Le Fashions

Ok, so you, by this point, are like, "Wow, stop talking about your photography class because no one cares."  But this is me ignoring you because I care and this is my blog and don't read it if you don't want to.  (I don't cater to my audience very well, in case you couldn't tell.)

So here's the dealio, I am not a hipster.  And this is not one of those things where someone who is a hipster pretends to not be a hipster.  I am actually not a hipster.  I enjoy listening to top 40.  I read stupid celebrity gossip magazines when I'm in the grocery store because I think they're interesting and mind-numbing.  Although I sometimes shop at thrift stores, for the most part it's Forever 21 and Target for me.  And I own two scarves which I never wear.  Therefore I could never be a hipster.

Now that we've cleared that out, I think photography is super rad.  And so do a lot of hipsters.  In fact, my class, which is made of only probably 13 people, has about 9 hipsters in it (including the professor, who is actually only a grad student).  So every day when I go to the class I feel this tremendous pressure to wear cute clothes, because everyone else is wearing cute clothes that are like artistic and cool and edgy and not at all like the usual jeans + t-shirt from the company you interned at over the summer + Stanford hoodie which = the average Stanford student's wardrobe.

But not only do my clothes have to be cute, they have to send a message.  And the message that I usually try to convey through my clothes when dressing for this photo class is "the reason you don't see value in my photos is because my aesthetic is oh-so-clearly over your head as evidenced by my edgy and different taste in clothes that you think are cool but a little but ugly."  I mean, if a  pictures worth a thousand words, can an outfit be worth (...I'm counting...) 38?  I'm hoping yes.

So yes, I am posting pictures of  my outfits for the last few classes.  Which you will probably (hopefully) think are a little but ugly.  But also cool.  and edgy.  and over-your-head.  Did I really say that?  How pretentious is that?

In any case:

Bright blue pants, turquoise top, fat belly.  I was in a rush that morning.  

Oh and btw's, I made my first print, which you are welcome to think of as complete crap.  While the subject of the photo may suck, I am fairly proud of the printing.  Here is a picture of that picture:

Pictures of pictures look dumb.

Alert.

I already told you about my photography class and how I need to take one billion thousand photos before this quarter runs up, but I don't think I clearly listed all the implications of this.

Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls,  I have an announcement to make.  I am a creeper.  I creep on people and take their pictures when they aren't paying attention.  But wait!  There's more! I live in a neighborhood full of little kids.  It's part of what I love about it.  On my walk to school there is an elementary school and a pre-school.  Little kids abounding!  And little kids make the best pictures (evidence:

)

THe other day a cute little girl rode by on her bike and I just took the picture.  And then as I told a friend later, "It was totally ok because her mom didn't even see me do it."  Which just sounds like I am the creepiest person in the world.  

Maybe I am, but hey, little kids are rad.  And there are a lot worse people who could be taking pictures of random little kids.  

I Wanna Get Witcha & Take Yo Pitcha

Some pictures and their explanations:

 I laugh at this as much as I laugh at my name actually being Gigi G.  Which is to say, me and Chin-Chin are homeslices.

 I'm trying out this new thing called closed-toed shoes.  It's weird that so far I really, really like it.  Mostly because these shoes have no sole so it seems like I have flip-flops on still.

 I get tired of packing up all my stuff just to go to the bathroom when I'm in the library studying for a few hours.  To solve this problem I left this message: "If you steal my laptop, I will haunt you til the day this laptop dies.  Furthermore, this laptop is two years old, and there are much nicer laptops in this library. (although you shouldn't be stealing things in the first place."  So far, it works!

 The effects of 2.5 years of methamphetamine use.  No matter how many times I see this picture, I still think it's hilarious.  Is that terrible?

 I had to tear at the fabric of our nation at work the other day.  And by the fabric of our nation, I mean the butcher paper that this map was made of.

I love my school.  

 This from from back when I was at home.  A snail made of green beans.  I felt kind of weird eating it.

And the housewarming present that my sister got me.  It's a small baking pan in the shape of an elephant.  Yet to be used, but VERY cool.  

That's about it.  I realize this is sort of a cop out of a post, but these pictures have been sitting in my phone waiting to be enjoyed by the outside world.  And I needed to make my last post not the first thing that you see on my blog.  In retrospect, it's a little embarrassing, but I'm not really one to be embarrassed.  Oh, and the song?  Missy Elliott's, "Work It"  Because I think at least two people were genuinely curious.  

Fin.  

Fool Friday: Library Dance Party Edition

I do love me the one-girl dance parties:

And this one REALLY lives up to the FOOL part of the title.

