A Walk in the Park

I spent a lovely, lazy afternoon in the New York City this past Saturday. Although the temperature read 82 degrees, I swear our wonderful, balmy weather could not have been any higher than 78. There was a soothing breeze and not a drop of humidity in the air, which is the closest thing I’ve felt to an Oregon summer day in quite some time (which is kind of ironic since Oregon has been seeing blistering temperatures of over 100 degrees for the past few days - Oregon typically sees one or two heat waves during the summer, so this isn’t unusual).

I took the 6 train up to 77th Street and then walked over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is near one of the entrances to Central Park. I perused through the exhibit of photographs that were taken over 100 years ago. One photographer had a couple of photographs that were taken of landscapes in Oregon, including one of Multnomah Falls, which is less than an hour away from where I grew up and is one of the more famous natural landmarks in our state. It was amazing to see such an old picture of it and yet it looks exactly the same. I also browsed the collection of French furniture and artwork on the first floor, which reminded me of my trip to France a few years ago and the elaborate and colorful rooms at Versaille.

I took the elevator up to the Rooftop Gardens where there was a small collection of some very interesting sculptures from Jeff Koons.

It’s a giant balloon animal, right?

But what really struck me about being on top of the museum was the incredible view of Central Park and the skyline of midtown Manhattan.

The picture really doesn’t do it justice. You really have to experience it for yourself.

After lunch, a staggering low - oh how much fun it is to drop after taking six units of insulin! - and viewing the Jeff Koons collection, I made my way across Central Park and down Columbus Avenue to the uptown branch of Magnolia Bakery. Diehard Sex and the City fans will recognize this name. It apparently made several appearances in the show (while I have seen the show, they’ve all been the reruns on TBS because I was, what, nine when the show aired? Something like that) and the Bleecker street store is now mobbed routinely by fans of the show. I opted to try Magnolia’s on Columbus in hopes that it would be less crowded. There was definitely a line, but it took only five or so before I reached the cashier. They have the most delicious cupcakes, so it’s a challenge to choose just one. I saw many people buying packs of four cupcakes, but I figured one was enough damage for me.

I took my cupcake and an iced coffee and walked back over to Central Park where I gave my very sore feet a break from all my walking. Despite the gorgeous weather, the park didn’t seem excessively crowded, so I found a nice spot on top of a small hill overlooking one of the paths. I watched cyclists and runners whizz past families and small children. As I walked through the park to the Columbus Circle subway station, I passed old married couples sitting together on the park benches and it was just so nice.

Honest to goodness one of the most relaxing days I’ve had in a very, very long time. With the chaos that is work and adjusting to my new apartment, it was another great reminder of why I love living here.

We Came, We Saw, We Cut, We Conquered.*

Time for the CWD Friends for Life recap.

Short version: It was awesome.

Long version: Most of the time when I go to diabetes conferences I don’t really go to learn. Aside from the information overload you get during your first year or so of living with diabetes, it’s really hard to learn much that is “new” in diabetes. Besides, as someone who both writes and reads diabetes blogs, information about new technology, like CGMS and insulin pumps, and research is readily available to me.

So why did I go to a diabetes conference? Simple: for the people. In addition to the bloggers I’ve already met, I also had a chance to meet Manny, Sara, the “Other Allison” and Mandy. This also means I’ve officially reached meeting 10 new bloggers (actually, I’ve met 11) in just seven months! This isn’t even including Kevin and Jillian, who I am meeting on Monday.

It’s true what they say: going to CWD is like coming home. I am involved in several different communities and through it all, the diabetes community is the one that feels like family. It was a phrase that was used several times throughout the conference by all the staff. The people who were attending the conference were a part of our family.

