Snow-rrific

It's been a snowy 2010.

Growing up in the desert, snow is still a novelty to me. Anytime the flakes start falling I whip out the camera to take pictures before the snow melts. It's like I forget that the snow will most likely stick around for a while.

The first of these photos was from the great blizzard a couple weeks ago:

Yes, I'm wearing pajama pants in the middle of the street.


This is my friend Tess' block
Fearless Rachel takes her life into her hands as she stands in the middle of the snowy street.



I took this photo this morning. They were big sloppy, wet flakes.

Taken from my office window.
Brrrr...

So the snow is nice when you are all warm and bundled up inside, but when you have to walk outside in it, it's an entirely different story. Walking home from work today was like an obstacle course. I imagined I was on the Amazing Race or something. First of all, I have to walk with my head down to keep the icy snow from blinding me. I also have tunnel vision because when I wear the hood on my coat I resemble Kenny from South Park (as noted in exhibit A- aka: picture #1) So with my sight obstructed I am trying to avoid not slipping on the icy pathways. Then there are these treacherous puddles that look so harmless and unassuming. But once you step into 5 inches of the icy water, you know the rest of the walk is going to be pretty uncomfortable. Lucky for me, I'm an expert at spotting such puddles and have been avoiding them at all costs. By the time I made it home I was pretty sure I deserved a gold medal.

On that note, I need to get back to watching the Olympics. Go Team USA!

Stay warm and dry my dear ones!

India

Hello my dear blog readers!
I've missed you.

I should tell you that my old laptop died so I've been without a PC for awhile. But I finally got a replacement this weekend. And in good time to tell/show you all about my trip to India!

A little background on the trip:

My company was going to send my work BFF Manny, to India to meet with some clients, etc. They were going to pay for everything. He invited me along- because I make an excellent traveling companion- and I would just have to pay for my flight and I could stay in this fancy hotel room.
Here is a guided tour:



Fancy. Is it not?

Okay, most of my pictures are not in chronological order so I will try my best to explain what is going on.

The flight. I've never flown so far, so long IN MY LIFE!
It was 14 hours to Dubai then another 3 hours to Bangalore.
We flew out of JFK at about 11PM. I stayed up the first few hours, waited for them to feed us, then I took a Tylenol PM and crashed.
I woke up to the beautiful scene below.


We were flying right over Baghdad. It was sunset.

So we were warned over and over again to NOT DRINK THE WATER! We didn't even brush our teeth with the tap water. We used bottled water. It made it feel like camping.
The first order of business when we arrived was stock up on the bottled water. Here's me with my big bottle:

Below is a temple at the Mysore Palace. This structure is typical for the temples in India. They are all very intricate and interesting on the outside.


This photo was taken at the Lalbagh Gardens. I just loved how all of the trees looked.
I took this one during my safari! Unfortunately my camera battery died so I didn't get any photos of the Lions, or Tigers, or Bears (oh my!)
I'm not even sure what this thing is. It's not a dangerous meat eater. That much I do know.
Back at the botanical gardens. Trying to get creative...

Okay, I used to think I liked Monkeys. It couldn't be further from the truth. We had driven up this big mountain and I wanted to take a picture from the top of the view below. But there were all of these monkeys blocking me. I was so concerned that they were full of diseases that I didn't want to get to close. I was pretty sure they were on the verge of attack. Look at this one's eyes! PURE EVIL MONKEY!


This was the view behind me and the monkeys.
We took a bus tour one day which took us to these gardens that had this big water/light show. It wasn't the Bellagio, but it was still pretty nice.Our new friend Atalanta. He works at one of the banks we deal with. Him and his friend showed us around and took us shopping one day. They bought me the cutest stuffed Panda Bear!

Most days I was left to myself. One day I took a tour bus and we stopped at this Sultan Palace. My new friends from Calcutta took this photo of me. I bought that skirt and another one earlier in the week. So comfortable!Another temple. I don't know why it's sideways....



