Fun in the city...

Here is me and Brenda.

So the past couple of weeks have been pretty fun here in NYC... hence, all the recent blogging. This past weekend my BF's cousin Garrett was in town, and the three of us had a blast hanging out around the city.


Here is Brenda and Garrett.

Brenda was the official photographer! Here is a pic of Garrett and me on the Brooklyn Bridge.


It was pretty hot, and maybe Brenda and I didn't wear sun screen and got really burnt... well, we at least had common sense enough to put some on our faces, so we didn't look totally like tomatoes...

On the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge, in the magical land "Brooklyn" there is this giant telescope that looks at the London Tower Bridge where UK tourists come and wave to New York tourists.
Here is me waving at UK tourists. The guy standing next to me was talking to a guy on the other end of the telescope on his cell phone, it was so random! The guy was like "uh-huh... uh-huh..." and then leaned over to the girl standing next to him and said pointing into the telescope "that guy said you have a very pretty dress on."
We finished up the fun weekend with a trip to Serendipity 3! We shared one huge frozen hot chocolate and some chocolate mousse.


It was cool too cause they saw Lance Armstrong and I saw Kate Hudson! She was walking out the front door of Serendipity, and turned around and smiled at the restaurant. It was like a movie where the famous person is over-exaggerated, only it was real! Crazy, right?

New York moment...

So, I was walking to meet some friends on Thursday, going from my building on 45th and 9th through Times Square to get to Bryant Park when I noticed a huge crowd of people standing at the corner looking up. I thought it was kind of weird, maybe just a group of tourists, so I kept walking. The next corner I got to there was another group of people standing on the corner looking up. I stopped. Looked at 2 other corners in that intersection, all were crowded with people looking up. I attempted to look in their same direction, didn't see anything and asked a woman "What's everyone looking at?" But she didn't speak English and ignored me, so I just kept walking. On the next street there were even more people, about 200 crowded along the street looking up in the air, and at this point some were even pointing! I looked up again and saw 5 helicopters hovering in a circle. I kept walking until I heard someone speaking English and then I asked them, "What's everyone looking at?" To which they replied, "There's a man climbing the side of The New York Times building!" Sure enough, there was a guy in red pants scaling the side of a skyscraper! I watched for about 5 minutes, and he finally reached the top of the 52 story building (that's what, around 600 feet?). It was intense, he was so high and you couldn't see any equipment, he was free climbing all the way. Then he was finally yanked off the wall by the police right when he reached the top. And everyone cheered.

The craziest part? That was the SECOND time someone had scaled the building that day. Crazy, right? The first guy was an actual famous climber speaking out against Global warming. The second was some guy from Brooklyn speaking out against Malaria (?). Go figure. Both were apprehended and taken immediately to a psych hospital for evaluations.

BYU Orchestra at Carnegie Hall

So on Wednesday night the BYU Orchestra played at Carnegie Hall, and a local member decided to buy out the ENTIRE show and give a bunch of tickets away to each ward in the area! So nice of them... AND the best part was, it got a bunch of YSA's to actually go on some dates. I was waiting for my date (yes, I had one too) and I saw a bunch of people walk by paired off. I was so impressed.

In true Ashley form, we accidentally chose a seat where the people sitting EXACTLY in my eye line were lovers, canoodling the ENTIRE performance... bleh... But that's okay, what happened next totally made up for it... One of the pieces they played was by the guy whose compositions were always used in Looney Toons cartoons, with Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. I couldn't help but giggle at the part in the music where you can just imagine Bugs Bunny dancing on his twinkle toes towards Elmer Fudd! Loved it....

The Greatest Show on Earth!

Last night I watched the Academy Award winner "The Greatest Show on Earth" with some friends, and it was actually really good! Not that I thought it wouldn't be... but the story was pretty substantial and all the circus stuff was pretty neat. Jimmy Stewart played an heartfelt clown, and Charlton Heston was the tough circus boss. And I LOVED the cameo by Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, who in one scene were sitting in the audience watching the show intently. Hilarious...
Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey- brought me back to the days when I was in the circus... okay, so I wasn't really IN the circus, but when I was little I actually DID win a contest and got to be in the circus for one show, where I rode a train and hung out with the clowns. It was amazing.

Mamma Mia!

I saw a great show with my roommate Ashley (yes, we have the same name)... we wanted to catch Mamma Mia on Broadway before it came out in theaters this summer...



It was really funny! I especially loved these two... The Australian guy and the bigger girl. Can't you see the passion in his eyes?? I could from the very back row! Hilarious...
The movie comes out on July 18th, starring Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Christine Baranski... I'm thinking it will be a good one!

My celtic love...

I have this thing for poetry, and I think that's in part why I like Celtic music so much... I feel like a lot of Celtic music is poetry... Which is awesome because I just found out that one of my current favorite Celtic songs was actually an original poem by Francis Ledwidge, the Irish poet, set to music by a Celtic group called Anuna. Here are those favorite lyrics...

August

She'll come at dusky first of day
White over yellow harvest's song
Upon her dewy rainbow way
She shall be beautiful and strong
The lidless eye of noon shall spray
Tan on her ankles in the hay
Shall kiss her brown the whole day long

I'll know her in the windows tall
Above the crickets of the hay
I'll know her when her odd eyes fall
One May-blue, one November-gray
I'll watch her down the red barn wall
Take down her rusty scythe and call
And I will follow her away
I will follow her away

oh sweet Tuesday...

I received about 10 hate emails today for work I'm doing on a documentary about dogs. Here are the choicest bits:

-HELL NO!!!!!!!No thank you

-This may be news to the fat couch potato dogs apparently owned by National Geographic staffers.

-You clearly should move on to tabloid journalism as it is your true calling.

I would like to thank my adoring fans! They really know how to make a girl feel special. But seriously, this wasn't even the meanest...

Also, I've been tagged! So, here's how the game goes:
The rules are:
1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
3. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

• What I was doing 10 years ago: I was at my brother Ryan's wedding- I stole that from Sandi's blog (his wife!)... I was 14, awkward stage... Freshman in high school, at this time of year I would be playing tennis and getting ready for summer!
  
• Five things on my To Do List today: Read my book club book, laundry (yikes, I just remembered!), buy plane ticket for sister's wedding... sign up for BYU class, and write!
  
• Things I would do if I were a billionaire: I guess I would do everything... in style. I would have a live in chef who would do all my grocery shopping, I would have a house in NY, San Diego, Granite Bay, Santa Barbara, Las Vegas, Provo, and Santa Rosa, a private jet that makes only direct flights, horses, a boat for wakeboarding, and I would quite my job and write fiction stories for kids, and I would send lots of boys on missions and help bring food and clean water to people in Africa and set up schools for kids in India and maybe I would have a private army that would wipe out bad people and save abused people and spread lots of music and love around the world! And I would buy an island in Ireland and Japan and have a garden and always invite my family over to play... And I would have a bird too.
  
• Three of my bad habits: Staying up late, procrastination, possibly over-reacting
  
• Five places I’ve lived: Granite Bay, CA; Provo, UT; Las Vegas, NV; Washington, DC; New York, NY
  
• Five jobs I’ve had: Freelance Associate Producer for Fox13 in SLC, Director of the BYU Daily News, Graphics Artist for the BYU Daily News, Photog for BYU Daily News, Receptionist/office assistant at ISU Insurance Services
• I want to know more about (a nice way of saying TAG!): Brittney Cramer, Brenda Saunders, Lyndee Lychfield, Shelby Pinney, Courtney Pinney!