Happy Birthday to Me!

That's right, faithful readers! About one month ago (I am a slacker at blogging and at life), it was my birthday! We shall not mention my age or my birth year, because I don't want people to be able to stalk me through the internet. Yeah, that's what it is.

Anywhoodles, I had a great birthday. First of all, you can't go wrong with a Halloween birthday. You get to dress up, plus people give you candy! And when they find out it's your birthday, they give you extra candy! My lovely coworkers gave me great presents, including some super awesome Harry Potter pencils, a Butterbeer scented candle, Butterbeer earrings (they look like little bottles. They're so cute!), and Butterbeer flavored cupcakes. Mmmm...cupcakes...  Also, I have really nice church friends, who had a party for me and gave me socks! Apparently, they noticed my well-documented affection for socks. Good times.

The library team in our Halloween best. You can't see my HP scar in this picture, but I had several children convinced that it was real. I am just that skilled with makeup.

Then it was time for my present to me: another trip to New York City! I went with Kate and my friend Jessie (who also documented our fun times on her blog). When we got to NYC, we met up with Niki (who was already there because an international friend had been visiting), and Larissa, our awesome friend in Brooklyn who let us stay with her. Niki and Larissa spent a lot of the trip pretending to be embarrassed by Kate, Jessie, and me, because we inadvertently wore matchy red jackets, but I know the truth. They were just jealous.

 

We even walk in sync. That's how awesome we are. No wonder they were jealous.

The first thing we did (besides sleeping and eating, which are things I do all the time, so they don't seem exotic) was go to the Empire State Building! It's really, really tall. And after you ride the elevator up to the 80th floor, the workers will tell you that it's much faster to walk the last 6 flights of stairs, rather than waiting for the elevator. They're not entirely wrong. It was pretty fast. But they're big fat liars about it only being 6 flights of stairs. I definitely counted 8. Luckily I have Sheera power, so I handily made it to the top. I thought we might lose some of our party on the way  up, though.

So yeah, the Empire State Building is crazy tall. I took about a million pictures from the top, just to prove that I was there. Also, I actually remembered to bring my camera and to get new batteries, so it seemed like I ought to take advantage of that. 

 

My favorite of my Empire State Building pics. I look pretty!

Also, the views (you can basically see the entire city, and since it's ginormous, that's a big deal) are totally awesome, so I took about a billion pictures of those. Here's a few that freaked out Mom. I told her I leaned waaaaay out to get them. JK. She was just freaked out because you can tell how crazy high up we are.

Look at how little the cars are!

 

This one kind of freaks me out, too, if I'm being honest.

We spent a whole lot of time up at the top, admiring the views and attempting to get really cute pictures of ourselves on all sides of the Empire State Building.

 

Admiring the View. This picture is a lie. I did not have any quarters for this machine.

 A pigeon that freaked me out at the top of the Empire State Building. Doesn't it know how high up we were? How did it get up there? Why did it get up there?? What does it want from us?!?!?!

Then we had to spend some time in the gift shop, of course. I really, really wanted one of these gorillas for my collection (why yes, I do have a collection of gorilla stuffed animals. Thank you for asking!). But since the price of one Santa-hatted gorilla was only $1 less that the fee to get to the top of the Empire State Building, I couldn't really justify it.

 

Curse my public servant salary!!!

After our trip to the Empire State Building, it was time for everyone to indulge me! Because it was birthday! So we went to the main branch of the New York Public Library! I mostly wanted to see everything, but even more than that, I mostly wanted to see the lions. Do you know about the lions? They're ginormous marble lions out in front of the library, named, appropriately enough, Patience and Fortitude. That's appropriate because those are two of the main virtues you need to work in a public library!

 

Fortitude! 

Patience!

The library was just as amazing as I hoped it would be. It's almost like a museum, it's so pretty inside and out. And there's a gift shop! My "Shhhhh!" t-shirt was a great investment. In my happiness.

 There were many steps and columns. It was most tranquil.

