This is Philadelphia, the city in which I currently reside and study. It's pretty fabulous. In case you can't tell from the green tree in the bottom left corner next to City Hall, this picture is actually from October, not December. Whoops! I'd left dead batteries in my camera now for two months' time!

This is my boyfriend and I, standing on the third floor of Macy's in front of the Christmas tree (which is enormous and prettiful, and pictures do it, obviously, no justice. I'm fairly confident that some God of festivities mandated that pictures of things like parties and Christmas trees can never look nearly as cool as the real things were), having a great time listening to the daily Christmas-time organ concert at noon.

Is your country dirty? Don't worry, the British Empire will clean it up! I don't remember where this place is, but I found it highly amusing, hence, it is being shared.

Happy Holidays!

Christmas time city life!

It's getting to be Christmas time, and I now have only one person left on my shopping list. Trouble maker, I know. What business do they have needing presents at Christmas? ugh.

This is what people turn into when they want Christmas presents. Yeah, that is supposed to be a child.

But it does mean that I got to go downtown today to try to cross them off the list (and I did get it down from two people to only one!). I went with Beth, and we had a wonderful time of marvelousness. Before shopping, we stopped at Macy's and visited Dicken's village.

Macy's does Christmas. They do Christmas with lights and toys and an organ, like a boss.

It was kind of awesome, even though it was full of moving dolls and they were all incredibly creepy.

SEE??

We had a fantastic photo taken with Santa, which I believe is the first picture of myself with Santa ever, but... for seventeen dollars for a single print, we did not walk away with a copy. It was a great picture, though, and when Beth told Santa that she wanted to do well on her exams, he told her he could come up with some Ritalin for her. Coolest Santa ever.

Instead, here's a picture of us in front of a house in Dicken's Village, taken by a random kind soul, with creeper moving doll in the background.

By the way, the lights show and organ concert at Macy's are both cool and also rather well-attended. I really liked the couples laying on the ground.

This picture is actually from yesterday, when I saw the lights and heard the concert with Gabe.

Of course, we may have gotten deterred by pretty dresses on the way down the escalators... yeah. We really, really did. And also by soft sweaters. But those were about $140 a pop, so... And really, trying on sweaters is not nearly as fabulous as trying on dresses. This dress was over the one hundred dollar mark, and taking a picture of it gave me an excuse to terrorize Beth.

A nicer room mate would not be nearly as much fun.

Then, we actually went shopping for other people, and beth got her finger all pastel-y... and, of course, got my face all pastel'd as well.

Either I got roughed up living in the bad part of town, or my room mate can't avoid touching colored things.

And theeeen, we went to the Christmas Village. Potato latkes are really good, and so are broccoli-cheese puffs, and apple cider. Yum :)

See? We love/are capable of standing next to each other!

The Christmas Village is a really cool place, full of expensive ornaments and scarves and jewelry. And also they have lots of German people running food booths (or selling ornaments. I don't think I realized until visiting the Christmas Village how perfectly "Christmas" and "German" fit together. I never really thought about how many Christmas traditions are German in origin, I suppose.)

I don't know if we can blame this one on the Germans, though...

On our way back to the subway, we passed a hotel, where there was a guy roasting chestnuts! Whoa! On an open fire! I've never seen such madness!

And that's what's really, really cool about living in a city.

Reading Terminal Market

Beth and I went to Reading Terminal Market today!

I also went to a football game, which was fantastic -- apparently we won, but, let's face it. After you see the marching band at half time, there's really no point in staying much longer. I'm only joking, of course, but I'd almost forgotten how much I absolutely adore marching bands.

It's a lot.

Anyway, after the game, I met Beth to have lunch at Reading Terminal Market. If you've never been there, it's enormous and beautiful. It was like those markets that Andrew Zimmern always goes to whenever he's in a city. It was absolutely amazing. Indian, Chinese, Italian... Produce, cookies, cheese, bread, whatever it was you could possibly want you could get there (including the largest shrimp(s?) I've seen, ever). We wandered around for a really long time just looking at absolutely everything. In the end, we shared a fried macaroni and cheese ball, we both had smoothie/juice things, and I had goat cheese and good bread.

Fried mac and cheese: In case you don't know, fried mac and cheese is one of the best unhealthy substances ever. As Beth said (having given me the most judging look when I ordered some), "I don't know why I doubted it. Deep-frying makes everything better, and mac and cheese is already pretty dang good." The fried mac and cheese that we bought at a cajun food stand today were enormous, so there was a very nice ratio of crispy, fried bits to melty-cheesy bits. The cheese was also spiced, in what I assume was a cajun-esque manner, so that added a whole 'nother delicious dimension.

