So, it was a bit weird when we were separated for a few weeks in early June.

We were back in Minnesota and South Dakota to visit family and friends and to attend a wedding. Anna stayed for her dad’s birthday and for some more quality time with her tribe.

I, on the other hand, packed my bags and headed back to work in New York City. The following is just a glimpse of what my life at “The Pad” was like while Anna was away. It’s the kind of stuff you’d find on the Discovery Channel if you were up at 3 a.m.

- I found myself subsisting on…well, I’m not sure what. I guess it was a combination of lunch meat and block cheese. When I did make it to the grocery store, I conspicuously left with a six-pack and microwavable chicken pot pie.

- I declared weekends deodorant and shower-free time zones, despite temps in the 90s and no air conditioning. I know what you’re thinking - eww, gross, nasty, sick. Yup.

- I slept on the couch a lot. Come to think of it, I actually spent a lot of waking hours on the couch.

- I grunted…a lot.

- I enjoyed a cold one with my bowl of Cheerios.

- I played basketball at the local park.

- For about 30 minutes outside of our building, I watched an ant carry a dead fly, drop it, and then return to his ant hill never to return. Stupid ant.

- I stacked dirty dishes with Olympic precision. The critical moment came when I ran out of clean forks. After a moment of panic, I retrieved one of the precious last clean spoons and made due.

I’m sure all of you are glad Anna came back. And so am I.

Because while it takes a great deal of effort to clean and care for myself, I know she’s worth fighting grooming for.

Sadly, my sense of direction was confused and after we got off the subway I led Anna east when we were supposed be headed west (or the other way around). She finally convinced me (I admit I can be stubborn) and we made it just in time to see two girls do a fist pump. They had purchased the last tickets (cue clench-fisted slow-motion “Noooooooooooo”).

Anna was a real champ not making me feel too bad about it and we started walking around the Union Square area looking for a place to have diner. That’s when we happened upon the Union Square Theater where “Jump” is currently showing.

We secured a couple of cheap tickets ($20/each) for the 8 p.m. show and headed off in search of a three-pound hamburger.

Fast-forward to the show: It wasn’t a full house so our $20 balcony tickets got us on the main floor, plenty close to the action (and there was lots of it).

“Jump” is best described as a live kung-fu comedy featuring talented tumblers and martial artists. The slapstick comedy was fairly enjoyable (taken for face value) and there were a lot of amazing acrobatics and eye candy. All in all it was a good show.

Be warned though, if you go, you might find yourself on stage duking it out with these trained professionals.

In other news, Anna and I are going to see Josh Rouse this Friday at Carnegie Hall.

He’s another artist I’ve discovered through Pandora, further showing why Internet radio should actually be embraced by record labels and artists’ management companies. I’ve spent several hundred dollars on music and shows for musicians I would never have followed before Pandora.

Anyway, you should listen to some of Mr. Rouse’s tunes at his MySpace page.

I highly recommend checking out his song “Hollywood Bass Player.”

The Pope’s coming to town this week and I’m wondering how much it would cost to rent out the Popemobile for a few hours. I’m also working on my moves should there be some time to fill in his schedule.

The past month flew by. I can’t believe my Spring Break, Easter and April 1 have come and gone already. It all seems to have come and gone so fast. I know that Drew has written about some of our outings, but I will give you a little update on what’s been happening in my life.

According to my day planner (which has come in very handy this past month) March started out with a placement planning fair. This event is set up to help first year social work students, like myself, pick out where they would like to intern in their second year of school. I attended this event happily as it gave me a day off from my current internship (which I do enjoy, but who doesn’t relish a day off from work?). The event marked the start of my month of trying to decide what I am going to be doing with an MSW. At the fair I was able to talk to some places that looked interesting to me, but unfortunately, I left there feeling more confused than enlightened.

