Getting to know The City

I didn't get a chance to write a post about last weekend, and I don't have the patience to do it right now, so instead of a long drawn-out post about the weekend, I'm going to give you this instead. Here are a few pictures of some of the things I did and saw last week.

The view back toward Manhattan on the Staten Island ferry.

The tenement museum in the Lower East Side. (the one with the wooden front on the left) You take tours through the building and see what life was life for the immigrants after they got off the boat. From when it was built in 1863 to the time it was condemned in 1935, 7,000 different people called this five story building home.

The New Zealand Consulate on Flight of the Conchords. (In reality an old trashy medical office)

$14.50 "Can't say no Sundae" from Serendipty 3. I felt pretty sick after eating it...exactly how you'd hope to feel after eating a $14 sundae.

Docks near Battery Park. I love it, it's so "Hitch."

The Woolworth Building, aka where the ball and dragon fight at the end of Enchanted take place

For the ladies, the apartment from Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Body parts from the Muppet Whatnot Workshop in FAO Schwarz. It's basically Muppet build-a-bear, and it's Amazing. Unfortunately its $90. If I got a surprise bonus at work I'd be very tempted...

Last Tuesday night in the park right down the street from my house, filming a scene for the FOX show Fringe

Lady Liberty, as beautiful and impressive as ever.

Hope you enjoyed these shots. I'll write about this weekend soon. It's been very solid so far, and can only continue to be awesome with the Super Bowl tomorrow!

HERE WE GO STEELERS, HERE WE GO!
Now for the other hand...

Imani

Last weekend I finally got in touch with Martha, the woman I will be helping start her business in Namibia this summer! She told me a little bit about her plans for the business, "Imani," so I could get started thinking about design work.

She has registered the business as Imani Investments CC, made up of Imani Properties, Imani Books, Imani FM, and Imani Café. In Swahili, Imani means faith. Martha told me that her vision for the logo and identity of the business is to reflect the themes of faith and illumination. Her main target market is youth and young adults, and she wants everything to feel alive, vibrant, and perhaps even a little funky.

Needless to say, I was stoked to start coming up with some ideas for the logo. Without a whole lot of information about the business itself and with communication being kind of hindered by the thousands of miles between us, I decided the best thing to do would be to start coming up with ideas, see what Martha and people think of them, and proceed developing from there.

I started with a pen and a blank sheet of paper. (Go figure. I should really do this more often). I wrote down some of what Martha had told me and jotted down definitions of the words illuminate and faith.


Next, with some visual inspiration from Google image searches, I started to sketch out different ideas for how to visualize the things I wrote down. Nothing was stupid or wrong; any stroke or shape was a potential idea. Trying to reflect themes of light, faith and celebration, I sketched.


From there, I took an "i" and started playing with it a little. Thinking about what an "i" could represent. I was excited to see an i come to life on the page, and got to a point where the i became a kind of abstracted celebratory figure. From there I decided to start playing around in illustrator.


Taking my abstracted i, I created the raw, sketched figure and type you see above. As you'll notice in a lot of the designs, I was really drawn to more raw, less rigid styles. Here, the i becomes a figure full of joy, with its head turned up to the sky. The sketched arms also have a lighthouse kind of illumination to them. I know there is a disconnect between the thickness of the "i" and the "mani," but perhaps when taken in the context of Africa, it will not be difficult for people to make the connection. This is one of the directions I like the most.

On the bottom left, I took the i from the first direction and made it a little more corporate and streamlined. It's probably a little too much like a sports drink right now, but it might have some potential.

To the right of that is a fairly simple direction, where the font does most of the work. I like the roughness and life of it, though.


From there I got pretty excited as I started to take the rays of light and actually play with breaking apart the letter forms. This resulted in something that again felt very raw and vibrant. To me, this effect as used in the middle row definitely seems to have a lively African style to it, but I don't really claim to know anything about Africa right now. The last thing I want to do is to create a design that is just a reflection of American stereotypes of what is "African" (he says while listening to The Lion King soundtrack). That being said, I do really like these designs. I think they're definitely different, but seem to have a kind of energy and illumination to them.

My roommate and Graphic Design student extraordinaire, Dan, told me that he liked this direction the most, and recommended that I try a few different versions of it. In the last two designs above I tried using some arches and straight lines.


Next I started experimenting with the usage of a hand, raised in a kind of worship. I don't know how spiritual or secular the logo should be, but I thought I'd give this idea a go. I obviously love using white space, and after I liked how the arm inside the "n" turned out, I decided trying the same thing with the figure of a celebrating person.

