Summertime In New York

Summertime In New York

Hot, sticky, humid

Lightening bugs in the night

Concerts in the park

We saw Arlo Guthrie tonight. I can officially say I have heard, "This Land is Your Land" live with the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop.

B-R-O-OK!-L-Y-N

I'm sure most of you know this......buuuut this summer I am working at a preschool in Brooklyn for kids with special needs.

I am a para, which means that I follow one little girl around and make sure she doesn't kick or hit me or others, run out of the classroom, etc. She also licks the bottoms of her shoe fairly consistently and bites her hand when she is frustrated. She also will put anything on her face: paint, stickers, food. Charming.

I work from 9-3, and it is about an hour commute each way. And I absolutely love it! There are 10 kids in the class and they are all so unique and interesting.

It is a nice end to a crap year.

I didn't have any experience really with Brooklyn until this job, and I really like it as well!

More crazy kid stories to come! Like how she turns upside down to stare at peoples hair, and how we have the same discussion numerous days in a row.

Ahhhh Massachusetts!

This past weekend I was lucky enough to go to Massachusetts and stay with Becky's family.

Becky's mom drove 2 hours (one-way) to pick me up in Connecticut!

It was such a nice weekend. I really needed it.

It was fairly nice weather, and staying in a nice house with air conditioning was GREAT!

I got to swim in the pool, play with the 3 ridiculous dogs, play ping-pong, watch movies, sleep in a super comfy bed!, go to church, have a BBQ, garden, spend time with loved ones.

Then Becky's dad woke up at 4 AM to drive me back to Connecticut, so I could make it to work on time on Monday.

Thank you Grinsteads, your love and generosity was wonderful this weekend!

Prayer request

Please pray for Patrick's dad, and the whole Fennig family. He is in the hospital dying from cancer. It was all very sudden. He was visiting Patrick 2 weeks ago. Came down with pneumonia, had complications, went to the hospital and they found massive cancer all over.

High Line Park

On Sunday Sarah and I decided to go to a new park that opened 4 weeks ago. It is called the High Line. It was originally constructed in the 1930s, to lift dangerous freight trains off Manhattan's streets. Naturally, there was a line to get into the park.
First we waited across the street.Then we wound our way through this line. We did only wait about 10-15 minutes.

Here is one of the views of the Hudson. I really like sailboats.
The incorporated some old railroad tracks into the landscape. It was very pretty.
Here is some more cool landscape.
A section of the park has some wooden benches you can sit on. This is a nice 2 person lounge. There are single lounges that actually have railroad wheels and are on a railroad track so you can push them together. Sarah and I sat here long enough to put sunscreen on. It was a really hot day.
A view of some buildings with neat architecture. I took a whole bunch of different pictures of the blue building.
A view of the Statue of Liberty far off in the distance.
Here is stadium like seating that has a big glass window looking down onto the street. We sat here a while with all the other people and watched the cars pass under us.
There is the glass window from the street view. It was a really nice park.

Happy 4th!

Brian, Sarah and I decided to be adventurous and try to get fairly close to the fireworks. We ended up on 57th street, amazingly practically right in front of one of the six barges on the Hudson. We literally sat ON the West Side Highway that was closed down for the fireworks. We got there about 2 hours early.
The sun setting and lots more people!

New camera takes some pretty sweet pictures.

I'm patriotic and Sarah's shirt says, "Make levees, not war."
After the show everyone started clapping. It was a pretty good show. Then it was an absolute madhouse along the streets back to the subway.

Coney Island

Happy 3rd of July!

I was lucky enough to have Friday off of work. I was invited to Coney Island with my friend Sarah, 2 of her roommates and 2 of their friends. It was a pretty nice day. It takes about an hour and a half to get there...it is the very last stop on about 3 different trains. I had heard that Coney Island was a bit shady, and now I know for sure. They had a whole bunch of freak show tents. You could pay 50 cents and see a 100 pound rat. No thank you. There was a game called, "Shoot the Freaks" where you use paintball guns and hit live human targets.

Naturally, we ate at Nathan's. I had a hotdog and Sarah and I shared cheese fries.
Look at all the hot dogs they have cooking at once! There were about 20 lines to order food in and all of them had quite a few people in them.
These pics are for my dad. He watches the hotdog eating contest every year.

The large count down clock to the hotdog eating contest. 22 hours to go! Please note: 1988 winner ate 13. The 2008 winner ate 59.


The Wonder Wheel. I wish I would have taken a picture of the man taking tickets to go up who was smoking on the job. Classy. I didn't go on any of the rides because they were all pretty expensive and it's not like I've never been on these exact same rides elsewhere.
Cyclone.

View from the pier. The large buildings in the background are actually Public Housing apartments. Interesting, eh?

Freak June Storm

One day in late June I was running a few errands after work. I was just about to cross the street when all of a sudden it got really, really windy. Followed by the harsh wind were dark, ominous clouds. I quickly hurried into Barnes and Noble (no big surprise there). I found my book that I was reading and a nice window seat on the 2nd floor....just in time for the rain to come pouring down! It also thundered and lightninged for quite a while. It was crazy. I got a little video of it, if you watch closely you can see the flashes of lightening.

M.J.

I walked down to the Apollo the day after Michael Jackson died and there were loads of people there. Including about 7 t.v. vans and camera crews.

Oh, Harlem. You're a card.