doahleigh - Holy Waste of Teabags!

So here’s the big NYC post. Like I said, this is going to be mostly for my own future reference, for that day when I’m like “Wait, have I ever been to Grand Central Station? I can’t remember.” I’ll just check the ol’ blog and find my answer. If you’re interested in the play-by-play of others’ trips, read on. If you just want to scroll through the pictures, feel free (by the way, I was so rushed and distracted the whole time that picture-taking was not my primary concern. I basically just held my camera out and hit the button a lot. So these aren’t the greatest photos I’ve ever taken). And if you’re bored to death with the whole business, come back a little later when I’ve written something more interesting.

I took this trip with my friend Robin. She had been there once before and so remembered a little bit about the lay of the land, but I’m happy to say I figured it all out pretty easily. I never really felt completely lost or confused, and we even gave directions to people a few times! Despite our cameras and maps, we so looked like locals. Uh huh.

We left Thursday morning and actually had to fly west to go east (oddly, it was cheaper that way), so we sat at our layover for a couple hours and got to New Jersey in the afternoon. We were staying with someone R knew just across the water from Manhattan. This is the view from the end of her road, about a sixty second walk from her front door:

Since it was our host’s birthday on Thursday, we didn’t go into the city that night so we could hang out with her. We strolled through the park at the end of the road and took pictures of the skyline, went to the grocery store to buy a birthday card, then had Pakistani food made by our host’s Pakistani friends. We got to learn a little about Pakistan culture too, including the fact that one of the girls was related to Benazir Bhutto. I think maybe Benazir was her aunt, and she was in Pakistan for a wedding when Benazir was killed. She had even talked to her earlier that day. It was surreal to hear her talk about her so personally. We also took a ride in the BMW convertible that our host had just leased! That night we went to bed later than we wanted to, but we were ready to go see the city Friday morning.

Friday we figured out the bus system and went through the Lincoln Tunnel to Manhattan. As soon as we stepped foot onto 8th Avenue outside the Port Authority where we were dropped off, I was immediately overwhelmed. We just started walking with no real destination and got swept up in the fast-moving chaos of the city. Eventually we stopped to make a plan and look at a map, but we made the mistake of pausing right in the middle of Times Square where we were immediately accosted by the tour bus people. We talked to this guy, Salu, for a good half hour before agreeing to buy tickets from him.

As soon as the sale was complete we asked for the nearest Starbucks—I was starving and Robin needed coffee. That’s one thing about New York that I noticed: no matter where we were, it was never in the right place to find what we wanted. On our walk to the middle of Times Square we had been looking for a Starbucks, which supposedly are on almost every corner, and never found one. But later that day we saw one every two minutes. There were a couple times we were starving and walked forever looking for a place that didn’t seem sketchy but didn’t cost $30 a plate. Once we were severely craving gelato, and we even went so far as to call our boyfriends who searched Google Maps for us. Guess what, the nearest one was about twenty blocks away.

Anyway, Salu pointed us to a Juan Valdez café where we had a quick breakfast, then we were off to find Madame Toussaud’s. That turned out to be far too expensive, so instead we hopped on the tour bus and went to the Empire State Building. Part of our tour bus ticket deal was one free day on the bus and a ticket to the ESB. We waited in a crazy long line, spent about 15 minutes on the observation deck and headed back down. As soon as we got to the ground floor we encountered mad media. Camera crews and reporters blocking our way.

We got outside and saw signs everywhere for Mariah Carey. We had no interest in awaiting her arrival, so we moved right along and found our way to Grand Central Station where we took a couple pictures and grabbed some lunch. Then we walked to Rockefeller Center. That is one of those places you see all. the. time. on tv so it was pretty cool. We saw the golden statue, the Rockefeller building, the place where they ice skate, the spot where the Christmas tree goes, Today’s Studio 1A. Around the corner we saw Radio City Music Hall, then went on to find the Museum of Modern Art.

