Halloween

A couple of weeks ago Kate went with some of her friends from the ward to a pumpkin patch to pick our pumpkin which we then left sitting on our front step for another couple of weeks. The day before Halloween I decided to carve it and put it back on the step. We had been planning to go to the Halloween parade and didn't think there would be any trick-or-treaters in our neighborhood (I was at the parade last year too so I really didn't know if we would have any or not). Turns out that by having a Jack-o lantern you open yourself up to trick-or-treaters. I went into school that day and was going to meet Kate in the City for the parade. When Kate left to meet me at 5:00 there were already at least 30 kids on our small block alone. They rang our bell but Kate couldn't answer because we didn't have any candy for them. I guess she could have given out some of the dental garbage that I've accumulated but that would have just made them angrier. We'll be ready next year.

I knew taking pumpkin carving as my minor would pay off.

Some random half naked guy dancing on the fire escape of some bar before the parade.



The NYC mayoral election was a couple of days after Halloween, so this "guy" was campaigning for Thompson (who lost) saying "my vote's not for sale...but I am". Yikes!!!


I met Kate and our friend Dave in the city for the parade Halloween night. It was a little disappointing this year because it was raining the whole time which really put a damper on things. However, the I think the rain kept a lot of the costumes pretty tame. It was also fun afterwards as we went to get dinner to see all the people dressed up walking around. Dave invited us to a couple of parties but because we are such losers, Kate and I just went home.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Last Saturday Jason and I borrowed a friend's car and

took a little day trip to Sleepy Hollow, NY. The drive along the Hudson River is absolutely beautiful this time of year with all the leaves changing to wide variety of colours.

Every October in the Village of Sleepy Hollow they put on special events, like Haunted Hayrides and Legend Evening, to celebrate Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". We didn't spend the evening in Sleepy Hollow because all the events tickets were sold out but it was still fun just to walk around. It was a little rainy and foggy but that just added to the spooky atmosphere.

One of the things we enjoyed the most was walking through Sleepy Hollow's Old Dutch Church Cemetery. It is one of the oldest cemeteries in America and it was really neat to see the gravesites of soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary War and Washington Irving himself.

"It's all dark and dead inside!"

They had a whole bunch of unbelievable gigantic mausoleums for all the dead rich people. The Rockefellers actually had a house nearby and put a lot of money into the town, including commissioning Matisse to design some church stainded glass windows that are still there. The window on this "small" mausoleum is broken and you can look inside...which really creeped me out.

The walk around the cemetary was actually really beautiful. It's amazing how many varieties of trees they have all growing together. I guess that's what you get when you aren't limited to only those trees that can survive -40 degree winters.

This doesn't belong to anyone famous. I just had to take a picture of it because it's the creepiest headstone I've ever seen.

Surprisingly, no one else was around to take this picture for us. Jason actually made us put away the camera when anyone passed because he thought we looked "creepy" having such a good time in a cemetery.

Kate's Here

Well, she actually got here at the end of August which means my bachelor days are over and I've had to get used to living with someone again, but it's been a smooth transition. We had thought about doing some traveling when she first got here because I was on a 2 week break from school. But we decided to stick close to home and relax. We did go see "Mary Poppins" the musical, which was obviously Kate's choice but like most of the shows Kate's taken me to, I wasn't all that excited about going to it but was surprised at how much I enjoyed the show.

As smooth as that transition was it didn't last long because within 1 week of Kate arriving, we had our first house guest, Kate's cousin Rachel. So as cramped as I felt with having Kate move in, and right when we'd figured out where to put all of her stuff, we get another. I'd started school by this point so Kate took Rachel into the city a couple of times by herself to show her around.

A friend of ours had told Kate that "Broadway on Broadway" was going on in the city on a Sunday morning. Of course I had no idea what the heck Broadway on Broadway was, but it turns out that it's a show they put on in the middle of Times Square (on Broadway) to mark the beginning of the Broadway season where they have performances from most of the major shows. Of course Kate was really excited about this; I had my doubts but I tagged along anyways. We got to Times Square right before the show started and the place was packed with people and police barricades which made getting around difficult, so we just jumped one of the barricades that separated the people watching from the small area left for people walking, and we settled into a spot in perfect time to see the show. There were 26 performances and Kate was keeping a list of the shows that she now wants to see. It turned out to be a pretty fun time but what really tipped the scales was that at the end of the show they brought a bunch of the actors back out on stage and the started singing "New York, New York" (in case you ever forget where you are, they like to remind you) and all of the sudden they started throwing confetti from the building. We finished the day with a picnic in Central Park.

Kate kept trying to get in the video. I had to beat her off with a stick.

