As many of you may know, I am no longer a New Yorker, so please check out my new blog A Library of My Own. If you are just reading Life and Times, you are missing out. Thanks!

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

More NYC!

Ok..so now that things are winding down for me this semester (two weeks and counting!), I am going to post more NYC fun stuff.

So some may ask where my H and I tend to hang out when we go out on the town. Well, we are more of the fish n' chips, Guinness, pub-people (less loud disco-y stuff)...so we tend to hang out in...wait for it...Hells Kitchen. Muhhahaha...

Ok...it sounds scarier than it is. Ok....it's actually not scary at all :) Or we hang out in the Upper West Side or Chelsea. I will go in depth in all of these at some point but tonight we are going to have a pint or two in the Upper West Side. We like a little cozy place called The Dead Poet which is a great place to go to get a nice yummy pint of Guinness or play a game of pool (one table though).

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Love Lunch Today Because...

So today was the second time I've been able to meet up with my husband for lunch. He is such a good guy :) He takes a later lunch (because my lunch break is pretty late) and last time he came all the way over to my work to eat some pizza with me. Today we met halfway. He took the V train uptown and I took the V train downtown and we met at Cosi's near Bryant Park (across from the Lion Library). It made for the best lunch break :)

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Camping Trip!!

Well, the weekend camping trip was great and I am back to the grind at work. I have a new shift so I don't go into work until 10:30...yay! It gives me some time in the morning walking the puppies, excercising, enjoying my coffee, relaxing before off to work. I stay a couple hours later but it's worth the relaxing morning.

So on Friday we were going to leave early and miss the Friday five o'clock rush across the bridge and off the Island but it was not to be. The truck decided not to start so AAA was called and just in case, we headed up to Yonkers to pick up a new battery at Autozone. So by the time we drove through the Bronx and Yonkers and back, loaded up, grabbed grocieries and Subway dinner and drove the two and a half hour drive to the campsite...it was almost 11:00 PM by the time we made it in. But we made it!!! So here's some fun recap photos of the weekend mini-vacation.

Oh! And the forcast said rain the entire weekend...yuck! But the guys put up an awesome tarp cover to keep off the rain and Saturday turned out to be a gorgeous sunny day. Lucky us!!
Here some of us are the first night. It was rainy and we were mostly keep dry by the tarp and warm by the fire:
We so look like we are posing...or something...
I think Anna is soooo spoiled :)
Mmmm...Smores - an American tradition:This one of Charlie Dog just cracks me up.
I'm not sure why I was wacking him on the head:
We went off-roading a bit in some of our friends jeeps and the dogs LOVED chasing the jeeps.
It was great because we had three dogs and Charlie Dog made a new friend:She is so cute with that tongue :)
We called these our Condo Tents:Hope you enjoyed the camping trip!

Friday, April 11, 2008

Amanda Update

Just a little catch-up for all those who are curious.

I'm finishing up this semester and boy am I trying hard not to stress. Projects and papers are rapidly getting closer to due dates and so I do what most normal people would do....I am going camping!!!

We are heading out tonight and going to bundle up (because last weekend the nearby lake was still partially frozen) and get the dogs and camp out in the wilderness. Oh! And someone is bringing their dog, a Burmese mountain dog, so little Charlie will have someone to play (a.k.a. terrorize) with.

What's been going on in NYC you ask? Well Spring is trying to get here. I've seen wild daffodils in the woods near our apartment, blooms are starting to be on trees (gorgeous!), and we had one super nice day yesterady (high sixties and sunny!). But mostly it's been rainy and cloudy. Last Sunday was insanely nice so my H and I took a nice long walk in Central Park. The friday before that was First Friday at the Guggenheim Museum and we though, hey! that sounds like fun. Ummm...first...if it starts at 9:00, do not show up at 10:30. And second...just don't show up. Members get in free...and the member line was insanely packed. The non-member line was all the way down the street. So....maybe some day we'll go when we have hours to spare to stand in line before nine o'clock. But we had a great time anyway since a friend lived by. My H met one of my co-workers and her husband and we now have more people to go karaoke-ing with. Yay!