I was trying to decide between working with either Families Youth and Children or Aging populations. I am currently in an internship where I work with the Aging population and I like it very much. But, I wasn’t sure if I stayed with the Aging population in my second year if I would be “pigeon-holed” into always working with this population. (And, anyone who has seen me in New York knows I really don’t like anything that has to do with pigeons.) So, I wanted to try something different, but there was a great internship opportunity within the field of aging that looked really appealing to me too. I just really could not make up my mind.

I had to go to interviews and fill out a bunch of forms and get my decision into the school by April 3rd. So, while I was going back and forth about what I wanted to do, (according to my day planner) I also wrote several papers and had a midterm, worked on group projects, went to a Hipster beach party, turned 25, saw a Knick’s game and a show about Rock n Roll, had spring break and decorated some easter eggs. Oh and (thanks to Drew) watched lots and lots and lots of basketball.

For some reason, in the end, I decided that an internship in the field of aging was the best way to go for me. I turned in the sheet on Thursday. I cannot really say what it was that made me choose population of aging, but something was just telling me to go in that direction.

Then on Friday I went to a seminar held by the Consortium of New York Geriatric Educational Seminars. I had signed up for this event in the beginning of March and had kind of forgotten about it until Friday morning when I saw (thanks to my trusty planner) I was going there instead of my internship. I didn’t know what was in store for me at this seminar, but again, I was happy to get out of a day at my internship. Happily, unlike my event at the beginning of March, at the end of this event I came out very much less confused and more enlightened.

The seminar focused on health promotion and culturally appropriate care with older adults. There were several speakers who are at the tops of their fields in working with older adults. I learned about the use of complimentary and alternative methods such as aroma therapy, massage therapy and use of herbal medicines. The final two speakers impressed me the most. One spoke about the use of music therapy and showed many amazing videos that showed the power of music for people who are physically and cognitively impaired (A woman who can only speak the word “Yes” is able to sing all of “Day-O”. Its incredible.). And the final speaker shared her own life story with a room full of strangers to showcase the power of life review therapy.

Then, yesterday I was doing reading for one of my classes. For the first time this year, one of my classes is actually focusing on the aging population. I was excited about this because in none of my other classes has aging been focused on and, as a result, many of the things I have learned have not directly applied to the work I am doing. The piece was from the New Yorker and described the aging process in a way that really spoke to me. The last line of the article, is a quote from an older gentleman driving in his car in after dusk. “The night is lovely, isn’t it?” I read this line and thought, “Okay, I know what I am supposed to do.”

The night of life can be a beautiful and fulfilling time, and if I can help in any way make people’s night times a little more lovely, that is something that I am very excited to do. I still don’t know what made me decide to do an aging internship before I had these two experiences. It’s like I knew what I was supposed to do before I realized it. But once I realized it, I must say, it was a really good feeling.

The loudest cheers of the night came from parents yelling for their scantily-clad, 12-year-old daughters dancing to “Low” during timeouts (Apple-bottom jeans and the boots with the fur!).

The second-loudest cheers of the night came for the 10-year-old boys who played during half time (I totally would’ve dominated them).

Madison Square Garden may be the “World’s Most Famous Arena” but it also hosts one of the most over-priced tickets in the pro game today.

There’s nothing like watching NBA players launch up half-court shots in warms-ups to let you know they just don’t care (or are really passionate about HORSE).

The Knicks don’t have a mascot, have a crappy cheer leading squad, and use t-shirt slingshots (I’m sorry, but you need t-shirt guns if you want to compete it today’s market).

Not once was the crowd roused from its seats during the game, except to go grab some more nachos and beer.

Even the most abysmal Minnesota Timberwolves game is twice as exciting as a Knicks game.

But, it’s still not that much better. I continue to feel more distanced to professional sports as time goes on with a few exceptions (The Minnesota Twins being the most notable — reasonable ticket prices and accessible players).

I’ve seen a lot of high school and college basketball games that have left me buzzed (I’ll still pass any urine test you throw my way). It’s fun to watch extremely skilled athletes, but a competitive match-up wrought with emotion and consequence is often far more entertaining.

And that’s why March Madness makes me so happy (see why March Madness makes Frank happy).

