Crazy Eight

You thought I’d forgotten about you, didn’t you??? No?? Oh, okay. Well, for those who were a perturbed that a blog post didn’t go up yesterday, I apologize for your confused emotional state. It was another busy Sunday and I just didn’t have time to sit down and write up a post. Alas, now I do and here’s your Week Eight, yes EIGHT, update!!

This weekend was actually quite relaxed. As it was basically my last weekend to kind of be lazy before my parents arrive this weekend, I slept in on Saturday and then did some shopping. Living down in The Village, I’ve become accustomed to a more laid back Manhattan with fewer people roaming the sidewalks. This means that going into Times Square now seems like a chore. It legitimately gives me anxiety because I just can’t get where I want to go as fast as I would like to because there are SO MANY PEOPLE. In the past, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but now it just isn’t fun. The reason I am bringing this up is because there are only two things I brave Times Square for now: Broadway shows and the Disney Store. This weekend I made my probably tenth appearance at the Disney Store and I actually made some purchases (they were gifts, not for myself…but there’s still time). I just love being anywhere that has anything to do with Disney and the Times Square Disney Store is no exception. The store itself is really neat but mostly I just love the magical energy of the store. Every single kid who walks in there just lights up! I am a pretty emotional person, I get a bit weepy when I witness beautiful moments. It’s a problem and I really should get it together. My eyes dampened up at least five times while I was in there. There were just some really adorable children who got so excited. Little girls picking out princess costumes. One little birthday girl with her birthday dress and tiara getting an Elsa doll. And then…’Let It Go’ came on and that just did me in! In conclusion, the Disney Store was a raging success and one of my favorite parts of the weekend!

After I finally pulled myself away from Disney, I stumbled upon a street fair and did some browsing. Then, I found myself near Herald Square and the original Macy’s! I actually had never been inside it before so I figured I’d finally go in. HOLY CRAP! I have never been so overwhelmed in my entire life! It really is some sort of shopping paradise but there are just so many options! So many floors! So many products! I only explored two floors before I decided it probably best I leave (too many people and too many expensive pairs of shoes I wanted to buy). Afterwards, I walked to the Manhattan Mall and bought a cute dress at JCPenney. After I wrapped up my shopping excursion, I headed home to read and do some writing.

On Sunday morning I met up with a friend for Brunch at a little place in Gramercy called Friend of a Farmer. The little restaurant was so adorable on the inside. It really felt like you were over at your farmer friend’s house! Everything had a very rustic charm to it. My orange juice was even served in a mason jar! While this isn’t usually my style, being in a restaurant like that right smack dab in the middle of New York City is really really neat. The best part about Friend of a Farmer: Their absolutely heavenly, oh so delicious, super amazing Pumpkin Pancakes! Also, their bacon was delish! It was thick and crispy…in other words, perfection. But the pumpkin pancakes were just SO GOOD! And the syrup that came with them wasn’t just a traditional maple syrup but some sort of nectar from the gods! (I actually don’t know what the syrup was…all I know is when poured on top of the pumpkin pancakes, it was yum!)

Photo Credit: http://teamfenom.com/wp-content/uploads
/2013/01/Friend-of-a-Farmer.jpg

Inside Friend of a Farmer
Photo Credit: http://fritosandfoiegras.com/

After we wrapped up at Friend of a Farmer, we walked down to Gramercy Park. Now, for anyone who saw the recent romantic comedy That Awkward Moment, starring Zac Efron, Miles Teller, and Michael B. Jordan, this is the park that Zac’s character steals the key to for the girl he’s trying to woo. The park really is exclusive…you can’t get in without a special key. For this reason, the park seems even more beautiful than it probably is. Exclusivity always makes one believe something is better simply because few people can have it. Anyway, Gramercy Park was gorgeous and all of the buildings surrounding it just screamed ‘classy’. I would recommend taking a stroll by it. The area is very quiet and low-key.

Gateway to Gramercy Park

After we finished up in Gramercy, my friend and I went our separate ways. She went to go shopping and I went to try on bridesmaid dresses! My amazing college roommate/one of my best friends, Sarah, asked me to be her Maid of Honor for her upcoming nuptials. I tried on several dresses she’d sent me pictures of and she said yes to the bridesmaid dress! I love it, but more importantly she loves it! So I’d say it was a success!

Later in the day, I went to Mass at St. Joseph’s and the priest who was saying Mass was from the Diocese of London. In other words, he had a delightful British accent. He also gave an amazing homily about needing to discern what is most important in life from what isn’t.