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Charlie's Toy

I got a good tip from Amanda while reading Click. The Good News' blog about her adorable dog Zoe's toy. It's called a Kong and I bought one for Charlie. I had to get the largest size because, well, let's face it...he's a slightly large dog. I keep forgetting :)

Charlie absolutely loves it, so here's Charlie and his toy:

He's reaching for it!!! He's so lazy he won't get up to get his toy.

And he's got it!My dog loves to pose for the camera.He's just waiting for someone to try and take it. He's probably watching TV in this one...he loves watching TV. His favorite movie is Eight Below where he'll put his little (ok, big) nose right up to the TV when the dogs bark.

And this is his favorite spot to take naps. He loves barking at anyone he hears in the hallway outside our door. He's our little (ok, big) guard dog.

The end!

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

San Antonio

After seeing the Alamo, my husband and I strolled the downtown streets of San Antonio. For some reason I loved this old movie theater:
And this cow (Longhorn?) just made me crack up...I am definitely in Texas.

I almost convinced my husband to go to the Ranger Museum. We didn't but I at least got a shot of the entrance...look at all those horns!!!
So then we headed down towards the famous River Walk or Paseo del Rio:

This was my first views of the River....gorgeous!

They even have little boat tours along the river. I thought they should do romantic gondola rides and my husband just laughed.

The thing I had been dreaming about FOREVER was to sit somewhere along the River Walk, sip a margarita, and just relax and enjoy ourselves. So when we saw this place, we figured PERFECT!!!

The Mexican Manhattan Restaurant as seen from the River Walk.

Sigh...and the much craved margaritas:

While we were enjoying our drinks a VERY inquisitive and hungry squirrel started walking around the porch. We seriously thought he was going to climb up a lady's jacket and steal her lunch. Finally a friendly waiter gave the squirrel a whole soft tortilla and the little guy was content to sit and munch on a nearby tree branch:


Then we pretty much just strolled along the River Walk. It would have been nice to see it when all the trees where un-bare but it was nice that we didn't have to deal with too many tourists....and it was the perfect temperature!

Of course, if you know us, we had to stop and get a Guinness at Waxy's Irish Pub. MMmmm..

My night pictures did not turn out well so I'll spare you that. But we stayed the night in a hotel off the River Walk and had a great view of the city.

The next day we bopped around some more. I love these cool bridges:

And being on the river, there are TONS of fountains....some you even have to walk over.

And of course, here's the quintessential view of the River Walk. At night it's all lit up with lights which is very pretty. I love the Texas themed ones....check out the Texas canopies in the back. I swear they love their stars and you can find them everywhere!This is a little stage where they put on shows and I thought it was cute. We didn't stick around for the show because we were heading out of San Antonio later that afternoon. And it looked a bit cheesy ;)But, if you walk up the stairs, like my husband's about to do, you'll find a bunch of cute little arts/crafts/clothing/etc stores. I got a cute little shirt and some candle stuff.

After a few hours of shopping, we were a bit hungry and decided to get some food. We saw this great Texan themed restaurant and sat on the balcony. I played a bit with my camera settings, as you can tell:


The color accent thing on my camera is pretty cool. Here's it picking up only red:

And here's only blue (I like the red better):

And here's normal:

Hope you enjoyed San Antonio!

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Indiana Who?

I don't know about you, but I love the Indiana Jones movies. So when I heard that my husband had never seen ANY of them....I was shocked....so I have to tell everyone this fascinating news. This Easter we went over to a friend's house, ordered Indian food (yeah...we go camping on Thanksgiving and have Indian on Easter...don't ask), and watched two of the three Indiana Jones. Tonight we are all three meeting up at Grand Central's Market to get dinner stuff and watching the third (my favorite) movie. Then he'll be all caught up for the new one this summer. Yay!!!