We knew that MOMA had free friday evenings, so we got there early to make sure we got in. We checked out the gift shop, then sat around the lobby. At about 3:45, just before the free hours started, we realized maybe there was a line we should be in. Uh yeah. A line that went down the block and around the corner! It went fast though and we got in no problem. We blew through all six floors of the museum, doing our best to take it all in without lingering so long that we wanted to leave before we got through. I took this one for Brad (if you haven’t seen it before, read the caption):

We sat in the MOMA sculpture garden for awhile eating over-priced gelato, then decided to walk to a tour bus stop that would take us closer to the Port Authority. We sat at the SE corner just outside Central Park for 20 minutes before we realized that the buses were done running. By then my legs were so painful that I was practically limping, so we hobbled down to the SW corner of the park and sat in Columbus Circle until I could move again. We worked our way down 8th Avenue until we found a place to eat dinner, then hobbled the rest of the way to the bus station. We were so tired, we fell into bed soon after getting back to the house.

Saturday morning we got to the city about 10:00, stopped at a Starbucks (this time we knew where to look) and hopped on a tour bus. We rode the bus all through midtown, into the Flat Iron District and then into Greenwich Village. Although Friday was gorgeous, this day was cold and windy and we were ill-prepared. We got off the bus in Soho partly to walk around and check it out, and partly to get out of the cold wind on the bus. We strolled around, checking things out, and eventually made our way to Ground Zero. I’m sure you’ve all heard about the little chapel next to the WTC buildings that survived with hardly a scratch. We checked that out for awhile, and took what pictures we could of Ground Zero, which isn’t much. It’s all blocked from view while they do construction. Still, it was an obvious hole in the landscape, and that alone was enough to evoke memories of the loss that happened there.

From there we walked down to Battery Park to sit for awhile. We didn’t want to take the ferry to the statue, so we took a couple pictures from the park and called it good. Off to Wall Street we went. We saw that iconic bull statue (can’t even remember what it’s for), the New York Stock Exchange and all the other fun money-related things. By then we were exhausted, but we still had to walk up to the pier by the Brooklyn Bridge to catch our bus. We rode that into Chinatown, got off to walk around, then struggled to find a good place to eat lunch. We ended up in a little Italian place with delicious food in Little Italy. We went back to the other end of Canal Street, but it was so crazy and overwhelming that we escaped as soon as possible. No Coach or Chanel or Prada for us (thank god), but not for lack of trying on the sellers’ part. Hopped back on the bus to get to midtown. We found the Marriot Marquis where you can buy discounted Broadway tickets, and the line was holy long already!

But we entertained each other to get through and buy tickets to Chicago. Since we had a few hours until the show, we got back on the bus (our legs were so tired!) and rode the whole downtown tour so we could see the things we missed by getting off the first time. By the time we got back up to the Broadway area, we had time to grab some Jamba Juice (in lieu of dinner) and get in line at the Ambassador Theatre. The show was amazing and very entertaining. We got out and walked through Times Square at night, which is full of energy. Then back to the bus station and home to bed.

I want to take this moment to say that my best word to describe Manhattan is: DENSE! So dense. So many people, so many cars, so many buildings everywhere. Look at all the people:

That tiny little island is jam-packed with stuff. I don’t get how it doesn’t just sink. Anyway, Sunday we slept in a little later. We knew it was going to be cold again, and we had accomplished so much already that we knew we could be a little more casual on our last day. We got to the city around noon and immediately hopped on the bus for the uptown tour. This one took us along Central Park, over to Grant’s Tomb, past where John Lennon was shot, through Harlem, etc. We got off at the NE end of Central Park and went in. The park is so totally different than I had imagined. I thought it was just a big park, like grass and trees and people hanging out. Oh no. First, we encountered elaborate fountains and flower gardens.

Once we figured out how to get out of there (we kept hitting dead ends), we were in the middle of a sophisticated system of paths and trails full of runners, walkers and bikers. Then we found the reservoir and some tree covered grasses, and then somehow we ended up hiking in the middle of woods.

