On Friday Mo and I drove to West Chester, Pa a suburban town outside of Philadelphia. The oh-so-famous Bam Margera is from West Chester. We were headed there to see Tim and Pearl Jam. Dave, Mo's brother in-law also came along for the trip. We had tickets to see Pearl Jam that night.
Mo is going to fill you in on Friday's events...
Saturday June 20th
I woke up around 8:30 to see Mo and Dave off. It was very hard to get out of bed after standing all evening at the concert. Dave had to work at 4 that day and they had a 5 hour drive ahead of them. Mo,Dave, Tim, Tim's Mom and I stood in the kitchen for a little and chatted as they prepared for their drive and rehydrate. Tim's family has an 11 week old caca-poo puppy, so obviously we talked about all our dog's for a while. Mo and Dave hit the road. Tim and I went to breakfast with his parents. After breakfast we went home and brainstormed about our plans for the weekend. We decided to go to the Philadelphia Outlets that had recently opened. Tim's mom had been wanting to go for awhile. So after about 20 minutes of driving we arrived in discount shopping paradise. Our first stop was coach. As we walked in we were greeted by signs displaying SALE. 20% - 50% off already reduced prices! Tim's mom and I were very excited and Tim quickly panicked. Luckily across the way was a Sony outlet. After having to make many decisions, I chose 2 perfect bags. Tim called, he needed help picking out a TV. The salesman at the Sony store was very confusing and kinda annoying. Eventually Tim picked out a TV. I was going to help him pay for it for his Birthday but the store tried to charge the whole TV to me, which sent PNC into some security threat to my card. PNC put a hold on my card and called my home in Pittsburgh and cell to alert a security threat. Tim ended up paying for the TV himself and I started to worry someone hacked into my account. I called PNC and they said everything was fine. We decided to leave immediately before any of us spent anymore money. We pulled up to Sony's back door and realized the TV would not fit into the back of their SUV with me in the back. I sat on Tim's lap and we headed home. We ordered some Italian food for dinner and watch the Jack Black movie "Be Kind Rewind"... I fell asleep.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Pearl Jam
Shira and I took off work Friday to go to a Pearl Jam Concert in Camden NJ. We hit the rd with my brother in law, david, @ 10:30. We were supposed to leave at 10 but David is always a half hour late to everything. Lacey Suggested telling him we were leaving at 9:30 to compensate but I didn't listen. We arrived at Shira's boyfriends house at 3:30 in westchester, and left for the concert right away. We picked up sandwiches and drinks and then hit traffic, which tacked on an extra hour and a half to the ride . I was not counting on the traffic and foolishly chugged a large Gatorade. The result wasn't favorable. We finally got to Camden which is not one of the safest places to be. Aaron, from the Next Food Network Star, is from Camden and I think he has a good chance at winning the competition. I think Lisa might have a slight lead on him. This is my favorite show at the moment. Bobby Flay is awesome. Anyway, the tailgating at this event was amazing. The parking lots were full of thousands of people partying. There were a lot of home-made games every where. Things like toss something into a hole or in a bucket....they looked like fun actually. I have never seen anything like that in Pittsburgh. The concert was very good. I think musicians like Eddie Vedder are a dying breed. He cares .....which shows in his performance. The night was tainted by a couple of bozo's who resorted to violence and basically acted like pricks. If you can't get along at a concert, you shouldn't be allowed in public. It is frustrating seeing something like that when music is sending the opposite message....I mean, why are you here? The rest of the weekend I worked on cleaning my backyard and also worked on an oil painting. I'll post a picture when it is done. This week is very exciting because the Yankees are in Pittsburgh and my friend Scott is in town and I have not seen Scott in a whole year and the Yankees have not been here in 38yrs! BDI is coming Sunday and there will be plenty of work after my Pittsburgh vacation. We also have a Mocap demo coming up for some high school kids. Anyone have suggestion on what we should wear? Maybe elbow pads and helmets again?
I'm Finally Blogging!
Okay, here I go... This past week (Wednesday thru Sunday) I went to Miami for my sorority's national convention. It was fun because my friend, Christie, went with me and we stayed on a really nice resort. Other than that, the convention was just what I expected, lots of women in a room- talking a lot. The resort had a really nice pool and a great jogging trail though (which is nice because I am trying to run 5 miles a day over the summer.) On the way home, the airline lost my bags so I didn't get them until yesterday afternoon when they were dropped off at my apartment. My parents picked me up from the airport and we went to Mad Mex, which is consistently delicious. I got a tofu quesadilla and a mango margarita. I proceeded to sleep the rest of my Sunday off. Yesterday, I came to work late because I had to wait for my bags to be delivered to the apartment. While I was waiting, I ran around the block a few times to get my exercise, and I found a lost dog that was about to run out on 5th Avenue. I picked her up and carried her to all the surrounding apartment buildings and knocked on people's doors, until a disheveled woman claimed that it was her dog. It made me sad because she didn't seem worried about her or happy that she was back. I kind of wish that I could have kept it because it was smaller than my cats, so I think they would have gotten along. When the delivery man dropped off my bags around 2:30 pm , he told me I was lovely which creeped me out and I made sure he quickly left my apartment building. After working, I went to a Washington Wild Things (minor league baseball) game in Washington, PA (near my parents house.) My dad's company owns the field so we sat in the owners box and had delicious food and alcohol for free. After the game, Clay and I got ice cream and fell asleep watching Law and Order. Sorry that this post isn't longer, I have a bad memory so I can't really remember the details of everyday.
The Past Week
Hello,
I am Ben Reicher. To pretty much sum up what I have done in the past week, click here>
http://www.reicher.com/cm1scene7.html
I am Ben Reicher. To pretty much sum up what I have done in the past week, click here>
http://www.reicher.com/cm1scene7.html
Erie Weekend
The little girl Kristen takes care of was on vacation in Florida, so she had the whole weekend off, probably only time this summer, so we decided to do a nice little weekend road trip. I skipped Lunch Friday, left work early and got home around 3:30. Of course Im a last minute packer so had nothing ready, so I open my closet grab grab items from shelf 1 some from shelf 2 dig and grab a few things from drawer 1 and 2, grab a good pair and an old pair of tennis shoes and Bam, all packed in 5 minutes. A few minutes later Kristen is done after what seemed like forever. We loaded up the car and away we went.
Like any good road trip up 79 we had to stop at the Grove City outlets, (the plan was just for dinner). I hit 2 stores, Oakley and Timberland and magically doubled my weekend wardrobe. We went in a few kitchen supply stores, some novelty stores and of course had to stop in the Coach store which had to be the smallest most crowded area of the ENTIRE outlets. After all the walking around we were hungry enough to go to the foodcourt and get dinner, Charley's Steakery. mmmmm. We then hit the road again with about an hour and a half to.
We type in the hotel we are staying at into the GPS on our new phones and immediately tells us we are not on a road. Im thinking the thing must be broke cause 79 is a major road, and then it reconnects to the system and all of a sudden we are found again and on a road. After working our way through the city of Erie, we Found our hotel.
We made reservations for this hotel Knights Inn through some Trip Rewards thing that Kristen has. Pictures make everything look so much better. First it used to be a Super 8, and there was just a little 3' x5' canvas sign hung up saying it was the Knights Inn, if we didnt have GPS we wouldnt have found it. We go check in and there were these 2 young guys at the desk. One thing we wanted to do was go to some wineries this weekend so we ask where are some good ones. They respond that they have no idea what a winery is, so we descirbe it to them, place you make wine, then they understand and procede to tell us there is a pizza shop that they think sells wine around the corner. By this time I am trying not to laugh because they were just not understanding what we were trying to ask for, and the other guy go gets his laptop and gives us the name and address of the most expensive restaurant in Erie saying they should have wine, we decided to just look in the phone book. The guys also told us there was a huge car cruise thing going on down on State street, 2 blocks away. After getting the car unloaded we decided to go down and check it out, Im assuming we must have missed it or something because there were maybe 2 older corvettes and a few '50s cars, nothing I would call a huge car cruise/show. We decided to go back to the hotel and call it a night.
We get woken up at 5:30 in the am by some brat little kid bouncing his soccerball outside our door. After several failed attempts and falling back asleep we decide to get up at 7:00 and go get the continental breakfast, you know cold coffee, warm milk, stale danish and bagels with broken toaster. We got back to the room wrote down the names and addresses of wineries and headed to the beach. It was freezing at the beach and the water was really cold. Of course I had to see how far I could get in the water without getting my clothes wet, just as I thought it was a foot closer to shore than I was. Big wave came and got the middle 2 inches of my shorts soaked, I had them cuffed up so I could go in farther. We took some pictures then walked down to the next beach are to see the lighthouse and took more pictures, then it started to rainso we got back to the car and headed to do some wine tasting.
I forget the names of the places we went too but got a bottle of wine from each. The first one we went into gave tours of the winery, not what I expected at all. I guess they could be considered micro-wineries. They had like 20 1000 gallon distilling tanks, a press and a botteling machine. It wasnt fall so no grapes so nothing was running or working. it was still an informative tour that lasted about 15-20 minutes. They had 5 barrels aging, I was expecting rows and stacks of barrels like on tours you see on tv. After the tour we tried a few fines, bought one and were on our way to the next.
We were looking for an ice wine. Its a rarer type of wine that cant be produced every year. The key is to leave the grapes on the vines until the first frost, hopefully the frost comes early enough before the grapes rot on the vines. The grapes then have to be picked and squeezed while still frosted which is supposed to make a much sweeter fruitier wine that is supposed to be excellant. The second place we went to had it, but you couldnt taste it so we bought a bottle. They had a bunch of other fruit wines like peach, apple, rasberry, cherry all kinds. We went to a few more places and tried a few more wines before heading to the Smugglers Wharf for an early dinner.
We then went to the Tom Ridge Center, to watch a movie called Mysteries of the Great Lakes. Sounds like it could be a real interesting show, maybe stuff on shipwrecks, and some other cool things, we were wrong. It was a show on how they aree trying to reintroduce lake sturgeon to different areas of the great lakes that no longer have sturgeon population due to overfishing and consumption of caviar. Though interesting was completely not expected from a title such as MYSTERIES OF THE GREAT LAKES.
Sunday we went to the lake Erie Maritime Museum which was cool. They had a replica side of a ship showing the damage from real canon fire and all kinds of other neat artifacts from the battle of lake Erie of the war of 1812. We then grabbed Arby's for a late lunch and headed on home.
Like any good road trip up 79 we had to stop at the Grove City outlets, (the plan was just for dinner). I hit 2 stores, Oakley and Timberland and magically doubled my weekend wardrobe. We went in a few kitchen supply stores, some novelty stores and of course had to stop in the Coach store which had to be the smallest most crowded area of the ENTIRE outlets. After all the walking around we were hungry enough to go to the foodcourt and get dinner, Charley's Steakery. mmmmm. We then hit the road again with about an hour and a half to.
We type in the hotel we are staying at into the GPS on our new phones and immediately tells us we are not on a road. Im thinking the thing must be broke cause 79 is a major road, and then it reconnects to the system and all of a sudden we are found again and on a road. After working our way through the city of Erie, we Found our hotel.
We made reservations for this hotel Knights Inn through some Trip Rewards thing that Kristen has. Pictures make everything look so much better. First it used to be a Super 8, and there was just a little 3' x5' canvas sign hung up saying it was the Knights Inn, if we didnt have GPS we wouldnt have found it. We go check in and there were these 2 young guys at the desk. One thing we wanted to do was go to some wineries this weekend so we ask where are some good ones. They respond that they have no idea what a winery is, so we descirbe it to them, place you make wine, then they understand and procede to tell us there is a pizza shop that they think sells wine around the corner. By this time I am trying not to laugh because they were just not understanding what we were trying to ask for, and the other guy go gets his laptop and gives us the name and address of the most expensive restaurant in Erie saying they should have wine, we decided to just look in the phone book. The guys also told us there was a huge car cruise thing going on down on State street, 2 blocks away. After getting the car unloaded we decided to go down and check it out, Im assuming we must have missed it or something because there were maybe 2 older corvettes and a few '50s cars, nothing I would call a huge car cruise/show. We decided to go back to the hotel and call it a night.
We get woken up at 5:30 in the am by some brat little kid bouncing his soccerball outside our door. After several failed attempts and falling back asleep we decide to get up at 7:00 and go get the continental breakfast, you know cold coffee, warm milk, stale danish and bagels with broken toaster. We got back to the room wrote down the names and addresses of wineries and headed to the beach. It was freezing at the beach and the water was really cold. Of course I had to see how far I could get in the water without getting my clothes wet, just as I thought it was a foot closer to shore than I was. Big wave came and got the middle 2 inches of my shorts soaked, I had them cuffed up so I could go in farther. We took some pictures then walked down to the next beach are to see the lighthouse and took more pictures, then it started to rainso we got back to the car and headed to do some wine tasting.
I forget the names of the places we went too but got a bottle of wine from each. The first one we went into gave tours of the winery, not what I expected at all. I guess they could be considered micro-wineries. They had like 20 1000 gallon distilling tanks, a press and a botteling machine. It wasnt fall so no grapes so nothing was running or working. it was still an informative tour that lasted about 15-20 minutes. They had 5 barrels aging, I was expecting rows and stacks of barrels like on tours you see on tv. After the tour we tried a few fines, bought one and were on our way to the next.
