it’s that time of the year again! christmas! i’m making christmas cards, and if you want to exchange with me, leave a comment with your email address, or just send me an email (imaclanni@gmail.com). if you don’t celebrate christmas but want a non-descript holiday card, i’m making those too, and hanukkah cards.

hooray!

ready for a SUPA LONG POST? i pretty much spared you no details. a teaser image would further add to the the extra-longness of this post (which took me an hour to write), so i’ll just get right into it.
 

THURSDAY:
right after thanksgiving dinner (lunch, actually), my family and i piled into the buldgemobile and began the 7 hour drive to long island.

liz and i spent most of the time watching miscellaneous movies and “office” episodes on our ipods, as pictured above. so that entertained us for awhile.

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so long, see you sunday. don’t forget to give thanks to the important people in your lives, you americans. happy thanksgiving!

on that note, i want to thank all my readers, without you guys i probably would have scratched this webblogin’ idea <3

i redyed my hair today. that’s pretty much the extent of my accomplishments though. having school off means i don’t do anything. i don’t even try to write long posts. so good’night.

i’m home! it was a good birthday party, yes indeed. read this extra-long post i wrote, complete with photos of course. here’s a teaser of kate (she’ll kill me if she reads this) and and animated gif of the glasses she gave me.

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i’m back! i had an excellent weekend full of boating and concert-going. i wrote a really long post, complete with photos for you. so here’s a teaser image that i promised i’d post on my blog. actually, it went more like, “hey liz! liz! take a picture of me in this little tiny lifejacket! yes, i’ll caption it ‘fat guy in a little coat!’ man, i love tommy boy.”

fat guy in a little coat.

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happy independence day, my american readers : )

i slept at kate’s last night. we went over to cvs and purchased a 12 pack (of dr pepper), so the night turned out fine. her mom had some friends over, which was kind of crazy. when they were all in the pool, kate and i snuck around the back and scared the heck out of them, which was sweet. we watched anchorman (borrowed from tommy), played cards, and drank dr pepper all night. this morning we watched like a bazillion episodes of “project runway” because i don’t have cable and never have the pleasure of viewing annoying yet addicting reality shows. later we came to my house and dyed my hair back to regular pink and went to wegman’s. which was nice because now i have a can of jolt for tomorrow morning, which will come in handy.

at sundown we walked to the bridge next to our neighborhood, which is over the erie canal. from there we could see 9 fire works displays, brighton’s was really close, just down the canal a-ways. that was pretty freaking awesome, i have to say.

and now i’m all nervous because my first day of work is tomorrow (hence the jolt). i’ve been told the first week is the worst, so i’m glad it’s only half a week…

i’m back! the trip was pretty awesome. i took a bazillion photos and wrote a really long post for you. so here’s a teaser image, and keep on readin’.

yes, that’s my father in a silly hat.

WEDNESDAY:
we left in the morning and got to long island around dinnertime. we made good time because of the wonderful hov lane they have. i wish we had one of those up here, especially during rush hour.

my grandparent’s have a nice new apartment (they moved from the poconos a few months ago) in middle island. it’s quite spacious actually. we talked for awhile and at 9 we left, as my grandpa goes to bed at 9 (hmm, sounds like my dad).

we went to ruby tuesday for dinner, since it was the only real resturant we could find around. it was good.

we spent the rest of the night watching cable television. mmm, cable. that show mythbusters is pretty cool. my dad really liked it.

THURSDAY:
the next day we went to the local outlet mall. it was freakin’ ginormus. it was so spread out we had to drive to the other section. we bought a lot of stuff, it was nice. lots of new earrings and such.

later we went back to my grandparent’s apartment. liz and i wandered around the complex and took photos of stuff, because we were bored. when we came back we went out to dinner—at ruby tuesday. turns out it really is the only real resturant close by. i got the same meal, since it was so good.

later liz and i played uno until a bazillion family members i didn’t know i had came over. after a few hours of reminising by the adults and uno playing by liz and i, we went back to the hotel. we watched some tv and went to bed.

FRIDAY:
the next morning we packed up and hit the road. we got to new york city around lunchtime. we found our hotel and checked in. the mananger yelled to us, “room only for 2!” but we didn’t care. that is, until we opened the door. the room was literally 9 by 8. two twin beds and a really tiny tv. so it was martz’s place for liz and i.

marta was still working, so we decided to go on our own to the tenement museum. there was a 2 hour wait, so we wandered around to find somewhere to eat lunch. we found a mexican place and when we walked in we noticed that we had eaten there before. it was kind of weird.

when we took the tour of the museum, there were 3 really annoying small children with us that wasted time asking dumb questions and threatening to touch things. the tour was cool though, it was pretty amazing. i can’t imagine living in a tenement, it really makes you think.

later we met up with marta and her boyfriend matt. we went to dinner at a cool italian resturant. and then we walked around the city for a few hours. we stumbled upon a huge bookstore and i finally was able to buy the nimrod flipout, which i’ve been meaning to purchase for a few weeks. after we left it was like 11 so we went back to marta’s place (my parents to the hotel). we played a few rounds of rummikub and went to bed.