I flew in Tuesday night and Mandy and her parents picked me up from the airport. After an exciting adventure in finding out hotel, we finally arrived and settled in as we had an early morning the next day. Wednesday was an unofficial conference day. Many people were there for the receptions and the focus groups, but the conference had not officially begun. I attended the Young Adults breakfast with Sara and Mandy where we discussed some great ideas for how to expand the conference to include young adults. It’s not quite the all-inclusive adults with diabetes sessions that I’m aiming for but it is a step in the right direction.

The conference itself was amazing and Jeff Hitchcock should have a full report of all the activities in a couple of weeks. I’ll post a link when I see it online so everyone can read the re-cap.

In addition to the two day conference, we (Sara, Mandy, Heidi, our new friends Alex and Beakal and ourself) also spent a day at Universal Studios. We went on all the rides and had lunch at the CWD’s buffet area in a closed off Latin Quarter. We escaped the clutches of Lord Farquaad, fought off aliens and survived a twister. We even had our picture taken with Shrek and Donkey.

One of the perks of going to a conference for people with diabetes is that they make all kinds of wonderful arrangements for you. This year, those of us who went to Universal Studios (or Islands of Adventure, which was the other option) received a Community Relations pass that allowed us to use the Express line which is usually reserved for people who are either handicapped or who pay extra. I have mentioned a few times about going to Guest Services and requesting a disability pass because standing out in the hot sun for several hours can damage insulin (which, for my new readers, you need to live). When I was in Orlando two years ago, I went with some of the other teens with diabetes to pick up these passes on our own, but this year they were included with our park tickets. However, rumor has it that Disney is getting very, very stringent about who they give these passes out to but I say it’s a fight worth fighting. Not only is it a legitimate reason (the July heat from the Orlando sun really can do serious damage), it’s also a nice perk. Considering everything I have to do to stay healthy as a type 1 diabetic, this is the least the universe can do to repay me.

P.S. Shout out to Dorothy, one of my faithful readers!
*Thanks to Sara Mandy for letting me steal this as the title for my post.

Weekend in Philly

You know those weekends where everything goes terribly, horribly wrong?

People don’t show up. Traffic is terrible so the people who do show up are late. The restaurant you picked is full. The back-up restaurant has lousy service and bad food. Everyone wants to do different things so you end up spending half an hour standing in parking lot debating what to do next and you end up all going in different directions anyway. The ONLY museum you want to go to is closed and you ended up just staring at it before you wander away to the nearest Starbucks. Then you consume too much food and take too little insulin, which leaves your blood sugar hovering near the moon and you’re even more pissed.

Yeah. Those weekends suck.

This, however, was not one of those weekends.

Honestly, everything about this weekend went exactly the way it was supposed to, which makes me the happiest person in the universe.

On Saturday morning, I drove down to Philadelphia to have lunch with some of the coolest, craziest cats in the diabetes community. I arrived at a nearly empty Applebee’s, which was great because it made getting a table for nine people very easy! Soon after, Gary Scheiner arrived, followed by Emily, a friend of Kelly’s, who is studying to be a nurse and is interested in learning more about living with diabetes. So of course she was welcomed! Kelly arrived shortly after that. Then Scott and Joe arrived, along with Hannah and her husband, Matt, followed by Betty.

Getting a group of diabetics (and a handful of T3s) is always a recipe for lively discussion. We spent over three hours at Applebee’s talking about everything from health professionals who irritate us to misconceptions that work to our advantage (using diabetes to get a table faster or getting a handicap pass at an amusement park) to Kelly and Scott sharing their experiences of growing up in the early 80s with diabetes (oh the horrors!).

We laughed, we debated, and we took pictures!

(from the lower left-hand corner going clockwise) Betty, Emily, Kelly, Gary, Scott, me, Hannah and Matt.

