Introducing...

I'd like to introduce you all to the newest member of my family...

Anna Noelle

She was born on April 25th at 2:12 in the morning.
6 pounds 11 ounces
19 and a half inches in length

This is my sister and brother-in law's (Jenna & Justin) second child. Megan, their first child, is just thrilled with her baby sister...


Apparently Megan thinks Anna is her baby.

We'd also like to apologize for the long wait between posts. We've been busy with school and work, but hopefully we'll get our act together and start posting regularly again soon!

-M

Late Night/Date Night

I often end up working pretty late hours when a job requires it. For me, as a producer, it usually means me sitting in the office waiting for the artists (3D artists usually) to do their work so I can post up a link for our client. I had one late night recently as a result of a job we did for Lysol:



The "germ" characters you see about half way through the spot took all night to "render" (for the computer to process the digital information, frame by frame). So...it ended up being an all nighter for me and my crew at work (about 5 of us).

The good thing is that this doesn't happen often. Maybe 2 or 3 times a year. And the company I work for is very understanding and appreciative of our dedication to making the best of these situations. My boss in particular always encourages me to take Marni out for dinner as a result, and he'll pay for it. This time however, he just hooked us up with a gift certificate that could be used at a variety of great restaurants in NYC.

So Marni and I decided to make a date night out of it and we chose Union Square Cafe...a very popular highly rated restaurant in the city.

We had a great time. We had oysters to start. A bottle of wine. Duck (M). Tuna (J). And finished the meal off with a couple of chocolate deserts. We were stuffed but it was all great!

We then headed to the Union Square movie theater where we flipped a coin between seeing No Country for Old Men (J's choice) or Atonement (M's choice). NCFOM won the coin toss.....but it was sold out! So we saw Atonement instead.

Unfortunately...I thought it was very bad. Poorly done. Could have been so much better. Blah blah blah. M thought it was ok...but didn't live up to her expectations. Needless to say, we don't think it should be on the Academy Awards Best Picture list this year.

So here's to a late night at work...and all the entertainment it can provide for M and I after the fact :)

End of Year Travel

2007 was a very interesting year. Marni and I both started new jobs (I had two different jobs!), we traveled to Florida, got engaged, spent the summer with my friend Mac, had friends and family Mark, Jasper, Kati, Alyssa, Christina, Wyatt, Rocky and Libby visit NYC. All in all it was a great year to say the least.

To cap off 2007 we took some time off (my first vacation since starting work in June) to head home and see the friends and family that didn't get a chance to visit us.

I started my travels with a stop in Minneapolis to celebrate my brother Wyatt's birthday on Dec. 20th. Then headed to Fargo the next day to spend time with my friends there. My camera is sort of broken and I didn't have Marni's camera, so unfortunately I can't show you what a great time I had.

I then returned to Minneapolis and met up with Marni who had flown in a day after me. We spent Christmas eve with her family and enjoyed her grandma's famous swedish meatballs.

Christmas day we got up and drove to Brainerd where I had the pleasure of meeting Marni's Grandpa Chuck for the first time.

The remaining week was spent doing wedding preparations. Being in New York we've conducted most of the business via email and phone. So now that we were in town we went around and visited all of the locations, met with all of our vendors, etc. Our parents met each other for the first time as well.

On the 27th we celebrated my brother Elliot's birthday. Wow is he excited about his Target gift card he got from Marni and me.

For New Years we'd made plans a while back to join my friends Jasper and Kim, who live in Fargo, in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It wasn't the high season of summer that Myrtle Beach is known for, but it was still very nice. We shopped...

ate...
...hung out on the beach...

swam in the heated pool, and played some golf. Kim won!

When it came time for New Years Eve we hung out at the condo. Ate some pizza and chilled on the balcony. When the clock struck midnight the entire resort erupted in cheers and fireworks. It was a great time.

Thanksgiving 2007

Let's all take a second and think back to last year's Thanksgiving. What a wonderful time that was:
http://jmnyc.blogspot.com/2006_11_01_archive.html

I really do miss the beach, and the palm trees, and the sway of the bo...ouch! Marni just hit me.

Ok so last year's Thanksgiving was great. But this thanksgiving was equally as good (but not equally as warm).

Wed. after work we high tailed it out of NYC up to Boston on the Chinatown bus. My parents were flying in the next morning and we had a holiday weekend of fun ahead of us staying with my bro Aaron and his wife, and our parents joining us. For Aaron it had been 17 years since he'd had Thanksgiving with our parents. Which made me realize, I believe it has been somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 myself. Wow, time flies. Needless to say, we were both Thankful for the opportunity to spend it with our parents, and gals.

