my weekend was too fun so...

i'm a little behind on posting photos.  i've still been relying mostly on the iPhone for this project.  i like my camera, but it's a bit hard to lug around.  i thought about getting a smaller camera before i went to NYC but it didn't happen.  :)  maybe later.

so in the meantime, here are my photos for the last three days.  the first one is a fun picture of my mom from mother-daughter weekend in october.    she cracks me up.















the second photo is me and my great friend erin at the gap.  we tried on turtlenecks that we liked and then discovered that the collars were giant.  we opted not to get them, but we did look pretty cute.















finally, i took some time yesterday to get my christmas decorations put up (i even listened to christmas music while i was decorating...it was a nice afternoon actually.)  so here's a picture of my little tree.  i even made sure my yoga frogs were in the festive spirit.  :)

i predict my next photo will involve pictures of the first real snow fall for the winter.

okay, my coffee still hasn't kicked in today and i'm having some trouble being articulate.  this was another great weekend and i hate that it's already almost over.  one more week of classes and then finals though!!

my classroom is usually less scary

a few of my students have been on crutches in the last week, which means that two of my classes got moved from my usual building to the science hall.  negotiating four flights of stairs isn't easy to do when you're dealing with repaired ACLs and twisted ankles.  today's picture is of some stuff that was in  my classroom this morning.  i'm not sure what that giant saw is used for, and i'm not sure i want to know.  

I wish I could have taken a picture of tonight's sunset...

it was truly amazing.  unfortunately though i was driving my car and only had my iPhone with me which promptly froze up the very second i needed it.  so, i didn't get a new picture taken today.  though i tend to be a rule follower, it isn't clear if i have to take a new picture every day.  it appears others don't necessarily do that, so for today i'll post a picture of the sunset when i was on my way back to dubuque after thanksgiving.  pretty iowa skies.

decemeber photo project

my friend haley participates in this on her blog and inspired me to do the same. i figured since i've been slacking on posts lately that this would give me good motivation to keep my blog more up-to-date. of course, in my haste to get out of the door i forgot my digital camera (plus i'm not sure i could have fit anything else into my school bag), so today's picture is from my iPhone. here's a shot of my desk and perhaps an explanation for why the blog posts have been lacking!

(for the record...the stack on the left of the laptop aren't papers to grade...but it is a pile of stuff that i've been needing to sort through since august. *sigh*)

grading schmading...must finish NYC posts!

saturday in NYC was a busy and yet fantastic day! we had a lot planned, so we got up at a reasonable hour and got ready for the day. on my way to one of the bathrooms, an elderly lady was

peeking out her door saying in a new york accent of some variety: "excuse me....excuse me...are you the maid?" i opted to not answer that question, partly because i was tired and mostly because i figured that yellow pajama pants and an orange striped shirt couldn't possible be confused with a maid's uniform. i'm pretty sure shelley and i spent the rest of the day saying that phrase. :)

first on our agenda was finding some breakfast. we opted for bagels with schmeah and coffee. mine was del

icious!! cinnamon raisin with blueberry schmeah. yumtastic. shelley got an egg bagel with whitefish salad. i was skeptical, but she let me try some and it was really, really good.

after we were full of bagels, we jumped on the subway and headed to the staton island ferry. it turns out the ferry is free and it provides excellent views of manhattan, the statue of liberty, and ellis island. it was also a fun ride! it's going to be hard to put this into words, but it was also amazing to see the statue of liberty. i wasn't expecting to be as excited about it as i was. maybe because i've been spending so much time in my race and ethnicity class recently talking about immigration, but there's just something special and majestic about her. see for yourself.

lady liberty

ellis island

the big apple

kate and shells freezing their asses off

:)

the ferry ride was about 30 minutes, so when we got to staten island, we jumped on a ferry going back to the city, because we needed to get to times square in time to see AVENUE Q!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this is one of my favorite musicals of all time (and probably the same is true for shelley as well). i've been listening the soundtrack for something like 4 years but hadn't seen the show so i was THRILLED when shelley informed me that it was going to be playing off-broadway. i literally almost shrieked in my office upon hearing that news but managed to restrain myself. we hustled to find the theater for the 2:00 matinee. we made it with time to stop at the lobby bar for a $9.00 glass of wine to enjoy during the show. (and no, it wasn't magic wine. it was quite good...but not worth $9.00 probably.)