Last night we made our way to a “Hipster Beach Party” on the Upper-East Side to bust a moby (funny, I didn’t even know what a hipster was until we moved here).

A few nights ago we went to the play “Rock and Roll,” which according to Wikipedia is “concerned with the significance of rock and roll in the emergence of the democratic movement in Eastern Bloc Czechoslovakia between the Prague Spring of 1968 and the Velvet Revolution of 1989.”

It probably would’ve helped to know a little bit of that background beforehand. So, it took a while to fully comprehend what was going on, but once I did, I enjoyed the show. It starred Brian Cox, so it was great to see him on stage. He’s an amazing actor. I’m hoping we get to see him return in Super Troopers 2.

It wasn’t a musical, but had excerpts of a lot of great tunes from The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd and more.

Anna’s parents are coming next week and we’re looking forward to their visit. We’ll be taking them to a Knickerbockers game, so that should be fun.

Anna’s birthday is also next week (March 15) so I think I’ll try and bake her a cake.

Feels like Spring is right around the barn, and I need to sign us up for a 5K so we have something to train for.

Anna beat me in Scrabble the other night: 265-232. She had an impressive game and totally walloped me despite giving up 20 points at the end for not being able to use the letter z.

Anna and I went to the movie “Definitely, Maybe” (trailer), and it was surprisingly tolerable, dare I say enjoyable. I like Ryan Reynolds so that helped. The movie was also set in NYC so it was cool to see a lot of familiar places (hey, we’ve been there!). But, is it a must see? Definitely, maybe (sorry, not really).

I may have mentioned this before, but we usually go to see mainstream movies at the AMC Empire 25 in Times Square. Tickets are a little pricey ($12 for adults), but the screens are huge and the chairs are comfortable (it’s hard to put a price on leg room and reclining seats). You also get a few aerial views of the Times Square area as you ride up escalators several floors to reach your theater.

Spring is right around the corner and I’m still wondering when winter is going to show up here in New York City. It’s dipped into the 20s and 30s for a few days but only snowed a total of 3 times all season, all of it melting away by the next day. I guess it’s also possible that Columbia University’s veracious grounds team shoveled it all into the Hudson River.

In other news, guests are arriving soon! My good friend Bill is due out here in mid-March, followed by a visit from Anna’s parents. It’s always good to see familiar faces.

Book your summer travel here now before dates fill up!

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.

I knew from the pre-trip email they sent with a detailed itinerary for all three days that they were going to be wonderful guests (*hint hint to all future guests). And, I am happy to say that I was right (I often like to be right, as Drew well knows by now). We started out on the Friday night they arrived. First, we had the always popular apartment tour, followed by a walk to a local bar. At the bar we enjoyed general camaraderie and the film “Bird on a Wire”. It was a great start to the weekend.

The next morning we all took advantage of the Saturday morning to sleep in and finally made our way out of the apartment around noon. We hopped on a train and made our way to Central Park.

Central Park is probably one of my favorite places in New York City that I have found so far. Although, at this time of year it is slightly brown and drab looking, I still think it is pretty amazing. It has some incredible sights to see, such as Strawberry Fields, where on this visit we learned from a Lennon “expert” that Yoko didn’t want a statue of John Lennon in the park due to bird doodoo. And there is my favorite spot at the south end of the park where there is a pretty little footbridge over a pond with ducks. This favorite spot is very conveniently located to one of my other favorite places in New York which is, faithful readers will know, FAO Schwartz. I don’t know why, but something about the giant piano and stuffed unicorns is magical to me. So, the three boys and I all went happily into the giant toy store (granted, three people in the party weren’t quite as thrilled as others, but I won’t say who.)

After the fun times in the park and on the piano we decided to search for some food and fortuitously (big word, I know. I am impressed too.) happened upon Five Guys Famous Burgers and Fries. There we had some very some tasty burgers and fries, (and one hot dog with bacon!) and fueled ourselves up for our next adventure.

