Why I love New York reason #132

When I first came to New York in high school one of the things our choir did was sing at St John the Divine Cathedral. It was a really cool experience and when I was able to come back for another visit while I was living in DC it was on my list of places I wanted to see again. I was so excited when I found out I would be living just a block away. It is located on Amsterdam between 110th and 113th. It is a beautiful Romanesque/Gothic church and I get to walk by it ever day on my way to and from work.

I took these two pictures yesterday.



They keep peacocks on the Cathedral gounds and yesterday when I was walking home Juliana and I spotted the white one. We had to chase it down but I eventually got a picture of it.

Pretty darn cool if you ask me.

fall!!

Fall has arrived! It is so wonderful in New York in the fall. The nights are cool and they days are crisp. My favorite part of fall is the the sudden abundance of apples. Nothing beats biting into a perfectly ripe Golden Delicious apple. We have planned a trip upstate to go apple picking next weekend and it's going to be fantastic. I'll try to be more diligent and post something about it up here.

Oh, in other news my sister-in-law Kristiina had a baby girl early this morning! I am so exciting to have another niece. The girls are most definitely out numbering the boys in our family once again.

and the rains came down

...but not really. As Hurricane Earl made its way up the east coast there were expectations for rain and wind. It was terribly humid here last week and I think everyone wanted a break from it all...I don't think we got one drop of rain Friday night. There was some wind but that's about it.

The good news the beautiful weather we've got now. Hopefully this means the summer is ending, I am so ready for fall.

guilty much?

I have been feeling a little guilty lately. When I have free moment at work or just before I go to bed I love hopping onto google reader and catching up on all the blogs I follow (mostly food blogs, oddly enough). I've been feeling a bit guilty because I have been so terrible at blogging myself. I've been truly terrible--my last post was in April and so much has happened since then. I am going to attempt to catch everyone up on whats been going on.

Mark and I got married 1 July 2010. It was an amazingly exhausting week and of course one the the most fabulous weeks of my life. Right after we got married we moved to New York. It has been a fantastic summer in the city and we both love it here. I was a little scared that there would be something about New York that Mark didn't like but as luck would have it he loves New York and is quite happy I practically forced him to move here.

I have been working non-stop at Columbia University which has been both good and bad. I was just offered a permanent, full-time position which is fantastic. Mark will start school next week and I think he is really looking forward to doing something with his days. Apparently sitting around playing video games all day isn't actually that exciting...surprise, surprise.

So from now on I am going to try much harder to update even if it's just a little paragraph here or there.

to those with questions...

...answers will be provided. I have received quite a few inquires the last couple of days in regards to any exciting news that I might have. I will admit, I have been remiss in keeping people up to date on certain aspects of my life. Allow me now to rectify that by telling you all that I am officially engaged!

Many of you may be shocked or even amazed at this news. Not many people even knew that I was dating someone so I will start at the beginning. His name is Mark and we dated in high school and were friends for years afterward. After his mission he started going to school in Oregon while I jumped around from Arizona to D.C. and then to France. I think all those years we both wondered, at least once, what would happen if we were ever in the same state longer than a weekend. When I came home from France in January we started spending time together both very aware that I was going to be leaving Salem for New York in March. I went into the situation with an open mind while Mark know he only had about 8 weeks to woo me. I was wooed.

Just before I left for New York we decided we wanted to get married. There were a few details to iron out but last week we decided to get married on July 1st in the Portland Oregon Temple. We will then both move into a yet to be rented apartment in New York where Mark will finish his degree and become an air traffic controller and a pilot while I work and possibly go to school (I still haven't heard back from Columbia). We are both so excited to be married and share life's adventures.

the sky is falling

I have recently realized that I have the unfailing ability to stress out and worry about things that, in the long run, don't really matter. Here, for your reading pleasure, are some of those things:

1. The need to have cash on hand for when Mark comes to visit and we go for breakfast at a cash only place.
2. Remembering to ask Juliana if I can borrow some of her summery clothes as mine are still in Salem and its suppose to be in the 70's this weekend.
3. My laundry needs to be washed.
4. I still don't have a job.
5. I submitted my application to Columbia and I keep thinking "What if they just don't like me?"
6. Realizing I really do suck at video games and there is nothing I can do about it.

While these worries tend to come and go most of them can be taken care of quickly and easily and the sooner I start taking care of them the sooner I can sleep at night.

cha-cha-changes

Some times plans are meant to be changed. This past weekend I had planned on making a trip to Bend to visit Mark and spend time with him and his friends there. After changing our plans once due to a forgotten dentist appointment, Thursday night found us together in Salem. His mom called and suggested that we go up to Seattle, hang out with his dad and meet some of his extended family. So we changed our plans again and we ended up spending the weekend in Seattle. It was a great weekend. Friday night I met his three uncles for some pool and a kind of family game night. They were all very fun and I managed to impress them with my minimal pool skills.

We then spent Saturday in the city. We went to the Olympic Sculpture Park,

up the Space Needle,

had some amazing sushi

and of course visited the Pike Place Market.

The weather was an amazing 65 degrees and sunny, we couldn't have asked for better. Saturday night we went to dinner with his sister and her husband. After diner we needed to make a quick stop at a Fred Meyer for some cough drops and snacks for the drive home and ended up walking around the store for about an hour. Mark's sister and her husband kept finding things that they needed and kinda dragged us along. We were both completely exhausted by the time we left the store and so ready to call it a day. After a few games of Bananagrams (super fun as long as I'm not playing with Mark) we finally went to bed.