After lunch, we all split up in various directions. Hannah, Kelly and I went back to her apartment in South Philly after making plans to meet Scott and Joe for dinner on South Street. We wandered around South Street for a bit, poking our heads into some of the cheap jewelry stores, killing time until Scott and Joe arrived. Around seven o’clock, we walked over to the Marrakesh, the Morrocan restaurant we were supposed to meet at. I tried to open the door, but it was locked. Kelly rang the doorbell - no answer. We stood across the street, plotting a way to break into the restaurant (I suggested climbing through the upstairs window), when we saw Scott and Joe come around the corner. Joe went up to the door and knocked. A lady opened the door.

Apparently they just didn’t like us.

Morrocan food is amazing but it was a ton of food. A seven course meal that included chicken, lamb, salad, couscous, fruit and baklava - all accompanied by their pita bread - had us eating more carbohydrates than I typically eat in an entire day! We shared more experiences growing up with diabetes. But it wasn’t all diabetes, all the time! We were also thoroughly entertained when the bellydancer came around.

Hannah and the bellydancer.

After dinner, we waddled back to Kelly’s apartment through the Italian Market. We were so bloated with food that we felt like we were pregnant. Kelly joked that we had “food babies.” When we got back to the apartment, we quickly looked up directions to the studio where Hannah’s husband was recording with his band. We hoped in our car and made our way back to Ardmore, just a couple miles away from where we had lunch and a stone’s throw from Gary’s office (we waved as we past it). As we drove through the mean streets of Ardmore, which involved us passing our turn not once, but twice, we eventually found the studio down a little driveway off a mostly unpaved road. It wasn’t exactly the easiest place to get to, but having those few extra hours with Hannah was so much fun.

Kelly and I slept in on Sunday and after a quick breakfast, we went to check out Independence Hall, which is one of the last few historical landmarks that I hadn’t been to on the East Coast. When we arrived, we stumbled upon a sign that said “NO MORE TICKETS ON SALE TODAY” and we were immediately crestfallen. I was thwarted once again. But then! A man appeared! Okay, he didn’t appear, he was the security officer and was standing there the entire time. He asked us when we were leaving. Kelly replied, “She’s leaving today.” A woman was standing next to him and said that some people didn’t show up, ripped off two tickets from her little booklet and handed them to us. It was obviously meant to be.

I left later that afternoon, quickly stopping by Bank of America and a gas station (yes, I pumped my own gas and this time I didn’t even ask for help!). Traffic was a bit nasty so I didn’t get home until nearly four hours after leaving Kelly’s, but I also stopped at one of the service stations so it wasn’t completely traffic’s fault. I was still home before eight, which meant I had time to upload all the pictures and watch Army Wives.

Lessons Learned at Powell’s in Portland

This afternoon, after my speaking gig to a group of soon-to-be graduates of the University of Oregon’s journalism program, I decided to take advantage of being in Portland and I headed to one of my favorite places in the city: Powell’s Books.

Now, despite the fact that this bookstore is on my top 10 list of Places You Must Go When In Portland, it has not always been this way. Powell’s Books takes up one city square block and is three stories high. The bookstore is divided up into rooms based on genres and each room is named by a color. Among them are the Gold room is the science fiction/mystery/thriller room, the Orange room is the business/planning room, the Purple room is the religion/language/travel room, and the Blue room it the literature/poetry room. The cases are ten shelves high and are jam-packed with books, sometimes two rows of books on one shelf. Powell’s Books is one of the largest bookstores in the world, having rightly earned the nickname the City of Books.

Unfortunately, because of the sheer enormity of the building, the bookstore had a tendency to scare me as a small child. I didn’t like to go because I was afraid of getting lost - which is not hard to imagine because even grown-ups sometimes lose their way around the building.

But now I have come to appreciate Powell’s selection and as an West Coaster-turned-East Coaster, I also appreciate Powell’s ridiculous good prices. I browsed the bookstore for about an hour with my Peet’s coffee, another love of mine, though it doesn’t rank nearly as high as Powell’s. Though Peet’s does serve as a reason for at least a couple Boston pilgrimages a year, as Boston is the only city on the entire East Coast that has Peet’s Coffee and Tea locations.

