Chase you down until you love me.

Too busy to blog you say? I say, yes! So this will be a blog of many colors. I will condense about seven blogs into one healthy blog for your enjoyment...

I present to you:

NEW ENGLAND TRIP!

My parents and cousin Melissa came up to visit me last month. We road tripped it up to New England. We took in the fall foliage and hit up some hot spots you'll see below. Both my parents and Melissa have failed to send me pictures, so these are the few pictures I have, but probably do not do justice to some of the amazing sights...

Look at those colors!

We stopped at a few of these cute roadside stores. Who doesn't want to buy Christmas ornaments, syrup , crafts and antiques when they are on the road?

We stopped at Robert Frost's house. We didn't go inside because we didn't want to pay- even though he was my Mom's favorite poet.

The Chocolate Barn... Seriously? What more could I ask for?

Me and Mel in a cute town in Vermont

My adorable parents sippin' cider on a porch.


My two favorite words: Ben & Jerry

We enjoyed it... obviously!



Oh, you bet we will!

Sharon, Vermont. The birthplace of Joseph Smith.

I was standing on the hearthstone of the original fireplace in the home where Joseph Smith was born. How awesome is that?

This was Plymouth Village... one of my favorite stops. It was a replicate the original pilgrim settlement. They had characters there, in costume and we could speak to them. "Good Morrow!" They also had a native American settlement, but they forbade us to use terms like "how" and "squaw". The native Americans were funny though because they all had Boston accents. They didn't even try to hide it.


The House of Seven Gables. It was the inspiration for Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel.


The Mayflower II - a replicate of the original



Yeah that's Plymouth Rock.

A beautiful view from our timeshare on Cape Cod.

We also did a billion other things, then we spent a week in NYC. Ash and Brandon also came up to spend some time with all of us. It was so great getting to spend time with my family. I miss them so much!

Moving on...

"CREPES"

I Just ate a tortilla with Nutella on it. It was like a crepe- but not. The tortilla was like, "I'm a crepe. KIDDING! I'm just a tortilla."

I READ IT FOR THE ARTICLES:


what?

I won't really comment further on this, other than the fact that I am SO excited for New Moon to come out next week. SQUEAL!!!

PERSIMMON

I want you to know about this fruit. It's delicious. It looks like an orange colored tomato and has that same kind of texture, but it's sweet and delicious. Don't fear trying out new foods.

DON GIOVANNI

Over the summer I made friends with this girl Keri, who was working in our office as a temp. She was actually an opera singer who needed a temporary job over the summer. She promised me that she would email me if she had extra tickets. Well I knew the season had started and she still never contacted me, so I assumed she forgot. But then I got an e-mail from her on Tuesday and she had tickets for the evening show that night! I of course wanted to go, so I took my friend Phindi from work and we went to see Don Giovanni. It was an amazing show and Keri did such an awesome job. She was a lead too- not just in the company.

In the lobby had all of these vintage costumes hanging like art.


Inside the theater. Nosebleeds...


Me and Phindi at Lincoln Center. Yes my hair deserves a post by itself. It is THAT tall.

So the rest of my thoughts don't really deserve individual headings so I'll just take it from here.

I'm writing a novel. Yes, I can't believe it either. It's not going to be good and I'm sure none of you will get the chance to read it. It's just about me trying to accomplish this life goal of mine. Then once I get this under my belt and have more confidence in my abilities, I can actually write something worthwhile.

So this ambitious undertaking is also eating up a lot of my time. Ugh!

In other news, I almost just DIED on the deathtrap that is my floor. Rachel accidentally sprayed furniture polish on the floor and I just put slippers on my cold feet, which equals a recipe for disaster. Luckily my balance saved me and I did not fall or suffer any injuries. But she just gave me a Reeses peanut butter cup so all is forgiven.

Okay, I'm spent. I need to get back to my favorite show, Glee.

Happy night!

Atlanta

My first "Business Trip"

My company sent me to Atlanta for eight days for some training. I'm actually going back this week for an additional three days of training. I'd never been to Atlanta before so I was very excited! Everyone kept calling it Hotlanta but it was neither hot (temperature) nor *hot (like Paris Hilton would say). It was pretty fun being in a new city, driving a rental car and staying in a hotel room. It was weird eating dinner by myself, but with all of the yummy restaurants around, I couldn't complain!

My hotel room was pretty nice. Here is a tour if you are interested in seeing my suite... (yeah i was bored enough to record a tour of the room.)

My hotel was right behind a mall- which was a great thing for me! I could easily walk there and go shopping or just walk around.

