Picture Show

Lots of pics for all the good girls and boys. And cat.

99 Photos of Fall

According to Blogger, this is my 99th post. To celebrate, here are 99 photos of me, family, and friends from the past 3 months. They're captioned to tell you some stories.

Enjoy!

Vacation pics and tidbits

Annie, the kids and I flew to Chicago on 7/31, drove to Hudsonville on 8/2, drove to Big Rapids (Cottage) on 8/5, drove back to Chicago on 8/8, and flew home to SLC (minus kids) on 8/9, our 1-year anniversary. All that time on seats of moving vehicles left me thinking, "Why do men wear wallets in their back pockets, anyway? My left arse cheek kills!"

Happy Anniversary baby! I did exactly what I wanted to do this year: set the bar low. I only get better from here, trust me.

Some of my favorite highlights from the trip:

- Zoey left the other 3 of us in stitches at the SLC airport restaurant. She started doing this weird "duh, du-huh" sound to Preston, and for whatever reason we all started giggling as she just kept doing it, without breaking. It was like one of those uncomfortably long Family Guy jokes. She just kept making that noise.

- The waiter looked like a creepy, ashy-faced version of Michael McDonald from MAD TV.

- I'm not going to compare every anecdote to a TV show, sorry about that.

- Nicknaming the Willis Tower the "What you talkin' 'bout-Willis Tower", and then hearing the kids try to say it fast. TV reference again, dang.

- Preston methodically cleaned out the appetizer plates at Giordano's.

- Zoey played a game at a street fair where you had to throw a ping pong ball into these tiny glass jars, to win a goldfish in a bag. You got 5 tries. These games are designed to be nearly impossible, right? She nailed it on the first try. We won a fish. It lived for 3 days. We tried.

- My Dad unwittingly ego-slapped me while we put together a new trampoline at his house. I just couldn't pull the last few sections of springs far enough to hook them. My hands were blistered, nearly bloody by then (slight exaggeration). He just kept pulling them 'til it was done.

- I saw my cousin Emily for the first time in well over a year, maybe two years? She went and married a man named Steve. Good job, cousin!

- I met my niece Elizabeth finally. She was crying within 30 seconds when I picked her up. We made up and became buddies later in the week.

- Zoey walking through Meijer in one flip flop, having lost the other one at AJ's house.

- Preston deciding to do lots of unpredictable things: Choosing an afternoon with Grandpa John and Grandma Terry instead of taking the train to Heidi's neighborhood with me and Annie and Dave and Heidi for the street fest; Going grocery shopping with Grandma Carol instead of hitting the G.R. Children's Museum with my Dad and Annie; Waking up super early on his own, at my parents' house, to play Gotham Racing on the X-Box. Well, that last one isn't so unexpected.

- Josh Pepper singing - screaming - "Beat It" in falsetto at the top of his lungs on Guitar Hero World Tour at AJ's house.

- Preston and Zoey arguing over the controls of the slowest, least entertaining type of water vehicle: the paddleboat. "I want to push the little handle forward and back!" "No, you suck at turning left while pedaling!"

- Seeing 3-yr old Danny by the campfire with his pants down. He was standing there with a marshmallow roasting stick in his hand, and suddenly his pants were at his ankles. It seemed like no great surprise to his parents.

- On my 2nd ski run of Thursday, catching an edge and going shoulder/face first into the water at full cutting speed. I hadn't fallen in a long time, and it's a trip. In half a second these thoughts occurred: "I am killing this run OH NO GOING DOWN. I think my shoulder just punched my clavicle. Am I upside down? I wonder if this looks cool to the kids. My teeth hurt?"

- Something about vacation makes my wife actually okay with a real, full arms and body hug. With an extended embrace. I know that's really sappy but I'm treasuring it. It was our anniversary after all. And I hadn't showered in like 3 days at the cottage and she was still in for it. That's love, baby.

I'm omitting a few things, surely, but I'm also very tired and this is taking forever. Plus I took the time to put those clever, HI-larious captions on all the photos above, so don't skimp on those. Thanks to Terry and John for letting me drive the Kia Sportage with the "One Hot Grandma!" license plate frame -- very awesome -- and for letting us crash at our favorite downtown Chicago condo. And thanks to Mom & Dad for hosting us at your home and the cottage for a week. It was a lot of running around, but something about the Midwest always makes it feel easy to enjoy. 

Pics from San Diego

Click on the slide to see larger photos.

Some Recent Pics

Starting at Preston's birthday in November thru this past Sunday. Enjoy! (click for larger, the captions tell the stories...)