We were looking for an ice wine. Its a rarer type of wine that cant be produced every year. The key is to leave the grapes on the vines until the first frost, hopefully the frost comes early enough before the grapes rot on the vines. The grapes then have to be picked and squeezed while still frosted which is supposed to make a much sweeter fruitier wine that is supposed to be excellant. The second place we went to had it, but you couldnt taste it so we bought a bottle. They had a bunch of other fruit wines like peach, apple, rasberry, cherry all kinds. We went to a few more places and tried a few more wines before heading to the Smugglers Wharf for an early dinner.
We then went to the Tom Ridge Center, to watch a movie called Mysteries of the Great Lakes. Sounds like it could be a real interesting show, maybe stuff on shipwrecks, and some other cool things, we were wrong. It was a show on how they aree trying to reintroduce lake sturgeon to different areas of the great lakes that no longer have sturgeon population due to overfishing and consumption of caviar. Though interesting was completely not expected from a title such as MYSTERIES OF THE GREAT LAKES.
Sunday we went to the lake Erie Maritime Museum which was cool. They had a replica side of a ship showing the damage from real canon fire and all kinds of other neat artifacts from the battle of lake Erie of the war of 1812. We then grabbed Arby's for a late lunch and headed on home.
Monday, June 23, 2008
My Life as a Movie
Friday June 20th
After getting back from work last night I went to Eddie and Donny's room to watch a movie with them and Robert. I fell asleep instantly on Eddie's bed again. I woke up around 2:30AM and realized that I should head to bed. So I went down stairs to Lucius' room where I was spending the night.
This morning Lucius woke up at 10 to get ready for work. I had plans to go to lunch with this guy, Jonathan, at noon,but I went back to sleep regardless. I woke up to his phone call. I told him I wasn't quite ready and would meet him at 1 as I quickly showered and got dressed. At 1 Jonathan and I went to get some sushi from this small little hole in the wall that isn't visible unless you are standing right in front of it, but you can get a platter of about 30 some sushi for 18 dollars. We then took our food back to the Columbia campus and ate on the steps. It was a really nice day out and there were quite a few of our other friends outside as well. After we demolished the sushi we went inside to get cool and get something to drink. We talked for a while, Jonathan is the kind of guy who is kind of arrogant and may not always have the best intentions, but he is someone that I work with on student council so I keep him close like a frienemy.
After we parted ways I went back to the dorms. I called for Donny to come sign me in and as I was waiting I handed the security gaurd my Columbia ID. He happened to bring the card down to the scanner which then registered the chip in my card and brought up my information on the computer screen. I also happened to be standing at an angle where I could see the screen and I noticed that there was a green bar under my name that said "access accepted", rather then the red bar that says "access denied". This meant that I actually had swipe access into the dorm. Seeing this I asked the gaurd about it. He was very confused and hesitant about letting me in. I told him that my card had simply gotten deactivated and I hadn't realized they reactivated it yet. He let me through and I met Donny in the elevator. This is a break through for me because it means I don't need someone to sign me in every time I want to go in and out of the building, which also means that I wont have to be signed in more then five days in any consecutive 30 days, which is actually a rule that I have just been ignoring.
I then went downtown to return some clothes and do some more shopping. I ended up spending a good portion of the day downtown, yet only bought one cute skirt from Macys. I headed back uptown around 8 when I got a call from Lucius saying he was bored and didn't know where anyone was. When I got back Lucius and I decided to go out to dinner. I wanted to take him some place nice to treat him for letting me stay with him for a past couple of nights. We didn't decide on a location until around 9:30 when we headed over to a steakhouse on the east side.
We ate at a place called BLT steakhouse. They give you bread and spread and popovers as complimentary appetizers and you order your steak completely separately from any sides or even sauces. I ordered this California steak that apparently the cow was only fed organic substances, with the pepercorn sauce, some mashed potatoes and some wine for the two of us. Lucius told me about this amazing day he had yesterday where he met some baseball team from Canada and he showed them all around new york, as they treated him to all the different tourist attractions such as the empire state building and riding in a rickshaw. The day ended with them finding some random limo to take them back to their hotel and giving my friend a ride back up to Columbia. We ended the dinner with some complimentary chocolate chip cookies, which I don't believe how they describe they make them because they were not cooked around the edges, and closed out the restaurant around 12:30.
We then walked around the upper east side looking for a dessert place called Serendipity, but gave up around 1 and got back on the subway to come home. We didn't get back to campus until close to 2:30 and we talked for a while longer until we fell asleep.
Saturday June 21st
I woke up around 11 in Lucius' room and went down to P's room to shower and get dressed. P went home for the weekend, and since I had a key to his room made it was like I had my own place for once. I got dressed in a fun summer dress and went down to B and C's apartment. We had plans to go to Conney Island and see the mermaid parade, and then back to times square for a city wide bubble battle. However, when I got to their apartment at 1 I was informed that they had entered a 72 movie shootout last night and had to make a movie pronto. There were a couple of other people there, T, who is their female roommate, David, who is a friend of C's, Ness, who is a girl from France and a friend of B's and is staying with them for a week, and Alvin. Alvin is a volunteer for the Asian American International Film Festival and was instructed to follow around one of the groups and keep a blog of the film making experience. C of course was the first to approach him at the launch party, and offered to put him up in their apartment for the weekend. If you would like to read his blog about the weekend you can find it at:
http://www.72hourfilmshootout.com/
The first thing we did was sit around and think of a plot for our movie. The theme was "a first goodbye" and as of last night all they had done was gotten wasted and drew penises on their idea sheet of paper. We finally came up with the idea of a call center for coffee that tasted horrible. People would call in and complain to one particular guy and keep hanging up on him. Then finally to use the resources we had Ness would call and talk to the guy in french. As he struggled to translate using google they would have a flirty conversation ending in the guy finally saying goodbye for the first time today, and the girl looking up the word for goodbye in a french-english dictionary and saying her first english word, and first goodbye. We then spent the next 3 hours writing out the script for our 5 minute film. I don't know how I got roped into being one of the writers seeing as english and such is not my strong suit.
By that time it was 5PM and C wanted to get a particular shot on the rooftop of a friend's building at sunset. So we all walked over to his friends place and set up a dinner party on the roof. C had sent out a mass e-mail and called several people asking for extras and actors. In this scene we had about 7 people standing around at the party as T was the main character talking on the phone to the call center about the horrible coffee. We then headed down to Chinatown to try and get the early dusk lighting. We shot Ness walking out of a convenient store and to her apartment in Chinatown. (In order to be counted for one award there had to be a scene shot in Chinatown). After all our outdoor shooting we went to dinner at a shanghinese restaurant and back up to B and C's place. For the rest of the night we mainly just sat around discussing what needed to get done the next day and fine tuning the script. I also called up Bert and asked him if B and C could film in the gateway lab on Columbia campus. Bert is the undergraduate in charge of the lab and has the keys to access it. It would make for a great call center. Luckily he obliged despite the fact that I would not be on set. I also called Donny and Eddie to see if they would be extras in the film. Around 2AM I went back up town and slept in P's room because he was out of town.
Sunday June 22nd
I woke up late, 10AM, for work. I ran over to Crepes on Columbus and apologized. The shift was pretty busy, there was a good consistent flow of people. When I was finally done I bought 6 crepes and headed back down to B and C's place. The production crew at crepes and then sat around for a while longer as we waited for a coffee maker. Alvin then had to leave to head back to Boston, so from his point of view we did not really accomplish much. We shot our two last scenes and C went into his room and started editing. The rest of us watched Beatleguese and then The Professional, which is a crazy movie. I moved in and out to try and help C and not have him feel to alone as he was editing.
After getting back from work last night I went to Eddie and Donny's room to watch a movie with them and Robert. I fell asleep instantly on Eddie's bed again. I woke up around 2:30AM and realized that I should head to bed. So I went down stairs to Lucius' room where I was spending the night.
This morning Lucius woke up at 10 to get ready for work. I had plans to go to lunch with this guy, Jonathan, at noon,but I went back to sleep regardless. I woke up to his phone call. I told him I wasn't quite ready and would meet him at 1 as I quickly showered and got dressed. At 1 Jonathan and I went to get some sushi from this small little hole in the wall that isn't visible unless you are standing right in front of it, but you can get a platter of about 30 some sushi for 18 dollars. We then took our food back to the Columbia campus and ate on the steps. It was a really nice day out and there were quite a few of our other friends outside as well. After we demolished the sushi we went inside to get cool and get something to drink. We talked for a while, Jonathan is the kind of guy who is kind of arrogant and may not always have the best intentions, but he is someone that I work with on student council so I keep him close like a frienemy.
After we parted ways I went back to the dorms. I called for Donny to come sign me in and as I was waiting I handed the security gaurd my Columbia ID. He happened to bring the card down to the scanner which then registered the chip in my card and brought up my information on the computer screen. I also happened to be standing at an angle where I could see the screen and I noticed that there was a green bar under my name that said "access accepted", rather then the red bar that says "access denied". This meant that I actually had swipe access into the dorm. Seeing this I asked the gaurd about it. He was very confused and hesitant about letting me in. I told him that my card had simply gotten deactivated and I hadn't realized they reactivated it yet. He let me through and I met Donny in the elevator. This is a break through for me because it means I don't need someone to sign me in every time I want to go in and out of the building, which also means that I wont have to be signed in more then five days in any consecutive 30 days, which is actually a rule that I have just been ignoring.
I then went downtown to return some clothes and do some more shopping. I ended up spending a good portion of the day downtown, yet only bought one cute skirt from Macys. I headed back uptown around 8 when I got a call from Lucius saying he was bored and didn't know where anyone was. When I got back Lucius and I decided to go out to dinner. I wanted to take him some place nice to treat him for letting me stay with him for a past couple of nights. We didn't decide on a location until around 9:30 when we headed over to a steakhouse on the east side.
We ate at a place called BLT steakhouse. They give you bread and spread and popovers as complimentary appetizers and you order your steak completely separately from any sides or even sauces. I ordered this California steak that apparently the cow was only fed organic substances, with the pepercorn sauce, some mashed potatoes and some wine for the two of us. Lucius told me about this amazing day he had yesterday where he met some baseball team from Canada and he showed them all around new york, as they treated him to all the different tourist attractions such as the empire state building and riding in a rickshaw. The day ended with them finding some random limo to take them back to their hotel and giving my friend a ride back up to Columbia. We ended the dinner with some complimentary chocolate chip cookies, which I don't believe how they describe they make them because they were not cooked around the edges, and closed out the restaurant around 12:30.
We then walked around the upper east side looking for a dessert place called Serendipity, but gave up around 1 and got back on the subway to come home. We didn't get back to campus until close to 2:30 and we talked for a while longer until we fell asleep.
Saturday June 21st
I woke up around 11 in Lucius' room and went down to P's room to shower and get dressed. P went home for the weekend, and since I had a key to his room made it was like I had my own place for once. I got dressed in a fun summer dress and went down to B and C's apartment. We had plans to go to Conney Island and see the mermaid parade, and then back to times square for a city wide bubble battle. However, when I got to their apartment at 1 I was informed that they had entered a 72 movie shootout last night and had to make a movie pronto. There were a couple of other people there, T, who is their female roommate, David, who is a friend of C's, Ness, who is a girl from France and a friend of B's and is staying with them for a week, and Alvin. Alvin is a volunteer for the Asian American International Film Festival and was instructed to follow around one of the groups and keep a blog of the film making experience. C of course was the first to approach him at the launch party, and offered to put him up in their apartment for the weekend. If you would like to read his blog about the weekend you can find it at:
http://www.72hourfilmshootout.com/
The first thing we did was sit around and think of a plot for our movie. The theme was "a first goodbye" and as of last night all they had done was gotten wasted and drew penises on their idea sheet of paper. We finally came up with the idea of a call center for coffee that tasted horrible. People would call in and complain to one particular guy and keep hanging up on him. Then finally to use the resources we had Ness would call and talk to the guy in french. As he struggled to translate using google they would have a flirty conversation ending in the guy finally saying goodbye for the first time today, and the girl looking up the word for goodbye in a french-english dictionary and saying her first english word, and first goodbye. We then spent the next 3 hours writing out the script for our 5 minute film. I don't know how I got roped into being one of the writers seeing as english and such is not my strong suit.
By that time it was 5PM and C wanted to get a particular shot on the rooftop of a friend's building at sunset. So we all walked over to his friends place and set up a dinner party on the roof. C had sent out a mass e-mail and called several people asking for extras and actors. In this scene we had about 7 people standing around at the party as T was the main character talking on the phone to the call center about the horrible coffee. We then headed down to Chinatown to try and get the early dusk lighting. We shot Ness walking out of a convenient store and to her apartment in Chinatown. (In order to be counted for one award there had to be a scene shot in Chinatown). After all our outdoor shooting we went to dinner at a shanghinese restaurant and back up to B and C's place. For the rest of the night we mainly just sat around discussing what needed to get done the next day and fine tuning the script. I also called up Bert and asked him if B and C could film in the gateway lab on Columbia campus. Bert is the undergraduate in charge of the lab and has the keys to access it. It would make for a great call center. Luckily he obliged despite the fact that I would not be on set. I also called Donny and Eddie to see if they would be extras in the film. Around 2AM I went back up town and slept in P's room because he was out of town.
