visit, which is always fun. And then I had to tote two bags of groceries uptown, which was not. Not fun, I mean. And then I munched on dried apples and played my guitar (my fingers don't hurt anymore, yay! Now I just can't feel them!) and generally goofed off instead of doing work. Work schmork.

Eh.

What?! Anna, running?

Yep.
It happened.

I actually packed my food the night before. And laid out all my clothes. And woke up at 7am. And actually ran!

3 beautiful morning miles (albeit with some insole pain, yet again! Gah, will it never stop?). Note to self: UM, DON'T TAKE BREAKS FROM RUNNING, YOU FOOL.

Oh also, I was thinking about what Ali on the Run posted about her thoughts during running and I remembered my whole 'see-an-attractive-person-and-speed-up' plan.

EXCEPT ...

Everyone is attractive. And fast. So instead of intervals of sprinting when I see beautiful people and chilling out when I don't, I'm just constantly sprinting. So that's fun.

Also, at the end, when I was in my sprinting daze, I thought I saw Ryan Hall. It obviously wasn't him, but Ali got my mind onto running celebrities so I kept thinking I was seeing famous people.

Oh wait, that happens every time.

This is why I would never ask a celebrity for an autograph unless I actually saw an entourage with them - because chance are, it would actually be a regular person that I was stalking and they would think I was weird.

That is all.

Of New Adventures and Acquisitions

So I am trying to make my life less of a get-up-work-school-collapse-at-home-in-an-exhausted-heap kind of thing - I mean, that's what I did in Montreal, and at the end of three years, my friend who came to visit me ended up seeing more in her 1 week visit than I did in my whole stay there.

And I am NOT going to squander New York City this way!

So I made this whole huge list of all the places I want to visit and all the things I want to do (I basically watched Friends all over again to see what fun things they did and then I googled 'top NYC attractions' ... yes, I am imaginative). And I try to do a new-ish thing every week.

So I walked to the Brooklyn Bridge! (Or rather, I walked cross town, then took the 6, and then walked the bridge). Sooo, the thing about the bridge is that yes, you can have really beautiful views of both Brooklyn and NYC, but it's under construction now (and who knows when they'll be done ... like 2013 or something), so you're actually walking in this tunnel of tarping and steel beams until about the middle, when you suddenly get a bit of the view. So I think I'll definitely come back in a couple of years to see what it's really supposed to look like, but for now, I'm satisfied with my bridge adventure.

And speaking of adventure ... I was walking back home and I realized that I really wanted ... a guitar. So I literally walked into a guitar store (where a really nice young man helped me out ... damn, musicians sure have something about them!) and got myself a guitar.

 

It's my new baby. I'm literally strumming it all the time. Now, the tips of my left-hand fingers feel like they've been through the grater, sure, but it's still fun! I look forward to annoying the Internet in the future with renditions of all the songs that are in my iTunes library played on guitar. (Heads up, there's 2000 of them. Not quite sure how Pitbull will sound played on guitar, but we'll see when we get to that ....).

Awesome Super-Fun Week Recap

I've been a bad little blogger, so let's just recap the week day by day.

Sunday
So I spent all of Sunday sitting around trying to learn some music for an audition that I had that afternoon. It was incredibly unproductive, and what's more, I didn't really like the choir anyways. I would've written the day off completely, except for a really nice guy from the choir invited me up to the roof of his building overlooking the river. The view was SPECTACULAR! I may have jumped around like a little girl and totally embarrassed myself, but it was truly awe-inspiring.

As was the Pinkberry that I was having. Apparently there's a whole Pinkberry vs. 16 Handles debate. Pinkberry was nice and tart (I got the original flavour) but I didn't like the fact that it wasn't a self-serve place. I mean, I like to have control over my toppings. Plus the toppings selection wasn't that hot. So anyways, I'm hoping that 16 Handles lives up to the hype, because that's all I have left!

Monday
Monday was a day of work blah blah blah and then ... MOVIE NIGHT! I went over to N's place with Laura to watch the ultimate classic of all time ....

Princess Bride.

Most excellent movie. The sheer ridiculousness of it all can just keep you entertained for hours. Especially if you turn it into a drinking game. It was enough to have 'as you wish' as a cue, but we had at least 6 more I think. White wine went down well. (<--- Alliteration! Yay!)

Tuesday
I dedicated Tuesday to my Trader Joe's visit. As promised (by everybody who's ever been there before), it was absolutely fantastic, and WAY cheaper than the market on my block. I also thought it would be smart to walk there. And then back. Which ended up being a grand total of 80 blocks, half of which were completed with 40lbs of groceries on my back.