Yes, this is me..... in the library .... after midnight.... today..... after figuring our a really hard part of an econ problem (why is calculus that I learned in high school sooooo hard to remember??!!??) ... and then celebrating when I realized the rest of the assignment was going to be peanuts.  or cake.  which ever analogy works better, because obviously I'm not at full mental capacity at the moment.

The florescent lighting of this cubicle is really doing wonders for my complexion, no?  And a million dollars to whoever can guess what song I'm listening to.  OK, that was a joke, I don't have a million dollars.  But I will write you a haiku and post it here.  And unlike the last three haiku's I've written, the last line will not be "Refrigerator."

Have a great weekend everyone!

A Gamboa Classic

Have you ever heard of giving someone the BOD?  Generally, it means to give someone the Benefit Of the Doubt.

An Evil Genius!!

Okay, okay, I'll explain!  In my family, we have a couple classic stories from the childhood of some of our siblings.  There's the brown sugar story, which has to be told by Camille (I wouldn't even try to explain this one - it has to be experienced), the fudge story, and there's the BOD story.  (There's probably a few others that I'm forgetting too.  They probably involve scars and getting lost as a child.)

This story is probably only funny if you know my little brother Lucas, but I tell it all the time and people find it funny sometimes, so here we go.  

Gamboa family tradition: When you turn 7, you've somehow earned the right to a trip to Disneyland with Grandma.  No one knows why, other than my Grandma has done this with all of her grandchildren, and simply because Disneyland is awesome.  Anyways, by the time my youngest brother was 7, my Grandma was having a little bit of trouble getting around (not to mention going on rides), so she just gave my sister Camille the money to take Luc to D-land.  (Which is actually totally not fair because Camille got to go to Disneyland.  Boo).  

Anyways, as such folk lore goes, I've lost a little bit of the details of the story, bit the gist is still there.  Which is that in some line, Camille and Luc were stuck by some kid who was being really annoying.  As little kids tend to do after a days worth of walking around an amusement park.  Anyways, my sister turns to Luc, and in an inspired teaching moment that she had as a 17 year-old big sister, she tells him to give the kid the BOD (obviously meaning the Benefit of the Doubt).  

Luc, being at the ripe maturity of a seven-year-old, didn't get what that meant.  So when Camille asked Luc if he knew what that meant, he thought for a second, then turned and said, "Beating Of Death?"  in a moment of pure Disney magic.  

So now, whenever my family deems that someone deserves the BOD, there's always that sort of question in the back of our heads about which one we'll give.  

Oh, the Blogging

Talk about Bloggers block.

It turns out when you leave your house only for maybe 20 minutes a day, you find topics to blog about hard to come by.  So here is another installment of ......

"Make my Mundane Life Seem like Every Little Detail is Interesting."

This is where I (you guessed it!) try and make my boring life seem like a collection of cool little things.

And let me tell you, I'm not about to shy away from the story-within-a-story thing even though it is pretty much bad story-telling.  

Anyways, I have sensitive teeth.  Like when I poke fun at them they take it personally and give me the cold shoulder for a week (sorry, but I couldn't resiiiiiiist).  And when I mentioned this to my mom, she said she had some hippie toothpaste that I could use.  And by hippie toothpaste, I mean this:

I mean all natural ingredients?  I am not a pioneer walking across the nation here.  I have the technology.  I think my actual response to my mom was, "I'm no hippie!  I throw six-pack rings in gutters that drain to the ocean!"  Which is a lie, but also wait a minute, I am kind of a hippie with these things. Because (and I'm switching to story number two here)......

I haven't used shampoo in about two months.  Since I was at the Stan-ford.  There, I said it.  And you can't even judge me because my hair looks like this:

Make fun of me all you want for being all 13-year-old-myspace photo, but my hair looks goooood, darnit.  And also, didn't instagram make that cool again? Just sit there and let that one soak in.  Weird mirror and over-abundant conceit sold separately.  

I just use baking soda plus water to wash my hair and apple cider vinegar plus water for a finish.  It doesn't quite have a conditioning effect, but it helps smooth things a little.  And while we're on the subject of my hair and all it's fabulousity, did I mention my hair is magic?  I throw it in a bun for a few hours and it comes out looking like I curled it with a huge curling iron.  

The point of this tidbit is that I walk around the house looking like this:

Just about all day errr day I am sporting this look.  Muy sexi, I know.  

Which is why this look + makeup that is leftover from the day before + this van (parked all by its lone-some because there is no way in narcissism that I can park this sucker in a way that is within lines)

Should not equal me getting hit on, am I right?  But yet that is what happens when you drive your little brother to work at 330 pm still in your pajamas and looking like you got run over by the ugly van.  Isn't it always that way? 

