Another Year Has Come and Gone

(For lack of photos, I'm posting some fun pics of my crazy kitties...)

There's just four days left of 2006 and I think I'm glad of that. It has been a whirlwind in more ways than one and I'm really hoping (!) that 2007 is less hectic. I graduated from Seton Hill with my MBA the Monday before Christmas (Dec. 18), so that's finally one less thing I have to worry about. Rob is back to work (from the truck accident in September), still very sore every day when he comes home, but at least he's working again. Possibly the only good thing that came from the truck accident is that he has decided to attend college and will begin the Saturday "Adult Degree Program" at Seton Hill in January. He's majoring in Human Services and will finish his bachelor's in just two years.

Robert Morris University, and therefore the Bayer Center, is closed between Christmas and New Year's, so I have a whole 11 days off. I'm having difficulty remembering how to relax...grad school gets you in the mindset of always having school work to be done gnawing in the back of your head. I still feel like I have too much to do and find myself setting overly ambitious lists and schedules for myself. I wonder if I will ever get past the guilty feeling I have when I just sit and watch TV?

I'm not really making any New Year's resolutions...I try to just make New Year's progress instead. We have agreed that we'd both like to begin eating less fast food and more healthy stuff so that we can hopefully lose a few pounds and reduce our coming candidacies for heart attack patients in our 40s. I would really like to try hard to get our credit bills reduced so that we can buy a house in the next few years. And I want to try to spend more time with my kitties, who I feel like I ignore sometimes...Xander or Boo-Kitty will drag their toys up to me and meow and it always seems like I'm in the middle of something and don't have time to play. I feel bad about that, but I went to graduate school and I go to work everyday to make their lives better too, so it hasn't all been for naught.

Happy New Year!

Christmastime in the City

So my employer sent me to a conference in NYC at the end of November (which, between that and final semester projects to finish up my MBA, have kept me from blogging of late) and I was able to take my husband along for the ride. The conference was good...Cultural Competency Institute hosted by the Alliance for Nonprofit Management from D.C. NYC was great...it was our first time there. We didn't get to see everything (it's huge and we only had one evening with really good walking weather), but I wanted to share some of my favorite photos from the trip.

We stayed at the La Quinta in Queens (inexpensive but nice and centrally located - easy to get to subway and buses) and got on the subway #7 into Manhattan. We got off at Grand Central Station because I really wanted to see it. I've seen it so many times in movies that I just had to see it in person, especially the clock, which just fascinates me. Imagine how many people have looked at that clock and imagine how many stories that clock could tell if it could do more than say 'tick tock.'

We then walked up Park Avenue (I think) to Bryant Park, which we were told had a large Christmas tree and ice skating and was on the way to the Empire State Building, our M.O. of the evening. Bryant Park has a Victorian feel with modern undertones. It's somehow quaint, even with the large Citicorp banners at each corner of the main plaza announcing that it sponsored the ice rink. There is a good view of many buildings from the park, including Empire State, which is the one in the photo that is lit up in red and green for Christmas. I should mention that although there were quite a few ice skaters at the park, it was so warm that night that they were skating in what looked to be at least a 2 inch puddle of water covering the entire rink floor. We don't skate, I should mention...I used to roller skate frequently as a teen, but the single time I attempted to ice skate, I just didn't get it. I was strangely able to skate backwards, but couldn't make myself get going in the forward direction, so I've never tried since. (Rob simply doesn't do anything that might involve landing on his behind, even before his truck accident.) I took a slightly blurry shot of the tree, but it's pretty even so.

I also took several photos of store windows that I thought were particularly beautiful. I believe the store was Lord & Taylor's (I could be wrong about that). The displays were all animated and the amount of detail put into them was just incredible. I cannot even imagine what the price tag on work like that would be. You just know they must have a Christmas Window Committee that starts meeting in January each year to discuss next year's windows! Just kidding...I'm sure that they hire a vendor to perform the work...I didn't catch a signature on any of the windows so we may never know.

Finally, after asking directions several times and receiving the answer "oh it's just a few more blocks that way," we made it to Empire State. We paid the full package price to go to both observation decks...my reasoning was, we're here, which has never happened and may never again, I wanna go the whole way to the top. Breathtaking, in a word. I knew after that I would never look at Pittsburgh in the same way again. Being from Greensburg, population ~40,000, Pittsburgh has always been "the big city." NYC makes Pgh. seem small and that's okay too...I like Pittsburgh just fine that way. Most of my shots from the observation decks came out blurry...it was extremely windy that night and I had great difficulty steadying myself to get good shots. Very windy night + approx. 85 stories = extremely windy. I am quite pleased with my photo of the main lobby, however...it may be the best photo I have ever taken in my life.

Our final stop of the evening, and it was getting late so we didn't do anything but pop out of the subway, take some pics and be on our way, was Times Square. If I were a homeless person living in New York, I'd want to live in Times Square. It's almost too much visual stimulation to take, but being a visual person, I loved it! I could have spent hours there just staring. The photos simply do not do it justice, I'm afraid.

On Friday, while I was at the conference, my brave husband got on a ferry boat in choppy stormy waters to see the Statue of Liberty...the thing he wanted to see the most. (I knew I wouldn't have time and I didn't want him to miss out, so I told him to feel free to go without me if he wanted.) It was very overcast, but he got a few good pics.

Before closing, I should mention that this trip denoted several "firsts" for me. It was also my first time flying and I enjoyed that immensely. I even thought turbulence was fun...better than Kennywood! (Rob disagrees with me vehemently on that point.) I hope to be able to visit NYC again someday and I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't yet been there!

Happy Holidays!!!