Movember

What.

Is.

MOVEMBER?

Weelllllll, I'm glad you asked!

Movember is a month long event where men raise vital funds and awareness for men’s health by committing to grow and maintain a mustache for 30 days.  On day one they start off clean, and for the rest of the month they tend to their stache on a daily basis.  Essentially these guys raise funds by seeking out sponsorship for their Mustache-growing efforts... and through their actions and words they raise awareness by prompting private and public conversation around the often ignored issue of men’s health. 

Besides just raising money for men's health, the point of Movember is:
1. to work towards changing the habits and attitudes that men have about their health
2. to educate men about the health risks they face, and
3. to act on that knowledge, thereby increasing the chances of early detection, diagnosis and effective treatment.


So.. Tell me Mollie.. Why the sudden interest in this Movember thing? You're not even a guy!

Well.. Because my very own boyfriend, Evan, is participating in this event, and he is taking it on full-force! Also because they allow women to register for the event as well in order to help support the men in their lives that are doing this.. I am officially a member of Evans team and need to start raising money and awareness for men's health!

Soooo.. That being said.. Men reading this post- go get checked out, and then send me your money. Women reading this post- just send me your money. Thanks!

hehe just kidding :] You all don't need to send it to me directly. I mean.. you can if you want, but there is an easier way..  Just follow these three easy steps:

1. Go on their website http://us.movember.com/
2. Click on Donate
3. Click TO SOMEONE YOU KNOW
4. Type in my name- Mollie Lewis
5. Figure it out from there

Yeah.. okay so there were more than three steps, but I figured saying "three" would keep you reading longer. :]

Anyways, if you find it in your heart to donate- then please please do. Even $1 would be helpful. :]

The Count Down Begins

Has it really been over two months already?... It feels like just yesterday that Danielle and I were hand-in-hand freaking out as we first arrived here..

I remember in the beginning we were both SO paranoid to go anywhere without each other... Well at least I was. We both held our bags super tight with one hand, and the other was in our pockets ready to whip out our weapons in case we were in any danger...Danielle would hold her finger on her pepper spray while I held my finger on my taser gun. Ready to go... We also reminded each other constantly to stay alert while getting on the subway..

How is it now? hahahaha well.. we often take naps on the subway and hardly ever remember to take our weapons with us. Its just not as scary as we thought. Not nearly as horrifying as people think it is. There are always people around us wherever we go- even at 3 in the morning there are still a ton of people on the subway.

In the beginning we had no sense of direction whatsoever when it came to the city, but now we both feel confident enough to always be able to find our way home (as long as our cell phones don't die).. And we also now have a good sense as to which areas to stay out of at night, and which trains we can rely on the most (and least)..

We definitely have been through really amazing times, as well as really hard times together. But we got through it.. the next hard thing we are going to have to get through is saying goodbye. Which is in only ten days. Although I am anxious to go home and start my own life and career as Danielle has..  I am definitely going to be missing this wonderful city and my even more wonderful best friend...

Okay Okay, enough Mollie. It's not time to get all sentimental yet. Save that for later when your heart is ripping out of your chest as you give Danielle the last hug you will give her for a while...



On a much lighter note- this is a recap of the past few days:

Danielle was sitting outside the other morning enjoying her coffee when a delivery guy came towards our stoop. He was holding two boxes- one was a Steven Madden box, the other was from the Popcorn Factory. Danielle was confused at first, wondering who bought her Steve Madden shoes.. but then the delivery guy hands her the Popcorn Factory box instead... hahahaha poor girl. :] As it turned out- Evan sent us a Halloween treat! A bucket of popcorn with really bomb flavors.. it also had toffee chocolate covered pretzels.. soooo delicious. Thanks Evan :]

 I joined Evans Movember team to help raise awareness and funds for men's health, specifically cancers affecting men.. I'll make a separate post about this with more information for you all. In the meantime- Here's my Mo Space profile picture :]

 Danielle and I got lunch at Chop't. Because I love this place and they don't have them back home.. The salads are so big that we got a second bowl and split one salad with each other. bomb. 

