Dear Ones, Well we have started into the holiday season already! I say this only since I work at Sears in the tool department and they have been playing holiday music since November 1st! Oh well, so is the world of retail sales. It seems with the elections over now, that things are mellowing out a bit here in New York; I am sure that the entire country can take a collective sigh of relief now that the craziness of the election year is over. Whether the candidate that you wanted to win did or not, our country is still the [View Full Entry]

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8:30 pm local time, the captain turns on the seat belt sign as we are about to land at JFK. Landing in New York City cannot compare to anything else, especially to landing in European cities where all you can see is fields, forests and country houses. Even from the plane, the view is simply overwhelming. Dozens of lights, sparkling skyscrapers and suspension bridges that create the Big Apple bring excitement and curiosity. During my first moments in NY I could only be compared to a child in a huge candy store on Christmas. With my eyes wide opened and my [View Full Entry]

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Hi All Sorry It has been a while since our last blog, but things are a bit crazy in NY and you only get short times on computers. Well we have made it to New York and survived our first week here. It certainly is a city of contrasts. Both Fiona and I were a bit drained when we first arrived, so it took us a few days to adjust to the city after spending so long in the countryside. New York is everything you expect it to be, busy, noisy with a lot of different things going on. This week [View Full Entry]

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Friday 31st October to Thursday 6th November, 2008 Struggling to come to my senses upon waking following our Halloween excesses the first thought that entered my head was not only how unusually bright and sunny for six thirty in the morning it was but also how unaturally warm. Seconds later as I struggled to raise my head from the pillow in an attempt to reach for my phone a glance at my wrist caused reality to strike home like a hammer blow to the back of the skull. It wasn’t six thirty in the morning at all, it was eight thirty [View Full Entry]

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Last week I went to New York City for the first time ever. I know, I know...I've been all over but I'd never made it there before. I went to visit my friends, Jen and Ryan, who live a block from Union Square. My journey started with going to Charlotte to stay at Helen and Doug's place while they were at the beach and then flying into Laguardia on Tuesday. I took the M60 bus to the 125th Street Station, figured out the not-so-logical Subway system, and Jen came to find me. We headed out into the cold, rainy day to [View Full Entry]

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With the excitement of Jacksonville behind me I flew down to Miami then back up to New York City. I arrived in JFK and with a little help from Han in NZ I found the directions to my hostel. After several trains I found myself in the heart or Manhattan. A place I would come to love in less than a week. I shuffled all my things off onto my bed and withing minutes I was out the door with a British guy and we were off down the road to watch Monday Night Football between the Dallas Cowboys and Philadelphia [View Full Entry]

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We had the option of getting an earlier flight to Amsterdam en route to London so we decided that 3 hours in the Red Light District of Amsterdam was more enticing than 3 hours on the public transport system of New York. So we will have to visit the Big Apple another time I guess. Shame, I was really looking forward to the Gugenheim!!!! [View Full Entry]

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We watched the CNN coverage over beer and ribs at Brother Jimmy's before heading down to Election Plaza at the Rockefeller Center. The center looked amazing and the mood was electric. There were very few Republicans in sight! They had replaced all the flags with American flags, and projected blue light onto half of the center and red light onto the other half. There was a 'Race to 270' display on the GE Building where a platform moved up the building whenever each party received electoral votes. The ice skating rink had a map of the US painted on it, and [View Full Entry]

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A long weekend in NYC, a chance to see Nicole, Jack/John, and Nat. The highlight was seeing Doctor Atomic at the Met on Saturday night. Nicole had heard some time ago that the benefactors had bought 200 of the best seats in the house, for sale to the public on the day of the show, for $30 each. We got in line at around noon, tickets went on sale at 2pm. Since Nicole can't walk much (blown knee), we sat & chatted for 2 hours, which we would have done anyway (probably in a park or somewhere other than sitting on [View Full Entry]

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"Even if it would prove to be just once in my life, I was so lucky to have been granted the privilege of living simply and without clutter, free of the many artificial concern that flood our daily lives, and thus closer to the untouched truth. So much of our good natural instincts are smothered by society and many of our daily lives are directed by false goals, dictated to us by others. Even in this day and age, with our sophisticated technology and developed culture, it must still be important, just occasionally, to find a wild place, where the land [View Full Entry]

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