lyrics from avenue Q, a touching song, one of the few nonfunny songs:

KATE MONSTER
"There's a fine, fine line
between a lover, and a friend.
There's a fine, fine line
between reality, and pretend;
And you never know 'til you reach the top
if it was worth the uphill climb.

There's a fine, fine line
between love...
and a waste of time"

4 am. i havent been up this late in a while. i'm on such a strange sleeping schedule - jet lag? not having slept for about a week? not sure what it is.

so much to do! i've never housecleaned at 3 am before. back to reality now that I'm back home - mail, laundry, housecleaning, organizing for class tomorrow.

which classes should i skip tomorrow... or actually class that starts in 5 hours.

NY ~ what a great time. It's really cemented my love for travelling, how is it that the last city I visit jumps to the top of my list of favorite cities? Now that Jen and I have cemented our notoriety as "celebrity stalkers" (i promise, we don't sit and wait for them, they come to us...), my faves were: Andy from Apprentice, John Tartaglia from Avenue Q (so cute!). Others: Drew Lachey, and John Norris that I saw on the subway (such a nice guy). Mostly, I got to cruise through two museums (the Met, the Natural History Museum), saw a lot of sights (Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Chrysler Building, Central Station, Central Park), meet up with friends, watch two musicals ($20 tickets!), Trump Tower), and ate a lot, as well as shop a little bit.

• favorite pasttime at subway stops: looking for mice in the tracks.
  
• daily pasttime: waiting in line for avenue Q at the lottery (chances were 6 out of 80-100, depending on how many people that showed up) and then getting my name picked on my last night in NY. Chances are not so good tho - I recommend waiting til the hype dies down a bit before going to see it, if you want to go for the lottery tickets.
  
• another broadway moment: i highly recommend waiting in the lottery for rent, chances are pretty good (over 50%) and we got second row, center seats! the cast is amazing, with Frenchie Davis and others.
  
• nightlife: drinking margaritas at the west end
  
• pet peeve: or something I was self conscious about: trying not to look like a tourist, altho a bit difficult with the hot pink Fodor's New York Guide in my purse
  
• coincidence: running into my roomie's boyfriend at the natural history museum, and then seeing an old high school friend at serendipity (I can't believe junior yr in high school was 8 years ago)
  
• biggest fear: getting mugged and losing all my pictures
  
• loved: the variety of foods available - Indian, Ethiopian, Serendipity... also got to visit Bobby Flay's restaurant, Bolo. Slightly overrated, but still good.
  
• hated: nothing? not being able to live there and returning to podunk city ;).
  
• what I still don't know: the districts in NY (or is Manhattan an island? The difference between Manhattan and NYC? How come so many islands? Staten, Riker's, Ellis, Manhattan...)
  

Times Square



on Broadway




At the Stuart Little pond, Central Park



Trump Tower.

The very next day, I meet:

Randie, this is for you... sorry it's not the greatest picture of him. my sister accidentally took video footage of him (instead of a snapshot) so you have to teach me how to freeze frame it. :) 


i think we make a cute couple. ;)

i met drew lachey (yes, nick lachey's brother) and the only thing I could think of to tell him was to tell him how I loved invisible man.

he laughed. :)

i felt like such a dork but so star struck. so many girls came towards him, just thrusting paper and a pen at him, but i shook his hand and ended up taking a picture with him three times b/c my brilliant sister can't take pics properly (but it turned out to be ok since he ended up holding me three times :) :) He was really nice about it, very patient.

rent was awesome! definitely the best cast i ever saw, a very satisfying experience... we sat second row, center... the best possible seats in the house! roger was really really good, jen and i are in love~

after two failed lotteries at avenue Q yesterday (*such* a bummer) and a trip all the way out to the met only to find that it was closed, finally we got some luck and got picked in the lottery to see rent. my trip has really begun - going shopping tomorrow, and going to see statue of liberty on thurs... and my aunt is coming to visit the flagship store of PRADA and got reservations at bobby flay's restaurant! hehe i love it when relatives take me out. ;)

i'm on vacation!! unluckily, post finals, I had to give a talk two days afterwards for which I crammed for the day after finals, and the day before the talk. not fun. But now I'm in NY! So much fun, seeing Times Square late at night and having margaritas near Columbia.

hopefully Avenue Q tomorrow~ I'm so happy even just to be SLEEPING IN... i think for me, as of now, heaven would be sleeping in, in a huge california king bed...

