NYC & Company

After an excellent trip to Maine, my Texas friends came back to NYC with me until Thursday. Tonya was originally supposed to have a hotel room for work, but her work stuff got canceled, so they stayed with me. I worked everyday, but had fun playing with them at lunchtime and in the evenings. Luckily, this week at work has been much slower than it has been lately.

Monday night, we were all pretty exhausted as we had gotten up at 3:00am to travel to NYC. We picked up food to take home for dinner and relaxed and went to bed early. Tuesday, I met Elizabeth and Tamara to buy some show tickets and to eat lunch (Tonya had gone into the office that day). We ate at Vinyl…a funky diner-ish restaurant just down the street from my apartment. We enjoyed checking out their bathrooms, which each honor a different recording artist. I went in the “Nelly” bathroom, which had a large glass mosaic mural of his head and was playing the song he sang with Tim McGraw. It was pretty funny!

Tuesday night, we met at Joe’s Shanghai in mid-town for a Chinese dinner. It was good, but not nearly the same experience as going to the one located in Chinatown. Afterwards, we went to see “Curtains” the Broadway musical starring David Hyde Pearce. It was a cute, funny show.

Wednesday night, I met the girls in Brooklyn for some delicious Grimaldi’s Pizza and Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory. Afterwards, we headed to West Village to go enjoy the music at Marie’s Crisis. We were a little disappointed this time…it was slow and not as fun as in the past. Maybe because it was a work night and all the singers didn’t come out, I’m not sure!

Thursday, I met the girls for lunch before they headed back to Texas. We ate at “Just Salad”, a newer salad place Tonya had seen on Martha Stewart a while back. They had everything you can imagine to go on a salad. It was fun and yummy!

I had one night off last night without company and my friend, Amber, hits NYC late tonight for a long weekend o’ fun. We have some different things planned that I’m looking forward to..will update next week!

While walking through Greenwich the other night on our way to Marie's Crisis, I saw this in a store window (my high school mascot) and had to take a pic!

Maine Top 10

My trip to Maine was fabulous and the exact kind of get-away I needed—very fun and also relaxing! I left early Friday morning to meet my Dallas friends, Tamara, Tonya, and Elizabeth up there. Tonya’s friend and co-worker, Sean, has a house on a lake up there. Two of Tonya’s other co-workers went, so it was 6 girls and Sean. His guy friends who live in Maine and some of their families came over frequently to even things up a bit and provide Sean with some relief! It was a gorgeous place…a very quiet lake with very few houses on it. So extremely peaceful. Sean is also equipped with everything needed to make for a fun weekend! Pictures from the weekend can be found here!!

We did so many different things in our short time there and I’m sure I could write a very lengthy blog about it all. I’m going to limit myself to the TOP 10 (in no particular order):

1) Purchased live lobsters, cooked them at home and ate them for dinner! Yummy!
2) Took 2 long kayak trips in the lake….once to be up-close-and-personal with the bald eagles that are fed nightly by the next-door-neighbor.
3) Shopped in Bar Harbor…a super cute village on the ocean. Very pretty and quiet place.
4) Explored Acadia National Park…enjoyed splashing around in the freezing cold water at Sandy Beach and seeing the views and hiking around the tip-top of Cadillac Mountain. My favorite part was following the piles of rocks on the trails that are used to guide your way down the mountain…it was like a scavenger hunt looking for the piles then hiking to them!
5) Hit golf balls into the lake off tees placed at the end of the dock. This game was my idea and I have a feeling it’s one Sean will use again in the future. Only he and I played and he talked a lot of smack beforehand about how much further he’d hit the balls than me. Guess who won? Yep, me! Well, it might have been a tie, but it was awfully close! I even shocked myself since it’s been so long since I’ve picked up a club (I sold mine before moving to NYC). It was fun and made me want to play, so I may have to hit up the driving range at Chelsea Piers in the near future.
6) Went tubing!! It’s been a long time since I’ve done any recreational boating and riding on a tube again was a blast! It sure hurt afterwards, but it was worth the fun.
7) Nightly bon-fires. Sean has a great fire-pit where the boys built fires each night. We sat out there for hours talking, playing, eating smores, enjoying Sean’s wine collection, etc…
8) Lots of fun swimming and laying-out on the “float” with Tonya. We even swam over to the neighbors area where they had a water-slide we borrowed!
9) Midnight boat rides. On both Friday and Saturday nights, some of us took boat rides at night. We would park the boat in the middle of the lake and listen to the loons and frogs and watch for shooting stars. I saw 1 each night, but others saw even more than that!
10) GREAT company! It’s always great to be with any of my Dallas friends, but also super special to experience a new place with them, too! I also enjoyed Tonya’s co-workers and all Sean’s friends who came over to play.

