Once upon a time, in a city far, far away...

One of my goals this year was to travel to the east coast. While i consider myself fairly well-traveled, the only east coast state i'd been to was florida, and, to me, that didn't count, as i was in a hotel room for the time i was there. Another goal of mine was to find a job that paid me to travel. I was fortunate enough to reach two goals at once. My lovely employer paid me to travel to new jersey to open up a few theatres. I worked a TON (over 90 hours one week) and therefore didn't have much time to travel, but i made it out to nyc a few times, thus these pictures. Above: me at times square the night we flew in from kansas. It was about 2o'clock am, and as you can see the lights caused it to be very bright and people were still milling about.



A reflection picture ( love! ) of me at grand central station, where i got lost looking for a bathroom.



The city as seen from the empire state building, which i later learned isn't the best place to look out on the city. Still, it was quite gorgeous.



A corner of the city


They say the neon lights are bright on broadway, they say there's always magic in the air...




Still to come... our trip to the macy's thanksgiving day parade :)

Hi, i hear your names nex-5, wanna be friends?

Who has two thumbs and just bought a new camera?? THIS GIRL!
i bought it because the only video camera i have is a $100 piece i got right before alaska. it lasted me while in alaska, but i thought it was time to invest in a (sorta) real video camera. I got the Sony NEX-5 and i la la looove it. Its super compact, takes great videos & was relatively cheap (around 800 for the body and two lenses). Obviously, its gonna take me awhile to learn how to really use it, but hopefully i can learn quickly and get a vimeo up soon!
Today (friday nov. 5) marks my one year with the company i'm with. at some point in time, i grew up and get to go on a company trip. i leave in a week for new jersey. expect pictures soon. :D

thus far..

So, life has been a wee bit busy. I just got done working 21 days in a row (sigh), but i think it was all worth it. I got confirmation today that my job is flying me to New Jersey to open a new store. It sucks that it took me a year to go to the east coast, but at least now i will be getting paid while i'm there. Also, today i bought a video camera (eeek!) so assuming i can get the hang of it, i'll probably start a vimeo. Until then, this is what my fall has been thus far... Puppy time!


And i learned how to do tilt-shift on photoshop. The idea is to make a picture look miniaturized. The really good tilt-shifts are done with actual tilt-shift lenses, but those are expensive & I'm poor. :D
(Before & after)

Oh, Glorious summer.

I WENT SKYDIVING FOR THE FIRST TIME!!!
After getting rained out, we finally got to go. We had instructors on our backs, but it was still totally worth it. There's nothing like free-falling through the sky. I'd venture to say this was my biggest goal i accomplished this summer. Amazing.

I also got to spend lotsa time with my favorite fella, Jack. There's a dog park about 5 miles away from our new house, so he and his four legged roommate often get to go run around and play in a pond.



I have a really good habit of being where i'm not supposed to be. these pictures were taken in such a place. I finally found prettiness in kansas city!
Seriously, we couldnt have asked for the clouds to be prettier for sunset.


Overall, i'd say this was a damn good summer.

More o summer.

To continue the tradition, i also went to animal paradise this summer and met up with some ol animal buddies. Seriously, this place is amazing.I also went to the lake of the ozarks for my first time actually being on the lake. It's a little pathetic, i've lived in the kansas city area for 18 years and just now went to the lake. It's massive & gorgeous.

I rode & drove a wave runner for the first time. Amazing. We flipped it quite a few times, though. The one we had was a 3 seater, which is hard to flip back up. We were terrified it'd sink.

And i was sort of part of a softball team. By sort of, i mean i went to one game and never actually played. i make a better cheerleader.

I went to worlds of fun for the first time in something stupid like 8 or 9 years. not too much had changed, except for almost every roller coaster i rode when i was younger was no where to be found :(

Whoops.

I cannot believe how long it's been since i've updated. Here are some things i've gotten done over the past 6 months..
It's been summer. That means lots of work for me! I survived some silly big movies. I even got to give out shots out of this ice sculpture. :D


My now roommate and I went to St Louis to see some of my friends. We went to forest park, this sculpture park, and one of my favorite places in the world..
CITY MUSEUM!! (if you don't know what it is, and care to know, look it up here.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Museum_(St._Louis,_Missouri)


Jack & I moved to Kansas with 2 roommates, one is Abigail:
She may look sweet and innocent, but it's all an act, i promise.

(more to come of this summer!!)

The end.

Yeah, there was a club on board.


Jamaica was the last off shore day. We docked in Florida and spent the night before flying home.
As for the overall experience, I've definitely decided a cruise is not my cup of tea. Although I'm happy i went (i've always wanted to go on a cruise), it's way expensive for just a week. Also, going on spring break wasn't a good idea, there were wayyy too many drunk, young college kids.