I made a Happy Birthday sign for Kyle and taped it to his door with a little present on his doorknob waiting for him once he got home.. No, it wasn't Victoria Secret- it was this magic popcorn that turns blue! He looooves popcorn, so he loved it :] We haven't seen too much of him lately because he has been working like crazy on the upcoming Batman 3 movie... Casting call is at like 5am so he has to get up around 3am every morning. Poor guy.. but he loves it so it works out :]

  

Besides all that- the main thing I have been doing lately is catching up on my reading of The Help for our CMADAMSC book club meeting tonight. It is SOOOO good. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to read a good story. (Corinne- if you are still keeping up on my blog and reading this post- then you have got to check this one out when you are done with your huge list of books pending on your kindle) :] We are only half way through and tonight will be our first meeting about the book! eeek i'm excited! (whoaa, eeek? I'm sounding like Danielle now haha) 

  

Oh and Danielle got us some sprinkled doughnut holes.. We have been wanting to try them for a while now.. yummm

Halloween!

Since we both don't have much money to begin with, we had to work with what we already had for our costumes this Halloween. Soo.. Danielle was a droog from the movie A Clockwork Orange...

and I was... well.... 

At first getting on the subway was kinda awkward since we were the only ones dressed up.. but once we got into the city it was a lot of fun. We stopped for dinner before going to the Halloween parade in the West Village. Unfortunately.. we underestimated this parade and got there a little too late to be able to see anything. There were a tonnnn of people out.. We did get to see a little of it though-

After walking around for a bit and checking out all the really neat costumes- Danielle and I headed back home to hang out with Kyle and watch scary movies. But first he cooked us dinner :]

 

 And while he was doing that, Danielle and I drew faces on our pumpkins! Happy Halloween everybody!

PS: NEVER see Red State. Horrible horrible hooorrriibblle movie. As Kyle says "Kevin Smith should stick to comedy."

Its a Christmas Miracle!

Saturday began really cold and rainy.. and it only continued to get colder and rainier.. 

until.. it stopped raining. 

and started SNOWING!

Oh, the weather outside is frightful!
But the fire is so delightful..

And since we've got no place to go...
Let it snow let it snow let it snowwwww!

Our very first New York City snowfall! It was beautiful! We both enjoyed it very much and we made a day of it- after all.. Danielle's work got canceled on her because of the weather, and there was no WAY I was about to go out in that! Yeah right! I remember complaining about being too cold when it was 68 degrees- so 33 degrees? fahgettaboutit! so we bundled up together to stay warm and watched movies all day.

On Sunday the snow was still there! But instead of being super cold outside- it was only really cold. (Which made it go-outsideable)

These are the tracks on the way to church.. Its pretty how the snow covers up almost all of the trash :]

Although the snow was really amazing and we loved it, the best part of my day was when I saw Spock sleeping right across from me on the train!  

Heres a closer look at Spock for you all. :] My dad says he doubts that its really Leonard Nimoy- in which case my response was "Whose Leonard Nimoy?" In any case- I was starstruck. haha :]

After church and hanging out in the city for a little while, I came home and made a snowball.

And then I smashed it on the stoop. Good times :]

Brooklyn Birthday

Danielle's First New York City Birthday! We decided to start celebrating with Skittle Shots. Danielle loved them :] Even though we made them wrong..

 

It wasn't exactly midnight yet.. but we had a double-skype-date at 11pm, so we decided to do a midnight birthday shot with Kyle early.

It was a good time :]

And then we took the midnight birthday shot again with out dates actually at midnight! Yay happy 23rd birthday Danielle!

We ended up going to bed pretty late and sleeping in a little late the next day... which made Danielle a little late for this job she was supposed to go to. (Which started off her birthday morning pretty rough). Thankfully- the lady still let her come work for her...  it was a birthday miracle!

After work she met up with a friend that lives in Manhattan- and he showed her a really nice night out in the city. He  bought her drinks, he took her window shopping down Madison Avenue, and he even took her ice skating!

Oh and the bar tender surprised her with a plate of cheese puffs with a candle in one of them.. hahahaha she loved it :]

When she came home.. she had candles leading her up the stairs..  (hehe)

Her birthday wasn't over yet! When she went into the kitchen she had birthday cards, candles, a little cake, a questionable dessert that Kyle made for her, presents, and a birthday sign set up as a surprise! (There's a #1 candle on the cake because its her first birthday in NYC... and because two candles wouldn't fit on that little thing haha)

Danielle had mentioned to me how she LOVES 80's Tom Hanks.. so this was my present to her :] She looooved it.

 And Kyle's present to her was a short script he wrote that had all of us in it, even Jammin our landlord! It was hilarious! Although she couldn't be with all her loved ones back at home- her first New York City birthday wasn't half-bad :]

The Parent Trip- Day 6

As I mentioned in my previous blog- I got sick for a whole day somehow. Monday was just a really crummy sick day.. Maybe it was something I ate? I don't know- but I had a terrible headache the entire day and threw up a total of 7 times.