Goat cheese: I bought my goat cheese at a cheese stand (duh) which mostly sold imported cheeses. It was called, "Enrobé," and it was a small lump of soft goat cheese covered in cranberry bits. I had a choice between apricot-encrusted cheese and cranberry-encrusted cheese, and as the rather flirtatious salesman said, "You're going for the cranberry because it's close to Thanksgiving, aren't you?" The cheese was light tasting and beautifully textured. The sweetness of the cranberries was a bit strong, but with a savory bread, it was absolutely perfect.

Bread: I bought two 65 cent dinner rolls from a stand which I can't remember the name of, but which was near a Chinese food place, and also very close to a "Southern Cooking" place which appeared to specialize in fried meats. The sourdough bread, I thought, could have had more flavour in it (I enjoy a very sour sourdough), but the olive roll had lots of little chunks of olive all throughout it, and a nice savory taste throughout. The olive roll was by far superior to anything from a supermarket, and certainly much better than anything I could get at the school dining hall. Both breads were textured nicely -- they weren't dense, but neither were they tough with large holes, the way many supermarket breads. I absolutely adored the flavour combination of the olive bread and the cranberry goat cheese.

Smoothie/Juice: The juice/smoothie came from a middle-eastern stand that also serves falafel and baba ganoush, but having already had my fill of delicious bread and cheese, all I wanted was a bit of sweetness and liquid. The stuff was not heavy, but also not sugary-tasting. It was like a smoothie, but also like juice. I had pineapple-coconut-banana, and it was superb.

At the market, for those who've never been, there are plenty of stalls that have ingredients instead of food, and even places that sell things like hats or shawls. Many stores sold teas, and I saw little jars of marmite for over eight dollars each. I also passed a shop that had dark chocolate hearts in the window -- anatomically correct hearts, that is. There was also a crepe place that I wanted to try, but was really too full for by the time I'd eaten my other food.

After Reading Terminal Market, we did wander down to Chinatown and peek inside a couple of shops. I bought a pack of White Rabbit Candies, which are basically cream-flavored tootsie rolls, and oh-so-delicious. I think I've had probably three "servings" of them already, since there's six servings per bag. Whenever I go to Chinatown, I'm always tempted to buy one of their eye-catching rings, but I'm always afraid that it will break. Many of them are surprisingly pretty, but they all look so flimsy. Besides, why would you want to spend three dollars or so on a ring, when, for just fifty cents or so more, you could go to Reading Terminal Market and have a smoothie? Yum :)

So what have I been up to?

In college, I've been doing some pretty fun stuff. Don't worry -- I've been drinking milk, not alcohol (as recommended by that bookmark they handed out during Welcome Week), but I've been having an absolutely splendid time regardless (or perhaps because of it!)

What have I been doing, then?

Well... I live in Philadelphia, so there's lots to do. Beth and I went to Magic Gardens, which we got in for free with our student PEX passes.

I had lots of fun trying to take pictures with the mirror fragments in the walls.

There were also a ton of bottles that people had put notes in, and we spent probably an hour sticking pencils into the bottles to try to get the notes out to read them. I was looking for a love note, and it took me a surprisingly long time to find one! Finally I did :)

This picture has little to do with the bottles and notes. However, I have nowhere else to put it, so it's going here.

If you've never heard of the Magic Gardens, it's basically an enormous, tumultuous collage of stuff in the form of a house and maze-garden. There are bottles galore, there are pottery fragments, tiles, lines of text... no matter where you look, there's more and more stuff. I would have loved it as a kid, it was amazing. And, since it's all stuck in with concrete, everything is completely touchable!

Beth and I lucked out getting each other as room mates. Yeah, one of us stays up later than the other, and we like different music, and one of us is less messy than the other... but we get along so well that we're best friends anyway. It's wonderful.

This, by the way, is Beth and I both very sad a few weeks ago when we lost to Penn State in the last four minutes and forty two seconds of the game. We had been winning for the entire game until the last FOUR minutes. I hope you realize how emotionally devastating it was for us.

Other than the Magic Gardens, I've been to the Franklin Institute -- Gabe and I (he's my boyfriend -- we met in Linguistics class) went to see the mummy exhibit there. Which was interesting and really, really creepy. There's this one peruvian mummy who's cradling this child mummy and is resting her head on top of another child mummy... who happens to have neither feet nor hands nor HEAD. Creepy.

By the way, out my dorm window we have a fantastic view of the city.

Other than that, really what's been going on is.... Shenanigans. Lots and lots of shenanigans.

This is Gabe, indulging my mischievous shenanigans. See what wild college students we are?

Yay, Mom and Rick!

Wow, it’s sure been a while. Quite frankly, I’m starting this up again because I realized it would probably be easier to do blog posts than email all the pictures of my day-to-day to my mom.

Jenny, my step sister, also spent part of the Saturday with us.

This weekend, I visited my family at home for the first time since I left for college. It was my mom’s birthday. Happy birthday, Mom! Know that you’re appreciated and loved dearly.

I got to cook, which was a big, big relief after being kitchen-deprived for over a month. Everyone reassured me that there would be a communal kitchen, but there is nothing but communal microwaves. Very, very sad, I know.

