Technical Difficulties...please stand by!

The reason there have been no posts in the last 4 days (which might be a new record for us) is because our laptop is on the fritz...and our only internet time is at our respective places of employment...

the hard drive stopped working properly Wednesday night, and after a marathon call with Dell technicians, I learned it wasn't a virus or anything, just a broken hard drive...

We're in the process of trying to salvage some stuff off of it, and then we'll be in the market for either a new one...or a new laptop...

Just an FYI for our loyal readers...

Mike

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Our tree, menorah, stockings.....

Our Gifts........
Our Dreidel Fairy tops the tree

Well, not only was this our first Christmas in NY, but it was also Mike's first Christmas away from his family.

Christmas eve was a rough day for us. Cooper was sick most of the weekend. He's never been sick before so we panicked, because we hadn't found a vet for him here yet. Monday morning it was clear Cooper needed to see a doctor so I pulled out a business card for a vet that his groomer recommended to me about 2 months ago and called them. I had to go to work so Mike took him in and after blood tests, x-rays, 3 hours, 3 prescriptions and $600 later- Cooper was diagnosed with a parasite.

See, in NY people are messy. There are a lot of things on the street and under park benches- like hot dog buns, popcorn, etc.

Anyhow, Cooper has become quite the scavenger while on W-A-L-K-S (he can't spell yet). We try to keep him from picking things up but he's kinda sneaky. He'll pretend like he's going to the bathroom and really just steal something he sees. Well, his sneakiness caught up with him. The doctor thinks that may be how he caught the parasite. Anyhow, he has to take 4 pills a day and eat only rice cooked in chicken broth for a week and then he should be fine.

So this morning I cooked up a bunch of rice for him for the next few days and Mike went to the drug store (so many things were open on Christmas here) to pick up one more medication for Cooper and he picked up Dunkin' Donuts and then we had breakfast. One of my co-workers, Kevin, just got back from Boston and brought me a bag of Peets coffee so we had that this morning too! As many of you know, Mike and I are Peets addicts - but the closes Peets to New York is in Massachusetts- other then that they are only on the west coast.

So we ate our donuts, drank our Peet's coffee and opened presents. My big present from Mike was an iPod Nano!!! I've been uploading songs all night. This is my first iPod! I can upload videos too- but I don't quite know how to yet. If any of you iPoders would like to comment with tips on how to use it I would really appreciate it!

I got Mike a Lacoste Sweater (you know the little alligator ones) and slipper shoes with hard soles so when he takes Cooper out at night his feet will stay warm. He's been wearing just his flip flops - which is ridiculous. (Mike note: "Hey, my feet don't get cold like you Americans...")

Mikes' family sent us a bunch of stuff- the best story of all is that we got them the same thing they got us! One of those digital picture frames that can hold a bunch of photos and display them like a slide show in a photo frame. We got my parents the same thing a few weeks earlier for Hanukkah. SO, we opened it and laughed. Then Mike calls his parents and tells them- wow I've never seen anything like that before and we told them to call us right before they open our gift. Then they see it was the same thing and everybody shares a good laugh. Too funny!

Our good friends' Kelly and Chris from back home also surprised us with a couple of bags of Peets' coffee and a toy for Cooper- Thanks guys that was super thoughtful of you!

Later on it the afternoon we had invited a few friends over for Christmas dinner. Well, let's be honest. Our only friends we have so far! :)

My coworkers Dawn and Chris and Chris' girlfriend Shirley. Dawn just moved out here from Cleveland to do what I do at ABC, she's also on our Trivia Night team. I'd also like to to take this opportunity to give a shout out to Dawn's mom. I hear she's a loyal blog reader. Hi Dawn's mom!

Chris Spitzer used to work at KXTV in Sacramento and he and Shirley are the ones that let me stay with them in Staten Island when I first came out here. Chris also does what I do at ABC.

I made a Turkey dinner- I just bought 2 Turkey breasts though. I cant bring myself to put my hand up the turkey carcass and plus I only like white meat anyways. I seasoned the heck out of them Sage, Garlic, Apples, Thyme, and Onions and baked them for about 2 hours. The house smelled great. I made a version of my Aunt Charlotte's stuffing and Mike made Green bean casserole. Dawn brought cheesy potatoes and lots of wine. Chris and Shirley brought dessert; an apple pie and yummy cookies along with Champagne.