Sunday June 22nd
I woke up late, 10AM, for work. I ran over to Crepes on Columbus and apologized. The shift was pretty busy, there was a good consistent flow of people. When I was finally done I bought 6 crepes and headed back down to B and C's place. The production crew at crepes and then sat around for a while longer as we waited for a coffee maker. Alvin then had to leave to head back to Boston, so from his point of view we did not really accomplish much. We shot our two last scenes and C went into his room and started editing. The rest of us watched Beatleguese and then The Professional, which is a crazy movie. I moved in and out to try and help C and not have him feel to alone as he was editing.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
whoops
No, no, no...look at the link below it. Sorry for any confusion.
Careless blogging on my part.
Careless blogging on my part.
Getting into the Swing of Things with the Easts
Tuesday June 17th
Not much happened the previous night. I got back from Crepes around 10:45 after a rather slow shift. I brought some pasta home with me, which was very tasty but enough to feed about 3 people. That night I slept in Ariel's room again. I had to wake up and be at the East's by 9AM, which was around when Ariel had to wake up as well.
I got to the East's and hung out with Emily a little. She had a dentist appointment at noon on the east side so I took her there. It was just a check up to see how her teeth were doing after they pulled 2 last week. The appointment took about 5 minutes. We met up with her mom after the appointment. Mrs. East had gone to a clothing store not too far away and had picked out some stuff for Emily. I was then to take Emily there to try the stuff on and pick out what she liked. She picked out one white top and one pair of hot pink leggings, the total coming to $160, luckily half off. They had the credit card on record there and charged the clothes. We then headed back to the west side where we had some mac and cheese for lunch. Emily and I then had plans to do some baking, so we made some sugar cookies in various shapes. During that time Mrs. East came home with Jacob.
I told Emily she had to do some reading to herself for a little while. In the meantime I hung out with Jacob. He is very into fantasy of any sorts. He has a game that he likes to play with his friends and he tried to play with me. He calls it "quest". It consists of him narrating a story invoving dragons, kingdoms, and other mystical things he can think of. I then play one of the characters and have to answer and interact with the other people he mentions. I can keep up when I am talked to directly, however I never really add much to the story or plot line on my own. Maybe this makes me bad at the game.
After a while I went to check on Emily. I then sat with Emily as she played on a learning computer game. She was not very happy to have to do this, but she is slow at reading and needsthe practice. At 4:30 I took her over to her tutoring, which then meant I had about 45 minutes on my own before I had to be back to pick her up. I was about 15 blocks from Columbia so I hopped on a subway and rode it the 3 stops uptown. I then went to the package center to pick up something, stopped by this cafe to get a bubble tea, walked by the dorm and ran into a friend to sign me in, went to another friend's room who happened to leave it open, so I dropped on teh package and picked up a book,then took a taxi back downtown and had time to stop and get a bagle toasted with butter. I felt that it was a very well spent 45 minutes.
After picking up Emily we went back to the appartment. Mrs. East had warned me it would be a late night because she took Jacob to the theater and Mr. East was at a business dinner. I made Emily some tuna fish for dinner and we ate some of our sugar cookies for dessert. We then watched a couple of episodes of "Mork and Mindy". By that time it was 8:30 and I got her ready for bed. I then started to read her the book that I picked up from Columbia earlier. Emily doesn't like to have to read herself but loves being read to. I read her the first chapter of "Twilight". In that time her father came home, and it was the first time I had ever met him. Mr. East looked like a TV father and had a very loving nature about him, which kind of surprised me because of his constant absence.
At 9 I headed back home. I stayed with P that night since Ariel had to wake up at 6, and I didn't have to get to work until 10:30. We talked well into the night, I asking himabout his recent seperation from K and making sure it wouldn't effect the foundation of that group of friends. He was trying to find out more information about my recent escapades, I wouldn't tell him about Donny though. We eventually went to sleep.
Wednesday June 18th
I woke up, showered and left for work with P at 10. Jacob got two of his molars pulled today so he was in his parent's room watching TV and eating ice cream. I got Emily dressed and took her to the American Girl store on Fifth Avenue. She bought a bitty baby and one outfit, as her mother instructed. We then walked over to Broadway hoping to go to lunch at a cafe known as Stardust. Unfortunately the line was out the door and around the corner, so we opted to go home for lunch. We sat in her room and colored for a little while as the cleaning lady, Doris, made grilled cheese. After lunch I read her another chapter from Twilight. She then had to read me 3 short books, one of which was Curious George, one of my favorites. She then had to read one more chapter alone from the book she readsto herself. By that time I needed to drop her off at her psyhciatrist right down the street. While she was there I walked the dogs around the block and through central park. I picked her up and was done for the day.
I stopped at a grocery store on the way home and picked up some rasberries and yogurt for dinner. I ran into P while I was there so I walked back with him and ate in his room. I walked around for a bit to see who else was around. I found Robert in Eddie's room watching Futurama. I fell asleep on Eddie's bed for about an hour. Lucius and Ariel came in. Ariel laid down with me for a little while, but needed to attend to her laundry. The guys decided to go off and play video games. I selpt in Eddie's bed for another hour. By that time Donny came back. He was not expecting to see me in his room. We talked a for a little and he gave me a kiss before I left. I found the rest of the guys still playing video games. They were debating getting some food but by then it was 10:30 and a lot of places were closed. I went with them as they walked down Broadway for something to eat, and I stopped in at the grocery store again to pick up some cereal for the rest of my dinner.
When I got back to the dorm I went to visit a friend of mine, Bert. He is a computer science major so I know him through some of my classes. He lived on the floor above mine this past year, and loves to cook, as well as has all the materials to do so, and invited me up to enjoy many of his creations. He is very nerdy like most computer scientist, myself not excluded, but he also is very invovled in columbia housing, and the computer science department. Because he works on the faculty side as well he knows all the loop holes and is not afraid to speak up for something that he wants, such as a better housing number, or the extra whiteboard the department bought. I went to visit him tonight for the purpose of having a key made. The kays in the building are simply cards with holes in them in certain places. I took Bert P's key and an old membership card P had lying around. Bert then used his drill to make me a replica. We also sat around and talked for a while catching up about how our summers have been going.
around midnight I went back to P's room and fell asleep on his bed. He has a test the next day so he was up studying for a while before going to sleep as well.
Thursday June 19th
I woke up and got to the East's by 10. P was still sleeping because he was up late studying. At the East's I played Sets with Emily for a little while until lunch when we had pesto pasta with Jacob. The three of us then went out to the movies to see Kung Fu Panda. It was a cute movie. We then dropped off Emily at her tutor and I took Jacob home. I then had to leave early, around 4 in order to get to Crepes on time.
I worked the night shift at Crepes on Columbus, where yet again it was slow. I tried to learn some spanish from the cooks though.
Not much happened the previous night. I got back from Crepes around 10:45 after a rather slow shift. I brought some pasta home with me, which was very tasty but enough to feed about 3 people. That night I slept in Ariel's room again. I had to wake up and be at the East's by 9AM, which was around when Ariel had to wake up as well.
I got to the East's and hung out with Emily a little. She had a dentist appointment at noon on the east side so I took her there. It was just a check up to see how her teeth were doing after they pulled 2 last week. The appointment took about 5 minutes. We met up with her mom after the appointment. Mrs. East had gone to a clothing store not too far away and had picked out some stuff for Emily. I was then to take Emily there to try the stuff on and pick out what she liked. She picked out one white top and one pair of hot pink leggings, the total coming to $160, luckily half off. They had the credit card on record there and charged the clothes. We then headed back to the west side where we had some mac and cheese for lunch. Emily and I then had plans to do some baking, so we made some sugar cookies in various shapes. During that time Mrs. East came home with Jacob.
I told Emily she had to do some reading to herself for a little while. In the meantime I hung out with Jacob. He is very into fantasy of any sorts. He has a game that he likes to play with his friends and he tried to play with me. He calls it "quest". It consists of him narrating a story invoving dragons, kingdoms, and other mystical things he can think of. I then play one of the characters and have to answer and interact with the other people he mentions. I can keep up when I am talked to directly, however I never really add much to the story or plot line on my own. Maybe this makes me bad at the game.
After a while I went to check on Emily. I then sat with Emily as she played on a learning computer game. She was not very happy to have to do this, but she is slow at reading and needsthe practice. At 4:30 I took her over to her tutoring, which then meant I had about 45 minutes on my own before I had to be back to pick her up. I was about 15 blocks from Columbia so I hopped on a subway and rode it the 3 stops uptown. I then went to the package center to pick up something, stopped by this cafe to get a bubble tea, walked by the dorm and ran into a friend to sign me in, went to another friend's room who happened to leave it open, so I dropped on teh package and picked up a book,then took a taxi back downtown and had time to stop and get a bagle toasted with butter. I felt that it was a very well spent 45 minutes.
After picking up Emily we went back to the appartment. Mrs. East had warned me it would be a late night because she took Jacob to the theater and Mr. East was at a business dinner. I made Emily some tuna fish for dinner and we ate some of our sugar cookies for dessert. We then watched a couple of episodes of "Mork and Mindy". By that time it was 8:30 and I got her ready for bed. I then started to read her the book that I picked up from Columbia earlier. Emily doesn't like to have to read herself but loves being read to. I read her the first chapter of "Twilight". In that time her father came home, and it was the first time I had ever met him. Mr. East looked like a TV father and had a very loving nature about him, which kind of surprised me because of his constant absence.
At 9 I headed back home. I stayed with P that night since Ariel had to wake up at 6, and I didn't have to get to work until 10:30. We talked well into the night, I asking himabout his recent seperation from K and making sure it wouldn't effect the foundation of that group of friends. He was trying to find out more information about my recent escapades, I wouldn't tell him about Donny though. We eventually went to sleep.
Wednesday June 18th
I woke up, showered and left for work with P at 10. Jacob got two of his molars pulled today so he was in his parent's room watching TV and eating ice cream. I got Emily dressed and took her to the American Girl store on Fifth Avenue. She bought a bitty baby and one outfit, as her mother instructed. We then walked over to Broadway hoping to go to lunch at a cafe known as Stardust. Unfortunately the line was out the door and around the corner, so we opted to go home for lunch. We sat in her room and colored for a little while as the cleaning lady, Doris, made grilled cheese. After lunch I read her another chapter from Twilight. She then had to read me 3 short books, one of which was Curious George, one of my favorites. She then had to read one more chapter alone from the book she readsto herself. By that time I needed to drop her off at her psyhciatrist right down the street. While she was there I walked the dogs around the block and through central park. I picked her up and was done for the day.
I stopped at a grocery store on the way home and picked up some rasberries and yogurt for dinner. I ran into P while I was there so I walked back with him and ate in his room. I walked around for a bit to see who else was around. I found Robert in Eddie's room watching Futurama. I fell asleep on Eddie's bed for about an hour. Lucius and Ariel came in. Ariel laid down with me for a little while, but needed to attend to her laundry. The guys decided to go off and play video games. I selpt in Eddie's bed for another hour. By that time Donny came back. He was not expecting to see me in his room. We talked a for a little and he gave me a kiss before I left. I found the rest of the guys still playing video games. They were debating getting some food but by then it was 10:30 and a lot of places were closed. I went with them as they walked down Broadway for something to eat, and I stopped in at the grocery store again to pick up some cereal for the rest of my dinner.
When I got back to the dorm I went to visit a friend of mine, Bert. He is a computer science major so I know him through some of my classes. He lived on the floor above mine this past year, and loves to cook, as well as has all the materials to do so, and invited me up to enjoy many of his creations. He is very nerdy like most computer scientist, myself not excluded, but he also is very invovled in columbia housing, and the computer science department. Because he works on the faculty side as well he knows all the loop holes and is not afraid to speak up for something that he wants, such as a better housing number, or the extra whiteboard the department bought. I went to visit him tonight for the purpose of having a key made. The kays in the building are simply cards with holes in them in certain places. I took Bert P's key and an old membership card P had lying around. Bert then used his drill to make me a replica. We also sat around and talked for a while catching up about how our summers have been going.
around midnight I went back to P's room and fell asleep on his bed. He has a test the next day so he was up studying for a while before going to sleep as well.
Thursday June 19th
I woke up and got to the East's by 10. P was still sleeping because he was up late studying. At the East's I played Sets with Emily for a little while until lunch when we had pesto pasta with Jacob. The three of us then went out to the movies to see Kung Fu Panda. It was a cute movie. We then dropped off Emily at her tutor and I took Jacob home. I then had to leave early, around 4 in order to get to Crepes on time.
I worked the night shift at Crepes on Columbus, where yet again it was slow. I tried to learn some spanish from the cooks though.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Nutri-Grain Bars
The taste of a Nutri-Grain bar reminds me of middle school. I guess I used to bring them in my lunch. I like the taste of college more.
