Five Foto Friday (September 19, 2014)

For the past eight years I have been a mentor in the ACE Mentor program.  The program is an weekly after school activity that exposes high school students to the Architecture, Construction and Engineering industry. Every September my Company buys a ticket for me to attend the kickoff cocktail party fundraiser. The event is held in a newly constructed building or space. Past years have been at John Jay College's newest building, the Hearst Tower, The New York Times building and Lincoln Center. This year’s event topped them all, literally.  It was held on the 68^th Floor of 4 World Trade Center. Although the building is not occupied yet, the building is mostly done except for interior fit outs. Needless to say, on a beautiful September night, I have many more than five photos to share with you.

When I walked out of the elevators, I was looking at the southern view.  Every corner I turned the view got better and better. 

The floor was completely open, just the core and expansive views for 360 degrees.  First up, a view of the Freedom Tower 1WTC.  Have been seeing 1WTC go up for years, but it's a whole different perspective when you look at it from the middle of it's height.

Next, is a panorama view looking northwest.

 This view is me standing near the core of the building, looking southwest.  One of the best parts of this building, from an engineering standpoint is that there are no columns at the corners, so they provide very expansive views.  You can see one large column at the right of the picture.  Basically, each corner of the building is cantilevered on columns at the faces.  Bottom line - Great Views with minimal obstructions!

 Sunset on the left, 9/11 Memorial on the right.

 Night time view looking north.

Here I took essentially the same picture before and after sunset of the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges.

A Shariously great event!  Maybe next year in 1WTC? 

Sally Hansen Insta-Dri

Wearing nail polish can add a great pop of color to your style.  I've always loved wearing a variety of fun colors.  Most often, the polish on my nails is self-painted.  The best time to polish is at night while watching some TV; great way to wind down.  The only problem is, that sometimes, even if it's hours after polishing my nails, and feeling "dry" I still get imprints from sheets and blankets!

One day while in CVS, I came across Sally Hansen Insta-dri (fast dry nail polish).  I probably had a coupon (I never go to CVS without some extrabucks), so decided to buy two - one for me and one for my Mom who had been complaining about never-drying nail polish.  There's a selection of fun bright colors for $4.99.

And some metallics:

The Sally Hansen says there are 38 colors, which seems like a wide selection, but they don't quite have the trendy colors I love like Essie does.  The other draw back, is that the polish doesn't seem to last as long as the longer drying, Essie polishes I usually use, but then again, they are a few dollars less, so I suppose it all evens out.  

One other thing I love about these polishes is the brush.  It's a wide, flat brush which makes it super easy to apply.

If you are looking for quick-dry nail polish with fun colors I Shariously recommend picking up a few of these!

Five Foto Friday (September 12, 2014)

One of the projects I've been working on for the last few years is the redesign of the plaza at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  This week, after three years of design and construction, the plaza was "unveiled."  I got to go to the morning ceremony and the final product looks great!

First, here is a view from the steps, looking north to the fountain and bosque of trees with seating.

The second picture is from the northern most end of the plaza, looking south through the tree Allee.

Here is a nice video of the inaugural fountain dance, to New York, New York.

Picture from across 5th Ave.

And finally a view of the plaza and famous Met stairs.

It was a fun event to celebrate everyone's hard work on the project and hopefully I'll be back on a sunnier day with less barricades for some better pictures.

I Shariously recommend a visit to the new plaza!

Breaking Bad (TV Thursday)

So, I know, I'm late to the party, but, the hubby and I have jumped on the Breaking Bad bandwagon. For a while, we've been wanting to watch Breaking Bad, but since we didn't have Netflix and it's not on Amazon Prime Instant Video, and only a few episodes were on demand we never wanted to pay extra to watch. Then, about two months ago, my Mom had taken season 1 out from the library and while we were over we started to watch.  The first episode was good but pretty gruesome. I'm a big believer that you can never judge a TV show by it's first episode so we watched half of the second episode before going to bed.  A few weeks later, we watched through the third episode when we returned to my parents.  We thought it was not going to be a binge experience since we were very slowly getting through them.

Starting four Sunday's ago, AMC started a weekly Breaking Bad Binge Marathon, airing seven episodes every weekend in order!  We could finally work our way through the rest of the episodes.  We got hooked, but now we had to wait a whole week for the next episodes.  Finally, we managed to borrow a Netflix account so we don't have to wait until Sundays and we have made it to season four.

For the most part, the show has its up and downs in the amount of blood and violence, but sitting through it is a small price to pay for the addictiveness of the show. All the characters are great!  I have tried my best to avoid spoilers for years in hopes that I would finally watch this some day and it paid off.  Although I do know what happens in the end (I do read EW religiously so it's a little hard to avoid not knowing anything) but I don't know how it happens and how everything plays out.  I recommend watching the series, and if the blood is too much just cover your eyes for a bit.

Now that we can borrow a Netflix, next up Orange is the New Black!  What are your Shariously favorite shows to Binge Watch?