Some recent pics

I've been a bad updater of late, though my little notebook of potential blog subjects is loaded. Just one of those times where life, work, kids, and home are enough to fill my time and then some.

Check out the pics, including me on a Wheaties box and lots of cute kids. Click on the little word bubble to see the captions.

Adventure of the Seas

Some pics and short narration of the HONEYMOON

Wedding photos and memories

I just have a quick minute on my lunch break, but wanted to get our wedding photos out there. This link will take you to the photographer's "Favs" - the site has a ton of pics, so if you navigate away and want to get back to the concise selection, go to "Thumbnails" and click on "KMO Favs".

Lowlights (get them out of the way):
Heidi's car accident
Mom's slip and fall and stitches (OUCH!)
Huge liquor bottles in the park from the bums

Highlights from the weekend in Chicago:
Heidi and Mom are both okay
Bums were rousted out by our secret patrol, the Sonnenberg Boys (ooooh, scary!)
Weather was perfect, park was beautiful
Tigers won on Thursday
Mardi Gras party on Friday
My hot wife
Dave & Matt narration of video
Brad & Heidi's toasts were awesome
Bryce's ceremony message was perfect
Eating myself in cookie form
Slideshow memories
My hot wife
Dancing with Zoey
Preston in sunglasses, then with tie around head
Leaving it all for the Caribbean!

Thanks to all who helped make it a perfect wedding. We both appreciate it.

Would you light my candle?

I've been in 3 states outside of this one since my last blog: Nevada, Connecticut, and Massachusetts - each progressively newer to me and harder to spell. It's late, and I can only really summarize one of the states. My Nevada experience occurred in Las Vegas, and per Las Vegas CVA mandate, my story has not left the city limits. Connecticut was nothing but a pass thru on the way to Northampton, MA, site of Murray-Esener wedding activities.

Before I get to that, I've also been to another planet recently. Moab. It took a second trip to that place for me to understand that it cannot simply be a part of Utah, United States, Earth. The Slick Rock Recreation area - where dudes in Jeeps compete for knobbiest tires - is one of my new favorite places. We hope to camp there and ride some mountain bikes, or just climb around the strange rocky mounds. Here are some pics. And a video that my lady will enjoy seeing on the Interweb. Yes, we are jamming to the Rent soundtrack.

Murray's wedding was an excellent reason to descend upon the unique town of Northampton, MA - home of Smith College, a naked sculpture park, a beer can hall of fame, and tons of boutiques and gift shops that are WAY more enlightened and clever than you, Mister Man. It was my first trip to what my brain imagines to be the typical "northeast" town. The weather cooperated by being primarily cloudy & rainy, but as often occurs, gave way to sunshine on Saturday, the big day. St. Mary's cathedral and the Hotel Northampton made excellent backdrops to a fun and memorable time with lots of my friends from childhood, high school, and college. A few pics here, and I'll refer you to my friend Megan's blog for more detail and better pics. We did pretty much all the same stuff as her, except the red eye and yoga.

Now that I think of it, something awesome DID occur in the great state of Connecticut. It involved salad, a state trooper, an awkward glance or two, and... well, I don't know if I should share the rest. But I could write a new entry: "Something came up on the way to Hartford Bradley airport"...

If you only knew...

It only took me 29 years, 3 months and 11 days to hit the slopes for my first time. Annie finally convinced me that Utah has the "Best Snow on Earth - for you to crash into over and over again!" Here is where I shout out to brands I had seen frequently at various snowsports and outdoor retail trade shows over my 6 years at Grabber. My first set of rented gear: K2 skis, Nordica boots, Scott poles. I had my Rudy Project goggles (thank you, Pro Ski Instructors of America conference in 2005 for that gift), my new Columbia ski pants, and then a bunch of other mismatched gear. If I didn't look like a beginner, I proved it moments after leaving the bunny hill chair lift for the first time. I pushed myself off the chair, went down the tiny hill thinking, "this is great!", then realized I didn't know how to turn or stop, so I continued upright until I neared a drop off, and just laid it down. This became an important lesson for me: When in doubt, just lay it down. Because it will hurt less than letting gravity and downhill momentum slam you down.

