It's crazy that I've been in NYC long enough that seasons are repeating. It smells like summer in the city. I don't know if I can ever describe how much I love my neighborhood when the weather is nice. In the morning it's so pretty, with the trees and flowers, and birds singing, it doesn't even feel like NYC untill you hit the main streets. At night everyone lounges on their stoops to catch the 75deg breezes. Little kids play ball, the steets smell like fruit from the hooka bars, people sing songs in all different languages. All the sidewalks are extra large, in residental areas this means kids have room to play, in commercial areas restraunts take down their walls and spill over onto the sidewalk.

Car I saw the other day.

Central park is always looks misty and spooky and pretty at night. I think it's the lamps.

Nick.

rooftops

Bonus points if you can find the statue of liberty in this picture.

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.