Hockey Junk

This week at work was the annual Hockey Store sale. It was the craziest thing I've ever seen. It started on Tuesday when we got an email telling us to come to the kitchen at 11:00 with a bag...you could fill your bag for $3. In the kitchen was the largest amount of junk I've ever seen. Hockey stuff the NHL didn't sell this past season that they're trying to get rid of now....t-shirts, caps, jerseys, hockey gear, kids toys, jackets, fleece sweatshirts, TONS of Christmas decorations and ornaments, banners, etc.... Most of it was team-related and most of it was for Canadian hockey teams. I really couldn't get an interest in most of it, but I did pick up a few things for Ryder. Later that day, they emailed us back and said we could come back and fill our bags for $1...they were just trying to get rid of more stuff. But, everyone went back and most people got another bag full of stuff!

Then today, was the BIG sale. People have been talking about it for weeks. They have nicer things at this sale...better clothing items, authentic jerseys, etc... This time everything was priced. It started at 11:00 and people began lining up about 10:45. They were serious. I went, didn't get anything. A few hours later, they sent an email saying they were marking everything down, and finally, they had another $3 grab-bag with what was left. It was nuts around the office. We'd get an email notifying us of a mark-down and you'd hear the person who read the email first yell "it's all $3 now"!! And you'd hear people rustling around to find a bag and everyone would dart for the kitchen and then come back with LOADS of junk. I really thought most of it was junk. I guess if you're a huge hockey fan, it would be pretty cool though. We have 4 boy interns this summer and they LOVED it. The intern who works directly for me got boxes and bags full of stuff. He plays hockey for his college and he was practically giggling with excitement when he talked about all the new decorations he has for his dorm room. He even got a New York Rangers shower curtain. A SHOWER CURTAIN!!! Too funny. It made for an entertaining week at work, though.

I leave early in the morning for Maine! Yippee! I need a get-away. Work has been crazy the past few weeks - I was there until after 8:30 tonight and other nights as well. I'm ready for some fun and some R&R. I've never been to Maine before and am excited to check another state off my list of ones to visit. I'll be sure to take some pictures and write about our adventures once I return!

Concert in the Park

Last night, I attended my first concert in the park of the summer. Every summer, the NYC Philharmonic and NYC Opera do concerts in Central Park. This was the 4th one this year. I went twice last year...it is always really fun. I went with a few girls from my Community Group, Sarah, Robyn, and Ilyse. We tried to go earlier in the summer, but were rained-out and ended up having an indoor picnic instead. Last night was perfect weather though! It was so nice to sit outside with fun girls, eating yummy picnic foods, drinking wine and enjoying the music in the background. We had so much fun, we even stayed after the concert ended until a cop came and told us they were clearing out the park. I really like these girls and wish we got together more often, but it seems like it's always hard with everyone's schedules.

Random Run-In

I had another really random run-in with a Baylor grad today. I went to the eye doctor-- someone I'd just randomly picked off the internet. I got there and the doctor noticed on the information I had filled out that my cell phone number is a Dallas number. So, she mentioned she was also from Dallas. Then, as we continued to talk, we discovered we were in the same class at Baylor! I didn't know her or recognize her or her name, but that's a pretty crazy coincidence!

Fantatsia

I had another NYU class this weekend -- Registration Logistics. It was mostly about customer service. Not the best class ever, but it was okay. My classes are across the street from Bryant Park (same on I went to for lunch on Thursday). On Friday mornings, Good Morning America does their Concert in the Park series there. Friday was Fantasia and she was on stage just as I was arriving for class. I walked over to listen for a minute. I'm not sure what I think of her music...kind of strange, but I only heard one song. She's on Broadway in the The Color Purple right now, which I guess is why they had her on the show. Anyway, just the latest celebrity sighting, not a terribly exciting one though!

The rest of my weekend was really slow. Went to church, walked around the Upper West Side some, and saw "Liscense to Wed"....it was cute, but got too silly/unbelievable for me.

Bodegas?

I don't think I had ever heard the term "Bodega" before I moved to NYC. Now, I hear it all the time and go to Bodega's all the time. I'm actually not sure what qualifies as a bodega and what does not. All over Manhattan there are tiny stores that sometimes consist of a grocery store, convenience store, and deli all in one. It seems like that's what people are usually referring to when using the term "bodega". So, I've been wondering, which of those 3 things is it? I looked up the definition today and found 2:

1) A small grocery store, sometimes combined with a wineshop, in certain Hispanic communities.
2) A warehouse for the storage of wine.

I don't think most of the "bodegas" here even carry wine and I'm not really in a Hispanic community at all. I'm not sure why the word is so frequently used here and honestly haven't used it myself. I tend to refer to all those combo-stores as delis, even if they only have the grocery/convenience components. I honestly think it's a little confusing and think we need to come up with a new term for these stores. Any suggestions?