the show was everything i hoped it would be. i knew the music, but i didn't know many of the plot points that connected the songs, so it was great to finally know why nicky was homeless and what happened with kate monster and princeton. i was so happy to be watching a show that i loved with shelley in new york city that i kept getting all misty-eyed. i'm a total cornball sometimes. during intermission we decided not to buy anymore $9.00 wines, but shelley did procure us two cups of ice which made drinking our mini-baileys a lot easier. :)

after the show, we were starving so we went to an upscale mexican restaurant that we noticed on the way to the theater. i had two of the best fish tacos i've ever had in my life. and we got yummy/fancy margaritas. yum!!

after drinks and food, we wander around times square more. we located one of my favorite things in the world, which was a tim horton's coffee shop. i learned about tim horton's when i was in montreal for a conference and was really glad we found one in NYC. i got a coffee and actually shelley paid for it because they wouldn't take my $20 bill because it was too large. um...

then, in our wanderings we located a cupcake shop that was featured on sex in the city. it's called magnolia and i will say it was worth waiting in drizzly rain to get a cupcake. plus it went perfectly with my latte!

our next stop was bourbon street bar and grill, which is a restaurant that claimed to have the spiciest bloody marys in the city. we tried them out and they were, in fact, quite spicy. i would say spicy enough that it was necessary to imbibe a hurricane afterwards. :)

we then walked back towards our hotel, stopping along the way to shop for souveneirs. our destination was actually a bar called cactus jacks. we were on a quest to see the texas a&m football game, and cactus jacks is the NYC aggie hub apparently. it wasn't exactly easy to find, but we did eventually get there. we had a fun time despite the fact that NYC aggies weren't very friendly to us and that the ags played a sucktastic game. we coped with both situations by drinking beer. (at one point NYC aggies were mistakenly drinking our beer as well...which i guess was inadvertently generous of us, though it would have been nice if they would have bought us a beer to make up for that. whatever.) aggies lost the game and shelley and i got a bit loopy on beer and shots. fortunately our hotel was not far away. we weren't quite partied out though so we went back to stag's head, got some food, got another beer, and then made our way back to the Pod so we could get some sleep. it was a really full and fun day!

the next morning we had to pack up and say goodbye to each other and to NYC. i jumped on the subway and headed back to JFK...realizing at one point that i wasn't on the train that i needed to be on, but luckily i rectified that situation without issue. :)

i'm so glad that i had this opportunity. i declared 2009 "the year of kate" back in january, and in so many ways it has been a phenomenal year. this trip was definitely a part of what has made this one of the best years i've had in a while. :) and 2009 isn't over quite yet, so who knows what else to come!

p.s.- thanks shelley for an awesome time. love you lots. are you the maid?

i should be typing up meeting minutes...

but instead i'm going to finish blogging about my NYC vacation. on friday, shelley and i slept in a bit. we got ready and packed our stuff and then went to meet her friend jon (or "prick" as shells calls him) and his fiance for lunch. we went to a sushi place and by the time we walked there i could have eaten shelley's arm. turns out i should eat breakfast before trekking around NYC with heavy luggage. lunch was really fun and i even forgive everyone for mocking me for being from iowa. (that was a bit of a pattern in NYC...we have gay marriage NYC...do you? oh snap!?!)

after lunch we took a cab to our hotel (thank the lord) and i think we were both very pleasantly

surprised by how awesome it was. here's a picture of our room. the hotel is called The Pod and our room was pretty small, but had everything we needed. the bathrooms were communal style, but they were also really nice. there were four in our area and one had just a shower, one had just a toilet, and the other two had both. we even had little lights above our door that indicated when they were open, allegedly.

after we got settled in, we walked up 5th avenue and checked out some of the stores. before we even got there though, i stopped at some athletic store to get some better walking shoes. ended up with a cool pair of running shoes that made my feet feel very, very happy. after that stop, we went to Saks and Sephora and some other stores. shelley showed me all the crazy expensive stuff in Saks. we looked at and touched a bunch of fur coats. one short, shrug coat made of chinchilas cost $44,500.

