#1 Read some of the stuff I'm writing sometime!  The business section, or Heartland.  Some ideas if you're ever bored one day...   Soon, I'm going to be doing more for Tennis-X.com.  Hitchhike over to that site sometime in the near future!
#2 I am not Megan Fox! See? I changed my hair color.
Because I was sick and tired of people in general and I guess, loads of tourists saying, "HEY! THAT'S MEGAN FOX!" or snapping cell photos of me while I am eating, I decided to change my hair once and for all.  Actually, it went more like 85 percent of the time, people said I was Megan Fox and the other 15 percent was "THAT'S Katy Perry-Miley Cyrus-Jennifer Connelly-fill in the blank with a generic celebrity brunette girl who looks nothing like me! Oh, MY, GOD!"  *Snap a photo.*

Really, it's one thing if you're photographed by people and that as yourself and something else if you're confused.  That, and most of the time when people aren't telling me I'm Meg Fox, they come up talking to me, "Hey, you're Sally's niece!  You have grown up so much!"  It's like the Asian person stereotype: everyone believes all girls with dark brown hair look alike.

Every time at some modeling thing, ok AND journalism, someone would drop a Megan Fox comment.  By the time a second tennis boy gave me a Megan Fox comment - hey! it was in a cute way! no offense taken - I got fed up.  Let Megan be Megan.  I kind of want to look like myself.  This doesn't seem like a big deal reading it but to hear it every day, and for it to kind of interfere with what I do sometimes got on my nerves.

Make me a real life Barbie, please.
To make sure I'm done with being confused for someone's grandaughter/Megan/ex-boyfriend's sister/etc., I wanted it really impossible that no one else would have something similar.  I walked into the hair salon with a nonhuman photo of a brunette Barbie over at the Bergdorf salon, which I heard was pretty good at giving people what they wanted.

Side note here: earlier in the day, I want to some woman who does some famous print reporters, Campbell Brown, aka. nobody I want to look like although they're awesome folks, who told me, "You should stick to natural.  I'm going to make you look like Charlotte from Sex and the City" after I described her "I want to look like this.  [Rip out photo of Barbie doll.]  Or a Playboy Playmate."  Really, what the heck?  Whenever are these people mentioned in the same sentence as looking like Carmen Electra?

I ended up with a better, younger, nicer girl over at Bergdorf Goodman, who was yeah, cheaper than the other lady.  This took probably four hours at least!  I went in early and ended up leaving in the darkness.  She was really fun to goof around with the whole time I was doing this or it would've been so boring.  The girl mixed up a trunk o' probably three colors to put in plus keeping my real hair as is, plus an additional rinse thing so I suppose that would be...um...5 colors altogether going on?  Anyway, I'm happy with it.

I went to the hospital right as October started for stomach surgery, caught a cough/cold there and learned I couldn't eat dairy products for a bit. Around September, I looked greenish which should've told me something.

Since then, I weigh about 115. I have gained weight from eating regularly again and look/wear the same size as before but more filled out. I'm at the point where I could care less. I feel like telling anyone who ever complains about it, "My hip measurement is 32"! Shut up! Do you want me to have 29" hips? YOU eat a salad!" Whenever I live up North anyway, like growing up in IL or now, i can eat a lot, mostly whatever I want and stay on the thin side. It's with the stupid allergy medicines I take in Texas that I look bad.

I love some of the print writing I have been doing thanks to my awesome editor. I love either writing "real" news articles or being funny and I want to get a chance to do both equally. Modeling has gotten better for me, I enjoy doing book stuff for other people and the weirdest thing has been every day, I get closer to sports involvement. Really! It's so weird. It wasn't my first choice but my mom's choice for me considering my opportunities I've been given in my life and who I've hung out with, but it's growing on me. It can be really fun.

Sports I DO and have always followed: college football! I'm hoping the best for the Longhorns this year! Although I'm wondering why Mack Brown reuses the same plays he knows opposing teams notice by now! What is going on with that?