Shira and I are going to buy a fat suit for Xtravagant. Hopefully we can find something he will still be able to dance in, but look fat while doing it.
I finished the submission of '3 Rooms' to a juried competition in LA. I am cautiously optimistic about our chances.
I saw Charlie this morning in the halls of NSH. He bit me and it hurt. And it is still hurting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OBlgSz8sSM
Shira and I are going to buy a fat suit for Xtravagant. Hopefully we can find something he will still be able to dance in, but look fat while doing it.
I finished the submission of '3 Rooms' to a juried competition in LA. I am cautiously optimistic about our chances.
I saw Charlie this morning in the halls of NSH. He bit me and it hurt. And it is still hurting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OBlgSz8sSM
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Recap.
The past couple days have been pretty fun. On Thursday afternoon Mo, Lacey and I went to Lacey's parents house to swim in their pool. The weather was hot and the cool water was very refreshing. After floating on rafts for a couple hours we decided to eat the pineapple and onion pizza Lacey's mom picked up on her way home from work. Pizza was the perfect dinner after a few relaxing hours in the pool. After dinner I had a reese's Klondike ice cream thing. It was very delicious. Lacey's family has a large St. Bernard named Wilma, who then decided to sit on my lap and cover me in slobber but, I didn't mind too much. Then Lacey's mom squirted whipped cream into the dogs mouths which, was very funny to watch. Tank's face was covered in whipped cream. Mo was not feeling well during the car ride home so we had to turn around and go back to Lacey's parents house. After he felt better we went home. This was my friend Tori's last night before leaving for semester at sea so I couldn't decide if I should return to Mt. Lebanon to say goodbye or not. I called her and she wanted to be alone with her boyfriend Colin who she is not going to see until October.
Friday was a pretty normal day in the Mo Cap lab. Nothing too exciting or interesting to write about. Friday after work Lacey and I went to Ross's and Oldnavy. Mo decided to stay home and paint for a couple hours. I hadn't packed enough clothing for the weekend and needed a couple things. Lacey and I tried on some hoochie dresses, wondering if they would be appropriate for our upcoming trip to Las Vegas in August. We decided they were a bit too short/tight for our taste. I did buy a royal blue cotton sun dress to wear the next day. After our little shopping trip we stopped at Trader Joe's to buy a few things for dinner. When we walked into Traders Joe's the music went off suddenly and a man came on the PA system and said, "you are a jerk." We never found out what he was referring too. As we proceeded through the isles we stopped for about 15 minutes to look at all the vitamins. Lacey and I were happy to see Trader Joe's sells Sam-E, a supplement we both have started taking. Once leaving Trader Joe's we realized we forgot to buy half the things we need and made a stop at Giant Eagle. After we stopped at Giant Eagle we headed to the beer distributor were there were many underage kids successfully purchasing beer. It was actually pretty funny to watch. Mo called us over 10 times to see what was taking us so long and to tell us he had started making dinner and finished slow cooking onions and fake chicken. When we got home Tank jumped all over me, Mo and Lacey are trying to break him from this habit. I think it is going to be hard because he is the largest 5 month old puppy I have ever seen. After unpacking the groceries (when I accidentally put Lacey's tofurky in the freezer and ruined her week) we decided to have some chips and dip. We sat outside and lit some citronella candles to keep the bugs away. Lucy wouldn't come outside because she hates bugs and doesn't like to be touched by them. After eating our chips and dip we went inside and finished making quesadilla's for dinner. They were really good but we couldn't finish them so we decided to save them for tomorrow during the day as snack. We played some Mario cart and watched some TV. I fell asleep while we watched TV and Mo turned on his iphone and decided to blast 80's music in my ear and walked away, leaving the iphone blasting in my ear. I got very annoyed and turned off the music and ran upstairs to the attic where I live when I stay at their house. We had big plan's for the next day...
On Saturday I woke up to Lacey letting me know it was my turn for the shower. We planned it our the night before that Lacey would shower first then wake me up, I would shower and wake Mo up and he would shower. After we all were clean and ready for the day we ate our quesadilla's for breakfast, we decided they would be better heated up. We headed to route 19 to start test driving car's for Lacey. Our first stop was at Subaru. I personally couldn't stand our car salesman, a young sleezy boy. He couldn't have been older then 20 and he just came off like a jerk to me. He referred to himself as the magician and could pull a rabbit out of a hat. ANNOYING. We all really liked the Forester, it has a huge moon roof and was very rooming and it gets great gas millage, important because Lacey drives 40 miles to work everyday. Next we went to Jeep where Lacey thought she was going to love the Jeep's but didn't like them at all. Next we went to the Volkswagen/Mazda dealership. We met someone who would change our lives or day forever. Brad, the greatest car salesman ever period. Words cannot describe Brad, just know that he loves the German engineering of Volkswagens. Lacey really liked the Tiguon and did not like the CX-7. After our lovely meeting with Brad we were really hungry and headed to Panera in the Galleria. We decided that every girl loves Panera and almost every guy thinks it is annoying because you have to make some many choices. After fully nourished we headed to Nissan for our last test drive of the day. We ran through the rain inside where we decided to wait for the rain to stop to go for a test drive. Mo peeked into the Z sitting inside the showroom and set the car alarm off. It was very funny because all 20 people inside the dealership just stared at Mo. It took the workers about 2 minutes to turn the alarm off and so everyone continued to stare at Mo. Lacey and I laughed hysterically. We had planned on going to the strip district but it was too late. We went to Shady Side to go to the store Journey's of Life. They were having a 20% off store wide sale. I bought Tim's mom a present because Mo and I are staying there this weekend. We walked down the street to L'Occitane where I proceeded to put every lotion in the store on my hands. We then got a drink at the Coffee Tree and Lacey had to carry mine to the table because my hands were so oily from the lotion. I watched a man in the coffee shop pull out a whole head of broccoli and eat the whole thing, stock included. We walked to the car and headed home. Mo and dropped Lacey off and headed to Giant Eagle because of course we forgot a few items to make Pizza for dinner.
More to come... but I must get back to work on the burger videos.
Friday was a pretty normal day in the Mo Cap lab. Nothing too exciting or interesting to write about. Friday after work Lacey and I went to Ross's and Oldnavy. Mo decided to stay home and paint for a couple hours. I hadn't packed enough clothing for the weekend and needed a couple things. Lacey and I tried on some hoochie dresses, wondering if they would be appropriate for our upcoming trip to Las Vegas in August. We decided they were a bit too short/tight for our taste. I did buy a royal blue cotton sun dress to wear the next day. After our little shopping trip we stopped at Trader Joe's to buy a few things for dinner. When we walked into Traders Joe's the music went off suddenly and a man came on the PA system and said, "you are a jerk." We never found out what he was referring too. As we proceeded through the isles we stopped for about 15 minutes to look at all the vitamins. Lacey and I were happy to see Trader Joe's sells Sam-E, a supplement we both have started taking. Once leaving Trader Joe's we realized we forgot to buy half the things we need and made a stop at Giant Eagle. After we stopped at Giant Eagle we headed to the beer distributor were there were many underage kids successfully purchasing beer. It was actually pretty funny to watch. Mo called us over 10 times to see what was taking us so long and to tell us he had started making dinner and finished slow cooking onions and fake chicken. When we got home Tank jumped all over me, Mo and Lacey are trying to break him from this habit. I think it is going to be hard because he is the largest 5 month old puppy I have ever seen. After unpacking the groceries (when I accidentally put Lacey's tofurky in the freezer and ruined her week) we decided to have some chips and dip. We sat outside and lit some citronella candles to keep the bugs away. Lucy wouldn't come outside because she hates bugs and doesn't like to be touched by them. After eating our chips and dip we went inside and finished making quesadilla's for dinner. They were really good but we couldn't finish them so we decided to save them for tomorrow during the day as snack. We played some Mario cart and watched some TV. I fell asleep while we watched TV and Mo turned on his iphone and decided to blast 80's music in my ear and walked away, leaving the iphone blasting in my ear. I got very annoyed and turned off the music and ran upstairs to the attic where I live when I stay at their house. We had big plan's for the next day...
On Saturday I woke up to Lacey letting me know it was my turn for the shower. We planned it our the night before that Lacey would shower first then wake me up, I would shower and wake Mo up and he would shower. After we all were clean and ready for the day we ate our quesadilla's for breakfast, we decided they would be better heated up. We headed to route 19 to start test driving car's for Lacey. Our first stop was at Subaru. I personally couldn't stand our car salesman, a young sleezy boy. He couldn't have been older then 20 and he just came off like a jerk to me. He referred to himself as the magician and could pull a rabbit out of a hat. ANNOYING. We all really liked the Forester, it has a huge moon roof and was very rooming and it gets great gas millage, important because Lacey drives 40 miles to work everyday. Next we went to Jeep where Lacey thought she was going to love the Jeep's but didn't like them at all. Next we went to the Volkswagen/Mazda dealership. We met someone who would change our lives or day forever. Brad, the greatest car salesman ever period. Words cannot describe Brad, just know that he loves the German engineering of Volkswagens. Lacey really liked the Tiguon and did not like the CX-7. After our lovely meeting with Brad we were really hungry and headed to Panera in the Galleria. We decided that every girl loves Panera and almost every guy thinks it is annoying because you have to make some many choices. After fully nourished we headed to Nissan for our last test drive of the day. We ran through the rain inside where we decided to wait for the rain to stop to go for a test drive. Mo peeked into the Z sitting inside the showroom and set the car alarm off. It was very funny because all 20 people inside the dealership just stared at Mo. It took the workers about 2 minutes to turn the alarm off and so everyone continued to stare at Mo. Lacey and I laughed hysterically. We had planned on going to the strip district but it was too late. We went to Shady Side to go to the store Journey's of Life. They were having a 20% off store wide sale. I bought Tim's mom a present because Mo and I are staying there this weekend. We walked down the street to L'Occitane where I proceeded to put every lotion in the store on my hands. We then got a drink at the Coffee Tree and Lacey had to carry mine to the table because my hands were so oily from the lotion. I watched a man in the coffee shop pull out a whole head of broccoli and eat the whole thing, stock included. We walked to the car and headed home. Mo and dropped Lacey off and headed to Giant Eagle because of course we forgot a few items to make Pizza for dinner.
More to come... but I must get back to work on the burger videos.
Catching Up
Since I was just resent the blog invitation yesterday, I will write some brief shorts starting at a time long long ago. (visualize little squiggly flashback lines)
The day is 2 Sundays ago. We had a Jeep trailride scheduled with our Jeep Club HRJA (Heritage Region Jeep Alliance). The trailride was a Saturday/Sunday camping trip, but we (kristen/my wife and I) were unable to make the Saturday ride because I had a playoff roller hockey game at 2:00 wich we unfairly lost because the other team, the only team we were able to beat in the regular season(twice) gathered a bunch of ringers that were way too good for the league we are in and crushed us 10-2. So sunday morning we woke up around 6:30 to get ready and packed for our funfilled adventure. The trail ride was at Beaver Run up in Beaver about an hour away and we had to get to the location by 9:30 so we can get the Jeep prepped for the trail. Trail prepping refers to airing down your tires (taking the air out of your tires allows them to deform and gives them a wider footprint and allows the tire to wrap around obstacles giving you better traction, we air down to 15 lbs of pressure per tire) and "disconnecting. Disconneting means disconnecting your sway barso it will allow your tires to have more vertical travel so when going over obstacles you dont go on 3 wheels as often. At 10:00am we start off joining the mild trails group with about 20 jeeps. Since our jeep is not as built up as some of the other ones we had to bypass a few spots to avoid damage. We got to do our first rescue and pull the guy out infront of us that slid down a 3 foot embankmentand was on 3 wheels. a group of guys had to push on the side of his jeep so it wouldnt roll while we pulled him out. Around 1:00 it was time for lunch and we headed back to the trail head. In the afternoon only about 7 jeeps went out to do more trail riding, we were going to do some harder trails. There is another younger couple in our club from ohio, that jumped in our jeep for the ride. He broke the frame of their jeep in the morning and was not driveable, had to be trailered home. We did very well and all the other jeepers were very impressed how our jeep did on the more difficult trials even with the extra weight of 2 more people in the back seat. We did get stuck in one mud pit, because of the extra weight we couldnt make it out. We did however get me and dave covered in mud, splattered mud halfway across the inside of the windshield and all over the rest of the interior. When we got home from the trailride we went straight to the car wash and the carwash guy was not happy to see us in his stall because of all the mud. We then noticed we had recieved some body damage on the passenger side rocker panel (under the door, the must have dit a big rock). That was our first trail body damage so the next purchase for the jeep will be rocker panel protection.
Monday I went out and bought 2 new pairs of tennis shoes.
Tuesday I had 2 cats staying with us. My parents left for florida last week to visit my brother and they left their cat with me till this past sunday. Kristen brought her dads cat home to stay with us to get groomed on thursday. kristen and the cat got home late when I had to go to work. I was working out at Pgh Post Gazette Pavillion (referred to as star lake from here on out) for the Tom Petty and the heartbreakers concert. I ended up getting back home around 3:30 am.