I ended up with a selection of about ten books but I knew I couldn’t afford all of them… the total price was over $60 and while that’s a steal, that didn’t necessarily mean my bank account would approve. I wheedled it down to six books for just under $50. My purchases include The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd, because I read The Secret Life of Bees and loved it so I thought I would enjoy her memoir; The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, because I saw the play last summer and loved it, plus it came highly recommended from a couple OCers; The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith, which I have been nagged to death to read by several people, plus his other book Friends, Lovers and Chocolate, which is the second in the series after The Sunday Philosophy Club which I finished earlier this year; The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, which is a monster of a book but I’ve heard rave reviews about it so I’m hoping it’ll be worth my while; and finally, The Naked Roommate: And 107 Other Issues You Might Run Into in College, which I’m giving to my younger brother who is graduating from high school on Friday.

This is definitely quite a bit of reading material and I’m not even starting on any of them until I finish Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, which I bought a couple months ago but just started reading on the flight out here on Saturday. I’m over sixty pages in so far and I’m really enjoying it.

In the past, I go on the book binges with the intention of devoting a significant amount of time to reading and absorbing the messages and lessons in these books. I have visions of myself curling up in a coffeeshop and reading for several hours, while refilling on cappuccinos and munching on scones. Of course, this never, ever happens. Usually I go through two - maybe three, if I’m lucky - books before craving yet another book binge which leads me with six more books that will sit on my shelf, patiently waiting to be read in a never ending queue of literature.

But I have decided that it is absolutely imperative that I break this trend. For the past few months I have become acutely aware of how much of my life has been devoted to the Internet and the mindless social networks that eat up so much of my time. I’m not even talking about the amount of time I spend on the Internet at work. I’m talking about all the hours and hours I spend glued to a computer screen, which I’m sure is going to cause brain cancer someday. As I zig-zagged through the halls of books, I realized that unless I made some serious changes to my time-management I was going to spend most of my life twittering it away and not actually do or experience anything. I mean, how much life reflection can you do on Facebook anyway?

One of my items on my 101 Things To Do in 1,001 Days is to give up the Internet on the weekends for one month (#92). But I have decided to expand it for the entire summer. It doesn’t hurt that my weekends are already swamped with plans, but adding a few extra weekends to the goal will really help me make the most of the summer before the weather turns so cold your air starts to freeze and your breathe turns into slabs of ice (okay, so that hasn’t actually happened to me, but I’m sure it could!)

Starting today and ending Labor Day weekend, I will not be using the Internet at all during the Saturday and Sunday hours. The only reason I will allow myself to log online is to get directions or look up a phone number in case I am absentminded and forget to do it at work, which, knowing me, is bound to happen. I did this last summer for a little over two months because I was without the Internet or television for six weeks when I moved into my apartment (that was the earliest the cable guy could come and install the equipment in my apartment). This meant I was forced to explore my new surroundings and I really appreciated how it helped me acclimated much faster to where I was. I felt comfortable with New Jersey much faster than I would have had there been an excuse for me to stay inside my apartment.

Hopefully by the end of the summer I will have regained a bit more of a sense of self instead of relying so much on other people’s lives to provide entertainment. I shouldn’t have a constant feeling of watching the Real World. I need to be out there. I hope you’ll join me.

My First Trip to the First State

Rehoboth Beach is, uh, really far. Although Mapquest told me how far Rehoboth Beach is from where I live in north Jersey, I was absolutely convinced that it was wrong and was closer that it really is. My advice is to always believe Mapquest and to plan accordingly. But even though it’s not that close, the extra fifty miles was completely worth it.