Let's just say I enjoyed the bunny hill. Annie did a great job showing me the basics, and after a few practice turns and plenty of snowplowing, I could zoom down comfortably. The minute we left that lift, however, I turned into a runaway train, rolling and sliding down more slopes than actually skiing. Too much, too soon. Solitude Mountain's lift ticket says "If you only knew...", which has my brain thinking of all the ways I could finish that sentence: "...how many 5-yr-olds will laugh at you."; "...how ridiculous you'll look trying to lock your boot back into the ski you lost, while balancing precariously on a slope you can't handle."; "...how badly your thighs will ache tomorrow!"; "...how much your girlfriend will enjoy being better than you at an athletic endeavor." But I finally did it, I'm walking upright today, and I'll do it again.

Here are some pics of us recently, enjoying the Christmas season in Utah. Merry Christmas everyone!

Christmas season

Rockin the 80s

Annie and I went to the IKEA 'holiday party' this week. The theme was "80s Prom".

Here is our Prom Picture.


That is my real facial hair, and what you can't see is the tie maintaining its skinny width all the way down. She was rocking a shiny faux-wrap dress that came together at the hip with a huge round buckle. Totally Awesome!

Malihalikaliapuaa'a'aa

It only took me a month to post a Hawaii recap! Here's the short: Kauai is incredibly beautiful. We were very fortunate to stay in a timeshare in Princeville (mahalo, Dr S.!), which is on the north, and best, side of the island. If you ever go to Kauai, you must get the Ultimate Kauai Guidebook: Kauai Revealed, by Wizard Publications. Just call it the "Blue Book" and use it to find activities, remote beaches, hiking trails, and rely on its restaurant ratings. Every place they recommended was right on. My recommendations: find Secret Beach, do a Na Pali boat tour (or helicopter tour, which we did not do), eat at Scotty's Beachside BBQ, snorkel anywhere, eat lots of fresh fish and fruit, and if you happen to need to watch a sporting event but are checked out of your room... go to Kalypso in Hanalei (I watched the UM-MSU game there!)

Instead of trying to summarize everything, we just captioned our photos. Check them out HERE.

Aloha!

Mountains Do

I primarily want to share some pictures and stories from several trips I took in July. We spent too much time in a car out of necessity, but lots of time outdoors on hiking trails, near mountain lakes and rivers, and had beautiful weather throughout. I spent more hours on roads called “Scenic Byways” than I ever had in my life. To me, scenic byways are code for “you may drive off a cliff because you can’t stop staring at the beautiful mountain scenery.”

The first weekend trip was to Annie’s mom’s log cabin in the Uinta Mountains. It’s a true log cabin, and it’s way off the beaten path. I had been up there back in January to go snowmobiling, where you can only actually get there via snowmobile. Since it’s summer, Annie’s plucky Jetta got us up the winding dirt roads with ease, although it’s much better suited to a 4x4 truck. The kids were troopers on the easy-to-medium difficulty hikes we did. At a gorgeous spot called Scout Lake, the kids ventured out onto some shallow rocks, when I spotted a little fish, maybe about 6”. It looked like it was frozen in place, not moving even the slightest. So the kids and I looked closer, and we could tell it was ensnared in some fishing line, wrapped around a stick. Zoey and Preston crept out closer, prodding the stick, and the fish would start straining against the line. Zoey got brave and dragged the stick out of the water, but it became clear the fishing line had cut into the fish’s belly and he wasn’t going to make it. So we left it. The kids were sad. After hiking around the lake a bit more, we were crossing that same spot when a seagull swooped down and nabbed that little dying fish right out of the water! It’s the circle of life, it’s the wheel of fortune…

The following weekend, Annie and I packed up my car and we headed up to Grand Tetons National Park for some tent camping, rafting, and hiking. The drive itself was great. The scenic byway on this trip included some 8% and 10% grades between eastern Idaho and Jackson, WY. Speaking of Idaho, we passed not 15 miles from Preston, ID – the setting for Napoleon Dynamite. We thought about stopping to play some tether ball, but we decided to keep chewing up miles instead. Jackson is a great mountain town, mixing the super-rich with real life cowboys.

As we entered the park, signs everywhere told us we were either going to burn down the forest, or get eaten by bears. This was going to be awesome! The bear threat level was Reddish-Orange. Fortunately, we found about the last available campsite in the park (after stopping at several others and getting sent away like so much touristy bother), which was at Lizard Creek on the north end of GTNP. Relieved to be out of the car, we cooked dinner on our small, controlled fire in the designated fire pit, then stashed everything back in the car. As I lay in the tent, I heard every crack of a stick or rustle of leaves clearly; sure the bears were going to find us among the 50 or so campsites.

