It finally caught up to me

I finally got sick... had a sore throat at the end of Friday and my cold started. Bummer. But it wasn't bad - Echinecea helped!

So I came home from work on Friday - we were going to go to a Shakespeare play in the park, and of course it started downpouring and spoiled our plans. Bummer. Actually, come to think of it - it's been raining for the last week almost. I guess Saturday it didn't rain, but every other day it has! Sorta dreary... But we went out to dinner instead with our guests Bret and Allison who are fun people. They wanted to try some "Best Burgers in NYC" place down in Greenwich Village. I think it was called Corner Bistro - lots of places here have very generic names! Funny that. But this place was packed - small place (everywhere here is small because space is so expensive) with a bar. They only had grilled cheese, hamburgers, and chicken sandwiches on their menu. But I have to say, their burgers were very tasty. Not the best burger in my life, but good :-). So we had some fun times - walked around Greenwich Village and came upon that cupcake store whereupon Bret said it was outrageous to pay $2 for a cupcake. Is it really that crazy? Hmmm. Then we ended up going home and just chilling on our own with banana margaritas Allison made us - pretty tasty! With rum, banana liquer, triple sec, and margarita mix.

Saturday was a long day - one of those "away from home walking around town for close to 12 hours" days. And I was a bit sick. But it was fun - we went back down to City Hall area and saw all the courts, then made a trek from out guidebook across the Brooklyn Bridge which was awesome. Neat bridge! And beautiful views of the skyline - especially the lower Manhattan tall buildings. Altho it was a long bridge. I took a lot of pictures - actually almost got run over by a bike when I took a picture. It was sorta my fault - I was trying to cross the bike road, and I got entirely chewed out by the biker behind the actually biker I ran into! Harangued! I felt bad :-(. But I made it. We went to the recommended fabulous pizza place in Brooklyn when we got there, but of course everyone else had the same book as us so we waited in line over 45 minutes. But the pizza was actually worth it! Pretty simple, but fresh mozzarella, tomato sauce and basil go a long way! Yum :-). Then walked down to the recommended ice cream shop on the pier with all-nature ingredients - also in the book and also a huge line. But faster than pizza. Very tasty - I got vanilla chocolate chunk. I guess they make their own cream. And the pier had some beautiful views - I saw at least 3 bridges there taking pictures :-). But we saw some billowing black smoke as from a fire rising from lower Manhattan and were afraid. Sorta scary - and it smelled metallic when the smell got to us. We found out later that a building by the World Trade Center that was being torn down had caught on fire! Crazy...

So we walked around the Brooklyn Bridge park which was really pretty, and decided we were going to walk back on the beautiful Manhattan bridge because we like the exercise :-). Another mile at least! There were a lot fewer people on that, though, and we made it - dumped back into Chinatown which is always interesting. We walked Bret and Allison through Little Italy (which has all but been encompassed by Chinatown which has expanded a lot). Then we veered over to NYU and Washington Park for a rest. Interesting park - very gritty. Very interesting people watching and lots of performers out - musicians and magicians. I wondered how you get a piano into the park everyday! If only he'd just play the piano and not sing! But it was nice to relax - we saw chess players too. But yeah - there could be hustlers and shady deals in that park too... So from here after awhile we decided to walk again, and headed to Union Square which I like for some reason. We suggested going to a brewery (Naveen loves these), but decided on caffeine instead in the form of coffee - it'd been a long tiring day! Just relaxed in the park with our coffee for awhile - no one felt like dinner. Then finally we just went home and made homemade black bean and corn salsa and ate chips for dinner! How funny... And played Eucher - a fun card game. Good friends, fun times, good company. And they left at like 4:30am on Sunday! But Bret looked up the distance we had walked - a good 7.5 miles! Go us :-).

So we were supposed to have another guest come in Saturday morning to Monday evening, but his flight got delayed again, and for that short of a trip it wasn't worth it, so he didn't end up coming. But that ended up being ok! We were tired Sunday and just wanted a down day. Chilled, watched TV, organized my pictures. It was rainy again or I might've gone to a play in the park. I did treat myself to a pedicure :-). Fun to pamper! And good to relax... Especially after all the company.

Monday was another dreary day - as I say we've had dreary days since Friday... Back to work and my advisor from UT showed up at IBM. She'll be here all fall on sabbatical - it's weird to have her here actually! But it's nice. I ended up leaving early to catch the last movie in the park at Bryant Park in New York City. Bryant Park has the big public library with lions and it's near Time Square. Beautiful park, really - perfect flat lawn for a movie setup. It drizzled a little bit, but we made it through the movie - an awesome one I hadn't seen - Hitchcock's "Pyscho"! Fun to see on the big screen. A bit scary, but of course a classic. Glad to see it! And the audience had mostly seen it because they laughed or clapped before predicted scenes - like when she gets in the shower everyone knew what was going to happen! Most classic scene ever. So very fun. And we bought sandwiches to picnic with :-). I love these little New York experiences like this - free movie in the park. Fun stuff.

Yeah, Kathryn (my advisor) thinks it's very cold here because she came from Austin's 100 degree temps to this week it's been in the upper 50s, lower 60s! Brrr. I'm ready for it to get back to summer this weekend! I want to swim again!

Gave a 15 minute presentation on my (semi-failed) project today at work. Went well - I was told it was well explained which is good. Short talks like that are hard - hard to actually explain the meat or "interesting" part of the research in such a short time. But I made it :-). I need to get into my new project, but I have to admit I'm a bit downtrodden lately. A little scared that everything I do just fails. A little sad that my friends will leave next week and then I won't know people here and will be lonely. A little nervous about starting a new project partly in the database world that I don't know much about. I need to just dive in, not resist it, but it is hard. Here's to generating momentum!

Have a great week - I miss everyone.