Wednesday I woke up at 7:30 to get ready to go to work at cmu and the 2 cats were not getting along at all. I sat there and babysat them for a little bit but as soon as i would leave the room they ould get into eachothers business and the hissing growling and claws would start flying. I tried locking each in seperate rooms but they clawed at doors and meowed even more. So i had to stay home and moderate so they didnt kill eachother, hence the MIA at cmu. They calmed down by late afternoon after they got used to eachother.
Thursday after work at cmu Kristen brought the little girl she cares for over so we can go to sandcastle. We all got season passes since its only 10 minutes away. The little girl has downs syndrome and autism, shes 6, doesnt talk, knows few signs, her name is Mia. We go to sandcastle and meet my cousin and her boyfriend there and hang out for a while, until they left cause of sunburn. We went and got potatoe patch fries for dinner, mine had cheese and bacon on it, but when we got back to our chairs to eat Mia got up and ran a chair into the guy sunning beside us. It was Jeff Reid, the steelers kicker. He talked to us for a little as we were apologizing and he said it was fine.
Friday Kristen took the roof off the jeep because it was real sunny in the morning. I walked down the hallway at cmu and when I got to the end I saw it pouring outside so I called her asking if she got the roof up and she didnt. She was taking a shower when it started raining. There was a 1/2 inch of water sitting on the floor of the jeep. The rain did wash some of the leftover mud from last sunday away though, so that was some good news. Later that night it stopped raining and we took mia up to a church festival where she had fun riding the swing around ride.
Saturday was a long long day. I woke up around 10:00 and tried relaxing , which turned into doing yard work and working on other random projects here and there. At 9:00 pm I headed down to Heinz field for the 10:30pm production load out call of the Kenny Chesney Concert. The production load out is all the stage stuff (lights, speakers and props, etc). I also took the steel hand call which started at 3am which was taking down the large steel stage structure. All the production stuff was out by 2:30am at which time the steel hands got to go to the press lounge at the top of the stadium to eat dinner. It consisted of lunchmeat sandwhichs that were nothing great. We then started taking down all the steel stuff and rolling up all the fabric walls (skins) that wraped the stage. Then they lower one side roof that housed all the speakers. There are numerous vertical trusses that the roof slides on. So the roof slowly comes down the trusses then gets disassembled on the stage. The vertical trusses then get picked up by a huge crane and lowered down on the concourse are infront of the jumbo tron in the stadium. I was on the crew that was disassembling these vertical trusses. The trusses are about 60 feet long and 3'x3' weighing several thousand pounds. The second truss we satrted working on a new kid jumped on and everyone is yelling watch your toes, he didnt. We knocked the last pin to seperate the section and a pice fell 2 inches crushing his toes. We all felt terrible, we warned him to watch his toes, there was nothing else we could do. He got rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. Later the roadie guy was telling us that the same thing happened few stops ago but the guy had to have his foot amputated cause it was so bad, that story didnt help us feel any better. Never found out what happened to the poor kid. The rest of the stuff went smooth and I finally got to go home around 8 pm Sunday. So after a long 22 hour work day of hard physical labor and standing on my feet almost all the time in scorching heatand sun I got home had chicken for dinner and immediately crashed. Dont remember anything except for waking up at 7:30am to come to work at cmu.
Monday I got to work and taught a hew person Ishita how to do mocap and how to clean data, I was also the subject for a jumping jacks capture. Mo then had me pretend I was being born to be mocapped for his art project. After I was being born on the floor I got a call from my best friend saying his baby girl was just born, I thought it was kind of Ironic. When kristen got home we went to vistit them in the hospital and see the new little girl Layla Marie. Still being tired from work on the weekend I called it an early night around 11.
Sorry for the LONG blog but I had to catch up to everyone else and be up to date.
The day is 2 Sundays ago. We had a Jeep trailride scheduled with our Jeep Club HRJA (Heritage Region Jeep Alliance). The trailride was a Saturday/Sunday camping trip, but we (kristen/my wife and I) were unable to make the Saturday ride because I had a playoff roller hockey game at 2:00 wich we unfairly lost because the other team, the only team we were able to beat in the regular season(twice) gathered a bunch of ringers that were way too good for the league we are in and crushed us 10-2. So sunday morning we woke up around 6:30 to get ready and packed for our funfilled adventure. The trail ride was at Beaver Run up in Beaver about an hour away and we had to get to the location by 9:30 so we can get the Jeep prepped for the trail. Trail prepping refers to airing down your tires (taking the air out of your tires allows them to deform and gives them a wider footprint and allows the tire to wrap around obstacles giving you better traction, we air down to 15 lbs of pressure per tire) and "disconnecting. Disconneting means disconnecting your sway barso it will allow your tires to have more vertical travel so when going over obstacles you dont go on 3 wheels as often. At 10:00am we start off joining the mild trails group with about 20 jeeps. Since our jeep is not as built up as some of the other ones we had to bypass a few spots to avoid damage. We got to do our first rescue and pull the guy out infront of us that slid down a 3 foot embankmentand was on 3 wheels. a group of guys had to push on the side of his jeep so it wouldnt roll while we pulled him out. Around 1:00 it was time for lunch and we headed back to the trail head. In the afternoon only about 7 jeeps went out to do more trail riding, we were going to do some harder trails. There is another younger couple in our club from ohio, that jumped in our jeep for the ride. He broke the frame of their jeep in the morning and was not driveable, had to be trailered home. We did very well and all the other jeepers were very impressed how our jeep did on the more difficult trials even with the extra weight of 2 more people in the back seat. We did get stuck in one mud pit, because of the extra weight we couldnt make it out. We did however get me and dave covered in mud, splattered mud halfway across the inside of the windshield and all over the rest of the interior. When we got home from the trailride we went straight to the car wash and the carwash guy was not happy to see us in his stall because of all the mud. We then noticed we had recieved some body damage on the passenger side rocker panel (under the door, the must have dit a big rock). That was our first trail body damage so the next purchase for the jeep will be rocker panel protection.
Monday I went out and bought 2 new pairs of tennis shoes.
Tuesday I had 2 cats staying with us. My parents left for florida last week to visit my brother and they left their cat with me till this past sunday. Kristen brought her dads cat home to stay with us to get groomed on thursday. kristen and the cat got home late when I had to go to work. I was working out at Pgh Post Gazette Pavillion (referred to as star lake from here on out) for the Tom Petty and the heartbreakers concert. I ended up getting back home around 3:30 am.
Wednesday I woke up at 7:30 to get ready to go to work at cmu and the 2 cats were not getting along at all. I sat there and babysat them for a little bit but as soon as i would leave the room they ould get into eachothers business and the hissing growling and claws would start flying. I tried locking each in seperate rooms but they clawed at doors and meowed even more. So i had to stay home and moderate so they didnt kill eachother, hence the MIA at cmu. They calmed down by late afternoon after they got used to eachother.
Thursday after work at cmu Kristen brought the little girl she cares for over so we can go to sandcastle. We all got season passes since its only 10 minutes away. The little girl has downs syndrome and autism, shes 6, doesnt talk, knows few signs, her name is Mia. We go to sandcastle and meet my cousin and her boyfriend there and hang out for a while, until they left cause of sunburn. We went and got potatoe patch fries for dinner, mine had cheese and bacon on it, but when we got back to our chairs to eat Mia got up and ran a chair into the guy sunning beside us. It was Jeff Reid, the steelers kicker. He talked to us for a little as we were apologizing and he said it was fine.
Friday Kristen took the roof off the jeep because it was real sunny in the morning. I walked down the hallway at cmu and when I got to the end I saw it pouring outside so I called her asking if she got the roof up and she didnt. She was taking a shower when it started raining. There was a 1/2 inch of water sitting on the floor of the jeep. The rain did wash some of the leftover mud from last sunday away though, so that was some good news. Later that night it stopped raining and we took mia up to a church festival where she had fun riding the swing around ride.
Saturday was a long long day. I woke up around 10:00 and tried relaxing , which turned into doing yard work and working on other random projects here and there. At 9:00 pm I headed down to Heinz field for the 10:30pm production load out call of the Kenny Chesney Concert. The production load out is all the stage stuff (lights, speakers and props, etc). I also took the steel hand call which started at 3am which was taking down the large steel stage structure. All the production stuff was out by 2:30am at which time the steel hands got to go to the press lounge at the top of the stadium to eat dinner. It consisted of lunchmeat sandwhichs that were nothing great. We then started taking down all the steel stuff and rolling up all the fabric walls (skins) that wraped the stage. Then they lower one side roof that housed all the speakers. There are numerous vertical trusses that the roof slides on. So the roof slowly comes down the trusses then gets disassembled on the stage. The vertical trusses then get picked up by a huge crane and lowered down on the concourse are infront of the jumbo tron in the stadium. I was on the crew that was disassembling these vertical trusses. The trusses are about 60 feet long and 3'x3' weighing several thousand pounds. The second truss we satrted working on a new kid jumped on and everyone is yelling watch your toes, he didnt. We knocked the last pin to seperate the section and a pice fell 2 inches crushing his toes. We all felt terrible, we warned him to watch his toes, there was nothing else we could do. He got rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. Later the roadie guy was telling us that the same thing happened few stops ago but the guy had to have his foot amputated cause it was so bad, that story didnt help us feel any better. Never found out what happened to the poor kid. The rest of the stuff went smooth and I finally got to go home around 8 pm Sunday. So after a long 22 hour work day of hard physical labor and standing on my feet almost all the time in scorching heatand sun I got home had chicken for dinner and immediately crashed. Dont remember anything except for waking up at 7:30am to come to work at cmu.
Monday I got to work and taught a hew person Ishita how to do mocap and how to clean data, I was also the subject for a jumping jacks capture. Mo then had me pretend I was being born to be mocapped for his art project. After I was being born on the floor I got a call from my best friend saying his baby girl was just born, I thought it was kind of Ironic. When kristen got home we went to vistit them in the hospital and see the new little girl Layla Marie. Still being tired from work on the weekend I called it an early night around 11.
Sorry for the LONG blog but I had to catch up to everyone else and be up to date.
Mo's Update
Yesterday, I went to court because the city had appealed to raise my property taxes. Lacey and I put together quite and elaborate defense but yesterday was Lacey's first day of class @ Duquesne for the summer. So I asked my mom to come with me so I had a second opinion and a second mind working on my side. My mom left her TT convertible in my driveway where Lacey warned her it might rain. My mom looked up at the blue sky and decided not to worry about it. We dropped Lacey of at school and then headed further downtown. After waiting about 40 minutes or so the case was ruled a DNA, for did not appear. So we won by default. This is a pretty good outcome but I was kind of hoping the presentation of my case would inspire a new John Grisham novel and then be made into a movie where Samuel L Jackson would play the role of me. We then headed back to my house. As we arrived it started to rain so we were able to avoid disaster not a moment too soon. I then blocked traffic with my car while my mom took about 10 minutes to back her car down the drive way. I pulled my car into the garage and then headed into change into my work clothes. I think men's business casual is about the worst look ever. I would much rather wear jeans or a full suit than something in between. So I put on my jeans and my green graphics lab t shirt '07. Shira then picked me up and we let Tank and Lucy use the bathroom one last time before we headed out. On our way to work a kid shot a golf ball right at my head while I was on the phone with Lacey. Luckily Shira screamed and I assumed the golf ball at my head position. I picked up the golf ball and threw it at the golfers which was pretty useless since they were about 200yds away. Then I yelled at them for a while and Shira did too. They yelled back. I don't know at what point I hung up on Lacey but she was in a quiet room with 2 friends, and all the could hear was screaming from Shira and I and they assumed we were getting attacked or stabbed or something. So they were relieved when the found out it was just a golf ball. Shira made lunch for the two of us. I had my doubts because it had everything but the kitchen sink between two slices of bread......provolone, roasted red peppers, avocado, a veggie burger, chipolte butter, and mayo. It was pretty good though and I congratulated her on a job well done. When I got home from work I made Lacey and I dinner. It was pretty good but I forgot to add the dry vermouth to the veggie chicken before I added the whole peeled tomatoes. So I took evasive measures and was able to to reduce the vermouth over the chicken in another pan. I gave it an 8/10. We then played mario kart together. Lacey won the first round but I was able to rebound to win the second. Oh, and then I went skydiving where I landed on a rooftop penthouse on the upper east side. There I met Derek Jeter who was widdling a bar of soap into a scale version of the Taj Mahal. He had tissue boxes on his feet for shoes. He had an extra bed so I slept there for the evening.
Monday, June 16, 2008
First Day as a Nanny and a Rainy Weekend
Response to questions and comments
I wasn't really that scared of skydiving, despite the fact that I signed a waiver releasing the company from any fault in case of injury or death. I think I was pretty confident because there was somebody strapped to my back. I figured he knew what he was doing. Right as we left the plane though he said we were going to back flip out. I didn't really notice though, we were going to fast. It was a lot of fun though and I would recomend it to anyone and everyone.
