NYE in DC!!

After Christmas, I came back to DC and Matt came to visit for NYE and the weekend!! We went to my friend John's place in DC for the beginning of NYE and watched some movies/tv and played games the start the evening. John's friend's fiance is a chef at the four seasons hotel, so since it was only a few blocks from where we were, we decided to go there for the countdown and post-ball dropping festivities. We got lots of free hats and headbands that said "happy new years" and they also gave everyone free champagne at midnight! We had a really good time and the bar was surprisingly uncrowded and the best part, there was no cover charge! We were worried about being able to get in to a bar that night because places required pre-purchased tickets or very steep cover charges, so this worked out great.

Then Matt got to stay for the rest of the week and weekend, which was awesome, it is so much nicer when we get to have longer visits. We mostly hung out hermit style on the couch watching Lost or other movies from Christmas and playing with our new Christmas presents. We each got each other ipods without knowing it, so we had alot of fun playing with them! It was a really fun weekend that went by too fast. Tomorrow it is back to the grind after two easy two-day work weeks in a row.

Happy 2009 everyone!

Christmas in Florida!

So, I'm going a little out of order here, I know I already did a new years eve post, but I'm doing Christmas now and then another new years eve one later because it is my blog and I can.

I went to Florida for Christmas and got to see the family, including the star of the show (and really the only person anyone cared about seeing), my niece Leili! She is such a bundle of cuteness, it is almost too much to take. I took lots of pictures until my camera battery died about 10 minutes in to Christmas morning, luckily, mom was nice enough to let me use her camera and pictures.

We were all (meaning me, sister, brother, sister-in-law, mom, dad, niece, grandma, and grandpa) there for 4 days, from Christmas eve until Sunday the 28th and had a great time. We did lots of movie watching and game playing, including (what I think is becoming) the annual family poker game, and some new games, including scattergories and apples to apples.

For your viewing pleasure, here are some pictures from the visit:

It's new years eve!

Today is the last day of 2008 and I thought I'd sum up what I did this year:

January: Went up north for MLK weekend and snowboarded for (basically) the first time and had fun, can't wait to do it again in Feb 09!

February: Went to VEGAS for spring break with 4 boys...

March: I'm struggling with this month, probably studied a lot

April: Graduated with my master's in Biomedical Engineering from Michigan

May: Went to DC to pick out my first place, also spent lots of time lollygagging on various beaches and boats in northern Michigan.

June: Matt moved to New Jersey...I was sad

July: I moved to Alexandria, VA to begin my new life in the big scary real world

August: Struggling here too, probably went out a lot with my new DC friends

September: Made it back to Michigan for a football game, best game of the season and one of our 3 only wins

October: Went back to Michigan again for the football game against MSU, did not go so well but got to see lots of college friends

November: Thanksgiving with Matt's family in Owosso and then weekend with the fam in GP

December: Christmas in Tampa with the grandparents and my brother's family, including my baby niece Leili, who is adorable (for those of you facebookers out there, I posted a video of her on my profile because blogger video is stupid)

Well that was a brief synopsis of my 2008, all in all pretty good, can't complain.

Looking forward to 2009!

Trans-Siberian Orchestra aka 2.5 hour live version of Windows Media Player visualizer

If you are just tuning in, there are three new posts from today, so be sure to read them all!

Saturday night we had tickets to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra who (whom?) I have loved for a while now. The concert was at the Izod Center (which is where the NJ Nets play). Now, both Matt and I were expecting a concert in line with seeing a symphony orchestra with some electric guitars and singers, but man were we wrong. This was like a rock concert/laser light show/chamber orchestra hybrid of madness. It was really awesome though, the first half was basically their christmas cd played live but with some added narration telling a Christmas story and the second half was more mainstream famous instrumental music transformed for electric instruments.

There were about 6 musicians who sat on the stage playing for the whole concert, and then there were two violin players who were running all over the stage rocking out on their electric violins (the girl had a pink one!) and there were about 4 guitar players and 8-10 singers. There were neon and laser lights going to the music as well as fire and fireworks going on all over the place and strobe lights, it was crazy to watch.

Throughout the show, they kept saying no one should leave early because they had a big surprise for us at the end of the show that was only happening for the NJ show, nowhere else. I wasn't sure if it would actually be someone sweet or if it would just be a big buildup and the person would be a letdown. But, after the show, they announced that Steven Tyler was there and he was performing with the orchestra. He sang sweet emotion and dream on to end the show so that was an awesome welcome surprise considering before we went there, we thought we were going to an orchestra concert. Here are some pictures:

The stage before the show, our seats were in the second row of the upper bowl right at center court

Steven Tyler singing Dream On

Whew, that was a lot of posting for one night, now it is past my bed time!

The Christmas tree of Christmas trees!

Saturday, we went in to the city to see the Christmas tree in Rockefeller center and the window displays in the department store windows. It was also my first time seeing the empire state building:


After seeing that, we pushed and shoved and pushed and shoved our way down 5th avenue looking at the windows of Macy's, Lord and Taylor, and Saks Fifth Avenue. I didn't get any pictures of the windows because they were really crowded and I was afraid of getting yelled at by angry tourists for holding them up just to take a picture. Then we got to Rockefeller center and saw the big tree!

We also saw the skating rink (which was actually a lot smaller than I thought) and the NBC news building and the area where everyone gathers outside for the TODAY show, it was really cool. Then, we had to push and shove our way all the way back to Penn Station to catch our train back to NJ so that we would make in on time to the trans-siberian orchestra concert, which will be the topic of my next post...

A night at the races

This past weekend, I went to NJ to visit Matt for a very christmas themed weekend! A lot happened so I am splitting this into several posts so get ready!

The first night was Matt's company's holiday party at the Meadowlands racetrack in NJ. It was really fun, I met a bunch of Matt's coworkers and everyone was really nice and had a good time. It was in a huge room overlooking the track (which was a mile long) with lots of other events going on at the same time. There was a huge buffet with tons of good food, my only complaint was that there was no shrimp! Matt and I bet on a few of the races but didn't win anything. One of the horses I bet on to win ended up dead last by about half the length of the track, I guess horse betting is not my calling, although it is probably easier when you have a sports almanac from the future...

Here is a picture of me and Matt from the banquet room with the track in the backround:


After the party we went back and hung out at Matt's friend's apartment and things got a little crazy, I was going to put a picture up that summed up the evening, but there are none that would pass the strict blog censor. We ended up leaving at 4:15am and had to walk two miles back to Matt's so didn't get to bed until 5:00am...sleep schedule was messed up for a few days for that one

Next up, the NYC christmas tree!

Christmas time is here!!

My favorite time of year has arrived :) And to commemorate it, I have put up christmas lights on my balcony and my little christmas tree in my living room. I had a little trouble taking the pictures of my balcony lights, they all turned out blurry, I tried with and without the flash and nothing was great, but you sort of get the idea.


My little christmas tree, I've had for a long time, (I think since before college) and every place I've ever put it up (dorm rooms, apartments) it has never come down until I have actually moved out of the place (which in one case was a year and a half!), so we'll see how long it stays up this time!


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