I was all of my guard when they guy in the truck next to me wolf-whistled and then said, "Heeeeey" in that way that is flirting.  Not that he was cute or anything, but can you take these things seriously when not even your Mom would tell you you look good?  Which is just a figure of speech, because my Mom is very supportive.  She told me I looked good today.  

So did you get your fill of poor story-telling, typos, and hair-cissism yet?

Photo Phun (get it?)

I'm getting a new phone soon (like, it's coming in the mail kind of soon).  And so I was going through all my old photos on this phone and deciding to trash or keep them.  But some of them were just too good not to share.


So it's time for a round of......

Why the Heck do I have this Picture Anyway?

And that's the end of that.  

Fire in the Hole

Baby-less and feeling oddly like an empty-nester, I write what I meant to for the last week or so, but was too preoccupied with babies (and OK maybe I've read 4 Harry Potter books in the last 5 days) to tell you about.

So picture this: you are wrestling babies, and you are doing a good job of it because they are giggling and clamoring for your attention and chasing you around as you say, "I'm gonna get you!" in a really creepy voice which should probably scar a 1.5 year old and a 3 year old for life now that you think of it, and then you get tired.  Because baby-wrestling is a little exhausting.  They are just about the cutest 30-40 pound weights you ever lifted, though.

And the babies get distracted in the bathroom and decide they both want to brush their teeth at the same time with the same toothbrush and they start screaming at each other and you until you decide that no one can brush their teeth and then they are both screaming, so you try and pick them both up and hold them so that they still know that you love them.

But then in the middle of one of those moments where you think, "gosh darn it I really want of these, but not for a long, long time" you hear a strange zapping noise out by the pool.  And as you look outside you see smoke.  So you drop the babies and really look outside and you see flames.  And you realize there is a small electrical fire involving two extension chords and a broom in your back yard.

So being a twenty-year-old with really no guts when it comes to small disasters, you yell in your alarmed, but still rather calm voice, "Dad! Dad, there's a fire in the backyard by the pool, and it's an electrical fire."  And your father, who is much better than you at saving the day, does a bit of quick thinking and turns of all the electricity in the house and then puts the small fire out with the hose.

And you are left with this:

And two extension chords that are now useless that your hero-dad has already thrown away and you can't take a picture of.

And you think, "My life is awesome."






And also you google it and you learn that you can use baking soda or fire extinguishers to put out electrical fires.  But a lot of baking soda so you should probably get a fire extinguisher because they work on grease fires too.


The End.

Welcome to Weirdsville.

OK, let me begin by saying I don't know how Moms do it.  I've been sort of the next best thing to mom since Sunday to my two nephews (okay well maybe my mom has been more of a mom to them, but....) and let me tell you it is pretty much impossible to feel like a normal person and to be all child-rearing-y all the time.  Granted a 20 year old like myself probably doesn't have the patience required to simultaneously watch a 3 year old and a 18 month old (they are to the day, a year and a half apart - yikes).

The point of this whole thing was - holy free birth control!  If you're wondering what I won't be doing for at least another 4 years, it's having a baby.

The other day I was making these

and I was all dressed in a skirt and chasing after babies and also barefoot in the kitchen and I thought, "The picture of domesticity"

Mine did not turn out that pretty for the record.  They are cookie dough truffles from here.  Redonkulously easy to make and similarly delicious.

..

.....

Sorry I was drooling over the thought of eating cookie dough right now.

The real real point of this whole thing is that I have hardly left home in the last few days except to go to the gym.  Because, you know, the forced-surrogate-mom-hood.  Not that I don't enjoy it.  It's just that I've actually been around these guys since last Monday. as in still June.

Oh my tangents.  (to be read like "Oh my goodness" except well, you get it)

The gym.  Okay back to the real story.  On Dayday (let's call it that because I have no concept of days in this summer haze thing I am in), we had a massive break in our water line which caused us to turn our water off for several hours as we tried to locate and fix it.  Meanwhile, I, being smelly and in need of an excuse to get my rather rotund rear off the couch for something besides baby-chasing and eating, decided to go to the gym.

My parents got me gym membership for the summer (subtle, aren't they) and it is a nice gym and we had no shower and they have showers which are significantly better than the showers I used during my entire freshman year of college, so I took my own towel, shampoo, and razor to the gym.  Can you say classy?  (Also, can you say run-on?)

I used to make fun of people who showered and got like ready for the day in the gym before I went to college and lost my fear of showering in places in that are not my home (I realize that makes me sound ... bad but it's just that showers are weird stalls in dorms).  But then I became one of those people and now I think they are cool.  Isn't that how it goes?

