The Zereps

Well, sort of. It’s OK for getting to many places, but for a lot of the vast reaches of NYC, it is simply impossible to get there in under 2 hours–including taking buses, the subway, and walking. I was researching ‘alternate’ forms of personal transportation such as scooters and bikes, etc. but found to my dismay they are all illegal. That’s right–even bikes are illegal to ride in the city. Here’s a quote from a legislator:

“In New York City it is rightly illegal for an adult to ride a bicycle on the sidewalk. The average bicycle weighs less than 30 pounds, yet adult bicyclists are too big, too fast and too threatening to safely share space with small children, seniors and other vulnerable pedestrians. Likewise, allowing any motorized scooter, gasoline or electric-powered, to drive on the sidewalk puts children, seniors, persons with disabilities and the blind in danger.”

Apparently, there are just too many people and not enough room. I was wondering why in a city of 10 million, I’ve only seen about 5 bikes thus far. So, I guess it’s only jobs and activities that are accessible from the subway for us… and lots of walking.

i just watched how to make italian dounuts. i’ll definately have to make those for eric as soon as possible. unfortunately i can’t eat them right now since i am now on my second week of raw food. it’s been working out nicely, too. i’ve lost like 5 lbs. i really want to go out to eat though. there’s this one raw food restaurant in manhattan that sounds super yummy, but it’s a too expensive for us at the moment. 🙁
well, today “they” are putting the second coat of varnish on our floors and installing the dishwasher, and WE HAVE THE KEYS!!! yeah! we’ll move our meager possesions over tomorrow and then see jabba and then set off for ikea! there’s a bus that takes you from manhattan to the new jersey ikea for free, which is nice. we can’t bring jabba home though till the varnish smell wears off. i’ll post pics of the bare apartment as soon as i can, i promise! although, don’t expect too much…it’s still just an old apartment in queens.
toodle-loo!
oh yeah, i changed the theme. i got sick of the old, boring one. i’ll make it look better when i get more time and settled in, but for now, the basic stuff will have to do.

Well, I sent my resume in to a number of places on craigslist today, so we’ll see how that goes. I also need to resubmit my resume to monster.com ’cause somehow they screwed the whole thing up and even though I have the confirmation email that says they got it, my resume does not show up at all on the site.

We got a number of errands done today. Candice has been window shopping endlessly on overstock.com and ikea.com for stuff for our new apartment. Matt was kind enough to give us one of the air conditioners that he wasn’t using anymore, so that was nice. We also have one being shipped to us from California. If all goes well, some of our boxes should be here by monday or tuesday. We didn’t get to visit our new place today because the new wood floors are being varnished and it’d be kinda toxic to breathe.

well, just thought i’d throw in a couple pictures to make this a little more interesting. 😉

this here is pixel, matt and samantha’s cat. he’s pretty cute and funny. i also like how his hair matches mine.

here’s me tonight walking jabba, frankie, and frieda. well, i was only holding jabba here, walking 3 dogs would have been *too* crazy. jabba is still a puppy who pulls on the leash, while frankie is a good little walker. frieda hold up her end of the leash pretty well, too.

i finally finished harry potter early this afternoon and *oh* *my* *goodness* is it ever sad…i won’t go in to too much detail so as not to spoil it for anyone still reading. she set it up *perfectly* for book 7, which has its upsides and downsides. the upside is that there will, hopefully, be closure at the end of book 7, which there wasn’t at the end of all the other books. the downside is that there will be no more harry potter! -sniff-

hmm.. that was weird. for a little while this morning, email to ericperez.com was working fine but the site wasn’t coming up. It just showed a 403 Forbidden error, but obviously it’s fixed now.

this is post #42. 😉

Ok… so, I’ve been told I’ve complained about a number of things in New York. I have to admit, there are some things I don’t like, but I guess I haven’t said much of the stuff that I do like so here is a list of good/bad things off the top of my head:

the good:
-the people – there are so many different types of people here and they are all unique–it truely is a melting pot here. I’ve never seen so many types of people together in one place before in my life. It’s great to see so many peole from so many backgrounds and cultures here together.

-the food – appently there are about 17,000 restaurants in New York City. I’ve only tried a dozen or so, I just like having the variety available. You could eat at a new place every day for years without running out. There is also such an abundance of fresh fruits and veggies available at stores and little stands–and it’s cheap too. I also really like being able to find caribbean foods in abundance. I drink my Malta almost every day, but I’ve yet to go to a Puerto Rican or Cuban restaurant… yet (That’s on my to-do list.)

-the variety – since there are so many different types of people here, there is a huge abundance of culture and variety of music, foods, smells, tastes, etc.

the bad:
-the weather – I’m told that there are about 6 weeks of horrible summer and 6 weeks of terrible winter here in NYC, but that the rest of the year is pretty bearable. Luckily for us, we came right in the middle of summer with some of the worst weather NYC has to offer. Today was probably the nicest day since we’ve been here though. Even though it was in the 90s, the humidity stayed around 35-50% instead of 85-95%.

-the garbage – I really don’t like having to walk past stinky piles of garbage on the sidewalk (only on garbage day, mind you-I can just see people imagining in their mind’s eye garbage heaps on the streets all the time)–especially, since on any given day we probably walk about 3-4 miles on the streets.

-the bad architecture – old buildings are nice and everything, but sometimes they are so impracticle–and since no one wants to tear anything down, things just get remodeled and painted over and over and it just looks really bad. plus, do you really want to use electrical wiring to power your computers and sensitive electrical equipment that’s almost 100 years old?

Well, that’s pretty much an abbreviated list, but it gives a brief idea of my preferences.