Music Monday

Another oldie but goodie....excellent for summer and will be on heavy rotation on the dock at the lake in THREE DAYS! I can't wait....

"Concrete Schoolyard" by Jurassic 5

"Let's take you back to the concrete streets,
Original beats with real live mc's"

Download now.

Motivation comes in all forms.

Click here to Get Your Basketball On.

Listen to The Sound of Motivation.

Charlie Murphy is a genius. Explore the website....you know you have the free time at work, don't front.

Let's Dance

No, Bowie wasn't in town......Instead, yesterday afternoon I headed over to see the New York City Ballet perform "A Midsummer Nights Dream" at the Lincoln Center. I got there a little early and just walked around the Lincoln Center which is currently being renovated and is going to be pretty spectacular by the time they are done. Then I headed in to my seat and enjoyed the show - minus the man sitting next to me explaining Shakespeare's story to his daughter but getting it almost 75% incorrect. No wonder this poor girl was so confused the whole time. It took all my willpower to not to lean over and correct him. It was a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon, although sadly it was their last performance of this ballet this season.

Waiting for performance to begin.

Music Monday

Happy official first Monday of Summer! Hope everyone had a good Father's Day yesterday and a good first day of Summer. The sun is FINALLY starting to peak out here amongst all this rain and I'm feeling much more optimistic about summer....esp since the lake, beach and 4th of July are right around the corner. Today's song is old school but its great for your summer playlist - makes me feel like I'm sitting on the dock of the lake as we speak! Check it out.....

"Can You Get To That" by Funkadelic

The Model As Muse

Its been raining ALMOST EVERY DAY here in NYC, so last Thursday I opted for a "weather friendly" activity. I walked over to The Metropolitan Museum of Art to check out an exhibit they have going on right now called "The Model As Muse: Embodying Fashion". The exhibit was really cool and I highly recommend heading over and viewing it....they walk through the history of models by decade, and pair it with examples of fashion at the time....starting with Twiggy and the 60s, up through the 80s and the emergence of Sports Illustrated (Cheryl Tiggs, Christie Brinkley, etc) up through the 90s (The Supermodel Trinity...Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, etc) and then today...Gisele Bundchen and the whole crew. The installations have music and video projected on each wall that go with each decade and I was rocking out to George Michael's "Freedom". A perfect rainy day activity!

Evening Gown from 1954 on display

Vogue spread from 1954

They had tons of Vogue covers on display dating back to the 50s. They also had editorial shots like the one above.

Central Park Zoo

Last Tuesday Sally and I headed over to the Central Park Zoo to spend an afternoon hanging out with the animals. Neither of us had ever been, so we were eager to check it out! Its amazing to think that (1) there is a zoo in Central Park and (2) that they have all these exotic animals just miles from where I live. The zoo is absolutely gorgeous...really well maintained and landscaped....and the admission is really cheap, especially for NYC! We had a great time walking around, hanging with the animals and catching up. Thanks for coming with me Sally!

Click the pic below to see some of the animals!

CPZoo

Mr and Mrs Nathan Calloway

This weekend I traveled to Charlotte to help my sorority sister, Mary Owen, celebrate her marriage to Mr Nathan Calloway! Lots of our KD girls were there and we had A BLAST! The wedding was absolutely gorgeous, complete with people playing handbells (which I loved). And then we headed over to the reception to dance, dance, dance. And eat, eat, eat. I've never met a mashed potato bar that I didn't like :) It was a great weekend and I was so excited to catch up with all my girls. Congrats Mary Owen and Nathan! Love you very much!

Click below to check out pics!

MO's Wedding

Music Monday

A late Music Monday because I was in Charlotte this weekend visiting friends, family and going to a wedding (more to come on this later!) I stayed in downtown (aka uptown) Charlotte with my sister and it was so nice to be in a townhouse versus a studio apartment! They had DOORS! And a dishwasher! And a garage! And on Saturday? WE WENT TO TARGET. I was in heaven. It was a sunny, glorious day and Katie and I had the windows down and were rocking out to a little "Crack the Bottle" by Eminem and Dr. Dre.

Thanks for letting me crash with you Katherine!

10K Race

"I am fast. To give you a reference point, I'm somewhere between a snake and a mongoose. And a panther." - Dwight Schrute

In January I announced that I have some "2009 Life Goals" that I was looking to accomplish and one of them was to complete a 10K. While this seems like a pretty basic goal, certainly not as impressive as running a marathon or an ironman, its a big deal for me! If you had known me in high school or college, you would know that the only physical activity I ever participated in was watching television. Seriously.

So to accomplish this goal, I signed up for a 10K on my birthday weekend and asked Katie and Elizabeth if they wanted to run it with me and fly up for my birthday! Then I harassed Carrie into signing up and, voila! We had committed, and we were going to make it happen...and WE DID! So on Sunday, June 7th we woke up early and headed to Central Park to run the New York Road Runner's women's only 10K.

Official times according to NYRR microchip:

Ellen - 1:02:48 2,469th runner over the finish line!
Carrie - 1:02:51 2,481st runner over the finish line!
Katie - 1:10:36 3,477th runner over the finish line!
Elizabeth - 1:14:45 3,786th runner over the finish line!

Carrie and I crossed the finish line together and I SO WISH you could have seen our faces. We were ECSTATIC....not because we finished....but because they were HANDING OUT MEDALS! YES!!!! That is right. We got medals. That made it totally worth it. Brian was kind enough to come to the race to take some "action shots" and some pics at the end of all the girls and then we all went to brunch....wearing our medals of course!!!

Click on slide show below to see all the pics....