We stayed with Mark's sister Saturday night and drove back to Salem Sunday morning. It was an absolutely amazing weekend. I once again learned the lesson that some plans are meant to change and that's ok.

when will it stop?

I feel like all I have been doing the last year is packing and then subsequently unpacking. If I had to give the year 2009 a name it would be the Year of the Suitcases. There was my first major packing prior to moving to France. There were a whole bunch of small weekend trips that shouldn't have been difficult but trust me, they were. There was also the huge packing of the entire house when we moved from one village to another. It is actually harder packing up someone's house that isn't yours. The easiest was when I was coming home. Choosing what I was packing was easy, fitting everything in my suitcases was the hard part

I am leaving for New York in two weeks and I once again have to start thinking about packing. There is quite a bit of uncertainty with this move and so I have a feeling this round of packing is going to be quite difficult. I suppose the one major upshot to this is that I am moving into my brother's already furnished apartment.

I know there are a lot of you out there travel often, any advice?

sleeping in

I am not very good at sleeping in. I have known people that have ability to sleep in no matter what. I have also known people that have to ability to take naps in middle of the day. This last week I have been sick with a cold and really, the only thing a sick person wants to do is sleep. I don't know if it was just pure dumb luck or the combination of the drugs I was taking but I was able to both sleep in and sleep during the day.

i keep asking myself...

...why? After I graduated from NAU I was only home a short time before I ran off for an adventure in DC. I left with some intention of returning so I never really went through all of my stuff that I was leaving behind. I told myself that I would take care of it after I got back. It's been over 2 1/2 years since I first left and I am now having to face the annoyance which is my stuff. I have boxes of papers and notebooks from college courses, trinkets from who knows what and a healthy assortment of fuzzy photographs dating back to middle school.

I started going through it the other night in hopes of finding my college diploma. You may ask, as a friend of mine did, how did I manage to lose my diploma? Funny thing, I had never actually seen it. NAU sent it to my parents house while I was in DC and I only came home once over the last 2 1/2 years and I couldn't find it then. I knew that I was going to eventually go through all my stuff and a desire to see my diploma gave me the motivation I needed to get started.

I started pulling open boxes to reveal the oddest hodgepodge of things. For a couple of hours the other night I was constantly saying to myself "Why the heck did I keep this?" or while looking at a picture "Why did I even think this was cool?" There were a few things that when discovered brought back some fun memories. Like the photo of me and my good friend from high school dressed like hos for our senior class 'Pimp and Ho Day'. A day that inadvertently created quite a stir from some of the parents of the underclassmen.

Last night I had gone through all of my boxes without finding my diploma. I was reaching a point of frustration. Well, in the same room where my boxes have been kept are also boxes belonging to my younger sister. My mom walked into the room and started going through my sisters stuff and within minutes had found what I had spent hours looking for, my college diploma. She was certainly smug about her ability to find it so quickly, I just wanted to know what it had been doing in my sisters stuff. When I had given it a quick once over, reminiscing about the good ol' college years I put it back in a box and continued organizing. It wasn't until a few minutes later that I realized irony of what had just happened. I had just spent the better part of a day looking for it only to put it away once it was found. What does one do with their college diploma? Is it meant to live in a box?

It's actually been a really good experience going through all my stuff. I've been able to purge myself of things that I've been keeping since high school. I think its all part of the growing up process, saying goodbye to your younger self and looking forward with an open mind and as little baggage as possible.

saying goodbye

I am leaving France tomorrow. I can't believe the time has come, it seems like I've been here forever. It has been an incredible 8 1/2 months. I've learned, experienced, and seen a lot. I am thankful for all of it and I will never forget any of it.


I went to dinner at a friends last night. After saying goodbye, as I was walking to the car, I caught myself thinking about the French word for goodbye, "au revoir". Directly translated it implies that you will one day see each other again. I know that someday I will make it back to this part of the world and see those that I have come to call friends.


So this is my fianl post from France. Don't think that just because I am returning to the States I am going to stop blogging though. I will continue through the next adventure, you never know what life has in store.

happy new year

It's already the 4th and I am just now getting around to posting a new years message. Lame, I know...but first things first, Christmas...

Christmas was fantastic. Three years ago I had my first Christmas away from home. When I was first faced with that prospect, I was pretty depressed. I had always been able to go home to my parents for the holiday and not going was an adjustment. It turned out to be a great Christmas and the two since then have also been away from home but they were just as good.

We left France early the morning of the 20th. It wasn't snowing but it was -16 Celsius and we were most definitely going to run into snow and ice along the way. It was along trip, 9 hours total with heavy snow and a detour along the way. We thankfully didn't have any trouble crossing the Channel and I made all my trains to Bath. Ada and her husband, Bryce, arrived the next day from Japan. The days leading up to Christmas were filled with secret shopping trips and yummy food. We also went to the Roman Baths (third visit for me) and we took a train to a nearby village to get pub food. I realized once again that you don't have to be "home" for Christmas. If I am with family it feels like home.

My New Years was quiet as usual. We stayed up and watched the fireworks in London on TV and then went to bed. There were some noisy neighbors but for the most part things were pretty subdued. I gave more thought to resolutions than I usually do. I've always kind of been against making resolutions as I never seem to keep them but in the last year or so I've learned that if I set a goal and work hard I can achieve what I set out to do.

I have one major goal this year and I've decided the more people I tell the more people will keep me accountable. I want to run a full marathon, I'm thinking Baltimore in October. That's right, 26.2 miles of pure torture. So my faithful blog readers, you are now charged with making sure that I stick to my goal!