One Can Always Use a Little Harry Potter in One's Life

This update is a little belated, but I've been busy being the quarter of a century adult that I'm supposed to be!  Memorial day weekend was really great and relaxing, something that I definitely needed.  So working (somewhat) backwards, on Monday all I did was lounge around and clean my room, which was fabulous!  And now my bookshelf doesn't look like it exploded anymore.  Then Monday after work I dropped off my laundry and went to the grocery store.  See...adult.

Anyway, before that I mostly hung out a lot with Kari and her sister Katy who was visiting and I we had a blast!  Since I got off work before Kari, I hung out with Katy on Friday while we waited for her to get off work.  She wanted to see Mood fabrics so I took her there.  Then we thought we'd try our hands at the Book of Mormon lottery and, turns out, Katy got her name pulled!  So that was exciting for them since neither of them have seen the show.  I've seen it twice at this point and while it's an amazing show, I wasn't all that broken up about not seeing it again.  So after a quick bite, I left them at the theatre and headed back to my place.

On Saturday I walked over to Kari's with some overnight stuff in preparation for a sleepover!  Ok, actually before that happened I was supposed to wake up super early and go stand in line with them for rush tickets to Once.  Katy had been trying every day since she got to the city, getting there at 7:30 in the morning and was still too far back in line to get tickets.  So on Saturday the plan was for them to go look at the line and then I would join them later (and bring coffee as my payment for being late hehe).  Even though they got there at 7ish, it still seemed like the line was too long so they decided to forgo that idea for the moment.  Instead, I ended up seeing something in my email about getting $5 student tickets to see Potted Potter so when I suggested that, they were game.

Ok, Potted Potter is a show I've been desperately wanting to see because, of course, it's about Harry Potter.  It's a parody that these guys from the UK put together and it's advertised as all 7 books in 70 minutes plus a game of quidditch thrown in.  I would have been able to get $30 discounted tickets through TDF, but even that seemed a little steep for what it seemed like this show was.  $5, however, was the perfect price!

It was extremely funny.  Definitely not $30 funny, but I'd say anywhere up to $15 funny.  I think I laughed the entire time.  It's similar to The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged.

This is their preview for the show:




Saturday night I spent the night at Kari's place and then Sunday night she and Katy spent the night at my place and we ended up ordering food and making colorful chocolate chip cookies (I still had food coloring left over from my birthday cake).  All in all, a great weekend!

Birthday Adventures

After graduation I had another fun event to look forward to:  My birthday!  I always get excited about my birthday, and this year was no exception.  The fun part was I think I had more friends around for my birthday than I have in several years.  In Oregon most of my buds went home for the summer, so not everyone was around.  Last year I had a small group of my TC friends, which was nice.  But this year, I not only had pretty much all of my TC friends, but I also had a pretty good selection of Willamette folks as well!  It was more than I ever could have asked for :)

I ended up working on my birthday, but it was a Friday so you know what that means! BAGELS!!!!  Only in this case it was not only Bagel Friday, it was Birthday Bagel Friday!  Woo hoo!  One of my co-workers took me out for lunch too, which was super nice.

Immediately after work I made my way to Columbia where we had a reservation at Amsterdam Cafe.  Amsterdam Cafe is a (kind of) tapas restaurant near TC that I like to go to.  I like their tapas menu and they have pretty good drinks so and it's pretty convenient to most of my friends, so I decided that would be a nice place to go and meet my friends.  The plan was to have dinner and drinks and then go back to my place for cake (which was amazing, but I'll get to that in a second).  We ended up talking and laughing so much that we didn't end up leaving the restaurant until about 11pm, so only Monica and Kari came back with me to my place, which was fine but kind of sad since they had both already seen the cake.  So no one new got to see the cake in person, but we ate it and it was delicious.

What follows is a lot of pictures of my awesome birthday cake....I had a really hard time picking them.  I took waaaayyyy more photos than one person ever needs of a single cake, but I was so excited by the theme of my cake that I got a little carried away.

The cake without the toppers

We stored it in the microwave overnight so the frosting wouldn't get messed up

That's right...I had a Harry Potter cake!!!!!!!!!!!

