Assorted flavors

Here's a brief rundown of some of the unusual and/or memorable events of the past two weeks, some good, some bad. In roughly chronological order, I...

--received a job offer, only to have it rescinded less than five minutes later. It was only temporary work, but still...

--helped chaperon a field trip to the South Street Seaport. My favorite part of the museum was a model ship called the Pardon Me, made by an inmate and sent to FDR (an avid collector) in hopes that the Prez would do just that.

--accompanied cousin Rachel to sound check for Amateur Night at the Apollo. So many memories of my own experience came flooding back...can't believe it's been more than 15 months since I performed there.

--watched and listened to Rachel knock it out of the park with her performance at said Amateur Night. She was amazing. So were several others...probably five of the seven acts were good enough to win the other times I've been to Amateur Night, and nobody got booed off. Not really fair to the performers or the crowd. This event deserves its own super-long blog post, which Rachel kindly provided.

--battled dehydration.

--purchased a one-way plane ticket to Utah. It's true--I'm leaving New York indefinitely (I don't like to use the term "for good") in two weeks.

--climbed to the crown of the Statue of Liberty with my friends the McCunes. The last 140 or so of the 350+ steps are very steep and incredibly narrow. It was about 95 degrees in the head. But it was cool to get to go up there since so few do.

--rode the tram to Roosevelt Island, then rode it right back to Manhattan. No Spiderman sightings.

--went to Serendipity 3 and had the Outrageous Banana Split. (Thanks David!) You can see a picture of how much I enjoyed it (as well as some of the other places I visited with my friends) here; for some reason I can't save a copy of the picture to post here on its own. They sell a "coward's portion" of that sundae, but I'm a brave glutton.

--went to my former roommate's wedding reception on the roof of the Central Park Arsenal--a fittingly unique place (and a happy ending!) for people who would come up with something like this. Congrats Ryan and Kim!

--walked through Fort Tryon Park, near the Cloisters, and saw a six-year-old climb into his little brother's stroller, and have his dad send it down some stairs until it tipped over. And they all laughed. Weird.

--had a very pleasant taxi ride through Central Park and Times Square that cost me absolutely nothing.

--tried to put a dollar on my backup MetroCard (I had left my regular one at home), but the touch screen refused to respond to my fingers. Luckily, Aja and her, well, normal fingers were there to save the day.

--made a modern-day pioneer trek to see the plaque commemorating the ship Brooklyn, and the site of the building where Joseph Smith stayed when he visited NYC.

Good times. Well, most of them...