Also, I'm still not as bad as the lady who spent two hours curling her hair in the gym locker room.

But I did blow dry my hair.  So not by much.


I hope no one (aka my parents) took offense to this post, but I meant it out of love?  And also no one reads this blog in my house (except me of course, because you have to make sure you don't sound like too much of a dweeb ..... dweeb?) so who cares.

Yeah, I'm going to call this one.

A Few Odds and Ends

I'm supposed to be finishing packing my room, which for me simply means throwing all of the random schtuffs in my room into plastic bins and then eventually into the back of my car.  While listening to a billion musics.

Also, this guy:

One of my favorite parts about blogging is that I'll be going across my day as regular and then something will hit me and I will just know that I want to blog about it.  The reason why that is awesome is because I start looking for things that are cool and funny and then when little things happen, I'm in a good mood planning the post.  

This guy hit me.  He is like my childhood.  From the Saved by the Bell vibe going on to the faint memory of childhood pizza parties, I just really wanted to post a picture of him.  I can't even quite describe it, but the cup made me happy.  

Another random little tidbit:

The other day I was walking across campus in the morning and there was hardly anyone around because there weren't classes that day so who in their right mind would walk around in the morning?  Plus it felt earlier because of the doom and gloom that is the weather we're having up here. 

That whole paragraph is not related to the story hardly.  

Anyways, I'm walking along and then suddenly I drop my cell phone, and I'm upset so I say, "Oh Fiddlesticks!"  and this man who is like the only other person awake in the Stanford morning is about ten feet away from me and he just stops and is looking down and laughing at my reaction. But not aloud.  Just kind of thinking about how absurd my reaction was.

I felt like I brought something unexpected to his day, but also, I don't know this man, so how can I say if he was laughing at my quirk or just at me?  I guess I should just give him the B.O.D.

And lastly:

A woman with full hands asked me to help her open a door that I was sitting sort of close to the other day.  Except that you needed an ID card to open the door and mine didn't work for that dorm.  And hers was in her back pocket of her jeans.  I said I would carry all her stuff for her, but instead she just asked me to get it out of her jeans.  

I think I was hit on. But she wasn't even college-student aged.  She appeared to be in her late 20s or early 30s.  

It was just weird.  

Well, I started with and odd and ended with an end so....

(to go with the cheese, of course)

The Only Thing

I don't like about this shirt is that it implies that I am only 50% awesome.

Oh and that it's actually my little brother's shirt.  But Marcus and I can share like ALL of our clothes.  It's kind of magic.

And isn't it really hard to blog without blogger?

I mean, I know that my brain is still here and that my computer is still here, but I have like 3 drafts of posts that basically have like a sentence each in them that are supposed to get me started.  And I kept thinking of things and then flipping to blogger and being completely unable to write them down in an easy way (never mind the fact that I could have typed them up somewhere else or used a paper and pen).  So blogger, I say to you: Booooooo. 

Which reminds me.  Someone in the google family has a similar sense of humor to the one that I have.  Hence this little gem:

Oh google chrome, I knew we were soul mates.  Every time things suck, I too say Boo. Also, can you even read that?  It says boo

OK, so let’s witty-gritty.  It’s like the nitty-gritty except it’s the part where I try to be witty.  Which is not to say that I succeed very often.  I would say about 80% of the time I end up thinking I posted is like when someone changes their facebook status to show that they bought a gallon of ice cream at Albertson’s – does anyone really care?

But that’s the whole point of this post.  The point is that blogs are such a weird concept.  I basically share a little piece of my world with some shapeless audience and pretend that you all are hanging on my every word (But aren’t you though?).  And you in turn decide to read it all, personal information and all, even if you don’t know me very well.  I know because I do it.  I read blogs of strangers.  They are (for the most part) somewhat famous on the internetz for the blogging skills, so it’s not that weird, but still, it’s pretty weird.  I know intimate details of the lives of women who live in New York, DC, Provo, and Arizona.  I have never met these women.  But I know the nicknames that they have for their husbands and a lot of the things that make them laugh.  Creepy?  In some ways yes, and in some ways it is actually quite awesome.  I feel connected with these women and I like it. 

I was trying to put into words why I blog recently because I was supposed to get other students to be interested in blogging at an activity fair at my school.  The thing is, I don’t even really like writing.  I think I like attention.  I like telling stories.  I like being able to put into words the new beliefs and ideas that I get about my life.  I try to do it often, because I think it makes my brain work better.  To have an entire infinity of people to bounce ideas off of. 