:)

wow, sorry if my last few blogs were a bit depressing! even the picture of the pieta is a little scary and gloomy. maybe i'll update my profile to give all you readers (like all two of you :D) something cheerful to look at. (and no, I will refrain from putting up another picture of jason mraz :)

i think i've been growing just a tad the past few weeks - dealing with my future, learning a little about myself, and facing the possibility of change in my life (or hoping for it :). or being happy with being where i am. i guess be careful what you wish for huh? anyways, so sorry if I've been so depressing. Also, finals and sleep deprivation don't always put me in the best moods, altho I do have to remind myself that I'm really exactly where I wanted to be, and even more than I ever expected to be.

i do feel better. maybe it was that tv break (oprah season premiere was awesome!) and a breather from studying, and a really late but yummy pasta lunch. hm, what should i make for dinner...

i watched super size me the other day. i'm NEVER eating chicken nuggets again. that's what i always used to eat at McD's as a kid, the chicken nugget happy meal. it's a really good movie, highly recommended by me.

one more final to gooooooooooooooooooo!! here's to late nights, marble slab ice cream, 5:30 am wakeup calls, powerpoints, panic attacks, library study rooms, and not failing~


ok, i lied. :D couldn't help it, here's a pic of jason mraz. at least it's a happy picture! do you see toca in the background? we met him! he was so nice, he went around the table and tried to memorize everyone's name. 

it's 5:52 am. i always regret not studying until the last minute.

hm, i should use this time to study instead of blogging, huh? :P

a pic i took of michelangelo's "pieta" at st. peter's church in rome. a beautiful sculpture, and my dad touched it up so it looks like it's glowing. 

in the still of the morning... i like this quiet time, before the stresses of the day has begun. finals week is still dragging on - but it's almost over, soon. the end of finals is always so anti climactic.

been feeling like i've not had control of my life lately. not that I do anyways but I feel like it's been a learning process.

I took a nice break last night... should have been studying, but I needed some time away. I visted my aunt in Folsom, and of course, good food is always guaranteed there! haven't been eating well, so it was nice. I also got to stop by Trader Joe's - I love that place. I had bought a blueberry juice there a few weeks ago and I've been trying to save it, so I bought myself two more yesterday. :) Hm, my roomie tells me that there's word that they might open one here in town... wow, that'd be great!! Now that there's a Cheesecake Factory, a Banana Republic outlet, and an Ikea (coming soon), all we need is Trader Joe's, Lush, and a French Connection. :) Then I'd feel like the next best thing to being in a city, is to bring all the things in a city, to me.

9/11

an excerpt from a widow of a man who died in 9/11, who helped storm the cockpit on Flight 93. She's referring to her last conversation with him on the phone while he was on the flight, when he told her he didn't think he was going to make it. She is also writing in the form of a letter to her daughter.

"Later, reporters asked me how we were able to help each other so effectively when we should have been paralyzed by fear. I told them I didn’t know, and I didn’t. Maybe now I have a better idea. I know that the most important thing about that last telephone call wasn’t the information I gave your father about what happened in New York and Washington, although your daddy needed to know those things before he could decide whether to try to break into the cockpit and kill the hijackers; it wasn’t even the few minutes we were able to spend talking about you and the future we would never have together. It was a few words said over and over, like a chant we repeated until it hung like a frozen rope between us. We said, “I love you.” We said it so many times, I hear him saying it still."

Article here.

"Note to self. Fall in love. Make peace with the cosmos. Learn your medicine. Outlive your parents. Find yourself, and live. Forever."

think big picture... trying to ignore the fact that i really don't quite know what the difference between actinic keratoses and keratoacanthoma is (completely different diseases? different degrees of malignancy? both, either, or?)... derm final today. two down, three more to go (not that i'm counting :)

an amazing love story (written from the viewpoint of her fiancee)... sandy and i've known about each other from high school, or we had a lot of mutual friends. and then i met up with her again in college, being in the same major and year together. i never ended up knowing her all too well, but i stumbled across her blog and read her amazing love story. so inspiring, gives me hope. :)

a website that reflects my political view. really upset over some people trying to use the religion card to their advantage, when they don't realize first of all, what the religion they advocate stands for, and two, realize that they're ruining it for others as well.

instead of writing about how stressed out or sleep deprived or how desperate about finals i am and trying to figure out if actinic keratoses and keratoacanthoma the same thing... or different degrees of the same thing... <:( there is such a bigger picture out there, beyond looking at closeup pictures of moles and warts etc... (derm final today)

an amazing love story... (this story is written from the viewpoint of her fiancee). i knew this girl since high school, and we went to the same university and she was in my major. didn't know her all too well, but had a lot of mutual friends. her love story is so amazing - i think the best thing about it is that she and i know a little bit about our past history of relationships and despite imperfections, it's good to hear about how well everything has turned out for her.

a website that reflects my thoughts about this election.

woohoo, i got my sidebar back~

now only if i can get through onc and path lectures...

exhausted. studied for abou 6 hours straight.

*fizzle*

a view of the new gap ads... so cute!