As it turned out, we didn’t need all that much energy. We quickly walked over to the TCKTS booth to buy our tickets for a Broadway show. And then, we hurried up and waited, for about an hour and a half…. Luckily, all the guys were such good sports about waiting and are so good at entertaining themselves (’Let’s come up with alternate lyrics to the Green Acres song!’), it really wasn’t too bad. Unfortunately, the show we wanted to get tickets for (Spring Awakening) only had partial view seats available, so we went with option number two, Altar Boyz, which, as it turns out is an Off Broadway play. However, it was still a hilarious, although somewhat irreverent show, which we all enjoyed a great deal.

Once we got our tickets we had some time to kill so we decided to go to the top of the Rock. Drew has written about this experience in his last post on this site, so I won’t say much, except for that it totally ROCKED!! That’s all.

The next day we had another late start and decided to go see that Statue of Liberty. According to the website we could get there by 5 PM and see it. Unfortunately, this was not the truth. It took us about an hour and a half to get to the end of Manhattan, then we had to wander around a while due to lack of signage to find where the tickets were sold. By the time we found the ticket booth (338 PM) we found a little sign that said all ticket sales ended at 330 PM. It was sad. And it was cold. And it was terrible signage. This did not make us happy. But being the flexible, roll with the punches kind of group that we were, we made the quick decision to jump on the Staten Island Ferry, which left from a nearby dock. From the Ferry we were able to get some good photos of the Statue and we all set foot on Staten Island for a brief moment. It was happy ending to this part of our day.

After our sea faring adventure we were all quite famished and so we headed into Chinatown to find some food. It was pretty cold and windy by this time, so we didn’t search for too long before we settled on a Vietnamese Restaurant (I know, a Vietnamese restaurant in Chinatown?? What were we thinking?) The food was simply okay, but our waiter was so rude, he was hilarious. He chastised Alan, Drew and I for all ordering a chicken dish (”Chicken?!, Chicken?! Chicken?!!!!) and also for only drinking water (”You are only drinking WATER?!!”). Dan was his favorite because he got beef AND a beer. Way to be different, Dan!

After the crazy waiter experience, we hailed a cab because it was way too cold to walk and went to a sports bar in Alphabet City to see Green Bay be defeated by the Giants (Wahoo!!) Then we went to another restaurant/bar in the Lower East Side called the Rodeo. There they had very yummy comfort food and we had some great conversations about James Bond and American Gladiators (a guilty pleasure of mine, I must admit) and other such things. All in all it was a very good day in New York.

The next day we were all pretty exhausted, but managed to get a trip in to Kitchenette, my favorite breakfast place, and then to Times Square before the guys had to head out to catch their train out to the airport.

It was a great weekend for Drew and I and I only hope Dan and Alan had as much fun staying with us as we had hosting them. Come back and visit any time guys!!

First off, we had Drew’s sister, Abby. She came in on Wednesday the 9th and stayed until Sunday the 13th. The days were jam packed with sight-seeing, restaurant eating and Guitar Hero playing (and I must note, and Drew has to concede, that Abby is AMAZING at Guitar Hero).

It’s so fun to have visitors come because their excitement for the city helps me to see it with new eyes. (Yes, I am already slightly jaded from living in New York for five months.) When Abby first arrived she mentioned several times that she felt like she was in a movie and she couldn’t stop smiling. She was even excited to see rats in the subway… However, I must say her face when we came out of the subway station at Times Square, was priceless….I wish I had thought to take a picture of it.

Abby had been given some advice on places to see from some of her friends who frequent New York, so that helped us out immensely with deciding what to do. We did a few of the things that Drew and I had done in previous outings (Columbia University, Times Square, Central Park, Grant’s Tomb, Grand Central Station, Cathedral of St John the Divine, Rockefeller Center, St Patrick’s Cathedral and 5th Avenue) Okay, it was kind of a lot of things. But as I said, it was great to be a long with someone so full of excitement at seeing them all for the first time.