I came home and collapsed in an exhausted heap. Apparently my limit is one bright idea a day. Then I'm done.

Wednesday
Um ... I forget. Oh wait - I went for a run. It was nice and cool and I ran alongside the Hudson River and it was a beautiful 4 mile run. Bad blogger me didn't take any photos but that's because the run was going so well. Although my left insole started aching a bit towards the end. And that means that I should take walk breaks and not escalate too fast. Woohoo ...

Thursday
I had work. Then class. (Wow, my life is exciting). Then I caught the tail end of a coffee hour and I chatted to people. Yay socializing and some (leftover) free food. I've learnt to cherish the free food as a grad student. Then I think I went home and did something?

Um, total blackout. I probably watched TV. And had pizza.

Friday
Class ends at 3pm! Woo! And then there was a Women in Computer Science event, which I just took as an opportunity to acquire a fake tiara (yes, there were tiaras - I mean it wouldn't be a women in computer science event without them, right?) and some cupcakes. Actually, a lot of cupcakes. And then, ironically, I ended up chatting with the only 2 dudes present. Man, I really know how to take advantage of a situation.

Also, I was finally able to hang out with my friend E on Friday. We met for tea at "Le Pain Quotidien", where I had a French brioche (which was absolutely not what I thought it would be ... but it came with speculoos which is like cookie butter made with ginger snaps which made it ALL BETTER) and some really colourful tea.

Look at those beautiful, radiant-looking ... teas. Just gorgeous. AND delicious. I love tea. I want to have a love affair with tea - oh wait, I already do. With the multitude of looseleaf tea packets I keep in my cupboard. Let me just sneak away to my lovahs right now.

Oh, as an aside - do you how perplexing a problem it is to have to decide whether the black smudge on your counter is just a bit of loose-leaf Earl Grey or a mouse turd? It's really hard to figure out until you stick your finger in it (and that's obviously not an optimal scenario).

Anyways ... back to normal people stuff.

I had the most delightful Friday evening. After tea, I walked E back to the practice center where she was planning to continuing rehearsing her piano repertoire for another 3 hours, but instead we spent 3 hours with another one of her friends talking shit and being CRAY CRAY.

All while stuck in a practice room the size of a shoe box. I feel like it acted as a hot-box for our ridiculousness, because the stuff that I was spewing at the end of the night was highly scandalous and not at all appropriate if I were ever to like have a job and/or rule the world.

Saturday
The night before, in a rush of ridiculous optimism, E and I planned to wake up early and finally go to the Cloisters, which is this castle monument (part of the Met) that's located up in the Bronx. But seeing as after the previous night's revels I only managed to drag myself out of bed at noon, we once again had to cancel it.

It's seriously like fate doesn't want us to go to the cloisters. I mean, obviously we're too fabulous to be nuns, but we at least want to tour the damn place.

Instead, we somehow managed to get our shit together and meet up to go walk in Central Park and spend a couple of hours at the Met.

This happened at 5pm. So um, yea, it took us a while to get ready. My face doesn't just happen this way, OK, I need time to put it on!

Central Park was gorgeous and sunny and wonderful. I was uber jealous of all the people who just had picnic blankets and had spent their entire day there. I realize that the weather is going to get worse soon (EDIT: I'm writing this on next Tuesday, and ALERT, the weather is WORSE. Think gale force winds and flash floods.), so I want to enjoy it while I can.

After an appropriate photo-shoot (oh who am I kidding, all photoshoots of me are always appropriate), we finally made it to the MET!

I have a map where I tick off rooms whenever I visit them, and on Saturday, we ticked off Musical Instruments, Arms and Armour and part of 19th-20th Century Art and Sculpture.

I bet YOUR museum doesn't have life-size knights. That's right. Didn't think so.

Go us!

Sunday
Sunday funday except not so much. I realized that after goofing around all of last week that A) I had gotten nothing done and B) I had a meeting with my advisor Monday morning to talk over my progress. Man, it's surprising how productive I can be with a deadline.

This was further exacerbated by the fact that I spent the whole morning/early afternoon at a church service listening to their choir before my audition for them. Note to preachers: if I can't remember the last time the choir sang something, it probably means your service is TOOO long. Also, the A/C was killer.

So you can see, my brain is turned onto important things in church.