After Mass, I met up with some familiar faces from home! We met up for drinks at a super classy bar near Little Italy and drank super classy drinks like the girls do on Sex and the City! Afterwards, we walked around Little Italy for a bit and it is so cute down there at night! It was so great getting to spend time with some great friends and catch up! It was so much fun!

Today was a long day of work and now I’m relaxing and watching The Bachelorette season finale! (Don’t judge me, I can’t help how addicted I am to this show!)

Hope everyone has a lovely week! The next time you hear from me, I will have finished up my internship (Friday is my last day!) and be reunited with my amazing family!

XOXO,

Alex

Alex and Haley Take NYC!

Hope the wait for this blog post wasn’t too painful for anyone! Wouldn’t want to upset my trusty readers!!

Week 7 was definitely one for the books! Work was again, business as usual. As many of you know, one of my very best friends in the whole world came to visit me this weekend! She is a New York lover just like me! Due to her job, she gets to travel a lot and decided to come up to the Big Apple for the weekend to see me!

Haley got in late Thursday night so the fun didn’t begin until Friday after I got off of work! Our mission for Friday night was to win tickets to see Disney’s Aladdin! Several shows in New York do lotteries where you can enter your name into a drawing for a chance to win discounted tickets for the performance that night. The way Aladdin’s lottery works is that two and a half hours before the performance, you can put your name into the hopper and check whether or not you want one or two tickets. Then, thirty minutes later they pull names out of the hopper to win $30 tickets to the show for that night! On Friday night, they were giving away seven pairs of tickets and six single tickets. Haley and I got there right at 5:30 on the dot, ready to put our names into the hat. Thirty minutes later, we anxiously waited while they began drawing names out of the hopper. Now, you must understand that Haley and I are two people who NEVER win anything! So, you can imagine our surprise when the lady pulls out a card and says, “Haley H---.” As soon as she began struggling on the last name (because Haley’s last name is challenging to pronounce if you’ve never heard it said before) we knew it was us! So we shouted her last name and the girl says, “Yeah!!” WE WON TWO TICKETS TO SEE ALADDIN!!! We were seriously so SO excited!! Probably more excited than any child would have been!! It was insane!!

Now, the main event—Aladdin!! It was absolutely AMAZING!!! Disney never does anything halfway, as I’m sure you all know. They go big! Aladdin was no exception. The sets were over the top, the stage had so many nuances that allowed the performers to come up from underneath, they utilized lots of pyrotechnics and the costumes were to die for! There were so many bright colors and TONS of Swarovski crystals! Jasmine’s costume…SO BEAUTIFUL!! All of the songs you love from the movie are in the show, plus some new additions. The cast was amazing BUT James Monroe Iglehart absolutely STOLE THE SHOW! He won the Tony Award for a reason! The best number of the entire show, and quite possibly the most spectacular musical number I have ever seen, was the “Friend Like Me” number. If you remember from the movie, this is when Genie is explaining to Aladdin about all of the amazing things he can do and how lucky Aladdin is to have rubbed the lamp. It was just so completely over the top!! There were dancers coming up from under the stage, fireworks, a super amazing medley of other famous Disney songs, and Genie was just dancing his heart out! It was phenomenal!! The second best number, “A Whole New World,” obviously. They actually flew in the sky on a magic carpet. I repeat…they flew around the stage on a magic carpet!!! I STILL cannot figure out what kind of theatre magic they used to pull that one off but it was amazing! In conclusion, Haley and I had a spectacular time seeing Aladdin and we HIGHLY recommend it to everyone!

On Saturday, we decided to just explore SoHo and do some shopping. We went into several luxury consignment stores where they were selling vintage handbags…as in Chanel…and Louis Vuitton…but mainly Chanel…beautiful, gorgeous Chanel. Of course, they cost a small fortune but they were beautiful to look at! We went into several big designer flagship stores too and fell in love with all of the handbags and shoes we’ll one day have. After several hours we became famished and decided to grab a bite to eat in Little Italy. Once we finished our lovely Italian lunch, we did a bit more shopping before going back to my place to get ready for dinner.

We ate at a cool seafood place we found called City Crab & Seafood Company. We ordered several small dishes to eat from and one of those dishes was lobster mashed potatoes. Just in case you were wondering what lobster mashed potatoes taste like, the answer is heaven. If ever presented with an opportunity to eat lobster mashed potatoes, you would be making a life-changing decision by ordering them and eating them until they are all gone!

