Weekly Highlights

Here's the rundown on exciting things this week:

Obama will be president for another 4 years!  This makes me happy.

This week was also my away day for work.  On Thursday we had all day meetings outside of the office.  We went to a hotel called Yotel where we basically had a lot of presentations regarding all of the various aspects of my department and the industry in general.  The hotel is kind of strange and futuristic, but it was interesting.  Here is the what the room we were meeting in looked like:

After all of our meetings we all went bowling, which was a lot of fun.  The bowling alley was probably the fanciest bowling alley I think I've ever seen in my entire life.  We even had our own private lanes in our own private room!  They also had ordered these things called beer towers which was kind of a funny sight.  My coworkers are so much fun and so silly.  We had the best time rooting each other on.  I did find out that I am a terrible terrible bowler.  The first game I bowled a 35....sigh.  Oh well.

Then today my roommates and I went to go see the movie Perks of Being a Wallflower.  I read the book on Friday before seeing the movie and I have to say they are both really good.  I think I like the book more, but that's not surprising at all.  They are also pretty heavy but definitely a good read/watch. Here's the trailer for it:


I also finally saw The Hunger Games movie which I had been wanting to see for a while.  I enjoyed it, but the book is definitely way way way better than the movie.  I think they left out a lot of important things.

And that's about it for me.  I'm getting excited for Thanksgiving to be here soon!

Hurricake Pops

As many of you know there was a little thing called Hurricane Sandy earlier this week.  First of all, fortunately I'm fine.  The power didn't go out, it seems there was minimal damage to structures in my area and overall the effect has only been in public transportation.  Basically at the moment traveling anytime is like traveling at rush hour and traveling at rush hour is MADNESS.

So what does one do when one has the day off from work in preparation of a hurricane?  One makes Hurricake Pops of course! I had bought this kit at Target because I thought it looked fun for Halloween themed cake pops that looked like eyeballs.  I've never made cake pops before but since they always looked so complicated I thought having a kit that had all the ingredients and told me what to do would be the way to start.  Basically cake pops take a long time to make because there are a lot of different steps.

First off is to bake the cake part.  In this case it was red velvet cake.  After baking the cake as normal you put it in the fridge for about 15min or so to let it cool.  Meanwhile you mix together a small amount of frosting.  After the cake is cool, you cut it into cubes and crumble the cake into a mixing bowl with the frosting and mix it together until it is a consistency where you can shape it.

Cake/frosting mixture

After you have the cake mixed, you use it to form little balls that then get popped into the freezer for about 20min to harden.

Cake balls

 After the cake has hardened, you melt these things called melting wafers and after inserting sticks, coat the cake in the melting wafer frosting and then stick them upright so they can dry.

Drying cake pops

After the cake pops have dried, you can decorate them with regular frosting!  Since these were Halloween cake pops they were all supposed to look like eyeballs, but that got boring so I ended up making several different designs just for fun.

Finished cake pops!

The pop on the left Monica calls my "Lambchop Cakepop"

I brought in some of the leftovers to work on Thursday (when I could finally get into the office) and they were a big hit!

Another random story:  I had heard that if you think your power is going to go out you should freeze gallon size ziplock bags of water.  That way if the power goes out you have extra water to drink, but also the giant ice blocks help keep your food colder for a longer time.  My roommates and I decided to do this just to be on the safe side and after the hurricane mess was mostly over we took one out and defrosted it in the sink.  It was so funny because it looked just like a pillow!  Well until we had to run the water and the water melted a hole in the middle.  Then it was a donut pillow.

Donut Ice Pillow

And then finally, I alluded to this earlier, but this is a picture I took at the subway station when I was on my way home from work on Thursday:

Luckily I'm smart and realized that if I walked up and around to a different set of staircases at the other end of the platform there were far less people.