I also try not to do things that are easy.  Because most of the time I bore myself writing them.  Like posts that are like OMG listen to my cool cool life.  Or lists.  At the start of this blog I did a lot of lists because they were easy.  But not in a while.  They’re easy to write but boring to read.    Stories are better.  But since I suck at those, quips and anecdotes do.  And mostly I try to do things where my personality comes through.  So that I don’t sound like my life is perfect or that the things that I think are funny are actually the funniest things in the world (but f’reals, that spinach joke was hilarious ….. to me) or really anything where I come off as the awesomest (unless it is a reference to how I am the awesomest at life, because well, the obvious reason).  But at the same time, a blog is soooo narcissistic. 

I don’t know.  This post is already too long, but I can’t really tell because I wrote it in a word document instead of in blogger.  And I also don’t really know what I’m getting at except to say that blogging is weird but I like it.  Is that weird

Easter Holiday

I have a new-found appreciation for Easter.  I like that it's a holiday all about joy.  The joy that Christ was resurrected and that He made a way for me to live in Heaven with my loved ones forever.  It's a pretty awesome idea.  And a way under-rated holiday.

I got a card from my fam bam (as part of a package) that was just too good to not share.

It has all the tell-tale signs of a holiday card from the Gamboa family to one of its members:

• My parents wrote something cheesy in it.  
• My mom altered the original text so that it's from the entire family (Most common are things like a little "& Son!" added on to a "Dear Brother,")
• Everyone had to sign it
• All the kids tried to be witty.  

Actually, we have sort of a competition to see who can be funniest when signing cards.  This time Marcus won.  I don't think he was even trying, I just really appreciate that he got right down to business.  It still makes me laugh now.  

Anyways, I realized that I usually like to write either about what thought is stuck in my head or about the interactions I have had with others.  Sadly, between work and class and studying for midterms, I haven't had much interaction with other people lately or many deep thoughts.  How pathetic is that!  I seriously need to get outside of my room more often.  

As a result, I have blogger's block.  I wrote an entire post that was a letter to my teeth (Oh GOODNESS, the relationship I have with my teeth.), but then I deemed it stupid and not even creative or funny, so I deleted it.  I did take a good picture of my teeth for it though.  But I think I deleted that too.  

Actually, the most notable interactions I have had lately are the three times this week I have absolutely wanted to kill Jillian Michaels.  But I keep using her DVDs because, I mean, she looks like this:

Ooh I should do a post on food sometime soon.  I have very complex and interesting opinions about food lately.  

Anyways,  that's about it lately for me.  It's been a week of nose-in-a-book-ed-ness so far, but we're only half way through, so hopefully it will get better.  

Summer Lovin'

You wouldn't believe how excited I am for this summer.  More excited than I am for practically anything else right now.  Well, that's false.  But I'm still PRETTY excited.  (Yeah, I used all caps, so what?)

This summer I am going home.  It's weird how my concept of home changes.  When I had a roommate, I was starting to feel like Stanford was home.  I still love it here, but coming back to my room everyday doesn't really feel like home.  It could be because half of my room has empty walls and a weird, uncomfortable and bare blue mattress.  It doesn't exactly give off a home-y vibe.

Oh the digressions of my brain.

Anyways, to Upland I go.  In about 8 weeks, that is.  I have big plans for this summer.  I hope I get through all the stuff that I want to.

Hopefully, the internship that I wan this summer will pull through and I'll be able to have a grand ol' time learning le business skillz and whatnot.  We'll see.  I'm afraid to count my chicks before they hatch on this one.

But then, since I am recently sort of becoming a foodie (Thanks K-Trizz), I was hoping to get a job as a hostess or the likes at some restaurant.  Just so I can get a feel for restaurants and a little extra cash in my pocket.  Which Stanford can then take away from me in the fall.

And then here's the part where I will (hopefully) never be bored or without anything to do,  because I have made a list of things I want to do during the summer.
I want to:

• Learn to cook a lot of dishes that are yummy and healthy and flavorful.  
• Go the Beach about a billion times.  Or like 4+
• Get tan.  Like, actually look like I'm Mexican tan.  
• Learn all the spices that are somewhat common.
• Have a street art photoshoot in L.A.  I'm sort of obsessed with street art.  
• Explore Griffith Park especially the Observatory.
• Go to the Getty Museum
• Read through the Book of Mormon start to finish.  
• Go to the Santa Monica 3rd Street Promenade
• Go to the Grove and hear some free music
• Hear Friday Night Jazz at LACMA
• Hit up the Garment District in LA

It's crazy how I've lived so close to LA all my life and never seen a lot of these things.  Basically every Saturday of the whole summer will be a day trip for me, so hopefully I can get some friends to come along with me.

