Five days and counting. I'm still on a mission to try and do as much as I can before I leave.
Saturday, I went out to eastern Long Island to participate in some pumpkin picking and other autumn things with friends whom I haven't seen in a while.

We stopped at two farms. We browsed all edibles available, and everyone had some sweet corn. It was quite the windy day, but it was the most perfect fall day to travel.

My friend's son Ben ran around and enjoyed everything surrounding him. The funniest part of the day was when we introduced him to Popeye, but he just kept asking where the "pot pie" was.

Pumpkins, apple cider donuts (most delicious donuts ever!), corn, and friends. Best autumn day I've had in a while.

My semester/college life is officially done. As happy as I am to finally move on, it saddens me to think about what are now memories and how my life will change. It's crazy how fast you become an adult! I figured to put myself in a happy place right now, I'll post about my Portland trip, finally!

A group of my friends wanted to go away for our last spring break ever. I've spoken so much of Portland that they decided they wanted to not take the typical Cancun vacation. We purchased our flight and found a wonderful spot to stay via Airbnb.

We explored the city - downtown, so many shops (especially vintage), so many parks, so many delicious restaurants and food carts, and so much more.

I can't even tell you how much walking and hiking was a part of this trip. Every day we went on hikes. I love that there are so many fantastic parks within the city, it makes New York seem like a concrete wasteland.
We also got really lucky with the weather. The pacific northwest is known for being just a wee bit rainy. The eight days we were there it must have only rained twice. That really allowed these hikes to happen!

(Gotta throw out credit to my friend Katherine for this photo.)

Towards the end of the trip, we rented a car to explore some areas outside the city. We took a trip near Mt. Hood, discovered a trail with so many waterfalls, and visited a sea lion cave in Florence. The Oregon coast is amazing.
Every day outdid the day before; our trip just got better and better. Our last day we received the best life lessons from a man named Mo on Hawthorne, a perfect way to end our trip.

I mentioned in a previous post about my film camera troubles, I went and bought so many disposable cameras. I really love the idea of capturing images the old school way through film and printed photos - the anticipation to see the end result after getting them printed. I ended up not taking many photos on my phone.
My plan is to get the rest of my photos developed and make more little photo albums/scrapbooks which I plan on doing real soon! I'll post about that when the time comes!

An update has been long overdue. So here we go.
What ended up happening because of the extreme and unpredictable nature of this winter season, what was supposed to be a one week vacation became a three week one. A long vacation isn't a bad thing, but I am a creature of habit; I was eager to get back to my everyday routine. But I digress.
Portland has officially become my favorite city, and I had such a fantastic time. It gives off such a home-y feeling in which it didn't take long for me to adjust. And I didn't get tired of it at all.

We were lucky the weather was much better than we expected. It didn't rain once and we saw three days of sunshine. It of course was overcast the majority of the time, but better overcast than rain, I suppose.

Being that the weather was accommodating, we were able to walk around and explore a lot. Everyday we visited a different neighborhood, but always found ourselves downtown by the end of the night. After a couple of days, it wasn't too hard to conclude that Portland is an afternoon city. Shops open late and close early. It's strange to be coming from a city that never sleeps to a city that doesn't have much of a nightlife. Not that it bothers me; I'm not much of a night owl.
I did love all of the shops and the locally made and grown way of life. I was only there a week, but that local small business feature really impacted me.

We took a trip to Seattle for a day. It was a nice day trip, but staying in Portland really spoiled us. We didn't come across so many local businesses as Portland. They're similar cities, but so different. It was nice to see how the other coast lives. Thinking about it now, I'm sure everyone in Seattle has intense calf muscles. Those hills were a little brutal to walk up and down.

The last few days we just continued winging everything and just explored, shopped, and ate. Oh boy, did we eat and eat.

The day before our flight we met up with family friends and they took us to the coast, two hours outside of Portland. It was amazing to see more of Oregon, which is beautiful. People don't give Oregon enough credit. There's so much to see and so much to do. We visited Astoria, where The Goonies was filmed. And then went to a couple of beach locations near Cannon Beach. It was a treat to see so much variety.

(Photo taken by Natalie.)

On our way back home, there was another snow storm that hit New York. We had a transfer flight in Phoenix, so we got stuck there for two days until our rescheduled flight home. Phoenix was great; downtown looked like loads of fun. Arizona is now on my list of places to visit. It was hard to appreciate it when we were stressing on where to stay, how to fill our down time, and when the next flight out was. But it was mostly brutal being in 80 degree weather and flying to 8 degree weather in the same day.

I could go on and on about the trip, but I'll end it with these videos. My friend shot some videos and made two compilations of our trip. Enjoy!