Yes, there were plenty of cows walking down the roads.
PS- I had to walk down this same street barefoot! I was just really glad I had a tetanus shot before I left!

Yes, this is a mall! Yay! Where I purchased my skirts.
The view from the hotel room
Lunch at a restaurant at the mall. The appetizers on my plate were the spiciest things I've ever had.
This is India to me:

Chase you down until you love me.

Too busy to blog you say? I say, yes! So this will be a blog of many colors. I will condense about seven blogs into one healthy blog for your enjoyment...

I present to you:

NEW ENGLAND TRIP!

My parents and cousin Melissa came up to visit me last month. We road tripped it up to New England. We took in the fall foliage and hit up some hot spots you'll see below. Both my parents and Melissa have failed to send me pictures, so these are the few pictures I have, but probably do not do justice to some of the amazing sights...

Look at those colors!

We stopped at a few of these cute roadside stores. Who doesn't want to buy Christmas ornaments, syrup , crafts and antiques when they are on the road?

We stopped at Robert Frost's house. We didn't go inside because we didn't want to pay- even though he was my Mom's favorite poet.

The Chocolate Barn... Seriously? What more could I ask for?

Me and Mel in a cute town in Vermont

My adorable parents sippin' cider on a porch.


My two favorite words: Ben & Jerry

We enjoyed it... obviously!



Oh, you bet we will!

Sharon, Vermont. The birthplace of Joseph Smith.

I was standing on the hearthstone of the original fireplace in the home where Joseph Smith was born. How awesome is that?

This was Plymouth Village... one of my favorite stops. It was a replicate the original pilgrim settlement. They had characters there, in costume and we could speak to them. "Good Morrow!" They also had a native American settlement, but they forbade us to use terms like "how" and "squaw". The native Americans were funny though because they all had Boston accents. They didn't even try to hide it.


The House of Seven Gables. It was the inspiration for Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel.


The Mayflower II - a replicate of the original



Yeah that's Plymouth Rock.

A beautiful view from our timeshare on Cape Cod.

We also did a billion other things, then we spent a week in NYC. Ash and Brandon also came up to spend some time with all of us. It was so great getting to spend time with my family. I miss them so much!

Moving on...

"CREPES"

I Just ate a tortilla with Nutella on it. It was like a crepe- but not. The tortilla was like, "I'm a crepe. KIDDING! I'm just a tortilla."

I READ IT FOR THE ARTICLES:


what?

I won't really comment further on this, other than the fact that I am SO excited for New Moon to come out next week. SQUEAL!!!

PERSIMMON

I want you to know about this fruit. It's delicious. It looks like an orange colored tomato and has that same kind of texture, but it's sweet and delicious. Don't fear trying out new foods.

DON GIOVANNI

Over the summer I made friends with this girl Keri, who was working in our office as a temp. She was actually an opera singer who needed a temporary job over the summer. She promised me that she would email me if she had extra tickets. Well I knew the season had started and she still never contacted me, so I assumed she forgot. But then I got an e-mail from her on Tuesday and she had tickets for the evening show that night! I of course wanted to go, so I took my friend Phindi from work and we went to see Don Giovanni. It was an amazing show and Keri did such an awesome job. She was a lead too- not just in the company.

In the lobby had all of these vintage costumes hanging like art.


Inside the theater. Nosebleeds...


Me and Phindi at Lincoln Center. Yes my hair deserves a post by itself. It is THAT tall.

So the rest of my thoughts don't really deserve individual headings so I'll just take it from here.

I'm writing a novel. Yes, I can't believe it either. It's not going to be good and I'm sure none of you will get the chance to read it. It's just about me trying to accomplish this life goal of mine. Then once I get this under my belt and have more confidence in my abilities, I can actually write something worthwhile.

So this ambitious undertaking is also eating up a lot of my time. Ugh!