We didn't grab that many pictures. But we had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner, post Thanksgiving dinner, and night out at a great restaurant. We did grab some pics however of our trip to the new Boston modern art museum. Here we are outside. And the family in front of the harbor.


Hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving!

M&M in NYC

Our string of visitors continued with my friend Mark coming to New York for the first time. Mark lives in Fargo and runs an art gallery/shop in downtown Fargo called Gallery 514 (gallery514.com) and is also a DJ. So between art and clubs, he was well overdue for a visit to NYC.

We started off with meeting up with old friends. You remember Mac, who lived in NYC over the summer. Mac, Mark and I (along with Jasper who also visited over the summer) have all been best friends since we were in first grade. Here's the three of us on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade before crossing the Brooklyn Bridge on a cold Saturday.
I gave Mark the brief walking tour of NYC, hitting a few of the sites, a few less frequented areas. It was cold, so we never shied away from taking the subway, a cab, or taking refuge in a restaurant.

We hit up Holy Basil for some thai food for dinner. We knew we were looking for some live music and good place to chill in the evening. We found a magazine the recommended a jazz club up in Harlem. Perfect!

Well, it wasn't so perfect. We had a good time. But to call it a jazz "club" was a bit of a misnomer. The trio was great, but it was basically a small little shop in what amounted to a strip mall in Harlem. The place was lit like any store, fluorescent, brightly lit, no real ambiance or mood. But it was bring your own wine/beer, so we obliged, and had a good time.

Afterward we had a slight run in with the cops in Harlem. There was no trouble. But I think we might have looked a little out of place in that particular neighborhood at that particular night. We caught a cab back downtown and headed to Mac and my favorite late night hang out, Decibel.

Mark used to live in Japan, so he enjoyed the no frills, authentic Japanese sake bar. We spent a good bit of time there...ordering bowl after bowl of edamamme.


The next morning Mac headed back to DC and Mark toured around the Brooklyn art gallery scene in DUMBO. Later, Marni and I met up with him and his friend Ali at MOMA, and then took a quick jaunt through Central Park..

...before taking one last picture and saying our goodbyes.

Marathon Visitors

For the second time in the three Novembers we've been in New York, we had visitors over the NYC Marathon weekend. Previously my parents had visited, but this time my brother Wyatt and his wife Christina were able to join us.

Wyatt had been on a business trip to Philadephia all week, and used the approaching weekend as an excuse for Christina to join him and make a vacation weekend out of it visiting us an hour away in NYC.

I took the day off to clean up the apartment and get ready for our guests. I then headed out to the airport to meet Christina who flew in from Minneapolis. We took a cab in to meet Marni at her work, which happens to be above Penn Station...the train station in which Wyatt would be arriving shortly thereafter.

It was Wyatt's first time in New York, and we had only 48 hours with them so we got started right away with a trip to Times Square.

After hiking around the city for the night, Wyatt and Christina were ready for a beer. So we hopped on the subway...

...headed back to Brooklyn and had some Fish and Chips (and beer) at our local favorite the Chip Shop: http://www.chipshopnyc.com/

The next morning the whirlwind walking tour of NYC got started with a walk through our neighborhood to the Brooklyn Bridge. Marni had class, so she couldn't join us for the morning portion of the tour.


We then hit up the World Trade Center site, Battery Park/Statue of Liberty, and made our way up to Chinatown.


By this time Christina's feet were killing her from all the walking. So we found a place in Chinatown called "Foot Rub Heaven". How could we say no?! I bought a her a 15 minute foot rub while Wyatt and I waited for Marni to join us.

Hunger was setting in, so we took a detour through the Lower East Side to grab the pastrami sandwich at Katz's Deli.

Wyatt's a big foodie, so we had to check out some NYC restaurants run by some famous chefs. Mario Battali's "Otto" and "Babo" were relatively close, so we checked them out and proceeded up to Union Square and then back down to the Lower East Side for dinner at Freeman's Alley, where we had a 2 hour wait at the bar! But it was a good time. We finished up the night with a little karaoke before heading home in a cab.

The next morning we were beat, but not to tired to go meet Christina's sister who happened to be in town for events surrounding the NYC Marathon. She was taking care of her son Ely while her husband Corey was at the marathon. Marni and I said hi to Ely and then we all took him out for a day on the town.


We had a great time and it was fun to have visitors again. We hope Wyatt had a good time for his first (but not last time to NYC).

Happy Halloween!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!