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.

Culture Shock: Snarky Commentator takes MoMA

Well lookie here, I'm on a roll. Third day in a row of doing fun stuff! Since the weather was being a little uncooperative, I decided to head indoors for some New York entertainment.

To MoMA that is! I figured if I'm ever going to start the whole I'm-living-in-New-York-going-to-museums-on-my-lunch-break-and-broadway-shows-on-random-weeknights, it might as well be now.

And I have to admit, the reason I chose MoMA was due to the ridiculously awesome souvenirs they have stocked in their Museum Store. Like I-want-to-buy-everything awesome.

But the curse of modern arts museums is that some modern arts are ... well ... kind of crappy. Now I understand that modern art is supposed to make people think beyond its physical representation and to allow meditation on more profound subjects. But seriously - sometimes, that's just a piece of bullshit.

I present to you ...

Nah, modern art usually costs millions. So this tomato-like get-up will probably set you back at least 199,999$.

Now I'm sure SOME people may find the above thought-inspiring (although guys, we know you just like to stare at boobs). But personally, I find it laughable.

Now that's not to say that there wasn't anything of value in the museum. There were some very interesting exhibitions going on, including one from a photographer tracing the bloodlines of several families ...

Not exactly art, per se, but very engaging.

... and one of inventions for a future world ...

This would be an artifical biological clock, which, taking information from a woman's banker, doctor, etc would let her know when she is prime for having children.

... and one of modern furniture (really cool too - they had this mini-apartment where everything folded together into a cube in the end!).

The last floor, which I guess is where EVERYBODY went is where the more famous painters were displayed - Mondrian, Picasso, Matisse, etc.

Wowee! Everyone and their grandma was apparently there. Note to self: put off further museum trips until the dead of winter.

In any case, there were some really nice Picasso's and even some new painters that I hadn't heard of that I really enjoyed looking at.

Umberto Boccioni, for example.

So MoMA was a success and a great practice for my snarky commentary. Since the weather had actually cleared up by then, I decided to head down Fifth Avenue, just to see more of downtown, and whaddaya know? It is indeed full of stores, just like they say. Now since I'm on a shopping hiatus (too much $$$ spent on the move and I only like to shop for summer dresses anyways), it wasn't as exciting as it could be, but at least I've scope out my route for my usual pre-Christmas shopping bonanza.

Culture Shock: Museum Edition

I realized two things after singing yesterday morning:

1. I was extremely hungry. And sleepy. So much so that I couldn't decide which to do first.
2. The Musee des Beaux Arts is right across the street from the church where I sing.

Considering my inability to make decisions, point No. 1 was postponed. But since the museum is free, I figured, why not? Because let's face it, once school starts, I'll always have something 'better' to do. So I sauntered on over and put on my 'I'm-an-art-connoisseur' face on.

Actually, first, I collapsed on a bench. Due to exhaustion. Then wondered at my insanity - going to a museum (a somewhat exhausting place, both physically - all that walking and looking connoisseur-y, and mentally - why yes, all that artsy thinking is tiring!) while feeling like I'd just run a marathon (and not the measly 2.5 miles I did this morning). Thankfully, I discovered a ziploc baggie of radishes in my purse. My purse is a mysterious, mysterious thing.

But the statue of the extremely skeletal looking meditating lady statue right in front inspired me. It's like she was telling me that staying on this couch would reduce me to her skeletal state. In order to preserve my bit of chub, I had to get moving.

Unfortunately, I only made it through the Impressionists Up to Picasso exhibit (I love me some Monet and some Henri Harpignies) and another random contemporary exhibition upstairs (called Big Bang!) before I really did have to call it quits. Actually, the Big Bang exhibit had a crazy mural room, made by a studio of artists called En Masse (literally - 'all together'), and the museum had thoughtfully provided bean bag chairs for patrons such as myself, who have no museum-fitness (not to be confused with general fitness; museum-fitness includes the ability to walk and shuffle along for long periods of time; the ability to stand in one place with one's head cocked to the side; the ability to read the tiny sign cards explaining the totally absurd abstract paintings; and the ability to do all that while looking like an artiste-hipster ... needless to say, I don't got it yet).

After this brief respite, I briefly meandered around some random rooms upstairs in a sort of a hungry daze, where everything looks like food.

That didn't deter me from my quest to release my inner artiste of course, so I had to take some artsy photos, of course.

The good thing of course is that most of the exhibitions are free and I'll be able to peruse all of them at leisure the coming Sundays.

But next time, I'm bringing lunch.