I was also very, very lucky in that my brother had a track meet that Saturday! It was a lot of fun, and I really loved that I got to see him run!

Those runners work so hard, I was impressed. I’m so, so proud of him. I don’t know how far they run, but it’s a fair distance. This race included running through woods and going through thigh-deep water. You can see from his red face that he was working hard!

Happy Birthday, Mom, and congratulations, Rick!!

SOA

Here's my guestblog post for Rhinestone Armadillo's Summer of Awesomeness. Check her blog out -- and try not to die from the cuteness that is her child :)

If you’ve read much Stephen King, you may recognize the name “Utica” from a book or two. He seems to think it’s a rather dismal area – which it kind of is. Utica’s heyday was sometime around the end of the 19^th century. However, I’m a teenager, raised during the nineties. Watch an old Britney Spears music video for proof that grunge can be cool, and so can urban decay…

Especially if you pair it with a “Marie Antoinnette” dress. Awesome. (Two guys came out from the garage this is behind to ask us what we were doing. They were fine with it, although I’m sure they both told some stories about the two crazy girls taking pictures with tires that night over dinner)

Picture taken by Marissa, behind the Utica Uptown Theater

It’s kind of a strange picture, I know. We did that on purpose – resplendent white and gold brocade dress in front of a pile of tires and rusty box springs. But isn’t it fun? Aren’t you glad that you got to see those tires as something cool, rather than just another heap of trash downtown? I am. We all need to appreciate what we have more, after all. As Mr. Fox says, “Sure, these gibblets are made from artificial squabs, and even these apples look fake – but at least they have stars on them.” (Fantastic Mr. Fox, 2010) So, this summer, I challenge you to go out and find something that you take for granted (or even downright unappreciate, like the tires), and find the hidden beauty in it.

Although I’ve been thirsting to leave Utica since about the moment we moved here, it really is a cool place. Apart from the utterly glamorous pile of tires, one of my favorite spots is the Uptown Theater. It’s an old theater that still has the cool golden molding in the lobby (and in the theaters, although we weren’t able to go in one, as there were features being shown in every theater), and in front of each screen is a little stage for the live pre-show entertainment that used to be the norm. One of the reasons it’s great is that it’s never quite as crowded as the chain theater ten minutes away – another is that the cost of the movie tickets and popcorn is actually affordable, and they sell their old movie posters for five dollars each!

Model: Marissa. Location: Utica Uptown Theater

There are also some great parks in the Utica area, and no matter where you go (assuming it’s not winter), there’s greenery. Flowers grow everywhere. You don’t have to work hard to find somewhere to skip a rock – which is another thing, I’ve realized, that I take for granted.

Photographer: me. Victim of candid shot: Rick

We wanted to go to MWPAI, the local arts museum/school, to take a look at their sidewalk art show, but it was raining a little, so most of the art was covered up. However, Marissa and I are much more water-resistant than charcoal and pastels, so we were able to take some pictures outside. It could be an archway…

Or, it could be an archway in a courtyard where a Very Intelligent Princess is having the time of her life away from her courtly duties and suitors!

Picture taken by me, of Marissa, at MWPAI

And that could be a mere door… or it might be something more. What do you think was hiding within?

Picture taken by Marissa, at MWPAI

I haven’t the slightest idea what you might uncover, were you to open that door. When I tried it, it was locked.

One thing I do know, however, is that people only lock things up if they’re worth something. Bring your lock-picks, and find some beauty, people!

Snapshot *ching ching*

Reaching into the archives for something I wrote, but never posted, because I don't feel like using my brain today.

These were little snippets of fanfictions I wrote a few months ago. They're based in the world of Harry Potter, but you won't need to be familiar with HP to get these. These two are just snapshots of kids -- high school kids figuring out love and life. (Methodology for writing these two was: put your ipod on shuffle, and write a piece for each song. When the song ends, stop. The title of the song these are based on is the title.)

I’m In Love With My Car by Queen

Sirius rode a Windflyt broom, which was about the standard of Hogwarts quidditch players. James rode a Cleansweep seven, and he was the envy of most of the Hogwarts Quidditch players.

He spent hours polishing it, and he’d been getting charmed polishes and waxes for it for his birthday (and Christmas, and whenever he could winangle someone into buying them for him, really) for ages.

James was in love with that broom.

So was everyone else.

And that, Lily thought, was why they liked him.

Take You With Me by Maria Mena

Around the year that Lily decided that James had matured enough that she could begin to give him the time of day, Sarah Clintock decided that she had matured enough that she no longer had to try to give Sirius Black the time of day (at least not every minute – not any more). She stopped watching him when she was sitting in class, and she stopped hoping to bump into him whenever she was in the same side of the school as Gryffindor tower.

One year later, she began her Auror (police) training, and she saved his life during what was supposed to be a harmless street exercise.

She couldn’t decide whether she was going to let him give her the time of day yet.