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.