Assorted other things

Yeah I know, I just posted about the shows but that post was getting a tad long so I thought I'd start anew and share some random pictures:

I went to this bar in Brooklyn that is somewhat Doctor Who themed!  They had a TARDIS in the back even!

Kari and Monica and I made a fort this weekend.  Because clearly that is what one should do with a huge living room. :)  It is an excellent fort to be sure.

I know many of my readers already know this, but I have a boyfriend now :)  I've heard a bit of clamoring for pictures so here's a good one of us when we went to the Intrepid.  (Ah hah, I now here you say....I wonder what other blog post stories she was with this person in!)  His name is Seth and he's  very awesome.

Also, just to do a bit of bragging...he brought me flowers randomly a couple weeks ago!  I don't think I've ever been given flowers just randomly, sure after a show or valentines day maybe, but not just out of the blue! It was the sweetest thing :)  And they were so pretty!

Side 1

Side 2

On an unrelated note, my mother made curtains for my apartment!  I clearly have the best mother in the universe.  She found a really pretty purple fabric that has a rose design on it, we took all the measurements and then she made them to fit the windows.  I know I still haven't done the photo tour...I keep forgetting to take pictures and then my room gets messy again but hopefully soon.

Pretty curtains!

If you want to Rent a Guvnor....

Ok so the title of this post makes no real sense....but I saw two shows this weekend!  Apparently after several months of being stressed out and not able to go see shows I'm making up for it now.

It starts off because my friend Laura's friend really wanted to come to NY.  I guess it's been his dream for a long time.  So she asked me if it would possibly be alright for him to crash on our couch for a couple of days.  He came with rave reviews and after a discussion with my roommates we decided that would be alright.  Turns out he was really fun!  He basically went off and just did stuff all day on his own so not only was he a fun person to get to know, but was a very low maintenance house guest.  Monica has really been wanting to see Rent before it closes (next week) and they were having a discount on tickets so we all ended up going to see it on Thursday.

I really like the musical Rent.  I've seen it several times both on stage, the movie movie version, and the filmed live on stage movie version.  I knew that they had done a revival off broadway, but when I saw clips and reviews from it, it seemed like it was lacking something.  So I went into the show with very low expectations.  It was actually a fairly good show.  The stage is much smaller than the original and so they played well with the space which was fun to see.  Also the actress who played Maureen was fantastic.  She had an amazing voice and really seemed to have a lot of fun with the character.  It also really stood out to me after seeing it why it's closing.  I think they tried to revive an extremely popular show too soon after it had closed on Broadway.  They changed and updated some things about the show (like Angel's costumes) but other things remained exactly the same.  The actors were okay, but some were definitely better than others.  For example, the soloist in Seasons of Love just did not have a strong enough voice to sing that part.  It sounded weak when that song is supposed to be the highlight of the show.  The actress who played Mimi had a beautiful voice..but sometimes made really odd choices, especially in the song "Out Tonight" making her not as fun to watch as I would have wanted.  So basically while I enjoyed it and I thought it was a decent production, it was definitely a ghost of its former self.

Anyway, last night Kari and I got rush tickets to see One Man Two Guvnors. I am so so so glad I got to see this show as it closes today and was one I had been wanting to see since it opened.  It stars James Corden who is a British actor and the only reason I know who he is is that he was in a couple episodes of Doctor Who.  This show was running on the West End and they brought it to Broadway for the summer.

The rush line at One Man Two Guvnors

It's really hard to explain what the show is about because it's one of the most ridiculous plays I think I've ever seen.  It's extremely silly, characters kept breaking the fourth wall and interacting with the audience, a musical act would come up and play during scene changes, and it involved a lot of slapstick humor.  Basically I thought it was hysterical.  I guess if I had to describe the plot, there's this girl who is supposed to marry a guy named Roscoe, but Roscoe was killed by his twin sister Rachel's boyfriend.  But Rachel still loves her boyfriend, but since he's wanted by the police she comes up with this plan to dress as her twin brother in order to marry the girl in order to get a lot of money (part of the marriage deal) so that they can flee to Australia.  But the girl wants to marry her love Alan (Alan the actor who struts about the stage).  And then James Corden's character is that he ends up employed separately by both Rachel and her boyfriend and then gets very confused as to which Govnor (Govnor means boss in British speak) he's supposed to be doing stuff for.

