My So-Called Life Lessons: Stuff I Found While Looking Around NYC

When I last left you, I was headed to New York City for the weekend. Well I made it back all in one piece. However, I will say barely. There was a time in my life when I could stay out until 3 a.m. with some lovely gay gentlemen, close down a piano bar with said gentlemen and been able to get up and function perfectly normal the next day. Those days have passed, yet I acted as if they had not on Friday night. So most of my Saturday - my one free full day in NYC - was spent on my friend's couch.

I went to NYC to see my dear friend Sean (who for the record was my high school prom date - I will spare you the photographic evidence) perform at The Metropolitan Opera. Opening night, at The Met. And my friend was singing in the chorus. I would not have missed it for the world.

Me and Sean. Looking better than we did in high school.

Going to the Met was not anything I had ever dreamed of doing, but it's totally on my bucket list now, and crossed off thank you very much. The Met is beautiful. Just beautiful. I only carried a little purse, so my camera didn't accompany me to the opera. All I snapped was this shot with my cell phone.

It doesn't do that space justice. It feels amazing to be standing in Lincoln Center on a Friday night for an opening night performance. If I could have bottled up that feeling, I would have taken it home with me in a 3 ounce or less container.

I even rented a dress for the occasion. Yes rented. If you have not been there yet, please visit Rent The Runway and rent yourself a fancy dress for your next big event

This was my first time ever going to any opera and what I saw was the marathon of operas. It was a Wagner opera and for those of you who do not know, Wagner is serious opera. I saw Götterdämmerung, which is a 6 hour opera with two intermissions. We left during the second because Sean sang in the second act and only one person in our group had the stamina to last the final 2.5 hours. Personally, my knees were killing me. So after 4 hours of opera, our group (we were a big group) headed out for dinner, and then a smaller subset of our group, which included me, headed to a piano bar where we stayed until 3 a.m.

I did manage to get out and take some photos during the remainder of my weekend, but not nearly as many as I planned. And when I got home to Chicago, I wasn't in love with any of them. I blame Friday. I decided I'd use these photos as an opportunity to play around with a new editing program I recently acquired. A lot of these photos are very processed, something I normally shy away from. I am finding that with this new program I am editing photos a little differently, so with this set I really went out there with some of them. What I am saying is that the editing of these photos is the equivalent of my Friday night - wild and crazy.

And all of this is a very long-winded way of saying here are a bunch of photos I took on my vacation.

Self-portrait.

Please note that this headstone is dated 1733 as the year of his death.

Please note, these pigeons were totally making out, and right by a church no less.

These birds were not making out. They just wanted my bagel.

This the famous Wall Street bull, and it was swarmed by Asian tourists on all sides each time I went by. This was the best picture I could get. Yet, somehow I think it's the best picture I could have gotten.