Harry is on a broom :)

With candles

Artsy candle shot

It was funfetti flavored cake

The next day, Saturday, Kari, Monica, and I decided to check out this dance parade that was happening near Union Square Park.  Turns out, it was a lot of fun.  I guess any dance group could sign up to dance down the parade route so you really had a variety.  It started off with these different cultural dance groups, like flamenco for example.  It then went into some ballroom and hip hop.  There were also some cheerleading groups and even a Zumba class.  Towards the end of the parade, however, the dancers did become a little more strange.  I saw several dancers dressed as zombies and at the tail end of the parade were a lot of dancers in strange costumes waving their hands in the air and "feeling the music, man"

After the parade we met up with Jessie and Alyssa at Rockefeller Center and just toured around.

Can't pass up an opportunity to have my picture taken with Harry Potter

Then, the highlight of Saturday came.  We were going to see Harvey starring Jim Parsons!  Jim Parsons is one of the stars of The Big Bang Theory, one of my favorite shows.  I knew the play itself would be very funny so I was really looking forward to it.

The show did not disappoint.  It was very funny and extremely well cast.  It's a very new show, previews just started on the 18th, meaning it hasn't even officially opened yet.  Hence the lack of a good video to post.  But I think it will do well.  

 After the show we decided to check out the stage door, and I was even able to get Jim Parsons' autograph!

I'm A Master!

That's right!  I'm now officially a Master!  And not only that but I'm now a 25 year old Master!  Needless to say, it's been an eventful week.  So we'll talk about graduation in this post and then I'll cover everything else in a separate post.

Graduation is actually made up of two ceremonies.  There is the Teachers College ceremony where they called my name and I walked across a stage and shook the presidents' hand and all of that, and then there is the Columbia ceremony where all of the graduates (both grad and undergrad) all congregate and are recognized by school.  It was a lot of fun and I'm really glad I could walk in the ceremony even though I finished all of my classes in December.

My dad was able to take a couple of videos of the ceremony, so I edited them together so if you watch that it's like you were there!  Only better because it is only the important bits :)

Before donning the gown

The sign for my program

The TC ceremony was in the St John of the Divine church

Before the big ceremony at Columbia

They gave us apple shaped stress balls because we're Teachers College

It really was a sea of blue with all the graduates

The Numbers

Here's my life at the moment in numbers:

2 1/2 hours until I'm on a train to DC!

3/4 of a day until I see my parents!

1 day until my cousin's baby shower!

4 days until my commencement ceremony from Teachers College!

5 days until my commencement ceremony from Columbia University!

1 week until my 25th birthday!


Exciting times, right?

And on an completely unrelated note and just because I don't like having text-only entries in my blog...I'm really excited for the Tony Awards this year!

Elementary, My Dear Watson

Several little things to talk about in this post.

On Thursday night there was a cool event that I went to.  There is a show on BBC called Sherlock and basically it's a revamped telling of Sherlock Holmes set in a modern day time.  It is really really well done and the second season begins airing in the US this week.  So as part of the publicity, the apple store did a talk and Q & A with the producers and writer of the show.

The event was a lot of fun and one of the coolest things that also happened the same day is that the second season playlist went live on iTunes, so people can begin purchasing the season pass.  There's also a short preview trailer up for free as well.  As of today (Sat) this playlist is now the #2 purchased season in the iTunes store.  This is pretty big considering there isn't even any real content live yet!

We're all pretty excited about it at work :)

And then switching gears to Friday night - I took my roommate and another friend to go to a free dance performance at NYU.  It was a compilation of student work and the reason I knew about it is that a friend of mine choreographed one of the pieces.  My friend Alex I knew actually in Colorado Springs, he was in Les Miserables and The Secret Garden with the Youth Rep Theatre that I was involved in high school.  He moved out to the city in the fall for school and this is the first time I've actually seen him.  It's actually the first time I've seen him since probably since we did theatre together.  So anyway, it was very exciting to get to catch up with him and hear how his life is doing.  He choreographed a short dance piece entitled "everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die".  It was an interesting piece and you could tell the dancers were very talented, but mostly I went because it was fun to catch up with someone from my past.

We were in the mood for ice cream after the show and Alex recommended a place nearby.  Apparently this place is somewhat of a NYC institution because there was a line out the door.  Luckily the weather has been a little nicer so we waited in line and got our ice cream and walked around for a bit before heading home.

Yes, the store is in fact called The Big Gay Ice Cream Shop

I just had a chocolate cone with rainbow sprinkles but Kari got a cone called "American Gobz" and Dalia got the "Salty Pimp".  Like I said, it was an entertaining place.  If you look closely you can also see the giant mural of a unicorn on the wall behind me.

I bought ticket to see Harvey today too!!!  I'm going to go with some friends as a little birthday treat to myself and I absolutely cannot wait!