I'm leaving for Portland today!
I booked my flight with a friend over a month ago and I can believe how fast the time flew.
We're leaving today, and coming back on the 14th. A good week of experiencing a great city on the other coast.

I've had it in my head for a couple of years that I will move to the west coast after graduating. Crazy thing is, now I have one more semester to go before graduating and I got to get my act together. I'm really hoping a lot of good things will come from this trip. Networking, meeting, connecting, SHOPPING. So excited.

Last time I was there was about a year and a half while visiting Seattle. This time we plan on staying in Portland, but visit Seattle for a day. No concrete itinerary, but lots of ideas of what we would like to do.
I plan on being out and about, which means I won't be bringing my laptop. My online stores are temporarily closed, and so, I bid adieu for now. Hope y'all have a great week and I'll be back with fun stories and great photos!

I've been cooped up at home this week on account of getting our bathrooms redone. Although I'm a bit of a homebody, I like having the option to stay home if I feel like it, not because I have to. I've been home supervising the workers, and even though I've planted myself in front of the television everyday this week, I've been trying to keep myself busy sewing, painting, etc. I can't complain, but I can't wait till this bathroom nightmare is over.

Being inside all day, I don't even know how the weather has been outside. I know last week was not so pleasant due to rain and thunderstorms, but so far all I can see is sun this week and that's great.
Last week was filled with rain, but it didn't stop my friend and I from hanging out.

We took a drive to a town not too far from mine, we walked around this wonderful pond, and took a stroll through the town itself.
My town is is in the center of Long Island, so we don't get to see water like this everyday. Although lucky for us, the island is not too small, so traveling to the north shore or south shore isn't that much of a hike. This particular day, we traveled south. The forecast said rain, but it didn't happen. We spent the afternoon enjoying the good weather.

I can't wait till the bathroom makeovers are done so I can go on another afternoon trip like this.

In the meantime, have you seen Silversun Pickups' new video? It's pretty wonderful.

So, remember how I've mentioned That Dog were set to play two shows in New York, which were their first NY shows since 1997? Well, I attended their show on Friday at the Music Hall Of Williamsburg, and they blew me away!
Walking into the venue, I had no idea what to expect with the crowd. I knew I'd be younger than most attending the show since I didn't know who the band was during their prime. But it's never too late to get into bands, even if they're disbanded. I surely got lucky being able to see them during their reunion.

I've been to the Music Hall once before, but never really explored the venue. My friend Jess and I arrived early, so we wandered around. We took a cheesy mirror picture in the bathroom.

There were two comedians opening for the band, which I thought was odd. Never attended a show before that had comedians as the openers. But it was a nice change from normal rock shows.
That Dog finally came on, and I've never seen such an excited crowd before. Honestly, the last bunch of shows I've been to, the crowd was more on the lame side - quiet & no enthusiasm shown at all. It makes me wonder what's been going on with audiences and why no one is excited anymore. You pay for a show - you in return should show some kind of enthusiasm. But it was nice to see that the crowd at this show actually enjoyed themselves.
The band played everything great, and were cracking jokes in between songs. They were funny and entertaining. Their set was all kinds of perfect, and I'm appreciative that I got to see them live. I hope they decide to record new material. I guess time will tell!

The day before the show, I downloaded a new camera app for Androids called Pudding Camera. I love the effects this camera has. I used it to take the cheesy mirror picture and this next picture. Wish I followed through using this app for the rest of the show because my photos came out blurry and not so wonderful with my regular camera (as shown in the last photo). Oh well.

Here's a great That Dog song to end the post.

Tomorrow's the last day of the semester! How exciting. I thought this day would never come.
Since I've been too overwhelmed by final projects to take photos from my week, here are some photos I've taken throughout the semester.

01. My favorite park in NYC is Madison Square Park. It's conveniently located by my school, and it's the perfect small kind of park. I went during a break between classes with a friend. This is a part of the line to the Shake Shack, which is supposedly a wonderful burger stand, but I wouldn't know. Every time I've gone to the park, there's either been a massive line in which I don't wish to participate, or it's closed. So I still haven't eaten food from the Shake Shack yet. One day.
02. For my last project for my general illustration class, we had to do a poster for the memorial of the Titanic, which I think I may have mentioned in another post. My professor found a little museum with artifacts from the Titanic, so we went on a field trip.
03. The museum was downtown in South Street Seaport. We were to arrive two hours before the museum opened, so we were told to walk around the seaport and sketch a bit. I sketched around the boats with friends. It was an awful rainy day - my sketches were all wet.
04. Going to an art school, you'd expect it to be pretty awesome, the interiors and such. But nope. Our walls are an ugly off white, the hallways are boring, the classrooms are boring. Nothing screams "I'm an art school." The students to try liven the place up by drawing on the walls, a.k.a. vandalizing hah. In a few classrooms, there are "sausage walls". People draw sausages linked together, and just keep adding to it everyday. Whenever the semester ends, they're painted over. Then when the next semester begins, the students start the sausage wall all over again. It's apparently been going on for a while, and it's pretty awesome. I took this on Friday - the last day I would see it. So here's evidence that this specific wall existed.