The Aftermath

The troops weren't feeling so hot on Saturday after my big birthday party. Luckily we had zero plans so lounging around and watching TV was just what the doctor ordered! Carrie came over and we all snuggled up and rented "Twilight", which watching confirmed to me that Edward Cullen loves me and my birthday. Mrs Ellen Cullen...sounds nice.

Pizza. I love you.

Post-lunch nap...Katie on the couch, Elizabeth in the bed.

Carrie came over and brought healthy fruit....that required pliers in order to open the container.

Seriously, how do you open this?

Katie giving it the ole college try.

My Birthday

Wow, what a fabulous birthday weekend I had! Last Thursday my sister and cousin, Katie and Elizabeth, flew up to NYC to spend the weekend with me and help me celebrate my 29th birthday. We had dinner on Thursday night with my brother Alston and my friends Carrie and Jenny at a delicious spot called Vero. I said goodbye to Alston and Jenny after dinner because I THOUGHT both were going to be out of town this weekend and not able to help me celebrate my birthday.

My actual birthday, Friday June 5th, was rainy so that afternoon Katie, Elizabeth and I went to see "The Hangover" - hilarious movie and perfect for a rainy birthday. The girls told me to be showered and dressed up by 8pm that night....and wouldn't tell me anything else. They were VERY MUCH enjoying my discomfort from not being in control and not knowing what was going on. Carrie came over to my apartment before 8pm and the girls presented me with a birthday present - a gorgeous clutch purse from Lauren Merkin! Then we walked outside to get a cab - except we didn't have to get try to get one in the rain....there was a town car waiting for us courtesy of Alston! We hopped in the car and headed to dinner, except I STILL didn't know where we were going. We finally pulled up to Centrico, a fabulous Mexican restaurant and when I walked inside all my girls were sitting at a table waiting for me! It was such a wonderful surprise to have them there - they were very sneaky, most having told me they were out of town this weekend :)

After dinner, we walked outside where ANOTHER 3 town cars were waiting to take all the girls to ANOTHER surprise location! Katie, Elizabeth and Carrie blindfolded me (again, they thought me not knowing where we were going was HILARIOUS) and led me to private room at Delicatessen where MORE of my friends were waiting with yummy cupcakes! (Cupcakes courtesy of Carrie, frosting courtesy of Brian.) I was SUPER surprised to see Alston standing there because he had told me long ago he was going to a concert that night and that he would celebrate my birthday with me later! My friend Noah even made a special playlist to put on Alston's iPod to play over the speakers at the bar! It was so much fun and I was so thrilled and honored that people went to that level of effort to help me celebrate my big day. Thank you everyone for coming and thank you Alston, Katie, Elizabeth and Carrie for organizing all of that - I appreciate it more than you know and love you very much!

Here are just some of the pics from Thursday and Friday night! Click on slideshow below to see all the pics.

Mr and Mrs Jeff Cutshall

On the weekend of May 30th I headed down to Pinehurst, NC for the wedding of my high school friend Kate to Mr Jeff Cutshall. The wedding was absolutely gorgeous and it was so nice to catch up with all of my high school friends who attended. We had a great time hanging out, laying by the pool and helping Miss Kate celebrate! I took a few pics but I'm going to share Anne's with you as well, since she has a NICE camera and took way more pics than me (Good work Anne.)

My pictures!

Click here to see Anne's pics!

Alston's Bowling Birthday

To celebrate Alston's 26th birthday we all headed down to Chelsea Pier's for a little birthday bowling, beers and cupcakes. I attempted to take some pics in between my turns up to bowl....here ya go! (I believe if you click on the slide show below you can see all the pics...technology and me don't mix these days.)

Hey Kelly

Happy belated birthday Kelly! Kel came up to NYC for her birthday and I'm WAY late in posting these pics! We had a birthday dinner at Uva and then hit the town where we met some "interesting" people. Hope you had a great time and sorry it took me so long to get these pics up!

Jenny and Courtney

Dinner at Uva

Me and Kelly

Kelly, Jenny and Court

Music Monday

So as you can read below, we went to see "The Hangover" on Friday. It was a perfect rainy afternoon birthday activity and it was HILARIOUS. They played a song during the movie that I hadn't heard in a long time and I made a mental note to download it and put it on my running mix. Enjoy!

Kanye West's "Can't Tell Me Nothing"

Turning 23 is fun.

Thank you everyone for your happy birthday wishes! Elizabeth and Katherine arrived in NYC safe and sound yesterday and we have just been hanging out, went to dinner last night with Alston, Jenny and Carrie...more to come and pics will be available.

Its rainy here so we are going to see "The Hangover" which came out today - further proof that the day of my birthday is a blessing from God, why else would he release this movie as a birthday gift to me?

See preview here.

See other preview here.

Sad news

My poor cat Mia (aka Princess Mia Mann) had been sick and unfortunately it turned out that she was more sick than a scratched eye. Long story short, sadly, yesterday I had to put her down. It was very hard but luckily my good friend Jenny came with me for moral support. Jenny and I were both sobbing messes, but it was the right thing to do so Miss Mia wasn't in pain anymore.

Mia had been with me through a lot over the past 5 years! 2 boyfriends, 2 apartments, 1 move to NYC, countless girls nights, lots of naps on the couch..... She was such a sweet cat and I'll miss her! Thanks everyone for your sweet emails!

Lawnmower

Just two men chugging along...Granddaddy Russel and Rives taken care of business.

Music Monday

I have to admit that mainly I love this song because of the video which stars Ron Howard. But I downloaded it and it's perfect for car dancing and I've definitely added it to my running playlist. Please enjoy.....

"Blame it" by Jamie Foxx featuring T-Pain