Yesterday morning we went to brunch at The Grey Dog, the adorably hipster café I talked about in one of my previous posts. I got the French toast this time and oh my goodness! SO YUM!! After we finished our food, we headed uptown to spend the day in Central Park. We decided that it was a good day to FINALLY ride in a row boat in the Central Park lake! While I always imagined that riding around in a row boat in the middle of Central Park would be glamorous…let’s just say it really isn’t! I mean, when you’re trying to row that thing and navigate around all of the other row boats (some with people who are so NOT paying attention) in the blazing sun, it gets very...sweaty, for lack of a better word!! But despite all of that, when you find a nice place to just stop rowing and take in all of the scenery around you it is all worth it. And even though it took a lot of muscle to row that boat, I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Though I’d prefer it if a gentlemen suitor were the one rowing me around!

Row, row, row your boat!

After we finished up in Central Park, we went to one of our favorite places: Tiffany’s on 5^th Avenue. We looked at several different floors and dreamed about the day we’d get our Tiffany diamonds. I’m quite content with where I’m at in life and my singleness…but walking around on the engagement ring floor seeing all of that sparkle, it definitely makes me wish the day I find The One comes sooner rather than later!! Hahaha

We finished up our day at our other favorite place, Serendipity! We, in a not so very ladylike way, ate a super delicious Forbidden Broadway Sundae. Okay maybe it was just me that ate it in a very unladylike way, but regardless it was SO YUMMY!!!

Forbidden Broadway Sundae

I was definitely sad to see my best friend leave (bright and early this morning) but I know this won’t be the last time Alex and Haley take New York City!!

Just want to give a Happy Birthday shout out to my amazing little brother, Tristan!!! I can’t wait to have him up in Aggieland with me next year!! Also, wishing a very happy 1^st birthday a day early to little Prince George!

Hope everyone has a lovely week!

XOXO,

Alex

P.S. As I was walking home today, I saw an adorable little girl skipping and twirling down the sidewalk singing “For the First Time in Forever” from Frozen. It was just about the cutest thing I have ever seen!  It’s the little things in life that can make you remember just how lucky we are to be alive. 

A Birthday, Two Mets, and...Wait, Was That Alec Baldwin?!

6 weeks! I’ve been in NYC for 6 whole weeks and I still love it! I feel like when people live in a place that millions of tourists visit every year all of the iconic spots lose their shine. To me, they’re still beautiful. I walk past Rockefeller Plaza now and I see all of the people taking pictures and pointing. It’s just so surreal to me that I get to walk by there anytime I have to go to a meeting at 30 Rock. I feel as though I’m having a very Carrie Bradshaw-esque love affair with the city…and I hope it never ends.

Work this week was business as usual so let’s just skip over that and get to the fun stuff, shall we!

This past Monday was my 22^nd birthday and despite getting sick with a cold, it was a really good day!! The engagement team surprised me with a card they all signed at the end of the day! They were really sneaky because I had no idea they’d been passing it around. That afternoon, one of the other interns and I had a work event and then we went to dinner. She told me it was my choice and I opted for my favorite pizza place, John’s Pizzeria. After sharing a delicious margherita pizza, we went our separate ways. I stopped and got some Ben & Jerry’s (chocolate chip cookie dough, in case you were wondering) and ate it while watching The Mindy Project in my PJ’s. It was wonderful!

Birthday Cards from my amazing family!

On Tuesday I was definitely feeling my cold. After I got off of work, I went straight home, took a shower, and climbed into bed.

Wednesday morning I woke up feeling much better. As I walked out of my building I noticed Alec Baldwin on the opposite sidewalk taking a morning stroll with his wife, their baby, and their dog. It was funny because I was in the middle of texting my mom and I immediately typed, “and I’m pretty sure I just saw Alec Baldwin.” When I crossed the street, which I had to do because that’s the direction my subway is, I was close enough to tell that it really was him. ‘Twas an interesting sighting for so early a morn!

On Thursday, we had a “local flavor” intern event which consisted of going to a Mets game! After work, we journeyed by subway to Citi Field in Queens and watched the Mets lose to the Braves. We left a little early but we saw every run that was scored the whole game so I think that counts for something! Citi Field is really nice and we had great seats! While baseball isn’t my favorite sport, it was still a really fun experience.

Entrance to CitiField

Really neat stadium!

Baseball Time!