After the forest we walked over a bridge and pretty soon were in the middle of what was basically a street fair. Finally we got out of the park and, in search of much-needed food, we ended up down on 47th for pizza. That’s when we called the boys about finding us some gelato, but instead ended up at Red Mango. Which, by the way, best frozen yogurt EVER! By then we were freezing and so very tired, so we agreed that we had done all we wanted to do and now it was time to say goodbye to New York City. We got back on the bus, through the tunnel and into NJ. We took a nap, ate some dinner, packed up all our stuff and crashed. Monday was a long day because of the layover (and we almost missed our connection!), but we were home by 4.

Tuesday I was tired and so not ready to go back to work, and my legs still hurt a little too. Plus, all the walking and not a single pound lost! Such crap. I’m so glad I went though. It wasn’t a very expensive trip (thanks to the fact that someone let us use their house to sleep), and I got to see a city I had always wanted to visit. I’m sure I’ll be back someday, but it was definitely an amazing first visit. Thanks to Robin for putting up with my soar legs and slow walking at times. We should travel together more often. I’ll leave you all (as if anyone is still reading) with this gorgeous view:

I’m back from New York City! Yes it was incredible. My legs hurt and I’m totally exhausted, but we did everything on our list, so it was worth it. I’m working on a detailed post that nobody will give a crap about except me, but in the meantime there’s this…

Today is my and Brad’s annikissary!

Yes that is a lame made-up word for the anniversary of our first kiss. In honor of that, I direct you to the sappity sap sappy stuff we wrote last year at this time. It’s all about how we met and blah blah blah. It’s cute though, so go over there to laugh and say aaawwww until I can put up some details about my super-fabulous trip.

Part 1 of the looove story

Part 2 of the looove story

My dad turned 50 on Sunday. That’s nothing to him because he plans to live to at least 102. Oh and he thinks he’s the man of steel, something I too believed until I was about 20 (a part of me still kind of does). We had a little party for him on Sunday—just immediate family. Which in my family means a pretty good-sized party since our family is HUGE! It was perfect though—the weather, the food, the people, the fun.

We had a cookout, we gave him a new digital camera, we took some family photos, we even gave my sister’s boyfriend a group-effort haircut in the garage. One of the best parts though was the cake. For his birthday my brother bought my dad a brand new Stihl chainsaw (my dad likes to cut wood), which looked maybe a little something like this:

Apparently my brother is a professional cake creator because just before the party started, he walks in with this, like it’s no big deal: 

Okay, I’m impressed with myself when I manage to make a box cake and frost it evenly in the pan. He made a fucking chainsaw cake! I had no idea my brother was so awesome. I want him to make my next birthday cake. I’m thinking maybe a detailed map of Europe…

On Saturday while I was hanging out with my mom, I got a text from Brad.

“The DVD player is broken. I’m going to get a new one.”

By the time I got home he had hooked up the new one, and the old one was on the floor near the tv stand where it stayed for a couple days. I’m not really sure what the appropriate process is for discarding broken electronic equipment, but I figured it would eventually find its way to the trash.

Yesterday I saw Brad pick up the broken machine and carry it toward the bedroom.

“Where are you going with that honey?”

“In here.”

“In the bedroom? Why?”

“I don’t know…”

“Isn’t it broken?”

“Yeah, but just in case it starts working again someday.”

Um, okay. I suppose since I have no idea what’s wrong with it, I shouldn’t doubt that it might magically start working again one day. So I just shrugged my shoulders.

And now the tv on my dresser is sharing its space with a broken DVD player.

Hmm… maybe it’s not really broken, and he just wants to use it to watch porn. I just thought of that. Hon, is there something you need to tell me?

Friday night I put the finishing touches on and submitted a 68-page paper for one of my classes. Thirteen of those pages were chapter titles, but still, that’s a lot of frickin’ pages! I had been working on it all semester, and when I hit SUBMIT, that was the very last thing I had to do for the semester.

