Photos from New York

Late but they are here, pictures from my New York work trip.

We went and visited the Ground Zero site.

We ate at this restaurant in the base of the Empire State Building: The Heartland Brewery. I highly recommend it.


We also managed to see Times Square.




These are some photos of the U.N. building:






This is the hotel we stayed in:

States I've been to/through

create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

Thanks to Srah, I see now that I have been in states I never thought I'd go to, for any reason ever!

I also did the country one, it's funny, I have been to Russia, as it is today but it marks Russia, as it was before.



create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

Our first houseguest

It's done, the huge couch has been broken in as a bed for an overnight guest. Sarah from SI was in Washington D.C. for the SAA conference, and was able to come over for a night. She got to our house too late for us to go line dancing, but the next morning, we were able to have
lunch at a really nice bbq place, Red, Hot and Blue, that her friend recommended.




Jeff and I decided we needed a sleeping implement for the second bedroom, so if more than 1 person was to visit, they wouldn't have to sleep on the floor. So,after dropping Sarah off at the Metro station, we spent a few hours at IKEA. We picked up a futon, a really thick mattress for it and a red cover for the mattress. Our house is starting to get a color theme.

We also finally picked up bookcases. Since these have to be put together, we got 3 of the sides and some solid pine shelves for books and some metal multimedia shelves for DVDs and CDs. We'll see how this works out.

Mixing business with pleasure

I got to go on my first business trip through work. One of my project teams visited Social Security offices in New York last week. We were up there from Tuesday through Thursday. It was a weird experience. I didn't expect to have as much fun as I did. We managed to get our work done and see some cool sights. It was nice riding the Amtrak, but I bet that was because we were in the roomy, non-smelly, double the cost of normal, business class Acela Express.

We stayed in Manhattan and visited offices in Lower Manhattan, Central Manhattan and Brooklyn. The first day we went down to the Historic Seashore to have dinner and then visit an office. After the visit, we walked down to ground zero. I don't know what I was really expecting but it wasn't what I thought it would be. There's a huge fence around the area with a list of people who perished in the towers. Also, they have some sort of plans up for what they are planning on doing there. We also managed to shop at the largest department store - Century 21 right across from Ground Zero. I remember when I visited the Twin Towers many years ago, there was almost nothing around them. On this first day, we took a cab, a bus, walked a couple miles and took the subway.

The second day, we took the subway to Brooklyn. After our work was done, we came back to the hotel in Manhattan and then walked to the Empire State Building where we ate at a wonderful restaurant - Heartland Chophouse and Brewery. We thought about going up to the Observation Deck but the line was huge, so we walked down 34th street to a huge Macys. Well, the others did that while I stopped at every one of the gazillion shoe stores on that street within a radius of 2 blocks. It was tough though since we ended dinner at 8:30 and the shops closed at 9. Then we walked up Broadway to Times Square. I was there too many years ago and it just seemed like there were more people and more stores than I remembered, which is probably true.

Our third day was a half day, since we were returning to Baltimore right after our office visit. So, I woke up a little early and walked over to the U.N. which was a block away from our hotel and got some pictures. I wish I had known they allowd visitors in. Though now I have a really nice long list of things for me and Jeff to do whenever we plan our trip to the Big Apple.

Photos to come!

Killing it softly ...

Do I need any words? Maybe just to explain that that's a stuffed elephant in a tutu and pointe shoes. It was given to me by a friend in IL and now it's Bandit's best friend ... though you wouldn't know by the way he's carrying it in his teeth or grabs it in his front paws and attacks it with his back claws!