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I freely admit that the Red Sox don’t particularly deserve a playoff berth this year - at least not in the light of the other teams. The Yankees aren’t any better, but someone from the AL East has to get in. And I guess if Cleveland strategically loses and the Sox/Yankees duo keep strategically neck-and-neck, they both may.

But IMHO, this was a lousy season for two teams that should be better: the Yankees because they are a very expensive team and so should be the best, and the Red Sox because . . . well because they’re the Red Sox.

On to other things. I went to home group tonight, and it was smashing good. In the words of Mystery Science Theater’s classic Pod People, “Huzzah!” And really, how do they know that fish have a three-second attention span?

Jonny emailed me today. He is well, and busy. He says Dublin is dirty but unpretentious (as opposed to New York, which is dirty and self-conscious, if not pretentious) and that Trinity is every bit as beautiful as they say. I miss my boy. After almost four years of constant companionship, apart-ness is . . . odd. Different. Not all bad, by any means, but certainly different. At any rate, I can’t wait to go over there next weekend!

I should be sleeping. I have to get up early (5:30) to catch a train to Albany, and from there to Troy. I still haven’t nailed down how I’m getting from the train station to Troy. Catching a cab in Albany is not as easy as hailing one in New York. So that will be fun times. I hope it’s not a crowded train, but I’m rather suspicious that it will be.

I will return on Saturday night around 10pm, and hurrah, will go to church here on Sunday.

Au revoir, mon cheries. Which reminds me to finish my French homework. A tout l’heure!

Filed at 11:18 pm under Daily Goings-On, Baseball
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In the form of a bulleted list, for something new and different:

• Shockingly, my prototype at work is going to be done on time (today).
• Last night I made chicken & risotto from this recipe. Il est tres bien. I did not roast the chicken, I just pan-fried it in a little chicken stock.
• Relevant published me again.
• Yesterday I had French class. I’m thrilled to be understanding what is going on. I’ve always been convinced that I was horrible with languages other than English, but maybe that was just because I had too many other things going on.
• Tonight I have home group, hurrah!
• Tomorrow I leave early (around 7am) for Troy for the two-day career fair.
• It’s finally cooling down. I’m wearing a corduroy skirt and a light sweater.
• I’ve been craving hot chocolate lately, but haven’t had any. ::pats self on back:: That’s a wintry kind of thing.

Filed at 9:46 am under Daily Goings-On
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So we got back from the info session at RPI last night a little after 11pm, and I was in bed by 12:30am. Not too bad.

I got the info about my Compassion International sponsored child. She is six, and lives in India. This is great. :D I didn’t get to look through all the materials because I didn’t find the mail until this morning, but nevertheless, this is exciting.

Also in the mail was my finally processed student loan consolidation, which I filled out June 27 and is only now processed. At least I locked in the lower interest rate. It’s nice - I can pay online, and prepay. Of course my mind immediately runs to everything I learned about prepayment risk for the investor in mortgage-backed securities, so I’m curious how this is handled, but I don’t really . . . care.

Then I got to work, and Verizon had left a message that I am finally the proud owner of my own phone number (it’s the same, I just split it off my parents’ bill) and could I please send in the BofA employee discount forms? So after two or three months of desperately trying to gain ownership of my own phone, it’s at long last completed.

And THEN, I called a place from which I ordered some discounted shampoo etc. in August, was charged, and never received the products. They apologized profusely and promised to reimburse my account. And either after class tonight or after work tomrorow, I’m going to get to the gym and fill out a change of status form and finally cancel my locker rental, which is in a location that I don’t go to anymore and I should get money back for that. Hurrah!

So, I feel accomplished, which is actually misplaced since I should have taken care of this stuff weeks, if not months ago. Better late than never? Maybe? :D

Now I’m desperately trying to get something for the portal processed online, and it takes forever, so I’m writing this.

Filed at 11:55 am under Daily Goings-On
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This article from the New York Times cracked me up. I can totally see a bunch of art students cooking the idea up.

