365-photo-a-day - August wrap-up

sunset - last look - mountain time - bangs! - club-fetti - wash.sq.pk. arch

flamingo hotel - lazy tuesday - it all fits! - tramsportation - q'boro bridge - neon museum

dockside - can't stop - bellagio fountains - dinner with friends - after work drinks - vegas calling

more neon - o captain my captain - m&m fancy - waiting for a truck - lake wake - inspiration

friendly skies - chihuly glass - going out with a bang - my morning - lake norris - wynn

The Summer of Yes is officially over. With one last swig from a Prosecco bottle in a bag as we walked down the street, we put the summer to bed - and not a moment too soon. Our legs are tired, our voices are strained, our livers are complaining, our bank accounts are depleted, and our souls need some serious attention. 

Once again (I seem to be a bit of a broken record on this subject), August was a month when some days I just couldn't seem to find anything interesting to photograph, but other days were full of photo opportunities. It helped that I spent almost two weeks out of town and on vacation - both a girl's weekend in Vegas and a family vacation in the middle of the Smoky Mountains kept the shutter button clicking, but many of my days were spent in long rehearsals and seemingly endless storage wars as Jon and I continued to merge all my worldly possessions into his already-full one-bedroom apartment (spoiler alert: we were amazingly successful and I even have an entire closet to call my own!). What also seems to be a recurring theme in this project is that I'm realizing there are many instances in which I would really like to take a picture, but just can't - dim lighting in the back corner of a restaurant, playing paparazzi with someone else's child, an un-showered, hung over friend - these are just some examples of the ever-increasing occurrences in which I think to myself, "gosh this would make a great photo!" and then immediately realize that I would be disowned by whatever friend I'm thinking of photographing at that moment. Because at the end of the day, this is just my hobby. I'm not getting paid to take photos, nothing is riding on me taking the world's most perfect Instagram, and my friends don't necessarily want to be my models every day. So for the sake of my relationships, I abstain from some photo ops. And we're probably all happier because of it ;)

August by the numbers:

Photos of my feet: 1

Photos of other people: 3

Selfies: 1

Photos of the sky: 8

Photos of food/drink: 3

365/Photo-a-day is a personal undertaking to capture one photograph per day in 2013. All photos were taken by me and processed with Instagram, Snapseed, PhotoToaster, and/or the new A Beautiful Mess app. The images were compiled using Picture Collage Maker Lite. What to see my pics as they happen? Follow me - @maspad on Instagram!

vegas or bust

This past weekend I hopped a plane to Vegas for the quintessential girls weekend. I had never been before, and when my friends asked me to join them on their trip I bought a ticket faster than you could say "Viva las vegas!" (which, incidentally, was said quite a lot).

And boy, did we viva. In four short days that quickly turned into four long nights, and in no particular order (there's no way I can remember everything in order anyway), we ate gelato at the Venitian, danced in public in our bikinis while day drinking at the Flamingo pool, saw amazing ariel and water acrobatics at Le Rêve, watched the dancing fountains at the Bellagio, closed down a Vegas nightclub at 4am, toured the Neon Museum, stumbled down the strip in heels at 2 in the morning, got our money's worth by eating everything that the Wicked Spoon Buffet had to offer, crashed Ryan Lochte's birthday party, embraced the chain restaurant nature of Vegas and had dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, ate cereal in a cocktail at the Chandelier Bar in the Cosmopolitan, watched Wine Angels at Aureole, played video poker and won a couple of bucks, played the slots and lost a couple of bucks.

My feet still hurt from three straight nights of heels, but that, my friend, is how you start to wrap up a summer of yes.

#1 landing in Vegas  #2 drinks at Tao

#3-5 Neon Museum  #6 desert palm tree

#7 Flamingo pool party  #8-9 - more Neon  #10 Chihuly ceiling at the Bellagio

#11 looking down at the Wynn  #12 Bellagio selfie

#13 nightclub confetti  #14 Bellagio fountains

#15 Paris in Vegas  #16 how Ryan Lochte celebrates his birthday

Finding play

All too often we get wrapped up in work. Making money, making a schedule, making that transfer to an uptown express. And while I'll be the first person to stress the importance of staying vigilantly late at work to finish that one last task or rereading the email for the 10th time before you hit "reply all," I'll also be the first person to tell you just how necessary it is for us as an exhausted, overworked society to make the time for some serious play.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said that "it is a happy talent to know how to play," and Gretchen Rubin dedicated an entire chapter to the business of play in the recap of her year-long project dedicated to finding happiness (check out The Happiness Project, a thought-provoking, if maybe slightly implausible, way of life). We spend our entire childhood being told to "go play outside," but why do these instructions stop once we hit a certain age and obtain a "real" job? Many people like to brag that they work hard and play hard, but if you were to actually tally up the amount of time you spend working versus your moments of real play, how balanced would that scale actually be?

The other day, my friend and I dedicated the better part of an entire day to experiencing about 15 minutes of true play. The goal was simple - gain entrance into the Rain Room, a large-scale art installation at the MoMA in which digital sensors cause rain to fall from the ceiling except where you're walking or standing at that moment. This allows you to walk through the rain without getting wet. Which. Is. Awesome.

We arrived at the museum around 10:30am. We were directed to the end of the line, located on an unglamorous section of 53rd Street. We were told that the at this point, the wait to get in would be about 4 - 5 hours.

Hours.

Only 10 people are allowed into the Rain Room at once, and there is no limit to how much time you can spend once inside. It's suggested that you cap off at 15-20 minutes, but one MoMA intern told us that just the other week someone led an entire 35-minute yoga class in in the room. Apparently wait times have reached 8+ hours on previous days in New York; patrons logged almost 12 hours of waiting when the exhibit was in London last year. So clearly, we were doing well with a projected time of only 5 hours.