needless to say it was a little out of my price range. we also checked out all the

fun shoes. some of them were fantastic and almost all of them were crazy expensive. i picked up more than one pair that cost close to $1000. that made the $300 ones seem much more

reasonable. on the right is a picture of a very fancy necklace we saw in one of the store windows.

while we were walking around (on our way to the empire state building) we ended up near rockefeller center. i'd been on a huge 30rock kick before the trip so it was cool to be there. (i didn't run in to liz lemon though.) i think this was the day we also were on a quest to find a starbucks so that we could have some adult coffees while we wandered. i wisely packed those bailey's minis in my suitcase and they were quite convenient for our purposes. fortunately for us, there are a whole bunch of starbuck's stores in NYC.

we saw times square as well which was fun and then made our way towards the empire state building. we decided to pay to go up the elevator and i'm so glad we did. it was really incredible! awesome views of the city and just one of those experiences that i'll never forget. we saw a bride and groom up there and i'm pretty sure i that one of the security guards was in a documentary that i show to my classes every semester. :) we didn't spend a lot of time up there because it was pretty cold and windy, but it was great!

after the elevator ride back down, we headed to serendipity for dinner. by the time we found it, we were both starving again. by the time we left though, i sort of wanted to get hit by a cab. it is safe to say that we ate WAY too much. the food wasn't all that great (for example, we had the greasiest nachos known to man as an appetizer), but the desserts more than made up for it. in case you haven't heard of this place, it was in the movies Serendipity and One Fine Day and they are known for their frozen hot chocolates. i got the peanutbutter one and it was phenomenal. shelley i think got a regular one and we also shared a slice of carrot cake. i was not well after that. but it was worth it. mostly. :)

once we had sufficiently given ourselves type-1 diabetes, we made our way back to the hotel to get ready to go out with shelley's friend chris. he met us at The Pod and then we walked to Monkey Bar. we picked this place not only because of my love of monkeys, but because it was featured on an episode of Sex in the City. (it's the one where carrie falls for the jazz player.) when we finally found it (there was no sign of course), we found a table to stand around and chris generously bought us a round of cosmos. shortly after our arrival i was chastised for taking pictures of some of the monkey stuff. i still managed to walk out of there with a few though, so take that monkey bar jerks!

after that, we went to a bar called Stag's Head that was close to our hotel and had some beers and enjoyed rocking out to some very loud, but very good music! i didn't get in trouble for taking pictures in that bar, so that was a bonus. :)

after a full day and a lot of walking, i think shells and i were both ready to head to bed! plus we had even more fun planned for saturday.

more on that next time!

more pictures

view from the top of the empire state building!

looking down

library from ghostbusters

me at the plaza

hello kitty

a little preview of the next post. :)

we're still in new york!!!!

vacayshh continued!

i'm having trouble come up with creative ways to start these posts about my NYC trip. not sure what the hang up is but i guess i'll just jump in and hope you'll read despite having no clever hook.

thursday night after riding the subway for about 45 minutes, i popped off and met up with my friend jared. i met him in albuquerque and it was really good to get to catch up again. we headed over to a bar where i had a fantastic watermelon beer. hopefully i can google it or shelley remembers what it's was called. it really was quite remarkable. shells and i were super excited to see each other again and it was great to meet some of jared's friends as well. after we made a schedge, we ended up dropping my stuff off at jared's (thank goodness...i was growing weary of the shoulder-dislocating-carry-on that i brought.) then we headed out and got food and more beer (queue pork slap ale). we actually got to this place (the name is evading me) around 9:30 and slowly ate and drank waiting for the happy hour to start at 11. once the hour struck though, we were informed by our waiter that they weren't doing happy hour because of a private event or something. keep in mind that the place was packed with people with no indication of a private event. and that he knew we had been waiting for happy hour. he knew this because we asked him immediately upon our arrival "when does happy hour start?" he said "eleven." we believed him. needless to say, we weren't too happy about that. jared ended up talking to a manager and somehow worked his magic because our $150 tab ended up being about $70.