Last night, Dan sent me links to a few logo-inspiration sites and I started to check them out. When I did, I realized I needed to do a little more work, and should consider a logo that has a stronger symbolic element, something that the actual type could accompany.

I thought that a kind of sunburst would be the best shape to experiment with, so in my free time today I played around with these forms. Some of them are similar, some are very different. The ones formed with i's in the top left are definitely more corporate than some of others that look a bit more tribal. I can't really decide which of these I prefer. I know too much flourish is not good, like the two in the center of the second row. Note that the word "imani" would still appear under or next to one of these shapes.


Anyway, it would be great to get some feedback about what people's thoughts are, what you like, what you don't like, or any other directions to experiment with.

Don't worry, color (and who knows, maybe gradients) will come later. Right now it's just about the style, emotion and message evoked by the designs. The next step will involve much closer precision and focus.

Any and all critiquing will be appreciated, even if what you say is wrong.

Thanks so much! I hope everybody had a wonderful weekend. I'll try and write a regular post sometime this week!

A New York Minute

I've now been in New York for three weekends, and the time has kind of flown by. Finally, this weekend I feel like I was able to hit the city pretty hard but also have time to relax and get my bearings a bit.


Friday night I met up with Kristen and her fashion friends Milan and Andrea for dinner. We ended up heading down to Soho for some delicious food at a cool little place I think was called Soho Park. From there, the other girls headed home and Kristen and I went and grabbed some tea and chatted. I'm definitely thankful Kristen and I are both co-oping here, since we haven't had much quality hanging out and talking time since freshman year. It's been nice.

My usual theater-companions Dan and Emily were out of town Saturday, so in the morning I got up early and tried to get lottery tickets to both Shrek and In the Heights. Unfortunately, I wasn't successful with either, so I ended up getting a student rush ticket to the play Speed-the-Plow, starring William H. Macy, Raul Esparza and Elizabeth Moss.

While waiting in between the lotteries, buying my ticket, and the matinee time, I putzed around midtown some more, including checking out the ice rink at Bryant Park. I don't think I will ever get tired of seeing the beautiful Empire State Building pop up out of nowhere as a kind of north star telling you which direction is which in the city. The afternoon also included grabbing a warm gyro from a street vendor for lunch that hit the spot as I strolled through Central Park killing time before the show. It was delicious.

I ended up having a ticket to the show in the dead center of the front row (student rush is a beautiful thing) so it was pretty cool being just a few feet away from a big time actor like William H. Macy. I really didn't know what the play was about when I bought the ticket, so it was great when it turned out to be about Hollywood and a movie studio executive.

The play was short but very good. William H. Macy was never supposed to play the role he did, but he and Norbert Leo Butz stepped in after original cast member Jeremy Piven had to drop out due to mercury poisoning. This made Macy a little too old for his role. It would've been a little more convincing if someone who was more like 40 years old than 60 had played the part. I actually would've loved to have seen Norbert Leo Butz in the role. I think he would've had some more youth and energy in the role. (For the record, Norbert was the original Fiyero in Wicked and was in Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years opposite Sherie Rene Scott).

That being said, William H. Macy was quite good, and Elizabeth Moss (from Mad Men) was great, but Raul Esparza steals the show. I'm a fan of his from his role as Jonathan in Jonathan Larson's Tick, tick...BOOM, the recording of which I love. Raul goes a mile a minute and hits it hard. Yeah, it was good.


After the show, I walked over to Grand Central Station which I'd never been to, and absolutely loved. It's so weird to walk outside in the city and at times feel congested and surrounded by towering skyscrapers and then walk into a building like Grand Central or St. Patrick's Cathedral and feel so open. Very cool. From there, I took the subway down into the Village and grabbed some hot chocolate at Café Pick Me Up, before heading back home.

I had the apartment to myself, so I hung out and relaxed for the evening. I had picked up the book New Moon at Virgin in the morning, so I read a few chapters, made some dinner, poured a glass of wine and watched the classic New York flick, Breakfast at Tiffany's. Not the most masculine evening, to be sure, but we're all entitled to a sensitive moment now and then, right? I'd also like to think I made up for it Sunday night with beer, pizza and football.

Before football on Sunday, I just felt like I needed to take it easy, so I relaxed, listened to a Mosaic podcast, did some more reading and cleaning, and then headed down to Prospect Park to meet up with my Daap architect friends Joan and Drew. Joan is a big steelers fan, so we went back to their apartment and hung out, ate and watched the game. How unbelievably awesome, the Steelers are going back to the Super Bowl! I am absolutely stoked and cannot wait. I was actually surprised how much black and gold steelers garb I saw around the city this weekend. Good work, New York.


