Live, from New York, it's ME!

Hello everyone!

I haven't updated this in a while but I figured now would be a good time to check back in with all you family and friends and let you all know I'm doing very well - I'm safe and dry and very fortunately unscathed post-frankenstorm.

Dan (my roommate, old friend from jazz band in highschool) and I weathered out the storm up in Washington Heights and I think we were incredibly lucky to live on one of the highest points of Manhattan.  We never lost power and our neighborhood had hardly any damage.  We did take a moment on Monday to walk down to the Hudson though and that was pretty epic!  The Hudson was higher than I've ever seen it and it had huge waves.  The wind was pretty strong and after walking around for a while getting incredibly soaked from the sideways rain, a really strong gust came along and almost knocked a woman off a rock.  (Fact: she was being kind of stupid climbing out on a rock in the river in the first place).  Dan helped her down and we decided it was time to head back indoors.

I took some pictures while we were down there:

leaving our apartment - I was trying to take a picture of the wind knocking the trees around but it didn't really work

the view of the crazy water, boats hiding upriver and less than 1 mile visibility

trees losing all their leaves

Dan watching the storm next to the little red lighthouse

the great grey bridge and the little red lighthouse

this was actually taken the day after - just to give you an idea of all the buildings we COULDN'T see during the storm

Besides Hurricane Sandy, things are going really well in NYC! I mean, obviously I'm not skipping around all the time - there is the stressful side of life that is just part of being in grad school - but on a whole I think I've finally gotten used to the program, my neighborhood and living in a real city again.  My classes - for the most part - are really great.  So far my favorites are Marketing for Arts, Culture and Entertainment and Conflict Resolution.  The people in my program (20 people in total, 17 of whom are girls and 11 of whom are international students) are all really fun and from all different countries and backgrounds.  Some of our professors are a liiiittle frustrating but I have to admit that it's because of them that we've gotten to go on really amazing site visits to the Neue Gallerie, the Guggenheim and meet with directors and professionals around New York.  We did have a lot of classes cancelled this week - only just had my first day back yesterday; and the subway is slowly limping back into service (right now it's limited service and all of lower Manhattan is still shut down... Honestly, if you are concerned or want to help, there are a lot of people in lower Manhattan and New Jersey that are still entirely without power, heat or water.)

The apartment and the neighborhood are two of my favorite things about living here.  Whenever I want to I can either just run down to the Hudson and run along the beautiful park they've installed there or run up to Fort Tryon Park and the Cloisters; both have just incredible views and give me enough moments in nature to maybe forget I'm living in NYC.  Our little intersection has a great sense of community between the families that live up here and the businesses - they actually had a little Halloween parade for all the kids on Wednesday!  They've been doing such a great job at keeping the community alive and happy during the storm and everyone just seems really friendly.  The apartment is still huge and super nice.  I keep on saying I'm going to do some painting but I haven't yet.  Hmm.... I'm having a potluck for everyone in my program this weekend though - it will be fun to see how many people we can actually fit in here!

I took some pictures of the place (about a month ago) for those that haven't seen it yet:

my room! I did NOT choose that wall color, but I'm working with it!

a peek of the kitchen from the dining room!

and a peek of the living room from the OTHER half of the dining room

the living room - best room in the place!

our epic 50-foot hallway

So there you go! Conclusions: I'm safe, doing well, keeping busy and have a bright pink wall in my bedroom.  I hope all is well with everyone else and that everyone else made it through the storm ok.

Love to everyone!
Meg

Winter Rediscovered, at least for one night

WHAT'S THIS?! TWO ENTRIES IN ONE DAY?! Whooo boy I must be on a roll tonight.  Or drinking a delicious BR Cohn 2008 Petit Sirah. Or both. Your pick.

Anyway!  Jimmy's "Spring Break" was the first week of March... but since it was more of a "Spring Week of Studying" we decided to take two days and go on a quick little camping trip to at least fit in a little bit of a break for him.  After much debate, we picked Big Basin Redwood Park as the destination.  Even though it's relatively close, we had to drive up and through some mountains just to get in the right neighborhood.  We left as early as we could Tuesday morning and after checking in with the ranger and reserving a camp ground for later that night we instantly set out for a good long hike.  After the hike, we took a quick jaunt into town to pick up some utensils (in all our excitement of packing the night before... we had remembered the spaghetti and sauce but forgotten any sort of bowl or fork with which to eat said meal), firewood and whisky and then set up camp in the best spot the ranger could find us.  I won't bore you with details anymore, the whole point of this trip really was to just sink into the wilderness for a little while... but I will mention that Tuesday night got down into the 30's! In all seriousness, I was giddy.  I think we both were.  Wearing lots of layers and wrapped in the warmest sleeping bags Jimmy had, I slept amazingly well that night, especially with a cold nose.  It was fantastic. And now: all the awesome pictures

oh, hello TREEEEEEES!

five minutes into the hike and Jimmy is disrobing. geez can't take this kid anywhere.

morning dew

recent damage

looking for a way around a blocked path

old fire damage

action shot

NEWWWWWTS!

no, really!

waterfalls in the distance

check out that rainbow

stairs leading the way back

reds

a posse of redwoods

the other rainbow of the day

banana slug action shot!

looking for a new home?

the bloo subaroo! in the redwoods

home for a night

cooking up some spaghetti

evening entertainment inside the tent once it got dark and chilly

morning time! this is where we store our shoes when we're in the tent

puffy warm sleep

 rise and shine! 

on the search for even bigger redwoods

climbing it suddenly looked very impossible

ripples

you must be this tall 

jimmy hiding in trees

super awesome knot

the view from inside

carvings from over the century

burnt shell of a tree

Oh man.  I spent the week after this little trip just WISHING I was back in winter-temperatures and greenery.  And since this little camping trip, I'm pretty sure both Jimmy and I are pretty much done with Santa Clara and San Jose.  Yup, time to move on.

On that note, I should probably also mention that: GRAD SCHOOLS ARE GOING WELL! Sort of. They're going well in that: I got into two of my top choice schools - George Washington University in DC and Washington University in Seattle.  Now the problem has become deciding between the two which is actually posing more of an issue than I thought.  If any of you have any experience in either city, please feel free to share it.  As much as basically everyone is telling me that I will love Seattle, I'd say the majority of me would really like to move back to the East Coast.  But then I stupidly went and looked at pictures of the UW library (looks like the grand hall right out of Harry Potter).  So, you know, I'll pull out a few more hairs before I decide.

Lastly but not leastly, the most recent cooking adventure!  This was actually made a few weeks ago but we're discovering that it's super quick to make.  Egg-topped Soba Noodles with Asparagus! Yum!

yes, this meal calls for a record amount of parm. your arms will thank you later

garlic garlic and more garlic

this is not real bacon! i promise!

it's morning star! the funny thing is: it smells like bacon, tastes like bacon and sort of looks like bacon.

i'm beginning to wonder if maybe they tricked me

soba noodles! takes them a grand total of 3 minutes to cook

command center

after mixing the cheese, shredded "bacon" and asparagus all together,  the majority of it then ends up in Jimmy's bowl

sunny side up egg - runny yolk recommended

put the egg on top, break the yolk while you're eating and all the flavors mix together amazingly

you can hire me to be your personal chef whenever you're ready.

that's all for now, yolks!