The weather could not have been better. It was sunny, with just a hint of puffy white clouds dotting the sky in the morning before clearing out to solid blue. It was small group of us that congregated in Rehoboth Beach - Heidi from D-Log Cabin, Katie from TuDiabetes and her husband, and Betty, a longtime member of DiabetesTalkfest, and her husband and myself. We met at a cafe just off the main boulevard and chatted about our experiences with diabetes, life on the East Coast and the upcoming diabetes conferences (anyone else going to Friends for Life?). Afterwards, we headed to the beach and strolled up and down the boardwalk, chatting while we checked out stores and stopping at benches to test our blood sugar. We also talked about the reason we were all there: the impact that meeting other people has on our lives and our self-esteem in handling this disease and how important it is to educate others through blogs, social networks and events.

So many people have said how meeting others with diabetes and how seeing people opening test their blood sugar or bolus for lunch changes the way they see their own diabetes. This is why it is so important for me to have these meet-ups or attend diabetes events and encourage people to come too. This summer I’ll either be attending diabetes events or hosting my own and in the next couple of days I will be posting the dates and locations for all of these.

It wasn’t until I started attending diabetes events that I really became passionate about diabetes advocacy and felt motivated to make a difference. For most of my life, I didn’t like talking about diabetes any more than I need to and I didn’t face any discrimination or additional health issues that other people with diabetes face. But being around others with diabetes made me realize that this disease affects us differently and with each new person I meet, I meet another reason to speak up, to educate and to advocate for a cure.

So to Heidi, Katie, Betty and the dozens of other people I have met and will meet: Thank you.

Heidi, me, Katie, Betty and John
(kudos to Katie’s husband Charlie for taking the picture!)

Leaving On a Jet Plane.

The third JDRF Blogger Round Table is now online and this month, we’re talking about my favorite subject: travel! Traveling with diabetes can be an arduous experience, especially when the goal is to get some R & R, but the nine bloggers on our panel (some of the OC’s best: Amy, Kerri, Scott Strumello and Scott Johnson, Allie, Sandra, Manny, Bernard and Gina) have some great tips for packing, road trips, warm weather and handling the infamous… Airport Security. Cue scary music.

I consider myself a seasoned traveler (I hit a record of eight states just last year!), and I’m continuing my Lemonade Life Summer Tour 2008 with stops in London, Orlando, Delaware, Washington D.C., and hopefully Philadelphia and Boston… not to mention my trip next week to Oregon for my brother’s high school graduation! Wow, I’m tired already.

Summer is the universally accepted season for travel (not that I’ve ever let a little thing like rain, sleet or snow stop me!) so most of us are probably gearing up for our vacations. Hopefully this blogger round table session will be useful for you and your family as your planning your next vacation. If you see anything that isn’t there, however, please feel free to drop me a note at amblass [@] gmail.com or leave a comment and let me know what’s missing. I’ll include any extra tips in my personal travel entries.

Bon voyage!

One-Fifth

Last Saturday, I watched Number Twenty on my 101 movies in 1,001 days challenge. That means I am one-fifth of the way done with that challenge and I still have more than two years until the challenge is over. Although two years sounds like a long time, if you look at my list, you’ll see that there is a lot of other stuff on my list that I still need to finish!

I finally got around to updating my NYC Restaurant list, though I’m pretty sure I’m leaving one or two out. There is also a Thai place I went to in Queens with Scott and Jon but I don’t remember what it’s called (Scott! Help!). It was yummy, too. The 101 movie list is still sorely outdated as I have way too much catching up to do, and with all those movie links to do… it might take me awhile. I also have three movies from Netflicks waiting for me at home.

As far as the other items on my list, we all know that I’m now going to London. Then there’s the upcoming CWD conference (one goal is to go to a CWD conference once a year) and I have more blogger meet-ups planned throughout the summer. I might actually reach my goal of meeting ten bloggers by Labor Day! I’ve also found a church that I like, so I’m two weeks into my (at least) six month stint there. I’ve also begun downloading the sermons from my old church, Imago Dei Community Church, off of iTunes and I’m about a month into that.