I found videos which are pretty fun.  The first one just the general clips of the show, which should give you a little of an idea how crazy and ridiculous this play actually is.  And then the second one is James Corden performing at the Tony Awards.







After the show I did manage to get James Corden's autograph, which was fun.  I can now say I've finally met someone who's been on Doctor Who!

So Many Adventures...So Little Time

Ok ok..so I haven't done the photo tour yet....I'm working on it!  I finally got my posters up in my room so I can only assume a photo tour is not far behind.

But first!  I've been having a lot of fun adventures recently so this will be yet another super long post with a lot of pictures.

The countdown has started and my summer fridays are slowly dwindling (in fact I only have one left) so before they are gone forever (or until next summer) I decided to enjoy them!  So last weekend when I got off work on Friday I ended up going to the Intrepid Museum.  It is a museum that is on an old military aircraft carrier.  It also has a submarine that you can tour.  I had never been so it was really interesting to go and see everything.  It is also currently housing the Enterprise Space Shuttle, which was really awesome to see.  The best part was that when I got up to get my student discounted ticket they informed me that as a Columbia student I got in for free!  (Sometimes I love having gone to Columbia).

The outside of the Intrepid

The Space Shuttle!

This is a picture from when they flew the Enterprise around the city

There was a Disney Cruise Ship parked next to it

The Submarine

There is a typo on this sign and it made me laugh...can you find it?
(hint: 2nd paragraph 3rd line)

Random interlude between activities:
I made pie!!!  It was just chocolate pudding inside a ready-made chocolate graham cracker crust but it was DELICIOUS

Also when I was walking to the Intrepid from work the Glee people were hanging out in Times Square to promote the 3rd Season on DVD.  They had a purple piano so I went and played it!

Saturday morning of that same weekend was a little bit crazy in that my roommates and I all got up at 5am (5AM!!!) in order to go to Central Park (we got there at 6:30am) and wait in line for tickets to see Into the Woods (part of the Shakespeare/Sondheim in the park series).  I've always wanted to see one of these shows which are free and in the really cool theatre in Central Park but tickets are hard to get.  They don't hand out the tickets until 1pm and since they're free people line up super early to wait.  Into the Woods is a musical that I love and fun people like Amy Adams were in it so we decided to try.  So we waited from 6:30am until 1pm through a pouring thunderstorm while half asleep.  We got tickets though so it was totally worth it!  Even though we got there so early we were not at the front of the line by any means.  In fact I found out the people who were at the very front (like first 5 or so) got in line at 2am.  Now that's just insane.

The line in front of us

The line behind us

Me guarding our place in line (yes I caved and bought a chair from
the guy running up and down selling them)

The other funny thing about waiting in the giant line is that there are these guys who bike up and down selling umbrellas, ponchos, and camp chairs for actually not outrageous prices.  There is also a deli that you can call and will actually deliver your food to the line.  We did that for lunch and it really wasn't bad.  So all in all it wasn't a bad experience (mostly after it stopped raining).

On Sunday I took a trip to the Bronx Zoo!  This is supposed to be one of the best zoos in the country actually and it was a very good one I have to say.  I haven't been to a zoo in ages so that in itself was super exciting plus just to be going there was fun.  Again, I was able to get cheap tickets online through my Columbia connections.  I only brought my cell phone which isn't the best for animal picture taking so I don't have that many pictures.

And finally, last night (basically a full week after the other events in this post) Kari and I were able to get last minute tickets to see The Best Man.  This is a play I've been wanting to see and since it's closing the first week of Sept it's a good thing I got to go!  It is a play written by Gore Vidal about the presidential primaries in Philadelphia in 1960 but the interesting thing is that it is still very relevant to today.  There was also a massive amount of celebrities (names are on the sign in the picture) in the cast so that was fun as well.  It was a really good play even though I think a lot of the references kind of went over my head considering I don't know that much about politics and I especially don't know that much about politics in the 1960s.

Catching Up

I know, I know, it's been forever since I've posted.  But I've had a good reason, well 2.  One reason is that I was moving which involves lots of packing and generally being crazy and the second is that I didn't even have internet again until last week.  But I'll try and hit the highlights in this post and once I've finally finished organizing and unpacking I'll do a photo tour of my new apartment :)

So, starting out.  The moving!!!

Moving was very stressful, but I did it!  A couple of key points:

I drove the following van through NYC loaded up with my stuff.  Be impressed, I know I am.