And that, my friends, was all of last week in one fell swoop. As a preview, I can tell you that it was much more exciting than this current week. So I'm going to look back on this sometime in November, when the weather gets icky and the workload gets EEEEEEKY (you know that feeling when you feel like you're drowning in work? Yep, that's eeeeeky. As in eeek, get me out of here!). And I'll think, wow, I used to have an exciting life. No, scratch that, I used to have a life, period.

Oh well.

Just a Saturday at the Museum

So clearly I did not have an early night on Friday, meaning my waking up was consequently delayed to the early lunch hours on Saturday. I'm really not made for that type of schedule so in sadness, I spent the whole morning early afternoon catching up on TV. I am proud to announce that I have watched all the available Downton Abbey episodes and am now speaking exclusively in a British accent.

By late afternoon, I realized that there was no way I'd be getting any homework done, so I decided some sight-seeing was in order. My plan was to walk through Central Park all the way to the Met, spend a couple of hours there (since my admission is free, I hope to systematically cover all of the collections within the year, at least, if not the semester). And then I would walk back.

It all started out nicely enough (even though it was crazy hot and stuffy, which turned into hot and extremely windy - talk about extremes!).

As you can see, it was jolly good weather and the walk itself was quite pleasant. I think the Grande cup of coffee helped as well, because otherwise I would've just stopped to nap. So there I am, walking, minding my own business (while dodging all the runners who apparently just take over Central Park ... at any time of day), and suddenly it gets all dark. Like really really dark.

By that point, I'm by the reservoir, so I have a bit of a clearer view, and what do I see, but a lovely New York storm getting ready to do some serious business.

Wait, let me clarify this picture for you:

Oh yea, that's me, in my nice open sandals on nice sandy path UNDER A HUGE CLOUD OF DOOM.

Needless to say, in about 5 minutes, it started pouring cats and dogs. Thankfully, I had an umbrella, but that protected maybe the top third of my body and my poor feet had to deal with the deluge. The runners obviously had nowhere to go, but in a way, I was actually jealous of them, because it's quite BAMF to run in the rain. In fact, it was warm and so I would not have minded the flood so much if I hadn't been wearing my nice shoes. (Do you notice how shoes are always a problem for me?)

But I made it! The Met is huge, so I knew I had to have some sort of plan for getting through it all, so I thought, ok, I'll start on the bottom floor. (Logical, right?). Turns out the Egyptian stuff is on the bottom floor, so all the better. 

I would pose like an Egyptian, but that's a little hard when taking selfies. Time to work on the posing at home.

The exhibit was nice but I guess I'm more interested in back stories than the actual artifacts and since an audio guide was extra $$$, I had skipped it. I guess I'm not really obsessed with Egyptian artifacts, although being at the exhibit made me remember this AWESOME video game called 'Cleopatra and Pharaoh' and suddenly I wanted to be back on my computer right then and there.

I kid, I kid. There was interesting stuff there.

Statues and mummies and temples oh my! Actually, the temple room was very cool - I always like these total-body experiences because they help to put everything into context. It reminded me of the Ishtar gate at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin - they basically reconstructed a whole Babylonian gate as part of the museum. So that was cool.

Obviously, my favorite part was all of the artifacts they recovered from some queens' tombs (all from the same harem, obviously, because all the cool pharaoh's have multiple wives).

I think I have to agree with that. Shoes and toe socks (?) made of gold is a bit above my budget. Ah well, something to dream for.

I would've walked home afterwards because it was actually quite nice and warm afterwards ...

Oh but also dark. And then it started raining. I wasn't particularly looking forward to walking in that through Spanish Harlem and beyond, so I took the bus. Like all the cool people do. And I may have finished the night with a slice of pizza from Koronet ... which was about 15'' long. (That's what she said). And that really was the end, because I barely managed to stumble to my bed to fall into the post-pizza coma. I'm clearly a good decision maker.

Wherein I do not actually stay in (as is usual)

The FNO excitement of the day before tired me out quite a bit so I was useless at work the next day. I did manage to make the most of my seminar (and it was rather fascinating), but afterwards, I was a hot (spacing-out) mess. I also knew that unless I made plans for the evening, I would be having another Downton Abbey night in fueled by Ben and Jerry's.

A very solid option, I thought.

(Thankfully), my lab buddy Laura invited me out for a night at the movies downtown. And apparently, New York does movies fancy.

Columns and palms and fancy doorways, oh my! And apparently, you are NOT allowed to take photos inside the movie theater. Well, all I have to say to that is ... suck it! 

