Fall

Ever since I tasted my first pumpkin spice latte pre-autumn, I haven't been able to get apples, pumpkins, and leaves out of my mind. Although rainy, this past weekend seemed to be the perfect start to fall. It was a curl up with your favorite blanket, candles, coffee, and book/laptop/music, weekend. The goodbye to summer dresses and beach time was sad for a moment, but fall has so much charm making it greatly welcomed.

One of my desired activities to accomplish this fall is follow in my family's tradition of going apple picking. A temporary cooling of that desire was the idea of an Apple Fest in Lincoln square which is a neighborhood north of mine. Roommate Jacquie, my friend Jill, and I made an alternate plan of eating mexican food when the rain didn't look like it was going to stop, but the sun ended up popping out and the sky cleared. We were able to enjoy a little walk through of the festival, get inspired to bake apple pie, and I bought these little pumpkins and gourds!

Afterwards Jacquie and I went to mine and Rebecca's favorite thrift store, and I found 2 amazing candles to add to the Rebecca and Rach "candles that moms don't like to burn and burn them" collection. Here is one of them:

              

I was able to skype with my family Sunday evening (so lovely, too), and I was tormented by their enjoyment of my mom's delicious freshly baked Apple Crisp. So what did I do? Asked mom for the recipe, bought the ingredients, invited Jill to help, baked it, and enjoyed it with Jacquie and the neighbor Tom! We made WAY more of the crisp part than the recipe calls for, because it's the best part. Here's the delicious result:

 The next day I told Alexander about my fun evening, and I promised that we'd make apple crisp together sometime this week. I made sure to stick to the recipe so that they wouldn't get as unhealthy of an apple crisp as we made last time. ;) He was such a great helper!

   

For the performance side of life, there's a couple of exciting auditions coming up. One is this Monday and the other one is the Monday after I return from a weekend in the Carolinas (for 2 weddings!) October 14-16. 

I'm still madly in love with my ballet class as well as improv class. It's fun to see our improv class grow closer each week, and I'm glad that's happening. Most of us signed up for the next level which begins at the end of October. The goal is to keep on signing up for classes and become an ensemble together. 

Chateau Byron news: My dear roommate Jacquie, who has been subletting my sister's room since January, recently took an internship with a photographer in NYC, and she left our lovely Chateau Byron Tuesday night. I'm so proud of her in taking that gigantic move and jealous of the fact that she will be there during the BEST season to be in NYC.

Lastly, all week I've been thinking about the beautiful rainbow that appeared for a bit of time Monday morning. Alexander spotted it first on our way to taking him to school, and it instantly brightened up both of our days. Later when I got home, Jacquie mentioned that she saw it, and it was exactly what she needed, too. Here's the rainbow that brought lots of smiles!

                   

twenty-three

In spite of Hurricane Irene's scare of tearing up NYC, my sister and I arrived early this past Friday morning for a birthday celebration/fun weekend. We met up with our friend Will, went to my beloved Shake Shack (waited in line 40 minutes for that delightfulness..), and our brother Matthew arrived at our yummy lunch after taking a train in from CT to spend the day with us! For my birthday evening just before we went to Catch Me if You Can the musical, our friend Will brought out a cheesecake with "Happy Birthday Rach" written on it that he had made himself! The three of us got dressed up, felt fancy by splurging to take a cab to the theatre, and enjoyed the show immensely!

The next day was crazy, because they shut down all mass transit in the city and hardly any stores were open. On our way to enjoy brunch at a cute French restaurant, we laughed as Will wrote off all of the restaurants that weren't open, because "they weren't true New Yorkers". haha. Later, we found an open Walgreens and stocked up on water, snacks, and spongebob floaties, just in case it was a disasterous storm. The next morning we scoped out Irene's damage, which was thankfully not too much in the areas we were at, but there were so many people that were complaining that Irene hardly did anything and that everyone (including the mayor) was making way too big of a deal out of the storm. Becca and I couldn't understand their non-thankfulness. We totally would rather play it safer than sorry!