For two whole weeks I’m so done with classes! It’ll be a busy two weeks, but at least one part of my life is on break. Damn that feels good.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go enjoy the last couple hours of this gorgeous day.

Holy crap you guys, help! I’ve been so busy that I haven’t time to write anything, and I’ve hardly had time to read your stuff. My life has got to relax or I’m going to crash. I’m so close to the end of this semester, and even though it’s a very short (and busy) time before summer classes start, I can’t wait to be done.

Work is out of control, but I can’t talk about that, so moving on. Almost all of my after-work time is spent on school stuff, little life errands, or pre-arranged engagements with friends and family. I feel like I’ve been busy since November, and I wonder if it will ever chill out or if this is just my life now. I’m hoping for the first one.

I’m sorry, I hate posts that are only about how busy someone is and how they just can’t manage to blog. But it’s all I’ve got today. This week, actually. Hey at least I’m not writing about how I think I’m done here because other things have taken precedence over blogging. This is still really important to me, I’m just too busy to be creative. Or interesting. Or funny. Or at all worthy of your attention.

Please love me anyway! I still love you, and I promise I’ll visit soon.

Mom: Well don’t bite my throat off!
Shannon: Your throat? That’s not right.
Mom: What is it then? My neck?
Andrea: I think it’s your head.
Mom: Well don’t bite my head off then.

[laughter all around]

Shannon: I might have to blog that mom.
Mom: Just make sure you say I’m on pain meds that make me loopy.
Shannon: Nah, that’s not important.

I think “don’t bite my throat off” might be my new catch phrase. Somehow it’s much more graphic than the one about the head.

Last night I was walking around the mall with my sisters and mom—we had been visiting my youngest sister who works at Macy’s, then hit the food court when her shift was over. Walking down the main corridor of the mall, some guy looked my sisters (only two of the three were there) up and down and said “Hey” in the most disgusting way possible. Andrea ignored him completely, and Kelli said a bored “Hi” back, and we all kept walking.

Essentially the encounter was harmless, and maybe it’s just because I don’t like nasty guys hitting on my baby sister, but I was really bothered by the exchange. I kept saying, “Gross, do guys do that to you a lot? How do you stand it?” I can’t imagine walking around and being ogled all the time. How uncomfortable.

Now I consider myself decently attractive, and even if you disagree, I’m still pretty okay with the way I look. But I’m not what you’d call “hot.” My sisters are.

I remember when Andrea and I were working and living together at Yellowstone - we’d walk into the cafeteria, and very subtley, everyone (or so it seemed) would watch her. Guys and girls. Some were checking her out, some were just noticing her, but either way it made her so uncomfortable. She didn’t like the attention and would get anxious, walk quickly through the room, eat fast and get out. One of the first times, when it was still a room full of strangers, we walked in and she looked at me anxiously and said, “I just want to leave.”

Emily hosts karaoke, and every time I go to support her (because I sure as hell don’t go to participate!) I hear drunk guys yelling disgusting things at her that they, apparently, think are compliments. And now I see that even Kelli, my baby sister, is being checked out in a disgusting, demeaning way by complete strangers who find nothing wrong with letting their eyes blatantly wander up and down a girl’s body.

I don’t get that kind of attention, and I thank god for it. I’m realizing more and more how blessed I am to be sort of average. I don’t draw attention for being “ugly” nor for being “hot,” and I’m actually quite relieved and happy about that.

There was an episode of King of Queens where Carrie suddenly feels unattractive because the men at a construction site don’t whistle and cat-call at her when she walks by. So her husband pays off the guys to demean and objectify her with lewd comments so she can feel better about herself. For the show, it’s just supposed to be comedy, but I know women in real life who feel that way. Like if they don’t get the attention of men, even the cat-call kind, then they feel ugly and unworthy. There is so much wrong with that, I won’t even go into it.

But I hope that my sisters aren’t those kind of women, I hope they feel confident in themselves despite their looks and what men think about them. The fact that all the attention makes Andrea uncomfortable, and the fact that all of them basically ignore that kind of attention instead of smiling and giggling and flirting back is a good sign at least.

