I have to say, I fell in LOVE with North Carolina. The plantation homes were gorgeous, the scenery was perfect, small rivers wound through the countryside like spaghetti on a plate (okay, not my most poetic comparison...but accurate!).
I would love to own a plantation style home with a BIG wrap around porch on a beach like the one I visited:
If you've never been, Washington D.C. is somewhat disappointing. It is nothing like the movies. If you grew up watching Dave and First Daughter like I did, then your expectations of DC were set pretty darn high.
Upon driving into DC it's nothing spectacular....just regular freeway, regular streets, and tourist signs scattered about. The surrounding areas seemed pretty ghetto (think of the dodgy parts of Los Angeles that they always show in the movies...yeah, that's what surrounds our country's capitol).
The White House is just plopped in the middle of a few streets that house official buildings. It's quite easy to drive to it and walk to it. I assumed that it would be more spectacular...bigger trees, longer driveways, expansive views, secluded from nearby buildings, etc. But alas, it was kinda ordinary.
DC at night offered some breathtaking photos.
Oh, and the best thing about DC? Big Abe. For shizz.
Have you ever had a song that inspired you more than anything? Tyrone Wells is one of those inspiring, humble artists who writes inspirational songs. I love his music, and more particularly I love his song "Simple Life." His lyrics were inspired by Micah 6:8, and in turn inspired me to make this lovely creation :)
Life ebbs and flows.
Sometimes you run,
sometimes you pause for rest.
My passion for writing, like most passions, is hot and cold. When I feel passionate about writing, I write. And boy, do I write. I've cranked out a couple novels when I'm on fire. The past year or so I haven't had the passion. I made a vow to myself to never write as a chore. I will always write with passion. I have no idea what lit this passion inside of me to write again, but I'm ON FIRE.
This fire inside of me was sparked and now it's spreading like wildfire. I'm getting fired up about music, song lyrics, reading, photography, and graphic design. I don't know what bothers me more...that I have so much passion burning inside of me right now, or that I have no idea what sparked it.
I guess life is too short to spend without passion.
And so I'm finding my way back to passion. Finding my way back to life.
Times Square during the day? Run down. Dirty. Like Vegas in the day.
Times Square at night? Magical. Glittery. Amazing. It's the New York dreams are made of.
Times Square at night makes me think of these lyrics by Tyrone Wells (one of my personal favorites).
I've always wanted to go to New York. The lights. The glamour. The distance. I even wrote about New York in one of my novels (and now I am promptly going back to edit it). How foolish of me to write about such a wonderful place without having ever been there. Lesson learned ;)
New York is very similar to Vegas. No, you can't walk around with a drink in your hand. The two metropolises are similar in that they are starkly different places in daylight than at nighttime. That's why I'm going to have two different posts (one about day and one about night).
Daytime New York is filled with anxiety...if you're in a vehicle going through a tunnel or on a bridge. Let me tell you this: I am NOT ever going to take a vehicle to New York again. Ever. If we could have turned around at the tunnel from New Jersey to New York--we would have!
If you've ever been to Vegas you know that driving in, you see Vegas from miles away and yet it feels so close. New York is very similar. Driving through New Jersey, you see the skyline and you feel like you are practically there...but it's still miles and miles away. Then you cross the tunnel and you are IN Manhattan. Yet it still takes an hour to get anywhere. New York is not for the impatient.
This is something the movies don't prepare you for. Cabbies are horrible drivers, but bus drivers (tour busses) are the DEVIL. They got their training with monster truck drivers, I'm sure. And that has resulted in their delusional thinking that their busses are monster trucks. They don't care if you are a person, a car, a diesel, another bus...they will run you over.
Central Park is nothing like the movies. It's just a normal, ordinary park. There is absolutely nothing spectacular about it. My hotel was three blocks from Central Park, so I got up early, grabbed some coffee (I wanted Starbucks, but the only thing I found was this snobbish French cafe...so I settled). The anticipation during those three blocks was torture! I arrived at Central Park and all of my anticipation melted away faster than butter in a frying pan. It was brown and ugly and boring and ordinary. So, I sipped my snobby $8 coffee while walking around trying to find cool things to photograph.
Let me just start this off with, the East Coast is weird! Here's the top 7 weird things about the East Coast:
...And it wasn't a white Christmas :( I've been spoiled with white Christmases since 2009. For a Southern California girl like me, it was exciting. This year? All I got was rain. It made me miss Alaska very much. The best part of being in civilization? Going to a movie on Christmas day and window shopping the day after Christmas. Those two things were difficult to do in the places I lived in Alaska. You either had to take a plane (bush village) or drive for hours on icy treacherous roads.
Tis the season to be thankful. This season I am thankful for love. It's been a crazy year of hurt, divorce, change, and starting over. And yet, I find myself thankful for love.
I am thankful for Tommy in first grade who let me kiss him when the teacher wasn't looking.
I am thankful for Kyle, the little asthmatic kid with the mullet that dared me to kiss him (when the teacher wasn't looking).
I am thankful for NSYNC and BoyzIIMen for producing a ton of love songs that taught me about love.
I am thankful for the crush in middle school who broke my heart and later turned out to bat for the other team.
I am thankful Sam, my first real boyfriend, for teaching me how to makeout.
I am thankful for my high school boyfriend who taught me about heartbreak. I would need that lesson later in life.
I am thankful for the love that took me to Alaska and showed me what it was like to be married to your best friend and experience adventure.
I am thankful for my Edward who teaches me about passion (of course I would have a Twilight reference in here somewhere!).
I hope that no matter what life throws at me, I will always find a reason to be thankful for each person I've loved. Here's to looking at the love glass half full :) Cheers!
There is a beautiful Drive Thru Zoo in Washington. It is very small and only takes about 20 minutes to drive through it. We had a blast driving through it and I got to stand up through the sun roof and play photographer.