Also, I made this terribly awesome joke in a TUSB post and I'm afraid no one will ever see it, so I'm putting it here: Studies show that if you eat a bucket of spinach at every meal, you will grow big and strong.  (You have to click the link to get the joke).

And pictures make every blog post better, right?

This is relevant because he's at the beach.  

This is relevant because it's my blog and it's a picture of me!

This is not relevant.  

The End.  

DC craziness

Oh the DC.  DC was, I'm not going to lie here, my least favorite of the three cities that I visited over Spring Break.  Although to be honest I'm not sure I really gave it a fair chance.  We were limited to public transportation, which was fine because the place we stayed at was about a quarter mile from the subway station. And also we basically limited ourselves to free attractions.

I guess I have to explain.  I love food.  I love to eat and I love trying new foods and I love the idea of sitting down to a meal with someone.  It's a social thing for me.  It's about sharing.  Kristin and I would go two different places for each meal just so that we could eat half of whatever we bought and then switch with the other person. And in New York, we ate out for every single meal.  And it got to be expensive.  New York is expensive.  So by the time we got to DC, we figured we had better slow down on the food expenditures.

So when we got to DC on Monday night, we had some time to kill, and decided to go grocery shopping.  We could buy sensible things and spend less in two days than we had on two meals in New York.  It was brilliant.  Here's where the fun began.

Fun thing Number 1:
The nearest grocery store to where we stayed was Whole Foods.  I think whole foods is great.  But also, every time I go there, I want to buy expensive cheese and some grapes to go with them and these crackers look so good, and is that curry I smell?  Which translates to not cheap.  So we decided to take an extra little walk to whatever grocery store that the Google Maps app on my phone said was closest.  It was about a ten minute walk.  But then again we were in Virginia. So Virginia decided to have some rain right then.  Correction, Virginia decided to have a thunder storm right then.  A thunderstorm that only lasted ten minutes, and, you guessed it, it chose the exact ten minutes that we were walking to the grocery store.

Contemplating the State of the Union, and also what my next meal would be.  

Only when we got there, it was more like a convenience store that comes with a gas station except there were no fountain drinks and there was no gas station.  Which not only had like negative selection, but was actually probably more expensive than going to whole foods.  So soaked and disappointed, we walked over to whole foods.  But we were good!  Despite being hungry enough to have way too many cheese samples to not even buy the cheese, we were like Ms. Don't spend money and Ms. Only buy the essentials.  We ended up getting some deli meat, bread, boring cheddar cheese, yogurt, a couple of apples, a couple of oranges, and a bunch of bananas.  The  bread and things turned into sandwiches, which we ate for lunch and dinner.  And the yogurt and bananas turned to breakfast.  And fruit for snacks.  Which brings me to.....


Fun Thing Number 2:
Day 1 of eat all the groceries worked out great.  Were were full all day and we were happy and we even got to go to the temple that night.  It was cheap and awesome.
But on day two, we ran out of turkey for the sandwiches (holy cow brains I have been spelling this word sandwhiches my whole life and that is wrong!).  But no worries!  We would make grilled cheese sandwiches (it is so weird to type) instead.  Except that we only had enough bread for three sandwiches.  One and a half each.  And we were out of snack fruit.  But we had a bag of nasty peanuts that we had bought for the bus ride to DC.  So as we made the grilled cheese's, we realized we were using a really funny burner after we had burnt all 3 of them.  And then we put them in a plastic bag, which turned into us having soggy, burnt sandwiched when we were hungry for lunch.  It was the saddest thing we had ever seen.  We walked though cafes at all the museum-y places and smelled the food and instead ate our yucky sandwiches and nasty peanuts.

Not so excited at museum Number 7.  

Besides this, DC is a LOT of museums.  Like 7 museums in 2 days a lot.  So by the time day 2 was ending, we were more than happy to meet some friends at Good Stuff Eatery to eat a properly cooked meal and enjoy something else besides reading a plaque about a dead person (I know I sound terribly insensitive right now).

This trip has soooo many pictures of food.  But the food was definitely a highlight.  

Honestly my favorite part was the temple.  It is such a gorgeous temple.  Not that there are ugly ones, but this one was breathtaking. 

Oh and I left all my toiletries (read: makeup) in NY on accident, so I get progressively more haggard looking in the pictures.  

New York City Stories

Oh my gosh NEW YORK CITY!!!  What a wonderful city.  It is awesome and there about a billion thousand things to do there.  Kristin and I had to squeeze whatever we could into 2 and a half days and we were pretty much shameless tourists.

