scenes from (last) weekend // from my iphone.

{the end of midterms! calls for mojitos & sparrow faces}

{art & pumpkins & mexican with high school lovers & FPOP lovin' on food day}

{graffiti & roarin' lambs & pretty views & a cookie with all of the things}

{some cuties & some jokesters & some (a lot) of fries}

{inspiration & central park sun & a boyfriend on 96th & that building}

{love for sure & an upstate ny escape & my midterm views & a weird thumb stack}

i'm a little bit late with this post but a lot of bit busy.  hopefully one day (in two years), i'll be able to write a long, lengthy post like i did in college about my deepest (who am i kidding) trials and tribulations.  but for now, a panoply of pictures and quotes for helping us to keep on keepin' on.

also - i've noticed that my favorite quotes lately have been completely anonymous, yet the tiniest treasures lay within them.  who wouldn't take credit?

"be the one who nurtures and builds.  be the one who has an understanding and a forgiving heart.  one who looks for the best in people.  leave people better than how you found them."
- anonymous 

queens county farm museum.

the northeast basically owns the season of fall.  october and november decorations here are on par with the hallmark-ization of christmas time, and the weather is something you just can't beat.  give me a reason to wear jeans, boots, a light sweater, and a scarf any day and i'm a happy girl.  where i grew up (florida) was not blessed with seasons, where i went to school freshman year (maine) only has one (cold as shit), and where i went to school the rest of the time (nashville) couldn't make up its mind (snow one day, sweltering heat the next). 

thank you new york for that consistency. and for forcing 7 friends and me onto a queens bound bus for 2 hours for the nearest pumpkin patch.  the roommates and i just posted a map on the wall of the greater NYC area so we can pin where we've been. aannnnnd this pumpkin patch isn't even on it. it's whatever.

"i feel that the greatest reward for doing is the opportunity to do more." 

- jonas salk 

scenes from the weekend: it's finally fall.

{roomie night // tricked out rides // so very new york // that green juice}

{date night at gallow green}

{bubble tea // birch lattes // my chef boyfriend // columbia anoche}

aaaaannnndd just like that it was fall. after trucking it to 84th street in search of movie tickets saturday night and realizing that no one in new york gets to a movie 5 minutes beforehand (solely because all of the tickets are already sold out), J and i made alternate plans and sipped bubble tea on the steps of columbia instead.  soak it all in, he said, as this was the last time we would be able to comfortably sit outside at night without wanting to jump off the top of the lion statue we were sitting under.  at first i was all WHAT'CHU TALKIN' BOUT, JOEY, but i realized he was right.  fall turns so quickly into winter here that if you don't stop and look around once in a while.... well, you know where i'm going here.   

my highlights of the weekend - lots of tasty drinks and pretty views and a chill in the air that made my moccasin-toting toes do a little dance.  a little to-do list for my favorite time of year: 

1. do a fall photo walk of the new hood
2. throw a successful halloween party
3. carve a pumpkin (a first!)
4. knit something new
5. go see art in odd places 
6. make a yummy fall stew
7. visit my grandpa's old japanese restaurant 
8. the village halloween parade
9. do yoga at least three times/wk
10. have a scary movie night
11. brendan james concert at the bowery  

"what matters most is how well you walk through the fire."

- charles bukowski 

dear new york life,

so far, i feel as if we have a LOVE LOVE LOVE / hate relationship.

i'll go through phases where i'm all if i have to listen to one more lecture on focus groups again...

^^^ but then i get to listen to my new epidemiology role models wax poetic on the soda ban and actually have fun drawing a systems map and think OH MY GOD infectious disease causation is cool.

and THEN i'm all if i see a squished rat on the sidewalk one more time....

^^^but then i go to a sara bareilles concert on a school night at radio city with my lovely ladies and can't believe this is my life.

and THEN when i think i'm FINALLY over it and i'm all if i have to buy 3 packs of gum at a bodega one more time to reach the credit card limit of 10 dollars...

^^^i remember how lucky i am that my family is so near (and how my sister is more than willing to try the ramen with me down the street).

and then i take a look around my hood....

and wonder how i EVER doubted where i chose to live. 

"stay close to anything that makes you glad you are alive."

- anonymous 

outdoor concerts make for a happy girl // from my iphone.

alicia keys and john mayer and olivia wilde and gerard butler and bono and stevie wonder and kings of leon and my mind was about to explode.  new york city is the coolest. 

"i want my heart and my passions to be the most beautiful thing about me." 

- anonymous 

sounds good to me.

{my program in a nutshell // an ode to the government shutdown}

"our lives are not as limited as we think they are; the world is a wonderfully weird place; consensual reality is significantly flawed; no institution can be trusted, but love does work; all things are possible; and we could all be happy and fulfilled if we only had the guts to be truly free and the wisdom to shrink our egos and quit taking ourselves so damn seriously."

- tom robbins 

a day at the museum.

i've officially fallen in love with the upper west side.  whenever i went to new york when i was younger, we either stayed in queens with my grandparents, brooklyn with my sister, or midtown with the rest of the camera-slinging, empire-state-building-gawking, tourist universe.  we would venture to chinatown to sample dim sum, demolish a sandwich at carnegie deli, or peruse the shop windows during christmas time near central park.  but now that we live up in the 100's, i've come to appreciate the comparative calm that is always present.  i'll forever remember this borough as the first place where i was on my own and as the first place it was physically impossible to finish all of my readings before class. welcome to grad school, they said.

--- 

a few sundays ago with J at the american museum of natural history - on the upper west side!  a sunday well spent indeed.

"do the best you can until you know better. then when you know better, do better."

- maya angelou 

photoville.

dragging myself to brooklyn while nursing a cold was more than worth it.  enter photoville: a pop-up photo exhibition in shipping containers (brooklynites looooveee their shipping containers) that featured galleries on war and peace, a shipping container turned into a "camera obscura," which allowed the manhattan skyline behind us to be projected on the wall in the dark, and a "depository of unwanted photographs," where one questioned the subjective nature of what constitutes art.  deep stuff for a lazy saturday.

"it is true that words drop away, and that the important things are often left unsaid. the important things are learned in faces, in gestures, not in our locked tongues. the true things are too big or too small, or in any case, always the wrong size to fit the template called language." 

- jeanette winterson