As always, you can create an account online for free to read the Times (it’s quick!) - but I’ve copied the article under the cut.
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Filed at 12:40 pm under Funnies
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Today = busiest day thus far.

Jonny got on an airplane in Albany at 7 this morning with his mom to head Dublin-ward. I amextremely excited for him. This is such an amazing opportunity.

Back here at “home” in New York, I realized at 6:30 am that I meant to get up at 6 and rushed through morning preparations for a long day. I headed to the Andreades’ apartment on the other side of the park for the “girls group” (involving banana pancakes, coffee, giggling, and prayer) and then up to work.

I’m now here and presented with 352 overdue enrollment requests that nobody bothered to give me until now and they have to be done Absolutely Immediately. Plus some applciation work. The good news is that, due to a random brainwave yesterday, my prototype is suddenly functioning a lot more like it should, making my chances of meeting my Thursday deadline much greater. Keeping all appendages crossed.

I will probably chug on outta here around 1, after my noon conference call, and make my way to Penn station. My parents were very happy to pick me up from the train and bring me over to RPI, which accomplishes both seeing them and not having to figure out how to get a cab to Troy from Rensselaer.

On the train I want to do some reading, but I realized that I never worked on my presentation for this evening. So if I don’t get a chance to do it before I leave work today, I’ll have to do it on the train, sans laptop (oh boy!). Then I can read.

Speaking of books, I finished Liar’s Poker on the train back on Sunday. I really, really enjoyed it. You’d think a book about bond traders in the 80s would be unspeakably dull, but the writing was superb and made the story understandable and enjoyable. Anybody who can induce people other than i-bankers to be interested in mortgage-backed securities deserves some respect. The language was a bit rough (which anyone who’s ever attended college will not blink at) but otherwise, I really recommend it, even if you think finance is the dullest subject ever, of which you would not be too far off the mark.

I’m now about to start Into Thin Air, about a trek up Mt. Everest (or so they tell me). I would never probably choose to read the book except Jonny keeps raving about it, so he bought it and I’m going to read it. I usually read books on my longer-distance trips (to and from Albany) so I imagine it will be done by the time I get back from Dublin next weekend.

Brendan, bless his heart, gave me a subscription to the New Yorker for graduation, which is awesome. I love getting it in my mailbox every Monday and having the issue a week before it hits newstands. I usually bring that on the subway since those rides are short (about 15 minutes), just long enough to finish a shorter article or half a longer one.

Right so, I’m driving back with the other BAS recruiter tonight into the city, and ideally we’ll be back before midnight though I don’t know how likely that is. I will work all day tomorrow and then go to French class - w00t! (Incidentally, I don’t think l33tsp34k translates to other languages. Blast.)

And oh, happy day. I will be in church on Sunday down here.

Filed at 9:58 am under Books, Work
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Yesterday was the three-month anniversary of my move to New York City. I think I can safely say that life has gotten significantly busier. And certainly intriguing.

I went back to Albany this weekend. Spent time with college friends, my parents, and Jonny. He’s leaving early tomorrow morning for Dublin - and I follow for the weekend in two weeks! Never been to Europe before. Note to self: check for passport.

This week promises to be a bit wild & wooly. I think I’ll be working a long day today in order to try and work out (or perhaps squash) the bugs in my application, since the prototype is due on Thursday. Tomorrow I’ll leave the office after my noon meeting to catch a train to Albany. I have the info session at RPI tomorrow night and will drive back the same evening with the other recruiting lead - no trains late enough. I’ll work on Wednesday and Thursday (interspersed with French class), and leave early Friday morning for Troy again to work at the career fair on Friday & Saturday . . . hopefully bumping into some friends in the interim who are also going to be in Troy.

I think I’ll come back here Saturday night so as to be at church on Sunday. Sadly, the cable internet dude has to come and fix our internet sometime Sunday afternoon, so either Katie or I will be tied down to the apartment.

