Okay, that has absolutely nothing to do with your Mom, but it sounded cool in my head while typing it.
Alright, bear with me – I think all chronological order will be thrown out the window as I recount the past week and a half or so of events here in ol’ NYC. First, some of the more recent things:
Robie Saunderson of San Antonio Chicken Divinity fame sent me a digital movie file of my TODAY show glory – click here to download it for yourself (it’s about 2 MB or so, so keep that in mind dial-up folks!). So it’s not exactly a CLOSE-UP of me, but hey, I 
was still intercut with Bruce Springsteen and when I saw it on the jumbotron screen at Rockefeller Center (NOT Times Square though…bummer), it was lifesize! Also, here are some stills that Robie thoughtfully sent as well (thanks Robbie!).
- Â While waiting for the Ferry bus (no smartaleck comments, kthx) to pick me up outside work today (I was standing outside a Kenneth Cole store and kept looking in – I definitely need to go in there and look at their shoes and jackets…and hope they’re not like $500) as I was heading home early to meet the DirecTV folks who ended up not being able to install HD because my receiver I brought with me is BROKEN…okay, I rambled there, but while waiting for the Ferry bus (heh heh) who walks by me but Conan O’Brian? That dude is tall! And what’s funny is that he wasn’t mobbed or nothin’ while walking down the street. In fact, he probably never is, but still, he’s pretty distinctive looking. And tall.
- Speaking of Conan O’Brien, this past Friday I remembered that on the internal NBC channels in 30 Rock, you can tune to each of the studios and watch rehearsals. So during the afternoon, I was working and watching Conan work on that night’s broadcast, which was actually pretty damn cool as you see how they tweak the material to make it funnier and such. And he cusses. Awesome. Then, a few channels over, you can watch Studio 8H aka the Saturday Night Live studio and watch them prep for Saturday. If you thought some of their sketches were painful to watch just once, try listening to it REPEATEDLY over and over – and it doesn’t get funnier, folks. I can’t imagine the skit I saw was one that was hilarious to watch on Saturday evening.
- The Rockefeller Center SKATING RINK has opened up as of yesterday. Yes, the skating rink is actually open. Yesterday the temperature was in the 80s. Go figure. But maybe they knew something we all didn’t because while Monday was sweltering and muggy, the rest of the week the temps are dropping over 20 degrees and by Friday, our highs are in the 50s! Yowza. Guess I’ll get to finally use my new umbrella and jackets.
- Have I said recently how cool it is to work in Midtown???? If not, it’s freakin’ awesome. So much goes on right there.
- Okay, so last I updated, the TODAY show experience had just happened, and now I’m posting the video. What’s happened since? Glad you asked.
So on Saturday, I embarked on my first sightseeing-as-a-native trip, wanting to go into Manhattan and see the Barnes & Noble flagship store as well as see more of Midtown Fifth Avenue, which is where all the fancy stores are. So I did that, traveling first to Midtown (#12 in the map to the left, which is courtesy of the NFT NYC guide, indispensable!) and taking some more pics of 30 Rock before taking the subway down to Union Square (which is in the southern part of #9), which is south of the Empire State Building and kinda close to Greenwich Village. Needless to say, the B&N there is pretty awesome. 4 stories. And like the retard I am, I couldn’t stop myself from buying not one but TWO heavy computer books that I now had to carry around the rest of my trip. I’m stupid.
You know, I’m looking at the map I put there and it makes me laugh – you see how close it looks like between where I live and where I work. Probably no more than 3-4 miles. But it takes at a minimum 40 minutes to get there. An hour when it’s heavily crowded or horrendous streets. Hopefully me getting to work ahead of the rush will help a bit, as I’ve signed up as a member of the 30 Rock gym and will work out in the mornings. I got to work early (meaning, 7:25 am) today and it was amazing how fast it was. The rush hour really is if you try to get to work between 9 – 9:30. That blows my mind coming from the military and getting to work by 7:30 (okay, I didn’t quite do that near the end of my time, but cut me some slack, bitches).
Okay, where was I? Oh yeah, I was in Union Square and bought a couple bricks to walk around with during the rest of my trip. I had originally anticipated just staying in Manhattan all day because the plan was to go to the movies with Shannon and some of her friends that evening around 7pm. That plan changed when the skin on my hands was raw after hauling those books around. Union Square is a really cool place though, with a huge farmers market during the weekend and lots of restaurants, shops and bars around there. I then walked up Broadway towards the Flatiron building, one of the older and more recognizable ‘skyscrapers’ in New York. Then it was a quick visit to Madison Square Park which was nice to be in. I jumped back in the subway towards Midtown though (#11, #12, and #13) and walked briefly by the Plaza Hotel, the very bottom edge of Central Park, and then finally back on Fifth Avenue, where like I said, all the very cool shops are. I bought stuff, of course. Then I hauled myself back to the Ferry terminal, went home and unloaded, changed, and then went back into Manhattan to go see “Into The Wild” with Shannon and Co. It was good to see her, but didn’t really get a chance to hang out much as the movie started soon and then afterwards, I left to go home as she had other things going on and I was still unsure of how to get home at this point! But while walking down Broadway, I couldn’t help but see Times Square so I ended up walking through that ridiculousness at night. It’s incredible though. And then I finally got back home. Quite an endeavor. Here are the pics below.
29 Sep 2007 -Â Midtown, Union Square, Flatiron, & Madison Sq Park
I’m almost getting tired of all this updating, but screw it, must keep going. The next day, Sunday, was chores day and picking up stuff I needed day, until I found out that North Bergen county in Jersey basically closes on Sunday. And I didn’t feel like exploring too much as my auto insurance was still up in the air a bit. On that note, I’ve switched to GEICO and literally it is saving me about $375 every 6 months over what USAA was having me pay. No gracias, USAA!
Then it was the second week of work, and in a summary, I think I’m starting to actually make sense of things. I’m not the expert I will become, but I’m certainly making headway in to what I’ll be doing and what the systems I’m working on actually do and how they do it. Sweet. I did take some random pictures from that week though, so here are those. Also, my sightseeing excursion this past weekend was to go visit one of New York’s amazing museums. It was going to be between the Museum of Modern Art or The Metropolitan Museum of Art – I ended up choosing MoMA which was incredible. I love what can constitute art. I did get to see Van Gogh’s Starry Night though, which is a definite checkbox in my life. It had a lot of incredible works and was quite a great museum. Highly recommended!
1 Oct 2007 – Rockefeller Center
3 Oct 2007 – Disappearing ESB
7 Oct 2007 – At the MoMA
So that brings me up to date with current pictures! It’s been amazing how fast time is moving while here, but i guess that’s to be expected what with all the things going on.
I hope you all are doing good! I’ll update again more frequently, I promise!