we took our surly selves to a bar near columbia that was pretty packed with people. more beer was consumed and good times were had. i managed to leave a $10 bill instead of a $1.00 for a tip on the first beers for shelley and i. luckily the bartender was awesome about it and gave me my money back. thanks new york! after much beer consumption and long distance mocking of a seeming douchey guy and his entourage of women who seemed to just be tolerating him, we went to the restaurant made famous by Seinfeld. i ordered something called gravy fries, which are fries with gravy on them. go figure. :) they were actually pretty good though. shells and jared and i then went back to his apartment and went to bed. i was definitely exhausted after not getting a lot of sleep the night before. big thanks to jared for hosting us on night one of new york fun!

gotta love vacayshh!! part 1

over fall break i had the opportunity to go to new york city with my friend shelley. this was a fantastic way to round out the last few months in the Year of Kate! i've been wanting to visit new york city since i was a kid. i had lofty goals of going to NYU when i was looking at college materials my junior year. (my plan was to major in everything so i'd probably still be finishing my bachelor's degree had i actually applied or been accepted.) now...many years later, i finally got to see the Big Apple and it was nothing sort of a fantastic trip.

shelley and i devised this plan a while ago based on our mutual love of the show sex in the city. sometime during the summer, an insanely cheap ticket popped up from MLI to JFK and finally our NYC weekend came to fruition. shells lives in philly and we haven't hung out since my ABQ days so we were WAY overdue for some girl time. it was great getting to share my first NYC experience with her!!

the beginning of the trip started out with a bit of drama. on wednesday after classes and meetings, i was scurrying around my apartment trying to get everything packed and organized. i rented a movie from iTunes so i could watch it on my phone and in the process of trying to get it transferred over, iTunes asked me if i wanted to update my software. i hesitated for a minute, wondering what the correct answer to that pop-up box was, and then clicked "yes" thinking this would not be a big deal. that turned out to be a HUGE mistake. not being a computer expert, i can't explain what happened next. i will tell you that my windows software also decided to update at the same time and somehow in the process of all of these updates, my iPhone exploded. not literally, but indeed something was very wrong with it. in my attempts to fix the situation, i'm sure i made it worse and before i knew it, the only option was for me to restore my phone. i gave it a shot and that didn't work either. i would get an error message and it wouldn't let me restore it. thus the catch-22 begins. i decided to reboot the laptop, since this is sometimes a useful solution. because of the windows update, that process took a very long time. it literally said it had to update 17 different things. 17. so while it was taking it's sweet-ass time doing that, i washed some dishes, made sure everything was packed, took my luggage to the car, took the garbage out, and when all that was finished it installing update 14 of 17. keep in mind that my plan was to meet my friend jeremy in the quad cities for dinner and then he was graciously going to let me stay at his place so i could catch my flight at 6:15 the next day from moline. so all of this phone drama is putting me behind schedule. after the computer finally rebooted, i tried to restore my phone again and it didn't work. again. this is the point where i start to panic a bit, because i figured that i would need my phone on this trip. this...my first trip ever to NYC. the trip that is giving me a little anxiety about traveling on subways by myself with luggage. plus, like most of you, i don't have people's numbers memorized anymore. so i might need shelley's number at some point. as well as my friend jared's, who we stayed with on the first night. and probably jeremy's since he was likely wondering what the hell was going on. i emailed jeremy to let him know the deal and that i would be in touch when i had a working phone. i grabbed my old motorola and managed to locate it's charger (which was a miracle.) then i hauled to davenport, making it to the at&t store two minutes before they were closing for the night. yes...i'm sure they hated me. but i think i won them over with my desperation. fortunately they were able to get my iPhone restored and because i had the good sense to bring my old phone, some of my contacts were also retrieved. i was so happy that i hugged the nerdy guy who works there which probably made him very uncomfortable. seriously, i can't express the relief i felt when the phone was operational again! i grabbed some food and then headed over to jeremy's about 4 hours after i planned to be there.

fortunately, that was where my travel woes ended. the flights to NYC were good, though a little delayed. the subway ride was uneventful and pretty easy to navigate. and before i knew it, i was in manhattan, giving shelley and jared hugs, making a schedge for the evening, drinking a beer that tasted like watermelon (and then another called Pork Slap...it didn't taste like pork), eating yummy pizza, meeting new people, exclaiming often "I'M IN NEW YORK!," eating gravy fries at the Seinfeld diner, and generally just having a GREAT time. there is a lot more to write about, but since this post is already on the long side, i'll write more later.



WE'RE IN NEW YORK!!!!