what google taught me about me

my zodiac sign is a leo.  it is a fire sign and has something to do with the earth's rotation around the sun i think.  my compatible zodiak peeps are other fire signs like aries and sagittarius.  i guess the great balls of energy like to hang out together.

i looked into what traits comprise the personality of a leo and if any fit me.  total shocker that almost all of them would fall into a pinky personality trait.  take a look at what google taught me about myself and a picture of my favorite lion from animal kingdom park at walt disney world.

A Leo defined via Google:

A Leo person is very independent. He or she is warm and action-oriented. Leo persons love fame and publicity and always want to be in limelight. They like to have an audience. A Leo person is also very enthusiastic and loves to socialize. They often tend to pass on this enthusiasm to others. They are optimistic, loyal and honest. This trait makes them a great leader. Being ruled by the Sun, a Leo person prefers to lead from the front and makes a great businesswoman. One of the characteristics of a Leo is determination. They also possess the rare ability to foresee the future and would make a great visionary leader. Their motto might be “what you see is what you get”. A Leo person is a diplomat. They can get along with people from all walks of life. They are not impulsive and analyze every situation before taking any action. They are arrogant and egoistic and often end up making more enemies than friends but they never step behind when it comes to helping others. A person born under this sign is creative. They come up with brilliant yet unique ideas. They love to live in a luxurious environment and can never settle for a second best.

• Female Leos are the ones who represent the lioness of the jungle. They are confident, arrogant, loving, aggressive, generous and creative. They carry themselves in a manner that is nothing less than awe inspiring.

Women born with this sign are dominant and expect a royal treatment from people around them. 

• A Leo woman is lively, charming, beautiful and sensual. She never falls short of male attention.

• They have a classy and superior taste. They are not satisfied with ordinary things. They strive for excellence.

• They are versatile and multitalented, which allows them to inspire people around them.

• They love a life full of luxury and extravagance. A Leo woman can go to any extent to lead a life that people around them envy.

• Leo women are social bees and love to be surrounded by family members and friends. They are very caring and make it a point to see everyone around them is in complete comfort.

• They are very creative and this is a reason they take front seats in professions involving creativity, like artists, writers, etc.

• They are extremely jealous and possessive and even the slightest suspicion will make her insecure. Nonetheless she is never clingy and would give space to her loved ones.

a good purge is always a good idea

about a month ago joani called me.  she wanted to know if she could throw away a couple of boxes that were still living in the basement of grandpappy's house.  i said please leave the boxes where they are and i would review their contents while on vacation in utah a few weeks later.  thankfully she kindly agreed to keep her hands off of my stuff and allowed me to purge my five boxes myself.  

the last day i was in utah i took the five boxes i had in joani storage and was able to purge them down to 2 boxes.  yay me!  i apologize to all of my buddies who sent me a wedding announcement or sat with me while i had a caricature drawn or dealt with me during my 'nsync phase when i recorded every thing they ever did on television onto a VHS tape because all of those things are now at the bottom of a garbage can.  i really only kept the really nice art history text books and a few little tiny trinkets.  i think my joani was happy with my purge even though she was responsible for actually disposing of the unwanted items.

now i've been in a purging mood at home.  have gotten rid of old yucky stuff that's been stuck in a drawer, movies i don't watch anymore as well as books that now reside on my iPad along with food that might have expired in 2010.  i think everyone needs a good purge every now and then, especially someone who recently bought three pairs of Ferragamo shoes.  did i mention my love affair with my new shoes yet?  :)

photo timeline of my summer

childhood BFF and her hubby bishop d - the smiles are because bishop d won the Newsies lottery right before

my beautiful inside and out cousin jess, her new hubby and the tarheel loving B family

point a camera at me and i'll do something silly - evidence picture #1

evidence picture #2

evidence picture #3

me and my joani

my brother flex and macaroni

me and my macaroni

going for a walk with two 3 year olds - serious entertainment

my sister in law sunshine

hanging with my awesome friend PhD and her beautiful offspring

getty villa with pacific ocean in background

new york philharmonic in the park with fireworks at the end

and now you're caught up to what i've been up to this summer.  love time with my family.  didn't love getting sick day of my flight home.  did enjoy being three short rows behind Elder Jeffrey R. Holland and his wife on my rescheduled flight.  love local grocery store for putting haagen daas on sale. 

