Manhattan to Brooklyn

This weekend at Hasting's I found a book called NYC: An Owner's Manual. It's really cool, and it was used for $3.00 so I bought it and flipped through it. It has a lot of advice about moving to New York, how to get apartments, what to expect from each neighborhood in different boroughs, and then it goes into what to do once you get there- how to get jobs, insurance, where to do your laundry, where to meet friends, etc. I've only barely looked at it so far, but I'll let you know if it does any good in helping Kenneth and I plan our whirlwind, weeklong "vacation" to find a place to live and scope out jobs coming up next month.

I realized today that next month is the last month I'll be paying rent in Albuquerque, and it felt real and scary and exciting all at the same time.

Saturday night I had a vocal coaching session with the incredibly talented and always hilarious/insightful Mr. Paul Roth. We worked on a couple songs I've been working on with my voice teacher and then recorded some videos (that I will post later this week). Last night I listened to all 50 minutes of video I took Saturday night and kind of liked what I heard. It's rare that any singer, even the best ones, enjoy the way they sound recorded. I kind of liked listening to myself, but I think it's because compared to how I used to sound (kind of husky and smokey sounding because of that damn cyst) I sound a lot more clean and bright. I still have a ton of work to do on my voice (high belt? a little scary!) but I am very proud of where I am right now. So I'm excited to post those videos and see what other people think.

Tonight I went back to hot yoga with my sister and her friends. It's been almost three months since i've been (because I couldn't go to early morning classes because I worked and I didnt want to go in the evening because I had to wake up so early to go to work haha). I felt awful because while the class wasn't particularly difficult (about average, as far as the yoga goes) it was suuuuuper hot because there were a lot of people there and I found it really hard to breath, which stopped my practice entirely and I had to just sit or stand to catch my breath and clear my head/refocus.

In yoga tonight the teacher had us dedicate the class to someone. I went through my brain files and picked a number of different people. Like a little wheel of fortune wheel, only instead of dollar amounts it had my friends/family's faces on it. I landed on my good friend from high school Amanda Torres (used to be Sloan but she got married). I've been thinking about her a lot lately, even though I haven't seen her in over a year (her and her husband came and saw me in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee) She started posting earlier this year on facebook about how she and her husband were going to adopt a baby and he's finally here today. When I saw his little face on facebook I started to cry, Amanda is going to be such a wonderful mother and he is the luckiest baby in the whole world to have a family like the them! Congratulations Mama Amanda :)

Tomorrow I'm going back on phase 1 of my diet (the strict part) because while on phase 2 I stopped losing weight. I didn't gain any (thank goodness) but I stopping losing. So I'm gonna do two more weeks on phase one and then try phase two again. Also I'm going back to yoga in the morning with my sister, then I'm going to meet the newest member of our family- my step mom's baby great dane, Pheobe!!!! This is going to be a wonderful week off from work... but I'm still working on finding more hours at ARCA or getting a second supplementary job for the rest of the summer. Gotta earn that money!

As always, thanks for reading and please if you have an extra buck or four, feel free to ChipIn!!!!!