Here's a song by Madness that I've been digging lately.

Yesterday, my friend Gabby and I had two awesome things in mind we wanted to accomplish in the city: a visit to David Lynch's gallery exhibition in the Upper East Side, and to attend Eric Erlandson (ex-HOLE) and Mark Yarm's book signing in Brooklyn.

Turns out things didn't work in our favor, so we came up with a plan B.
We had to skip the exhibition. So we planned to walk downtown, walk the Brooklyn Bridge, and walk to the book signing. Before we knew it, was 6:30 and we had half an hour to get to Brooklyn - we weren't even close to the bridge. We hopped on the train and hoped for the best.

We stepped into the book store EXACTLY at 7pm, so we were technically on time.
The event started with a conversation between the authors. It was interesting hearing Eric's side of the grunge scene, stories about Kurtney (a.k.a. Kurt & Courtney), and his Buddhist ideas and how it got him through everything that he was surrounded by.
I'm definitely looking forward to reading both of their books. (I skimmed through both books on the train ride home.)

Getting home after that was quite an adventure in itself. Honestly one of the most aggravating things is traveling through Brooklyn to Queens and vice versa. But I won't get into that.

Even though our original plan didn't fully happen, I'm happy we brought myself to attend this. I really enjoy book signings and definitely want to attend more in the future. I'd say the day was a win anyway.

Here's one of my favorite HOLE songs.

Birthday week summary!

The school week was really light and easy. Two classes were cancelled, and the rest were laid back and stress-free.
My birthday celebration started on Wednesday with The Joy Formidable concert. Went with five friends, and we walked out of the venue amazed. All bands put on a great performance, especially The Joy Formidable. They blew us away - they had great energy and sounded amazing live. The opening band, A Place To Bury Strangers, were not what I expected. I have known of them for years, but never gave them a chance. After seeing them live, I instantly became a fan. I would say that night was absolutely amazing.

Stayed over some friend's apartment that night, and then we all went to class the next morning. After class, I checked out a local thrift shop with my mom and bought a few things. Came back home, ate pizza, and watched Twin Peaks. Being that that day was my actual birthday, I was happy being home with my family - I had some good quality mother-daughter time.
Last night I went to dinner with friends I haven't seen in a while.
Today, my brothers + my older brother's girlfriend brought me to Medieval Times. LONG day, but SO much fun. Our knight won! Blue knight for the win!

The top photo includes my brothers John + Niko, and John's girlfriend Serina.
Bottom photo is me and Serina enjoying our Medieval Times drinks! Excuse the crap phone-photo quality.

Now for the quick photo summary:
01. This week was pretty chilly, so during one of my days off, I made some hot chocolate. Cinnamon + whipped cream + sprinkles = PERFECTION.
02. My friends bought this shirt for me at the Joy Formidable concert. The graphic collar is so cute!
03. On the way to Medieval Times drinking iced tea/lemonade while doing sudoku and rocking out to Gorillaz.
04. The cups we bought at Medieval Times. Can seven of the same cups be considered a set?

Being that I've been on a Gorillaz kick all day, here's a good song to end this already long post.

In between classes today, some classmates and I had intentions of buying concert tickets - the trip downtown turned into a pleasant adventure.
For weeks now, we've been talking about seeing The Joy Formidable at the end of March at Terminal 5, and planned on buying tickets asap. Weeks passed, no tickets. The one day we actually made an attempt to buy tickets at the venue's box office, we found out that you can't buy tickets there. Ridonkulous. So we pushed it off some more.
FINALLY we bought them today.

Our first stop was at Mercury Lounge's box office. Bought the tickets, then wandered around and found a nice little Greek restaurant to eat at. As soon as I took a bite out of the delicious souvlaki pita wrap, I realized how much I missed Greece and all my family there. There are days that I miss it, and today was one of them.
Afterwards, we walked to Chinatown for ice cream. We got our ice cream and chilled at this park and watched all people getting seriously hardcore into whatever gambling-like games they were playing. It was a nice little park. Wouldn't know how to get there again if you asked me though.
It was a short break, but a nice one. The weather was perfect, and it made this little trip enjoyable. I don't get to travel downtown very often, so this was a treat.

Here's a video by The Joy Formidable, to end the post. I honestly am so psyched to see them live. They are such a powerful band and I'm sure they'll put on a kickass show. Plus, the show is the day before my birthday, so it'll surely be a wonderful birthday treat!