Today, Dan and I got up and went out to the American Museum of Natural History. It was pretty cool, especially the Dinosaur exhibit and the Cosmic Collisions Space Show in the planetarium. A definite highlight was meeting up with my future neighbors in the hall of African Animals. It was kind of an information overload, though, and it was packed with families for the holiday, so Dan and I didn't stay too long.


From there, we walked over to Jerry Seinfeld's actual one-time apartment on W. 81st, then took the Subway up to Tom's Restaurant at the top of the Upper West Side. Tom's is of course known to most of the world as the setting of Monk's on Seinfeld. Dan and I were starving, and the cash-only diner was super authentic. I went with an awesome breakfast special called "The Lumberjack," and Dan opted for a man-sized rueben special that came with a steak knife. I could definitely go back there.

On our way home the snowflakes were some of the biggest I've ever seen. It was amazing. I tell you what, if it wasn't for snow, winter in New York City would be pretty horrible. It would feel very cold and lonely all the time. This place is beautiful in the snow, though, and the brightness of everything at night as light reflects off the white ground is awesome. Every day on the way to and from the subway, I love walking by McGolrick Park, a.k.a. the park from the french song in Flight of the Conchords. It's especially beautiful at night covered in lamplight, but it's pretty great during the day, too.


Tonight I started doing design work for Africa, and I'm actually really excited by what I have so far. It's been a lot of fun. I'll post some designs here in the next few days probably.

I'm getting pretty seriously stoked for tomorrow. It should be an amazing day. I am always proud to be an American, but I'm feeling it much deeper than ever before right now.

With the Steeler game, the day off today, Inauguration tomorrow, LOST on wednesday, and the weekend coming back up soon, this should be a week for the ages.

I still have a lot to figure out here, but I think I'm slowly becoming more connected to the city.

I hope everybody had a great weekend, and I hope the next few days are wonderful.

Yes, America, yes.

Komm Gib Mir Deine Hand

I saw this in Lindsey's blog and thought it sounded cool. Unfortunately, for the most part my list did not turn out anywhere near as interesting as her's did. I knew it wasn't going to be pretty from the very first song. Anyway, here it is:

Let's see what your music has to say about you.
Put your iTunes on shuffle, one song for each answer, press the next button. Write the song no matter how silly.

1. If someone says "is this ok" you say...
["Save A Horse (Ride a Cowboy)" —Big & Rich]
2. What best describes your personality?
["Straw into Gold" —Idina Menzel]
3. What do you like in a guy/girl?
["Under the Stars" —Hans Zimmer: The Lion King]
4. How do you feel today?
["A Part of That" —Sherie Rene Scott: The Last Five Years]
5. What is your life's purpose?
["Brown Sugar" —The Rolling Stones]
6. What is your motto?
["Silver" —James Newton Howard: Treasure Planet]
7. What do your friends think of you?
["I Will Love You Tomorrow" —KC and the Sunshine Band]
8. What do you think about often?
["Kids in America" —Kim Wilde]
9. What is 2+2?
["Pittsburgh’s Headed to the Super Bowl" —High Powered Home Boys]
10. What do you think of your best friend?
["Finale" —The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee]
11. What do you think of the person you like?
["Bless the Lord" —Godspell Soundtrack]
12. What's your life story?
["Fighter” —Christina Aguilera]
13. What do you want to be when you grow up?
["Time After Time (acoustic)" —Norah Jones]
14. What do you think when you see the person you like?
["Papa Loved Mama" —Garth Brooks]
15. What will you dance to at your wedding?
["Grace" —U2]
16. What will they play at your funeral?
["Tell Her" —13 Soundtrack]
17. What is your hobby/interest?
["End Duet/Transformation" —Beauty and the Beast Broadway Cast]
18. What is your biggest secret?
["Nessun Dorma" —Pavarotti]
19. What do you think of your friends?
["Sometimes" —Britney Spears]
20. What is the worst thing that could happen?
["Get Up Stand Up" —Bob Marley]
21. How will you die?
["In this Room" —Lauren Kennedy and Rozz Morehead]
22. What is the one thing you regret?
["Golden Moments" —James Taylor]
23. What makes you laugh?
["Wonderful Maker" —Jeremy Camp]
24. What makes you cry?
["Love You Out Loud" —Rascal Flatts]
25. Will you ever get married?
["Too Much Food" —Jason Mraz]
26. What scares you the most?
["Tonight’s the Night" —Crazy for You Soundtrack]
27. Does anyone like you?
["Laker Girls Cheer" —Spamalot]
28. If you could go back in time, what would you change?
["Where is Your Heart At?" —Jamie Cullum]
29. What hurts right now?
["Size 14 Feet" —Alan Menken: Lincoln Soundtrack]
30. What will you post this note as?
["Komm Gib Mir Deine Hand" —the Beatles]

I'm especially upset Britney snuck into my list. Some of them are ridiculous. Others aren't so bad. I was actually excited to see Christina pop up where she did.