We also did some new things we had been wanting to do, such as going to the top of the Empire State Building. This was quite the experience. The lobby and the top of the building are great! The view from the top is incredibly spectacular. However, the way up is not so much fun (as Drew wrote about in his last post.) We also visited the World Trade Center site and caught glimpses of the new construction starting there. Unfortunately, they have everything pretty much fenced up and then have tarp covering all of the fences, so everything we saw were literally glimpses as we had to peak through rips and tears in the tarp to get a look.

Another fun excursion was to the store Century 21. Basically this store is like a GIANT TJ Maxx. There is so much stuff there and so many people there that it is pretty difficult to do any leisurely shopping. You really have to know what you are looking for, and then be willing to wade through hundred’s of items and hundred’s of people to find it. I did find a very cute bag, Abby some souvenirs, and even Drew (after he awoke from his nap on one of the couches there) found some white T-shirts. All in all, it was a success! (However, I am sure that Drew will never be going back there, and I will only go if someone I really care about has come to visit me and wants to go.)

In addition to fun sight seeing we found a few good restaurants as well. Two of the places we went to were within one block from our apartment, but for some reason, we just never got around to going to. Which is another reason I love visitors, it gives us a good excuse to go out to eat! Happily for us, both places were very good and one of them, Kitchenette, has become my new favorite breakfast place.

This has become a very long post, so I will leave the excursion with our other visitors to my next blog. But I must say that it was a great pleasure to have Abby come visit and she is welcome again at any time. Stay tuned for Lot’s of FUN with Lot’s of Visitors!! (Part II)

The Empire State Building (ESB) is arguably New York’s most well-known landmark (it is the tallest building in the city right now, after all) and it certainly attracts a good amount of turistas. But does it deserve all of the attention?

The ESB’s lobby is kind of cool and I like it because it reeks (like tube socks) of another era. Consider it an Art Deco appetizer to the rest of the building. We passed through the the lobby and headed up an escalator into the winding lines (worse than any maze I’ve ever been in).

We went through security, purchased my sister a ticket (we bought ours online) and then were shuffled into miles of those elastic rope line-control thingies (Hey, wasn’t that the elevator we just passed?).

This is where our ESB experience quickly fell apart.

We were funneled into one room so they could take a crappy photo of us (and later try to sell it back to us for more than what it costs to eat for a week). Then, just when we thought we were on our way to the top, we were sent into another line in another room where they tried to hock $8 maps and audio guides.

“You’re going to get up there, walk around once, and then what are you going to do?”

Are you serious? Oh, they are very serious. Serious like county fair carnies.

“You have keys for your car. You’re going to need a map to know what you’re looking at.”

This mantra was blasted over a loudspeaker and we heard the same sell about 8 times while waiting in line for the elevator.

When we finally reached the elevator, it was a very short and fast ride to the top. The ESB offers some really amazing views in all directions and I think it definitely has The Rock beat in that regard. It’s pretty easy to take photos despite the safety grates (tripods are not allowed into the building) and be prepared for a good amount of people milling about.

It’s unfortunate the process is commercialized to such an extent. I give the ESB a C.

The GE Building at Rockefeller Center, on the other hand, was not crowded and we could’ve been in the elevator to the top in under 5 minutes. We decided to watch a few short films about the building and NBC.

The elevator ride to the top is a off the chain (not really). A person ushers you in and wishes you a pleasant ride to the top. Then the doors close and the space suddenly become dark, revealing a plexiglass ceiling and a clear view up the elevator.

Even cooler is the blue lights placed on each floor, so as you pick up speed, they start to blur and you fear you might just be making your own Willy Wonka exit into the skies of Manhattan. The only scarier ascent I’ve experienced is that of the Space Needle in Seattle, where the elevator offers a clear view to the outside.

Once we reached the top, there was plenty of space to roam around and look at the city, including two levels of outdoor viewing. There’s also Plexiglas barriers which are nice because they don’t obstruct the view, yet do a good job of shielding the wind.

There’s also a cool room at the top produced by Target that lights up in different colors when you move around. All in all, the Top of the Rock rocks. I give it an A and in this epic battle of buildings I declare 30 Rock the undisputed champion.