Thursday June 12th
I slept in Lucius’ room last night. He didn’t have to be at work until 2, so we didn’t wake up until noon. I was going to meet with the mother, Mrs. East and the kids today at 2. I took the subway down to 86th and walked over to the Central Park right where they live. I walk in the door and the doorman calls up to the apartment because all guests much be announced. I walk to the elevator, where the doorman has already called for it to come to the first floor and pushed the button for the 8th floor, without leaving the comfort of the front of the building. I get up to the apartment and Mrs. East opens the door apologizing that she has never gotten wires more mixed up with anyone before. She explains that the kids just left with the manny, Hugh. They were at the museum and wouldn’t be back for a while so she gave me $20 to fake a taxi back uptown. I kept the money and took the subway home.
It turns out that the mother, Mrs. East had surgery recently and needs to have medicine pumped into her, which she has replaced every week. This means that she cannot go up and spend the week at the Hamptons any time soon. However, she is hoping that I can join them on weekends until I get familiar with it enough to have just the little girl, Emily, and I spend the weeks there together. For now she has both I and Hugh working because the two kids don’t necessarily like doing the same thing, and they both prefer being around someone of the same sex. However, the son, Jacob, is going to summer camp for the majority of the summer and so for the rest of the summer Hugh and I will have to split the time. I’m not sure how that is going to work, but I’m sure we will work something out.
I was expecting to be out a lot later then half and hour, so most people were not around the campus. To waste some time I checked the mail and went to Riverside Park to read my New Yorker with a bubble tea and muffin from the farmers market on Broadway. At around 4:30 I started to try and call some of my friends to see if they were back from work in order to sign me into the building. No one was answering so I sat on campus to try and catch people as they walked from class or research back to the dorm. Eventually my friend Robert came along and so I walked back with him. Robert is a friend of mine who talks a lot, and quite often tells the same stories over and over agian. He also tends to stay in his room a lot and play video games and drink, but that also makes him fairly reliable, and we tend to flock to his room, because despite the mess he always has it open and is happy to have company. Robert, Lucius, Donny, and I ended up going to dinner around the corner on Amsterdam at a place called Taco Ria.
Donny is a relatively new friend of mine. I met him towards the end of the semester, though he has reminded me that we actually met twice before the final time where I actually started to remember his name and face and we became offical facebook friends. He lives on Robert's floor for the summer with Eddie as his roommate. Eddie had been out of town for a while during my first week back at Columbia for the summer and so I stayed with Donny a lot and slept in Eddie's bed. Towards the end of my stay though he kissed me and mentioned how he was interested in dating. I told him I had to think about it though, and we are just friends for now. I have only told Ariel about this seeing as I don't know how the other guys would react.
***SIDE NOTE***
for those who haven't read this in the New York Times I found it very interesting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/fashion/08love.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=modern+love&st=nyt&oref=slogin
I don't know if any of you guys will like it as much as I did because of all of your situations, but still I figured I would pass it along.
After dinner we headed back to campus where the guys proceeded to either watch the Lakers game or play Call of Duty. I would meander between the two things as I waited for Ariel to get back from weight training, her being the only girl I know in the building. She didn’t come upstairs until fairly later, 11:30, and by that time we were all just sitting in Roberts room talking. She joined us and we continued to talk until around 1:30 or 2. Seeing as everyone needed to wake up tomorrow to go to work or class or something we finally dispersed and I slept in Ariel’s room that night.
Friday June 13th
Ariel and I both woke up around 8 and got ready for work. She is interning at CNN this summer so she has been working crazy hours and putting a lot of effort in, despite the fact that it is unpaid. I was heading back to the East’s place today to actually have a full day of work. I got there around 10 and Hugh was there to pick up Jacob. They left to see an advanced screening of Get Smart and spend the day together, while I was there to entertain Emily. We played on the computer a little, and went into her room where she showed me some of her toys, and her window where she liked to look at people from, and how many people would sit naked by their windows. She was still in her pajamas so we looked through her closet for something to wear. Mrs. East came in and kept looking through the closet with us pulling out things she had bought and Emily never wears. Finally she claimed, “You know what, from now on I’m just going to buy you clothes from the Gap.” While Emily responded “No! I know you won’t mom.”
After Emily finally got dressed we decided to go to the Museum of Natural History. We watched a show about the big bang, and saw the marine life. We had lunch in the cafeteria and talked about who invented words and decided on their meanings, and gossiped about Hugh, who aparently is very tall, hairy, and a little scary. Emily then had an appointment so I dropped her off and went to Starbucks to sit for a while. When I picked her up we headed back to the apartment where we colored and read together when Jacob came home with Hugh. Hugh left and I played on the computer with Jacob and Emily until there mother came home. When Mrs. East came home I got ready to take the dogs for a walk, they have two small white fluffy dogs, Maya and Buddy. Mrs. East asked her children if anyone wanted to walk the dogs with me and Jacob offered. Mrs. East then pushed Emily to come with us, until Jacob quietly said to his mom how he wanted to go alone with me because he spent all day with Hugh and didn't get to know me yet. We walked the dogs in Central Park and returned home. The kids then took showers and got ready to go out to dinner with their mother. I ast with Mrs. East and talked about her kids and what to expect for the rest of the summer. She then paid me $150 for my time and I headed back to Columbia.
By that time it was around 5 PM and while I was walking to the subway my friend Ariel called me and asked if I wanted to go downtown and meet her for dinner. Feel confident about spending money I took the subway down to 59th street to meet her outside the Time Warner building. We then walked through Central Park disscussing all sort of things from a story she is hoping to pitch to her boss, to what we want to do for the 4th of July. We ended up on the east side at 72nd street. We walked down for a while trying to find a menu that appealed to us. I ended up buying her dinner at an Italian restaurant on Lexington and dessert at a French restaurant, to try and repay her for letting me stay with her these past couple nights. We then walked back through the park to the west side and took the subway up to Columbia.
Back at Columbia we met up with Robert, Lucius and Donny. Lucius and Ariel rarely ever drink because they are afraid that they will do something stupid if they do, but decided that they would tonight if everyone did. So the guys made a stop to the liquor store as Ariel and I went to the grocery store. We met back up in Robert's room and made cosmos, mojitos, and margaritas. At around 2:30 AM I had to head down town to B and C's apartment in midtown.
Saturday June 14th
I got to B and C's appartment around 3:15. They are two guys who graduated this past spring and now are living in a very nice place on 53rd and 8th with two other roommates. C is a very extroverted person and knew most people on the Columbia campus, and even if he didn't know them they all knew him. He is from New York and in the summer he creates a list serve for about 200 people of all the things he plans to do, in case any one wants to join him, and they are all free. I know him through the film festival that I am a part of, he was the co founder with B. There were a number of us sleeping over their place that night, around 5, because the next morning was going to be an early one. I went to bed around 4AM and had to wake up at 6AM in order to get to Central Park with them at 7. We were getting there so early so that we could stand in line for tickets for Shakespeare in the park. We were very close to the beginning of the line which was nice, and met up with a number of other people there. In total there was about 20 of us waiting in line, of which I only knew about 3. We played a couple of card games and quite a few rounds of mafia. We were waiting there for 6 hours, until the ticket booth opened at 1PM. Each person was allowed to get 2 tickets, but for the people who did not wake up early and stay in line the rule was you had to bring food or drink to the people who were in line.
When we finally received our tickets some of us dispersed because the show did not start until 8PM. The rest of us went more into the heart of Central Park for a free concert by Vampire Weekend. The line to get in was ridiculously long, so B and C and a couple other people opted to just sit outside the venue and picnic. We could still hear the music fine so it wasn't really a problem. While we were picnicing I got a phone call from a friend, Joey, who was in the city for the weekend. He goes to Columbia as well but is in the DC area this summer working at NASA. I met up with him at the apple store on Fifth Avenue. He was inbetween having lunch with some friends from highschool and going to his aunt's house to pick up some shoes. He made time for me because I wanted to give him and early birthday present, tickets to see one of the last performances of Rent on Broadway in September when his birthday is. It is his absolute favorite musical and I wanted to make sure he left that night available. He walked me back up to the park while we talked about this girl that he met while in DC and how amazing she is. I hope that things work out between them, because at the moment he still cn't tell if she likes him because aparently she is really shy.
Shortly after I met back up with B and C at the picnic it started to pour. We didn't really stress and just sort of let it rain on us, but eventually we started to get a little cold, and we didn't think that music was that amzing so we decided to walk back to their apartment. By that point everyone else had dispersed and it was just the three of us. When we got baak the rain had let up but we were completely soaked. We took showers and changed clothes and put our wet clothes along with the blankets in the dryer. We got some food from Chipotle and watched a little bit of animal planet before we had to head back to the park for the play. It wasn't raining when we left and we met up with the rest of the group outside the outdoor theatre. When we sat down it started to pour though, and everyone put up their umbrellas, which then just dripped on to the person next to the defeating the purpose. The play would not start if it was raining, so we had to wait it out for about an hour and half hoping that it would let up. Unfortunately it never did so we just got soaked again and headed back the B and C's place. This time there were about 15 of us heading to their apartment. Again we all changed and put our clothes in the dryer. We had a little wine, talked, and watched the Boondock Saints.
People gradually left throughout the night. I decided to stay another night and went to bed around 3.
Sunday June 15th
I had to wake up around 8AM in order to get ready and out the door by 8:30. I needed to get back up town by 9 to work the breakfast shift at a restaurant called Crepes on Columbus. I started working here about 3 days a week about 2 months ago. My Sunday morning shift is typically pretty good, and I make a lot of money, adn during that time there at 2 waiters on staff and one bus boy for about 17 tables. The other two weekday night shifts that I work tend tobe fairly laid back and slow. During those I tend to be the only person working, with maybe a bus boy during some of the peak hours. There is 1 cook at all times, and 1 dishwasher. Everyone else who works here speaks spanish, and some only speak spanish. This makes for the times that I am working as the only waitress fairly quite.
It was father's day today and so it was fairly busy. We pretty consistently had a wait, which meant that the three people on staff were running around crazy, and we began to run out of glasses and silverware, so we had to start washing it in the sink. My shift ended at 4, but the manager hadn't arranged for anyone to work the night shift so he asked me to stay. I went back to Columbia for a 2 hour break, and to change my shoes into something more comfortable. I then headed back for the dinner rush, which actually was not that busy, to the manager let me go after 2 hours.
Walking back from work I decided to get some cake from this hungarian pastry shop. I took it to these steps on campus and sat outside eating. I called Ariel to see if she wanted to join me but she was still working on her pitch. I then facebook messaged Donny because he doesn't get service in his room and asked him if he wanted to join me, because I figured that if he got the message in time he was most likely to be willing to come. After about a 45 minutes I headed to the dorm. I was exhausted after being on my feet all day and only getting 7 hours of sleep in 2 days. Unfortunately Ariel was still working on her pitch, so I went to Robert's room and where he was playing video games with some of the other guys. I ended up just laying on his bed and fell a sleep until 12:30, when I moved to Ariel's room and actually got ready for bed and went to sleep.
Monday June 16th
Ariel woke up at 8 and had to leave for work by 9. I packed up my stuff and moved down to P's room. I knew that he had class at 10 and got back at noon so I slept in his room more while he was in class. He came back and joined me as we slept for another hour. We then got up and and went to lunch at this middle easter fast food place called Amir's. He had another class at 2:30. After he left I showered and went to work at Crepes on Columbus for the night shift.
P.S.
I'm sorry my posts are really long. I'm just trying to tell you absolutely everything that has happened to me, as you guys asked. Plus at the moment I am trying to give you a lot of background about who these people are to me and what these different places are. Hopefully soon either the posts will get shorter, or by having this background information you might actually start to get interested in the people I am writing about.
I have also gone back to add a little background to the people I mentioned in my first post, if you care to reread it.
I'm sorry I can't post every day. Sometimes I just don't have access to a computer. I realize this is very different then you guys. But I will always up date you.
Also it would be helpful for me if you guys added a little background because I don't really understand half of Mo's update.
-the nanny
I wasn't really that scared of skydiving, despite the fact that I signed a waiver releasing the company from any fault in case of injury or death. I think I was pretty confident because there was somebody strapped to my back. I figured he knew what he was doing. Right as we left the plane though he said we were going to back flip out. I didn't really notice though, we were going to fast. It was a lot of fun though and I would recomend it to anyone and everyone.
Thursday June 12th
I slept in Lucius’ room last night. He didn’t have to be at work until 2, so we didn’t wake up until noon. I was going to meet with the mother, Mrs. East and the kids today at 2. I took the subway down to 86th and walked over to the Central Park right where they live. I walk in the door and the doorman calls up to the apartment because all guests much be announced. I walk to the elevator, where the doorman has already called for it to come to the first floor and pushed the button for the 8th floor, without leaving the comfort of the front of the building. I get up to the apartment and Mrs. East opens the door apologizing that she has never gotten wires more mixed up with anyone before. She explains that the kids just left with the manny, Hugh. They were at the museum and wouldn’t be back for a while so she gave me $20 to fake a taxi back uptown. I kept the money and took the subway home.
It turns out that the mother, Mrs. East had surgery recently and needs to have medicine pumped into her, which she has replaced every week. This means that she cannot go up and spend the week at the Hamptons any time soon. However, she is hoping that I can join them on weekends until I get familiar with it enough to have just the little girl, Emily, and I spend the weeks there together. For now she has both I and Hugh working because the two kids don’t necessarily like doing the same thing, and they both prefer being around someone of the same sex. However, the son, Jacob, is going to summer camp for the majority of the summer and so for the rest of the summer Hugh and I will have to split the time. I’m not sure how that is going to work, but I’m sure we will work something out.