This week, I caught another cold/cough/sore throat...again. :-o

Last night watching Food Network around midnight or so, right after that, the new "Extreme Sweets" show came on with Mr. Adam. For anyone who didn't watch Work for Food last year, the new show is different anyway - really cute and fun. He went around Hollywood area sweet factories/stores which were normal until the part with the bug candy. Have you ever seen those lollipops with worms inside, chocolate crickets, a big red apple cased in by caramel bugs? Ecgkh. Later, he went to a place with the jellybean portraits. I got to see a couple of them in person! They're more colorful than on the show. I never knew you commissioned one.

Probably going to update my blog soon in this entry....

T-Mobile's Sidekick users haven't had e-mail/contacts/notes/etc. for weeks now.  I lost most of your phone numbers.  If you received a 4:00 a.m. phone call around this time asking for Yahtzee, it wasn't me.  That was a real dork's prank on me about a month ago, by the way.

I'm going to go off like a old Southern 50's preacher and say, BURN IN HELL, T-MOBILE!  You made me lose years of contacts!!!

Right.  Ask people for their contact info again?  Some of the people I had on there were phone numbers ONLY.  How do I track down people to ask for a number if I don't know it/see them around/live in the same country/want to ask while they have scary live-in girlfriends suspicious of friendships with girls, about to chop off my hair if I ask the guy(s)?  UGH!!!  Yeah, I'm going to walk up to someone who got back with his girlfriend, "Hey!  I um...lost your number since we hung out while you were rethinking your situation with HER."  Makes me sound bad, when it was only meant as friendship, doesn't it?

OTHER people were old IL contacts.  Politicians.  Etc.  What am I supposed to do?  T-Mobile probably doesn't realize this came right at the time after I wasn't allowed to eat dairy products for over a week.  Can I quote my favorite preppy-punk boy when I say this?  T-Mobile, you are a..."total jerk!"  I love using that phrase ever since I saw it written, hahaha, right up with my other favorite phrase recently: "the friend I am dating" in place of the word girlfriend.  Or, the "friend I was married to" in place of wife.  Love it.

US Open tennis boys make me appear four feet tall.  The good news?
Я владею русским!
OK, that statement is slightly inaccurate.  I do try my best to do it.

I know I'm going to be sitting here after this tournament is over wondering what to do with myself!

Мы прекрасно. Да?

Check out my interview with the first Turkish man to ever make the second round of a Grand Slam!

http://www.tennis-x.com/xblog/2009-09-01/2205.php

This week, my doorman went to send me a UPS box in the elevator. My dog follows me around everywhere no more than two feet away at any time. When I went inside the elevator to get the box, I walked out, like normal thinking the dog was behind me. He always follows me.

The dog actually stayed in the elevator, and the doors closed on him! He rode all the way down to the lobby shivering, where he was rescued by the doorman!! I had to go collect him...he was a nervous wreck the rest of the day.

How weird is that if you had ridden the elevator, seeing this dog alone riding it like he pushed the buttons, "Hmm, I'm going out for a walk today?"

BURN THIS PHOTO!



Merry Tuba Christmas December 2000,
with Matt F. one of the original M's in my collection, possibly the first.

We're trying so hard, we look ridiculous.

***Not original hair color. This has already been highlighted blonde and darkened here!

Apparently, this coupon isn't good everywhere....telling more later...

Did you all see how well Roger Federer did yesterday?

I was watching that thinking, "This is like a baseball score."

This is a great week for TennisGrandstand.com material for sure...

Updating my blog later!

ADDED new terrace & apartment photos on my website [KNR section right side]. Check it out!!

The terrace now has a hedge, white fence, and new trees!





Boo! The tale of the haunted tapestry!

I don't believe this is actually haunted, but I told M. a while back it was to scare him.

This tapestry is actually from 1800's Belgium.  An old woman unrelated to me purchased it there, moved to France, England, and then South America.  Somewhere along that time, her husband was murdered(!!), leaving a trace of blood on the tapestry that was cleaned off by a seamstress!