I would love to hear suggestions from you at home about what I should work on next or how to accomplish them. Do you know of a cool art gallery (#36) or restaurant in NYC (#42) I should check out? How about a place to get a massage (#20)? Are you a diabetes blogger who is in the NYC area who wants to meet me? Just send me an email (#5). If anyone want to surprise me with tickets to the NYC Ballet (#40) or a live taping of a TV show (#47), hook a sister up!

As you can see, I’ll definitely need the next two years to get everything done. But it sure is fun!

Playing Tour Guide.

On Saturday, I took the train into the city to meet up with Jon Schlaman, co-founder of Diabetes Talkfest. It was definitely not the great day weather-wise for a day out (and considering how sunny it was on Sunday, I’m kicking myself for not double-checking the forecast). But we managed to have quite a fun time seeing some tourist attraction and actually going on Saturday worked out because I was able to go to church - which I really liked! yay! - and I managed to get everything off my list. My bangs are cut, I worked a bit more on my freelance article, I went grocery shopping and bought my mother’s present for Mother’s Day. Very productive indeed!

Anyway, on to the recap:

We met at Penn Station and walked up through Times Square and over to Ninth Avenue to lunch. After a quick bite to eat and a long discussion about the future of Diabetes Talkfest, we walked down Seventh Avenue after deciding to try going to the top of the Empire State Building. But right as we walked past 42nd, I spotted Madame Tussauds. We decided to check it out. I wasn’t sure if spending that much money in a museum full of wax celebrities would be that much fun, but man, this is definitely going on my Things to Do When Schlepping Tourists Around NYC List! Jon took out some of his anger on Bill Gates, I modeled for Annie Leibowitz, I rocked out with the Spice Girls, we said hi to the Clintons, I got some comedy tips from Lucille Ball and even my boyfriend came!

Afterwards, we waited in the longest line in the world to go to the top of the Empire State Building. It was far too cold and we really should have skipped it (or been smart and checked the forecast), but it was still amazing to be that high up off the earth and to see so far. You could even see the lights from Giant Stadium, which is next to where I work. Sadly, my camera ran out of batteries so I have no proof that I was actually up there, so you’ll have to take my word for it.

When we were done, we headed back down and hopped on the subway to Queens where we had Thai with Scott Strumello and then walked over to his apartment where I got to meet Phyllis, his adorable cat. I also saw the most amazing contraption in the history of the world.

A personal soda machine.

It’s amazing.

I want one.

Welcomed Weekend.

Another week has come and gone! Hard to believe. It feels just like yesterday I was moaning about how it was only Tuesday and then zooooom it’s Friday!

It’s kind of weird how that works. I wish that wasn’t how it worked on the weekend though. I want the weekend to move like molasses but that doesn’t usually happen. Mostly because I sleep through half the day since I don’t typically wake up until around 11:30 or even noon. By the time I’m awake, showered and dressed it’s usually after 1p.m. and the day is practically over and I have to get ready to go to bed again!

Okay, maybe not quite, but you know what I mean.

My plans for the weekend:
- Weight Watchers check in (ugh)
- cutting my bangs
- buying new shoes. I’ve been wearing these adorable silver ballet flats to the point that I’m starting to hate them. Our dresscode just changed to casual Friday everyday so wearing fancy shoes isn’t required but I don’t have many casual shoes now!
- going to NYC to play tour guide with Diabetes TalkFest’s Jon Schlaman and have dinner with him and Scott Strumello
- hopefully going to a new church (maybe, if I don’t chicken out)
- grocery shopping
- working on freelance article
- sleep?

What do you have planned for this weekend?

Spring Break.

Well, as a 22-year-old post-graduate working girl, I sadly bid farewell to any hopes of having a spring break last year.

Luckily for me, my mother is a teacher and she has spring break, so when I found out that I needed to use up my two roll-over vacation days from last year, a mini spring break vacation seemed like a perfect solution.