SATURDAY:
we got got up around 12 and my parents came over and we packed up the car.

we drove to queens (we were in manhattan, if i didn’t mention that before) and visited a place called the flux box. it was like a giant musicbox that you could walk through. it was made by a bunch of artists that were in need of money. it was the coolest art exhibit ever, i have to say. all the music was made by real instruments and such all connected to a computer by wires. there were wires freakin’ everywhere. like i said, it was really friggin’ cool.

we still had time before we had to leave, so we went back to manhattan and visited the fire museum, which was full of really old fire trucks and the like. they were much older than my dad’s fire department’s antique fire trucks, so old that many were powered by horses or steam. there was also a 9/11 memorial, which was very sad. i cried when it happened, and i cried then.

after eating dinner at a deli with huge subs, we said goodbye to marta and got on the road. we got back to rochester at 12ish and after reading my flist, i went to bed. hurray.

the rest of the photos are here.

liz and i rode our bikes to pittsford today. it was quite fun. i opted to bike instead of go to flex, since it was so freaking nice out today : )

i’m leaving for long island/new york city tomorrow morning! i think we’re staying two days on long island and a day and a half in manhattan. mmmm. see you sunday!

photographin’ by the dad. photoshoppin’ by dr. lan.

i’m back (as of 1:00am last night)! i’m sure you want to hear all about it, eh? overall, it was a fun trip, but not as fun as last year. we just didn’t do as much as last year. we had a decent amount of free time, but it was all spent in the same place, which was lame. so here’s a teaser image, and keep on readin’.

stabby taking pictures of times square!

THURSDAY:
well, the bus left at 3ish and we didn’t stop until 6 for dinner in albany. i got dragged into going to hooters with my friends (can you say peer pressure?) and later we got milkshakes at haagen dazs. we got to the hotel at about midnight and went to sleep after a small get-together with the boys and a few rounds of ten fingers.

FRIDAY:

at 9am friday morning we went to nbc studios and took a cool tour. we got to visit the sets of conan and snl, which both seem way smaller than they do on tv. after the tour we were able to wander around rockefeller center. most of the stores that my friends wanted to go in (lacoste, billabong, etc.) weren’t really my style, so i didn’t buy anything. we walked all the way to times square and hung around there for awhile.

afterwards we went to the meet-the-artist program and listened to a presentation about musicals and such by some guy i’ve never heard of. stabby fell asleep halfway through.

then we went outside and took the group photo. our next destination was, ironically, times square. we didn’t mind though and spent most of our time trying to find h & m so that bev could buy a dress shirt for…

tarzan! it was amazing. it was “opening night” and we were sort of the test audience to work out the kinks, but it was still really good. i say “opening night” because it technically wasn’t really, but it was the first time anyone has ever seen it. the scenery was the best. the first scene was my favorite, when the ship crashed tarzan’s parents had to swim up from the ocean to safety. the actors were attached to lines so that they could “swim up” to the top of the water, which was a blue-ish silkscreen. it looked amazing.

we got back around 12 and again hung out in our room until the security told the boys to go back to their room and for us to go to sleep.

SATURDAY:

we spent most of the day in chinatown, which everyone seemed to enjoy. the girls liked going into the back rooms to look at mounds of fake louis vuitton and prada purses and the boys liked looking at extremely cheap “bling” and crap electronics. neither of those things intrest me much, but i did purchase (and this was my only purchase the whole trip) a pink ipod case for ten bucks. it’s cool. but let me just say, kids from brighton do not know how to barter. poor bev kept asking too politely if they’d lower the price, as did chels.

we also stopped at soho, but left after noticing that most of the stuff was way out our price range.

our last activity was seeing slava’s snowshow, which was really cool. it was a play-type show, but not really. it didn’t have any words, it was just a bunch of clowns doing stuff. there was a lot of audience interaction, like when one of the clowns threw dee-dee over his shoulder and brought her offstage. another time one of the clowns tried to walk across the seats of the audience and required the hand of me, among the hands of other people around me. the snowshow part was cool, there was little pieces of white paper everywhere (which were fun to throw). at the end a bunch of huge (we’re talking 10 feet diameter) air-filled balls were thrown at the audience and we bounced them around like beach balls. it was a blast.

we got home at 1:30 and i pretty much passed out as soon as i hit the bed. ’twas a good trip.

and now i leave you with a photo representation of the secret handshake bev and i made up:
1.
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3.
4.

the rest of the photos are over here!