I was expecting to be out a lot later then half and hour, so most people were not around the campus. To waste some time I checked the mail and went to Riverside Park to read my New Yorker with a bubble tea and muffin from the farmers market on Broadway. At around 4:30 I started to try and call some of my friends to see if they were back from work in order to sign me into the building. No one was answering so I sat on campus to try and catch people as they walked from class or research back to the dorm. Eventually my friend Robert came along and so I walked back with him. Robert is a friend of mine who talks a lot, and quite often tells the same stories over and over agian. He also tends to stay in his room a lot and play video games and drink, but that also makes him fairly reliable, and we tend to flock to his room, because despite the mess he always has it open and is happy to have company. Robert, Lucius, Donny, and I ended up going to dinner around the corner on Amsterdam at a place called Taco Ria.
Donny is a relatively new friend of mine. I met him towards the end of the semester, though he has reminded me that we actually met twice before the final time where I actually started to remember his name and face and we became offical facebook friends. He lives on Robert's floor for the summer with Eddie as his roommate. Eddie had been out of town for a while during my first week back at Columbia for the summer and so I stayed with Donny a lot and slept in Eddie's bed. Towards the end of my stay though he kissed me and mentioned how he was interested in dating. I told him I had to think about it though, and we are just friends for now. I have only told Ariel about this seeing as I don't know how the other guys would react.
***SIDE NOTE***
for those who haven't read this in the New York Times I found it very interesting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/fashion/08love.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=modern+love&st=nyt&oref=slogin
I don't know if any of you guys will like it as much as I did because of all of your situations, but still I figured I would pass it along.
After dinner we headed back to campus where the guys proceeded to either watch the Lakers game or play Call of Duty. I would meander between the two things as I waited for Ariel to get back from weight training, her being the only girl I know in the building. She didn’t come upstairs until fairly later, 11:30, and by that time we were all just sitting in Roberts room talking. She joined us and we continued to talk until around 1:30 or 2. Seeing as everyone needed to wake up tomorrow to go to work or class or something we finally dispersed and I slept in Ariel’s room that night.
Friday June 13th
Ariel and I both woke up around 8 and got ready for work. She is interning at CNN this summer so she has been working crazy hours and putting a lot of effort in, despite the fact that it is unpaid. I was heading back to the East’s place today to actually have a full day of work. I got there around 10 and Hugh was there to pick up Jacob. They left to see an advanced screening of Get Smart and spend the day together, while I was there to entertain Emily. We played on the computer a little, and went into her room where she showed me some of her toys, and her window where she liked to look at people from, and how many people would sit naked by their windows. She was still in her pajamas so we looked through her closet for something to wear. Mrs. East came in and kept looking through the closet with us pulling out things she had bought and Emily never wears. Finally she claimed, “You know what, from now on I’m just going to buy you clothes from the Gap.” While Emily responded “No! I know you won’t mom.”
After Emily finally got dressed we decided to go to the Museum of Natural History. We watched a show about the big bang, and saw the marine life. We had lunch in the cafeteria and talked about who invented words and decided on their meanings, and gossiped about Hugh, who aparently is very tall, hairy, and a little scary. Emily then had an appointment so I dropped her off and went to Starbucks to sit for a while. When I picked her up we headed back to the apartment where we colored and read together when Jacob came home with Hugh. Hugh left and I played on the computer with Jacob and Emily until there mother came home. When Mrs. East came home I got ready to take the dogs for a walk, they have two small white fluffy dogs, Maya and Buddy. Mrs. East asked her children if anyone wanted to walk the dogs with me and Jacob offered. Mrs. East then pushed Emily to come with us, until Jacob quietly said to his mom how he wanted to go alone with me because he spent all day with Hugh and didn't get to know me yet. We walked the dogs in Central Park and returned home. The kids then took showers and got ready to go out to dinner with their mother. I ast with Mrs. East and talked about her kids and what to expect for the rest of the summer. She then paid me $150 for my time and I headed back to Columbia.
By that time it was around 5 PM and while I was walking to the subway my friend Ariel called me and asked if I wanted to go downtown and meet her for dinner. Feel confident about spending money I took the subway down to 59th street to meet her outside the Time Warner building. We then walked through Central Park disscussing all sort of things from a story she is hoping to pitch to her boss, to what we want to do for the 4th of July. We ended up on the east side at 72nd street. We walked down for a while trying to find a menu that appealed to us. I ended up buying her dinner at an Italian restaurant on Lexington and dessert at a French restaurant, to try and repay her for letting me stay with her these past couple nights. We then walked back through the park to the west side and took the subway up to Columbia.
Back at Columbia we met up with Robert, Lucius and Donny. Lucius and Ariel rarely ever drink because they are afraid that they will do something stupid if they do, but decided that they would tonight if everyone did. So the guys made a stop to the liquor store as Ariel and I went to the grocery store. We met back up in Robert's room and made cosmos, mojitos, and margaritas. At around 2:30 AM I had to head down town to B and C's apartment in midtown.
Saturday June 14th
I got to B and C's appartment around 3:15. They are two guys who graduated this past spring and now are living in a very nice place on 53rd and 8th with two other roommates. C is a very extroverted person and knew most people on the Columbia campus, and even if he didn't know them they all knew him. He is from New York and in the summer he creates a list serve for about 200 people of all the things he plans to do, in case any one wants to join him, and they are all free. I know him through the film festival that I am a part of, he was the co founder with B. There were a number of us sleeping over their place that night, around 5, because the next morning was going to be an early one. I went to bed around 4AM and had to wake up at 6AM in order to get to Central Park with them at 7. We were getting there so early so that we could stand in line for tickets for Shakespeare in the park. We were very close to the beginning of the line which was nice, and met up with a number of other people there. In total there was about 20 of us waiting in line, of which I only knew about 3. We played a couple of card games and quite a few rounds of mafia. We were waiting there for 6 hours, until the ticket booth opened at 1PM. Each person was allowed to get 2 tickets, but for the people who did not wake up early and stay in line the rule was you had to bring food or drink to the people who were in line.
When we finally received our tickets some of us dispersed because the show did not start until 8PM. The rest of us went more into the heart of Central Park for a free concert by Vampire Weekend. The line to get in was ridiculously long, so B and C and a couple other people opted to just sit outside the venue and picnic. We could still hear the music fine so it wasn't really a problem. While we were picnicing I got a phone call from a friend, Joey, who was in the city for the weekend. He goes to Columbia as well but is in the DC area this summer working at NASA. I met up with him at the apple store on Fifth Avenue. He was inbetween having lunch with some friends from highschool and going to his aunt's house to pick up some shoes. He made time for me because I wanted to give him and early birthday present, tickets to see one of the last performances of Rent on Broadway in September when his birthday is. It is his absolute favorite musical and I wanted to make sure he left that night available. He walked me back up to the park while we talked about this girl that he met while in DC and how amazing she is. I hope that things work out between them, because at the moment he still cn't tell if she likes him because aparently she is really shy.
Shortly after I met back up with B and C at the picnic it started to pour. We didn't really stress and just sort of let it rain on us, but eventually we started to get a little cold, and we didn't think that music was that amzing so we decided to walk back to their apartment. By that point everyone else had dispersed and it was just the three of us. When we got baak the rain had let up but we were completely soaked. We took showers and changed clothes and put our wet clothes along with the blankets in the dryer. We got some food from Chipotle and watched a little bit of animal planet before we had to head back to the park for the play. It wasn't raining when we left and we met up with the rest of the group outside the outdoor theatre. When we sat down it started to pour though, and everyone put up their umbrellas, which then just dripped on to the person next to the defeating the purpose. The play would not start if it was raining, so we had to wait it out for about an hour and half hoping that it would let up. Unfortunately it never did so we just got soaked again and headed back the B and C's place. This time there were about 15 of us heading to their apartment. Again we all changed and put our clothes in the dryer. We had a little wine, talked, and watched the Boondock Saints.
People gradually left throughout the night. I decided to stay another night and went to bed around 3.
Sunday June 15th
I had to wake up around 8AM in order to get ready and out the door by 8:30. I needed to get back up town by 9 to work the breakfast shift at a restaurant called Crepes on Columbus. I started working here about 3 days a week about 2 months ago. My Sunday morning shift is typically pretty good, and I make a lot of money, adn during that time there at 2 waiters on staff and one bus boy for about 17 tables. The other two weekday night shifts that I work tend tobe fairly laid back and slow. During those I tend to be the only person working, with maybe a bus boy during some of the peak hours. There is 1 cook at all times, and 1 dishwasher. Everyone else who works here speaks spanish, and some only speak spanish. This makes for the times that I am working as the only waitress fairly quite.
It was father's day today and so it was fairly busy. We pretty consistently had a wait, which meant that the three people on staff were running around crazy, and we began to run out of glasses and silverware, so we had to start washing it in the sink. My shift ended at 4, but the manager hadn't arranged for anyone to work the night shift so he asked me to stay. I went back to Columbia for a 2 hour break, and to change my shoes into something more comfortable. I then headed back for the dinner rush, which actually was not that busy, to the manager let me go after 2 hours.
Walking back from work I decided to get some cake from this hungarian pastry shop. I took it to these steps on campus and sat outside eating. I called Ariel to see if she wanted to join me but she was still working on her pitch. I then facebook messaged Donny because he doesn't get service in his room and asked him if he wanted to join me, because I figured that if he got the message in time he was most likely to be willing to come. After about a 45 minutes I headed to the dorm. I was exhausted after being on my feet all day and only getting 7 hours of sleep in 2 days. Unfortunately Ariel was still working on her pitch, so I went to Robert's room and where he was playing video games with some of the other guys. I ended up just laying on his bed and fell a sleep until 12:30, when I moved to Ariel's room and actually got ready for bed and went to sleep.
Monday June 16th
Ariel woke up at 8 and had to leave for work by 9. I packed up my stuff and moved down to P's room. I knew that he had class at 10 and got back at noon so I slept in his room more while he was in class. He came back and joined me as we slept for another hour. We then got up and and went to lunch at this middle easter fast food place called Amir's. He had another class at 2:30. After he left I showered and went to work at Crepes on Columbus for the night shift.
P.S.
I'm sorry my posts are really long. I'm just trying to tell you absolutely everything that has happened to me, as you guys asked. Plus at the moment I am trying to give you a lot of background about who these people are to me and what these different places are. Hopefully soon either the posts will get shorter, or by having this background information you might actually start to get interested in the people I am writing about.
I have also gone back to add a little background to the people I mentioned in my first post, if you care to reread it.
I'm sorry I can't post every day. Sometimes I just don't have access to a computer. I realize this is very different then you guys. But I will always up date you.
Also it would be helpful for me if you guys added a little background because I don't really understand half of Mo's update.
-the nanny
Mo's Update
After a tomato scare, Mo has had a lot of time to reflect on the state of the world and the mocap lab. The report is good and we are all working on making this better one maker at a time....one marker at a time. Deep fried hot dog on fathers day assure the tomato symptoms are officially over. Fact! The longer they fry the better they are. "I am in awe of what we have accomplished here today", so said our Father in reference to the new annual deep fried tradition. Don't sit in a Nissan 350 Z, while it is a great car on the road, it is not so good indoors.
Also, everybody celebrate ...... "Mahler vs The City of Pittsburgh", case closed with great success. I hope. Tank likes to jump as high as he can while Lucy prefers to just chill out an slouch.
Also, everybody celebrate ...... "Mahler vs The City of Pittsburgh", case closed with great success. I hope. Tank likes to jump as high as he can while Lucy prefers to just chill out an slouch.
----Walkers Be Careful----
This morning Shira and Mo were almost killed by a kid playing golf. He shot right at their heads... they were mad.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Liza is the best..
We all need to pick it up here in the lab. Not only does Liza out bake all of us but now she is officially out blogging all of us.
Liza I can't believe you went sky diving... were you scared? Liza, you are living a very adventurous life these days.
Yesterday was an interesting day here in the lab. Nothing too exciting going on. I wanted ice coffee but for some reason La Prima doesn't have ice. So after a little bit of thinking I decided to put the leftover Rita's into my coffee. It was pretty nasto. If you like super sweet coffee that leaves an awful after taste in your mouth I recommend it. Mo made tuna puttanesca for lunch but we left it at home. Remember the days in elementary school when you would have to call your Mom to bring your lunch to school when you forgot it. Clay got a flat tire yesterday and Laurel was late for work and everyone was really really mad at her.
What is everyone doing for father's day?... write your plans.
Liza I can't believe you went sky diving... were you scared? Liza, you are living a very adventurous life these days.
Yesterday was an interesting day here in the lab. Nothing too exciting going on. I wanted ice coffee but for some reason La Prima doesn't have ice. So after a little bit of thinking I decided to put the leftover Rita's into my coffee. It was pretty nasto. If you like super sweet coffee that leaves an awful after taste in your mouth I recommend it. Mo made tuna puttanesca for lunch but we left it at home. Remember the days in elementary school when you would have to call your Mom to bring your lunch to school when you forgot it. Clay got a flat tire yesterday and Laurel was late for work and everyone was really really mad at her.
