My Mom, The Royal Wedding & I

So, let's talk about all that hype regarding the Royal Wedding. William and Kate. Its been going on for months, right? For the most part I didn't give it much thought, except that I knew it would be a beautiful and extravagant event. And I do like beautiful and extravagant things!

Watching the news a few days ago, they were announcing how LIVE coverage of the wedding would begin at 3am. HA! I laughed. "Are people actually going to get up and watch that?!"
My mother, who's next to me, chimes in, "I am!"






(I left three spaces to show my shock and confusion.)


"Are you serious?!" In which I laugh harder.

She is. I knew my mom liked the royal family, but this went beyond my understanding.

I'm A Featured Blogger!!!

WHAT?!

I got a lovely email saying:

Congratulation! (is that a word?...looked it up...apparently it is.)

You have been featured on BLOGGERS as one of the Bloggers of the day. Your profile and Blog "Laura in the City" has been showcased in Bloggers Home page (http://bloggers.com). In addition to that you are awarded with Featured bloggers badge on your profile.

Thank you again for your brilliant work.

How exciting, right?!! Go take a look at my profile in all its glory.

Just wanted to share the news! Thanks everyone who has read my blog, watched my new vlogs, subscribed and left comments! Please keep it up!

Much appreciate! 

(Do you get it? That was a subtle one. wink wink.)

Crap I found in my room.

Laura Moves Back to Canada.

Blog 1 of Phase Canada.

This has been the state of my room for the past 2 days, in suburb time (which works out to be about 3 months worth of New York minutes.).

I think everyone understands the concept that you have to make a mess bigger to eventually make it vanish...or make it smaller...or something. When the parents and I got home after our 10 hour drive from New York City, we unpacked the van, and then I couldn't help but begin to tear my room apart.

I grew up a terrible pack-rat. I collected everything throughout my younger years: bottle caps, coasters, rocks, bits of string, shells, fossils, stickers, coins, those copper souvenir things that you make out of pennies, letters, cards, action figures, and ticket stubs. I even had a few Pokemon cards. Its a problem. I had this overwhelming feeling that I would need these items at some point in time or that my collection would be worth a fortune one day...like my Beanie Babies. They're worth about $2 now. 

my first video blog! goodbye room.

Soaking up New York City

I've been feeling a cocktail of joy and sadness lately.

After two and a half years I'll be leaving New York.

In all honesty, its a miracle I'm even feeling a little sad about leaving, since for a long while, all I wanted was to get out. My family never moved around while my sister and I were growing up, but this must be what a kid feels like when their parents decide to move after they've gotten settled in their town, and at school with their crowd of friends. You move away and then you have to start all over again. Sometimes life doesn't feel fair...but no one said that it would be.

New York is putting on her pretty face all of a sudden...like she's trying to make peace before I go north. I made my bucket list a couple weeks ago of all the things I wanted to make sure I did before I leave. I'm not touristy. But, I figured I should go to the MET at least once. So I did.

I hate this painting. (One of my roommates put a copy up in our kitchen, along with some other "classics", but we like to joke about how creepy it is. Hence the photo.)

just some pretty pictures.

In light of a beautiful spring day today, I just wanted to post some pretty pictures.

Montauk Moments

As I have written in early posts, sometimes it is much needed to get out of the city, even for a day. So a couple of girlfriends and I embarked on a day of bonding to "The End". i.e. to Montauk, Long Island. Its quite a ways away to The End...a three hour train ride on the LIRR, but it didn't feel too bad. I just dreamt about the Hamptons estate I would own someday in the future.

Once you get to the Montauk train station, you still need to make it into town. You can either walk a mile or so down the highway, or get a ride from one of the somewhat sleazy taxi drivers who are, oh so polite enough, to welcome/badger you immediately after you step off the train platform. We opt for the ride. As the cabbie cranks some 90s dance tunes, I know that this will be a day full of, what we will later call, "Montauk Moments".

When we arrive at the main strip, we stroll around, stepping into a few shops and enjoying the strangely quiet surroundings. Though its mid-April, our visit still falls into Montauk's "off season", so a number of stores and restaurants are still closed until the summer months. We're peeking into a bakery when we notice a concert poster on the window. I think the band was playing a concert that night.

It looks like this:

On seeing the poster, my friend, Annie, laughs, "That's Mick Jagger! I can't believe the band just stuck a picture of him on their concert poster." (or something to that end.)

We'll revisit this later.

Jogger vs. Bus

(http://assets.nydailynews.com/img/2011/04/06/alg_mark-malkoff.jpg)

"Who is this man?" you may be wondering. "And why is he on a Big Wheel? In traffic? Beside a New York City bus? WHY?!"

Well, this is a friend of mine. Mr. Mark Malkoff. He's a comedian/filmmaker who has written and starred in a bunch of online videos where he goes out and does things that no one has done before. i.e. Living in IKEA for a week, visiting all the Starbucks in Manhattan in one day, and living on a plane for a month.

In his latest project, "Big Wheel vs. Bus", Malkoff races a New York City bus on a Big Wheel for a mile across 42nd St. to prove that buses in NYC suck. If you don't know, Wikipedia refers to a Big Wheel as, "a type of tricycle, usually made of plastic, with an oversized front wheel, that rides very low to the ground." They are not easy to ride, for a kid, or a grown man.

Enough about Mark. 

You know what else can beat a New York City bus? Someone jogging. Yes. That's me I refer to. I can run faster than a bus. 

I was originally asked if I could help film some footage for the shoot, back in February. "Sure!" I said. (Always confidence...even if you don't know how to work a video camera. Minor detail.) But of course, obstacles always come up in any given project, which led to Mark calling me the morning of the shoot.

Improv Level 2 Graduation!

What up, homies!? 

I graduated my Level 2 improv class last night. What! Victory.
But still, I'm a bit sad. I really liked our little group and our Monday afternoons of laughter. We had a fun show last night though, with some crazy shenanigans as usual.

I still get really nervous to perform improv, as I'm sure you would know if you've read some of my earlier blog posts...so I didn't want to invite many people. I basically only invited my "inner circle" of friends. I was torn because I wanted people to be at our show, of course, but I didn't want them to be people I knew. So whatev, I invited a few and then I tweeted about it...a couple hours before the show. I figured the rest of my classmates would bring loads of people.

Before our show we were all talking, and one by one people started confessing that they were either bringing one person, or that they didn't tell anyone about the show altogether. Its only Level 2, so we're all a snatch sheepish. I didn't know what was worse...having a nearly empty audience, or having an audience full of people I knew. But I still consider the former being the lesser of two evils. So, even if there were only six people in the crowd, it would still be a fun event.

Luckily, we did have quite a good turnout (most of which people I didn't know)! And it was a fun and ridiculous show. I think having FUN is most important. Viewers like to watch people on stage having a ball. (Unless they're in a holocaust epic.) Was it perfect? No! But it had its moments; one of my favorites being when a completely