I've tried to find the spot before.  It really was cleaned well.  And I love how the story goes that a seamstress cleaned it.  Who uses that word today?

My grandpa bought a house from the tapestry owner and/or her daughter(?) in Caracas, Venezuela that came with the tapestry.  They didn't want it because of the bad memories, I assume.  Since then, it traveled to Miam, Illinois, Texas, and now New York.

Yesterday-
REALLY loved going to a street fair, flea market, etc. over in Chelsea, walking to West Village from where I am, etc.  I went around NYU and sort of hung out.  Somewhere along the route I discovered a BBQ brisket sandwich that was pretty delicious for North of the Mason-Dixon line and a corn quesadilla made from arepa flour.

Friday-
I turned 22.

WEBSITE-
I am in the process of updating my web site, photos and interview sections.  I know I say this often.  I really mean it!  An update...

KRYSTLE RUSSIN.COM (left)==
NOWHERE NEAR DONE!

KRYSTLE NICOLE (right)==
Mostly done.  You can take a look around!  Only need to update family photo album section, which would be scanning.  This is the easy part of programming...the photos.

My favorite of the new photos, particularly because it reminds me of a circus or something teen pop singer circa 2000:

JUNE 3
Deflowered fax machine & surprise guests.
Faxed the first faxes on it today after a month on this 4 in 1 printer...

My dad always picked out the 3 in 1 machines - "We don't need a fax."  Sure, you don't.  You go to Kinko's once a month.  This was great unplugging it, leaving a mess everywhere with the stack of paperwork on the floor I had to send, my clothes in the bathroom for my shower, because two guys randomly showed up in the apartment right at the moment I'm taking away my fax machine's innocence.  Not the best impression I wanted to make on people viewing the apartment.  Do you notice it's always the wrong moments when people stop by?

JUNE 2
Found! Great Japanese restaurant in undisclosed location!
Nick texted today, "Let me know if it's better than the other one [usual hangout I brag about.]"  We were discussing restaurants and best of the best.  The answer?  It's actually really good and at the same level as the original hangout!

There's the usual sushi place I know of and the new place tried today.  NOT going to reveal where it is until it becomes an official usual hangout.  This place had the cheapest soda I ever found at a Japanese place for $1 - they can run from $2.50 to $5!  Great amount of food portions for the $9 tofu dish I ordered, AND the owners tossed in a free appetizer.  A return visit to this restaurant will probably happen over the weekend or next week.

Tofu: firm vs. soft?
I'm going with soft on this one.  It's much easier to eat and taste the tofu.  At this restaurant, the tofu's texture was very silky, the fried outer shell very thin and delicate.  Please don't hate me, owners of the other #1 sushi place.  I preferred this new age tofu to the original.  Everyone, age=AH-GKEE.  Not "age" tofu, as in old age, if you thought I typoed there.

For anyone ever having messed with cooking tofu, the firm tofu is easier to deal with.  It could be I don't know how to work with soft tofu in preventing in from falling apart on the pan into a tofu soup.  I remember doing that three times and finally saying that I have had it with this.  Cold tofu works really well in a salad, if you're into that sort of Asian feeling salad, and even that, I made the tofu fall apart cutting into it.  It is right up there one of the most annoying foods I have ever worked with.

Finding a good grilled cheese should NOT be impossible.
Venting off about food frustrations, I cannot find a good grilled cheese in Manhattan.  I found the Bouchon Bakery tomato soup and grilled cheese, which makes you feel fuzzy all over eating it.  That's about it.  In Austin, I used to settle for E-Z Diner or Red River Cafe's grilled cheese experiments, not finding a good classic one but some that earned a B- grade on my sheet.

