gardening

My next door neighbor (at my parent's house) asked if she could pay me to plant some flowers for her.  I woke up at 645 this morning to get over there early in attempts to avoid the heat.  While toiling around in the dirt I had an epiphany. I hate gardening.  I don't like sweating, I don't like dirt, and frankly, I don't think I'm very good at it.  But I was thinking about all the older women I know, and they LOVE to garden.  Especially my mom.  Am I the black sheep? Or is gardening something that once you turn 35 it turns into a major hobby? 

Please. Let me know.  

Also, on an unrelated note, my mellow mushroom waiter guessed I was 16 the other day.  Granted, he was weird and there's a pretty good chance he was high, but this is nothing out of the ordinary.  He guessed my 17 year old sister was in fact, 17.  Story of my life.  

VBS blues

I was teaching VBS (vacation bible school) this week and I am probably the VBS staff's worst nightmare.

First, I missed a training session I didn't know existed.  Then I left to go out of town until the night before VBS began.  Apparently, I was suppose to call all the parents before it started, but didn't know that because I missed the training session.

Flight delay in New York because of a FLAT TIRE.  C'mon Delta... This resulted in us missing our connection in ATL. This resulted in us having to spend the night there and catch the first flight in the morning at 7:45.  On the bright side, I did get a $14 voucher for food that night and I get a $100 voucher to use sometime in the next year.  But it also meant I was arriving in Mobile 10 minutes before I was suppose to be at church teaching VBS. 

Got to church, there was confusion, my kids ended up missing the opening ceremony because again, i missed the training session so I didn't know exactly what I was suppose to do.  

I call the parents that night.  One of them says she asked her daughter what she learned that day and all she could tell her was "God flies at night." awesome...

Then I felt really bad all Tuesday, convinced myself I had swine flu.  

The next morning, my sister was off at the carpool area trying to round up our kids.  She comes back and says, are you feeling better now? I said yes.. and she said ok good, because they are canceling VBS because some kid that was here earlier this week had swine flu.  (which may or may not be true at this point, still awaiting the results from CDC but it's looking like thats what it was).

So yeah, they are rescheduling the last 3 days of VBS and I'm pretty sure they checked my schedule to make sure I wouldn't be here for those 3 days.    

poll: which is scarier?

Possum really unhappy with the cat?

Madeline's cat really unhappy with my kitty? This was right after she got a bath so her hatred for Samson was especially strong.

My vote is for the cat.  Look how cute this baby possum is!

NYC: An Intro

New York is dirty and smelly.  The people are weird and everything is ridiculously expensive.  I got lost at least 10 times and the weather kinda sucked.  With that said, I freaking LOVE it.  I went to DC in March, and while the company was nice (shout out to anna and priyal what whatt), DC is lacking a certain charm that I felt in New York.  Plus, it's kind of a bore.  I plan on writing a lot more about my trip, but I didn't want to write some super long blog that everyone would be scared to read.  So, first, top 5 things I love about New York.

1.  The People.  Where else could you find a man walking down the street carrying an enormous snake (5th avenue... during a parade.  There were TONS of people around)  Or a man shouting "Obamacondoms.com, for all your hard times"?  Or a man dressed up as the statue of libert

y?  Side story to that... as I was attempting to take this picture, my

 mother behind me all of a sudden started bursting into laughter.  After some moments of confusion I realized I was standing on a grate and my dress was going all marilyn monroe on me.  This was Times Square on a Saturday night. So, my family is dysfunctional, my mother obviously thinks crowds of people staring at me and my underwear is hilarious.  

    

2.  The food.  Oh, the food.  It started with 

olive oil and roasted fennel gelato from Mario Batali's restaurant (Iron Chef anyone?) and ended with an enormous piece of divine strawberry cheesecake from Carnegie Deli.  In between that there was Bobby Flay's restaurant- Mesa Grill, high afternoon tea (to the right... yeah I ate a lot of sugar on this trip), soup dumplings, etc.  On the last day we went to Aquagrill, a restaurant in Soho where I could have picked out a $500 meal consistingof 1 ounce of caviar, an oyster sampler, and a bottle of wine.  I settled for a yellowfish tuna sandwich which was only about $12 instead. 