Sunday evening Becca and I enojoyed bonding time through walking to Union Square, stopping in a bookshop, and chatting over coffee at a diner called the Coffee Shop. We ordered coffee and chocolate layer cake, but the server guy brought back something that wasn't even cold but tasted like ovaltine instead of our much wanted cake, so she and I competed over who would get the guts to tell him that isn't what we ordered. She did it, and we finally got the cake! It was so good to have time to be together and just talk again since it's been pretty much since January since we've REALLY gotten to have bonding time.

She departed Monday morning, but my flight got cancelled til Monday night, so I had an extra day to spend there, and it was such a beautiful day for exploration. I got to hit most of my favorite spots! After I hugged her good-bye, I took a train up to the Met. I was all proud of myself for my decision to go there, then I got there and they said it's always closed on Mondays, but it ended up being a good thing, because I took a lovely stroll through central park over to the American Museum of Natural History (which was my place of employment when I lived there), saw my boyfriend Dum-Dum (the easter island statue featured in Night at the Museum), went to my favorite exhibits, and saw a couple of dear old coworkers. Next, my thoughts of hunger instantly brought me to the location of Shake Shack that I used to visit the most. It's right next to the museum at 77th and Columbus. After my chocolate desire was satisfied, I walked down to the Lincoln Center, felt instant inspiration, went into the Library of the peforming arts and was even more inspired by all of the music and theatre books, and I picked up a book on the Lincoln Center, and an opera score. I read and read, then went over to the Met Opera shop and felt more happiness inside as I walked into the Met Opera House. The moment I laid my eyes on a Met Opera Diva mug, I had to buy it, and as I was checking out I had a nice little chat with the cashier guy who thought I lived in New York. That's always a great feeling :).

After that I decided to walk many more blocks down to Times Square, stopped in the Disney store, and down to the Drama Book Shop at 40th. Soon after I went back and packed my things, had a quick smoothie with a friend I haven't seen in a year, then hopped on a bus to the airport! I even made a new friend from Germany who is visiting the states for 3 weeks while in the airport.

It was such a great trip and definitely wonderful to experience NYC again after not being there since October. One day Becca and I will return to live there. One day. :)

Since Man of La Mancha has closed, I've had time to have a bit more of a social life, since I withdrew from the show with the Savoyaires in Evanston. I was supposed to start rehearsals August 15, but I felt the need to take a break since I felt like I was spreading myself way too thin the past few months. It hit me when I got really sick a month ago. I'm so happy with the decision to withdraw, since I've had time to further myself now--for example--ballet and improv classes!

Ballet classes were on my to-do list for this self furthing time, but it was my friend Tiffany that got me started the very first class. She asked me if I wanted to join her in going to a modern dance class, but once I got to the studio I chickened out when I saw that it was Modern I-II, and the dancers in the class looked way more experienced, so I went to the Beginning Ballet class. I instantly fell in love. It amazed me the different muscles that we were working that I had never felt before. I was doing well until about 3/4 through the class when everything started getting more difficult, because I don't know any of the terminology yet. The teacher was impressed and recommended that I take her other class Fundamentals of Ballet in addition to this class so that I can learn the positions. I think I'm going to switch studios do to the distance, but I'll start back up again this week! I bought my very first leotard and ballet shoes, and I was so excited about them I wore them around my apartment for a while afterwards, haha.
 
Improv classes at Second City started up last week! I was very nervous the whole day about it, but was quickly put at ease when I got into the classroom, was amused highly by our teacher, and realized how fun it was going to be. I had no idea that the improv world was mainly men! There's way more guys than girls in my class, and that's the case for all of the classes. This is definitely going to be a fun industry to try to get into ;). I know I'm most likely going to be addicted to improv after this course. We get discounted and free tickets to shows happening at Second City, and our class is going to go together each Tuesday after class to a show. We're already becoming a family. How cute. :)

Can you believe it's already September?! There's a feeling of Autumn in the air on this labor day..it's a mixture of emotional feelings...more so about my wardrobe than anything else. Haha. I'm going to miss summer dresses, but fall clothes are fun, too! 

"Original" Primm kids togther again in NYC :)