The Midwest just about everywhere has good grilled cheeses, no worse than A- most of the time.  All right?  In Manhattan, where do you go?  The places I find overfry their grilled cheeses or want to throw in random grilled cheese drama that doesn't belong there.  Truffles?  NO!  Tomatoes are fine.  Bacon?  Mmmmm.  I could let that slide.  People go crazy with the bread.  Let's toast it in grand style with an unpronounceable bread name!  Ugh.  A grilled cheese is a classic, simple food.

"Selling" myself on eBay this past spring - humorless people, huh?
I don't go off answering to rumor nonsense, but this I will.  Now, everyone's saying about the Burn Book style nitpicking on me, "Don't people realize the auction was half joking?"  Everyone else seemed to get it.  See, the plan was to put some outrageous price on there as a joke so people might say, "Hmm.  I don't know about a whole million and want the trip and rest of the silly stuff, but I could buy the domain for much less for the catchy name."  If the person lived in New York, later on in the year, this guy and I probably would have taken them out on a little lunch thing as a thank you for buying the domain anyway when he came into town.  It's really like people don't have a sense of humor about poking fun at ourselves anymore.  That, and making a fuss over a MySpace questionnaire a friend forwarded that was not a self interview but, um, an actual MySpace fill out thing.  Really, tell me I am the first ever person on this planet to have done that.

Forcing myself to eat apples.
I forced myself to eat a cute mini apple today, remembering advice to eat healthier these days.  I said YUCCCK and made a sour face the whole time but finished eating it.  If this works anything like my "I love poultry" brainwashing, I will be eating apples every morning with a big smile.  You can do anything - nearly anything, anyway - you set your mind on.  I have hated apples since I was 4...

Planning ahead for August.
Still planning stuff for August.  This is going to be a lot of fun!  I hope my friend can take more than a week off from work so we can hit everything.

NOW! That's What I Call a Dog! Vol. 2
Major dog bragging for a second, NOBODY photographs better than my dog.  I mean, what girl really wants a picture with DiCaprio if you can pose with a handsome guy like this?

Cut Richard Gasquet some slack on his failed drug test! Why the 2-year ban from tennis over 1 cocaine incident??
Read what I have to say at Tennis Grandstand:
http://www.tennisgrandstand.com/archives/3937

Throwing China plates in a ditch,
A waitress costume at the U.S. Open,
Rescuing a homeless avocado chair from DEATH,
Getting engaged by June 26, 2009,
My next dog's name shall be "Andy."
Read on.
I was sick the past week, like you know.  I say it's either:
1) I saw a guy from Austin up here in NYC right before I got sick, who gave me swine flu.
2) the Mexican restaurant outing

I don't know which it is.  A combo.  Kidding about the swine flu, of course.

Anyway, I was feeling really run down and fed up.  One of the M.s suggested for fun, I plan my wedding, birthday, so on, because then "it magically happens!"  Yeah, right.  I would love to get married soon, but I don't see that one happening.  And celebrating my birthday?  Umm...

"Didn't I just do this for that tennis video?"

"It will pass time and make you laugh."

It did take away some of the nasty flu feeling I had.

Planning my 22nd birthday seems a little silly now.  I really celebrated my birthday for the first time since I was little last year for my 21st.  Really, by now, it feels like Sweet 16 if I do another.  Hmm.  OK, let's go with eating out somewhere fun and going out to do something interesting earlier in the day, feeling happy, and maybe making up for it in August.  I want to invite this girl over to stay with me in August to hang out during the U.S. Open and go around town.  She's never been North of the Mason-Dixon line, if CA counts as being the "South," and I would LOVE to take her!  Also, I want to go to a match with her for one guy, if we can, being his only eye candy chick supporters among the men.  Instruments and possibly a waitress costume or bikini may make appearances!