 I know that hearing about other people's vacations can be capital b Boring, so I will spare you and only tell the stories of the ridiculous things we did.


Thing Number 1:  Stay with a complete stranger
Being the starving college students that we are, Kristin and I opted to not get hotel reservations for anywhere we went and instead depend on the kindness of others for a place to sleep.  Luckily we knew people in every city except NY!  So we ended up staying with a man named Mbe who is Nigerian and in his late 30s!  Not to mention, neither of us had ever met him before.  I make that sound SOO sketchy.  Haha.  But Mbe is a really good friend of one of Kristin's current roommates, so that is how we got that hookup.  Plus he is Mormon, so there is that automatic Mormon trust thing.  He had such a sweet place.  Here is the view from his apartment:

Yep, he lives on the corner of 110th and Central Park West on the 16th floor so his apartment literally overlooks the beauty of Central Park and then the city.  It was awesome.


Thing Number 2: Sleep on the subway
Trying to save money and minimize the time that we would stay in a stranger's house, we bought a red-eye flight from Friday night to Saturday Morning.  It left at 11 pm and got in at 7 am.  We figured we would be fine after a crappy 7 hours of sleep to go explore the city.  What we didn't realize that with the time change, a crappy 7 hours of sleep was really a crappy 4 hours of sleep.  So by 2 pm on Saturday afternoon, we were EXHAUSTED.  Like incoherent strings of words and going into free museums just for the warmth and not knowing where we were.  So we got on the subway for the sole purpose of taking a nap.
Because we were soo completely tired, and we had a Broadway play to go to that night, and we did NOT want to fall asleep for that (which is good because Memphis is now my favorite musical of the ones that I have seen).
We took a train as high as it would go, and then back downtown.  The only problem is we got interrupted by some teenage boys who came on to sing/play the guitar to "Come Together" by the Beatles for money.  And maybe I was just half-asleep, but they sounded really good. 
I do remember saying to Kristin, "Do you know who sleeps on subways?  Homeless people."  And then she responded, "Well, in NYC, we are pretty much homeless."

We were completely fine, and nothing got stolen (except I was wearing a pair of really cheap dangly earrings that are now missing, but if someone stole those I'm too impressed to be mad), but still, I don't think I'll do that again.


Thing Number 3:  Taking the Peep World bus. 
On Monday afternoon, Kristin and I got ready to take a Chinatown bus from NYC to DC.  We had looked up a super cheap bus that left from Penn Station that would take us from there to the Chinatown in DC.  So we got ready to head to "Chinatown Express"  for our trip.  When we got there, it was a restaurant.  A restaurant!  We were there at about 1:10, we hadn't yet bought a ticket, and the bus we wanted was supposed to leave at 1:30.  We frantically tried to find the bus and ask the Chinatown Express people if they knew where to go and figure out a way to get ourselves(and all of our stuff which we were carrying), over to DC.  Kristin turned the corner on 33rd to see a bus that had DC 2 NY written on the side and a line of people.  The bus was parked in front of this classy establishment:

It says Peep World, if you can't tell.  It ended up being $30 as long as we paid the driver right then, and in cash, but we got on the bus and made it DC without stopping or danger of being raped.  It was actually a really nice bus with free water and they played a really cheeeeeeesy Bruce Willis movie called Red on the way over.  It was actually quite enjoyable, despite the mass amounts of stress before getting on the bus when we didn't know if we would be able to go on or not.


So besides those 3 stories, and the normal getting lost in the subway system stories, I only have normal tourist stories about how much I LOOOOVED the bagels or the street food or watching Memphis.  Seriously, you should all go see Memphis.  It won 4 Tony's last year, so you don't just have to take my word for it. 

Oh New York City, I will miss you.  Hopefully some day I can live on you.

Dear Frank,

It's been real.

I really appreciate the way you helped me out in a pinch.  I really wouldn't have made it through the last week and a day without you.

We really got close, you know?  I bet it was all those times that I held you in my arms.  And the time that you got that boy to carry you up the stairs and then the boy and I got to talk.  I think you did it on purpose.  You were there the day that I tried out my new bright pink lipstick.  And you gave me the chance to study for my finals.

But even through all of that, you still have that look of disgust on your face when I tried to kiss you on the cheek.  Let's be real here, we didn't exactly bring out the best in each other.  You forced me to stay in my room and then I got annoyed and made some rude comments about your weight.

So even though I really appreciate everything you did for me, I got to let you go.  Plus, Betty is feeling better and she is just so much easier to have around.  There were really just too many people in my room at once.