Yesterday I slept in, as usual, and then I headed to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of my favorite places in New York. It was nice to walk through the museum looking at all of my favorite galleries. I kept my headphones in the whole time, listening to my movie scores playlist and blocking out everything else. The exhibit they have in the Anna Wintour Costume Center at the current moment is called Charles James: Beyond Fashion. The gowns on display were from the 1940s, 50s and 60s. They were beautifully constructed and I couldn’t help but notice how tiny they were. Not just the waists, but also the height. The women who wore them must have been so little! Looking at his designs was great, but nothing compared to my favorite wing of the museum, the 19^th and 20^th-Century European Paintings galleries. That’s where all of the Degas, Monet, Van Gogh, Manet, Matisse, and Renoir paintings are. There was also a Picasso that I don’t remember seeing the last time I was there. I know people always say Monet is their favorite and blah, blah, blah but I just love looking at his paintings. The colors are just so beautiful and his paintings were made out of his love for the landscapes he saw. I also love Degas and his paintings of the dancers. Van Gogh paintings are so amazing to see up close because you can see how thick the paint is on the canvas. I feel like every time I go to The Met, I appreciate the paintings even more. As I was looking at the Monet paintings, I would look down at his signature on the bottom corners and think about how Claude Monet stood right where I was standing when he painted that and with his hand, he signed the bottom. He signed the signature I was looking at. It just blew my mind and I think I fell even more in love with the art hanging on the walls all around me.

After I left the museum, I went to a bakery called Two Little Red Hens that I’d read about online, which is located in the Upper East Side. The bakery was a tiny little whole in the wall but their cupcakes were delicious. The one I most wanted to try was called the Brooklyn Blackout cupcake, which was getting rave reviews in the articles I was reading. The cupcake consisted of chocolate cake with chocolate fudge icing and chocolate pudding in the center of the cupcake. It was so delicious I have no words to describe it. Just imagine delicious gooey chocolatey goodness and you’ve got the Brooklyn Blackout cupcake!

The Brooklyn Blackout Cupcake

Today, I went to Mass at St. Patrick’s and then met up with a familiar face from College Station. The director of the organization I’m in at A&M was in town and she and I met up to see the Broadway musical, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. While I didn’t know a whole lot about Carole King before I did some Googling last night, I did know that she was/is a song-writing legend. The musical was absolutely fantastic and if you’re a fan of hers and the music from that time, you would LOVE this musical. The performances were incredible and Jesse Mueller, the actress who plays Carole, was phenomenal! She definitely deserved the Tony Award she won! I would highly recommend it to anyone visiting New York anytime soon!

Now I’m just relaxing and watching some Netflix while writing this blog. I honestly can’t believe I only have three more weeks of my internship left! It is just insane how fast the summer has flown by! This week one of my best friends is coming to visit and I can’t wait for all of the fun we’re going to have!!

Check back in next week for an all new post!

XOXO,

Alex

Goodbye, Twenty-One!

Welcome back, loyal blog readers! Week 5 proved to be super busy and eventful, so here we go!!!

The first three days of the week were spent at my Intern Conference. The conference was held at Deloitte’s absolutely amazing, resort-style training center called Deloitte University in Westlake, Texas. The facility itself was most impressive, but add on a delicious buffet that was available for each meal and a Starbucks counter where you can get whatever drink you want for free and you’ve got quite the luxurious retreat…or at least what the average college student would consider luxurious. The conference wasn’t all fun; there were several learning opportunities too. We had a couple of guest speakers, a partner panel where several partners from all over the country answered questions from the audience, and a really fun and intense simulation exercise. The simulation exercise gave us the opportunity to work with interns from different east and west coast offices to create a plan for providing relief to a fictional African village. It was a really interesting project to work on and a great opportunity to meet new people.

View from my room at DU

Each night we had a planned social activity. The first night was a community service night and the second night was a really fun game night. There were poker tables, roulette tables, pool tables, a photo booth, arcade games and some caricature artists. I got my caricature drawn, but more on that later. I also posted up at a roulette table and did a pretty amazing job! If we had been playing with real money, I would’ve been a really happy girl! In conclusion, the conference was awesome! I met a lot of people from so many different places and got even closer to some interns from the New York office. It was a really great time and being back in Texas for a couple of days was very refreshing.

(Speaking of Texas: Upon arriving at Deloitte University, the other NY interns on my bus absolutely freaked out over the cacti and cows! It was insanely funny!)

I didn’t have to work on Thursday so I used that opportunity to go and see Newsies! The show was great! It was upbeat and high-energy! The choreography was fantastic and it definitely helped that the entire cast was very talented in the dancing department. They were also strong in the singing and acting departments, as well! Just before intermission was the extremely fantastic “Seize The Day” number. The cast dances for pretty much the whole song and it was just SO GOOD! When the cast hit their final pose at the end of the song, the audience cheered and cheered. I can honestly say I have never heard an audience applaud for that long after a number. When it sounded like it was going to stop, it just picked back up again! It gave me chills…I can’t imagine how the performers felt.