My mother had never been to Boston before and I had only been there for about twenty-four hours last Labor Day. It was also within driving distance of where I live (which I still can’t get over) and would help cut the costs.

I drove up on Friday night so my mother and I were ready to go Saturday morning. We started off on Newbury Street with brunch and window-shopping. We even found a funny window! I thought this was hilarious and I ended up buying a magnet with the saying on it too. We walked the Freedom Trail through Boston, passing through the Boston Commons, Park Street Church, the Old South Meeting House, up past Faneuil Hall and into the North End. Unfortunately, both Paul Revere’s house and the Old North Church close ridiculously early (like 4pm! What respected historical location closes then!?!). So we had to come back.

We had thoughts of going to the Old North Church for Sunday Easter service, but I ended up coming down with a bit of a cold and slept in until almost 11 a.m. instead. We didn’t want to waste too much of the day, so we took a quick jaunt over to Cambridge (I waved to Massachusetts General Hospital - home of Dr. Faustman - on our way there) where we had Peet’s coffee, toured Harvard University and stopped in the Curious George store. Afterwards, we made our way over to the North End to finish up our sightseeing stops.

When we got to Paul Revere’s house, there was a tour with some students going on. While the tour guide was speaking, he said to the students, “You all are from a high school in uh, in uh Portland…Portland, Oregon, right?” I thought he was going to say “Maine” because we were in Boston and you could practically throw a rock at Maine (well, compared to Oregon!). We stopped by the Old North Church and I had my picture taken with God (well, kind of). It was still early, a little after four, when we were done so we wandered around the North End looking for a place to eat. We actually stumbled upon a jewelry store where my mom bought a really great green ring (how Boston!) and I got a woven bag for the spring.

On Monday we decided to skip town and we drove up to Salem. Salem was probably not the smartest decision ever considering it was very cold and nearly nothing was open, but we did tour the House of Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s birthplace and one of the many, many witch museums which was sadly just a retelling of The Crucible, so I found it slightly dull.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s birthplace - cute house, too bad he wrote such a God-awful book like the Scarlet Letter

We skipped town on Tuesday, but not before heading up to Bunker Hill monument and I stupidly decided to climb to the top - all 296 steps! I have climbed to the top of Notre Dome (yes, it’s possible to climb to the very top of it), and I’ve been to the top of the Eiffel Tower and the Sears Tower (albeit via elevators - thank God). Somehow it’s been ingrained in my psyche that I absolutely must climb to the top of whatever monument I’m near, which isn’t so great considering how out of shape I am.

The drive home is terribly long, but we made a couple of pit stops. The first was in Providence, RI for a bathroom and Macy’s stop. The Macy’s was not on purpose, but when you walk past all those clothes on the way to the ladies room you just haveto stop. Then we stopped for dinner in New Haven and took a quick spin around Yale, mostly by car, but we did get out and visited the library, which is amazing. My mother and I briefly contemplated me attending Yale for grad school, but then we discovered they have no master’s programs in journalism or communications. So we said, “Well, Yale’s out!”

Because, you know, I totally could have gotten into Yale…

Wednesday was my mom’s final day and we spent most of it just sitting around my apartment. In the afternoon, we went to the city for dinner at my old favorite, Cibo (those of you who attended OCapalooza last year will remember Cibo) and then we rushed over in very heavy traffic to see A Chorus Line. It was amazing! I have seen quite a few Broadway shows, but each one are so different than I have a hard time picking a favorite. This is definitely a fun, yet touching look at what an actor goes through on Broadway and I have much more respect for those who pursue show business.

My mom left yesterday morning, so now life has finally returned to somewhat normal. I am way behind on most of my freelance projects so other than running a handful of errands I plan on staying put in my apartment and taking care of what needs to be taken care of. Won’t be very relaxing, but at least I’ll get some of the stress off my plate!

You can check out all my photos from spring break on Flickr.