And actually the 2+2 is relevant because
Pittsburgh is headed to the Super Bowl!

Here we go! I have the day off tomorrow, so I will give a weekend post sometime in the next day or so. Other people should do the itunes list too. I want to do it again but that'd be cheating. I might just do it one more time to see what happens.

The Grand Tour

So here it is, the apartment tour. I've meant write posts like this on my last two co-ops, but I never did, so here you go now!

Let's see, we'll start in Dan's nice red room. Our rooms didn't have any furniture in them, so we're both rocking air mattresses. It's nice to see how little furniture you can actually get by with.

Here's my room. It's actually bigger than I thought it would be. The double aerobed is key, and some milk crates are nice, too. Right now I'm standing in the doorway to Dan's bedroom and the door to the living room is on the right. Dan has to walk through my room to get to his. I'm not charging a toll...yet.

Here is the view in the living room looking back to the open doorway of my room. You can see I actually do have a nice chair in the corner of my room that I sat in as I finished the last few chapters of The Last Lecture tonight. You can see the nice futon and some of Liz's pillows and decorating.

Looking to the opposite corner, here you can see Dan happily sitting at the table and giving a solid thumbs up. There's the tv (it's nice to live without cable once in a while) and original Nintendo. You can see more of Liz's decorating here, which makes the whole place fun and homey. The pink is the kitchen.

Here's our kitchen, no dishwasher, no microwave, plenty of pink. It gets the job done great though, and feels kind of 1950s. The open door is to the bathroom.

I stood in the shower to take this picture of the bathroom. Again, nice pastel colors. It's tight, but wonderfully New York.

The place has worked out really well for all of us and is in a nice location. Dan and I are both very happy.

In other news, this morning when I got off the subway at High Street, I'm pretty postive I walked by an actor named Fisher Stevens. I couldn't tell you his name at the time, but I did remember him as being on the show "Early Edition" about the guy who got tomorrow's paper today and tried to stop the bad things written in it from happening. When I checked out imdb, I remembered he had a part on LOST last season as Minkowski, the crazy sick guy inside the ship!

I forgot to mention I also saw Mario Lopez before the Little Mermaid, didn't I? That was funny.

Finally, I have to say after hearing friends talk about their co-ops here in New York I've been feeling very lucky. I have been blessed to work with people that are super nice, appreciative and compliment me on my work. I know that not everyone is working in an environment like that. Sure, once in a while at work somebody asks me for help moving heavy things, putting together a shelf, or running down the block to the hardware store to pick up something in a picture-hanging emergency, but for these people it's not a pain. I'm happy to help however I can.

I don't know if anybody at work realizes how much a "thanks," a smile, a handshake, or an invite to play a game of foosball means to me, but it all really means a lot. These are awesome people, and I'm thrilled to get to spend the next ten weeks with them.

It Sure Ain't L.A.

(But that's not a bad thing)

I'm going to really do my best to keep the length of this post under control. Let's see how I do.

So this weekend was a good one. Friday night I left work and headed into the village to meet Dan, Kristen and Rachael at the Life Café for dinner. I was excited, with the Life Café featuring prominently in Rent and all. We sat next to the Jonathan Larson wall and everything. I resisted and did not sing any of La Vie Boheme because I'm sure people do it all the time and it probably gets annoying.

After dinner, we all grabbed some hot chocolate in a cool little coffee shop on Avenue A. On the way back to the subway, Dan and I stopped to watch some filming going on. The woman who plays the police officer Ramirez in the Dark Knight walked by Dan and I, and I definitely made eye contact with her. Apparently they were filming a scene from an upcoming abc show, the Unusuals, and I think the woman in the car we saw was Amber Tamblyn. She's cool.

Saturday morning, Emily, Dan and I got up early and went into Times Square to try and score some student tickets for Spring Awakening since it closes next weekend. We got in line a little after 10 probably, but they ran out of tickets after a while. It was okay for me, because I've already seen it, but I did want Dan and Emily to get to check it out. We decided to head over to the tkts booth to see if we could score any sweet deals.


Emily and I ended up getting 50% off seats to the matinee of Phantom of the Opera, which Emily has seen many times but neither of us had seen along the great white way. I was pretty excited. The ticket agent told us the seats were in the back and off to the side, which we were fine with. When Emily and I went into the Majestic, we found that our seats actually were the very last two seats on the side of the very last row at the top of the balcony. It was a bit of a bummer, but it was also pretty funny, and the seats weren't terrible.

