Concrete Jungle Where Dreams Are Made Of...

...If your dreams are made of trips to Bed Bath & Beyond. Almost every day. (Bet you're glad you clicked on this post, huh?)

So here at the end of this week 3, I'm going to attempt to catch you up on weeks 1 & 2! So hopefully by next week, we'll be in REAL TIME. (There's a lot going on here in real time. Fasten your seat belts.)

After making it past move-in day, the rest of our time here has been GLORY. Yes, it's been a transition, yes there's been homesickness & yes there's been a realization of the power of budgeting... but truly, we are so fully aware of how much our cups our overflowing, and we love this little apartment we call home! Alekza & I were just talking about how we can't believe Sunday was only our 3-week friendaversary! Living underneath someone's loft bed (or the "downstairs" as we like to call it) bonds you quicker than you'd think! But if there's anything that has bonded us most in our time here so far, it has been the renovation of our home & what that looks like in this city.

It looks a lot like this.

But if you were to zoom in a little closer, you'd see that there came a point where we couldn't tell the difference between the pouring rain & our pouring sweat. Sorry for the visual. Also you'd see that I'm carrying a trashcan full of rain & 3 bags of groceries. And additionally, it always requires walking from the Times Square subway station to our apartment...so like, through Times Square. Where people are all taking group photos, sprawling across the sidewalk and waiting in line to get their caricatures drawn. (But honestly I don't even mind anymore because when you're holding a trashcan full of groceries, you get these looks from tourists like, "wow...they bought groceries. this homely girl must be a new yorker..." Until, of course, we stop on the sidewalk & ask a young girl to take a picture of us.) Really cool, right?! ;)

So besides registering 3 different emails for Bed Bath & Beyond coupons, drilling a stand-alone pantry into our wall (thanks tiff & ken!), & making 3+ trips to Time Warner Cable to get wifi & cable (why did no one tell us that would be SO HARD?), we've been doing a lot of other really fun things...

...liiiike making pic collages, mounting decorative deer heads & building Alekza's loft bed from the ground up -- the most rewarding task I have ever completed:

This is an old pic...but look at that bed!

The makings of our living room collage!

P.s. While assembling Alekza's bed while she was at work & Rachel was at class, I headed down to the nearby hardware store (I randomly have become a pretty frequent visitor) and - if you read my twitter, you already know - THAT'S when I ran into Zachary Quinto - Mr. Spock himself. I did the ultimate double-take and then actively reminded myself "be cool...be cool...you're a fellow artist, right?! it's just a normal day..." (pitch perfect, anyone?;) But anyway, here he is in Glass Menagerie on Broadway right now - which absolutely rocked our worlds, by the way! Victoria, Karina, Rachel & I could not recommend it more highly!

Photos Courtesy of "The Glass Menagerie" website!

And here we are at the show!

Yes, this was a snap chat;)

...to match Victoria's photo with Zachary Quinto

^^ This morning involved waiting in line catching up with these amazing friends, savoring our last moments with Karina before her ToUr DaYz, & grabbing bagels at Junior's - yummmm.

Other fun things we've done... that night we finally got to catch up with our precious friend from Springboard - Jackie Reynolds! Jackie just moved to "IN THE HEIGHTS!" (Washington Heights), and she, too, is going after that theatre dream! :) So naturally, we all decided to grab Shake Shack since Rachel & Jackie had never been! But we decided to head down to the cute lil Shake Shack in Madison Square Park (home of time warner cable). It finally started to get chilly, so this made for the perfect night - in addition to having a blast catching up with Jackie!

Our cutie friend Jackie!

Hmm...what else have we done...
Oh, yeah! Some AUDITIONS!

