Westchester Excursion

Erin was so kind as to kidnap me from my home (read: parents) and bring me to the new Greenburgh Public Library, which was actually really nice. At least some of our tax dollars are being put to something worthwhile. 

Here is our failed attempt at "holding up" the library. I think in this case, failed is an understatement. 

We met up with Gil for lunch and decided to be adventurous so we went to a new restaurant on Central Ave, Hurricane Grill and Wings.  It's like Buffalo Wild Wings + Surfboard tables. We were actually going to Candlelight but the wait was 1+ hours, so we settled for the Hurricane place. I still like to think we were being adventurous. 

Erin lost one of her contacts in transit. She looked like the lady from 28 Weeks Later, or a husky. 

Then she wanted me to take a boring photo of them because she didn't want everyone on my blog to think she was a freak. 

Then I ended my day by roasting my Uggs. 

bears

My friend David loves bears.

I don't.

Rasputin

Morae has been incapacitated since the day before Christmas because she had knee surgery and got a new ACL named Rasputin.

Okay, well he didn't come with that name.. I made it up and she hates it, but all of our friends love it! Though arguably evil and undoubtedly creepy looking, Rasputin was supposedly this really resilient guy. Didn't it take forever to kill him?!

And though some may say it is entirely unnecessary to name an ACL, who doesn't love naming new shiny things, especially expensive ones. For example, I named my laptop Isabelle.. and Erin named her baby Anjali.

And here she is!

She's kind of skeptical of anyone who isn't her mom, until you stuff food into her mouth of course. The same goes for me. 

Baby Burrito!

Which brings us back to the topic at hand. If we name babies, we should be able to name ACL's. 

And yes, those are metal staples. I used the same staples to put up sheetrock. 

Merry Christmas!

Christmas time always gets a little stressful around my house because my mom seems to wait until I come home from school (which is usually around December 22 - THREE DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS) to start preparing for our annual Christmas party, cleaning the house (aka hiding everything), wrapping presents for our friends and family, etc. While I was still in Prague, I told my roommates that I already knew that three things were going to happen when I went home: 1) My room was going to be full of shit that isn't mine and I'm going to have to clean it up 2) I'm going to have to set up the TV that my sister and her husband bought my parents for Christmas 3) I'm going to have to clean and decorate the house.

AND LO AND BEHOLD, I get an email from my mom the night before my flight back to the states which ends likes this:

"oh oh need to clean ur room, full of my clothes! got big flat screen tv  47 inches from ate and dom. ill put it in the living room wall where the pics are since it wont fit in the family room wall unit. hopefully u can fix the new tv. still in the box. k babes. needs help xmas decor too. luv u much!!"

So, of course I became convinced that the only reason she was excited for me to come home was to help her around the house. So, one day as she watches me take groceries inside my house I say "Mommy, I think you're only happy I'm home so that I can help you lift and clean things" to which she responded, "Well, yeah." 

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But even though my mom treats me like an elf (I need to get some S.P.E.W (Society for the Protection of Elfish Welfare for you non-harry potter fans) action up in here (this is a lot of parenthesis)) I'm loving being at home and being able to see all my friends and family - especially my nephew Nate who looks a lot more like a tiny man than a 2 year old baby.

My Fambam

My old married sister Leslie and my boyfriend John

My best friends basically since birth - Kim, Sam and Geenie

John got me these pretty pearl earrings and my mom got me this necklace! Weird coincidence

My AWESOME and incredibly entertaining 2 year old nephew Nate. Took these pictures at church today and they do not do his adorableness justice. 

I think he sings this better than J.Bieber

tarjayy sesh

I used to always go to Target with one of my best friends, Erin, but she got busy at home so I had to venture into White Plains alone. (Woe is me.) I don't know WHY I thought going to the city center to pick up a bunch of random things the day before Christmas Eve was a good idea, seeing as I spent more time trying to get out of the parking lot than in the store. 

But anywhos, I've been reunited with my Uggs! Yeah, they're pretty foul looking and I got them in high school - but they are STILL warm, comfy and holeless (clearly not a word) which is something that CANNOT be said for every single pair of boots I've gotten from Charlotte Russe. Anyway, I was just really quickly (which turned out to be not so quickly) going to Target and coming straight home, and I'm in the suburbs. SOMEONE SUPPORT ME ON THIS JUSTIFICATION!

Well in other news, I picked up a few beauty things and some crackcorn - I mean popcorn. I picked up some Sonia Kashuk lipsticks and blush, and HiP cream eyeliner. I think I might have gone too red on the lipsticks - but it's the holidays! I'm absolutely loving the blush though.  I always mess up using powder blush and this stuff is very sheer and dare I say, foolproof? I hate that caked on blush look. I totally jinxed myself and am going to look like a clown tonight.

Sonia Kashuk Luxury Lip Color in Bordeaux and Sheer Rosebud and Super Sheer Liquid Tint in Rose.

And this is my favorite (but sadly) NP lipstick in Rio. It melted off of the stick during the summer time and sort of just coagulated during the winter time. RIP

Chicken is Chicken.

One thing that makes being home REALLY great is all of the food. Soooo much good food. Like this big hunk of pork right here. 

Funny story about pork. One of my best friends doesn't eat shellfish or pigs for religious purposes, and my other friend, Morae, apparently didn't know that "pork" was pig. She knew that "ham" was pig, but I'm not sure what she thought pork was... So, she accidentally let our friend take a large bite of the pork bun. What's funny about this is not the fact that Morae encouraged the violation of our friends religious code, but because we were 17, in our junior year of high school and she didn't know what "pork" was.