Relevant mentioned an interest in more articles, so I wrote one on the train on Friday evening. I have to re-read it tonight before I send it to them. I’m a little skeptical about how good it is, but the always-patient Jonny is reading it for me with critiques and sending it back today. Stay tuned.

Right, so I guess I’ll be here late tonight unless I get more done. Ciao all. Leave comments.

Filed at 11:03 am under Daily Goings-On, Work
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I should be in bed because I have to get up again soon enough, but I have musings I’d like to put down first.

After work I walked from my apartment to the NYU bookstore on the other side of Washington Square Park to return my French CDs. I did dearly want to keep them, but I needed the $75 for groceries, so as to avoid another ramen-filled week. I can always buy them again when I have the cash.

I positively love Washington Square Park, in all its eclecticism and seediness and feeling of something grand being hatched somewhere. I saw the men playing chess, I saw couples sitting in their own little worlds, I saw a group doing theatre of some kind involving a pair of horns and a matador cape on the lawn, I saw a guy playing the guitar, I saw a jazz “group” (consisting of a big doublebass and a saxophone), and I unfortunately saw a guy walking two dogs who had suddenly taken a very inappropriate liking to one another.

I walked back through after returning the CDs and stopped, crouching, to pull out the camera. The light wasn’t good, so the pictures leave much to be desired and I’m tempted not to post them . . . but, as the British say, “sod it”, I’ll post them anyhow.

The point is, in the Park I realized why I’m in New York. Something about the atmosphere here is making my non-geek side resurface. In all actuality, I never intended to study computers in college, and though it was a good fit, the rest of me was suppressed and left to wither during the last four years. I spent all my free time in high school playing instruments and reading books, and I did very little of that while I was at RPI - unless it was required for class.

It’s amazing to feel these things re-awakening in me. I want to play music again, I want to listen to classical music and dissect it, I want to discover new unheard-of bands, I want to learn how to appreciate jazz music for its technicality and not just because it sounds good.

I want to start reading again in earnest. I made a resolution this January to read 52 books this year. That’s never going to happen, but I did manage to finish the complete stories of Flannery O’Connor last spring (which, to my credit, is a very thick book) and I’ve gone through a number of them since then. I want to expand my mind and read things that make me think. I want to read more George MacDonald, Brother Lawrence, C.S. Lewis (I want to understand “Till We Have Faces” this time), John Piper, e.e. cummings. I want to train my mind to concentrate on those things again.

And most of all - I want to start writing again. The people-watching that is ubiquitous here begs to be written down. I don’t feel like I can write any more. I don’t know where to start. Incidentally, Relevant did say they’d like to see more of my work after the one they published online - which is promising and gives a much-needed kick-in-the-butt.

And I want to form friendships with people who I can sit and talk with for hours over coffee about lots of things, and hash out ideas and worldviews, and plan how to take over - er - fix the world.

I want to do these things, not so much for just my own enrichment, but because this is really what I feel God is calling me to in this time in my life. I’m realizing that this period of time is a special gift and will never return to me. When I move out of this phase of my life, I want to know it was well-spent.
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In a completely different vein, please pray for those fleeing from Hurricane Rita. This is so painful to watch - I can only imagine how horrifying it is to live.
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And now for the pictures from today. Please excuse how dark they are. Most are not great quality but they’re all I’ve got from today. I’m too tired and it’s too late for me to work on the lighting.
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Filed at 11:29 pm under Life, New York City, Writing
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Last night was my first French class. There are about 20 or 25 people in the class, mostly older but some young people. It’s a mix of people who have obviously had some exposure to French and people who have had none beyond “Lady Marmalade” (which, incidentally, contains phrases you would not want to unsuspectingly drop on strangers). To my untrained ear, some had horrific accents, and others had either a natural grasp of the language or were actually native French speakers taking the class to boost their GPA.