Luckily, the Phantom seems to be holding up great. It's been on Broadway since I was a year old, but you wouldn't know from seeing it, and you certainly wouldn't know from the performances. Every actor, especially our Phantom, performed like it was opening night. I was very impressed. And the sets and effects. Wow. I don't want to give anything away for anyone who hasn't seen it, but I was pretty blown away by the scope and complexity of the whole thing. It was awesome, and now I have experienced the longest running show in Broadway's history.

Needless to say, leaving the theater I couldn't get the song Masquerade out of my head, and had fun belting the line "You will curse the day you did not do...all that the Phantom asked of you!" loud enough to get funny looks from people around us.

When we walked back out onto 44th street, we found the city covered in snow. It had been snowing a bit walking around midtown around lunchtime and when we went into the show, but afterward everything was covered. It was exactly what I hoped winter in New York would be like and I was indeed glad to be wearing my new wool coat in it.


Saturday night, Emily, Dan and I headed down to Court Street on the other side of Brooklyn and grabbed some Burritos before meeting Gabe and seeing Doubt at a really cool little Esquire-like movie theater, Cobble Hill Cinemas. I liked the movie a lot, probably partially because I like everything, but everybody in the movie was amazing. Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman were awesome, and Amy Adams was great, too. Meryl Streep was especially crazy since the last thing I saw her in was Mamma Mia. It blew my mind to see her going from "The winner takes it all" to this. Awesome.

Sunday, Dan and Emily got up early to head back to midtown to try and get tickets to shows. Emily wanted a ticket to All My Sons, the Katie Holmes/Patrick Wilson/John Lithgow/Diane Wiest play that was having it's last performance Sunday, and Dan really wanted to see Spring Awakening. They both wanted me to go with them, but I decided to take a break from the theater. I don't want to overdo it. I still have 10 weeks. Happily, both of them were able to get tickets to their respective shows.

Instead, I walked over to the North Brooklyn Vineyard to meet Kristen and Rachael for church. It was a pretty good service with maybe 30 people in the congregation. The worship leader's voice was a little off pitch at times, which I didn't want to be distracting, but it sort of was. The pastor's message was really good though, and the church also meets on Sunday nights at 6 in a bar in the neighborhood. You have to be 21 to get in since the bar stays open, and apparently it's the same message with a more rock-based music. It's definitely something I'd like to check out.

It's definitely frustrating that I haven't found a church I feel like I really connect with yet, after my connection to Mosaic in LA was so easy and fast. I don't know how many new churches to try, since I don't want to waste too many Sundays and miss out on connecting with a community. I know something will work out, though. We'll see. I really want to try and do some sort of service and volunteering soon, so I might go back to Apostles to make that happen.


(44th Street: I love the classic lit-up letters on these marquees!)

Sunday evening, I went back to midtown and took a nice little nighttime stroll through some of the beautifully snow-covered Central Park and wanted to find the ice rink, but it looked like it was far away, so I ended up walking back down to Madison Square Garden where I guessed I could find some kind of sports bar with tv's to watch the rest of the Steelers game. I ended up in the Blarney Stone when I saw a guy in a Jack Lambert jersey inside. From there I watched the last quarter of the game and ate some Buffalo chicken strips. Excellent.

Next weekend, Joan (from UC) and I are going to have to find a Steelers bar to watch the game. I really can't miss a game against the Ravens for the conference championship! I don't know, I think I can smell it...

Well, I think that's it for now. Sorry the post's still super long, isn't it? Bummer. Oh well.

Oh, one last thing! Tonight I bought plane tickets for Kristen and I to fly back to the 'nati for Key Laborers! I'm really excited to be able to see everybody and especially my small group. It will be awesome!

Okay, if you haven't checked out prettyloaded.com yet you need to read the post below and do it. I'll post an apartment tour soon. I hope everybody has a great week. I miss you all!

much love

Preloading Preloaders

Hey everybody, we just launched the project I mentioned in my last post! It's prettyloaded.com, a site that showcases a much hated and dying art form: the website preloader. One preloader loads into another preloader, and another, and another...

My team here put this thing together in about four days so there might be some kinks. I did some type explorations for the logo but in the end we didn't go with my design. No big, I basically prepped and tweaked a bunch of our preloaders so they'd be ready for the site. It was a good way for me to check out the history of Big Spaceship's work. A lot of them are actually really sweet, and the other design firms that sent us some of theirs have some awesome ones, too.

Make sure you read the "about" section at the top of the page. It does a good job of reflecting the mood and humor of Big Spaceship.

