Louisville Bound!

Tomorrow morning I am leaving with Nick to head down to Louisville for a week. We are driving (which is around a 13-hour drive). We are stopping in Cleveland on the way down to visit some family. We will be spending the night at my grandparents house tomorrow night, and then Thursday afternoon we will arrive in Louisville. I can't wait! It will be great to see all my friends and be back in the city. Nick is staying with one of his friends and I am staying with my friend Maura.

On Friday Maura and I are going to Hullabalou, which is a concert at Churchill Downs. The main bands that we will see are Train and Bon Jovi. It is going to be great and the weather is supposed to be good too!

To my Louisville friends: We should get together. I want to see as many friends as possible!

Well, since I will be gone for a week, don't expect any blog updates for awhile. But I will be sure to tell you about my time when I return home to Connecticut.

New Look

I changed the design of my blog. How does it look? I found some really cute ones online but I can't figure out how to download it and actually make it my design on blogger. Any suggestions?

Weimaraners

My dog, Bailey, is a weimaraner. There is a famous photographer named William Wegman that takes photographs of weimaraners. They are very cool and unique. Every year we buy the William Wegman Puppy Calender. I think it is amazing that he can get dogs to pose in such different ways. I saw that he has some galleries in NYC, so maybe one day I will visit some of his works. Weimaraners are also known as being on Sesame street. The dog heads, but the people arms, legs, and bodies. They are pretty cute.

Here is his website: http://www.wegmanworld.com/home.html

Some of his photographs:

Formspring

So I created a Formspring where you can ask me questions.... not that I have enough websites already.. but go ahead and ask me anything! (It can be anonymous too!)

Here is the link:

http://www.formspring.me/ErinMarieRup

NYC and GAGA

Chris and Mom in Central Park

Waiting in Line for Gaga

Lady Gaga on Stage

WOW- It has been a great and crazy 24 hours. Yesterday, Thursday July 8, Mom, Nick, Nick's friend (Paul), Chris, and I left for NYC at 11 am. We took the train to Grand Central Station for an 80 minute ride and arrived in NYC at around 2. We walked to our hotel through all the hustle and bustle of the NYC traffic. We dropped off our stuff and we were off to explore the city! Mom, Chris, and I made our way to Central Park. We passed the NYC Public Library and Times Square. We did A LOT of walking. I had never been to Central Park even though I've been to NYC before. It is HUGE! It is 10 times bigger than I thought. We saw plenty of runners and horse carriages. We decided to go a paddle boat ride. It was fun, but Chris did all the rowing for Mom and I :). I was just to uncoordinated to do it. It was a gorgeous day and the water was beautiful. After we went to dinner and met up with Nick and Paul. The main reason that we went to NYC was to see a free concert of Lady Gaga on Friday morning. Nick discovered that people were already lining up for it (at 3)!! We figured we would wake up at 4 to get in line.... but no, we needed to get in line then, at 6 pm! So the journey begins.....

We basically sat on the side of the street for 12 hours (6pm-6am) and then we were shuffled into the area of the concert. We did take shifts and went back to the hotel for a nap and shower. I only got 3 hours of sleep... boy was a tired once we got home! But let me just say that sitting in line was entertaining. There were crazy people dressed up like Gaga. I never realized that so many gay guys LOVE Lady Gaga. We were surrounded by them and I have a never seen so many in my life! There was guy dressed up in a red dress with stilettos and long black hair. I thought it was a girl for sure when I first saw him. And then there was this one guy running around in Spanx all night and he looked naked! It was so obnoxious. He was right behind us earlier, but luckily moved away with his friends. Thank goodness or it was going to be a long night. We saw a few cat fights and I heard the F word way too many times. They surely WEREN'T polite at all. I can say that I am definitely more cultured now.

At 6 am we were getting ready for the concert! They let us in the area of the concert.. a little bit further away from the stage than anticipated but considering there was a record breaking 20,000 people there we did great! Gaga didn't start singing until 7:30 or so to practice, but the crowd went crazy. We were sardines in this cramp area and several gay guys were pushing off of me to see and it was annoying! Geeze. But I got to see her!! She went on a platform (luckily) so I (short, 5 ft tall person) could see. She sang great and was awesome live. I took some pictures to capture the moment. We stayed to hear her sing "Bad Romance" and a new single "You and I." I can officially say that I have seen Lady Gaga! What a great experience. In the middle of the concert it started pouring on us! It was crazy but it really cooled us off.

Afterwards we headed back to the hotel to grab some breakfast and then we left to board the train. We were exhausted, but it was a great time in the city. I can't wait to go back. There are so many other things that I want to do. I still want to go to the wax museum, Guggenheim museum, shop at all the cool stores, take the ferry, etc.

Introduction : Rocket Power

Did anybody else love this show when they were younger?? I sure did! I remember watching it every morning. The date was 1999! 11 years ago, I can't believe it was that long ago. It feels like it was just yesterday. I also loved their handshake: WOOGEDY, WOOGEDY!

Below is the theme song:

OneRepublic - Marchin On (WAKING UP) (LYRICS)

Today I downloaded iTunes for the first time. I feel like I am one of the very few people my age without iTunes. I actually don't even own an ipod so that is why I didn't have it before. I do own an mp3 player that holds 250 songs! WooHoo! Last semester in Spanish class I won a $15 gift card to iTunes so today I finally used it! I bought the OneRepublic CD calledWaking Up. It is really good! Below is one of my favorite songs off the album. I also bought a few John Mayer songs. Enjoy :)

Progress on my Scrapbooking

During the past week I did a lot of scrapbooking because I had a lot of free time. But now I'm going to take a break since I won't have as much time anymore because of my job. I completed a total of 10 pages which is a lot! And I completed another book! Now I have a total of 8 completed scrapbooks. I still have 4 more pages to do to be caught up. Today I went shopping and bought some new stickers and paper. I can't wait to use them! I love to scrapbook because it is a good way to relax, listen to some music, and express my creative side. And of course it is a great way to keep all my memories together in one book! I actually keep a scrapbook for myself and all of my events and a scrapbook for each of my brothers and their events. I worked on Nick's a lot since he had a lot of things going on his senior year. Sometimes they will tell me that it is weird that I scrapbook their lives, but I think they will appreciate it when they show their children them in the future! :)

Family Vacation on a Caribbean Cruise (December 2009)

Nick's Senior Prom (April 2008)

Nick's trip to China (June 2008)

Close up of new paper I bought today. It is really cute with the birds and flowers :)

Paper I bought today