wooo

Blugh, so it's been awhile.

Well, this past week has been jam-packed for me, so that seems as good a place as any to start. These pictures are in no particular order.

Nick's picture was on the front page of the New York Times online!! And he's reading the book I gave him! Awesome.

Caitlin came to NYC and we had sooo much fun!! I took her and Nick to their first Musical Monday and we all had a blast.

Welcome to NYC. Here is a huge pile of trash in the subway.

I let caitlin borrow my yankees hat when she was cold. She complained about wearing anything that made it look like she supports baseball, then accidentally gave it to a homeless man. Sigh.

I accidentally walked through the huge NYC pillowfight in Union Square the other day. It was madness.

My friend Emily came to town! You may or may not remember her as my friend from New London who now works with ringling bros.

Ok, I know this picture is blurry and not of elephants, but she snuck me into the circus on it's day off and I got to see the elephants and all the other animals!! IT. WAS. AWESOME!!!

My friend Leon's band had a show in a polish disco nightclub that also has punk concerts before 10? It was weird. Here's some bathroom pics.

One of the best melted plugs I've seen.

OMG, I found the mythical wafel truck!!! Tara and I heard of the wafel truck months ago and actually walked by it. The wafels are real belgium wafels and better than I imagined. I had the soft and chewy one with Spekuloos sauce. It's kinda hard to describe, but it's kinda like a cross between peanut butter and graham crackers. It's good.

View from my train home.

Rainbow squid attack shirt I made for Alli and Melinda.

Here's a sensor rack I'm fixing, in case you were wondering what I do at work.

I took caitlin to the Met. Isn't this amazing? It's made of candy wrappers and bottle caps.

Caitlin is a newly converted vegetarian, so I took her to a lot of vegan restaurants. This meal is 100% vegan and really delicious.

More public bathrooms.

So, among with other things, apparently Bill Clinton was in our building the other day. All I know is me and Tara made a game of seeing how many policemen/SS agents hanging out on the roofs around us we could get to wave at us (2 cops in case you were wondering). BUT Lauryn Hill was also in the building the other day. I totally spent half the day trying to casually run into her so I could strike up a conversation (starting of course by mentioning my name was Lauren too) and somehow get her to sing Joyful Joyful to me. It didn't work. But for all you who need reminding, or perhaps if you haven't seen Sister Act 2 to begin with, here is the link to the finale:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8dtPLXliFE&feature=related

It's in German, so here's what you need to know; that person who comes in late is Lauryn Hills mom who doesn't support her singing, she is a rebel, and backstage Whoopi is saying "Take off your robes. If we're gonna lose, we're gonna lose as ourselves." It's amazing!! Melodrama and some truely amazing 90s fashions.

Snow plows!

Mimi told me Austin and Drew were curious if they had actual snow plows in NYC, or if they just attached the plow blade to other trucks, mainly trash trucks. Well, just as I was coming out of the laundromat today I saw some heading down the street and ran to catch up with them. They're not the best pictures, but here's what I found:

So in case you can't tell from the pictures, the first one is a trash truck with a plow blade attached to the front, and the second is a real snow plow, sprinkling salt and everything. What they were doing in Astoria on this sunny morning is a mystery, but at least now I know they DO use trash trucks. Austin and Drew are so wise.

New York consistently has the biggest snowflakes I've ever seen. I tried to take some pictures at work the other day, but it's hard to tell. All those smudgey looking things are snowflakes, not dirt.

dayz and such

Yay, day off!!
Working every day makes days off seem like the best thing ever. Ever! I learned this awhile ago in Sullivan, on a day that me and Caitlin still reminisce about, where we drove to Matoon and went to Target and Bread Co. It was so great.
I had the day off! I slept, drank an entire french press of coffee, ran errands with Karyn, watched awful TV, and hung out with my roomies. And now I'm writing this. It was wonderful.

Here are some other days in New York.

Dinner and, of course, wine with Nick. He's too great to me. He only took me to dinner after offering to take me to a show. I just didn't feel like it.

Karyn moved to my neighborhood!! Yay, a friend next door!! (Meh, 10 blocks away, whatevs.)

This is what it looks like when 20 cop cars all drive down 35th st. in Midtown at once. The sound is deafening.

I made beef stew in preperation for the snow last week! It turned out pretty good.

yum.

Snowy day

So here is the snow that fell about a week before. Nothing too notable, the only reason I remember it at all (besides the picture) is that Chris hit me from about half a block away with a snowball, right in the back of my head, that all the boys at work are still recounting.

This is the snow I woke up to on the morning the supposed blizzard was coming our way.

It was pretty snowing. Mostly, it was blinding the way the snow blows into your eyes. Pictures don't really capture that.

My subway stop, still in Queens.

Made it to work! It's fashion week, and we actually had a lot of jobs for this day at one point. All of them were canceled by the clients, most of them canceled the night, but definitely that morning with everyone freaking out that it was only going to get worse. The only job not canceled was the one in the building, which was a Nissan something. I don't know what it was, but it involved moving car chassises into the building. This is two forklifts trying to bring in a half of one in a huge box on a slippery sidewalk, where we were doing our best to salt and shovel. Eventually we ran out of salt and went inside to try and thaw out while the snow accumulated again. The boys and I hid in the freight elevator on the 2nd floor and watched as they took a complete chassis, packed in a roofless box, off of a semi and somehow managed to get it in on those forklifts. It was crazy!!

I ate some soup and fixed some wiring issues on lights. This one was really burnt. The boys got out a really old coffee maker and we all chipped in for coffee and milk. It was a great day for a long coffee break.

View from the 4th floor landing. Around noonish.

In between another round of shoveling and some more shoveling, I cleaned a VL Spot. (That's a moving light. Vari-Light is the brand. VL 2000 Spot. We have washes too but I don't know how to clean them yet.)

Crunch time! Some absolutely amazing guy who happens to own a four wheeler and a tiny shovel blade in NYC (?!?!) drove by and shoveled off the sidewalk for me and Chris (George and James had to go uptown to shovel some other property). So now we only had to shovel the giant pile of snow-slush-ice hybrid that is coating the side of the street, at least enough to get a truck in and lift gate down and room to load, because we need to load up a job. This is tricky because we're not worried about getting hit, but we are worried about getting sprayed by slush. So we use the old Wayne's World trick and just yell "Game off!" and rush to the sidewalk every time one of us spots a car coming. And of course "Game on!" when it's safe to go back.

James and George come back, and we all finish pulling the list as quickly as we can, and start loading at sunset. It's still snowing, but rather than the getting worse everyone predicted it seems to be slowing down slightly.

We finish loading the truck in the dark and have an amazing snowball fight in the parking lot next door. Seriously, it was a great fight.

How glad am I that I bought these boots? They may be ruined by salty slush puddles, but my feet have never been dryer or warmer in the winter.

A view from the elevator the next day. Now hardly any snow is left but they're predicting more tonight. We'll see.