Trees and Tragedy

On friday I went on a company community service outing.  They picked us up in buses and took us to a park in Brooklyn where they fed us pizza and then we planted a lot of trees and flowers at a public park.  We went through an organization called New York Cares which I guess organizes most of the corporate community service days in the city.  It was a lot of fun to do good in the community and get my hands dirty.  It was raining when we started so we definitely got pretty muddy.  They also gave us t-shirts!

Getting down and dirty

The other thing I did this weekend was Sat night I saw a play at Columbia.  The play is Antigone, which is a Greek tragedy that I remember having to read in middle or high school (I'm not really sure when).  One of my friends was in it which always makes a performance more enjoyable I think.  He was excellent and the play was good just very...tragic.  But, since it's a Greek tragedy, that's probably what they were going for.

The rest of my weekend is slated for running errands and today I'm having lunch with a friend! :)

Aca-scuse me?

This weekend I actually did not go see a musical or play (gasp, I know right?) but I did still have singing people in my life!

I have been excited to see the new movie Pitch Perfect since I saw the trailer.  My best impression of it was that it is what you might consider Bring it On: Glee Style.

It wasn't something that I figured Seth to be interested in so I figured I couldn't drag him so I've been waiting for the opportunity to drag Kari or Monica instead.  Well, it happened that the movie ended up getting great reviews and Seth decided he wanted to see it.  So we saw it on Saturday!  and I LOVED IT.  It's silly and funny and filled to the brim with very talented singers.  The music was so fantastic that I immediately had to buy the soundtrack.  The funny part was that when I got home after seeing the movie Kari was sad that I had already gone because she decided she wanted to see it...so I saw it again on Sunday.  It was just as awesome the 2nd time around :)

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Another weekend story:

You might remember I did hula at Willamette.  Well, the weather has taken a turn for the colder here but the building has yet to turn on the heat (it's a city-wide kind of thing).  So Kari and I were chilling out (well literally...it was freezing!) and instead of huddling under blankets we decided it would be fun to hula for warmth!  So I ended up teaching Kari a dance and we had a lot of fun.  I was sooo sore the next day though, I always forget that part of it.

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Vaguely speaking of Willamette they had an alumni event on Monday.  It is this thing they do called 7 Cities 1 Night and they have alumni get togethers in 7 cities across the country, including NYC.  So I forced Kari to go with me and we ended up having a great time.  It was at this very swanky restaurant in a hotel right by central park.  It also ended up being an open bar and then waiters circulated with trays of appetizers.  I ended up chatting with some people I had known during my time at WU so that was a lot of fun.

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Monday at work we had another one of those baking days and the theme was Pears.  Now that was a challenging one as I don't think I've ever really baked with pears before.  I ended up finding a recipe on the Betty Crocker website, though, and made Sugar Cookie Pear Bars.  They turned out great and were a big hit at work :)

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I also wanted to share a couple pictures I took one evening.  Seth lives in the part of Brooklyn that is closer to Manhattan and there's a park you can walk to where you can look out and see the statue of liberty and the skyline.  It's pretty cool.  We walked down there at sunset and it was really pretty to see the colors against the buildings.

A Trip to the Museum

This weekend was low key but still fun.  I spent the majority of it relaxing in my pajamas and enjoying my shows (this weekend it was the season finale of Doctor Who and the season premiere of Once Upon A Time).  But I did manage to get out of the apartment long enough to have a fun outing with Seth.  We went to the Museum of the Moving Image.  I've been there once before and it was just as much fun the second time.  We ended up being able to create a flipbook and I made a couple of little movies using stop motion animation!

Here are my masterpieces ^_^

And that was my weekend!

Another Broadway Weekend

It has certainly been a fun weekend!  Starting with Thursday night I finally got to try the 20 at 20 off Broadway show deal that was happening the past couple weeks.  We tried for Avenue Q tickets and actually got them!  So I got to see Avenue Q for $20.  I actually have already seen this show in New York but hey, it's a good show!  It was just as funny as I expected it to be and I enjoyed it immensely.