why hello mr. ferragamo

i'm a single woman.  this means many different things.  primarily i don't owe an explanation to anyone about how i choose to spend the dollars i earn.  therefore i might have taken that "freedom" to the fullest extent over the last couple of months.  here's the story how mr. salvatore ferragamo and i developed and solidified our relationship.

i was in california at the end of june for my cousin's wedding.  after all the family left to their prospective homes away from the ocean, i opted to hang around for a couple of extra days to see some really good friends.  i was scheduled to hang with my friends brian, aida and their awesome crew of kidlettes.  we were meeting at 11am.  i got a text from aida that morning saying she forgot about brian's hockey game so would need to push back our meeting time.  so what was a girl from NYC to do with some solo time, a rental car and an american express card.  (light bulb going off) as i'm sure the retail planners of LA hoped, i headed to one of the 100s of malls.  bad idea for my budget.  very bad.

walked into the mall and the first store directly to my left was salvatore ferragamo.  i'm not going to lie, my heart did a little flutter but decided to avoid the temptation so walked around and browsed. elsewhere.  didn't buy anything.  decided it was time to go meet with my buds so headed towards my awesome rental car.  this meant walking back towards mr. ferragamo and his awesome shoes.  

the problem then became my excellent eye sight because tucked away in the corner of the shelving unit viewable from the glass was my favorite word in the english language - "SALE".  the happy endorphins kicked in and i entered the world of ferragamo.  was immediately greeted by well dressed sales woman who didn't blink at my choice of reef flip flops.  she took the shoe i chose from the sale shelf, which was an awesome red patent heel, to find my size and came out with about five additional options.  i kid you not that opening each box was taking me back to my favorite memory of opening presents on christmas morning while my joani's cinnamon ring was baking in the oven.  so i walked out with three pairs of shoes.  happy happy birthday to me!

if you know me well personally, you will realize that each of the shoes that now call my bedroom closet #1 home are a perfect embodiment of my personality.  go ahead and feast your eyes on my new preciouses.  and i look forward to not eating out, seeing movies, or buying blurays for awhile to come.

dog days of summer

so...haven't blogged in awhile...ok, more like 6 weeks.  i guess i forgot that i have a blog and the purpose of which is to update it.  video chatted with joani last night and she even brought up the fact that i haven't posted in a very long time.  when your mommy wants to hear your innermost thoughts about life, liberty and my pursuit of happiness that means it is time to use my newly manicured fingers to type away.

things are busy yet lazy at the same time.  ya know what i mean?  if you don't, please go with me as i do a little explaining.  i've been busy because things seem to be happening quickly.  been working hard at work as well as in my church responsibilities.  trying to live the dream.  but i've been really lazy because once i get home from my evening festivities the first thing i do is turn on HGTV.  i can't seem to shake my addiction to home improvement shows.  just recently found a love for yard crashers on saturdays.  i really need to get a grip on my obsession.  (watching love it or list it as i type)  plus last weekend i literally slept 30 hours of the 48 hours of the weekend.  i guess i was tired.

love me some summertime.  enjoy the strawberries in season.  national cheesecake day is july 30th where the cheesecake factory offers 1/2 price cheesecake slices.  adore the natural light that pours through my windows in the mornings and evenings.  walk home multiple times after work to enjoy the fresh air and sunsets.  love this season!

i apologize to joani and any other casual readers for not taking the time to update my little life lived in new york city.  i try to do better.  pinkie swear.

might be time for professional help

my addiction is in full force and it might be time to seek professional help.  this week i bought tickets to five events.  bought tickets to three events on the same day within about 2 hours of each other.  even voluntarily went to two theaters in times square.  (if you are new to my blog - i detest and loathe times square above almost all locales in nyc)  what is happening?  i have no self control.  netter now affectionately refers to me as her "ticket broker".

don't believe me that i have an addiction?  let me spell out what events i have tickets for and when they occur.  the following is in chronological order.

monday, june 11th - ed sheeran @ bowery ballroom

friday, june 16th - keane @ beacon theater

wednesday, june 20th - peter and the starcatcher @ brooks atkinson theater

tuesday, july 31st - newsies @ nederlander theater (this is my birthday so is a total freebie from my addiction diagnosis)

saturday, september 8th - us open for men's semifinal action

friday, september 21st - ed sheeran @ terminal 5

saturday, october 26th - alfie boe @ berkeley center in BOSTON!

i also have my eye on some new york pops concert tickets and want to see a bunch of plays on broadway before they close like other desert cities.  