What is everyone doing for father's day?... write your plans.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Getting Back to New York
Monday June 9th
So I went to the airport shortly after I left you guys on Monday. It turned out my flight was canceled so I had to wait for another 3 hours for the next flight out, meaning I didn't get back to Columbia until 11:30.
For those of you who don't know I don't actually have housing in New York, so I have just been kind of mooching off friends and moving from one room to the next sleeping on an air mattress. So the first night back I stayed with my friend Ariel. She is my closest friend here at Columbia and one of the few girls that I know who is staying the summer. I spend most of my time with her and tell her everything. I don't know what I am going to do next year when we are living in different buildings across campus from eachother. She appreciated me staying with her because she had an exciting/overwhelming weekend when this guy Eric visiting her, and had a lot to talk about. I tried to give her my wise advice but I think the whole guy situation will take a couple of more sessions.
Tuesday June 10th
I had to wake up early (5:30) to meet up with some friends. We all met through the film festival and are known as the food commitee. We rented a Zipcar and were driving to Jersey to go sky diving. We drove for 2 1/2 hours to south Jersey listening to a mixed CD that this guy B made consisting of various love songs such as Boys2Men – I’ll Make Love To You, Marvin Gaye – Lets Get It On, Atlantic Star – Love Me Down, and Blackstreet – No Diggity. It made for an interesting ride. B is a really interesting guy. I know him through the film festival the I will be running next year. He is one of the co-founders. He graduated this past spring but I hope to and expect to stay in touch with him. He is one of the most physically fit people I know, meaning he can do such things as pushups where he claps behind his back and pushups on just his thumbs. He also has created a non profit which is centered around the idea of Joy. He makes paper decorations with the words "you are my joy" on them and posts them on people's doors. He also hands out stickers with the same phrase, and tags places around Columbia, hoping that people will see them and it will put a smile on their face. He also does such crazy things as swim the across the Hudson river to Jersey, and walk the subway track. He is also the person who brought us all together and organized the skydiving adventure, even though he has already gone skydiving before.
We attempted to go sky diving the previous weekend but because of weather conditions they made us sit and wait for 3 hours before they told us we could do it. This time we were luckier and were the first people to be taken up. It was the first time for four of us. We all jumped tandem to an instructor, from 13,000 feet above the ground. It was an amazing time. Nothing like anything you could expect. On girl, V, almost passed out during the parachute part, but after some rest on the ground and some water she was fine. V is the freshman of our group. I feel bad because I feel like the guys put a lot of pressure on her to do things. Not necessarily bad things, just stuff like telling us what the names of her middle school rock band were, and coming to hang out with us, but still it is pressure. She is cool about it though and a really nice girl.
Afterwards we hung out by a pool for a little, (we also have on our list of things to do this summer to teach V how to swim, but she was not interested in getting in) until we got bored and decided to stop by K's house. K is in my year. She is a very open and pretty Asian American girl who used to date P. She lives in Maryland so it was not much of a drive. She is leaving for the summer to go to London and work for a film studio, so we were happy to get to spend the time with her. We jumped on her trampoline for a while, and got to play with her dogs. I'm trying to convince them all to come to my house next, and meet my dogs. I showed them some pictures of Charlie, but after everything they have heard about my family they say they aren't surprised at all that I would have that kind of animal.
I decided to go for an early dinner at this Moroccan place in Delaware called Casablanca. It was really good food, a 7 course meal for $20. The meat was really tender, and I learned at dinner that apparently you can eat the bones of chickens and such as well. After dinner we all said goodbye to K as she headed back home, and the rest of us drove back through Jersey to New York. Along the way we dropped off V because she had to fly to California the following day for a family vacation.
The two guys and I then drove back to the city and I dropped one off at Columbia, P, and one off at his apartment downtown, B. I then had to return the car to the garage where we rented it. Unfortunately, by this time it was 1:30 and the garage door was closed. I found a place to park and walked to the garage knocking on the door, and calling their phone. The guy on the phone kept hanging up on me, and the third time I realized it was because he doesn't speak English. Luckily, he was still nice enough to open the door for me so I could finally return the car.
By this time it was around 2 AM and I needed to find a place to stay. I decided to stay uptown at Columbia with P. He had a paper to write for his class the next day anyway, so I was able to even sleep in his bed. P is a good friend of mine. He is one of the few guys who actually stayed and helped me through everything when it came to organizing the film festival. He and I are also in the process of trying to organize a catering company on campus, so we have slaved away in the kitchen together many a times, and have spent long nights trying to work out logistics.
Wednesday June 11th
I slept in today which was nice after the previous day. I got up and showered in time to have lunch with my friend Lucius. We went to a deli around the corner. and the proceeded to Riverside park where we spent the afternoon just sitting around and talking. Lucius is a political science major, and a really passionate guy. He is working at a law firm in Queens this summer. He is the kind of guy who reads a lot, but when he reads he reads text books and books titled, "Politics in Society". Despite his interestes, at the park our conversation mainly focused on what sex he would prefer his child to be and whether his parents seperation made him more skeptical about love and marriage.
I'll keep you posted on any more news (exciting or not)
-the nanny
So I went to the airport shortly after I left you guys on Monday. It turned out my flight was canceled so I had to wait for another 3 hours for the next flight out, meaning I didn't get back to Columbia until 11:30.
For those of you who don't know I don't actually have housing in New York, so I have just been kind of mooching off friends and moving from one room to the next sleeping on an air mattress. So the first night back I stayed with my friend Ariel. She is my closest friend here at Columbia and one of the few girls that I know who is staying the summer. I spend most of my time with her and tell her everything. I don't know what I am going to do next year when we are living in different buildings across campus from eachother. She appreciated me staying with her because she had an exciting/overwhelming weekend when this guy Eric visiting her, and had a lot to talk about. I tried to give her my wise advice but I think the whole guy situation will take a couple of more sessions.
Tuesday June 10th
I had to wake up early (5:30) to meet up with some friends. We all met through the film festival and are known as the food commitee. We rented a Zipcar and were driving to Jersey to go sky diving. We drove for 2 1/2 hours to south Jersey listening to a mixed CD that this guy B made consisting of various love songs such as Boys2Men – I’ll Make Love To You, Marvin Gaye – Lets Get It On, Atlantic Star – Love Me Down, and Blackstreet – No Diggity. It made for an interesting ride. B is a really interesting guy. I know him through the film festival the I will be running next year. He is one of the co-founders. He graduated this past spring but I hope to and expect to stay in touch with him. He is one of the most physically fit people I know, meaning he can do such things as pushups where he claps behind his back and pushups on just his thumbs. He also has created a non profit which is centered around the idea of Joy. He makes paper decorations with the words "you are my joy" on them and posts them on people's doors. He also hands out stickers with the same phrase, and tags places around Columbia, hoping that people will see them and it will put a smile on their face. He also does such crazy things as swim the across the Hudson river to Jersey, and walk the subway track. He is also the person who brought us all together and organized the skydiving adventure, even though he has already gone skydiving before.
We attempted to go sky diving the previous weekend but because of weather conditions they made us sit and wait for 3 hours before they told us we could do it. This time we were luckier and were the first people to be taken up. It was the first time for four of us. We all jumped tandem to an instructor, from 13,000 feet above the ground. It was an amazing time. Nothing like anything you could expect. On girl, V, almost passed out during the parachute part, but after some rest on the ground and some water she was fine. V is the freshman of our group. I feel bad because I feel like the guys put a lot of pressure on her to do things. Not necessarily bad things, just stuff like telling us what the names of her middle school rock band were, and coming to hang out with us, but still it is pressure. She is cool about it though and a really nice girl.
Afterwards we hung out by a pool for a little, (we also have on our list of things to do this summer to teach V how to swim, but she was not interested in getting in) until we got bored and decided to stop by K's house. K is in my year. She is a very open and pretty Asian American girl who used to date P. She lives in Maryland so it was not much of a drive. She is leaving for the summer to go to London and work for a film studio, so we were happy to get to spend the time with her. We jumped on her trampoline for a while, and got to play with her dogs. I'm trying to convince them all to come to my house next, and meet my dogs. I showed them some pictures of Charlie, but after everything they have heard about my family they say they aren't surprised at all that I would have that kind of animal.
I decided to go for an early dinner at this Moroccan place in Delaware called Casablanca. It was really good food, a 7 course meal for $20. The meat was really tender, and I learned at dinner that apparently you can eat the bones of chickens and such as well. After dinner we all said goodbye to K as she headed back home, and the rest of us drove back through Jersey to New York. Along the way we dropped off V because she had to fly to California the following day for a family vacation.
The two guys and I then drove back to the city and I dropped one off at Columbia, P, and one off at his apartment downtown, B. I then had to return the car to the garage where we rented it. Unfortunately, by this time it was 1:30 and the garage door was closed. I found a place to park and walked to the garage knocking on the door, and calling their phone. The guy on the phone kept hanging up on me, and the third time I realized it was because he doesn't speak English. Luckily, he was still nice enough to open the door for me so I could finally return the car.
By this time it was around 2 AM and I needed to find a place to stay. I decided to stay uptown at Columbia with P. He had a paper to write for his class the next day anyway, so I was able to even sleep in his bed. P is a good friend of mine. He is one of the few guys who actually stayed and helped me through everything when it came to organizing the film festival. He and I are also in the process of trying to organize a catering company on campus, so we have slaved away in the kitchen together many a times, and have spent long nights trying to work out logistics.
Wednesday June 11th
I slept in today which was nice after the previous day. I got up and showered in time to have lunch with my friend Lucius. We went to a deli around the corner. and the proceeded to Riverside park where we spent the afternoon just sitting around and talking. Lucius is a political science major, and a really passionate guy. He is working at a law firm in Queens this summer. He is the kind of guy who reads a lot, but when he reads he reads text books and books titled, "Politics in Society". Despite his interestes, at the park our conversation mainly focused on what sex he would prefer his child to be and whether his parents seperation made him more skeptical about love and marriage.
I'll keep you posted on any more news (exciting or not)
-the nanny
::::::::::June 11, 2008::::::::::
Today Mo and Justin are MIA.
Sadness has fallen over the lab because we all miss them.
Monday was super duper exciting... it was great having Liza, Charlie, Lucy and Tank all in for a visit.
WARNING: Don't eat tomatoes... EAT RITA'S.
Sadness has fallen over the lab because we all miss them.
Monday was super duper exciting... it was great having Liza, Charlie, Lucy and Tank all in for a visit.
WARNING: Don't eat tomatoes... EAT RITA'S.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
I'm coming tomorrow!
Charlie and I are excited to come visit you guys and Tank tomorrow. Unfortunately I have been awfully busy packing and such, so I don't think there will be any baked goods to share.
My mom told me about Mo's installation and I'm excited to see it, and you guys at noon!
My mom told me about Mo's installation and I'm excited to see it, and you guys at noon!
Friday, June 6, 2008
:::::::Sprinkles:::::::
Today Shira found sprinkles in the mocap lab. She put them in the leftover Rita's and claimed that it was delicious. I don't know if it was as delicious as Liza's homemade chocolate chip cookies, because I didn't eat any...
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Dear Abby version 1
Dear Abby,
Someone in my work made me feel bad today for wanting to go to Kinkos with another coworker. Even though I feel like it would be quality time, this other coworker doesn't think so... any advice on how to approach this subject?
Thanks,
Morose Mocapper
Someone in my work made me feel bad today for wanting to go to Kinkos with another coworker. Even though I feel like it would be quality time, this other coworker doesn't think so... any advice on how to approach this subject?
Thanks,
Morose Mocapper
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
IKEA!
Mo is the worst free cell player ever.
Shira and Laurel went to Ikea.
Shira and Laurel built a beautiful headboard for the art installation.
Art installation to be installed TOMORROW!
Elise is loving her new scented marker.
Justin wore a superman shirt.
No one has touched the Rita's since Friday.
Shira and Laurel went to Ikea.
Shira and Laurel built a beautiful headboard for the art installation.
Art installation to be installed TOMORROW!
Elise is loving her new scented marker.
Justin wore a superman shirt.
No one has touched the Rita's since Friday.
Monday, June 2, 2008
and we are off into June...
A bright morning has passed.
Laurel out with food poisoning.
Mo in a dark depression caused by the status of the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Elise posed the question... Jail for a year? or Exiled for life?
Speaking of Exile...
Shira enjoys her new desk.
Justin is mentally preparing himself for the game tonight with fried food, bacon and ketchup.
Rita's untouched since Friday.
Liza? no post from you.
xoxo for now,
Lord of the Mo Cap Lab
Laurel out with food poisoning.
Mo in a dark depression caused by the status of the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Elise posed the question... Jail for a year? or Exiled for life?
Speaking of Exile...
Shira enjoys her new desk.
Justin is mentally preparing himself for the game tonight with fried food, bacon and ketchup.
Rita's untouched since Friday.
Liza? no post from you.
xoxo for now,
Lord of the Mo Cap Lab
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