Wii Fit

Nothing pleases me more than having the entire family addicted to a "game" we waited in line for three hours for. Wii Fit is a big hit for us, with all of us competing on each challenge to see who has the highest score. I went through my full fitness routine tonight for the first time since we got it, and am tired! I will probably be sore tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, I have a busy day, but should be fun. Up at 5am because I have to be at grand central station by 6:45. Hop a 6:57 train to Stamford, CT, where me and a colleague are meeting with a hedge fund for a couple of hours. At 10am it's off to another hedge fund in the area for a couple hours, then BACK to the original one for lunch with a lead IT guy. After lunch we're meeting with a sysadmin to go over the implementation of our stuff.

Should get done with that by 3pm, then need to get back home for a meeting with our CEO. So all in all, full day.

No plans for the weekend yet.

Got Wii Fit

As I mentioned in the last post, we were up at 6:15 this morning to get to Nintendo World to get Wii Fit. As anticipated, there were already 6 people in line when we arrived around 7:15. The store opened at 10am.

We had a good time waiting around. There was a kid in 5th grade with his parents behind us, so the boys talked about video games with him, and took turns playing the DS. I chatted with a gal in front of us, a single 50-something year old who loved her Wii, and was currently obsessed with Guitar Hero.

We also had the pleasure of listening to the B-52's this morning. They were on the Today Show, which they were filming just around the corner. So we jammed in line to Love Shack and Rock Lobster, which is my favorite B-52's song!

Sorry this is such a poor picture, here's the only pic we got of us in line:


Here's Damion with Pikachu!



And here's us when we got home:

It's not every day...

...you have a $150 breakfast!


Of course, it's not everyday that you have breakfast on the ice rink of Rockefeller Center. Read on!

This morning we drove into Manhattan to Nintendo World to try and pick up Wii Fit. This is a "game" for the Nintento Wii that comes with a pad that enables you to do exercises and it tracks your progress over time. It's hard to explain, go here to find out more.

Anyways, we drive in, park at Rockefeller Center, and there's a line literally wrapping around the block for Nintendo World:


Clearly they weren't going to have any left by the time the queue was empty. So I'm going in with Damion and Miles at 6:30am tomorrow (a father's love knows no bounds!) to wait in line for 3 hours hoping to snag one. Of course, then there's my friend Jay who apparently had no issues buying one in Portland.

Having struck out on Wii Fit, we decided to make the best of it -- have breakfast at Rock Center.

Where the ice rink normally is, they have tables and turn it into a restaurant, the Rock Center Cafe. I've been by this a million times because I normally meet my boss in the city at the Terrace Club, a private club he belongs to just across the street. So we went on down, and were greeted with the most ridiculous childrens menu I have EVER seen:


Filet Mignon?!?!!?!? And this was the Brunch menu!! I fear for what I would have seen on the children's dinner menu!

We had a lovely brunch though:





The sun was shining (I actually got sunburned today from sitting in the sun here), people seemed to be in an exceptionally good mood (probably due to the phenomenal weather), and it made you want to walk fifth avenue with the millions of other folks having a great morning.


We came home and dorked around the house for a while. Kristal and I rearranged our bedroom. The boys painted:





And Damion is learning the guitar:



We're making the best of this holiday weekend. What is everybody else up to this weekend? Post in the comments!

Andrew and Fam

Greenwich For Real

Just a note, I'm posting TWO posts tonight, so after you get done reading this one, you can continue on to a "catch up" post. Or you can skip down there and read that one first to keep this all chronological and stuff. :-)

Today was a Greenwich Village do-over day. Since we got rained out last weekend (see the prior blog post), we decided to do our walking tour and everything today.

We started out with a great breakfast:


Miles was a great help in the kitchen as we whipped up some chocolate-chip pancakes and bacon. Oliver was anxious to help too!


We got ready to go, and decided to drive in. Driving into the city is actually super easy for us, and costs about half as much as if we took trains. Driving in Manhattan isn't too bad either, as long as you get into the vibe of the Drift. The Drift is that maneuver by taxi's and most other drivers on the road where the vehicle is left to just drift across lanes. No signal, no clear intent, just moving in fluid motion across the lanes of traffic. It's as if there were no lanes. Once you realize that drifting happens nearly all the time, you start to adapt and accommodate. I have gotten down the technique of the Drift, but I still use my turn signal. :-)

We found FREE parking in Greenwich Village right at Hudson and Bleeker and took in the shopping down Bleeker street. Oh, and before I get ahead of myself, Kristal...


looking exceptionally hot today!

After Bleeker, we hit a house that Walt Disney had lived in:


We then took a detour and headed over for lunch. Here are the boys while we waited for our order:


We went to this mexican restaurant, sat outside, it was great. We ordered this Tapas plate with a bunch of "mini" stuff -- mini tacos, mini burritos, mini quesadillas, and mini taquitos. We thought we were getting a great deal because the whole thing was $19 -- less than $5 each for lunch! We also ordered soda's -- BIG MISTAKE. The soda's were $4 apiece!! A four dollar glass of Diet Coke???? Yeah, officially the most expensive glass of soda I've ever had.

