Christmas in the Great White North

I had two weeks off from school for Christmas so I went back home. The day before I left New York there was a blizzard that shut down all the local airports. I managed to make it out without much trouble. I found out that the next day there was another storm that canceled more flights out of New York.

The weather wasn't much better in Edmonton. It was cold. There were only a few days that made it out of the -20s. That just meant that I didn't get to play as much shinny hockey as I would have liked to.

It was fun to be home and play with the kids. The twins were pretty funny on Christmas morning and Grace was cute and always giggling.

We did manage to get out skating once with M&T and the twins, but the ice was really bad that made it hard to skate so we didn't stay out very long.

The Smiths came up from Lethbrigde for New Year's eve.We spent the night playing rock band and watching hockey. Pretty good night.

And of course there was the Resolution Run on New Years Day. Being ridiculusly cold at the start and too hot at the end are just part of the run.

I've been away for 5 months but I was suprised at how much it felt like I hadn't been away at all.

Christmas in NYC

Yesterday I went into the city to see some of the Christmas sights. I wanted to see the tree at Rockefeller Center and some of the shop displays on 5th ave. There were more and more people the closer I came to Rockefeller Center, and by the time I got there it was almost shoulder to shoulder. It was a pretty impressive tree and it was kind of fun to see people skating in the plaza.

The big store turn their display windows into Christmas dioramas that have little to do with the store itself, but tons of people stop to look at the displays.

Of course Macy's has Christmas lights and window displays outside but they also have the Times Square New Year's ball on display too. They also have a Santa set up that is reminiscent to "The Christmas Story". They make a big deal about Christmas.

Before I went home I stopped in at Bryant park where they have another Christmas tree and skating rink. And for no good reason I took a picture of the Empire state building. Merry Christmas from New York.

Thanksgiving Day Parade

My parents are in town for a couple of days and we decided to go down to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. We took the PATH train into the city, and the train was pretty full for a holiday, but it turned out that most of the people on it were heading to the same place we were. There were a lot of people there.By the time we found a good spot to watch from we were there were people 6-8 people deep off the rail, so we were behind a lot of people and the instant the parade started a wall of kids on shoulders and standing on things shot up in front of us. Most of my pictures were taken from between kids heads.You don't really get a sense of how big these things are until they float over you. They say there were 40 balloons.

These things float ominously down the street like Snoopy shaped clouds of chlorine gas over top of the unsuspecting crowds.

I'm not sure if this is Miley Cyrus or Hannah Montana, either way all the kids around us were going nuts when she went by. "IT'S MILEY"

This float has the whole sesame street gang, Bob, Maria, Gordan, Big Bird, Oscar, etc. I think they tried to get Mr. Hooper but had to settle for just his store I put these two pictures in especially for Moses Smith because I know he's a big fan of Neil Young. Keep on rocking in the free world Moses

I started to get kind of cold after 2+ hours of standing there, but most of the crowd stayed till the end of the parade. I think the little kids were kept warm with by their anticipation of the arrival of Santa. I was expecting him to throw candy or have his sleigh pulled by a John Deere tractor. I guess Cardston has just set the bar pretty high.

Parade left overs.

After the parade they kept Broadway closed to traffic while they cleaned up. It was pretty cool to walk down the middle of Broadway through Time Square.

Halloween Parade NYC

Did you even know there is a Halloween parade in New York? I didn't until two weeks ago. I had nothing else to do last night so I went to it with a couple of guys from my class and it was crazy. It's like other parades in that there are floats and marching bands and people walking down the street but think of all of that taking place at night with everyone in costumes.

Anyone in costume is allowed to be in the parade so there were 50000 people in it. I stood and watched for over two hours and is was still going when I left. When I left I felt out of place not being in a costume. They said that there was about 2 million people watching.

There was a lot of creative costumes and floats.

The crowning jewel of the parade was the "thriller" dancers. They had Thriller playing and there were 5 Michael Jacksons and 200 zombies behind all dancing in unison. It was pretty impressive. It was a lot of fun.

Weekend Wife

Kate came to visit me this last weekend and good times ensued. At first it was a little strange to have her here and see her in person rather than over a web cam but I got over that pretty quick. This was the first time she'd seen the apartment I live in, and I think she thinks the place is OK. We went into Manhattan on Saturday and went up to the museum of natural history and saw a couple of the stars of "Night at the Museum" movie.

When we got out of the museum it was raining and pretty windy, but for some reason we decided to walk through central park. There's nothing worse than trying to stay dry holding an umbrella in a rain and wind storm. We stumbled onto a pumpkin festival in the middle of central park where there were hundreds of pumpkins lining the paths around the festival that I guess people carved and put there. There is always something going on. Both of were cold and wet as we made our way down to time square and on towards our favorite Korean restaurant. The leaves haven't really changed colours yet around here but some trees are getting close.

Kate did a lot of shopping,but not a lot of buying, on Monday and Tuesday while I was in classes and we met up for lunch both days. She left Tuesday night and it's a little different since she left. I'm looking forward to the next time she comes to visit.

Speading the Good Word

I wore this shirt to school the other day and got some inquires from my classmates about the raft (though I'm not sure why, because my normal introduction of myself to new people is "I'm Jason Steed and I built a raft and sailed it down the North Saskatchewan"). So of course I regaled them with stories from the raft in all it's glory, of which they were very impressed and jealous.

On my walk to the subway that day I didn't have my coat on, on account of abnormally warm weather. Some bohemian looking guy with a trumpet case in hand standing on the sidewalk calls out "Hey, what about the raft?". Though I was a little surprised, I'm always ready to talk about the raft so I shared my story with him and this guy thought it was the greatest thing since dreadlocks. Thanks for the shirt Scott.

Just when you think I couldn't talk about the raft anymore I gave a talk with it as one of the key stories about following the counsel given at general conference. Now the Elders Quorum here wants to build a raft.

Just doing my best to spread the good word.

Booze Cruise

So part of orientation this week, my class went on a boat cruise on the East and Hudson rivers. The boat took off from 23rd street, right across the street from my school, and went down the East river under the Brooklyn bridge, and a couple of other bridges, out to the Statue of Liberty, then up the Hudson river to the Holland tunnel where we turned around and went back to where we started.It was actually really interesting to see some of this stuff from a boat but I don't think too many other people cared about sight-seeing because this was a BOOZE CRUISE. It was a cash bar but that didn't stop many of my classmates from getting tanked, most were already a drink in hand before we left the dock (I had to explain to a guy from Utah what pre-drinking was). The rocking boat and slightly intoxicated people with drinks in their hands is never a good combination. Overall it was a pretty good time, though it was no raft trip.