this wouldn't be such a huge problem if i didn't also love to travel and have recently bought a plane ticket with my family to florida and am plotting my vacation to spain in november.  the combo of tickets to shows/concert and tickets to travel is why i still eat kraft macaroni and cheese every sunday and had left over papa john's pizza for lunch EVERY day this week.

i have started the process of researching a good therapist to help me get to the root of this addiction.  will gladly take recommendations.  you can even provide them anonymously.  i won't judge.

attack of the pegged pants

i was going to mention this little moment from yesterday in this week's simple moments post but decided i couldn't wait to share.  so here is my quick run down of the attack of the pegged pants...

yesterday afternoon around 3pm i was waiting for an elevator in my office building to take me to the 20th floor.  elevator came, so i proceeded inside.  then just before the doors closed a masculine forearm appeared between the closing door and the wall.  the doors proceeded to go back into their open position so a group of 5 men could enter my previously solo journey to the upper floors of my office building.  

i moved to the side to allow them in and kept my headphones in my ears to enjoy more tunes by my current rotation of ingrid michaelson, ed sheeran, cary brothers or (as always) linkin park.  my eyes veered towards the floor as i let the tunes take me to my happy place.  that's when i noticed this mob of men all had PEGGED THEIR PANTS!  

what the biz?  did my elevator suddenly turn into a time machine taking me back to 1987 when i wore side ponytails and desperately wanted a hyper color t-shirt and espirit bag?   if you don't know what pegging your pants means please raise your hand.  read the below to learn about the finer points of pants pegging.  if you do know about pegging pants or t-shirts or shorts, then you can skip the next paragraph to find out what happened next...

(...pants pegging was a fashion fad in the 1980s.  you would take the cuff of your pants and wind it around your ankle/calf so that you were left with the excess material.  then you place it around the cuff which is lying close to your skin and roll up.  then you roll the cuff up again until you have achieved the pants peg.  see step by step pictures at the end of the blog posts for pegging pants.  a thank you to my coworker receptionist for being my pants pegging model...)

the attack of the pegged pants didn't stop with my elevator ride.  no sir-ee.  instead it continued as i left work for the day.  i was on the escalator and lo and behold the man about 8 steps in front of me going down on the escalator also had pegged pants.  no joke.  for reals y'all.  i couldn't grab my iPhone quick enough to snap a picture for photographic evidence before he exited the escalator and moved too far away. 

trust me the attack of the pegged pants is coming.  first it was the bright pinks and neon greens showing up in my local ann taylor store and now the 80s are taking young men hostage one-by-one by forcing them to peg their pants.  we must remain strong and fight off the urge to grab a can of hair spray to cement our waterfall bangs hairstyle and no spending hours making friendship bracelets with string or grabbing that pair of L.A. gear hightop sneakers complete with multiple pairs of laces in the very back, dark corner of your closet.  resist my friends.  resist i implore you.  resist!

and now, a step-by-step picture guide to pants pegging as provided by moi et receptionist...

a real retail guarantee + snow patrol

i've bought and sold tickets on stub hub a couple of times.  when netter and i couldn't score tickets from ticketmaster to a snow patrol concert in mid-april i wasn't concerned because we could always stub hub it.  i tracked the price of the tickets until about a day before the show so that we could get the best possible price.  bought online and met at the venue.  and that's when things went wrong.

i gave netter one print out ticket and i took the other.  i got through security first to hand my ticket to the ticket scanner lady.  i got through just fine and waited for netter.  the scanner lady took netter's ticket and tried to scan multiple times.  the ugly red light came up each and every time denying netter access.  ugggh!  then the security guard and scanner lady noticed the name of the original purchaser on the ticket and told us they recognized the name as he had done this type of fraud before.  so netter wasn't able to see the concert because they wouldn't let us switch tickets since i had already gone through and there was no re-entry.  so i went into the concert solo while netter went home.  (sad face)

the whole time i was at the concert i just wanted netter there because it was such a great concert.  so once i paid my cab driver and got inside i called stub hub because they have fan protect guarantee that all of their tickets sold online are guaranteed to work.  got on the phone with a nice man about what had happened.  he sent me to his supervisor because he wanted to escalate the issue.  

the customer service was amazing!

they gave me a refund for the one ticket that didn't work and ALSO gave me two tickets for snow patrol's concert the next night!  hello!  netter and i were actually going to see the snow patrol and ed sheeran concert together!  we had an amazing view and rocked out to the awesome tunes of some favorite british rockers.