Saturday morning, we packed up early, and drove south through the park, stopping along the lakes and several scenic spots. Our goal was to get a more desirable campsite, then go rafting. Annie knew of a campsite east of the park, in the Wasatch-Cache National Forest, but as we approached, it showed “NO FIRES”. So we backtracked to a site in the park called Gros Ventre (pronounced ‘gro vont’). It’s named after a river, and roughly translates to “Slightly less threat of getting eaten by bears”. After reserving our site, we headed back to Jackson, and got hooked up with Dave Hansen’s Whitewater, getting the last 2 seats on a 16 person raft. With several hours to kill, we walked around downtown Jackson. Thirsty, we stopped into one of those country-boy bars next to the rafting office. I swear, everyone there stared at us like we were aliens. After a longer-than-expected bus ride to the drop in point, we hit the water for my first rafting experience. It was somewhat of a joy-ride tour, mixed with four or five lower class rapids. The best part was a long stretch of calm river, where most of us just jumped in and floated next to the raft. Quite refreshing. We were pretty exhausted once we got back to our site, but had time to cook some bratwurst, corn, and chili on the fire. Being several miles east of the mountains, we had a great sunset view, too.

Sunday, we packed up and headed back into the park. After some much needed coffee and bagels, we visited the Jenny Lake campsite and took the ferry across the lake to some cool hiking trails and river falls. We decided to hike back, rather than boat, and the 2+ mile hike was tougher than expected, with lots of rocky terrain and hills. Best workout I’ve had in months. With legs slightly burning, we stopped at a great little pizza place in Jackson on the way out of town. We made awesome time on the way back to SLC, only stopping once in Blackfoot, ID. Sadly, we saw no bears during the trip. But we did see a heard of bison!

I gotta do more camping. It forces me to be outside and do things I wouldn’t normally do. We have at least 7 national parks within an easy drive from Salt Lake, so I’m sure it will become a more frequent part of my summers here.
http://picasaweb.google.com/sj.gingrich/MountainTime

BARRACUDA! Killers

I was going to write this post chronologically, but then I realized a review of The Killers concert would be anti-climactic after my Memorial Day stories. To Thursday's concert then: There's a warehouse-like building on the shore of the Great Salt Lake, with faux-Arabian domes and windows all around called the Great Saltair. The setting is mysterious, with the expansive but empty lake, salty dry flats, and mountains on the fringes. Anyway, the concert was great - Annie even enjoyed the few songs she recognized, but couldn't hang in the midst of the crowd with me except for the openers and the finale. But it was memorable. I hadn't been to a good rock concert in quite a while, and it felt good to leave with that 'my head's in a tin can' feeling and scratchy voice.

Memorial Day weekend, I flew to LAX, met up with my family, and headed south on the 405 to lovely Dana Point for a family reunion / 60th Anniversary Party for my grandparents, Gene and Mary Carter. Friday was a catch up day with all the cousins, aunts and uncles, and we had a sweet game of Family Jeopardy in our reserved conference room (about 35 people in the room). Saturday, a group of us congregated at 5:45 am, and boarded a charter fishing boat. After an hour of luckless giant squid fishing (seriously), the captain caught wind of a BARRACUDA! school down the coast a bit. The next several hours were spent frantically grabbing 5" sardines out of the bait holds, jamming hooks thru their snouts, and casting out to land one of these sharp-toothed fish. Once you hook one, you reel it in toward the side of the boat, and then a crew member grabs a huge hook called a 'gaff', stabs the fish through the belly and pulls it on board. AWESOME!!! The three BARRACUDA! I landed were the three largest fish I've ever caught. What made this more interesting was the constant presence of sea lions, seagulls and pelicans. The sea lions (or seals, I still don't know the difference) would chase your bait and bite its body off, leaving the fish-head on your hook. Or worse, you'd hook a BARRACUDA! and they would chase that, grabbing hold and snapping your line. To better express the excitement of our first encounter with this school of starving fish, here is a sequence of things you'd see and hear:
(12 of the 18 people on board hook a fish)
"Fish on! Fish on! Fish on!"
(Barracuda move quick, so people constantly switch places and get lines tangled)
"Ah, I lost him." "Stay with it!" "Move with your fish people!"
(Sea lion steals bait)
"Crap! A Sea lion stole my bait!" "Get more bait!" "I think an egret pooped on me!"
(Someone gets a BARRACUDA! close to the side)
"GAFF! GAFF!"
(Crew member runs behind you with a giant hook and stabs fish)
"HOORAY!"