I won't bore you with the details of what amounted to a full five and a half hour wait on a New York sidewalk on a hot, sticky New York summer day. We checked our email, ate a wrap, dedicated a solid two hours to deconstructing our current relationship statuses (stati?), and I passed Level 23 on Candy Crush Saga (why why why did I ever start playing that?!?!).

And then we finally made it into the hallowed halls of the Rain Room.

And we played. Simply, purely, innocently.

I twirled. She sun-saluted. We threw our heads back and laughed. We allowed ourselves to be children, playing in the rain.

And it was delightful.

365/photo-a-day - June wrap up

summerofyes - toasting my union - jersey shore

astoria sunset - 92 and sunny - central park - met rooftop 

end of an era - looking down - somewhere on lex - fancy shmancy!

sunset love - art in queens - boardwalk sunset

Gosh I love the summer. The days are longer, the air is stickier, the drinks taste better, and even the vacations wear sunglasses. And I embraced this month with open arms. A fancy dinner where I got to get all prettied up, two separate visits to the Met, two separate visits to the beach, a marriage equality music video (I like to think I had a little something to do with the recent news out of the supreme court!), and some serious sitting in Central Park.

The thing that's becoming very clear to me in light of this take-a-photo-every-day-in-the-year-2013 is that it's actually really difficult to take a photo every day. I'm not using this as an excuse, but I work a lot - sometimes six days a week for hours (and hours) a day - and it becomes impossible, not to mention irresponsible, to devote considerable time every day to taking a photograph that I am proud to post and call my own. Maybe it would be different if I didn't have such a crazy schedule. Well, actually, it would be different if I didn't lead this schedule - if I was a full-time blogger, then of course I'd be taking more pictures and posting every day and baking so much more than I already do. But I'm not a full-time blogger, this is just my hobby that arose out of a need for a creative outlet outside of my daily occupation.

It sounds like I'm complaining, or rationalizing. I'm really not. I love my job and it's insane schedule, I love my friends and the huge amount of time and attention they require, and I love the challenge of finding the much-needed "me time" that I require to accomplish my hobby-related goals. And at the end of the day (or the month) if I have a collection of photographs that showcase my previous month, I can consider that a job well-completed.

I'm at the half-way mark of this project. I had assumed I'd peter out and forget all about it by mid-March, but that hasn't happened - instead I'm finding more things to photograph, finding new inspiration (and gaining more followers!) on Instagram, and loving this project more and more each new month.

June by the numbers
Pictures of the sky: 8
Pictures of my feet: 3
Pictures of my hands: 2
Pictures of people/animals: 4

365/Photo-a-day is a personal undertaking to capture one photograph per day in 2013. All photos were taken by me and processed with Instagram, Snapseed, PhotoToaster, and/or the new A Beautiful Mess. The images were compiled using Picture Collage Maker Lite. What to see my pics as they happen? Follow me - @maspad on Instagram!

summer: playlist

It's hot here in New York.

Very hot.

But there are a few things that are getting me through this heat wave. A super powerful fan I bought two summers ago from Target. Air conditioned rehearsal halls. Frozen Thin Mints (my rule is that when you buy them in the spring they go right into the freezer and are not to be touched until June). And a rockin' summer playlist to accompany me from smelly subway car to crowded city streets and back again. Below is my list (made with the awesome A Beautiful Mess app!) of songs that are basically a requirement for jamming out this summer. Some are new songs, some are old (we should probably just give the Best Song Ever Award to "Ignition (Remix)" and call it a day), some are Top40 hits and some are local bands, but all are available on iTunes and pretty darn rad.

Enjoy!

Summer of Yes

The beginning of summer always brings excited anticipation. Hopes of beach days, plans for road trips, dreams of outdoor BBQ's...but for some reason, this year I'm more excited than I usually am when looking down the barrel of a season full of smelly subway trains and un-airconditioned evenings. Maybe it's because I and most of my friends are staying in the city this summer (it's usually a headache-inducing battle of the schedules just to find a day when half of us are not out performing in some summer stock or another), maybe it's because I've actually taken the time to read the last few issues of Time Out and put some of the more awesome events into my calendar, or maybe it's just because I'm 29 and I'm determined to hold on to every last shred of my wild youth.

My friends and I have declared this the Summer of Yes. It's a a loose derivative of another friend's Week of Yes, in which she did not allow herself to turn down any social request for seven days (in hopes she'd land the man of her dreams, or something to that effect). Our Summer of Yes is much less restrictive. In fact, we haven't ventured too far beyond screaming it's name and raising our arms à la Steve Holt! every time we do something delightfully fun - but just putting a name to our experiences leaves us feeling hopeful, connected, and excited for the months to come.

This sumer, I eagerly await the chance to...

*Finally visit the Botanical Gardens
*See some friends shake their thang at Broadway Bares
*Don a swanky hat for the Jazz Age Lawn Party
*Barter for indie goods at the Brooklyn Flea
*Embrace the challenge of combining two apartments into (a) one (bedroom) with John
*Get back to baking
*And make some delicious summer pasta salads
*Watch this blog continue to grown and change into what I need it to be
*Relax at a lake house below the Mason-Dixon line
*Dip my feet into the ocean (and stimulate that economy!) at the Jersey Shore
*Save my pennies
*But window shop with complete abandon both on Amazon and on 5th Ave.
*Maybe actually buy something fun
*Or maybe not
*Work my way through my summer reading list (new Dan Brown, anyone??)
*Eat bagels. And more bagels.
*Sleep in when I can
*And embrace the quiet time I get when I wake up early
*Put on lipstick, in the middle of the day, for no good reason at all, just because I can.

                  #summerofyes