It was funny.  Since a long time ago I used to joke with M., Brandon, myself, and another guy that since we all wanted Fiesta dishware settings in different colors, I thought about registering for a four person wedding to get all the colors.  I remembered that and wrote down that I will register at Bergdorf but make sure to register at Macy's or Bloomingdale's, where I will be able to get all the colors in them!  I used to go cruising around fiesta plates with the M., who I know wants orange and some other color, and we would stare at them saying, "When we're doing something special enough to register, we have to get these plates!!" and obsessing over them ever since.  His family actually had the ORIGINAL Fiesta ware plates and threw them out when they went out of style in favor of some pieces of junk settings they no longer have.  The other funny part I learned was that his mom's family threw the Fiesta plates in a ditch along the side of the road(!!!), because back then, there weren't any laws about littering at that point in time, and "that's just what everyone did back then."  You just threw trash in general in a ditch or a grassy area.  Ugh.

Anyway, I just have to have the forest green and some sort of turqoise or robin's egg blue plate, mug, etc. settings.  If you throw in a cutlery set, I will love that.  To me, it's not the same to go out and buy this stuff as it is to receive it for a special occassion, so I am waiting on for that moment when I can have a big checklist of things I want to get it.

I wrote down measurements I want to have at my wedding (22 in. waist) that are a tad unrealistic but possible, I guess, via a corset, some stuff about serving five different cakes - great for me, a person who gets sick with sweets easily if I don't watch it! - and a description of my first wedding being a surprise one in Vegas, another in NYC more traditional.  I did not write down "DiCaprio" under my husband's name info.

I added I want to get this all down and planned to get married by the time I turn 22 - that's June 26, 2009 for you, um, COUGH, eligible gentleman -  I don't think that will ever magically happen, but the rest of all this just could.  Of course, I'm being really sarcastic about all of this, but it would be nice if it happened, right.

A permanent pad?
All right, right now, we are in a rental.  It has a nice terrace (see below), and it's being remodeled downstairs, so it'll look really nice, BUT it is a rental.  We are hoping that we can find a nice permanent place as an alternative to renting - something with a good sized outdoor space and in a nice area.  It's been fun visiting different open houses to get an idea and reviewing them.

If I can sneak in some good, fun apartment reviews and photos for you without offending anyone, I guarantee to do so soon!

Adopting a pet?
I just have this urge to adopt a small dog since I met Tallulah (Yorkie) on the 6th floor this year.  I don't know when I will do it or anything.  It will probably be at the humane society later this year.  Unsure.  I obviously can't have a family and am trying to sort out my life until it's just right and perfect, so a dog is the next best thing.

Like a proud parent thinking of baby names, I continue to think of names for my future small dog.  I have decided to call my dog Andy and will probably also assign it some sort of last name.  (I never like my pets to share my last name.  They're either some other last name or a first-name basis, like "Cher" or "Diddy.")  I think it's an absolutely beautiful name for a young toy dog, don't you?  The thing that's most annoying is when you meet a dog called something like M&Ms or something you wouldn't call a real person.

To give you an example, the handsome black cat that "mysteriously" disappeared sometime around this spring before it got hot in Austin was Matthew Meow.  I like to joke Matthew went down to the courthouse to legally earn himself a last name.  ***If anyone knows Matthew's whereabouts, because he "mysteriously" (yeah, right) vanished the day before I came up to NYC, hoping to bring him from Austin, please return him.  Immediately.  There's a bounty out now for my catnapper.

Redoing my hair
The other step in trying to patch up everything, feel better, was redoing my hair, which was a mess from having had to rest it again from the extensions being out.  So I did the usual and asked the hairdresser for Pam Anderson layers, haha.  Oh, it's kind of lame, but it does make a difference a little.  I am looking more like I used to again.

NOW! That's What I Call a Terrace! Vol. 1

First, an arial view of the plants.



And a story about this homeless avocado chair.  This is a vintage 60's/70's chair someone abandoned outside.  I noticed it while out walking.  I'm not the kind of girl to take out someone's trash or anything...except this chair looked really sweet, like it needed a place to enjoy outside on the terrace.  It escaped its death being sent to the trash collector and now sits outside in the sun most days, leading a pretty happy lifestyle.


Now, the plants. This took a few trips to Home Depot for sure.





Nice, clear, sunny day!