In other news, I almost just DIED on the deathtrap that is my floor. Rachel accidentally sprayed furniture polish on the floor and I just put slippers on my cold feet, which equals a recipe for disaster. Luckily my balance saved me and I did not fall or suffer any injuries. But she just gave me a Reeses peanut butter cup so all is forgiven.

Okay, I'm spent. I need to get back to my favorite show, Glee.

Happy night!

Atlanta

My first "Business Trip"

My company sent me to Atlanta for eight days for some training. I'm actually going back this week for an additional three days of training. I'd never been to Atlanta before so I was very excited! Everyone kept calling it Hotlanta but it was neither hot (temperature) nor *hot (like Paris Hilton would say). It was pretty fun being in a new city, driving a rental car and staying in a hotel room. It was weird eating dinner by myself, but with all of the yummy restaurants around, I couldn't complain!

My hotel room was pretty nice. Here is a tour if you are interested in seeing my suite... (yeah i was bored enough to record a tour of the room.)

My hotel was right behind a mall- which was a great thing for me! I could easily walk there and go shopping or just walk around.

Over the weekend I did the touristy stuff with this really cool lady who was doing our training. Paula, who was also from California and I went to The World of Coca-Cola, the Aquarium (which happens to be the world's largest), and a tour of CNN. Everything was very close, in walking distance of each other. The weather was really nice that day. Most days I was there it was cloudy/rainy but we had beautiful sunshine that day.

The world of Coca-Cola


This was the "tasting room". There were stations set up such as North America, Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America with all kinds of coke products and you could help yourself. Some were pretty good and others were incredibly disgusting. I choked on a couple of them... literally.

The cute Coca-Cola Polar Bear. This guys little eyes blinked and mouth moved. He was sooo cute!

A picture from the beautiful aquarium

There's a story behind this one:

So we went on the CNN Tour, and security is super tight, they wouldn't allow photos; they even made you turn your phone completely off. I was bummed because I really wanted a picture there, because I did broadcast journalism in college and this place was very exciting to me.

One of the first stops on the tour was this mock studio where our tour guide explained to us how the teleprompter worked (I of course already know all this, having worked the teleprompter in my internship at the TV station in Vegas) and other interesting things about the biz. Then they asked if anyone wanted to sit at the anchor desk and take a picture that we could purchase later. I was hesitant because I didn't want to hold up the group and have everyone on the tour stare at me while I took a picture at the news desk. But Paula encouraged me, "oh come on! you are having a great hair day." That was apparently all I needed to hear because the next thing you know I volunteered to take my picture at the desk. So I sit down in the rolly chair and situate myself at the desk (I must say I felt pretty comfortable there) and I struck my best news anchor pose, and as soon as they clicked the picture, EVERYONE on the tour started to laugh. I was so confused- I thought, "there must be something happening behind me or something," but I had a feeling that wasn't the case. So I addressed the group (yes, 40 complete strangers) from the news desk and asked, "why is everyone laughing at me?" and the girls who took their picture before me said, "it's because you looked so cute because you got all serious and professional when you took your picture." Then Paula basically told me the same thing. She said it looked like I knew what I was doing and it was funny to see me striking my pose. Ha ha ha. So I had to buy the darn thing of course, cost me more than the actual tour... but now I have a lovely souvenir. This is a picture of a picture, I think you get the gist.

Anyways... on to good eats:

I took this picture for Heather. Yes I had yummy Chick fil-A for dinner one night!

Why did I post this one sideways- oh well, I'm feeling too lazy to change it. This was breakfast in bed. Thank you room service! Yum!

Chili's (obviously) at the airport. At least I had my book to keep me company. BTW- 1776 was really good. I highly recommend it! Especially for all of you history nerds.

This was our office building. Way down yonder on the Chattahoochee. Literally it was right off of the Chattahoochee River!

It was completely surrounded by trees.