All and all it was a great night.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, and for those of you who don't celebrate it- I hope you had a nice Tuesday.

Cooper's still famous

There are a couple of dog boutiques that Cooper likes in the city. There's one in our neighborhood called the Pethaus Boutique. It's nice and only a few blocks from our place. There is another great one that is at Bryant Park. That's where Cooper's "I love New York" sweatshirt you have seen in previous posts came from

Anyhow- I entered Coop Dog in their cutest dog contest. The winner isn't chosen until Christmas Day, but being the stage mom that I am I have entered several pictures in the contest. They posted one on their blog. Check it out- The post is called "the lazy dog" http://www.thechocolatedog.org/blog.html


As many of you may know Cooper's has been famous for quite sometime.

Back in Sacramento Cooper starred in a whole minute thirty news story on News10. Of course his fame had nothing to do with the fact that I set up the story.

Story: http://www.news10.net/display_story.aspx?storyid=29217

Video: http://www.news10.net/video/player_news10.aspx?aid=41294&bw

A shave, snow, and a dog in boots.

It's been a nice, relaxing weekend. Which was good because I was recovering from a cold. It's been going around my work; the kind a cold where you sneeze and have to blow your nose so much that it hurts and gets all chapped and red- Yuck. The day after my birthday I had to call in sick and on Thursday and Friday I sucked down DayQuil and NyQuil to make it through. (Mike note: DayQuil and NyQuil are like the moonshine of medicine...Jen was only half-coherant on those days...which was hilarious at times)

Half way through the day on Saturday I begin to feel better.



Last weekend when my parents were here my dad got a shave from one of those professionals with a straight edge razor. Anyhow, I have always wanted Mike to get one too, but I think he's always been a little intimidated by the thought of someone holding a razor blade to his throat. (Mike note: "thats because I keep seeing those commercials for Sweeney Todd!")

Well, after seeing my dad get one, I think he realized he wouldn't die and was actually excited about getting one.


So we spent the day doing our holiday shopping and he had a 6:30pm appointment. I took pictures!


Before- Hairy Monster- right?

Good thing he didn't sneeze!

Anyhow, I didn't take an after picture, but it looked great and he really enjoyed it. (Mike note: its true, I did enjoy it...and she only nicked me a little...hardly could tell.)

Afterwards we wandered around to kill time before a movie, but we were in a Barnes and Noble store and they did an overhead announcement advising that they would be closing early due to the impending storm.

So, we figured we better scrap the movie and head home.

Sunday morning we woke up to find everything covered in white.


We put Cooper's snow boots on him (Thanks to his Grandma and Grandpa Weiss for Hanukkah) and took him out in his PJ's to go for his morning walk. It was beautiful.

Feeling Special

I just want to say Thank You. I was so touched by how many cards, emails, and phone calls I received with birthday wishes.

It really means a lot tome that you all still remembered my birthday even though I'm so far away.

Thank you. I am blessed to have so many wonderful friends, even if you all are in different time zones now!

I love you all!!!


Jen

Jen's Birthday with the Rockettes

When I asked Jen what she wanted to do on her birthday (since we both had the day off), she talked about a few things, but the one thing that kept popping up, pretty much ever since we got here, was going to see the Rockettes. As some know, Jen was a dancer of many varieties throughout her childhood and dreamed as a little girl of becoming a Rockette. I'm pretty sure that dream died when she took out the glass flamingo in Las Vegas, but still, going to see the Rockettes had been a long-term goal of hers...

So I got us tickets for a matinee show on Tuesday (her birthday) and off we went...

but first...

we had to go to the post office to deal with her passport (which she has touched on in a previous post)

That experience almost killed us...the one woman apparently in the post office that could handle passport stuff had to be the slowest woman possible...and not just slow with paperwork, but she did EVERYTHING SLOW...walked back and forth to the copier slow...TAAALLKKKEDDD SLOOOOOW....everything was at a glacial pace...she wasn't mean or DMV-attendant like or anything, but I'm fairly certain there were dead people who could have helped us with a little quicker pace...too much dawdling, I say! =)

Anyways, nearly an hour and a half later, we got out of the post office, on the A train, and headed to Radio City Music Hall!!!