Fun day seeing Newsies!

Later that night I went to dinner with my roommate and then we went to Madam Tussaud’s Wax Museum!! She had never been before, so we figured that night was as good a time as any! We had SO much fun posing with all of the wax figures. My personal favorite: Kate Middleton and Prince William…obviously!

#PowerCouple

Me and my besties, Will and Kate!

Friday, aka the Fourth of July, some of my friends and I decided to go to this BBQ Block Party down in the Financial District. We were able to get some free burgers just in time to get under an awning before the rain started pouring down. We stayed there until the rain let up a bit and then we went shopping for a little while. After shopping, we walked down to Stone Street where we waited for some other friends to meet up with us for dinner. While we waited, we charged our iPhones at this charging station and chatted to two NYPD officers. They were so nice and we talked to them for nearly an hour! One of them actually told me he thought I was from the city because he thought I had a bit of a New York accent! Haha! Once our friends showed up, we grabbed dinner at a nice little bar and then headed to watch the Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks show! We got super lucky that we found a spot right in front of one of the Macy’s barges so we had a great view of the 35-minute long firework display! Macy’s does everything BIG, that’s for sure! The show was gorgeous, and, despite the rain, we had a great Fourth of July!

Macy's Fourth of July Fireworks

Yesterday I spent the day with one of my friends from high school, his mom and one of her best friends. We had quite the eventful day because they wanted to see a bunch of sights. I met up with them at the Museum of Modern Art, or MoMA, where we walked around and looked at the art for a bit. Then we went to Gray’s Papaya, a little whole in the wall hot dog place that can be seen in the movies Fools Rush In and You’ve Got Mail, among other things. After that, we took a walk through Central Park, which was lovely, as always. Then it was onto Serendipity for their signature Frozen Hot Chocolate. It was delicious, as always. Next up was The Plaza Hotel. I decided we should try to go inside and it totally worked! The inside was gorgeous!! One of my dreams being to get married at The Plaza, when I saw signs that said ‘Grand Ballroom,’ I figured we should follow them. The signs led us to the elevator and a sign that said the ballroom was on the third floor. So…we went to the third floor. Much to our surprise, when the doors opened it was completely dark…but there it was! The Grand Ballroom! Unfortunately, our fear of getting caught someplace we shouldn’t be kept us from getting a really good view of the ballroom. However, we will always be able to say we nearly broke into the Grand Ballroom of The Plaza Hotel. We did find a ballroom that was unlocked and took a look inside. I also used the restroom in The Plaza Hotel…so there’s that. Then we went to FAO Schwartz and a few other 5^th Avenue shops. Finally, we had a late dinner at Ellen’s Stardust diner and soaked up all of the bright the lights in Times Square. It was a LONG day but I got to experience several things I haven’t had the chance to do yet! It was also nice to see some familiar faces in the big city!

Beautiful stone arch in Central Park

Serendipity's Frozen Hot Chocolate

Lobby of The Plaza Hotel

Entrance to the Grand Ballroom

Other ballroom we saw

Today was a relaxing day filled with cleaning up my area of the room and unpacking my suitcase from Wednesday. I also went to Mass at St. Joseph’s for the third time. Even though the church is extremely hot, the choir keeps me going because THEY ARE AMAZING! Today the priest gave a fantastic homily and I left feeling rejuvenated and ready for the week!

As some of you may know, tomorrow is my 22^nd birthday. It seriously seems like I was just down at the beach with the Dunn family ringing in my 21^st, and now it’s time for the big 22!! As my mom pointed out, this is the first time I won’t see my parents on my birthday. Kind of crazy to think about, but I am so blessed to be where I’m at…just a girl from a small town in Texas living out my dream of living in New York City.

When I sat down to get my caricature drawn, I asked the artist how he was doing tonight! The artist said he was doing great and then looked at my name tag to see where I was from. I told him I was working in New York but I was actually from Texas. He smiled and said, “I knew you had to be from Texas!” I asked him why he said that and he replied, “Big personality!” I started laughing and then smiled so he could draw my picture. When he revealed it to me, I couldn’t help but laugh! He completely captured what this summer is for me in one caricature. It’s adorable and I’ll probably have it framed.

My Caricature

My 21^st year of life was an amazing one! I found my soul mates, aka my amazing best friends (you know who you are!), led an organization and ended the year being so proud of the work we’d done, and tried to live each day with a smile. I learned a lot about myself and I hope 22 teaches me even more!

Hope you all have a lovely week!

With Love,

Alex