The Uneventful Life of a New York Neophyte

So the last 2 or 3 weeks or so have been relatively uneventful, at least by the standards of this city. I mean, people here are like bees or tasmanian devils or any other cliched hyperactive animal that you can think of. They never stop, always have stuff to do, people to see, places to have been 20 minutes ago (although I think a lot of that has to do with the wonderfully inefficient mass transit system ... which is none-the-less miraculous in its continuous functionality as I am sure that many other such systems that seem to work better break down all the time ... and at least we have mass transit, unlike the majority of cities in this tremendously forward thinking country where we seem to refuse to acknowledge any kind of anthropogenic motive for global warming).

A few Fridays ago I got a real treat as Nichola, friend of mine from Norway (well, she is English and we met in the Czech republic but she fell for a dashing norwegian and is now raising a family in Scandanavia) was visiting New York with her husband, Garth and daughter Olivia. I took a half day and left after the works in progress, meeting Nik in the city for lunch ... we had a typically American lunch, massive bacon cheeseburgers and fries ... delish! Olivia came with and thoroughly enjoyed the meal, loving both the fries and the floor under the chairs. After lunch we went for a stroll around mid-town, then met up with Garth and I said goodbye as they went up to Westchester and I headed out to Astoria to see Aviva and spend the night out in Jersey at Jess Levys.

We trucked out then and spent the evening hanging out at Jess's very nice place, playing pool and watching TV and just generally appreciating a house of a size that none of us will ever have in New York City. The next day we got up, ate at what I am told is a typical diner (pink fluorescent lighting and a perpetual Amandas Bat Mitzvah theme feel) and headed back to NYC, minus Aviva who headed down to Cherry Hill to see her nephew. Just before we left we headed up to a huge apartment complex and starred out over all of Northern Jersey ... I would like to say it was a beautiful or awe inspiring sight, but it wasn't. There were a lot of trees everywhere and I can see why it might be called the garden state. I can also see why it is called the armpit of the US, as there were literally 2 dozen factories scattered about in the woods. On the way back into the city we witness what I now know to be a singular St. Patricks day celebration in Hoboken, that is, they celebrate St. Patricks day a week or two early so that they can draw tourist dollars from all over New jersey. Apparently they celebrate a number of holidays early ... who knew a city hall could have so much power ...Back in the city I walked through the park on my way up to the Bronx, catching sunset over the reservoir. New York can be surprisingly beautiful.

Sunday was a waste and monday started to become busy as I got my batch of ELISA (Enzyme Linked Immuno Absorbent Assay ... because all of you were dying to know) kits in and started working to get ready for the Salt Lake City conference I was going to in mid-April. In the next week or so I did get out into the city for a burger with Russell, a guy I met through Jess who shares my love of battlestar galactica and spent an evening with Shauna at DTUT (fabulous cybercafe on the upper east side, something that I very much wish existed near me in the Bronx ...). We (meaning Aimee, Aviva and myself) also took Clarisa out to Friendlys (kind of a filthy east coast version of dennys with fabulous ice drinks known as Fribbles that Clarisa seems to love) for her birthday, truly an experience. And that was pretty much March, or at least the boring parts of it as I busted my ass at work getting stuff done so I could take the last weekend in march of to got to Boston, and the first weekend in April of to go to Avivas for passover ...