And now for part two. I only hope that this blog doesn’t fall in line with most every sequel ever made (do you get the idea?) No? How about now?

It has now been two weekends since our last guests, my good friends, Dan and Alan, came to visit. They came over Martin Luther King Jr. Weekend. It was only a few days trip, but we packed a lot of stuff into the very short time. So get ready for a long post.

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The previous two weekends before the last we have been hosts to some awesome guests. They kept us busy and helped us explore our new “hometown”, which we had been neglecting somewhat in the past month.

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New York City offers some spectacular city views. So, if you have to choose which Manhattan peak to summit, where should you go? Should you shoot up to the Top of the Rock or swing by Kong’s hangout? I offer our experience.

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Hello! So I am back after my long hiatus. How many times can I use the grad school excuse before it doesn’t work anymore? Hopefully, I won’t need it in the future as one of my new year’s resolutions is to blog more often. (But really, how many times COULD I use the excuse??)

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Anna is sick with the stomach flu (no I didn’t poison her…well, hopefully not) so I am taking it upon myself to kick off a new year of fun-loving posts.

Why is Anna sick? I’m hoping it doesn’t have anything to do with the meal I made for her (one of our resolutions is to take turns cooking every other night). I seem to have survived (nice work small intestine).

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I stood atop the Fred Lebow Statue at the finish of the 2008 Olympic Marathon Trials in Central Park, my left arm slung around Fred’s bronze shoulders.

I gazed off into the distance as Fred gazed down at his watch as the last of the runners trickled in. I wish that if we had waited long enough, we would’ve seen Ryan Shay power up that last incline, too.
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This last weekend as we were looking for something to do Drew found a nifty little advertisement for Open House New York. Its a weekend where buildings that are usually not open to the public are opened for limited hours. We decided to go see the Chrysler building, but got a very late start. In fact we didn’t get out of the apartment until after 3:00 PM. (I got distracted making cupcakes and Drew was distracted doing something on his computer.) Even though the building closed to the public at 4:00 PM we thought we’d give it a try. (Its not like one of us is in grad school or the other one isn’t busy running a web based marketing campaign or anything.)

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It turns out we live just three blocks from Grant’s Tomb, the largest mausoleum in America (and the second largest in the Western Hemisphere). Creepy? A little. Cool? Absolutely.

Some of the more interesting facts I learned about the 18th President of the United States:

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I’m taking some time away from my studying and cleaning to reflect a bit on the past week since I last blogged. Okay not really taking time away from as much as postponing my studying and cleaning…

Drew recently posted about our Saturday of running and giant pianos. Seriously, I loved the FAO Shcwarz store. It was so much fun. If people come and visit I think I might make them go there. I mean its free and you get to play on a giant piano. Its fabulous!

But Drew already wrote about that so I will talk a little about what we did last weekend. We went to the world famous Lenox Lounge.

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I woke up this morning and started to prepare for my first race in exactly 364 days (the last race being the 2006 Twin Cities Marathon 5K Run/Walk which I completed in a tidy 20:00). I’d like to say I planned it that way…you know, for dramatic effect and to keep up my two race/year average.

Nevertheless, the old pre-race habits came back right away: lace up shoes, attach timing chip, crumple up race number and put in mouth, eat a box of Kraft Mac and Cheese (OK, I threw that one in for fun).

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