Kate and Rachel did end up going to one of the shows on Kate's list,"The Fantasticks". Here's some trivia for you, the designation to "Broadway" and "Off Broadway" has nothing to do with where the theater is located, is has to do with the size of the theater. The Fantasticks is an off Broadway show which means the theater holds less than 500 people which made for an intimate affair

Rachel was here for 2 weeks and left on a Wednesday afternoon and that Wednesday evening my brother Michael and 2 of his friends checked into the Jersey City Steed Hotel. Oddly enough you'd think that having three people sleeping on air mattresses on your living room floor would seem more crowded then just one, but it didn't. They only stayed a few days and we didn't see them that much but they did take me to a Yankees-Red Sox's game. The day before the game was hot and humid so I naturally assumed that the next day would have about the same weather. I was wrong and so were the other guys. It was cold and windy. We were all in shorts with only thin or no jackets. Cold the whole game, but still fun.

Twins? Surprisingly not. I'm just impressed that Michael actually remembered he had a brother.

The funny thing about having house guests in a one bedroom apartment is that when they leave the place seems a lot bigger.

Again our friend Dave, who seems to know about all the fun things going on in the city, told us about a concert and movie screening of The Wizard of OZ in Central Park to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the movie. We met after school, had dinner, and went up to the Park. After a little bit of a debacle which left Kate inside to save seats while I left to wait for Dave and almost couldn't get back in because they had filled up, we both were in to see the show (Dave showed up late and had to listen from outside). Julianne Hough and Jennifer Hudson preformed. The movie was fun to watch with about a thousand New Yorkers who boo-ed and jeered as the Wicked Witch showed up, cheered when Toto made his escape from the picnic basket, and sang along with all the songs.

Mr. Steed Goes to Washington

Last Wednesday a friend of mine, Dave, said he was going down to Washington DC for the weekend and invited me to come with him. He was initially going down to get a bobble head from a the Nationals baseball game, but when I said that I'd take him up on the offer it became a sight-seeing weekend along with the baseball game. It's about a four hour drive down there with traffic and of course there was traffic on a Friday night.


The National Mall from the Capital building


Saturday we started out at the Capital. Dave lived in DC and worked at the Capital Building as a guide so we were able to bypass some lines waiting for a tour, and once we were on the tour Dave wasn't satisfied with how little our guide was telling us so we sort of wandered between tour groups and Dave filled in what wasn't being covered.


Archie Bunker's chair

Dorthy's Ruby Red Slippers

Oscar the Grouch. Note no slimey or elephant trunks or Bruno the can carrier.


We made our way through the various Smithsonian Museums for the next couple of hours which was good because it was raining.




We took the metro to the Nationals game. There are some big differences between the New York and the Washington Metro systems. DC's is newer and more open, people are more courteous, and you feel like you are less likely to find a pile of poop or a passed out drunk in the station. But where's the excitement then? The game ended up being delayed for about an hour because of the rain which turned out to be a good thing because by the time the game started there weren't many people left in the stadium so we could sit wherever we wanted. We sat in some great seats in both left and right field (we moved in the 6th inning). We did get the bobble heads.



Washington Monument reflecting in pool

Lincoln Monument

Closer


After the game we wandered back into the city to see the monuments at night. This was a really neat experience and I would highly recommend it. All of them are lit up at night and there is hardly anyone around. I didn't appreciate how empty they were until the next day, when we saw them during the day. It ended up being a late night, but DC has so many police around that I never felt unsafe.


During the day. Just a different look than at night.

On Sunday Dave had called a friend of his who is a city guide and agreed to take us around all the monuments and tell us all the stories about them. She is a lady in her 70's and has been doing tours for about 16 years so she is full of information and her pace was quick. She was a lot of fun. Having someone tell you the significance, historical background, and artistic aspects of each of the monuments deepened the whole experience.



The White House. The Obamas were on vacation.

World War II Memorial. With the Lincoln Monument in the background

This is hidden on the WWII memorial and was actually included by the artist. The American GI's would leave this mark on building as they went though cities.

Korean War Memorial. The etchings on the wall are actual pictures of soldiers from the war arranged to look like the mountains of Korea.


There are 19 statues of soldiers representing the army, air force, and Marines. Only 19 because when you look in the wall you see their reflections and you see 38 (see previous picture) which represents the 38th parallel the DMZ is on. Each of the soldier's faces is different and every face has characteristics of all the races of the soldiers that fought which makes the faces almost distorted.

The Vietnam War Memorial is just a wall with about 54000 names of the missing and dead. After the names of dead there is a diamond and after the missing a cross. Once the missing are confirmed dead the cross becomes a diamond.

People leave things at the wall all the time. Every day the national parks service picks up and catalogs what it is and where it was placed and stores it. There were a couple of letters on the ground while was there. Very personal letters. This one was from a guy writing to a friend of his. He explained that he had fought side by side with this guy but that he had been dealing with a lot of his own problems since he returned home but he was now ready to deal with his friend's death. The writer was said he was the first one to his friend's side after he went down.

Changing of the guard at the Tomb for the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery. They change every half hour. The one guard marches back and forth for the half hour, then an officer comes out followed by the replacement guard. The officer inspects the uniform and gun of both guards.






