The Movies

John and I went to see How to Train Your Dragon this afternoon. It was really cute, the price of a 3D movie however is not.

Its one thing to pay $12.50 for a movie in NY but now all these new 3D movies are $17.50! That's getting WAY too close to 20 bucks. If we wanted to see it in Imax it really is $20! I don't know if I'm really sold on all this 3D and Imax stuff, especially since it makes movie outings more expensive :(

I just needed to vent, it really was a cute movie and John and I both enjoyed it. It just makes me a little sad spending that much on what used to cost half as much in Arkansas (in reality that's alot of things, this one just really hit me in the face today).

Yay Spring!

Ok, its not technically Spring but the weather has been really nice the past couple of days. There aren't really any flowers blooming or anything but its certainly warm enough to hang out outside without a giant coat.

Rosie and I have been taking advantage of this nice weather and the extra evening daylight by going to hang out at Madison Square Park after work. She's super excited because the squirrels are still out since its still light. Today we sat on the park bench and she searched the lawn desperately for squirrels. She eventually saw one and lunged onto the sidewalk. Unfortunately there happened to be a woman walking by at the same time and the lady freaked out a little since it appeared that my sweet little dog was ferociously lunging at her :)

On to things besides squirrels that we happened upon in the park....I don't know what these people were doing but it certainly looked hilarious. They were all blindfolded and holding on to the person in front of them. I guess walking around NY blindfolded is good for your karate (or taekwondo or whatever) skills :)

Cheese Dip!

I just wanted to share the lengths I am willing to go for cheese dip...
John and I went to Penn Station to get dinner at Moe's. To put that in non-NYC terms, it would be like purposefully going to eat dinner at the airport!

That's what its come down to since absolutely no one in the city has cheese dip except Moe's. You can't even say cheese dip, you have to say queso or they have no idea what you're even talking about.

Anyway, we got a giant bowl of cheese dip to take home and we will be enjoying it all week long :)

This So Counts as Nature

I read an article recently where they had a list of ten ways to tell if you are a New Yorker. One of the things was that you think Central Park counts as "nature."

I'm not trying to say that I'm a New Yorker, I clearly come from a much more woodsy area, but this SO counts as nature :) I seem to stumble upon a new undiscovered place (to me at least) each time I visit Central Park. This is the ramble, I was there awhile ago and I definitely felt like I was not in the middle of NYC. You couldn't hear the noise from the street anymore and you could barely see the buildings. It was so peaceful and since it was a really cold day there was no one else in sight. It was kind of an odd feeling to be in the middle of the city in the woods with no noise and no other people. I'm sure its even more isolated from the city when the trees have all of their leaves, I'll have to check it out again in a couple of months.

Snow, Snow Go Away.....

Tomorrow is the first day of March and last year on March 1st we got 9" of snow. I can't handle anymore snow this year. We just got around 20" a couple of days ago and I'm really crossing my fingers that that was the last snow. I feel like I've either had snow boots on or rain boots for the past three months now, I can't take it anymore!I've definitely come across some creative snow creations, but the snow really is only beautiful for a couple of hours and then turns into gross slush that makes walking around awful. I didn't take the picture below, but it gives you a really good idea of how nasty it is walking around in this stuff.I don't know if you can tell, but winter is really starting to drag me down. I guess I'm used to Spring starting to show up around now and it certainly will not be doing that here in NY for about another month :(

Belated Valentine's Day

We had family in town visiting this past weekend and so John and I celebrated Valentine's Day a little differently this year. Thursday I had a cookie decorating party with a bunch of girls from my Bible study and work. It was so much fun! I made a ton of cookies and then everyone decorated them at the party.On Friday and we had lots of good food and did some fun touristy things over the weekend. I finally made it to the Statue of Liberty for the first time and we also got to eat at Peter Luger's Steakhouse for the first time. Lots of really fun firsts :)
Yesterday John and I celebrated Valentine's Day with each other. John took me to dinner at Double Crown and we had the chef's tasting menu complete with wine pairings, we even got a signed copy of the menu from the chef. The food was outstanding, it was just a little too much food. I enjoyed it all but ate WAY too much!

Never a Dull Moment in NY!

Well Thursday certainly made for a memorable moment in my NY experience, running out of a burning building won't be forgotten any time soon! I know that sounds awfully dramatic, so I'll start at the beginning :)

It all started sometime mid-morning on Thursday when the fire marshal came over the loud speaker and said there was a fire under the sidewalk outside but the fire department was there and it was under control. He said if we saw smoke outside don't worry and there was no need to evacuate. No one really thought anything of it, I mean the fire marshal did say to stay put.

Not too long after that is when all the craziness broke out. I sit towards the front of the office in a row of cubicles and you can't see over the cubicles unless you stand up. We were all working like normal when this shadow moves over the building and from my desk I could see how dark it was all of a sudden. I stood up to see what was going on and of course started to think terrible things. When I stood up I looked out the window and saw a huge column of fire all the way up at our 6th floor windows. That's when people started screaming and running! I grabbed my stuff and ran out with everyone else. Everyone was able to make it out of the building and no one was hurt.

When I got outside and stood still for a minute I realized I was shaking and lots of other people were shaking or crying. No one was hurt and no one was really in danger since the fire was coming from outside and would have taken a while to come inside and pose a threat but that didn't cross your mind when all you see is a wall of fire and people start screaming!

Here are some pictures from news stations. According to the news a transformer under the sidewalk caught fire and exploded. All of the snow melting and salt running down into the vaults where transformers are stored can sometimes cause a problem. The transformer had started smoking and that's what the fire marshal had said was under control. The bottom floors of the building were evacuated because of the smoke but since it wasn't reaching the upper floors it was deemed safe for us to stay….that was until the transformer exploded sending a column of fire up through the grates in the sidewalk and all the way up past the top of our 7 story building!

On the up side everyone was able to go back to work Friday and besides the front of the building the only damage noticeable from inside is all of the windows that were blown out and had to be boarded up.