Birthday Brunch

We had a wonderful birthday brunch on Saturday. About 17 of us made it out to Essex for a fairly early brunch. Yes 11:30 is early for brunch in NYC.

From Birthday Brunch

From Birthday Brunch

I had a tasty eggs benedict and Scott had some eggs and salmon along with unimited mimosas. Very tasty. Sky and Anna brought us some very sweet birthday presents by bringing a couple of disposable cameras for the table to take pictures with. They also provided cupcakes with candles. Afterwards we made our way to Sky and Anna's place for some SingStar and sushi dinner. I'm pretty sure all we did all day was eat.

From Birthday Brunch

From Birthday Brunch

Lovely Visit

It was better than the Tooth-Fairy or the Easter Bunny. Sarah Mapes and her boyfriend Corey visited us for four lovely days here in New York City. They drove all the way across the country just to see us. I think they deserve a gold star for doing that in just 2 days. Whew, I reported on Easter's activities. Monday Sarah and Corey tried to visit the Statue of Liberty but got stopped because of a pocket knife. I guess there's airport level security for the Statue. Instead they came up and got some passes to the Natural History Museum from me. Every guy is happy spending a day with the rocks and dinosaurs. Girls don't mind them either :)

From New York Sara...

From New York Sara...

After I got out of work we met up with Sarah's friend Sarah who she went to high school in Alaska with. Sarah Combs is going to Columbia for her masters, so of course Sarah Mapes had to have a chance to say hello. We grabbed some pizza and dessert at a bakery, a good NYC standby. Tuesday morning Sarah had a class to learn about grant writing and budgeting for work. Once she got done we headed down to China Town to grab some delicious food from Joe's Ginger. You can't beat the steamed pork soup buns for tastiness.

From New York Sara...

From New York Sara...

From New York Sara...

We also managed to fit in a trek across the Brooklyn bridge to some excellent pizza and some more Sing Star karaoke. We had a wonderful time and now we just need a way to get from Denver to New York quickly and easily. Anyone who has an extra jet plane lying around should send one my way.

From New York Sara...

This picture shows Sarah and Corey leaving NYC for the last time on this trip. The next picture is one that symbolizes my feelings. If I had been the one in the middle and hanging on to everyone. I didn't want to let them go! But I'm very glad they came.

From New York Sara...

Easter Parade

I hope everyone had a lovely Easter or a lovely Sunday if you don't celebrate that particular holiday. We've been having a wonderful time with Sarah and her boyfriend Corey in town. I will have to post about it all later because I'm too busy having fun for now. Just thought I'd share some pictures from the Easter Parade. It's not really a parade with floats, it's more of a thing where the street is blocked off and everyone wanders up and down it wearing hats, some crazy some more normal. It was fun to see. my favorite was the Peeps Statue of Liberty.

Brella Jockey

Forgive me if I've lectured on this topic before, but every time it rains I find that it's such a uniquely New York phenomena that I can't help but notice again. On the sidewalks of New York which are usually busy with people going where they want to go at their own pace whether it be fast or slow tourists quickly learn to treat the sidewalk like the highway. Get out of the fast lane or you'll get run over. This problem is compounded when everyone has their own umbrella which can add an extra foot or five of mandated personal space. I always wonder if you can judge a person by their umbrella. I do notice that a lot of big wall street type men tend to carry the golf umbrellas that take up the entire sidewalk. Seriously, do they need to carry their tent with them? Anyway, you have people with huge umbrellas, people with colorful umbrellas and people with no umbrellas. If you're ever unfortunate enough to be in the latter category you will find no sympathy, because people will not get out of your way so you can walk under an overhang and they will walk right by you letting the water pouring off their umbrella stream onto your head. Even if you do have an umbrella and it's a small one you've got to jockey for space. Are you going to hold steady? Will you raise your umbrella up, tilt it or hunch down? You have to do that dance that happens every once in awhile with strangers. You know the one, where you both try to get out of eachothers way by going the same direction? With umbrellas you can't put yours higher if they're going to do the same. I hope this makes sense. It helps if you picture a sidewalk with say 6 people holding umbrellas trying to walk past each other at once. There's a lot of overlap and intricate manuevering. If you don't do it just right your umbrella could end inside out or maybe it just smacks into someone else's and showers you with the water resting on top. It's just a funny phenomena that I never though of before I lived in the city.
You can also tell when the rain started by the variety of umbrellas in the afternoon. If it was raining when everyone left for work, they were sure to bring an umbrella. One that they probably took time to select and purchase, so there is a lot of variety, pops of color or clear plastic dome shapes, all kinds. If it only started raining in the afternoon and people didn't check the weather report all the umbrellas are black and lots of people are wet or running for shelter. The guys that come out on the street corners like rats out of holes when it rains sell a standard cheap black umbrella with a curved plastic handle that will last you through approximately 1.5 rain showers before it flips inside out, rips and the handle falls off. It's fine in a pinch, but you'd be better off going to the nearest Drugstore and buying a real umbrella. I always think that would be a great marketing scheme for a bank or some business. Print your name on a big bright umbrella and give them out with any transaction while it's raining. Or maybe rainboots, since the people in the picture obviously could have benefitted from some.