3.  The Subway.  So it took awhile to figure out, but once you get the hang of it, it's not so bad.  While I felt that DCs was a tad easily to decipher, it is not as practical because NYCs system goes everywhere you would need to go.  Might still have to walk several blocks, but its doable.  And there's always somebody down there playing music.  Guitar, drums, violin, you name it.  My favorite was on our last night, as we were leaving Times Square we walked down to the sound of The Meetles, a Beatles cover band.  They had a huge crowd and were really good.  We only caught the last couple of songs they did but it was really cool.  

4.  The Countries represented.  To start, there's just so many foreign people it's not even funny.  I heard accents that I couldn't even tell you where they were from.  Chinatown is just great to walk around.  Its the only place I saw cats the whole time I was there... hmm. Lots of ducks hanging up in windows, all kinds of fish and fruits and veggies to buy.  Its really legit, it looks almost identical to the small town where I lived when I was in China.  Madeline bought some bubble milk tea while we were there.  The "bubbles" are tapioca and the drink is very sweet.  A bit strange but it was good.  We also went to Little Italy which is in fact, very little, just one street.  Come to think of it though, the only time spent there was in a shop run by Chinese people... so didn't really experience that.  Sunday was the national puerto rican day parade.  We were one of the few non-puerto ricans there, but I still found it very cool.  Its just neat to watch how excited they all were and how proud they are of their culture. 

5.  It's like, famous.  I kept on thinking things like, oh here's the lobby of the Empire State Building they show on Elf when he first walks into the building.  This is where Phoebe runs like crazy through Central Park on Friends.  These are the steps (of the Met) that Kevin James sits on in the movie Hitch.  This is the statue they always show in the intro to 30 rock.  And so on and so on.  Our waiter at Mesa Grill was telling us all the movies that were being filmed in NYC then and all the celebrities that he had randomly seen.  I also went on the NBC studio tour and got to see the SNL set and Jimmy Fallon's late night studio.  

SOOO, Summary.  NYC=awesome.  If I'm not lazy, I will write some more details.  

hey.

As you all have noticed  (the 4 of you that will read this), I haven't written anything in awhile.  That's because I'm not doing much with my life and loving every minute of it.  It is quite depressing that it in June 10th since we got done with school on May 8th.  How is it even possible that its been a whole month?  Oh I remember rushing through that Physiology miniboard (because I couldn't stand one minute longer) just like it was yesterday.  Please summer don't go!  

Oh, as a last follow up to my new year's resolutions, here are their success rates. Because it is funny how much of a loser I am...

1.  4.0 for spring semester.  FAIL.  This one was kind of a joke anyways... I did want an A in physiology though, and I got a B.  B stands for barely scraped by too. 

2.  Healthy eating.  FAIL for semester.  SUCCESS for summer.  

3.  Exercising regularly.  FAIL for semester.  Didn't even train for my triathlon.  Strangely ever since then though, I've been doing grrreat.  

4.  Become more responsible with money.  FAIL.  unless you count the little organizer I bought to put my receipts in.  And I did return 2 swimsuits today that I had paid $280 for... But my reasoning behind that was, I could get 3 not as cute suits for the price of 1 of those. 

5.  Avoid boys.  EPIC FAIL. 

6.  Find something exciting to do this summer.  SUCCESS!!! YES!  This includes, but is not limited to, Disney World, NYC, Puerto Rico, ATL, and Boston.  And not planned but is a must... going to visit A LOTT in the Big Easy.   It would have been impossible for both 4 and 6 to be successful, and 6 won out. 

NEW GOALS:

*Expect nothing from myself.  Then I cannot be disappointed by missed goals.

*Drop out of school because obviously med school makes me eat everything I can find AND makes me incredibly lazy.

*Win the lottery.  

*Transfer to an all girls school.  Do they have those for medical school?

I'm leaving for NYC in the morning... at 7, which is in 5 hours.  I think I might try to go to bed!