America's Playground

After returning from Boston last week, I had a bout 48 hours before I was off again, but this time to Las Vegas.

I was in Vegas for my friends', Brandon and Pam, wedding. It was a very nice, small wedding in the garden at Caesar's Palace.

After the wedding we gathered for a cake reception and dinner at Caesar's.

Brandon is from Hastings, MN and many of his friends from there gathered. Because I was Marni-less, their little group was kind enough to make me an honorary Hastings resident and welcomed me into their pre and post wedding activities.

After dinner we headed out to the fountain/light show outside of the Belagio.

Congratulations Brandon & Pam!

Papi for Presendt?

Twins fever has indeed landed in Brooklyn. I've taken to including the Minnesota Twins schedule in my detailed calendar for the next two weeks arranging pretty much everything around it. It looks like they are going to make the playoffs, but even more exciting is that they have a chance to win the division.

So about a month ago my brother Aaron let it slip that he might be able to get tickets to the Twins vs. Red Sox in Boston if I was interested in going. Uhhh yea.

So on Wed. morning I got up early, took the Fung Wah bus to Boston and hung out in the Sheraton Hotel all day working (stealing their free wireless internet) and waited for Aaron to finish work so we could head to the game.

We had great seats.

It was such a nice night and it was such a fun game. The Twins ended up winning after Torii Hunter hit a 3 run homerun over the green monster in the 8th inning.

Another highlight of the night was seeing David Ortiz (former Twin, but now a Red Sox legend) hit his 50th homerun, tying the Red Sox record for most home runs in a season (he went on the next night to hit 2 more homeruns, thus taking over the record for himself). As you can see, Boston fans, despite losing, still had something to cheer about.


I had a great time and it was well worth the ticket price and the early morning bus trips. Thanks Aaron!

Garden Party

We had a pretty low key weekend. Friday was rainy to we stayed in after work. Saturday we then did a little shopping for some odds and ends, I'm installing some new shelves, but the progress is slow.

Our hilight of the weekend was the Annual Garden Place Block Party. For those who don't know, the quaint little block on which we reside is called Garden Place. It's a great little tree lined street that doesn't have any through traffic because it is a T at both ends. So every year the more permanent residents organize a block party, and thankfully invite us renters to join them as well.
In case you were wondering, and I had little doubt, we surely live on the whitest block in New York City. I am pretty sure that Marni was the only non-caucasian there. It was pretty funny...of all the places in NY, I land up in the one closest to Utah (in terms of skin tone).

But it was a good time. We chatted with neighbors Geri and her daughter Julia. They gave us a little history (gossip) of the neighbors and introduced us to a couple of new people.

It was potluck so Marni made chicken salad. It was a hit, and was gone very quickly.

Can the World Really Handle Another Katie Johnson?

I've been delaying a post for a few days in anticipation for some news...

Please welcome to world Tyler Jason LaMott:



Our friends Katie (formerly Johnson) and Jason LaMott are now the proud parents of a baby boy. Here are the kid's stats:

Tyler Jason LaMott
Born Sept 12, 2006
9:18am
7 lbs 3 oz
20 3/4 inches long



So this really begs the question, can the world handle another Katie Johnson? I started thinking about the events of yesterday morning and I did a bit of research. I took note of the time and found a couple of interesting notes about 9:18am CST on 9/12. For starters there was an earthquake in Malaysia (no casualties thankfully) that registered around 5.3. Then, in Costa Rica, Pacific side only, the power went out for about 45 minutes due to a "polar irregularity" as reported by Reuters. And then closer to home, suddenly on Sixth Avenue below my office, every cab on the street started honking at each other and the cabbies yelling incessantly, but see that's every day on Sixth Avenue, the weird part is that they were all yelling at each other...in English! Now I'm not going to make any assumptions. I'll let you draw your own conclusions. But needless to say...something was going on at 9:18am yesterday.

It is a good sign that their child was a boy. Perhaps there is hope that we'll have a new addition to the world that's more like dad, and less like the hellraiser that is mom.



Love you both. And congratulations.

J&M

One Year Later

We are happy to report that it is final. We will be living in New York for at least one more year. The lease has been renewed with minimal increase (always a big worry come lease renewal time in NYC).

What this made us realize, is that it was a year ago today that I pulled into New York with my big yellow Penske truck.

It has been a whole year now that we've been "New Yorkers" (by legal residency only...I don't know that we've completely earned our stripes yet).

To celebrate our year in New York, we crossed yet another thing to do off of our To Do List. This one had more of a home town sentiment to it despite the location however. On Friday after work we hopped on the train out to Yankee Stadium to see the opening game of the Twins vs. Yankees series.



It was a drizzly Friday night in the right field bleechers, but was still a fun night. The Twins lost, which bummed me out, but it was still fun to be routing for the Twins in a sea of Yankees fans.



Needless to say, they weren't very threatened by me.

So after a year of living in New York City, we decided to create a couple of quick lists to reflect on our journey.

Here is what we've LEARNED:

1) Despite the moniker "City that Never Sleeps", unless you are in a very active neighborhood, the city definitely sleeps. You will always see people for the most part, a slice of pizza at 3am is not as easy as you are led to believe.

2) Having your grocercies delivered is silly. Having a table from Ikea delivered is worth a mountain full of gold.

3) No matter how little space you have left in your closet, there's always room for more stuff.

Here's what we MISS:

1) The constant breeze in the air.

2) Grilling food during the summer.

3) Chipotle. Oh wait, no we don't. We have one 2 blocks away and we go there every week.

Here's what we DO NOT MISS:

1) Cars

2) Parking

3) Gas prices
(obviously there's a theme there)

Of course we miss all of our friends and family that we don't get to see as often as we used to. But that was the intent behind the blog...to keep everyone up to date on what we've been doing and stay connected to you all. Thank you to everyone who visited us this past year. We look forward to seeing you on your next visit. If you have not visited yet...the door is always open.

We are looking forward to another eventful year. And you can be sure you'll read all about our adventures (both good and bad) on JMNYC.