Moving on, we took in some stately brownstones:


With cool street addresses:


Here is the brownstone that was used for exterior shots of the Huxtable house, on the Cosby Show:


Maybe it was in better shape 20 years ago. :-)

Here's a funny picture Kristal took of us walking. I look like I'm trying to wax eloquent about something and her knowing smile that seems to say "yes Dear, how fascinating." :-)


We ran across this wall, one of the last examples I've seen of "old New York" before it was cleaned up:


You just don't see tagging like this anywhere in Manhattan. It's almost like a preserve to see it in Greenwich Village. As an aside, I have NEVER seen more tagging than in Newark, NJ. That place is GHETTO. And scary. I actually watched a show on A&E called Gangland (about modern gangs), and they featured the MS13 gang, and they have a huge presence in Newark. And modern gangs aren't just the crap you think of in East LA back in the 80's, like Beat It style, we're talking about brutal, (inter)nationally organized gangs. Jersey is apparently a haven for this stuff, not just Mafia.

ANYWAYS, by this time, we were all starting to get a little tired:


On our way back to the car, we ran across Gay St. It's a cute little street:


Everybody who passed it would stop and take out their camera's to take a picture. You'll also notice that there are no people on the sidewalks. Walking on the residential streets of Greenwich Village was really cool as they were nearly empty. Just a few locals now and then. Which is a stark contrast to practically everywhere else in "mainstream" New York. The boys loved it because they had plenty of space to play (pretending to be Indiana Jones on some adventure).


We hit Washington Park on our way out. This park used to be a haven for drug dealers and other seedy folks, but is now a generally cool hang out with TONS of musicians playing instruments of all sorts. It's right by NYU so you get lots of university hippy's as well.


And last but not least, Miles took this great picture of Damion, Kristal, and myself:


So that was our day in Greenwich Village!

Catching Up

This is not the first time I've had to do a "catch up" post. Here are a few pics of the past two weeks since the last blog post.

Ok so we've had a few Oliver requests, so to oblige, here's how our puppy is doing. First off, he's grown a TON. And we discovered that he's not the "mini dachshund" as advertised. Definitely too big to be a mini. But he's great to have around the house, loves playing with the boys, and if we could just get him to stop chewing up Kristal's shoes, we'd be in great shape!




Now a few random pics. Here is me at "work" (at home). Doing what I do out here, I split my time between being in suits, and in jeans and a sweatshirt (notice my Vermont souvenir!):


Here's Miles and Mom:


OK so last weekend, Miles' piano teacher invited us to a performance she was participating in at a music school in Manhattan. Upon researching it, turns out this place, Greenwich House, in Greenwich Village, is a 100 year old music school, who's alumni include John Cage and Henry Cowell. This place is an institution in Manhattan, and it was very cool to have the opportunity to visit. Miles' piano teacher is a soprano, and was singing children's songs. It was a great recital, the boys really enjoyed it.



The plan was to visit Greenwich House for the recital, then do a walking tour of Greenwich Village. I mapped it all out, and all the sights we were going to see. Unfortunately, we got rained out! So since we had driven, we took a detour home over the Brooklyn Bridge:




I couldn't help but comment to Kristal how much steel actually comprises the bridge. It seems to me there was an awful lot of "extra steel" if there can be such a thing. Take a look at this picture:

See that? There are beams, cross beams, extra support lines, more beams, random fan-looking-structures of steel, and more beams. :-) Oh well, am I a structural engineer? No.

Anyways, after coming back from Brooklyn, we were hungry, so decided to land right back where we started, Greenwich Village, for dinner, at a funny place called Jekyll and Hyde's. For some reason we didn't take any pictures of the place, but it was a Horror-themed restaurant. So there was creepy stuff everywhere, the lights were so dim you could barely see, they played creepy music, etc. Most of it was tongue-in-cheek, and actually quite funny (i.e. think Monster Mash), but pretty cool. And not a complete rip-off like Midtown theme restaurants.

As we were walking back to the car, the boys stumbled across this gem -- a narrow doorway leading to who-knows-where with the coolest street addresses:

Our week with Sebra

Sebra, Kristal's mom, has been staying with us for the past week. It has been a lot of fun having her with us. I wanted to post a few pictures of the past week and the great things we have done.

Last Saturday we went to the Statue of Liberty:



Of all the tourist things we tend to do with people who visit, this one doesn't seem to get tiring. Screwing around with all the people on the ferry's and the lines get tiring, but it's a pretty cool landmark. Sebra found her grandmother and her grandmother's sister's names on the wall on Ellis Island. Very cool.

We also went to the Hoboken Arts and Music festival last weekend. As you can see it was crazy busy, but really cool. It was almost like a farmers market but with a lot more venders. I guess like a Saturday Market sort of thing. There were also two stages where none other than Mickey Dolenz was headlining that night. He's one of the guys from The Monkees. Unfortunately, we were too tired after walking for three hours to stick around for him, so we'll just have to catch him on reruns of the show. :-)





You can't see it very well, but Kristal was wearing an adorable skirt with music and piano notes on it. Very appropriate for the Arts and Music festival.


Little Oliver also got a new surprise -- a doggie bag!


He looks really cute in it. We took him to Central Park today in his bag (on the subways) and he did really good, and got lots of smiles from kids and women.

Here are a few more pics of him:



Here is Oliver playing with his new bag:



Kebra moved to Alaska this past Friday. She is spending the summer at a resort in Denali National Park doing seasonal work out there. It should be a great opportunity and a lot of fun for her. As a going away thing, Kristal, Kebra, and their mother all got pedicures:


And finally, for Monther's Day today, we all went to Central Park and Midtown. We always do a Mother's Day Picnic, so thought it fitting to do this years in Central Park.


The boys and I gave the necklace to Kristal this year. It was made by a local jeweler and is called a 'Loveprint.' We took thumbprints of Miles and Damion, the fingerprints are cast in Silver, and then she made them into a necklace:


On the back of each one is the boys' name. It's a really cool idea, the necklace turned out great, and it looks really good on Kristal.

That's all for now!