I don't know why this picture is so little, but look how pretty the inside of the library is! Look!

The other awesome thing about the library was that I saw a celebrity! A librarian celebrity! I read a blog on School Library Journal's website by a children's librarian at NYPL. And almost as soon as we stepped into the library, I saw her! I'm afraid I might have gone a little swimfan on her, but rather that being freaked out, she was super nice, and said it made her feel like a rock star! (True story, we communicated about that through her blog post the next week.) The best part about it was that she told us about the first 90-second Newbery Film Festival, which just happened to be occurring at the library in about 15 minutes! We stayed for about an hour, watching many 90-second films about Newbery award-winning books. It was super fun! I wish we could have stayed for the whole thing, but fabulous New York City weekend waits for no woman (not even a librarian), so we missed the last half. Still, it was awesome. Plus, Jon Sciezka was there! Anyhow, you should really check out some of the 90-second films. They're very impressive and short.

After our fabulous and educational time at the library, we decided to get tickets to a Broadway show. I'll not lie, this is my favorite thing about NYC. Broadway!!! We really wanted to see How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, because little Danny Rad-cakes is in it! But it was sold out (sad face), so we had to settle for this:

The closest we could get to Daniel Radcliffe. :(

But we still really, really wanted to see a show, so Kate and I were tyrants, and made us buy tickets to Billy Elliot instead! I think not everyone wanted to see it, but they bought the tickets anyway, with very little protest. And they all liked it in the end, so I'd say it worked out. In the time that we had to wait before our show, we decided to eat dinner at a restaurant called Juniors. It's the busiest, fullest restaurant I have ever been in. There were seriously about 10 million people in there. I think it's because it's right there in the theater district, so all those hungry theater people come to eat. Also, they have excellent cheesecake, which we knew from our last visit to NYC. I wish I had taken a picture of the cheeseburger I got. It was enormous! I honestly didn't even eat my fries (or finish the burger) because I was so stinkin' full. I couldn't even stomach ordering cheesecake! But I did order a black and white cookie (which came in super handy on our bus ride back to Baltimore Sunday night).

 

This...is not a picture that I took. I stole it from the interwebs. But yeah, imagine this, with about 5 times as many people, and that should give you a good idea what it was like.

After dinner it was time for us to see Billy Elliot: The Musical. For those who don't know, Billy Elliot was a movie made about 11 years ago, about a little boy who lives in Northern England in the 1980s during the coal miners' strike. In 2005, Billy Elliot was turned into a musical with music by Elton John! Fancy! Also, it won a bunch of Tony's when it first opened on Broadway. Anywho, Billy is an 11 year old boy who starts taking ballet, kind of by chance, and it turns out that he's really good and loves to dance, but people aren't necessarily supportive of him. The play is about Billy and his dancing, and the town and the strike, and it was awesome. The boy who played Billy was amazing. He made me feel bad for having no talents, he was just that good. He was a fantastic dancer, his singing was lovely, and he was such a good actor that he made not only me cry, but Kate as well! And that's much harder than making me cry. There is some bad language in it, (especially in this one super awesome song that's goes back and forth between the miners and the little girls in Billy's ballet class), but I would still definitely recommend the show. If you want to see it on Broadway though, you better hurry, because it's closing in January!

 

He just wanted to dance, and that was my dream, too!

After the show, we wandered around Times Square for awhile, including going into the M&Ms store, which was pretty neat. By this point, though, I was super tired and I refused to take my camera out. So I don't have any photographic evidence of it, but honestly, we were there.

Sunday was our day for winding down, going to church, and then heading back to Baltimore. I ate my giant cookie on the bus. It was a great way to leave New York. I can tell why people fall so completely in love with the city. I've had so much fun both times that I've gone! I can't wait to go again! Of course, a lot of it is because of the people I was with. So thanks a bunch for being awesome, Kate, Jessie, Niki, and Larissa! You made it a great birthday trip!

Group Shot!