The inside of the Hall is amazing...neither Jen nor I had any idea just how big it was...we were sitting in the orchestra section, but it was much larger than most theatres, with a couple of levels and balconies to boot..lots of people all eager to see the show.

And it was quite the show. Admittedly, I didn't get emotional about it like Jen did (she cried about 4 different times, she's such a softie) but it was neat to see the Rockettes do their routines and the rest of the show was fun...

Following that, we left and after a quick discussion with random strangers about Canada's health care system (don't ask) we walked over to Rockefeller Center to go ice skating...

But here's the deal with that...ice skating at Rockefeller Center may seem like a fun, easy thing to do, but the crowds are enormous, and its stupidly expensive...basically 25 bucks a person to skate per hour...as Jen might say "thats dumb," so we decided to walk down to Bryant Park and go ice skating there (larger ice surface, way cheaper).

Now, its still a little embarrassing that I'm the only native Canadian that can't ice skate all that well. I blame my parents, who forced me...FORCED ME from my native land at a young age during my learning formative years and brought me to 2 states (Florida, California) where ice skating wasn't even on the radar in the mid 80s and early 90s...

But despite my lack of ice expertise, I managed to get around the rink multiple times without falling once and with grabbing the wall several times, though I know there were a few looks of panic on my face during my skating time, like this one:

After that was over, we stopped by a shop and bought Cooper a "I Love New York" sweatshirt (I swear that dog has more clothes than me now) and then headed for home so we could participate in our local bar's trivia night.

Yes, Jen wanted to forgo any kind of a birthday dinner to make sure we were at our usual Tuesday Trivia Night at the Piper's Kilt. In fact, she looked at me like I was speaking Mandarin when I suggested skipping it. So we headed to the bar with Jen's co-worker from Cleveland Dawn (our other Cleveland native Helen wasn't there) and posted another score in the mid-70s. I swear, I'm going to change our team name from the Transplants to "Perfectly Mediocre" or maybe Jen's suggestion "That 70s Score."

We're somehow still in fifth place out of about 20 teams or so (in other words, we're the Utah Jazz of trivia) so we'll keep plugging away...

All in all, a pretty good 29th birthday for the love of my life....just 364 days till the next one...I should probably start planning now... =)

Procrasstination

Six years ago my Ca drivers license expired on my bday of course. So I spent the morning of my 23rd birthday driving down a foggy I-5 to Lodi. CA. Why Lodi? Because that was the closest DMV office to Sacramento where I could make an appointment to renew my drivers license the night before.

Fast forward six years.

Well, my CDL expires today and to get a NY drivers license I have to surrender my California one. Which I can't comes to terms with. 2 weeks ago I mailed renewal forms to CA dmv.

How am I spending the morning of my 29th birthday?

Filling out forms online then heading down to the USPS (same city at least) and applying for my passport so I have a valid form of identification, not to mention it's a requirement for my job to have a passport. I just waited a little too long to go and get it. Oppps!


Happy Birthday to me!!

Off to go stand in a long line,

Great Weekend

So, my parents came to visit! It was so much fun. It was my mom's first time to New York and my dad hasn't been here since he was 20 yrs old.

We had a great time. They were real troopers, we took them all over the city and on several different subway lines. We took them to Columbus Circle, Central Park, Time Square, The Upper East Side (Bloomies and Saks) and The Upper West Side.

Anyhow we wore them out, but had an awesome time.

Tuesday Mike and I both took the day off and we're going to see the Rockette's at Radio City Music Hall and ice skating at Rockefeller Center for my birthday.

Happy Hanukkah!!!

Got Milk? (A Jen Post)

So... One thing Mike forgot to touch on was Canadian milk. It doesn't come in cartons, jugs, or bottles. It comes in bags. That's right bags, like plastic bags...like the kind of bags that San Francisco has banned.

Anyhow, I learned of this back in 2003 when I first went to visits Mikes family. And it's not that Mike comes from a strange family, it's that's how it's done there. Crazy, huh?

So how do you pour a glass of milk from a plastic bag? Well, they have small pitcher made especially to hold the plastic bags. You snip off a corner of plastic w/ scissors and then you pour. It's crazy!