Over the weekend I did the touristy stuff with this really cool lady who was doing our training. Paula, who was also from California and I went to The World of Coca-Cola, the Aquarium (which happens to be the world's largest), and a tour of CNN. Everything was very close, in walking distance of each other. The weather was really nice that day. Most days I was there it was cloudy/rainy but we had beautiful sunshine that day.

The world of Coca-Cola


This was the "tasting room". There were stations set up such as North America, Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America with all kinds of coke products and you could help yourself. Some were pretty good and others were incredibly disgusting. I choked on a couple of them... literally.

The cute Coca-Cola Polar Bear. This guys little eyes blinked and mouth moved. He was sooo cute!

A picture from the beautiful aquarium

There's a story behind this one:

So we went on the CNN Tour, and security is super tight, they wouldn't allow photos; they even made you turn your phone completely off. I was bummed because I really wanted a picture there, because I did broadcast journalism in college and this place was very exciting to me.

One of the first stops on the tour was this mock studio where our tour guide explained to us how the teleprompter worked (I of course already know all this, having worked the teleprompter in my internship at the TV station in Vegas) and other interesting things about the biz. Then they asked if anyone wanted to sit at the anchor desk and take a picture that we could purchase later. I was hesitant because I didn't want to hold up the group and have everyone on the tour stare at me while I took a picture at the news desk. But Paula encouraged me, "oh come on! you are having a great hair day." That was apparently all I needed to hear because the next thing you know I volunteered to take my picture at the desk. So I sit down in the rolly chair and situate myself at the desk (I must say I felt pretty comfortable there) and I struck my best news anchor pose, and as soon as they clicked the picture, EVERYONE on the tour started to laugh. I was so confused- I thought, "there must be something happening behind me or something," but I had a feeling that wasn't the case. So I addressed the group (yes, 40 complete strangers) from the news desk and asked, "why is everyone laughing at me?" and the girls who took their picture before me said, "it's because you looked so cute because you got all serious and professional when you took your picture." Then Paula basically told me the same thing. She said it looked like I knew what I was doing and it was funny to see me striking my pose. Ha ha ha. So I had to buy the darn thing of course, cost me more than the actual tour... but now I have a lovely souvenir. This is a picture of a picture, I think you get the gist.

Anyways... on to good eats:

I took this picture for Heather. Yes I had yummy Chick fil-A for dinner one night!

Why did I post this one sideways- oh well, I'm feeling too lazy to change it. This was breakfast in bed. Thank you room service! Yum!

Chili's (obviously) at the airport. At least I had my book to keep me company. BTW- 1776 was really good. I highly recommend it! Especially for all of you history nerds.

This was our office building. Way down yonder on the Chattahoochee. Literally it was right off of the Chattahoochee River!

It was completely surrounded by trees.

Happy Independence Day

This year we went to Long Beach... like we did last year. It was a PERFECT beach day! We had a great day.

Kelli was our independence day mascot. She was very patriotic.

This yellow ball found its way to us in the ocean, and it matched Jenny's cover up!

The sky was so amazing!

Waiting for the train

Jenny and I on the train. (Feeling gross and crispy)

What HAVE I been up to?

Besides looking ridiculously cheesy...I mean fabulous.

Parties with my friends where we put on ties and pose like this... oh yeah and we also watch Arrested Development, aka: the funniest show I have ever watched.

Enjoying gorgeous sunsets! (SO happy that i have my camera back)

Watching the scary storms from my office roll in EVERY DAY! Look at that crazy, evil cloud!

This was just a shot of the apartment that I liked.

"Window" shopping at fancy furniture stores

I took this from the window whilst shopping for shoes

And this fun one (with a super zoom)
I love NY in the summer!

The Ballet

This week we went to Lincoln Center to see the New York City Ballet perform A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was a beautiful performance. I don't know a lot about ballet, all I know is I could NEVER get my body to do what they do. They are incredible! I think thy thought so too, because although we were finished applauding they kept coming out for encores. It cracked me up. I couldn't stop laughing at them coming out and bowing long after the applause was over. Seriously!

(photos courtesy of the websites I borrowed them from)

Jenny, Kelli and Rachel

Fun sculpture inside

That's me... not a sculpture.

Photo of Ballerina's. They had a bunch of pictures like this posted all around the theater.

A view from the top looking down at the cool steps. Our [cheap] seats were in the "fourth ring" aka: the very top.

Flat Stanley also made it to our performance. This was a project for Kelli's nephew, but I think it's a good shot of the stage.

BFF's (we are on the same steps as the photo from above, above)