My parents ended up dropping by and bringing me some medicine, which stopped the throwing up.. And then Danielle ran a hot bath for me which helped my body not feel as sore. (Thanks for taking care of my guys :] )


On Tuesday I still had a huge headache and my body was still real sore, but no more throwing up- so I decided to meet up with my parents for their last day in New York City.

I met them at the Conservatory Pond in Central Park. They wanted to see the sail boats :] They even rented one for a half hour- and I kept asking them to try to run into other boats.. it was a lot of fun hahaha (don't worry- they couldn't tip over so no boats got hurt in the process)

Then we went to Godiva for a treat :] yummm. I got a chocolate covered strawberry and they got little fancy chocolates.

I love this cone of chocolate covered strawberry's!  That would be cute to bring a girl on a date :] Or for valentines day... or just because.. :] hehe

After that we decided to go to dinner at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company.

Its a restaurant that was created from the Forrest Gump movie.  It was really neat- as it turns out, there is one in Long Beach as well!

They have this sign on each table that says Run Forrest Run. They have another sign that says Stop Forrest Stop- which will flag down a server for you if you need anything, otherwise they won't bother you.

This is our view of Times Square from the restaurant. not too bad :]

 I got fish and chips- and it came on a news paper that has articles all about Forrest on it.. so awesome. Get a closer look to read what I'm talking about-

After dinner we went to our last broadway show- Mary Poppins!

The theater was huge, we were on the mezzanine. The costumes were great, the special effects were really awesome, and all together it was a really good show. The only thing is that it didn't follow the movie in more than a few parts, but it was still really good and we all really enjoyed it.

And my mom got a snow globe! 

After the show we went out to a little bar right next to our hotel and had a couple drinks and tacos (it was taco tuesday after all). The bar was all decorated for halloween

sure, it was really fun...

but really creepy at the same time...

Last night at the hotel. I pretty much passed out right away, but not before taking this picture of the Empire State Building :]

Overall- I had a REALLY great time with my parents. Thanks for coming here and taking me out every day! See you soon! :] 

The Parent Trip- Day 4

On Sunday we went back to Times Square to check out that TKTS booth to possibly get tickets to an ON Broadway show. The line was suuuuper long, so I waited in it and let the parents wander around for a bit. 

We ended up getting tickets for a matinee showing of Chicago. We had a couple hours before it started- so we decided to check out Central Park...

By horse and carriage!

It was soooo fun and so awesome. We went around the entire park and got to see many neat parts of the park...

Our horse driver was also our tour guide and showed us a ton of areas of the park that were used in films.. Like Elf, Maid in Manhattan, Friends, Home Alone 2, etc. It was really neat :]  

  

After the ride we checked out Midtown a bit before heading to the show, and my parents got a hot dog :] they looove them.

Now this is the absolute WORST part of the day. In fact it pretty much ruined the rest of the day for me. :[  A bunch of guys suddenly got into this huge fight right in front of us, and in the process they knocked over this stroller that had a little baby in it..  

You can see it on the left of the picture.. :[  After the fight we saw the dad pick up the stroller while holding his little baby that was crying :[ It really hurt my heart to see that and I wasn't able to talk about it right away with my parents because it was hurting so much, so instead I got angry (sorry mom and dad =/ )

Anywaayyysss, we headed back to the Theater District to see Chicago.. But we still had a little extra time before going in- so I couldn't help but stop and get something sweet. Strawberry & Nutella Crepe. yummmm

Chicago! You can't really see it from this picture- but its starring Kara DioGaurdi- one of American Idol's judges. She was amazing.. the whole show was amazing. Definitely worth going to- we all loved it so much. 

For dinner I took them to Shake Shack- This place is considered the IN N Out of the East coast! Except.. they sell beer and wine as well, along with a lottt of different shakes.

  

They have bombbb burgers. The buns are potato bread buns. (+1 point for Shake Shack) And they have cheese fries- definitely does not match up to animal fries though (+2 points for IN N Out).

Buttttt, as I mentioned earlier- they sell beer and wine, along with a ton of different kinds of shakes.. (+1 point for Shake Shack). Conclusion- IN N Out would have competition if Shake Shack came to the West coast. And vice versa. 

After that I went home to relax a bit and get a head start on these blogs.. Little did I know- the next day was a 24 hour sick day for me.