We watched Premium Rush, which was about as plotless as action movies can get. The only upside is that you get to see quite a bit of the New York scenery and especially the Columbia campus. So that's always fun. Plus the glistening bodies of super buff bikers. Those were also quite appreciated. Oh and we might have spiced up our watching experience a bit ... so fun was had all around.

Afterward, Laura's friend N invited us to her gorgeous townhouse by Lincoln Center, and I have now decided that I need to get on with my townhouse savings fund. I mean, girl had a special pool room!

Now I'll be the first to admit that I am not a pool player. In fact, I count it a good day when I am able to hit a ball (any ball) with the cue stick. But yesterday, I was ballin'! At least 3 balls went into the pockets over the course of 2 games. Personal record right here!

Speaking of balling - so was Laura. She won 'Queen of Amazing Poses' award because she did indeed hit the ball in while perched in this manner. Grand applause was had all around.

Fantastic evening? I think so. Future plan - learn to dominate at pool. Actually, no, wait, first - get a pool table. Wait, no, get a room to hold a pool table, first. Ah, so many plans, so little time!

Fashion's Night Out

After all of the excitement of the long weekend, starting the semester again was ... difficult.

I mean, to go from full days of leisure to full days of ... well, actually, it's leisurely reading on fascinating subjects ... and well, that pesky 'go-to-class' bit. Not sure I can get used to a giant class full of obnoxious undergrads anymore. Guess what, apparently getting a nice little piece of paper that says you've graduated totally makes a difference. I now feel completely entitled to make fun of them.

In any case, Tuesday and Wednesday were spent in equal parts at the lab/in class or watching Downton Abbey at home.

Oh wait, did I not tell you about my new obsession?

Well, never mind. I WOULD have stayed in all night Thursday watching it as well, but it just happened to be Fashion's Night Out and I have wanted a sneak peek of that ever since I heard about it a couple of years ago.

So I got all dolled up ... and decided to take the bus downtown. The definition of cheap and chic right here. Except, well, I was supposed to take the M04 bus ... and I saw it coming at the right time and I got on and then I realized that's it was going the wrong way. I panicked, got off, and as I saw it drive away, I noticed that on the back of the bus, it says it was the M104 bus. Guess the "1" wasn't working on the front or something, but let me tell you, it makes a pretty big difference - whether the bus goes down 5th or down Broadway.

So I had to be all Carrie Bradshaw and take a cab instead. I have to say, I do prefer them (and they even have TV screens and news inside!), but my wallet is thankful this won't be a usual occurrence.

After a bit of a misunderstanding, I finally ran into my friend E. Note for future self - going alone is not that fun. Especially if you can't actually afford the clothes. But add a friend into the mix and suddenly it's a fashion party.

 

Oh, just coveting some Michael Kors bags. Too bad there were beefy security guards everywhere ... We actually had to skeddadle pretty quick out of there. If only because of the blaring music and the insane crowd of people.

The problem with FNO is that most of the small boutiques/stores weren't having parties per se ... mostly just loud music and lots of staff members on hand to - well, do nothing, because I don't think I saw anybody buying anything. (Let's face it - in reality, FNO is a lot of high fashion boutiques open late. No sales or anything, but they're hoping the atmosphere of the event will make you want to shell out the two grand you wouldn't shell out in the light of day.) Unfortunately for us, by the time E and I showed up, all of the champagne was gone and we had to do with water. (Not that we were complaining - it was so humid and stuffy, it was quite refreshing!). So next time - show up to the big department stores (not the small boutiques) and show up EARLY. To increase the chance of snagging some bubbly, of course.

Afterwards, E and I decided to keep strolling around downtown and WOWEE, the energy of the city is electrifying! I guess I may be missing out on something with my early bedtimes ... Hmm. On the other hand, sleeping is SO glorious.

And New York is never short of surprises ...

Like the Goat in a Pearl Necklace ...

... or a random red carpet. Werk it! Some very nice Italian gentleman of a certain age (who seemed to be coming out of the woodwork during FNO) offered to be our papparazzi - so we definitely took him up on it! Note to self: schedule daily practice posing time with my mirror.

After having our model moment, E insisted on walking uptown and I agreed (to the very loud protests of my feet). Thankfully the end prize was worth the walk:

Mojitos! I'm usually not a fan but these were AMAZING (and for what we paid for them, they better have been). We sat outside at the French Roast in the warm and humid evening and chatted about anything and everything until a time that was ridiculously past my bedtime. And the world didn't end, wouldn't you believe it! Maybe the rest of these night-going-out people have a point ...