I'm sorry Frank.  Truly I am.

Your Friend,
Genevieve
(or as the Russians at Kangaroo Mobile like to call me, Gen-vee-ehhv)

Oh, the One Girl Dance Parties.

Can I even tell you how many one girl dance parties I have had in the last two weeks?  No, I could not, because that would require me to count them, which I am totally incapable of doing.
And could I help it if my new song obsession is Rocketeer and that it is a good dancing song?  Also, is anyone else obsessed with Far East Movement?  Because I SO totally am.

Sometimes (like right now for instance), I stop and look at the things I say and I think, wow I sound like a prissy, annoying spoiled girl.  I promise I'm not.   Most of the time.

Does this post have a point?  No.

Am I just spouting words for the sake of procrastination?  Yes.             Very yes.

Reading Nat the Fat Rat makes me think it is normal to put a webcam pic of yourself in every post.  

Another story so that I can satiate my desire to not have a post of complete nonsensical babble:
Today was my last day of tutoring.
I have been tutoring a 12 year-old girl named LaShea for the past 8 weeks or so. (Her name is pronounced La-Shay).  Favorite phrases of LaShea include:

• Oh Lord.  Imma pray for you.  
• Don't make me get gangster on you.  
• Jersey Shore.  Now that's my show.  
• So .... do you have a boyfriend yet?

I worry about the generation of 12 year-olds that grew up on Jersey Shore as entertainment.  A lot.  

Once I asked LaShea what would happen if she did get gangsta on me.  She said it would involve her AK47. Then I asked if she knew what that was.  She had no clue.  I love America.  

In the two months that I spent knowing LaShea, she fell in love with me as a tutor.  My friends, this is a pretty big deal for me.  I'm not really the type that 12 y/o girls become best friends with.  In fact, I would say I am bad with adolescent girls in general, unless they are close enough to my age that I can treat them as an equal.  Maybe this means I can start adding girl names to the dozens of baby boy names floating around in my head.  

Not that I spend time thinking about baby names.  (But really, find me a Mormon girl in her 20s who does not think about baby names, and I will exchange her for a unicorn.)

Oh, the dance parties.  I mean, the 12 year olds.  I mean, the baby names?  .... let's stick with the dance parties.  

A little flirt never hurt.

Interwebz, meet the new guy who is staying in my room.  He's kind of huge and obnoxious, but I have to house him for the next few days.  His name is Frank:

As in, short for Frankenstein.  Because the lady at the PC repair place called him a monster.  

I'm actually growing quite fond of Frank, I held all 29.2 pounds of him in my arms across a street and up three flights of stairs, and we bonded because of it.  

Let me tell you the story of how Frank and I came to be roommates.  

Yesterday, my computer broke.  Out of nowhere. But luckily, it was just the screen that broke.  When I turn it on, it looks like this:

One stripe.  And I din't drop her or anything (my computer's name is Black Betty).  I love Betty and I would never do anything to hurt her.  

So after waiting overnight to see if something magical would happen, and waking up to realize that the computer fairy is not real, I decided to make phone calls to PC repair places close by.  

I ended up at Kangaroo Mobile for a free diagnostic of the problem with Betty.  Betty has a broken LCD screen.  Which they have to special order and then install, and it is NOT cheap.  

But you guys, it is finals week next week.  And I have to create a website by this Friday, and all of my files are sitting in Betty.  I need her.  This week especially, Betty is sooo important to me.  So I went to kangaroo mobile, and I played the girl.  I batted my eyes, I made extra eye contact, and I was smiley.  

And kangaroo mobile let me have Frank for free.  Yes, he is all mine until a new screen comes in the mail for Betty.  

The guy at kangaroo mobile even carried Frank to my car for me.  So either I am good at smiling, or kangaroo mobile has some good customer service.  As I made the quick drive back to campus, I thought about how things have a way of working out.  And then I had a one girl dance party to Rocketeer in my car to celebrate. (Note to self: that song is going to play REALLY loudly next time I turn on my car.)  

But f'realz.  It's good to be young.  

In other news ( and I know this is not a fashion blog and I am not about the fashion), what do you think of this outfit?

Too many colors?  I actually wore this today, except I wore flats that were more neutral.  But the yellow sweater and the blue shoes and the pink earrings?  I like the bright colorz, but I'm thinking this might be a little too redonk.  Also, over half of these items were obtained from my fashionista older sister.  

Oh and be tee dubs, what are you giving up for lent tomorrow?  I am giving up using my sister's netflix account and the soft serve ice cream that they have in the dining halls and most importantly, I am giving up needless worry. As in when you worry about things that you have no control over.