Maybe I, as the oldest sister, am not as hot because it leaves me free to kick the asses of the jerks who look at or talk to my sisters the wrong way. The guys aren’t paying attention to me while they’re checking out the other three, so I can quietly come in from the side and roundhouse kick ‘em all in the face.

You kind of forget how invested you are in the lives of the people behind the blogs you read until one day you click on their link in your feed reader and BAM! Rejected, blocked out. “This blog is open to invited readers only” and you weren’t invited somehow.

Dude, Kelly, what’s up? I get a little behind on my blog reading, and suddenly you’ve gone all private on me. I don’t even have your email address to tell you how desperate I am to be invited. I can see that you’ve posted twice since I last stopped by, and one of them is titled “TOTAL DISBELIEF” in all caps. What? What is total belief? Why? What happened? I must know!

Good thing I’ve got this little tool called my own blog to write a public statement that says: I’m pretty sure we’re friends. Right? Can I be an invited reader or what? Help me out girl.

As for the rest of you, if I find a similar message on your blog with no warning, I’ll either cry or punch you in the thigh. Depends on my mood that day. So just don’t okay?

Holy crap, it’s been another year. Three now that Brad and I have been together, fought together, loved together, laughed together. Actually it feels like more…it’s only been three years? Surely with all the experiences we’ve had, it must be more.

But no, it was three years ago today that we went our first date which we didn’t know was a date until later. (If you’re interested, you can read all about the beginning here, here and here.)

Tonight we’re doing what we always do on our anniversary: dinner and a movie. Not because we’re totally unoriginal, but because that’s what we did on that first night. Which I guess kind of means we are unoriginal… But whatever, doesn’t matter, it’s just what we do.

Love you hon.

Kelly asked what I did for Brad’s birthday in response to the awesome gift he made me for mine. I think she said something like “You owe him something good,” which ya know, no pressure or anything. Well I’d say I did pretty good. A long time ago I started a project for him, and then I forgot about it for a couple years. A few months ago I finally pulled it out again, and on his birthday he got this:  

It’s a homemade Batman quilt! Now come on, that’s pretty frickin’ awesome. I also bought him dinner and took him to Coldstone for ice cream. But since the quilt was a long-time in the making, and his birthday was just an excuse to finally finish and give it to him, his real present was this:

On Friday night we went to Detroit for the Pistons game. Remember when he got me the jersey to wear for the occasion? I was yards away from Rasheed Wallace and I still don’t think he even noticed me. Jerk.

We had fun though. Happy birthday again babe.

Nanette recently rocked my world and honored me with an award of excellence. I didn’t get a trophy or anything, but I was thrilled nonetheless because Nanette is pretty much awesome and I’m happy she enjoys what I got goin’ on here. Now it’s my turn to bestow the honor on a few of my faves. I get to pick ten, per the rules, so I scoured through my feed reader and managed to narrow it down. It was made easier by the fact that some of my contenders were already recognized by others—no double dipping folks, that’s greedy—but it was still no easy task.

In no particular order, I present the following bloggers with this stamp of excellency.

Ordinary Art - I see a lot of me in the way she describes herself, and I hope if I ever have children, I’ll be the wonderful mother she is.

Quarter Life Crisis - You gotta love Jen, what with the mad cooking skills and the ever-changing hairdo!

Strongly Worded - Her upDATEs alone are reason enough to keep reading. The rest is pretty awesome too.

Ex-Everything - With a shiny new tagline!

Memoir - Okay so she talks about her dogs a lot, and I’m no dog person, but I’m hooked anyway because she takes great pictures and is crazy in love with her fiancé.

Babs in Blogland - This is one girl who’s not afraid to tell it how it is.

The Collective - This is a group of way cool chicas who, each week, write their own take on a topic. This week they wrote about the top five people they want to punch in the face. Why would you not want to read that?