Sit back and let it play and hypnotize you. Filter the dates if you like. Enjoy. Show your friends.


I'll probably write a full blog post about the weekend tonight.

Girl...it's cold!

I've made it to Friday which means I've been living in New York City for a whole week! Today it is freezing out thanks to the wind, but it is an absolutely beautiful day, so when I got to work I decided to walk the block past my building to the park at the end of the street. Who would have thought, it's called Brooklyn Bridge park, and I walked in to find this view.


What a day! B-E-A-Utiful!

So I've definitely decided that New York is ridiculous, but in a mostly good way. Everything and everybody seems to move pretty quickly. It's nice to spend the workday in Brooklyn where things are a little quieter. I found out that the area my office is in is called DUMBO, Brooklyn, which is actually an acronym for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. Can you believe that? After I was told that the other day I didn't really believe it, but I looked it up on Wikipedia so it's true.

Work has been very good. Big Spaceship is pretty similar in mood and environment to how things were in Hollywood, with foosball, ping pong, guitar hero, some free food, music playing all day and occassional drinking. The cool thing about the office here is that there are no cubicle walls, it's just one huge open room lined with long desks with computers on them.

Everybody here is split up into teams of about 7 or 8 people who work on one project for a few weeks. My team seems pretty awesome, with a bunch of cool people. My team leader, Tyson, hails from Napoleon, Ohio and is definitely one of the nicest (and tallest) guys I've ever met. Really all the people here seem to be really nice, fun people and I'm definitely looking forward to getting to know them.

At first I wasn't sure what I thought about the project our team will be working on for the next few months, but the more I thought and learned about it, the cooler it sounds, and I think working on it will make me a better designer. Also, in addition to the one big project, there seem to be a fair amount of internal projects that float around. Like the owner kind of walks over to someone's desk and says, "Hey you guys, you know what? It'd be really sweet if we could do this...!" My team has been working on one of those projects for the last few days and it'll launch on Monday. It's a pretty funny and quirky project, so I'll post a link here next week.

Tuesday night I was fed up with UPS for trying to deliver my air mattress and bedding (which I shipped from the Wex last week) when no one was home, so I took a car service to the package center in Queens to pick it up. I thought it would only take a few minutes to run in and get the package and leave, but I ended up waiting for more than 45 minutes in line. After 20 minutes or so I told the driver of the car to leave and that I would call when I was done, but he was being really nice and insisted on waiting. I was pretty frustrated with UPS while standing in line but I was tired of sleeping on the couch in the living room and really wanted my bed. I was ready to pay the car service driver whatever he wanted, but he told me that it wasn't my fault and that I didn't know it would be so crowded, so he only charged me 40 bucks. I felt really bad for taking up so much of his time, but he insisted and even gave me a hand shake when he dropped he off. I was very thankful. And New Yorkers are supposed to be mean...

So now I have my double high aerobed set up in my room. I'll try and post a photo tour of our apartment in the next week or so. My other rooommate, Dan's friend Liz, is super cool. I knew we'd get along when I walked in and saw vhs copies of Newsies and a few obscure weird Disney movies from the 80s sitting on a shelf. She's a vegan, so before I met her I was feeling bad about having a whole gallon of milk taking up space in the fridge, but it turns out she's uber-laid back. We're going to get along for sure.

Last night after work I went over to my new friend Amber's apartment to watch the football championship. Amber is the older sister of my friend Garrett who I lived with in LA. She's a lot of fun and I went over and hung out with her and some of her fellow NYU grad student friends while we watched the game. They were all really nice and cool, and it's fun to make new friends. Unfortunately the Sooners lost, luckily I didn't care that much. I was just glad to hang out.

Tonight, I'm planning on hanging out with my friend Kristen and whoever else is around and free. Tomorrow Emily and I will be attempting to score some more cheap theater tickets. Maybe All My Sons, Shrek, or Spring Awakening, but really anything. Aside from that, I'll maybe do a museum visit or some general sightseeing and exploring. Just another weekend in the greatest city in the world.

Right now I'm reading "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch. Today on the subway I was hit by the section about complaining. Randy (who was living out his last few months with pancreatic cancer at the time) writes,

Complaining does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it won't make us happier.

Very cool. While I'm out here, I definitely want to do my best to not complain, because complaining wastes precious time. I only have three months here right now, and I don't want to waste it, even when it's cold, or I have a lot of work, or whatever.

Even back at home and in the Nati, I'm going to graduate in a year and a half and that's awesome but it's also a bummer. I don't want to waste any of it.

Sure it's easy to type this in a blog post, not so easy in the heat of the moment. But I'm really going to try.

