Since we’ll be visiting the city today, I decided to look through my random New York photos and see if anything jumped out at me. These two photos were taken back to back in October 2008 – one in New York City at night and one in New Brunswick, New Jersey – back when I was going to Rutgers for my Masters.
From Marco…
Every now and then I pass a set of swings on the way to work.
I’m reluctant to call it a playground despite that there’s also one of those sort of rocking horses next to it. It’s really nothing more than these swings and that horsey. No grass or anything, just some sort of rubber padding.
But I guess it’s better then nothing.
Niki asked me the other day to be on the look out for picture ops.. So today when I walked past the swings I decided to take a snapshot and share this fun story: Back in 2009 when I was vacationing at Niki’s place, we went to New York (as we often do *grin*)
We ended up at Central Park, entering from Columbus Circle (for those in the know). As we entered this young woman approached us and asked if the park was open at night for joggers. I was somewhat speechless to hear that question. Not something you’d expect her to ask. The park is a large place, I don’t think you want to be running around in it at night by yourself.
Now for some reason I remembered seeing a sign saying it closed at some point of the evening, only allowing people on the main roads. So we sent her off with that knowledge.
Niki and I proceeded into the park itself. It had just rained so that nice smell of wet grass and trees was everywhere. We walked past a playground and Niki wanted to go on the swings! 🙂 Since it had just rained and it was already around 7pm there weren’t any kids there at that moment. So I just sat on the swings (gotta stay cool) while she actually erhmm..well…swung I guess the word would be.
She did warn me that she had to be careful to not do that for too long or she might get sick. And sure, at some point she suddenly stopped before it was too late. It was a very random but fun few minutes there on those swings. A very good memory. It actually reminds me of another story from the same trip but I’m going to have to keep that one for another time.
A hint: It involves bugs.
Here are Marco and I’s plans for this weekend. Nothing too major.
Today – Visit the Palisades Center, a four floor mall. I need to pick up my engagement ring (it needed a minor repair), and I might also possibly get my hair cut. Then at some point I need to treat Marco to an Icee. They are frozen slushy drinks that are typically sold at movie theaters.
There, now that I have Marco’s attention…
Saturday – We’re going to have lunch at Bailey’s Smokehouse (a barbecue joint). I’ve been there once with a friend and wanted to show it off to Marco as well. After that, we are going to head over to my workplace. I want to show him the remodeled Learning Commons, which he has never seen – pre-flood or post-flood. They are also going to have a community festival, so we’re looking forward to the promised fireworks.
Sunday – Off to New York City. The only thing we have planned is visiting Forbidden Planet, a comic book store which moved to a bigger and better place (or at least we heard it’s supposed to be bigger).
Two random places we want to visit for food: Steak’n’Shake and Five Guys Burgers and Fries. The former is totally due to nostalgia – I grew up with Steak’n’Shake as it’s a Midwest restaurant and I am sorely hoping it will remind me of the good old days. The latter we have never been too. All I know about Five Guys is they give you a ton of fries, so order less than you think you need.
5 months and some change later:
Here are some more pictures from the canal boat ride we took back in the summer of 2010 (“we” being Roger, Marco, Marco’s Mom and I).
Random family above.
My mother sent me a photo of three of the newest visitors to grace my parents’ backyard.
The kittens have since moved on, probably to the protected wildgrass behind my parents’ house.
Here we are at Sunday night once more. Saturday was a visit to the New York Renaissance Faire in Tuxedo, though that is a post for another day. Today was more football (NFL) — just the way I like it.
Of course, to get to that point I had to some errands and chores around the house, but at least I have perfected the art of going to the laundromat, waiting for the stuff to be put into the dryer, and then walking further on to the grocery store to do some quick shopping. I made it back with 8 minutes to spare! I only forgot the bread (boo) but a quick trip to the deli fixed that.
I will say that the progress with learning the Dutch language is not going as fast as I would have hoped at the 3 month mark, but at least I am currently enjoying it. I am somewhere buried deep in the word order section of dutchgrammar.com.
Here’s a sample of what I stare at almost nightly:
Image from dutchgrammar.com (click image to be taken to page where things are explained)
Of course, at this point I have finished all three of these sections and am not dealing with things outside of this format, like making sentences negative using niet.
Here was one of the more interesting blog posts that I read recently:
(Not Just Another) Weekend by Unquiet Time
– On Taptoe, a band festival; on cranes poised on river barges tipping over; and on being offered a job as a Delft tour guide.
Continuing the December theme of my last post, one of the places that Roger, Marco and I visited this previous December was Water Tower Place in Chicago. It is an upscale shopping area with eight floors (although each floor is pretty small).
We fell in love with the entrance to the mall:
The three “glass” objects you see on each level are actually formed by cascading water. You can see the pool of water above each of the levels.
Today is September 14.
My last day of work is December 14. That’s the last day of finals. It just hit me that there is only three months to go.
Now that I am in the final semester, each class seems like the last. For example, today was a Nursing Research 101 class in the morning. For them, I went to their classroom and spoke about how to use the databases for articles and the catalog for books. In the afternoon I had a genetics class where the professor brought her class to the library. She wanted me to talk about the distinction between primary and secondary sources within the sciences and how to look at only a journal article abstract and figure out which is which.
Closeup of a tree on campus, Spring 2012
At this point, when I introduce myself I’ve taken to jokingly explaining to the students that if they need help they need to come find me this semester before I move. Today after hearing where I was moving half of the class clapped, a few said “awesome/cool” and one said “Congratulations!” There’s just something about Europe that people tend to like.
Life in the Hague 