Luck O' The Irish

From 2008_03_17

I started out the day in my usual haze of morning fog. I didn't really pay attention to what shirt I had put on until I heard someone on the news say Happy St. Patrick's Day. When I looked down and saw that I chose my green shirt to wear I thought, huh that's pretty lucky. I got my annual review today and it was super good, which made me very excited so Scott and I went out to dinner to celebrate. We had some really good guacamole and drinks and when the bill came I checked it and the waitress took my card. When she came back I saw that for some reason she had only put half the correct amount on the card so of course I told her right away so she could fix it. For some reason that seems to happen to me every once in awhile and I'm always honest about it, which usually pays off. One time the manager gave me a complimentary bottle of wine. This time our waitress just said thank you. Scott and I wandered over to our train station and tried to sprint down the stairs and only managed to get there just as our train was pulling away. When the trains pull into and out of the tunnel they create a wind tunnel effect and everthing blows everywhere. I thought I heard a shout and looked in the direction of it and saw a bill floating away. I hurried to stomp on it thinking someone's dollar was about to blow on to the train tracks where it would be irretrievable. When I picked it up I saw it was a 20 dollar bill. I looked around and asked the guy if it was his and he said no. There were some other gentlemen around dressed up in old Union Civil War gear from the parade. Apparently they'd been imbibing a decent amount because I asked one of them if the money was theirs and he shouted at his friends who didn't seem to know/care if they had lost any money. So the guy said "it's your lucky day." I guess it was. It's nice when the Karma train comes back around.

Count Down

Very soon Sarah and her man Corey will be coming to visit! I can't wait to see them. I've never met Corey, but I've heard good things :) It's been a little warmer lately which makes me so excited for spring. That is until all the pollen starts making me cry. Apparently in New York they plant male trees which have less root structure to tear up the sidewalks, but that also means a higher pollen count. Allergies in the city aren't very fun, but warmer weather is definitely welcome. I'm counting the days till flip flops and beach time.

work-shops

I had a workshop for the little kids today. We made pop-up books. They are so funny, it really entertains me to see what comes out of the imagination of a 2 or 3 year old. I had them make pop-up mouths and then decorate it with whatever kind of animal they wanted it to be. One kid made a horse and had the mouth in the middle of the horse's body. Then she made a lion and asked me for help so that I could spell the story she wanted to write. "The lion hears the horse running and the horse eats him." It was quite the novel. All the letters were there, but words weren't necessarily on one row and some of them went backwards across the page, but I was pretty impressed with the skill and imagination of such a little kid. Another girl made a rainbow around her mouth, I wasn't quite sure what this rainbow creature was about but she seemed to have definite ideas.
In Big Brothers Big Sisters we're working on creating animations so that we can add sound effects and a score to them. Our story is pretty interesting, but I won't give it away. I'll have to post the animation we made last year at some point. It's a pretty good one. tee hee.
Got slaughtered in volleyball tonight even though we played pretty well.

IRSssssssssstinks

Grr, I'm currently battling the IRS over taxes they say I owe but I know I don't. The person I talked to at the IRS said "oh wow, that's not right, you've got your work cut out for you." when I explained the situation to her and why it wasn't right. I love how the responsibility falls to me to fix this mistake. It's like I'm guilty until proven innocent. Grrr. Alright, rant over.
I've got Volleyball tomorrow and Big Brothers Big Sisters. My "little" Shaniqua finally got to meet Scott today. That was exciting since she got to be excited about our engagement and all but hadn't ever met him. I also got to hang out with her because we went to a movie scoring recording session at NYU. It was pretty neat to see. They had the orchestra up on the stage in front of a screen where they showed the movie, then the conductor had on headphones that had clicks going in time to the movie, to help them conduct the music just right. You could definitely see/hear a huge difference when the music hit the scenes at just the right spots vs when the music was off. These were all music scores written by NYU students for some animations or films written and produced by NYU students.

Signing off with some trivia:
The IRS, deals directly with more Americans than any other institution, public or private. It also is one of the world's most efficient tax agencies. In 2000, the IRS collected more than $2 trillion in revenue and processed 226 million tax returns. It also had the lowest cost/collection ratio since 1954.

How much do you think it costs taxpayers for each $100 collected by the IRS?

A) $10
B) $2.45 Incorrect: The correct answer is C
C) 39 cents
D) 89 cents

Ri-turn

Hello! It's been a very busy couple of weeks. Last weekend I had class from 9-5 learning about how to use dreamweaver. I'm very interested in web design and building. Plus work and volunteering with BBBS and finishing up Photoshop class and volleyball and soccer and events. Whew, I hadn't been home before 10:30 in quite awhile and Scott didn't get home before midnight all week. I began to wonder if I even had a husband around :) Anyway, I'm back now hopefully. I did meet a "celebrity" at one of my events. I'll post the picture once I get it. He was someone who I admired as a kid and he was even in one of my favorite books. Hehe it was Grover! The only picture I managed to get was one of the place where I spent most of my time which is in the Woolworth Building. A very ornate and beautiful old building. The other picture is of a creepy thing that I found at the bottom of a coffee cup. I made Scott take the picture then dispose of the bug. Those things creep me out!!!