Song of the Day + Not- so- romantic Romantic Comedies

The other night I saw Paper Heart. For some reason, I really liked this movie. It was a documentary about Charlyne Yi and her quest to find out what love is. It pretty much had all the elements I could want in a movie: love, awkwardness, and puppet shows. While travelling around America interviewing people, she meets Micheal Cera...who I love. The movie has a lot of cameos in it. I pretty much wanna be friends with all of Charlyne's friends: Demetri Martin, David Krumholtz, Seth Rogen.
I have to say that one of my favorite parts in the movie is when Charlyne interviews some kids at a playground in Atlanta. She holds up the mic to this little black girl and asks "How will you know when you're in love?" and the little girl says "Well, he'll make me happy. Sometimes take me to Applebee's and get me some HOT WINGS!" I immediately thought of Kalen. All in all a good movie, though. I'd recommend it.

 

Speaking of unconventional romantic comedies, 500 Days of Summer comes out today. LOOOOOVED LOVED that movie! So for our song, the Hall and Oates song Joseph Gordon-Levitt dances to in the movie. A treat for both the eyes and the ears!

Song of the Day + Traffic Reports

I was on my way to work yesterday listening to the local radio station in my car. And I realized something. Isn't it weird how car accidents are reported as inconveniences? The reason that they're reported on the radio is so that people know how much of a delay there will be on that road. Why don't they ever give a brief description of how serious the accident was or if the people in the accident are okay? It doesn't seem like it'll take up much more air time. "There's an accident on 41 and Vanderbilt. Just a slight fender bender, no one was hurt.Another accident on..." Right? But then again, maybe people don't wanna take a break in the middle of their music listening to hear about people who got seriously injured.

On that really random note...today's Song of the Day is The News by Jack Johnson.

OCD

I couldn't stand how that hulu clip was blocking the column on the right hand side of my blog. Sooooo... here's a random picture of my three little cousins (WHO WILL BE HERE IN JUST A FEW DAYS!!!). They came to wake me up. I, of course, look like poop but I thought it was a cute picture otherwise.

And when I'm not playing with them, I will be drinking wine and/or other beverages with my masi.

:)

Glee and Cake Love

Every Wednesday night Holly, Erika, Victoria, and I get together to watch Glee.  If you haven't seen Glee before...you should.  It's very entertaining.  Here's a clip of one of the songs performed on the show:



It became a tradition to bring a low-fat dessert to each Glee night. Usually someone would bring Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches or Weight Watchers ice cream bars. However, last week was the season finale...and store bought, low calorie desserts just would not suffice. So Erika came up with a brilliant plan. She and I would bake a cake from scratch. Holly and Victoria couldn't participate because they had to work during the day. We decided to go with a chocolate cake with chocolate ganache and meringue icing. Yummmay.

I went over to Erika's house that Wednesday.  Being the expert baker that she is, she had already laid out all the materials and tools needed to bake the perfect cake.

 

Look at all the butter! Yikes.

 

 

Erika baked, I assisted, and Peanut helped us clean whatever had fallen on the floor.

We made the three layer so gigantic that the third layer started sliding off!  So we decided to take the top layer off.  Coincidentally, the spatula Erika used left her with a monogram.

In the end, it turned out to be a very tasty cake!

Priya and Ojas Go To Miami

For those that don't know I was born in Miami.  I lived there till I was 11 when we moved to Naples.  Even though it's only 2 hours away (not even) I don't go there except to visit family occasionally.  Ojas was down for a week long visit and we thought it would be a good idea to go to my hometown for a couple of days.  In two days, we packed in a lot of activity. 

We went to Hollywood to have lunch with my brother at the Hard Rock Resort.  Then we went to Hollywood Beach.  This place was kind of dead on account of the "cold" weather.  But we had a nice walk anyways :)

You can't go to Miami without going to South Beach.  I was a little excited about this part.  Even though I've been to South Beach as a youngun', I've never taken part in the grown up aspects of it (i.e. going out...getting a drink or two).  Unfortunately, South Beach was a little dead too.  I guess Miamians are in no mood to go out if the temperature is less than 80 degrees (maybe it's because they can't wear skimpy clothes? I don't know). 

 South Beach is where we encountered a diner with the most MAMBO menu we have ever seen.

We had also gone out one night in Coconut Grove, where Ojas got me some pretty roses.

On Saturday night, we went to Bayside to eat dinner and take a mini- hour long cruise.  This was Ojas's first cruise of any kind.  He was pretty stoked.

We got really nice views of downtown Miami.  Towards the end of the cruise we saw this giant Christmas tree.  Ojas wanted to walk to it before we left Bayside.  I told him that there was probably no point to walk all the way to it seeing as how we could look at it pretty well from the boat.  But he "works on Christmas Eve and won't have a tree, so he REALLY wanted to walk to it." Allllrighty.  Weirdo.  So we walk to the tree.