To this day - she literally just texted me this when I told her I would write about this incident - she claims that:

"Chicken is chicken

Beef is beef

Why wouldn't ham be ham?"

But anyway, after shoveling pork into my mouth I hit up the boyfriends house and watched him and his little brother play Sonic the Hedgehog on miniclip. 

Mind you, Gabe is 4 and can use computers and cell phones. Morae was 17 and didn't know what pork was. 

Hold up, I'm drummin' one out

Edit: Credit for my title goes to Sir Anthony Bauer

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Today I was blessed with the presence of one of my best friends Morae (and her bf Alex V. but that's not that important. jk. kinda). We snuggled in my bed together while Facebook stalking and getting me caught up on what happened while I was gone i.e. who's doing crack, who's pregnant, who's doing crack while pregnant, etc. 

Afterwards I went to Rockland where I was supposed to go to the Palisades Mall with John, but LO AND BEHOLD after I got to his house, this conversation took place:

John: What're we going to do at the mall?

Me: Oh I want to go to Sephora and just look around.

John: What is Sephora?

Me: A make-up store.

John: Can I tell you something?

Me: What?

John: I really don't want to go to the mall.

SO of course, I don't end up going to the mall because I know he's just going to trail behind me miserably, so instead we ate banana bread and I fell asleep while he watched YouTube videos. YouTube: 1 Michelle: 0

Then we headed to Jep Jep Jep's house and played with his shiny drumset and watched Gasland (here's a trailer). It's just mind boggling how many things go on in the world unnoticed. 

Home Sweet Home: DAY ONE

Two of my favorite things:

1) My silly boyfriend and 10 minute discussions about whether or not he should brush his teeth if he's about to eat raw onions and other smelly things anyway

2) 5 Guys little bacon cheeseburger with everything, jalapenos, raw instead of cooked onions and cajun fries

 

Finals Study Break = MGMT Concert

David and I took a break from studying to go to an MGMT concert at the Divadlo Archa theater. We were initially WAY up in front, probably 5ft from the band. Then things got crazy, I kept drowning in the sea of people while David struggled to keep me from getting stomped on, the we both really had to pee, so we decided to just move to the back. Maybe if it was Lady Gaga I would've compromised my life. Sorry MGMT. 

But anyway, going to a concert during finals week in NY would be unheard of (for me at least). Gotta love studying abroad =)

Fruitilicious

My roommate went to Billa, a European grocery store, and came back with some funkyy looking fruits. The first one is a gooseberry and the second one is a dragon fruit. I am not a fan of the gooseberry, it's kind of sour and bitter. It tastes like a crybaby except in fruit form and healthy - which just seems wrong. The dragon fruit kind of tasted like vitamin water solidified into a fruit. Am i just really spacey or is it actually possible to drive to the 24-hour Pathmark and pick up a couple of these fine looking specimen?

Oh and in the last picture, I was fortunate enough to find a golden retriever that would sit still long enough to take a picture with a gooseberry in its mouth. 

sha sha sha shouka!

I usually put ketchup on my eggs, but this just takes eggs and tomatoes to a whole 'nother level. 

Shashouka is an Israeli dish of eggs cooked in spicy tomato sauces and lots of lovely herbs - definitely one of my favorite breakfasts. I ordered this in a cafe in Amsterdam. I LOVE that city. More on Amsterdam later. 

But for now, I'll take a moment to reminisce on my shashouka. 

Candlemaking!

One of our RA's named Jan (pronounced YAHHHHN) held a candle making workshop, and I don't know about you, but I am NOT one to pass up free candle making. Below you will meet Michelle, my other roommate who happens to have the same name and race as me but with much more talent and much less height. 

But clearly, I win in the candle making category. Hers look like barf. puke. vomit. gross.

And I do not know who that child is or how safe it is for her to be at a candle making workshop, but I DO know that she is adorable. 

Happy St. Mikolas Day!

This is my lovely roommate, Danielle. Doesn't she remind you of a golden retriever? Every time I see groups of blonds, I automatically think of golden retrievers. She, however, prefers when I call her Blake Lively, rather than Air Bud. 

This morning she made me french toast and tea, and that night we went to the kavarna (coffeshop) behind our dorms, accidentally crashed a St. Mikolas party and got some aammmaazzzinnggg hot cocoa. Below shows how she lures unsuspecting creatures into her bed with hot cocoa. 

Laundry

Pulling clean, warm, laundry out of a dryer is definitely what i consider one of life's simple pleasure. A lot of times, because I'm busy and I just leave my laundry in my basement's dryer until I'm ready for it, I come back to cold, unhappy, laundry. Well I'm sure the laundry isn't unhappy, but I am always disappointed.

I am really bad about doing laundry in general. ESPECIALLY in my dorms - I dread lugging my bag of laundry up and down flights of stairs which inevitably leads to leaving a trail of socks and bras all over the building. I would have been a great asset to Hansel and Gretel.

But in Prague, I hate doing laundry even more. I don't even have the option of running to the dryer to pull out warm clothes. I hang them up on one of these babies until they're nice and stiff and cold.

And this is why I have enough underwear to fill the grand canyon. I can count on one hand the number of times I've done laundry in Prague.

TMI.