Breathingfire -Maybe it’s cheating because he’s my boyfriend, and maybe the site isn’t looking its best these days (he’s busy and he’s sorry), but he’s been doing this blog thing since the beginning so I gotta give him props. Props? What the fuck?

Taste the World - She hasn’t exactly posted in over a month, but I miss her and hold out hope she’ll come back. I want to see how her wedding goes!

djkreutzer - There’s so much beauty in the world. Don’t believe me? Check out this blog-she proves it.

B: They need to make a french fry that more salt will stick to.
S: Yeah, like with an extra layer of grease so the salt sticks better.

We are such disgusting Americans.

It’s been a whirlwind folks, busy busy busy (I wrote busty as first, which is actually sorta true too), but I wanted to tell you about my Minneapolis trip before it becomes old news. A long time ago I told Katie of willikat that I’d be out there for four days and would she like to hang out. She said she would, so we emailed for awhile, but never made official plans. At the last minute I also found out that Angie is from the same area and knows willikat. My master plan was to meet both these ladies at one big blogger night of fun, but master plans never work out. So the first thing I did when I got into Minneapolis, while still on the shuttle to my hotel, was text Katie and make lunch plans. Since I didn’t have any work obligations until the next day, I knew it might be my one and only chance to meet her.

I’ve never done an actual blogger meet up before, so I was nervous and excited at the same time. I’m not good at meeting new people, so if I hadn’t have felt like I already knew her, I probably would have made up some excuse about being busy with, um, some work thing I just found out about. But she and I have been reading each other’s blogs for awhile now (what? couple years?) and we have this joke about our ‘parallel’ lives since we have so many odd things in common. Like okay, when we’re making plans for her to pick me up outside my hotel, she tells me she’ll be driving her Elantra. I drive an Elantra. At lunch? We ordered the same thing.

Basically what I’m saying in my rambling way is that I’m a little bit in love with Katie. Whenever bloggers meet, they always report back about how amazing and sweet and spectacular the person they met was, and I’m making no exception. I mean the girl just got laid off from her job and she shows up to lunch in a cute dress and heels. I was looking a little rough in full-on travel mode, just short of a hoodie and flip-flops (see below). We had lunch and gab gab gabbed about all kinds of stuff, then we stopped at a cupcake bakery where I snapped the only two pictures of our visit.

Then she drove me around and showed me the twin cities. She even felt comfortable running an errand while we were out, that’s how tight we are already! Seriously, it was fun. And it made me want to meet more of you. So come on people, let’s work it out!

The rest of my trip was mostly work stuff. I ate well, as is usually the case on business trips, but I didn’t see much of the city. By the time I finished work obligations and dinner with colleagues each day, I was pretty exhausted and ready for bed. Which by the way, sucked. I promised I wouldn’t go into details of the suckiness, but shut up. It was a sleep number bed, which I discovered is nothing more than a glorified air mattress. I spent the first night moving up and down the number scale, unable to sleep. Number 65, try to sleep, too hard. Release some air. Number 50, try to sleep, no good. Release some air. Number 35, try to sleep, too soft. Add some air (which sounds like a jet plane by the way), no good. All. Night. Long. The second and third nights I popped some Excederin PM before bed and slept hard despite the awful mattress. But on the last night I forgot to take the meds, and if I don’t take them before I try to sleep, my body isn’t fooled. I was wide awake, watching bad tv and eating vending machine snacks until a few hours before my shuttle picked me up. I even shaved my legs in the bathtub out of pure boredom at 1:30am. They hadn’t been shaved in, I’d guess, a month or two, so it was nice and time-consuming.

Minneapolis, or what I saw of it, is actually really nice. Their public transportation system is about 823% times better than GR’s, and hello, the skyway. I walked all the way from my hotel to the Convention Center (a 15-20 minute walk) and never once went outside. All Twin Citians are probably laughing at my fascination with this, but seriously, it’s genius. I want to sleep with the skyway it’s that wonderful.

I’ve been busy since the moment I set foot on Michigan soil, but I hope to return to a normal life as soon as possible. Hope you’re still with me!