It’s been all cold and wintery… and Virginia and I have both been sick… so.. we’ve not been out having too much fun… we’ve been cooped up in the house… so.. when you’re stuck in the house, it’s a little hard to take too many fun pictures and whatnot… but.. here ya go.
So… yeah… Virginia and I played around with some wine glasses and some strawberries for a while… but… other than that… it’s been a lot of sitting around.. watching TV… eating ham…
Okay, so after seeing Harry Potter sing and dance like a pro with an American accent we took a stroll down 5th Avenue to see all the lights. It was beautiful, but very crowded. Then we went back to the Loft to change clothes and catch our breath.
We decided to go to dinner in little Italy at Il Palazzo, which was delicious.
After dinner we took the Metro to the end of the island for a walk on the Brooklyn Bridge. It was so lovely! Amazing views of Manhattan and all the bridges, boats, airplanes, sky scrapers, so cool!
So then back to the Loft because we wanted to get up super early for our last day in the city.
Did I mention that we were in the Gramercy Park area and the Loft was just a block away from the flatiron building? Great view to take in on your way to breakfast.
We had breakfast at the Grey Dog in Chelsea. Cool place with a nice hippie vibe.
Then we walked through Chelsea Market, but we were too full to eat, so we just feasted our eyes.
The last thing we did was walk on the highline, which is this park that is built on an old elevated train line. It’s really neat because it’s been all landscaped and filled with art exhibits and allows you to walk about 20 ft. above the street level.
This billboard was a work of art called “the first hundred thousand that I ever made.”
Since we had to walk about ten looong blocks back to the Loft in the chilly morning air, I suggested we stop and get some hot tea. But I think I subconsciously sensed that we’d find this awesome-ness:
Two dozen varieties of macaroons! A macaroon specialty shop. SO GOODDD!
Then back to Penn Station for a long train-ride home.
The traveler at rest.
So over winter break Martha and I got to take an exciting trip to NYC!
We had a blast. We got to stay at the Appalachian Loft which is run by my former employer, ASU. Luckily I’m an alum, so we got an amazing rate.
It’s basically like a hostel for students, so we slept in a bunk room.
But there was a lovely view and the common space and kitchen were beautiful.
We got up super early every day and hit the city. First Rockefeller Center.
We did the NBC studio tour and learned all kinds of fun facts about SNL. I also got to play weather-woman for the “tour video studio.” Also, TV studios are really small. They look so much bigger on TV!
The ice skating rink was also smaller than I thought it would be, but very pretty. All the Christmas lights were up and the tree was huge!
Also huge was the crowd at the Lego store, where they had Lego replicas of all the statues in Rockefeller Center AND the Center itself with Lego people iceskating. Very cool.
Then to Times Square to buy theater tickets.
We got there early so we had time to grab empanadas from a food cart. Gotta love the street food.
We ended up with amazing orchestra tickets to Avenue Q which was technically off Broadway, but had been on Broadway back in 2004 for a few years. I’ve wanted to see it for a while – it’s like the Book of Mormon of its day.
So being off Broadway was cool because they have cigarette/snack guys and bartenders that bring you drinks. The show was awesome and hilarious. Overheard exchange of the night:
Dude 1: I didn’t know there was going to be graphic puppet sex.
Dude 2: Didn’t you see the sign outside?
Dude 1: I thought that was a joke!
Here’s us dressed up in our fancy theater clothes. We are standing in front of the Loft’s handy-dandy metro map which we used ALOT! We were about 1 block from two different lines, but we managed to get everywhere we were trying to go.
The next morning we got up and went to an awesome breakfast at the “quintessential modern American Jewish deli” - (they had a sign… which sadly we didn’t get a picture of). It was delicious. Martha’s cultured work friends had given her a list of restaurant suggestions, and they did not let us down.
Then we walked all through Central Park on the way to the Met.
After the Met, we did try to win theater tickets for the Book of Mormon, but sadly we didn’t win the lottery. In case you don’t know the Book of Mormon is sold out until Feb., but you can enter a day-of-drawing to win tickets. There were probably over 300 people at this lottery. It was, not surprisingly, a fun crowd, but not great odds.
So we decided to buy tickets to How to Succeed in Business (without really trying) instead. Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame was headlining and it was INCREDIBLE. Great, great, great show. Very classic Broadway fun. We were close enough to throw things at Daniel (but we didn’t).
Also, on the way there I almost ran into Samuel L. Jackson in the intersection. Didn’t get a picture though, sadly.
Okay, so that’s about halfway… To be continued tomorrow.
So… we’ve been kinda lacking on this half of the blog lately… but… things have been busy… I’m working, Virginia is working… holidays and all of that have rolled through…. so… yeah. That’s our excuse. And we’re sticking to it.
So.. here’s what Christmas looked like….
As you can see, Santa Claws came to visit…. O.C. made such a cute Santa… and Grace actually liked the sweater…. the antlers on the other hand… we’re just getting to the point now where we’re not afraid to sleep… Grace was threatening us for a while… looming over us while we slept… just watching… biding her time… just waiting for our eyelids to fall… but now, she seems like she’s forgetting about it.
Josh also came up… and we had a second Thanksgiving with another awesome turkey…
This one was brined for 2 days… then I injected it… then we smoked it on the grill… it was a special kind of awesome… just thinking about it now makes me want to cook up another one… I think that turkey doesn’t get enough “play”… it shouldn’t be relegated just to holidays and crappy lunch meat… Fresh carved turkey, and the subsequent week’s worth of leftover turkey sandwiches is something that should be celebrated at least quarterly.
Here’s our spread… we kept it reasonably small since it was Thanksgiving #2…. but, it did provide the important thing…
Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Sandwiches.
Then… there was work… and more work… and more work… and then Christmas… which we already mentioned above… then I went back to work, and Virginia… well… Virginia took off to New York with Martha… it must be nice to be able to take off like that…. There are pictures of the New York trip somewhere… I think Martha has them… and Virginia has the stories… so… I’m gonna just say “They went to New York” and leave it at that…. Virginia can fill in the rest with pictures and whatnot…
Then more work… and more work… and more work… but then today, we decided to get out of the house… actually, we decided to do that yesterday, but Virginia left her house without her coat… so we couldn’t really do anything, because whenever she got out of the car, she froze into a solid block of ice… according to her that is… according to the thermometer on the car, it was 62 degrees yesterday… so, anyhow… where was I… oh yeah…. today.. we got back into the car and tried that whole “doing something” thing again… so we drove up onto the Parkway, parked with dozens of other cars, and went walking towards Humpback Rock…
This is the view from the top… but… it’s a pretty crazy walk up there.. so there was a lot of this going on…
But… it was pretty amazing up at the top… quite a few people… but there was enough room to spread out a little bit….
Here’s Virginia… on top of the world…
It’s absolutely amazing up there…. you feel like you’re above absolutely everything…. except for the people who are on rocks above you… but you can push them off… then you become King of the Mountain! … or a felon… I’m not sure which… maybe both.
Anyhow… we had a good time. It was nice to get out of the house, and we might have to do it again sometime…
