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Back to the Blog

I seem to follow a pattern of blogging for a few months and then stopping completely...and then starting again...and stopping again. But I'm starting again (again) and this time I'm going to try to keep up with it. Let's see how that goes.

To get back in the swing of this, I'll share some pretty autumn pictures I've taken recently:

West Broadway

East Hampton

Also, a word about Glee. It's been pretty bad lately, but I liked last week's Gwenyth Paltrow episode. Watch these two clips and tell me if there's anything she can't do.

Blossoms, Class Ring, and Dante

It's spring at Vassar too! I took these photos last week when the trees were covered in blossoms - unfortunately they've already fallen and green leaves are sprouting where the blossoms used to be.

I also got my Vassar class ring in the mail today!

This is my high school class ring:

...But I don't wear it that often. Sometimes I wear it if I'm wearing something red and it matches (I chose a red stone because red and black were PPAS's school colors) but I love that the Vassar ring is so simple, elegant, and understated. I'm also glad it arrived more than a month before graduation so I can enjoy wearing it facing towards me; once you graduate you turn it to face outward.

Isn't it pretty?

In other news, I finished memorizing the entire Canto III of Dante's Inferno this afternoon! The professor of my Italian seminar on the Inferno gave us the option of memorizing and performing a canto (the equivalent of a chapter in poem form) in Italian in lieu of writing a final paper, which sounds easy, but is actually quite a challenge. The canto I chose is 136 lines long. I still have to perfect it and cement it into my mind, but I have about a month in which to do that. I'm so happy I finally got through it all; when I was halfway through, the end seemed so far away! But I guess that can be said about a lot of things. People tell me that now I'll remember this canto for the rest of my life. I don't know if that's true, but if you want me to recite it the next time you see me, I'd be more than happy to oblige! Or you can request just a line or two if listening to 136 lines of medieval Italian seems a little overwhelming.

And another side note - did anyone watch Glee last night? My housemate and I both did presentations in our art history seminar today, so we didn't watch it last night, but we're watching it tonight and are very excited...

More Snow Pictures

From the past two snows - New Year's Eve Day in NYC, and this past weekend on Long Island.

Central Park Pond

Fountain in front of the Plaza - can you see the wreaths in the windows of the Bergdorf Goodman's building?

The Plaza Hotel

Farewell, World of Disney NYC - we went uptown to go to the Disney store on the last day (which, according to its website, was 12/31/09), but it was already boarded up for good. Not even Disney could afford Fifth Avenue rent anymore.

See the snow on the branches?

The snowy woods on Long Island

Snow Day

Yesterday I took lots of pictures of New York in the snow. Snow in New York doesn't stay beautiful for long, but when it's new, it's stunning.

Lower East Side

Upper East Side

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Polar bears in the park

The park was packed with tons of kids sledding and building snowmen.

A man skiing across the Great Lawn

Belvedere Castle

And then my camera died. But my cell phone came to the rescue with decent, albeit low-resolution, pictures:

Upper West Side

Columbus Circle

This snowman was part of a trio, and he even had sunglasses on.

The line for horse and carriage rides was about a block long!

Central Park pond by 5th Avenue

You'll also notice that I changed the picture behind the title page. I've changed it around a few times recently but I think I'll stick with this one until winter's over. Happy Solstice - from now on the days will be getting longer again!