This is a picture from Robert E. Lee's house in Arlington national cemetery. You can see the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Monument, and the Capital building. Arlington was build on land once owned by George Washington but was passed down to his step-granddaughter who married Lee. Despite living in Washington, Lee said his heart was in Virgina and he left to lead the the South in the Civil war. His wife moved shortly after when they started burying people around her garden. You can see that there aren't any tall buildings in Washington; no building is allowed to be taller then the Capital building.


I think I came away from the weekend with an appreciation for the way a country honours it's people who have sacrificed and held true to what they believe in.

Summer studying

My summer semester of school started the beginning of July and just wrapped up yesterday. It's not exactly ideal to be in school in the summer but on the plus side the school's work load wasn't all that intense so I was able to do some fun things. One day before class I went up to Bryant Park where they had a big stage set up and on Wednesdays they had Broadway in the Park where they had performances from different Broadway musicals. It was alright but the music always means a lot more when you've actually seen the musical (and I haven't seen many).


Once a week I would have a lab that went until 8:30 at night, so on one of those nights I stopped in Hoboken on my way home and went to a "Movie Under the Stars". From the name you can figure out that it's a movie that they play outside and the night I went they were playing "Batman: The Dark Night". It was pretty cool the be watching a movie on the banks of the Hudson river with boats moving silently by and with the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building and the rest of the Manhattan skyline in the background.



I also started studying down at the main NYU campus which is right off of Washington Square Park. It's in a really nice area of the city and it's sort of fun to just go down there and wander around. The park itself is fun because it attracts all sorts of different people, making it a great place to take study breaks just to see what kind of people showed up that day.


With the mini Arc de Triomphe in the park, there is always a steady stream of tourists, but with the fountain there too, lots of locals young and old come down and play in the water. Apparently the park is a magnet for bands looking to make a quick buck and random people just playing for the heck of it. I've seen little rock bands, jazz bands, bagpipers, saxophone players, trumpeters, and tons of guitarists. It's funny to watch little groups form and then before you know it they're all playing and singing. Then there are people who just come and sit in the park and enjoy the oasis of green in the middle of the city.

Canmore Weekend

The weekend of June 20th the family decided to go down to Canmore and spend the weekend in the mountains. Everyone else met up in Calgary on Friday morning at the zoo, but because of Kate's work, Kate and I left Edmonton Friday night. This trip had two purposes; first was the relaxing weekend with family and second Kate and I were running the 100 mile Kananaskis Rely with Kate's firm. More on that later. We ended up pulling into the condo in Canmore pretty late because although we got away from Edmonton in good time we stopped in Calgary to have diner with the 10 person relay team.




The place where we stayed was really nice and had a great view.



A couple of months ago Kate started talking about this run up in the mountains that her firm was going to put a team into. At first she sort of made it sound like I might be invited to run with their team, but only if they couldn't fill it internally first. She kept sending me the web page to look at to see which leg of the race I would want to do, but I felt like I was in no position to pick anything and would be happy with whatever leg they wanted to give me (if any at all). As the race came closer Kate started to sound more confident that I would be running and that I should really pick a leg. This time I took her advice (sort of) and I tried to look the website, but none of the links on the page showed up, so I put it off.

You get sort of get a sense of the hills from these. I like the second one because if you look close you can see a 7% grade sign for traffic going the other way. I'll never look at those signs the same way again.


After some time Kate told me that all of the legs were full except for one, so I was stuck with it. Turns out that no one else wanted this one because it was 18 Km of hills, and no not the nice gentle inclines or better yet declines, this was ascending to the top of a mountain pass with all but 3-4 Km going up. Of course no one wanted it. Well, anyways that's the leg I ran and considering the hills, the altitude, and the heat I felt pretty good afterward. (The leg after mine has 9Km down hill). Each team was responsible for water and support of their own runners so while we weren't running we would stop on the side of the road and wait for our runner to go by.

Kate trying to "mist" me with water as I run by. Turns out it was more of a full stream that hit me in the face.


Kate ran later in the day and her run was pretty challenging too. I wasn't at the start of her leg because I was dropping people off at their start points, but did catch up to her. I think her ran 16 Km and it was really hot. Her biggest problem was that she drank too much ahead of time and was feeling the effects of that a couple of Km in and of course there are no bathrooms on the side of a highway so she had to go in the "not so concealing" bushes (at least it wasn't between two cars at a car dealership in the winter. You know who I'm talking about). She finished and said she felt pretty crappy but that wore off after a few minutes and she was already planning her next race.

If you couldn't tell from the pictures it was a beautiful race.


"The Nolans"
In case you forgot this post started off about the weekend with family in the mountains, and that's what the rest of the weekend was. We ended up doing a couple of little hikes around the town and swam in the pool at the condo, we even ended up playing board games which is a rare thing we do.