A Long Overdue Entry And So Much to Tell

It's certainly been quite awhile since I've typed up an entry in this here blog. There are just a few small things that have kept me busy over the past few months. Additionally, I've had this uncompleted task of typing up all my CR entries from my notebook but have just closed that out by typing up the last one and leaving it as is. I'm not going to type up any others and it's tedious and time consuming and honestly not that rewarding. Next time I'll have something to write up my entries electronically.

So where do I even begin?
Well for one, I'm going to London next week! I'm going there for a week to work from office and look for a flat.
Hang on a minute... look for a flat??
Yessir, I'm moving to London on April 4th to take on a new role which I am very excited about. The whole move is something I'm ecstatic about and it goes WAY beyond switching roles. There is just so much to look forward to and it has me smiling wide with excitement. :-)

There's lot to do until then, but it had been bugging me that my blog was missing the last CR post and also an update on the changes going on with me. I'd better crack on with my list of tasks, much to do.

Oh, and by the way, IT SNOWED TODAY! WOOHOO! Beautiful, white, powerdery snow filled the streets and sidewalks, car windshields and signs. I'm headed out tomorrow to explore the park and see if there's anything fun to photograph.

Wintery Goodness

Snow snow snow!!! We've been getting quite a lot here as of late and it's AWESOME! It's making up for the dismal snow year of 2006. I'm watching the white specks stream down through the windows at my office. It brings a smile to my face this morning.

SNOW DAY!!!!!!!!!!

It was great having Michelle's parents here to visit. We did most of the things we planned on doing and most importantly went to the restaurants we planned on taking them to. NY is all about the food, well any city is about the food for me!

I don't mean to...ah, the words are NOT coming to my head and I can't figure out how to best put it. So forget that sentence, all I really want to say was IT SNOWED TODAY!!!! I woke up to a winter wonderland outside as a blanket of white powder covered the area outside the apartment. I quickly showered, had some yogurt, got dressed and put my boots on. Michelle asked "where are you going?" I didn't need to respond since the look on her face knew my response was going to be "I'm going to play in the snow!" I bundled up, grabbed my camera and headed out the door to find flakes fluttering through the air. The picked up speed and showered me with white flakes. I had a HUGE smile on my face as I walked around, cozy in my coat, scarf and sweater. I snapped a few photos of the wintery goodness but mostly I just walked around and let the snow piled up on me. I think this photo brings that description to light (it's blurry because the camera chose to focus on the background instead of yours truly).


More pictures of the snow! View the rest on my flickr page.








The city was absolutely beautiful today as we walked around. Snow covered every spot of the city: signs, doorways, rooftops, car windows, benches, christmas trees on the street. Ahhhhh, how lovely to see the city in the middle of the holiday season AND fully covered in snow. It was gorgeous!

Tonight we made use of the Bowbeer's rental car and drove to Jersey (i know, we're crazy but keep reading) to go to Bertucci's. It's the italian place with the AWESOME bread. Oh man, so so so good. I haven't had that since I went to Michelle's graduation in May.

Last night we went down to Rockfeller center to see the tree. We got there around 11pm and it was practically empty. Our strategy of going late seemed to pay off. I took a couple of photos (of course) and here are a few of them:

Snow Snow Snow - Wintery Goodness

Listening to: Howie Day - Be There

I'll be eating a homemade chocolate covered banana while writing the first part of this entry. They have become a tasty treat of mine that are very simple to make. However, after this past weekend I shouldn't have anymore sweets for the rest of the year. I think getting Michelle a giant heart shaped cookie-cake from Mrs. Fields was a very bad idea... It was sooo good at the time though and I've been enjoying it the entire weekend. Michelle ate a few pieces but I admit that I did the most damage. Every time I went into the kitchen I would slice off a piece of the pie and little by little I made my mark. I'm guilty as charged. Another sinful treat was the chocolate covered strawberries I made for Michelle. I bought some ghiradelli dark chocolate and pulled a recipe from foodnetwork.com and went to town. They turned out really well!! What made them even tastier was some champagne I picked up that turned out to be very good for the price.



A very fun experience Michelle and I had was going to the play Avenue Q. We tried a few weeks ago to get lottery tickets but didn't get any. This time we lucked out and Michelle's name was chosen first from the big bucket of names. We were both really excited about getting front row seats for only $20 each. It was my first Broadway show too and what a show it was...SO FUNNY!!!! We both had a great time and are going to try to get tickets for Wicked next weekend. :) Overall, Michelle and I had a great weekend in the city together. Although we didn't do a ton of stuff it was still fun to hang around the apartment and stay out of the cold. We made some yummy food too and I just had an all around good time. --Thanks for making the trek down here sweetie!--



So on the the title...there's been snow on the ground for the past week and it's been very exciting. It's cool to see white covered cars, trees, patches of street (although most of it is an ugly brown by now) and it's stayed cold enough so the snow hasn't melted. Warmer temps are predicted for the coming week so I set out today to get some pictures of central park before the white blanket disappeared. When I first arrived it was such a breathtaking sight...the entire park was as white as could be except for a few paths carved out. It was amazing and gorgeous and great for pictures. I loved walking through the cold, snowy fields and just feeling winter all around me! This is what I was waiting for the whole year and it was hard to take it all in. I tried to capture some of what I witnessed but I messed up the settings on my camera so a lot of the pictures came out grainy or too light. For the techies, my ISO was set too high and the exposure was too long so the pictures were blurring and grainy. I snapped a couple of good ones though as long as you don't zoom it all the way.



