Update on my Life: In NY!

Hi everyone! This past pre-Thanksgiving weekend I was visiting relatives in New York. Not the city, as many of you will think, by the countryside. Visiting was very fun, seeing my dad's side of the family, and my mom's side. Stories of my parents childhood were passed around like candy at Halloween, most of them humorous. The highlight of my trip though, was seeing Woodstock.

Yeah, that's right, Woodstock. Not the little bird that followed Snoopy around, but the place. As in "3 days of peace and music", the '69 hippie festival Woodstock.

Woodstock is also known for it's guitars and wind chimes in case you didn't know. Coincidentally, Woodstock chimes were in the middle of their huge bi-yearly clearance sale. We bought some stuff, including 3 wooden ducks, a couple chimes, and a lollipop drum thing. At the warehouse in which the sale was located, there was this big gong for sale. People would randomly come up and give the gong a whack, just for kicks and giggles. My sister and I both rang the gong, and I confess, I felt like a rebel.



Excuse the crappyness, i took this w/ my cell



After my family was through with the sale, we entered the small town of Woodstock. We entered several stores, a few of which were clearly capitalizing on the history of Woodstock. The shops were basically forests of tie-dye t-shirts and glass pot holders (a.k.a. bongs). Several shops sold pins with peace signs on them, and almost every shop had some from of reggae playing. Some shops were neat, like the candle shop.

The candle shop was (as it should be) filled with candles. There were plain candles, and some beautifully decorated candles. there was even a tower of wax made from the leavings of drip candles. The tower was almost to the ceiling, ad was nicely colored, looking like an overgrown willow tree. A willow tree with a lifetime's worth of gum stuck to it.
We also went to a nice shop with mainly glass. I believe the type of glass was called Venetian glass, a kind of colored glass that is very smooth. There was also a mirror with a kid of Mosaic for a border. It was a pretty pricey store, so we didn't hang around for long.

We also went into a store that was pretty similar to the others when looking at merchandise. The really neat this about this store though, was some of the furniture. The first picture is of a light brite lamp. You remember light brite right (tongue twister, huh?)? It was the box that lit up, and you would put colored pegs in the holes to make a picture? Anyways, t struck me as a really neat lamp. I had wandered over to the children's section of the store just to, you know, check it out, and there it was. The retro lamp just sitting there, waiting to be found and blogged about. Wish granted lamp, wish granted.

The next cool thing I found in that store was a cardboard peace sign. Inside a few of the holes of the peace sign were colored strips of paper. On the paper, customers had written words of encouragement, hope, sayings, and sometimes wishes. I remember reading one that said "please let my mom win a lot of money so we con stay in our house". Just reading it made my face drop. The rest that I got to read were pretty stale, saying things like "never give up :)".  I must confess though, I too wrote a generic saying; "You are loved." Still, i thought it was an excellent idea!

But, the absolute best store i went into was definitely the toy store. Toy stores are always the best, aren't they? This one had a small section on a shelf for bandages. They were different shapes, the most memorable of which was the bacon ones. I know, I know, bacon bandages have been around for a while now. But to see one in person, to touch it, that is a different story. I also bought a pen with a lambs head when the end is. When you push down on the head it lights up and goes "BAAAAA!!". I have dubbed it my test-taking pen, and it was christened this morning in German class. I also bought a ghost key chain to go with my collection. When you push a button on the back of the ghost the eyes flicker a blue light and the ghost goes "OOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOooooooo" all creepy like. Its pretty neat.

Well that's all i have for this edition of Update On My Life. See you next time!

Rachael

ps. if i have any grammatical/spelling errors on any of my posts LET ME KNOW. Rachael hate being grammatically bad!