The professor is a little tiny French woman. She walked in and didn’t speak English for the first half hour; however, she was very good, and I could follow her for the most part without relying on any shreds of French residing in my subconscious. She went to English to explain the syllabus and class structure. She speaks sort of broken English, so obviously we have a native speaker - which is great.

The class has no exams. There is homework every week, but it is fairly simple (fill-in-the-blank worksheets). I’m glad the class is taught entirely in French, since immersion is always best. Of course it’s only immersion for two hours a week, but it’s something, no? I’ll have to find other avenues for practicing.

The classroom itself is in an NYU building on Cooper Square - which, incidentally, is where the extremely prestigious and tuition-free Cooper Union is. (I had a calculus professor at RPI who got two of his degrees from there - the third was a Ph.D. at RPI.) Charlotte had told me that the building is ghetto - she wasn’t kidding, but I could hear people exclaiming about the paint job so apparently it is in better shape than it had been previously.

It’s a bit odd to not be around geeks and engineers, and to carry only a notebook and ::gasp:: regular pen to class, but I think it will be fun. If it goes well, I may look into taking French 3 next semester. I’d love to obtain some level of proficiency, just because it seems like it is good for a person to have basic communication capacities in more than just their native tongue. Americans are pretty spoiled in this.

I’m watching the Rita coverage out of the corner of my eye on CNBC today. This is hard to watch.

Filed at 10:14 am under Daily Goings-On
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Autumn seems to be very reluctant to arrive here. It’s been in the 80s - which, granted, is much better than the summer was, but I’m used to fall weather by now. I guess it will be uncomfortably cold soon enough. I hope we don’t skip autumn altogether.

I got back late Sunday night and collapsed. I was tired after having stayed up late with friends in Troy on Saturday night and getting up early for church on Sunday. Katie was there when I got back - turned out she’d been upstate on Sunday, though not far enough to where I would consider it “upstate”. Growing up in Albany distorts your view of these things.

Yesterday was a normal day at work, except it was more busy than usual. I actually stayed past 5pm, trying to finish some things up. This application that I’m developing is moving along, but since I’m essentially adapting and customizing code, certain things aren’t working - like, for no apparent reason, all the text in the program is transparent. You can see right through it to whatever’s behind it. And this will not be acceptable.

I’ll figure it out.

Last night I had coffee with two girls from work and one who I met through her boyfriend, a co-worker. We had a lot of fun. I really rarely spent time just hanging out with girls in college, and now that’s most of my social time. It’s a bit bizarre to me, really, but I’m finding myself (shockingly!) enjoying it. Who woulda thunk it?

It looks like I will be spending a lot of time at RPI next week. Next Tuesday night is the Banc of America Securities information session for people interested in the company, and I think I will be going up for that. Then the NSBE/SHPE Career Fair at RPI is all day on Friday and Saturday, and I’m definitely going for that. A couple of my good friends from college who graduated with me are trekking to Troy and we are planning crazy times - or at least getting together.

Tonight is gym and catch-up time . . . French starts tomorrow. (Back to school!)

Filed at 11:08 am under Daily Goings-On, Work
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I’m in Albany for the weekend - well, at my parents’ house. It’s starting to really feel like coming to my parent’s house and not coming home from college. It’s a little sad, and a little good. I start to understand what my friends were feeling in their first year of college - something I never went through since I lived at home. I’m a grownup! Haha, no. But I’m grown up (a very important distinction).

The weather is infinitely cooler and less humid up here than it is in the city - a welcome relief!

Today is piled high with meeting up with friends and running errands. They are unveiling our senior gift at 11:00 am, but clearly I am not there. However, I hear that this afternoon, after the football game, they are planning to get into the Guinness World Book of Records by having the largest group of people ever to do the Electric Slide on the football field after the game against Utica. Supposedly President Jackson and the football team and a host of other people are joining in. Seriously, is this the RPI I started at four years ago? Suddenly there are fun people organizing fun events! Maybe it’s worth stopping by and joining in, just to say I’ve done it.