I've been playing a lot of guitar lately and it feels so good! I love jamming with my electric on Guitar Rig. It's probably one of the best pieces of software I have and it makes the guitar experience so much richer. There are hundreds of settings and thousands of combinations to choose from...it never gets boring. I've been trying to record some new stuff but Sonar has been giving me problems lately (it's the software I use to record). I recorded some long solo's just for fun but they are just too raw, there's lot of mistakes and switching...it's basically just 9 minutes of experimenting which nobody wants to listen to, haha.



Without further ado...

SNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Missing in Action

Listening to: Howie Day - Don't Panic

Don't worry, I'm not dead...just really lazy. :)

It's SNOWING!!!

Listening to: Jet - Stand Up

IT'S SNOWING OUTSIDE!!! I walked out and to my surprise, light, fluffy flurries were sweeping down out of the sky. It wasn't cold enough for the snow to stick but it was fun to see it coming down. I walked up a couple of blocks and felt the snow blowing past me. I stopped at the intersection and watched it through the street lights. It was soooo cool!!!! Man, I can't wait until there's a big storm and the snow piles up on the ground outside. I want to see that white blanket covering the city. In the meantime, I took a couple of pictures with my small digital camera (I didn't want to bring the big one out into the wet snow). You can look at them on my flickr page but I've also included a few below for your viewing pleasure.









As for the weekend, Michelle and I didn't do a whole lot but it was really nice to see her again. It was extremely cold on Friday night so we decided not to brave the wind chill. We stayed in and watched "This Film is Not Yet Rated." We both really enjoyed it. Check out the review here. On Saturday morning, I made waffles for breakfast which I've captured below.



After we stuffed ourselves with yummy waffles, we ventured out into the city to do some shopping. We took our chances at getting lottery seats for Avenue Q but no dice. It's not going to stop us from trying though...next weekend! Instead of the play, we ate at Spanky's BBQ in Times Square and went to a comedy show at UCB. It was a nice full night of entertainment and good eatin'!



...and here are some more pictures from the weekend. Check out the rest on my flickr page.

Just a TAD bit cold...

Listening to: Nothing, my headphones are broken :(

I'd say it's fairly chilly outside today:


11°F

Feels Like

-5°F

IT'S FINALLY SNOWING!!!

Listening to: Supergrass - Moving

The snow is falling harder and harder outside the office window! I can see a whirl of white flecks drifting to the ground. There's no hope of it sticking in this metropolis but it's still wonderful to look at! :) :) Just a little bit has raised my hopes of it actually being a real winter up here in NY. I can't wait for more!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Listening to: Jason Mraz - Winter Wonderland

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Christmas Time in New York

Listening to: Guster - Donde Esta Santa Claus

We planned to have a full fledged weekend of exploring New York's winter theme. It would've been so nice to get a white blanket of snow in the city but that hasn't happened yet. It's been way to warm for it to snow. We had our minds set on the way certain things would be but were surprised when they turned out very different and much more crowded. But we came up with some good ideas of how to avoid the masses. Here's our weekend story...



Our plan for the weekend started out with going to visit FAO Swartz and Bergdorf Goodman. We left my apartment at about 4:30 dressed it sweaters and long coats since it was really chilly (felt like 25). We walked down to 86th street and got a large, fresh squeezed orange juice at Jamba and took the subway the rest of the way down. We got off at 59th street and walked across to the east side. FAO was packed and there was a line around the building to get in. We didn't want to go that bad so we continued down 5th avenue. It was so incredibly crowded! Everyone was out looking a the displays and shopping and it was crazy.



We somehow through the sea of people and down to Rockefeller center to see the massive tree. It was really beautiful. I'd seen pictures of it before but being there is different. The air was cold and crisp and the lights were all around.





Saks Fifth Avenue had an awesome light show on their building that played every 15 minutes. I took a picture of the snowflakes but check out the video of the light show as well. The song is a modernized version of carol of bells. It was awesome to see just a blurp of it in passing but as we meandered our way through the crowds we eventually got tired of everyone out there so we left in a hurry. We had the great idea of coming back late Sunday night when everyone would be gone.





We continued on to near Times Square where we had planned to eat dinner. We chose to go to Olive Garden for lack of a better place, plus we wanted some tasty bread sticks! After we waited more than an hour, we finally got seated and filled our tummies with a scrumptous meal. We planned on seeing The Holiday later that night so we went down to the AMC Empire a couple of blocks down. On our way we saw a HUGE limo truck. It was so freaking ridiculous...it had a truck bed and everything and people were actually proud to be in that hideous artifact.... When we arrived at the theater, all of the shows were sold out until 11pm. We spotted a Starbucks across the street so we waited in there and sipped a warm cup of caramel apple cider. The movie was really good. We both really enjoyed it and thought it deserved more than the less than average ratings it received. It was a really nice Christmas movie even though at times it was a little corny.



The plan for Saturday was to order brunch for delivery (yes we're that lazy!) and rest all day, watch Christmas movies and snuggle. We were motivated enough to make dinner and cookies in the evening though. We made some giant burritos with mexican rice (courtesy of Michelle), seasoned ground beef and beans. They were tasty and sooooo filling! Later on (around 10) we went down to Rockefeller again and it was empty! What a great time to go if you can because we didn't have feel like sheep getting pushed along. We took some more pictures of the tree, the light show and holiday lights along 5th avenue. We walked back to 66th to see the tree at Lincoln center and were pleasantly surprised to see this beautiful scene:

.

Nobody was around and it was so pretty. We enjoyed the sight of the glowing holidays lights all around and then went back home. I took a couple more pictures which you can view, as always, on my flick page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gpod