I have 2 theories on this:

One... the plastic bag people, the milk people, and the pitcher people all got together and formed a brilliant plan to take over the world; but only the Canucks went for it.

or

It's so cold in Canada that in the winter they can't leave their houses and milk in plastic bags can freeze so that when it's too cold to go outside the Canadians can still have strong bones that come with the calcium of milk. You know, for when they have to shovel snow and stuff.

Anyhow please feel free to share your thoughts on this phenomenon.

Milk it does a body good- pass it on.

PS - The picture below has nothing to do with milk or with this post. It's just like the cutest picture ever and I thought you all should see it.

Canadian Vacation

A Winter Wonderland in Canada

Well, we're back and we had a grand old time in the Great White North.
We arrived Friday around 630pm after a six and a half hour drive. We ran into a brief snow storm around Watertown that made driving damn near an impossibility for a few minutes, but Jen was able to calm me down and talk me through it (all at 10 miles an hour)
We had a nice dinner that Grandma had made for us and then headed for bed.
Saturday we spent several hours with my Aunt Irene and Uncle Dick who live in the same city my Grandma lives in...we hadn't seen them in over four years, so it was good to catch up...they leave for Myrtle Beach in January for a couple of months, and have invited us to go down there and stay with them for a weekend, so we'll probably be taking them up on that...gotta get Dad and Mom to ship out my golf clubs so I can play golf with Dick...
Saturday night, Grandma took us to a nice dinner at a local restaurant.All in all a pretty good day, except for the fact that the high temp on Saturday was 12 degrees...
that wasn't a typo...
12 degrees..
12 degrees Fahrenheit...
as in "holy #^@$ its 12 DEGREES OUTSIDE!!"
that didn't seem to stop us from taking Cooper for a walk after we got home from dinner, but he was done about halfway through...at that point, Coop Dog would run up towards every door, hoping someone would let him in out of the cold...he didn't care if he lived there or not,he just wanted to be warm...
We woke up Sunday morning to find it had snowed a good amount overnight.So Cooper got to go out and run around in the snow, which was fun fora bit, but then he got cold again...he'd be walking, putting a couple of paws up (to keep them out of the snow) while he walked on his other paws...very cute...he's getting good use of his winter sweaters...
Sunday was spent shopping at the mall, where we picked up a Maple Leafs dog toy for Cooper, a couple of touques (that's Canadian for beanies) and a scarf for me, and several clothes items for Jen to give to the child she adopted for Christmas through work...
Of course, no trip to Canada would be complete without a trip to the Beer Store. For the Americans reading this, you can't buy alcohol in Canadian grocery stores...the government runs Beer Stores and Liquor Stores where you get what you need...frankly, if you're a raging drunk like I'm apparently becoming, its the best Canadian store...ever...
I love my Labatts and Molson, but my good friend Mike Baldwin turned me on to Molson Brador a few years back...its Molson's malt liquor, and its awesome...picked up a case to bring back into the States with us...
Went to the Swiss Chalet for dinner Sunday night...then we said goodbye to Grandma Monday morning and headed for home... it took FOREVER to get home though, first off because we got stuck behind several snow plows on the 401 out of Kingston for, like, 200 miles (more like 20, but it felt like 200)...and the roads didn't even need to be plowed!! What the $^%# is that??

So after going 20 miles in 57 minutes, we finally got going again, and we were making great time, until we hit the George Washington Bridge to head back onto Manhattan from NJ...it took us 90 minutes to go 4 miles...again....90 minutes to go 4 miles...we were literally 4 miles from home...we could have WALKED home quicker than that!!

I'm not sure what I'm bitching about, because Jen was the one doing the driving at both points, and she handled it much MUCH better than I would have....but still being the passenger, I was pissed off...

Oh yeah, we also got cut off by a big rig on the bridge that basically pushed us off the road...tried to get his license plate, and then catch up and get his phone number, but we were unable to get the number...we both hope his brakes go out sometime and his rig goes over a cliff....jerk.

Here's his plate number from the state of Maine. Feel free to offer suggestions on what to do with it.

I know what you're thinking..."Well, besides all that, Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?"

Well, despite ALL THAT, it was nice to drive a car once again after not being behind the wheel for over two months, but now its back to being at the mercy of the subway...
All in all, a nice long weekend vacation...we were glad to be able to see Grandma before she flies to California for her annual six week stay at Mom and Dad's, and we can't wait to go back to the homeland early next year...

A Mike Posts, but pictures and editing by Jen!