Alright, it's time to finish this post and get my weekend started. I hope everybody had a great start to the quarter! I owe a bunch of people phone calls. I need to get on top of that.

I'll leave you with another picture from the park this morning. It's the other huge bridge, the Manhattan Bridge. Not quite as historic as Roebling's beauty, but impressive and huge nonetheless.


I really need to try and write shorter posts. Oh well.

much love

Just Getting Started

"One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years."
-Thomas Wolfe

So it's Sunday night after my first weekend living in New York City. Work starts tomorrow and I'm feeling pretty darn good. I wanted to get my time here started with a bang, and I'd say I have.

Saturday, Dan and my studio-mate Emily headed to Times Square for some more exploring. We went to the 13 box office but unfortunately they were sold out of student rush tickets. After some lunch at the Celtic Pub, we decided to walk over to the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre to see if there were student rush tickets left for the Little Mermaid. There were, and although we were considering going back for Standing Room Only at 13, the ticket agent convinced us to snag the Mermaid seats.

From there, Dan, Emily and I had a bunch of time, so we worked our way north, checking out the tree and rink in Rockefeller Center, St. Patrick's Cathedral, The World of Disney, the Apple Store and the Plaza Hotel. We went over to Columbus Circle to get an NFT for Emily in Border's, and I was captivated by the light show in the Time Warner Center lobby when these giant crystal lights were synchronized to Christmas music.


Heading back down Broadway to the Theater District, we kept our eyes open for dinner and ended up at Pasta Lovers, which I actually may have been to before. I don't really know. It was tasty though, and soon it was time for the quarter's first night of Theatre!

Once inside the theater we found we had great seats toward the front of the left side of the orchestra, and we found out both Prince Eric and Ariel would be played by the understudies. I wasn't too upset, though, because all that was important was that we got to see Sherie Rene Scott as Ursula. I didn't have huge expectations for the show, but I was actually very impressed. I knew the music would be great, as I have the soundtrack and think Alan Menken hit it out of the park with the additional songs. The Ariel we saw was great and I was struck by how cute she was when she really started having fun at the beginning of the second act. Eric had a good voice, but not a whole lot of power.

Luckily, my girl Sherie did not let me down. She just lays it all out and has a blast hamming up the sea witch. She makes everything look so easy. And Flounder, man oh man, could that kid sing. He owned his part. Really, there were a lot of great characters and performances in the show, especially the Eels, Scuttle, Sebastian and Grimsby.

With those great performances, music, cool sets and special effects it was a great first night on Broadway. The show was made complete by the couple times I looked over at a little 3 or so year-old girl sitting with her parents watching the show with a huge smile on her face the whole time.


Today...well I'll just cut to the chase and say that I ended up getting a student rush ticket to Closing performance of 13. I had to wait in line for an hour and half, but I made a friend talking to the girl in line next to me who worked in costuming. It's nice to be around people who know more about theatre than I do. Anyway, I was pretty much stoked to have a ticket to the final performance of any show, let alone something as highly recommended as 13.

After I got my ticket at noon I strolled through Central Park and grabbed some lunch at a small little cafe/diner on the Upper West Side. Then it was back to the Jacobs Theatre for the show.

I was thrilled to find I had a great seat up in the Mezzanine, and have to admit the theater was mostly made up of teenage girls. For anyone who doesn't know, 13 is a musical about kids turning 13 and dealing with drama and life, and the entire cast and band is made up of actual teenagers. There was a lot of cheering during character entrances and impressive notes, and the energy in the packed theater was contagious. It was definitely a great time. The guy playing Evan was great, as was Archie, and Patrice was amazing. I'm afraid I might be in love with her.

During the song "If That's What It Is," Archie started to lose it, and I was struck by the relevance of the lyrics about putting one foot in front of the other. By the time "A Little More Homework" ended, just about the entire cast was in tears.

After some major dancing in the curtain call, the show's creator and composer, Jason Robert Brown joined the cast on stage. I've heard he's a bit of a jerk, but regardless he's one the best musical theatre composers writing today (...Songs for a New World, Last 5 Years, Parade...) and he started to cry as he said some nice words about hard work and realizing your dreams.

Those were definitely some of the most talented kids I've ever seen and I'm really glad I got to see the show before it closed.


I was already listening to the soundtrack a lot before I saw the show, so that will definitely continue. The songs "Tell Her," "If That's What it Is," and "A Little More Homework" are probably my favorites. I love the line in the latter about looking in the back of the book for the answers. It's easy to feel like we want to know where we're going and what's going to happen in our lives, but at the same time I'm glad we can't. It's that mystery that makes life so exciting.