I miss that place. And I miss the people more. I miss sitting down alone in the Union for lunch and having a group of eight people sitting there by the time I have to leave for class at 2pm. I miss late night Munchkin and pub runs. I miss wandering across the footbridge and seeing five people I know. I miss the geekily ironic posters near the CII. I miss grabbing the Poly every Wednesday and flipping straight to the Dave Barry column, then to the incident blotter. (”Monday, 9/10: Student reports sharp pains in forearms, caused by playing video games for 11 hours continuously. Public Safety dispatches student to Samaritan Hospital for examination”. Upperclassmen: “Silly freshman. You have to build up to 11 hours.”)

But I don’t miss riding the shuttle.

Filed at 10:21 am under Daily Goings-On
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And this is the winner for this week’s “Best Quotes I Heard Someone Yelling Into a Cell Phone on a Street Corner”:

Guy outside restaurant shouting angrily and emphatically into his cell phone in the village:
“No, no! The absolute best book about the French Revolution is A Tale of Two Cities!”

Filed at 4:49 pm under New York City, Funnies
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Last night I found that my textbooks for French at NYU (class starts on Wednesday) were in - so I headed over to the bookstore on the other side of Washington Square Park and bought them. Pricey . . . but I’m used to that.

On the way back I realized one of the things that makes New York City feel different from Troy - everyone is reading, everywhere I go. I’ve never seen so many people reading all the time - papers, magazines, books. It’s really pretty cool. Not everyone who reads also thinks critically for themselves, but it certainly encourages it.

This week has been busy in its own way. I’ve finally eased into real projects at work. Traders have been calling me with portal enrollment questions and I’ve been able to answer them on my own. This is very encouraging after only being here a month or so. Another month and maybe I’ll be indispensable (HA!).

I’ve also been called to help with campus recruiting at RPI this fall, which excites me greatly. I’ll be back and forth from Troy a bit in October and may even get to help with interviewing. If you happen to be reading this and you’re a student at RPI right now . . . come visit the Banc of America Securities table at the career fair in two weeks! And bring your resume!

I’m heading home again tonight. The weekend is full of seeing friends and family. Always good.

Filed at 11:57 am under New York City, Daily Goings-On
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My first piece of writing to get “published”!

Filed at 10:07 pm under Writing
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Oh, I do so love these 4-day work weeks.

Always odd to see PNG in the news. I mentioned to Jonny that I had read that there was “no destruction reported”. We had a good laugh over that. There’s almost nothing there to destroy - certainly no tall buildings.

Last night I went to a performance at Dance Theater Workshop in Chelsea. My aunt manages the non-academic portion of the performing arts department at SUNY Albany and has been a dancer for her whole life. She was here for some sort of dance conference and said that if I wanted to go to the show with her, she could get tickets - so I did! It was actually pretty great. The performance was excerpts of pieces by all different choreographers, companies, and dancers, and it was all very unique.

I had every intention of going home this weekend - even bought the ticket - but I woke up with a scratchy throat on Wednesday and I haven’t been able to kick it. I don’t feel particularly sick, and if it weren’t for my Dad, I would just ignore it and go home. But, although he’s slowly improving, it’s not safe to be around him if I’m carrying anything. Can’t risk him getting sick - so here I stay. I’m rather disappointed but it’s more important for him to stay healthy.

The good news is that Jonny will come down to see the Red Sox play the Yankees at Yankee stadium! Those are highly coveted tickets. I already had a co-worker offer to be my best friend forever and give me cupcakes if I handed over the tickets. That game is Sunday afternoon.

My roommate is out of town until Sunday night. I’m pretty sure I’ll just stay in for the weekend, read, play the guitar, maybe watch a movie . . . I cleaned the apartment already because I thought I wouldn’t be here for the weekend, so it will be a lovely time of doing nothing. I want to do some work on this server, installing the blog software update that was just released, and some freelance work that’s been piling up. So I’ll keep busy.