my time with the fabulous stub hub customer service didn't end with my evening conversation.  i got a call a couple of days later from another manager of stub hub who gave me a credit for the cost of my original ticket.  basically i got to see snow patrol twice for FREE!  woot woot.

i will continue to purchase tickets from stub hub because i believe them when they say ever ticket purchased on their site is backed by a guarantee.  something about the word "guarantee" that just makes things feel better.

and now a couple of pictures of my home boys, snow patrol...

it's all about time

apparently when the sun shine increases the outdoor temperature to over 60 degrees my time spent blogging about the awesomeness that is NYC takes a pretty big hit.  it also didn't help that i had good friends in town for a week so was out and about with them, went to a few plays, a few concerts and rented a car to spend lots and lots of money over memorial day weekend.  plus i'm still in a leadership role in church, trying to get my book club up and running and attempting to get into swimsuit shape.  therefore, the blog suffers. 

so now i'm back with hopefully better time management so that i can continue to blog and give you an inside view of what it's like to be me.

let me introduce you to Ed Sheeran

a few weeks ago i attended a snow patrol concert.  i attended two nights in a row...but that's a whole other blog post about stub hub fraud.  any way, i bought the tickets for netter and i.  when i mentioned the opening act was one british lad named Ed Sheeran she was even more stoked (are people still using 'stoked' to describe excitement?) to buy tickets.  i was confused having never heard of young british mr. sheeran.  

she took me back to the time we spent in a music store while on vacation in london.  she was very excited to purchase cds in said store by artists that hadn't released music in the states as yet.  one of the special cds was by, you guessed it, ed sheeran.  

i was happy for her because i know how great it is to hear favorite artists live.  the thing i didn't count on was falling in love with ed myself.  just goes to show yet again that netter has excellent taste in music (minus a few artists that i just can't embrace).  his set was SO good.  i would have been very happy to allow him some extra minutes even if it meant waiting longer for the always fabulous snow patrol.

so now i have tickets to the ed sheeran show at the bowery ballroom in june.  the tickets are currently being sold on stub hub for over $120.  i didn't pay that much and will NOT be selling them.  actually counting the days until i enter that venue that holds about 300 people to rock out with my new favorite brit...ed sheeran!  and props once again to netter. 

enjoy my favorite song from his about to be released on june 12 "+" album.

the night i was giddy

about a month ago i went to the theater with netter.  we had tickets to see newsies.  it's a play based on the disney movie from 1992.  if you have never seen newsies i encourage you to get yourself to the netflix list and order it immediately.  this movie is still one of the "fond" memories i have of my childhood relationship with big lug.  he might not admit it but i think he really liked the movie and definitely knows all the words to "i'm the king of new york".  i actually really want him to come to new york before the limited engagement of the show is over.  

but i digress...

from the moment the orchestra started the overture i had the cheesiest grin on my face.  that grin and happy endorphins never left my body for the next close to three hours.  the show was SOOO good and actually improved, plot wise, on the original movie.  the actors were amazing, the lighting was great but the dancing was IN-CRED-I-BLE!  the choreographer just received a well deserved Tony nomination for his work.  

i've seen many, many, many broadway shows in the almost 10 years that i've been a new york city resident.  this show was pure joy and fun.  i would love to see it once a month until it is scheduled to end in august just so i can embrace that feeling of joy and fun.  if you are coming to new york, have potential plans to come to new york, or even have no plans to come to new york i would recommend thinking about adding a showing of newsies to your itinerary.  it will be worth it.

say hello to matt bomer

i have wanted to upgrade my tv for awhile now.  not that my love for Ed had wavered but it was time to make the leap to 1080p and multiple hdmi ports instead of the one that Ed had.  i did my research and decided on a 46" samsung HDTV.  two saturdays ago my friend and i took a zipcar to the best buy on 117th street and east end in harlem to buy my new tv.  

thankfully my co-worker was in the mood to upgrade his family's tv wanted to buy Ed.  it made me feel good that Ed was going to a good home and my co-worker was willing to drive into the city to pick up the tv.  

the moment i turned on the new tv i knew what his name would be.  i chose to name my new tv after the most beautiful man i have ever met in person...mr. matt bomer.  (thank you gooch for taking me with you to the white collar set so i could meet him.)

now i get to watch beautifully clear, picture quality on my new tv.  and just so you know, there is a difference between 720p and 1080p.  trust me.

oh and for any doubters as to the real life beauty of seeing matt bomer in the flesh, below is a picture of matt, my friend C, tim dekay and i on the white collar set.  boo-yah!