After our race on Sunday morning, Reagan and I had a very long and relaxing visit with Piper. For some reason, all of the photos that I took, came out looking like Piper was groggy and sad. She probably was groggy. She definitely wasn’t sad though. Just the same, I thought that if she could talk, she probably wouldn’t want me posting those shots of her, not looking like her normal princess self.
After our visit with Piper, we met up with some friends of ours (John and Kat), who are visiting from SC. Reagan knows John from HS. We spend the evening palling around lower Manhattan, since it was so nice out.
Highlights included a jumping contest on the benches at the Battery Park City Promenade.
^–Reagan’s Jump
^—John’s Jump
^—My Jump (shot by Reagan)
Kat also had a pretty impressive jump. But the lighting was throwing off the AF, so it came out all blurry. I’m retarded. More photos of this outing are here.
Saturday was the first race of 2010 for me. It was a good one to start out the year with, since the weather was beautiful and it was for a good cause (run for Haiti). It was also pretty cool, because it was the first race that our new team “New York Running Club” was listed correctly on the roster/results.
I tried to charge my Nike+ sportband the night before, only to find that it was malfunctioning, again. The display looked like some sort of alien language. Reagan was kind enough to let me borrow hers, since she was sitting this one out. I will be sending it back on Monday Grrrr. The Central Park Races are normally capped at 5000 runners. But since it was for a charity (I guess), they doubled the cap and let 10,000 participants run. It was crrraaazyy. I wasn’t expecting such a crowd, so I showed up at the 9th hour and barely made it starting grid before the gun. As a result, I was way in the back and had no real chance of making it through the pack enough to get a good time. It was ok, though. My friend Mike ran with me, and we just had a relaxing race, and chatted the whole time. It also made me totally pumped for the upcoming running season and nice weather. Woo hoo!
Our Alaska/Hofstra friends also came to visit us, this weekend. Reagan and I pretty much just tagged a long with them through the village to various thrift stores, before hitting Broadway, in SoHo (pretty much Reagan’s dream day). It was a pretty good time, even for me.
It has been snowing all day. As usual, the local media totally hyped it, beforehand. Yesterday, NYC public schools preemptively canceled class for today. In fairness, it has been coming down pretty hard, all day, and is still coming down. Even though Reagan and I both had to work, we were both able to leave a lot earlier than normal. I wish that we could have had the whole day off, to be out and about, like our friends Kim and Ryan. I did get a few snaps of my own, today, mostly on the way out of work.
^—Looking at Battery Park City, from 1 WFC.
^—-1 World Trade Center from the Vesey Street Bridge.
And my favorite, the ever timely snow-heart that someone made on our sidewalk.
It was so cold, last weekend. Some of our friends ran a race in CP, that I was going to go shoot for Examiner, and I totally bailed on it, because it was so cold (I then want back to bed and slept in until after1 pm, hehe). It is still freezing outside (check out the ice flow in the Hudson, above).
I guess that I can’t really complain though. Check out the photo below from Maggie (or Ben), of Georgetown last weekend.
Despite the freezing temperatures, I’m am getting excited for Fashion Week, which begins on Thursday. Plus one of my old HS homies will be in town visiting. We are going to link up for dinner or something.
People tend to get stir crazy, when they are sick and it is too cold spend any sort of quality time out doors. We do, anyway. Saturday, it was barely in the double digits outside, and it felt even colder because of the wind. Reagan had an appt on the UWS early in the afternoon. I decided to pick her up afterward, so that I could say I had been out of the house, hahaha. When we were trying to figure out what to do for the rest of the evening, I came up with this kind of corny idea about making some miniature ppl and photographing them. There were a few things that I have seen recently that gave me the idea. There was this thing that I saw on Boing Boing. There was also a thing that I saw on a blog kept by some of our acquaintances from Harlem. Finally, let’s not forget this Seth Green-esque weirdness.
So, we stopped by the Michael’s on the UWS and picked up some FIMO, then picked up some burritos at Ch#$%$, and headed home. Kelly, I would like you to know that per your fine fine suggestion, I have now added a burrito tag and category.
We made various little models, so that we could have a few options of scenarios, to shoot.
By the time that we finished building all of the little guys, and baking them in the oven, we were kind of running out of energy to get really fancy with the photos. But, we did have a lot of fun with the underwater scenario (shot in the fish tank). Reagan suspended a little scuba diver and mermaid from some of her hair. Yes, she tied one of her hairs around them (her idea [an awesome one]). Hahahaha. The baby convicts and the gold fish were the funniest part about it. They were so incredibly curious about what was going on, that they are in just about every shot. Look how curious the little convicts are in the shot below, when Reagan first dropped in the mermaid.
Ok, so here is the real ripoff. Our friend Zach always puts together these awesome time-lapse videos of stuff that they do. I have been super curious to try my hand at making one, for a while. I didn’t get very fancy, like he does, with the music and everything. But, if you want to see my first crack at a time-lapse video, click play below, to watch Reagan and I building little Fimo guys.
If you want to check out a few more photos of the Fimo ppl and some other randomness, click through here.
Since Piper has been back at Columbia, I have been back to the old car moving routine. I have not enjoyed it. I normally get up at 6, so that I can get it done before there is any real traffic. The sweet spot is between 6 and 7. After 7, there is a garbage truck and a school bus blocking every single street in our neighborhood.