Here are a couple of the moving photos:

Empty old closet

Empty old living room

The moving van partially full

Piling everything at the new apartment

My old - and tiny- empty room

After all the moving craziness, Kari and I decided to give ourselves a little break and we saw Simon Amstell!  He's a British comedian who I like and who I never ever expected to actually do a show in the US since he's not very well known here.  But he did a show, and I got to go see it, and he was hysterical.  I'm so glad I was able to see him perform live :)

This is a picture of the stage, there was a projection on the stage
saying "NUMB" (The name of the tour)

Me with Simon Amstell!

Other random things:

BBC America has a new show that will air on August 19th called Copper.  There is a lot of marketing going behind it and they have ads all over the Times Square subway station which I think is super cool.

This is Joanna - she's Kari's birdy :)  She's a canary and is super cute.

I had these strange round ice cube things that I had never tried and the other night I got the bright idea to put Midori (and water) into it and see what would happen.  I ended up with  Midori ice cube!  It went great in my Midori sour :)

And then this weekend a family friend is visiting so we've been wandering around the city.  We ended up getting super cheap tickets to a musical that is part of the New York International Fringe Festival. The show was called "Non-Equity The Musical"  It was basically about 6 non-equity actors living their lives in nyc, going to auditions, and how hard it is.  It was cute, but definitely could use some work.

The theatre where we saw the show

Ok well I think that's all I have to update on for now.  I will try to get a photo tour of the apartment up soon.  But basically I loooove my new apartment, I'm so excited to be living with awesome roommates who also happen to be two of my favorite people.  It's a pretty exciting time!

Moving is Awful

I'm packing!  And no I'm not done.  But I'm making progress!

An Oregon Adventure

We take a small break in Big Apple Adventures to bring you an Oregon Adventure!

Yep, for the past week I've been in Oregon visiting my parents and my grandparents who are also visiting.

Basically it was a very relaxing week of shopping (no sales tax, woo hoo!), seeing friends from college, visiting with former coworkers, eating at the restaurants I can't go to in NY, and I'm probably forgetting something but that seems about the gist of it.  I'm actually writing this post from the airport as I wait to take my red-eye outta here.

I made potato chip cookies with my grandma which was fun.  I've always loved these cookies and now I finally know how to make them.

Salem is doing this art installation thing where they placed pianos all over the city that anyone could go and play should they so desire.  So my mom took a couple of pictures of me playing the piano that is on the pedestrian bridge.

I guess the only other major news is that I got my hair cut!  I love that it takes me literally 30 seconds to dry in the mornings again.

I also ended up going through a lot of boxes of my childhood possessions, especially books from elementary school and finally got rid of a ton.  I'm actually going to donate many of the children's books to the library of an elementary school in California named after my great-great-grandfather!  When I was looking through all of the boxes I found all the old vhs home videos my parents had taken through the years and man, they were hysterical to watch.  I ended up recording a few of them from the tv just to have so here's a glimpse.

This is Track Day at the my elementary school in 1994 so I would have been in 1st grade.  Clearly my athleticism knows no bounds.

Well, I think that's everything for now.  New York here I come!!

Stress

So I've kind of been a giant ball of stress and emotion recently, hence the lack of posting.

But I did have a fun weekend a couple of weekends ago when Tom came to visit me!

He was just here for the weekend and he's done most of the normal touristy stuff before so I decided to take him on "Allison's Awesome Adventure Tour".  Stops include Toys R Us, the Nintendo World store, the Lego store, and Dylan's Candy Bar.  Oh and we saw Phantom of the Opera.  Basically, we had a lot of fun :)

On the subway!

Monica came to visit too!  I also met another friend of Tom's!

Other than that I haven't done a whole lot.  I was briefly distracted from real life with the Colorado Wildfires.  Luckily everyone I know seems to be ok but it was a pretty scary couple of days.  And I'll definitely miss the Flying W :(

I've also been dealing with apartment drama but I won't get into that here.  So basically it's been a bundle of emotions, which helps illustrate my theory that I post less when I'm stressed out and you can tell exactly what months are more stressful than others by the amount of posts that they have :P

Oh! I almost forgot!  I have a new baby cousin tooo!  He's completely adorable :).

Ok, that's all for now.  I'll be in Oregon next week for a quick trip which is super exciting too!