Grand plans are being hatched for a travel-based website. Stay tuned.

Filed at 11:55 am under Links, Daily Goings-On
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These are from today.

The edge between summer and autumn in New York, at the Hudson River.
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Filed at 11:29 pm under Photos
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A little about my weekend!

My roommate, Katie, left for a week-long vacation with her family on Thursday night, so I have the apartment to myself all week. It’s very quiet - which is nice in its own way.

I took Friday off from work and got on a 7:15 am train to Albany. Jonny picked me up and I drove with him and his family to see the Red Sox play the Orioles. They lost - not a very exciting game - but it was Jonny’s birthday and we had fun. We ate at the Longhorn Steakhouse near Fenway afterwards, and then drove home.

On Saturday, I spent the day at home with my family. My Dad is home now. He developed gout in his foot as a result of conflicting medications (my confidence in the doctors is very, very low now) and has been laid up, but I got to see him and talk with him and play his guitar. It was a quiet day.

I went to church on Sunday and saw all my returning friends who are still students at RPI. It makes me feel sad and nostalgic to see them . . . I miss RPI.

After church, I went grocery shopping for my family - that was kind of crazy. I came home and spent some more time with my parents. We started watching Because of Winn-Dixie, which is not the best movie I’ve ever seen, but it was cute - and Dave Matthews is in it! (He plays a guitar-playing hobo type. Appropriate.)

Jonny picked me up and we took the train to New York. Yesterday was a great day - we ate fish & chips at a place called A Salt & Battery on Greenwich Ave. They were fantastic, and according to Jonny, rather authentic.

We then took the 4,5,6 train to High Street in Brooklyn and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge to the Manhattan side. It is every bit as amazing as anything you’ve heard, and certainly one of the best free things I’ve ever done in the city. Plus, an RPI graduate engineered the whole thing, and there’s a plaque in his honor on the Bridge.

After the Bridge, we went up to Serendipity on 60th (between 2nd & 3rd Ave). It was made famous by the movie Serendipity, one of my personal favorite movies, and its claim to fame is the “iced hot chocolate”. Well, it certainly lives up to the hype. If you get a chance to go, it’s worth it. A little on the pricey side (the hot chocolate drink is $7.50 but is the size of an ice cream sundae) but fantastic. The wait was about an hour when we got there around 2:15pm, but by the time we left there was not much of a line.

We went grocery shopping for me, and then went to see Phantom of the Opera at the Majestic Theater. Oh my, it was good. The casting was arguably not as good as the movie (the actors are generally older on stage than in the movie, and Emmy Rossum is hard to beat as Christine), but the Phantom certainly had a completely amazing voice, and the staging and production is great. They really use every inch of the stage and parts of the theater - and the chandelier! It scared me! We had orchestra seats and they were well worth it.

Now I’m back at work, getting into another short week. Jonny left the camera with me for the week, so many more pictures are on their way.

Filed at 2:06 pm under New York City, Daily Goings-On, Baseball
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The people in this town are feeling deeply for New Orleans and all the surrounding areas. The Red Cross is reporting donations like that of the response to 9/11 - and obviously, there are plenty of people here who remember those times.

On a much lighter note, this is also a city that is suddenly very excited about tennis, due to the US Open being held here. My roommate went on Monday night and said it was great. I recently watched the movie Wimbledon and thus am somewhat interested, though I’m not going to make it to the Open. It seems like a lot of sidewalk conversations are about tennis now, though.

This week’s issue of The New Yorker is all about food, and it’s longer than usual. It makes me hungry to read it on the subway.

I head home early tomorrow morning to drive to Boston with Jonny and his family to see the Red Sox. Saturday and Sunday will be spent in Albany, and we’ll head down here Sunday night or early Monday. Jonny and I will spend Monday here in the city and see Phantom of the Opera on Monday night.

Filed at 11:29 am under Daily Goings-On
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