i hate to brag

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Sometimes, stuff happens and you don't wanna come across as the bragging type, but you can't help it!

So... As you all know I've been away to Barcelona, and I landed today and I realised that I had the best time. I went to Sonar festival and it was pretty damn epic. Staying up until dawn, dancing and listening to some seriously good music.

Anyways, everything was going normal until I saw Jake Shears (from Scissor Sisters) 'Vine' a clip of him and Dita Von Teese in Barcelona, so I thought I'd be cheeky and just be like 'lets meet up' and commented thinking it'd go un-noticed.

10 minutes later he replies, and tells me where he is. I give him my number and within 30 mins I'm dancing with JAKE SHEARS & DITA VON TEESE!! We thought we'd dance with them for about 10 minutes and that'd be it. But they took a shine to us, and we stayed with them until the last act!

Jake even text and asked what we were doing a few days later but had to turn him down as we had plans! Now I'm home and feel my celebrity lifestyle has died haha.

Anyway, I hate braggin'... but I wanna share my story! And I wanna hear all y'all's too! I'm sure you have them.

Literally... nothing can ever enter this post again without sounding totally lame compared to Lee's awesome trip to Barcelona! Like... not only Jake Shears but Dita Von Teese too?! What? WHAT?!



I'm not even going to deny how jealous I am right now. Pure jealousy for the awesome trip you got to have! If I EVER travel there, I better have an awesome time or I'm going to go to their capitol and scream, "WHY MEEEEEE?!?" at the top of my lungs. And then I will kidnap Lee and make him rub his magic powers on me so I can have a good time! You are so damn lucky and awesome and I can't even hate you because you're sooo cool about it and deserve it.

I actually came into this cool as thread, because while I am so far from still making weight for the military, I am 60 pounds lighter and it feels awesome. Everyone knows right after high school, I lost tons of weight and became normal-sized I would like to say. Then, after my mom's sickness and her passing, I ballooned to a number I won't even type but it was super high and super gross and nothing I ever thought I would reach.

I decided I wouldn't crash diet like the first time, but I would just work on changing my habits and challenging myself with my fitness. It took six months of experimenting where I didn't really lose that much weight, but I felt better, but these last couple of months have just clicked and I am watching it come off and I am so excited and happy and just.... AAAAH!

I am not saying you can't be happy in the body you have or fat shaming anyone. I was big and proud and will always support people's right to be and feel however they want... but my fat was killing me. I was pre-diabetes and all it reminded me of was all the food that I ate while being highly depressed because of what I went through.

As a reward for myself, I signed up for the Zombie, Run! Nothing is more fun than running from zombies!

Mine's not as dope city as Lee's either lol.

Well, now that this thread is here and I'm in here as well, why nooot? Along the lines of Chant there, for the first time in years, I feel really great about my body. Getting this full length mirror helped me not only realized I was happy about it, but also that I get to walk by it everyday and check myself out. I spend so much time picking and loathing it in the past that I have lots of catching up on body self love to do. I don't care if it's vain to be honest. I think I look gorgeous and I will keep on staring and loving it.

I am also so much more proud of my writing. I haven't felt like this since I was what, 13/14? Even if I'm the only one who loves it, I honestly don't give any fucks, but luckily I am not the only one who thinks so. Having shared love makes things easier fo'sho lol.

I met Patrick Stump. And hugged him. And got a picture. Highlight of my life!

I'm so jealous of Lee's life! LOL

Bit jealous of Lee, yeah, can't pretend I'm not. XD

Yesterday... well, two days ago at this point... was seriously awesome for me - even the really embarrassing momentary encounter with Arthur Darvill (yeah, it happened, and I'll explain in a moment!) - and while I'm sure a lot of people won't find much about it particularly impressive, I do, and thus, I am going to go ahead and implement this thread to brag about how amazing it was.

So, Thursday, I spent the whole day in Manhattan with my friend Tina (she's the friend I helped to move from Boston to NYC at the end of May, if anyone recalls that for whatever reason). The plan was that we were going to get rush tickets to see Once and then spend the day just wandering. The fact that rush tickets sold out 10 people ahead of us should have been a pretty failtastic start to the day, but it ended up working out because we decided to explore a bit and see if we could get standing room tickets to Phantom of the Opera (because I need to see this cast, and she just needs to see it) or the "$30 under 30" tickets to Alan Cumming's one-man rendition of Macbeth. I wasn't going to walk away without tickets to something, because this was supposed to be Tina's first ever Broadway show!

We stopped at the box office for Phantom first (where we were told that chances of standing tix were good if we came back at 5pm, but, well, we didn't go back), and discovered the theatre across the street in the midst of renovations for a new show called Let It Be, consisting entirely of Beatles music. First I've heard of it, but, yes. EXCITED FOR THE FUTURE. Anyway, we headed over to Macbeth and as luck would have it, they still had some of the $30 under 30 tickets left. We were planning on coming back in a few weeks to see that anyway, so it all worked out!

We wandered some more until we found a good place to eat, which was this little organic cafe just a couple of blocks off of Central Park. Organic food at a reasonable price say WHAT?! Someday I will be able to find the same random restaurants in NYC twice on purpose instead of once by accident. XD While we were sitting there, I discovered I had put my Wildlife Conservation Society membership card in my wallet (I thought I'd given it to my mother, but I guess not), so we spent a couple of hours at the Central Park Zoo after our brunch. Because who would say no to a free trip to the zoo? We stuck around long enough to see a sea lion feeding and a penguin feeding, then went back out into the park and wandered around for ages.