So, in preparation for moving to NYC, I spent most of July & half of August applying my BRAINS out for jobs in Journalism/copywriting/copyediting (can't remember if I've already mentioned this...) but when none of those brought many results, I decided that maybe that was God's way of telling me to focus in on auditioning while scoring some sort of sweet nannying gig or things of the like! So I immediately started looking out for auditions, and the first one I set my sights on was Oliver at Papermill Playhouse in New Jersey. I was so excited to find out that the audition was at Pearl Studios on 36th St. - a mere 7 blocks from our place! (And also incredibly ironically the same building that my new job is in! ... But more on that later;)

So anyway, there's this amazingly helpful site (thank you thank you, Laura Wetsel, for this golden treasure of information) called Audition Update that has different sections where people give their opinions on working with certain theatre companies, people update when shows have announced callbacks/casting, and - most helpful - people at auditions give play-by-plays of how the morning is panning out: how long the line is, if they're seeing non-eqs, etc. WHAT? It's brilliant, I know! So I read up on how long the Oliver line was & jetted over to Pearl Studios around 7:30am. It was kind of exciting to show up & recognize SO many girls from the Newsies auditions. I gave a few small smiles & nods at some of the girls I recognized - totally smooth - and felt sooo seasoned (as an auditioner, that is;). And who else did I run into? My friend OWEN from Springboard! It was so so good to see a familiar face & catch up with such a fun friend. (Lucky for Owen, the male auditions weren't til 2, so he was like, you know, #20 on the list...whatever.)

Kinda like a sleepover, right? Or a lock-in...in broad daylight...

So I killed time with clif bars, Shauna Niequist's Bittersweet, and when they said they were only at #20 (I was #135), a few girls left to grab some food & I even got to go home & chill for awhile! And YES, twas a very sweet thing. So I came back about 45 minutes later, they collected the first 140 girls' headshots, and then by the grace of God, I was in the last group of 10 that got seen that day! PHEW! After 5 hours, I gave my best 30 seconds of "Blow Gabriel Blow" from Anything Goes, & just like that, I went on with my normal day, ha! But the girls at this audition were incredibly cool, & I got to enjoy some awesome conversations - with mostly recent post-grads! We shared in each other's trials & victories. And gabbed over water & throat lozenges.

Then, the NEXT day (or the day after?) Rachel agreed to attend an audition with me! We went out for "Musicals Tonight" production of Smile about a pageant, and when we arrived at the Actors Equity building (3 blocks from our place!) we realized they were also having auditions for Seth Rudetsky's new show "Disaster! The Musical" so we signed in for that, too! We signed our names in & they told us to be back at 10am...so we went home & napped. Oh yeah, and we ran into this on our way home:

A Katy Perry pre-show on Good Morning America!

When we came back to the audition at 10am & saw how long the wait would be, Rachel & I decided to act like we knew what we were doing & head to Madison Square Park to hit up time warner cable & a few other errands in the meanwhile. When we got back to the audition, we made some friends & waited around for another hour, but eventually our odds looked futile, so most people headed out! (Plus, I had a job interview to be at!) But nonetheless, it was so fun to finally have a friend to do the audition thang with:)

Don't worry...this was pre-nap ;) Make-up DID enter the picture later on...

So anyway, besides these bigger happenings ^^ we've mainly just been exploring our new hood,  trying out every thai restaurant in Hell's Kitchen (especially "Yum Yum" thai...mainly because there are 3 of them on one block?), visiting amazing churches, meeting awesome Baylor Theatre alum at Karina's going-away dinner at the Frying Pan (a boat on the Hudson. um. so cool.) & bonding as roommates over things like...TLC...and PB&J sandwiches... :) Oh, also, our rooms don't have light switches, sooo the mood lighting makes every conversation that much more beautiful... ;) But seriously, we're having the best time. These 3 weeks haven't been without their difficulties, but we are constantly looking at each other in disbelief over how apparent God's provision, goodness & faithfulness has been in our lives. He is continually reaffirming how much we're supposed to be here, and we fall more & more in love with our new home everyday. At church yesterday, we literally almost cried! It's silly, I know! I think so too!

There's still so much more that's been going on that's so exciting! Like how to [attempt to] make friends in nyc, how to visit a gazillion churches & how to use self-control at the Brooklyn Flea Market -- oh wait...we haven't figured that out yet.

Sweet Lekz bought me a cookie from Schmackary's to celebrate
being newly employed! I have a boss! ... Rach was at class :(

Ordered chinese food to our door for din (seamless.com!
oh-ho-ho yes) & watched "You've Got Mail" for Rachel
& Alekza's FIRST TIME! ... 'twas a good night.

But there are just a few updates of this crazy September, & there are more to come!
Most notably: my new job!

Until next time,
Kelsey