I highly recommend ocean fishing to all of us Michiganders who are used to hauling in 1/4 pound bass and blue gill all our lives. It is so fun to say BARRACUDA! that I felt compelled to spell it that way each time, as you may have noticed. Saturday night, as we were prepping to see a slide show of the pictures my Uncle Dan took (he's a professional photog., so they're nice); we started humming the riff to Barracuda by Heart. My cousin Mark's girlfriend Debin suddenly says, "I think I have that CD in my car!" Sure enough, 5 mins. later we were watching the slideshow to the rockin' sounds of the Wilson sisters. Here it is:
BARRACUDA It helps if you play this in the background: VIDEO

On Sunday, we had a church service in our conference room hosted by my Aunt Becky, who is an accomplished music minister, which featured a recording of one of my Grandfather's sermons from about 1989. He mentioned both my mother and my sister Wendy in the sermon. I have a unique family, where 4 generations of us (probably 40 people total) were gathered in a room for a Christian church service in a hotel on the beach, and we were all cool with it. We all think we can sing too, so we sang old hymns in 4-part harmony. The oldest grandchild from each family also participated in some way. My Grandpa recently wrote a book called "My Life - As I Remember It", had it published via Amazon's self-publishing service, and gave each of us a hard cover copy. Each of his children's copies had a unique note written in it; and each of us grandkids had the same words of wisdom: "Remember who you are", signed by Grandpa. He has certainly left a legacy that has reached well beyond our own family. Congrats to Gramps and Grandma on 60 years!

I Can See Magna From Here

So I like my job so far. I've been eating a few cookies for, you know, product training. And to balance it out, I've been taking the stairs rather than the elevator to the 4th floor. I'm not going to say I'm out of shape, but I can really feel the elevation by the time I reach my cube. Yes that's right. I'm in a cube farm. It will be a couple months before I take over the company and get a plush windowed office with views like these, from our break room. Annie's IKEA opened yesterday to much fanfare, Swedish pride, and freeway bottlenecks. I'll probably see her again in about a month. I'm off to California tomorrow for a long weekend, which I'm really excited about. It's a family reunion / 60th Anniversary party for my grandparents. I believe that puts them in the category of "really old"... but they're still rockin' and I have a blast with my family. Annie can't go because IKEA won't let her leave the meatball line until the entire state is satiated. Happy Memorial Day everyone!

"If you're going to San Francisco..."

"...Be sure to overdress; the weather is not as warm as you might think..."

You'll recognize that as a classic song lyric. Either that, or my latest lesson in travel. Annie and I had a great time in SanFran last weekend. It was the first time in the city for both of us, and we got to celebrate her birthday while we were there. The weather was cloudy & foggy on Friday and Saturday, but we did the requisite trolly rides, pier tour, seafood eating, wine tasting, shopping in Union Square, and getting pedicures. WHAT?! Yes, it's true. My primary birthday gift to Annie was a simple concession: "Okay, I'll get a pedicure with you." She's convinced it's the greatest thing ever, and I have to admit, it was not awful.

It was also a chance for me to see some great friends, Brad and Megan, from Michigan. They recently moved to Foster City, south of SanFran, and it was their first time meeting Annie. Just 4 months ago, Brad and Megan lived above me at an apartment complex in Grand Rapids. Now look at us! They picked us up in the city Saturday around noon, and after taking a drive down Lombard Street (the winding, steep one), we headed out to HWY 1 and drove down through Half Moon Bay, and then over to their home in Foster City. It would have been a gorgeous drive if not for the fog and clouds, but fun nonetheless. Megan has provided her perspective on the weekend at her blog, here: http://www.xanga.com/theparisians

Annie and my pictures are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/sj.gingrich/SanFranTrip

THE END OF UNEMPLOYMENT UPDATE #1: I have a 3rd interview on Monday with a notable cookie company based in SLC for an assistant brand manager position. It's a famous brand, the founder was on the Today Show this morning, and you may have seen their franchise in a mall near you. Wish me luck!

More Pics

I added some pics to the NYC trip photo album from A's camera.
http://picasaweb.google.com/sj.gingrich/NYCTrip

Additionally, I wanted those of you who've never been in Salt Lake to get an idea of the landscape, and the views I'm now familiar with, but still amazed by.

First, some general shots. I spend most of my time Southeast of the city, where my apartment and A's house is. If you go due East from her house, you climb the foothills of the mountains, and these shots are from that 'bench' area:

This picture is looking SW across the valley, in the early morning.







Here you can see downtown and the north ridge from the same viewpoint.