Then on Saturday I mostly slept in and relaxed.  I then met up with Seth and we took a quick tour of Grant's Tomb.  The tomb is actually right near Teachers College and so I've definitely walked past it before but have never been inside.  It actually reminded me a lot of Napoleon's Tomb in France.

Then today was the Broadway Flea Market!  I knew that this happened but I've never been and I'm so so so glad that I went.  Basically it's a huge fundraiser for Broadway Cares: Equity Fights Aids.  So a lot of different Broadway shows and other theatre organizations have tables where they sell everything from random stuff to signed props from shows to pictures with cast members and all of the money everybody gets goes to Broadway Cares.

I ended up getting a Wicked t-shirt, a couple posters, and won 2 tickets to Phantom of the Opera in a raffle!  It was also just fun wandering up and down the street to see what everyone had at the different tables.

Me with the Newsies cast!

Roomies with matching Wicked T-shirts!

This poster was only $1 and it's the same cast I saw!

Yaay Neil Patrick Harris! ($5 Woo!)

This was the cover they put over the How to Succeed program
For 25 cents I had to have it!

As you can see I got a lot of great deals and had a lot of fun and supported a fantastic charity!  What a good day!

2 Shows 1 Weekend

This weekend was a lot of fun.  Kari's sister Katy and Katy's boyfriend were visiting and so I wandered around with them for a lot of it.  They waited in line on Friday and were able to get rush tickets to see Once. (You usually have to get in line around 6am or earlier to get tickets).  They were super nice and got me a ticket too!

Once was such a good musical.  I was a little surprised I liked it so much because mellow musicals are not usually my forté.  The show itself was so mesmerizing.  It was a little thin on plot, but this is the basic plot: Boy plays music but is sad and wants to give up on music and life. Girl comes in and shows him through music that life is worth living. Boy and Girl are happy again.

Yeah...plot left a little something to be desired.  But the real magic in the show is in the music and the movement on stage.  The actors are also the orchestra so the majority of the show is filled with music. Sometimes it was almost like interpretive dance in the way that they moved around with the music.


The other show I saw was Evita, which I also really liked.  Ricky Martin was in that one, and he is really really talented.  I don't think I quite realized, but it was fun to see him perform in person.  The ensemble were also really talented and the dancing was fun to watch.  The actress who played Eva Perón was talented, but it was a little hard to understand her when she went for the higher notes.  So I'm still not entirely sure what some of the lyrics throughout the show were.  I found a couple good videos for Evita so the first one is the trailer where you can hear Elena Roger sing part of "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" and the other is the Tony performance where you get a little more Ricky Martin.



We were waiting in line a long time so we ended up taking some fun pictures too :)

Other random adventures for the weekend:

Well this is before the weekend, but last week the tv show Smash was filming across the street from my office so I took a couple of pictures.  I think they were filming inside the theatre (hence the super bright lights aimed towards the closed windows)

I also went with the visitors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  One cool place we went to was up on the roof.  I had never been and the view was great!  They also had this strange art installation piece.

The art piece

I also was invited to Seth's parents' home for Rosh Hashanah on Sunday.  I ended up meeting a lot of his family and had a good time :)

Apartment Photo Tour!

I know, I know.  This is super belated.  But here's the photo tour of my new apartment I've been promising for forever.

The front door is on the right and straight ahead is
a coat closet.

Turning around you can see the long hallway

The first door on the right is my room!

My room

More of my room - It's so much bigger than my old room!

My lovely - and big - closet

looking back out the doorway

The next bedroom is Monica's then the next room to the
right is the bathroom with our rockin' shower curtain

The HUGE living room

The back half of the living room...yes we built a fort
Kari's room is to the right of the fort around the corner.

Looking back from the living room is the - also huge - kitchen

Another shot of the kitchen

So there you have it!  Long story short: I LOVE MY NEW APARTMENT!  (And my roommates are pretty awesome too!)

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!