Tonight, I checked out a church called Apostles which meets Sunday nights in St. George's Episcopal Church. It's cool because the building is a huge cathedral, quite a change from the Crossroads Auditorium. The worship was great, and the message was pretty solid and challenging. Some of the language and service was a little more traditional than I'd prefer, but the community really seems to be engaging and serving the city, which I definitely want to do. I might check out a different church next Sunday morning, but I think I could get a lot out of Apostles.

Alright, now I'm going to bed. Tomorrow work starts, which will hopefully be fun. Maybe I'll have some slow time to be able to play ping-pong or guitar hero there.

This is all still pretty surreal, especially the starting work part. I'm already beginning to fall in love with the little charms of this crazy city. I've only been here for two days. What's going on?

Welcome to New York

So I don't know when it will hit me. It might take a few days or weeks, or maybe it never will, but I am now living in New York City. Yesterday on my 45 minute flight I thought a little bit about how bright eyed and bushy tailed my blog post was and about the fact that I'll probably be hit by a wall of cynicism soon.

Actually, after starting to explore the city, it's hard not to get a kick out of the fact that few to no people say sorry or excuse me or thanks, and it's funny when people give you weird looks when you do say those words. It's not like New York is going to be able to turn me into a jerk. Fuggettaboutit.

So what did I do yesterday? Well, I got into the apartment around 1:30 or so and my roommate and fellow daaper Dan let me in. After unpacking a bit, he and I headed out to explore. We went down to find my office at the end of the Brooklyn Bridge. We took the G to the A and eventually we found it in this really sweet little area. Some of the streets are cobblestone and there are old rail tracks laid into the pavement. The buildings are ornate beautiful old offices and warehouses. It's very Newsies.

Here's the view from right in front of where I work. On the right is the building I'll work in, and at the end of the street you can see the Manhattan Bridge rising above the river. Sweetness. The whole place seems a little quieter, a little more peaceful.


After we found the office, we decided to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. We're right here, why not? Even though it's Winter, there were still a lot of people on the bridge. I was stopped to take a picture for a foreign couple. The bridge is pretty massive and cool. Good work, John A. Roebling.


When we got to the other end of the bridge, we decided to head Northeast-ish into Chinatown. Inside Chinatown, there were a lot of great smells and a lot of women walking amond the crowds carrying non-descript bags saying "DVD's, DVD's." I enjoyed that, but didn't really need to take a chance on a copy of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button that may or may not work when I put it in my DVD player at home.

From there, Dan and I actually kept walking North...and walked....and walked. We grabbed some roasted nuts from a street vendor for some warmth and sustenance and then kept walking. Eventually we found ourselves in Madison Square Park, back at Dan's Pentagram Office. From there, we trekked over to Penn Station and Madison Square Garden for a quick bathroom break where I was stoked to find a PNC Bank! Good work Pittsburgh National Credit.

Soon, it was time to meet Kristen and Dan Dake for dinner at the Thai restaurant, so we walked back south a few blocks along 7th. All in all, we ended up walking nearly non-stop from my office to the Restaurant for four hours. When we got to the place, we started to feel the burn, so needless to say, we sat in the restaurant for probably two hours or so.

After a wonderful dinner and the joy of seeing Dan Dake for the first time in six months, Dan B. and I took the 1 to the beautiful L train back into Brooklyn. Once home, we played a little classic Nintendo and tried to watch National Treasure 2, but pretty soon we crashed.

It was a solid day.

Today, I'm hoping to explore more and snag tickets to a show. 13 would be great of course, but I'd really see anything. It's time to start my day.

In the immortal words of Annie Warbucks, "I think I'm gonna like it here."

Start Spreading the News...

I'm leaving today!

Sorry, I couldn't resist. Really I am leaving today. In a few short hours I'll be flying to the Big Apple, thus beginning my Adventure in New York City and the craziest year of my life.

What are my plans and hopes for my quarter there? I don't have too many specifics. I just want to experience the city. I think there's purpose for me somewhere, and hopefully I'll find it as I search for the heart of New York.

Sure I want to see shows, like 13 (which stupidly closes this Sunday), Billy Elliot, Shrek and Mary Poppins, but none of them will make or break my time there. I'm looking forward to meeting new people, watching strangers on the subway, strolling through snow in central park and slowing down to sit in sweet coffee shops to open a book and sip chai.

I'm hoping to take risks and feel uncomfortable. To stare at my NFT guide one minute, and keep it closed the next.

Most of my friends know I have dreamed of living in New York for a long time. I've never written down my life list, but if I did, "Live in New York City" would be on it. This really is a dream come true and I am so thankful for the opportunity. I cannot wait to see what happens.

It's time to take this city by storm.

Look out New York, here I come.