Here is part of the Wasatch range that borders the Eastern edge of the valley. In about 20 minutes, I can drive into the canyons of this range. After taking the pic of downtown, I just turned around and this is the view.



Here's my new apartment. That one with the door, way down there at the bottom. Yeah, it's pretty sweet. Since it's mostly underground, I don't have views from my apartment, but here's a shot from just out front.

NYC Trip

This is my second draft, as an inadvertent touch-pad swipe somehow deleted my first 2 days' summary, which blogger couldn't recover. Ugh. Still my biggest pet peeve of laptops, those over-sensitive touch pads. I had picture links and everything. Since I just wasted 30 mins., I'll just provide some links to pictures here. Sorry.

Shortly after I moved here, A had some corporate meetings at Ikea in Philly, so we decided to take a weekend trip to NYC. She took a train into Penn Station, and I flew in to LaGuardia on Friday night (Mar. 2). I decided to save money, and took the Super Shuttle to our hotel in Times Square. While a responsible financial decision, the 6pm Manhattan traffic made my shuttle ride longer than my connecting flight from Cincinatti. After checking into the Renaissance Times Square, we headed over to John's Pizzeria for a delicious brick oven pie. Then we hiked to Caroline's Comedy Club to see former SNL-er Tracy Morgan. Although a bit too vulgar, we enjoyed his goofy style and a great MJ impression for a verse of "Man in the Mirror".

Saturday turned out sunny and 50, a great day to bump around Times Square and get some walking in. We headed over to Rockefeller Center and took the long elevator ride to the top. The clear day gave us great views of Central Park, the Empire State Building, and even a tiny Statue of Liberty way off in the distance.

After a quick beer at the Pig 'N Whistle, we got in the TKTS line at the Marriott Marquis, where you can get 1/2 price Broadway tickets. You have to wait in line, and it's cash only, but after about an hour in the queue, the line moved quickly and we got our RENT tickets, 11th row center, at the Nederlander Theater. Great seats and great show. Heavy subject matter, but it was amazing to see people performing at the top of their craft. Throw in a quasi-celebrity cast member in the form of Frenchie, from American Idol infamy,and you've got "five-hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes" of memories. Before the show, we were treated to Italian goodness at Cascina, in the Hell's Kitchen area. A five-foot-nothin' old man, as big around as he was tall, was our kindly waiter. I had some sort of homemade wide noodle dish, and A had gnocchi. An excellent outcome considering we didn't have pre-show reservations, and caught the last open table in the bar area.

Sunday, our flight home didn't leave until 8pm, so we took the opportunity to explore more of Manhattan. We started with a cab ride to the World Trade Center site. Other than a few picture memorials, there isn't much to see. Sad memories and lots of construction. We were on foot the next 3 hours or so, walking north through Chinatown and Little Italy. We stopped at a corner pizza shop called Pomodoro, and tried their signature Vodka Sauce pizza. A said it was the best she'd ever had. I think it's because the waiter was flirting with her. He 'happened' to deliver the pie while I was in the closet-sized men's room, presenting it with some 'Mickey Mouse ears' just for her - it was 2 paper plates sticking out from under the tray. HILARIOUS!

From there we did some window shopping in SOHO and somehow avoided spending any money. We probably saw 5 Sephoras that weekend, and A bought: nothing. There's a first time for everything I guess. While trying to catch a cab back to the hotel, we passed a huge throng of protesters in front of a Starbucks, saying the chain was killing the Greenwich Village local shops. We would've grabbed a non-fat grande mocha latte, but we couldn't get in the door. Oh well.

That's about it..., okay not quite. We took a cab to JFK and flew JetBlue back to SLC, our first flight together and our first experience with that airline. I wish I could say the flight was uneventful, but that just wouldn't 'fly' (har). A 1-hour tarmac delay made us jittery due to JetBlue's recent highly-publicized problems. Once we got in the air, we settled into our seats, flipping channels on our personal TV monitors. Shortly thereafter, I started feeling a little light-headed, got up to use the bathroom, and promptly passed out in the aisle. I was probably dehydrated and the plane was extremely hot, and I went down like a ton of bricks. After filling out a short medical report and drinking 12 of those teensy bottles of water, A and I had a laugh about what a great impression I made as a travelling partner. Thankfully, the rest of the flight was uneventful and we made it back safe and sound.

New York City is a great place to visit. Despite some claims that the people are 'rude', we experienced nothing but great service, and people willing to make recommendations and help us find our way around. Here's some pics from the trip: http://picasaweb.google.com/sj.gingrich/NYCTrip