The Zereps

Well, Friday was a commuting disaster in the city here. There was rain and flooding and mysterious subway ‘incidents’ that caused all queens-bound (read: homeward-bound for me) trains to be halted and thousands (who knows, maybe millions!) of people to be stranded and traffic to grind to a halt in mid-town because of all the people taking taxis and busses and anything they could find to get back into Queens. Normally, it takes me 1 hour door-to-door to get to and from work. On Friday, I spent 2 hours on a bus and I barely made it 40 blocks. At that point I decided to get some dinner and saw on a TV that the train I needed was finally running, so I headed to the station. Some unlucky people had their trains not start running again until the next day–I guess that either means stay with a friend in Manhattan, get a hotel, or walk the couple miles across the bridge (or something!) I finally got home around 9:45 at night (after leaving work at 6.)

Today, I did do something fun though–I went and visited the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum, conveniently located on the deck of the retired USS Intrepid, aptly enough. She was commissioned in 1943 and was destined for the scrapyard before somebody rallied to turn her into a museum. The ship itself is a massive aircraft carrier; she fought in World War II and all the way through the Vietnam war before she was decommissioned in 1974. She now resides at 12th ave and 46th st at Pier 86 (Google Satellite Map.) I spent a couple hours there when Candice was at work this afternoon (she didn’t want to go anyway. 😉 ) Unfortunately, I was not well-prepared as I forgot my camera and sunglasses, so no pictures (and lots of squinting for me.) It was a pretty fun museum to visit–the first museum on the sea that I’ve ever been too. Also at the museum was a Concord airliner that you could walk through and a submarine tour (USS Growler,) which I didn’t have time to see.

Hmm.. this is kinda interesting… they’ve cordoned off our entire street with orange cones and pink signs saying “No Parking” because the F/X TV Show “Rescue Me” is going to film an episode on our block tomorrow. OK, so it’s not that cool, but when was the last time a TV show was filmed on your street, huh?

Samantha and Matt invited Candice and I out to go see The Da Vinci Code today since we were all off of work due to Memorial Day. We met them outside the illustrious Freeze Peach Cafe and made our way to the Loews theatre in Times Square. Unfortunately for us, we were using ‘magic super-tickets’ that Samantha gets through her work for $6 (a normal movie ticket price around here is $10.75, and there isn’t any matinee pricing either.) The short of it is, they wouldn’t let us use our super-tickets to see The Da Vinci Code because they said that movie was still a ‘special engagement,’ even though it had been out for 10 days or more by now. Not to be deterred (too much) we surveyed the other movies available–lots of winners this year–and decided the lesser of the evils, as far as pre-summer movies for us was ‘mission impossible iii.’ it was okay–I was just glad that we didn’t spend $10.75 each to see it because that would have been a rip off. After the movie we went and had dinner at California Pizza Kitchen (mmm, delicious.)

After coming home, feeding the pup, and settling down at home for a while the strangest thing happened. The whole day we were out today the weather was hot, humid, and sunny. But, after we were at home for a while, some clouds started rolling in and beforer we knew it we were in the middle of a full-blown thunderstorm. The lightning stricks kept getting closer and closer, louder and louder. The rain just came out of the sky in a flash of more ligntning and the ground (and our house) was shaking at the experience of this flash of stormy weather. It was pretty fun. I was just glad I had taken the dog out before all the atmospheric shenanigans had started. Guess it’s back to the grind tomorrow; all-in-all it was a pretty relaxing weekend.

since eric wrote a post, i’ll post a few pics. view the album (pic is a link)!

there aren’t any pics of eric ’cause he was sitting in front of me and i couldn’t see anything but the back of his neck, just so ya know.

I think this is the longest time-span that we’ve gone without updating our blog–almost two weeks. Hmm.. let’s see, what’s been happening lately? I guess we’ve just been busy, but mostly too lazy to post anything. We were in San Diego last weekend and this week we’ve just been working. The weather here changed for the worse yesterday–it had been cloudy and high of 68 degrees or so, with thunderstorms last night, but then overnight summer weather kicked in and now it’s in the 80s. That may not sound too warm, but add the east coast humidity to that and it’s plenty hot. Tomorrow, it’s gonna be time to whip out the A/C units and get some cool air blowing through this joint.

To end this midnight post, I’m going to take a moment here to say goodbye to my precious eyeware–my one and only perscription Oakley sunglasses that protected and sharpened my eyes for over 2 years. They’ve gone missing and I’m very sad to see them go. Farewell. You shall be missed. 🙁 Have a great long weekend everybody!

OK, so it didn’t exacltly take three hours, but it did take a long time! Here’s our story… Yesterday, Candice and I decided to go (more like, she dragged me along) to IKEA. Every Saturday and Sunday, there is a free bus that goes from Port Authority (near Times Square) to the IKEA in Elizabeth, NJ. On a normal day, this trip takes about 30 minutes and they leave the station every half-hour or so. The bus is always full, and there are even usually a couple people left standing in the aisle. Yesterday was no ‘normal’ day though; apparently, there was some sort of huge accident that was slowing down traffic all over the place–cars were practically at a stand-still many places. What should have been a half-hour cruise on over to IKEA turned into a two-hour romp through most of the length of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and finally New Jersey. Half-way through the trip people were starting to get mad, and so even though he wasn’t supposed to, the driver let several people off the bus on the side of the road. Eventually we made it to IKEA around 2pm (after leaving at 12.) We were quite hungry, so we headed straight to the IKEA Cafe (who’d a thunk the place would be packed and we’d have to wait in a long line to eat at 2pm!?) If you’ve never eaten there, I highly recommend it–it almost makes the whole trip to IKEA worth it. 😉 We did our shopping (Candice used her birthday gift card which payed for almost half of our purchases) and mosied on home–and luckily the traffic had cleared up by then so we got back pretty speedily. That’s all for now… I’m sure eventually Candice will post some pictures of some of the stuff we got and our new living room arangement. 🙂

…was yesterday, i know, but here’s the pictures, today. it’s not a big thing here, i guess. nobody we knew mentioned it, but i made some yummy food! some good ‘ol beans, rice, and enchiladas…jabba participated in the fun, too. 🙂

that’s sparkling water with a lime wedge, btw…

chowin’ down

Random pics from our home, sweet home:

[Candice’s new mixer]

[Ch-Ch-Ch-Chia Cilantro (long story.) ]

[Jabba, the super-pug.]

[Bouquet of Flowers]

[Our Living Room]

[The white rose]