I believe an apology is in order

An apology is definitely in order in regards to my absence over the past few months. (August. May? Three months, jeez.) As for my lack of pictures and stories, another apology should be added to the previous one. 

In other words, I'm really sorry you guys! I didn't plan on disappearing as I did, but life just took a bad turn and things have been pretty difficult for a while now. This summer has also been fairly boring, so I only have a couple of short, simple stories for you all about what I've been up to.

Firstly, I don't have a picture for you, but at the beginning of summer (the first weekend of June, I believe) my face went under a little. . .unplanned renovation. Meaning, I was at a hotel with my family and a couple friends, one friend and myself were swimming in the hotel pool, and I had a bit of an accident. I don't exactly recall what I was doing, I think I was just swimming around near the bottom of the pool, but since I wasn't wearing goggles I couldn't see that the incline of the pool was coming up very quickly and I smacked my face (more specifically my mouth). Now, I'm just thankful that I have some pretty big front teeth, (the only time I'm thankful for it, actually) because yes, they broke upon impact. Thankfully I wasn't in any pain and I was able to get my teeth repaired within a couple of days (a quarter of one tooth was rebuilt and half of the other had to be reconstructed), but it was quite a traumatizing experience for both myself and probably both of my friends as well. Not to mention the lisp I had for a good month afterwards really sucked.

Onto story number two! This one actually refers to the last two photos and isn't too much of a story, but later in June I had a job doing the photography at an acquaintance's sister's bat mitzvah. Long story short, I was on my feet for five hours straight, dealt with extremely loud music and obnoxious people, and the only enjoyable part of the evening on my end was when I had a lovely conversation with some elder relatives of the acquaintance discussing my camera, photography as a hobby, and a little bit into the inner-workings of the universe and what it entails. But I don't think I'm going to look into getting hired for any more party gigs anytime soon. (Oh yeah, and the two photos I snapped up above were of the party favors. I just really liked how they turned out!) 

And last-but-not-least, the top five photos were from a little day-trip up to Geneva-On-The-Lake so my sister and mother could partake in my cousin's bachelorette party (my sister is a bridesmaid for the wedding later this week! She's really not excited, though, which is a bit disheartening, but we're all still very excited for my cousin nonetheless. She will make a beautiful bride and I hope that her marriage will be happy, healthy, strong, and flourishing.) Anyways, as I wasn't able to take part in the "festivities" of roaming about to winery after winery, my father and I headed up to Geneva-On-The-Lake so we could see what might be going on up there. Sadly it was a rainy day, so most of the fun things weren't running, but we still headed down to a nearby park and get some lovely photos of the lake in the rain (the top two photos are just a couple of what I captured that day). Another bummer was that we got caught in the previously-mentioned rain. (Normally I'm a big fan of going out in summer rain storms, but I'm not so big a fan when I have a fragile camera out in the open and it starts to downpour. The camera came out unscathed, thankfully!)

Anyways, the last three photos from the five were from the church-turned-winery we went to so we could pick up my mother and sister and make the gruesome, nearly two-hour trip back home in more rain. I'm a sucker for close-up flower photos (the one isn't quite close enough to be considered macro, I don't think.). The beautiful vineyards were also a plus to the scenery. It was really quite beautiful.

Sadly school is starting back up in a couple of weeks for me, which means that I'll have less time to explore (despite how little I do already) and even less considering the fact that I'm taking more difficult classes this year as well, boo.

I hope to get back to you all soon, though, so until then wish me luck! 

Thank you all for bearing with my absences and thank you for embarking on my journeys with me, despite how few and far between they may be!

Back to NYC!

As stated above, I have recently returned to New York City for a trip with my school's choral department! We were there from April 30th to May 4th and the trip was . . . interesting, I suppose. Not the best trip I've ever been on, and certainly a very stressful one, but nonetheless I made the best of it and have returned to you all with many new pictures and stories to share! These, of course, are only a dent in the pictures I took on my trip, and are also all from the very first day that I was there. Also, the fourth picture (the side-profile of the red-haired oddity) would be of myself; odd, I don't think I've ever actually put a photo containing even a portion of my face on this blog before! First for everything, right?

Anyways, the first three photos were taken the morning I arrived in the city, and seeing as it had rained all night it was very foggy. I could relate to the foggy, drowsy feeling of that morning, too because we'd driven on a bus all night to get to the city and I got very bus-sick from sleeping for four hours on the vehicle, so the beginning of the day wasn't the most enjoyable, but by the time the last four photos were taken I was feeling much better and was ready to re-explore the city. Truthfully, I missed New York, and once I was back out in the hustle-and-bustle of the streets I felt like I'd never left.

The buildings in the fifth picture are two that I wish I could get an infinite amount of pictures of, because they are so beautifully built and detailed and their structures just always leave me wanting more. They were located across the street from F.A.O. Schwartz and the underground Apple store, and I remember them vividly from last year as well. 

Now, the very last photo is of my friend Katie, who is one amazing girl. She'd dyed her hair right before the trip so it would be half-blue-half-black for when we went to NYC, but the black dye actually made her hair a bit darker, so she worked with the results she received and I, personally, from the perspective of someone whose hair is now bright red, think it looked great! (Past tense because the dye has since come out and her hair is no longer blue, but still just as terrific!)

So that's a bit of the stories of the pictures and my opinions on them, and again, this is only a small dent in the amount of photos I took, so look forward to more pictures and, as they start to come to a close, a longer entry about my trip in its entirety! For now, however, I'm about to go out with my mother to celebrate Mother's Day a day early at dinner. Thank you all for reading!

Back with some writing! (Sorry for the unscheduled hiatus everybody!)

(Disregard the picture that's obviously from December)

The Stages of Spring

I.    Autumn's presence

      Nothing but the crisp smell of 

      Fallen leaves and the in-and-out

      Patterns of warm days laced with chill

II.   Snow storms in March

      And April

      Cold and ice when and where

      It just shouldn't be

III.  Lengthening days 

      And screwed up sleeping schedules

      As night comes later

      And an hour is lost from the day

      Try not to have an early schedule that week

      Because deep regret will follow with the first morning

IV.   Flowers blooming and birds returning

      Trees coming back to life with buds of pink

      And chirps of winged beauties 

      Blessing the steadily-warming mornings

V.    Sunlight

      Warmth of the oncoming summertime

      And grass flowing lush and green

      Once the April showers have been chased away

      And this part of the world

      Has come back to life

Hi everybody! I'm just going to give a quick update for you all so I can explain myself and my two month hiatus that was clearly not forewarned. (Sorry for that, by the way!) Life has been, to say the least, inconvenient for my as of late and distractions have kept me from writing and taking as many photos as my little heart can handle, and I apologize dearly. Many things have happened that have kept me from returning, such as school work, issues between friends and family, and not to mention a pretty terrible break up of my own, seeing as it was my first relationship and had lasted about four years, but most of those things have led me to new doors that are opening into new opportunities that I hope to share with you all as they enter my life! 

Now, for the poem above. It's different from what I would usually write, but this morning as I was walking outside, I found that the words just came to me and wouldn't stop flowing until I had finished. Spring seemed like it was going to finally bring itself about, but sadly tomorrow we're supposed to be getting more snow (boo). As for the stanza on the time change; yes, I have a very, very busy schedule this week and next, of which is requiring me to get up at five every morning and that's not fun when five should really be four. Wish me luck with everything life's throwing at me, and I hope you understand my past and possible future breaks between entries. I hope that I'll be back with another post soon, so until then, thank you for reading!