Hi y’all! Finally back to writing on here again, time sure flies when there’s things to do and even when there aren’t it seems it’s hard to remember some things.

I recently took a lovely trip to New York City, for my mom's publisher's conference and for pleasure, and got to see a lot of the city. The Empire State building was nice at night and the first night I ate at Blue Fin, a trendy restaurant connected to The W Hotel.

During the four days I was there with my family I got to take a tour of Radio City Music Hall which was very interesting, it's such a gorgeous old building, it would have been a real pity if they'd torn it down. All the buildings make for an awesome sky line and there are so many places to enjoy the view. Rockefeller Center, the Staten Island Ferry, (which is free and you get to see the Statue of Liberty!)... There's lots of places to eat and many great museums, (I liked the met the best.) And central park was pretty this time of year although there wasn't much in bloom surprisingly enough.

I also got to go and tour the Food Network and see the Emeril Live sets and test kitchen which was cool as well. NYC is just such a great place to walk around, and has many interesting restaurants such as Tao, a pretty happening spot which I ate at last week. The desserts were phenomenal. Time's Square is also pretty fun at night, even the junky stores to get t-shirts and stuff. There's a huge Hershey's store that sells candy from around the world.

I enjoyed walking around the Village on Friday night, there's some pretty awesome record stores that feature some strange and rare albums by familiar artists. The Cornelius Street Café has nice little pizzas and salad and there's lots of places to get a cappuccino and (theoretically) listen to music. However most places with bands don't let people under 21 in after nine or ten PM.

The Natural History Museum wasn't my favorite museum honestly. It's pretty zooish and hard to find your way around but the planetarium show is impressive. I also made it down the Birmingham for two days, the first we didn’t really do much but had a pretty nice dinner at this Italian-Southern restaurant. The next day we got to see some things, but we had some transportation issues because we couldn’t rent a car on Sunday in Alabama.

Vulcan Park was pretty nice, lovely view of the city. The art museum was great, such beautiful works, probably my favorite museum we saw. We also had brunch there, which Randall decided he was too picky to eat, but was super good, the grits were delicious as was the sweet tea! We saw Linn Park which is right around the corner from there too. And took a bizarre and backwards walk down into town where my family and I stopped in church and then had some excellent BBQ at Dreamland BBQ.

The flight back home the next day sucked, we got stuck on a full plane between two bathrooms! There’s so much to make up in school, the ‘friends’ who were supposed to give me notes (promised actually) all flaked out on me. Four different people. In other news, next week is Spring Break, (yay a little time without worrying about work and stuff) and next month is my birthday although I don’t know exactly what I’m doing for it.

This year we’ve gone to Observer’s Inn again in February and saw Saturn which was amazing. School is rather tough right now, and I hate the late night astronomy lab because the next day I am always so tired. I’m working hard on my piano right now, trying to write some more songs and practice the ones for Guild in June. I really can’t wait to go to University of HI this summer. I miss the island so much.... Anyway hope everything’s going well for my readers right now... I’ll try to check in now and then on this blog but in the mean time please feel free to visit me at www.thesurrealdeal.blogspot.com the blog I frequent more often (when I have the time of course.)
Now I’m going to share some poetry I’ve written. If you have any comments or questions please don’t hesitate to leave one!




The Small Things

Is it really the big picture in life that makes us up
Or is it the small things that change our lives
And shape our souls
Like the tiny shadow of a given day
Playing with your memory
Building it up for a future trip
To life’s many mountains and valleys

Is it the little things
That make us great
That set us apart
That we keep to ourselves
A secret to share
With your own private state
Of mind

Is it the small things
That get us through the big things
Or make it hard to concentrate on tomorrow today
It’s all just one puzzle
One mess
One moment
And it takes all the small things, the little things
To make it complete


Always

When I look behind at all the marks I’ve made
And all the stops I’ve taken down the road
It’s a comforting thought to know there’s things to come
Back to later on along the way

Remember things that could have been forever
Seeing things so near yet long ago
A view back into what life used to be
And a sign that some things always stay the same

Everyone takes their own way down the road
Everything falls into the circle
That keeps us bound to one another always
That lets many paths become as firm as one

Trees that stand tall as ancient sentries
Against the rain and storm until the sun shines bright and clear

The stars rain down a crystal light from yesterday
But tomorrow we can still bask in their glow