 

We're standing 20 feet from the tree.  "Alright...here it is...wanna head out?"..."Let's go closer" he says.  So we go closer.  We find a seat nearby and as soon as I plop down, Ojas takes a box out of his pocket and says "Well since it's Christmas and all....Will you?"  After I saw the ring and said a few "OH MY GOD...'s", I said yes! :)  We then found a latin gay guy (who was admiring the tree and was "just thinking how wonderful it would be if someone proposed by it!") to take our pictures.  I wish I had realized at the time that the pictures were a little blurry but I was in an ecstatic haze.

 

 

I may be an unemployed girl...but I'm a very HAPPY unemployed girl :)

I'm ENGAGED!!!

More about this later today!  But for now...song of the day.  Just cause it's a really cute song :)

My Kansas Boy...

...can't hack the the Florida sun...even though we were only out for two hours.

We got back from the beach and I told him I was gonna change so that we could pick up a few things from the grocery store.  A few minutes later, I came back to the family room only to see this:

Looks like I'm going grocery shopping on my own. Heh.

Swings and Carnival Bling

Sometimes I get into these really weird moods.  When I'm in these moods, I usually feel pretty down...the worse part is not knowing what will make me feel better.  Last Saturday, my mind and body couldn't decide whether I wanted to lay on the couch and watch made-for-tv movies or if I wanted to gather some friends and check out the carnival being put on my the local Italian American club.  After calling some people and losing all motivation, I had pretty much decided that laying on the couch was the option that seemed to be calling out to me.  Then my mom got home from work.

Turns out she was in the same exact mood.  She decided that we needed to get out of the house so we went and got dinner.  We came home and after a few glasses of wine, it seemed so silly that we were passing up on a carnival.  So my mom and I went to the carnival...while slightly under the influence. Slighty.

 

 

 

 

We opted to save our money by just simply walking around the carnival...taking in all the lights, the smell of the funnel cakes, the excitement of little kids.  Then we saw this baby:

Now...I'm not a huge fan of riding carnival rides seeing as how they're put up and taken down so easily.  For instance, you would never see me on the ride in the third picture above.  No way.  But the swings were different.  They were my favorite ride at the Dade County Fair (which we went to EVERY year when I lived in Miami).  Naturally, as the wine coursed through our bodies, we were (or maybe just I was) itching to get on this thing.

My mom insisted that she try to take pictures while we were on the ride.
I don't think I laughed that hard in a while.  Only you can't see anything but my arms and legs.

This is a horrible picture...as I was extremely sweaty.  But...It turned out to be a good night after all.

 

Song of the Day + Bad Mood Pick-Me Up

Angela is one of my favorite friends.  One thing I really like about her is that she shares my taste of music.  She usually finds out about bands and stuff before me.  When I saw her in Gainesville she told me about Phoenix.  Apparently they've been around for a while but I've never heard of them.  I really like their song "If I Ever Feel Better".

I've been in kind of a bad mood this last weekend.  It's hard not having a job.  I could go on about how miserable it's making me but I've done that too many times.  But I feel like this song portrays the general mood I've been in.  Besides that, it's also pretty catchy.

Girls Weekend in Orlando

If there's anything that I love more than theme parks, it's going to theme parks with some of my favorite girls.  We had been planning an Orlando reunion for MONTHS!  I'm glad we waited though because the weather was beautiful...and the lines were very short.

Before we went on to Universal on Saturday, we decided to go out on Friday.  We were all staying with Sarah who is in Orlando for med school rotations.  She asked if we wanted to meet up with some of her friends before going out.  While we were all for the plan, we thought we'd be going to some dumpy college-y house near downtown Orlando.  No...Sarah failed to mention that this place was on the 27th floor of this awesome apartment building right by Lake Eola!  Look at the view!

Here's our group!

The next day, we rolled out of bed at 11:30 and got to Universal around 3.  Usually this would have KILLED me.  But I said to myself "Self, you have been to this place a million times...so many times that we won't need a map because you'll know where every ride is.  So chill out and enjoy the time you have with your friends."  And so instead of rushing to each ride like a lunatic, I learned that it's a lot of fun to just goof around the park and take silly pictures.

 

 This day also reconfirmed that I need to be working for a theme park.  I'm still in awe of all the fake buildings and stuff!

The next day, Lindsay, LaTeresa and I decided to spend the day at Islands of Adventure while Sarah and Brittany stayed home.  I'm so glad Teresa came out with us this weekend! She was so much fun! And of course, I always love little Lindsay.

Teresa participated in every way she could.  Here she is as one of the stunt actors on the Disaster ride.

Hehe...she loved the Simpsons

We found out that Lindsay's grandpa is friends with the creator of Marmaduke.  Lindsay tried saying hi to Marmaduke...but he kept running away!

My pick for most awesome picture of the day.  Who wouldn't wanna chill out with Cyclops?!

A Ladies Night Poem

Friday, a Ladies Night at La Casa de Patel

How many Indian women? I couldn't tell.

For there were three different types of bottles of wine

and thai food which tasted mighty fine.

We played Pictionary until we were all hysterical

How did we win? Must've been a crazy miracle.

For dessert, delicious chocolate covered strawberries

Made em myself...with the help of Luke Perry.

(or maybe just by myself)

At the end of the night before it was time to go

I said "Ladies, let's have some chai! Whatchu gotta go fo'?!"

So once more we gathered to sip some tea

And everyone there was filled with glee.