This morning, Reagan woke me up, while she was stirring around. I had one of those sudden moments of panic, like I knew I shouldn’t still be asleep. I had forgotten to take my phone off of silent, and the type of alarm that I had set for moving the car, doesn’t make any noise, when my phone is on silent. It was already 7. I got down stairs just in time for the blizzard to start, and in time to get stuck behind every school bus and garbage truck in our neighborhood, at least once. Hahahaha. I’m ok with that though, because the snow was very pretty and entertaining to watch, while taking breaks from watching the dudes toss garbage into the truck.
At long last, I did find a parking spot in time to make it down to work w/o being late, where I took the above photos of the storm. I know they are kind of boring. I liked these ones much more.
To add a little bit of contrast to the gray photos above, I thought I would post the image below. It has made its way around the internet by now, but I thought it was cool enough to share again anyway.
The image comes from artist Steven Worley’s blog. In his post, he outlines the history of Crayola’s color spectrum, and how the palette has expanded over the years, saying:
Crayola’s crayon chronology tracks their standard box, from its humble eight color beginnings in 1903 to the present day’s 120-count lineup. According to Crayola, of the precious crayons of my childhood – the seventy-two colors from the official 1975 set – sixty-one survive.
In spite of high hopes coming into the weekend, it turned out to be kind of a bust. Reagan and I weren’t feeling super well on Saturday morning, so we scrapped the plan to pick up Piper’s stuff in Jersey, and instead, headed straight to the hospital. By Saturday evening it was pretty apparent that we were both coming down with some sort of ailment.
I spent the entire day, Sunday laid up in bed. Reagan toughed it out and made the trip to church. For her reward, she is feeling even worse today. Neither of us went into work today. I have been logged in from home, trying to get some stuff done. But it has been slow going, since my head is still so cloudy.
Staying home wasn’t a hard decision to make, when we woke up to sideways rain pelting against the window. As nasty as the weather was today, it certainly did make for a cozy sick day. Late in the afternoon, the clouds broke for a minute and I ventured out to move the car (which is when I shot the image above). Hopefully those clouds will take our illness along with them, on their way out of town.
The worst part of this ordeal, of course, is not being able to see Piper. From the nurse’s report, this morning, it seems as though she may have made some progress during the night. They were able to come down on her ventilator settings a bit. Last time she was totally paralyzed they were able to make the same progress. The real test will be, if she can maintain those settings when they back off the sedatives. Fingers crossed. We miss you Piper!
There isn’t much to report from Sunday, on the Piper front. Her doctors decided that it was a good idea to put her back on a paralytic today, because that is the only effective way that they have discovered, so far, to keep her from de-saturating. When she starts to wake up, even a little bit (even though she has been super-sedated) she is fighting the vent.
Reagan passed the time by catching up on TV. She finished her new book. I finished mine, too. I can definitely think of worse ways to spend a long weekend. Until today, the weather has been particularly mild, since Thursday. This has made for a very pleasant walk to and from the hospital, requiring only a hoodie to stay warm. That streak ended today, when we were instead greeted with sideways rain.
One thing that is nice, is that Piper has been on some meds to help her get all of the extra fluid out of her system. As a result, she has been a lot less puffy and is starting to resemble her normal self, a lot more.
It is going to be tough, this week to ease ourselves back into reality. As boring as it can be, hanging out in Piper’s room all day, it can also be very relaxing. It is super mellow, in there, when no alarms are sounding. Not to mention, the rhythmic sound of the vent can lull a person into a trance. Poor lil’ PJ. At least she seems to getting some solid rest.
I had to be in the office for a while on Saturday. When I arrived downtown, it was late afternoon, and it was like a ghost town. It was totally freezing outside. The only people that I really saw were occasional groups of tourists. The sun was totally lighting up the west side of the downtown post office. So I stopped to take this shot. Not the first time I have had fun with this piece. I walk past it almost every day, at least once. So, why not?
What is even better, is that after I got this shot, I was packing everything bag into my bag, when a group of tourists who were kind of off to the side watching me pulled in right behind me and started breaking out their cameras. Like run-on sentences much? This is why that’s funny (the incident, not the fact that it was expressed in a run-on sentence, it’s pretty obvious why that’s funny).
It was really nice not having to work, this week. Reagan, unfortunately was not able to get out of work on Thursday. So, I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art with Reagan’s Parents. One of the great things about having family come from out of town, is that it gives me a good excuse to do things that I probably wouldn’t normally find time to do. I haven’t been to the Met, since Reagan and I have been married. It was a lot of fun.
Below, left to right: Walking through CP after a fresh snow; European painting section of the Met; and, Greek sculpture section of the Met.
Saturday morning, Reagan and her mom wanted to go shopping at some of the stores in Rockefeller Plaza. So her dad and I decided to check out the observation deck on the top of 30 Rockefeller, to kill some time. It was very cool. Even though it was overcast, the clouds were high enough that the visibility was really good. The temperature was in the low 20’s and the wind was gusting pretty strongly. But, it was still a very enjoyable experience. Below are a couple of my favorite shots from Top of the Rock.
Above: somebody in their fur-trim snorkel jacket, shooting the Empire State Building. Below: Central Park and the UWS. Toward the top of the frame, you can see where it was starting to snow, in Harlem. Also, just for kicks, I uploaded a full resolution image of the UWS, in case you want to try to spot your house.
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