Now, I've spent a lot of time in Central Park, but there are some spots that I know are there but I have never been able to find. I have made it one of my missions in life to find ALL of them, and yesterday, I finally found the Shakespeare Garden! We got ourselves good and lost in the heart of the park and found some really awesome little spots for future photoshoots, picnics, just personal hangouts... Oh, and Belvedere Castle. I'd never even heard of it, but yeah. There's a small castle right in the middle of Central Park. Look at me, chilling like a princess in one of the turrets!

We sloooowly made our way back to Times Square, getting properly lost in the park some more in the process, and got ourselves some gelato on the way out. Enter Arthur Darvill. Now, allow me to relay what happened to you in excruciating detail. Because it happened, and in hindsight it was equal parts hilarious and embarrassing.

We were walking in one direction along the southern edge of Central Park. Arthur Darvill and his girlfriend (I assume, anyway; they looked pretty cozy) were walking in the other. We both had our mouths full of gelato, and noticed him at the exact same moment. If you could have seen our faces - and HE totally did see our faces - well... we looked ridiculous. We couldn't have been any more than a meter away from him when we saw him, and we elbowed/somehow tried to nudge each other at the same moment and were like... half-pointing, half-flailing in his direction with spoons in our hands and we said something along the lines of "ohmygodthat's *fall into a unison silent freakout*?!?!?!" to each other. He had turned to look RIGHT at us just as we had this freakout. There was no possible way he did not see us freaking out and knew we were freaking out about him and oh my god, SO embarrassing. >______> And then we stood there still freaking out and debating going after him for about 20 seconds, but by then they were so far back in the direction we had come from that it really would have been too creepy!fangirlish to be acceptable. So, we have made up our minds to recount this story to him at the stage door when we do see Once (which will be sometime in the next few weeks). Because you have to admit, it's pretty funny. And we were polite and didn't interrupt him while he was going about his life, we waited for a reasonable opportunity! That has to count for something!

Then we had dinner - at another random place we found just wandering around - and headed to the theatre. Macbeth. Alan Cumming. Alan Cumming AS Macbeth. And as Lady Macbeth. And as Macduff. And as Malcolm. And as Banquo. And as all three of the witches. And as King Duncan. Basically as everyone. Not to mention as the insane asylum patient who was going through the entire play in his madness inside the hospital. And he was just ugh, so flawless. And I know he probably couldn't actually see me, but one of Macbeth's monologues early on, I swear he was looking right at me the whole time. The way he jumped between characters so fluidly, aaaaaah oh my god I WAS IN THE THIRD ROW I WAS SO CLOSE I COULD SEE EVERY DETAIL OF HIS EXPRESSIONS ANDANDAND. Whew, deep breaths. It was just so, so incredibly well done and well-performed. How did he not even get nominated at the Tony Awards?!

It took me a long time after the show ended to actually be able to say anything about how I felt about it. Until I said it to the man himself. Tina and I went to the stage door with half of the audience. I have never seen so many people waiting for a single performer at a stage door before... but it's Alan Cumming. I wasn't surprised. They had a whole bunch of security guys running crowd control, and after what felt like forever (and had to have been at least half an hour if not even longer), Alan came out armed with multiple sharpies - and took the time to sign playbills and say hello to every single fan who was waiting for him. We couldn't take pictures with him - I'm not surprised, with how many people were waiting - but I said hello and told him he was amazing. And that is really the only word I have for him. In Macbeth, or in anything else. The man is just so... special. I don't get this excited over celebrities, I really don't. I might get caught off guard like what happened with Arthur. But I make it a point of being as professional as possible in person. Alan Cumming, however, is one of the few actors on my list of Celebrities I Need to Meet Before I Die. I have now met him.

And I just can't get over how absolutely perfect the entire day was. Or how long this post ended up being. Wow. How the hell did that happen? XD Sorry for the tl;dr of it all... >.>

I know the layout of Jay Baruchel's apartment by heart to the point that I know where to get a mug in his cabinets now if I want tea.

My friend from CEGEP, Brittany, is his next door neighbor in NDG and they're good friends. When he goes off to shoot a film/go to press for a film, she feeds his cats for him. He's a nice guy, funny (le duh!) and really, really loves cats, so we get along pretty decently. It's weird cause he's not ~actor Jay Baruchel to me he's just Jay. It's only weird when I see commercials for his movies on TV and I'm like... oh shit it's that guy I know. I don't see him often cause he's obviously busy and he's her friend not mine, we're acquaintances, but if I saw him on the streets, we'd definitely stop and have a chat.

My post here will be very short and to the point. My tattoo sleeve is finished. You can see it here. I'm in love with it. The end.

Everyone here has awesome stories and I love it. This thread should be renamed, "but i'm a bad ass so it's ok"

Anywho, I'm here to say. I love my short hair. Societal norms be damned, my long hair didn't define me. No one does. Except me. I feel limitless and free. More confident for sure.

The only thing I have is that I've met Ben Mansfield from Primeval and I got his autograph and a picture taken with him. I've actually also met Danny Boyle, as well, about three times, and even asked him if he wanted a cup of tea once, lol. But he's a really nice guy and very down to earth. And I got the chance to know his dad for a few weeks before he died, and I'm not bragging about this but I'm glad I got the chance to meet his dad because he was a really nice guy and funny.

Everyone's stories are awesome though.