Snow, Lots of Snow (by California Standards of course)

Last Friday it snowed. For like 6 hours straight. It wasn't evil, icy, pierce your skin hateful snow. It was happy, fluffy, fat snowflakey snow. Like in a Disney movie when snow falls and happy music plays kind of snow.

Anyhow, it snowed Thursday night into Friday morning and I got to walk into work in it. It was so fun!

Here's what it looked like that morning.

This is our building.

This is the route I take to the subway from our place. It's Cooper Street Made picking this apartment easy, I figured because the cross street was called Cooper it was fate!

My feet in the snow while walking to the subway on my way into work.

Self Portrait in the Snow.

On Sunday Mike and I took Cooper the Great to the park. It was like a picture perfect postcard. Everything was covered in snow and the sun was out. It was 40 degrees outside and lovely. 40 degrees is warm to me now... heck it's a heatwave!

Cooper in the snow - Sportin' his I love NY sweatshirt.

The park near our house- Inwood Hill Park It's at the top of the island of Manhattan.











Salt water marsh at the top of the park.

These are the baseball fields- Kids spent the day building snow people.

Families used the hillsides in the park for sledding- It looked super fun!

Cooper had a blast!!! He's decided that he loves the snow.

Afterwards- Cooper needed a bath. He thought it was a crummy end to a fabulous day. I thought it was great!! I love when he's a fluffy fur ball after he gets a bath.

Oh Happy Day (A Jen Post)

Our old laptop - may it rest in peace.

And now--- tada---- we have a brand new laptop. It's a Gateway and it's great! It's super light weight and it works- which makes it fabulous.

Until now I haven't been able to get pictures off of our camera because the old laptop couldn't handle it. As you can imagine I have lots of making up to do.

First of all... I got the Uggs. They are great. Super warm and I hate wearing anything else on my feet.

As you read in an earlier post my sister Rebecca came and stayed with me for a girls weekend while Mike was at that hockey thing in Atlanta. Here are some of the pics from that visit.

We went to this fabulous restaurant on the Upper Westside called Rain. It was NYC restaurant week and my coworker Dawn went with us. It was great food, but a snotty waitress. They gave us a $40 gift card as a Thank You for coming in during restaurant week. Mike and I used them last night. So Good!!! Nicer waitress too. This is us at Rain.

This is the chocolate Dessert at Rain.

The day before Mike left for Atlanta was the day Rebecca arrived. I met her at the airport and then we went to Peter's- a bar near my work that we hang out at. That's where we meant up w/ Will and Jenn Selva. Here are the pics from that night ....

The Jen's

Mike & Will

The Watts' & The Selva's

All In The Family

Well, as Jen mentioned earlier, Sister Jen came to visit us a couple of weekends back. Its always good to see my sister, and she's quite possibly the easiest houseguest we've ever had (along with Bec). The reason being, Jen came out here by herself last New Year's and pretty much did all the major touristy stuff...so when she came this time around, we had the ability to do stuff that none of us had had the chance to do so far...

Of course, most of that involved food....as our friends know, Jen and I are big time foodies, and we love the ability to check out new restaurants and such around the New York City area since there are only 14-thousand of them or so....

Among the highlight of Sister Jen's trip to NYC:

1. Dinner at Mesa Grill: (top Photo) Jen and I took Sister Jen (by the way, my sister isn't a nun, its just the only way to differentiate between the two of them...well, probably not the ONLY way, but one of the funnier ways, especially since Sister Jen is getting her masters in theology...) to Mesa Grill for her birthday dinner, as she had just turned 28 years old a couple of days before she got to NYC. (Still reeling by the fact that I have a 28-year-old sister...crap, I'm old)

Mesa Grill is one of Bobby Flay's restaurants in town, and I think it might have been the best of three (Jen and I have now gone to all of them). I had the flounder, which was awesome, and the Jen's had the salmon, which was also very good. The decor is also very nouveau and judging from the crowds, it remains a pretty popular place.

2. A trip across the Brooklyn Bridge: This was, in a word, awesome: We took the subway down to the base of the bridge and then walked across from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Going there was a little rough, because of the wind. It was really REALLY windy that day, which made for a bit of a struggle going over into Brooklyn. At one point, the wind actually lifted me off the ground and pushed me a few feet (hard to imagine, considering my 255 pounds). Of course, Jen was miserable and wasn't having a good time at all, but it was fun to cross over the bridge. The return trip, though, was even better. We had gone over to have lunch at a pizza place (more on that in a minute) and when we left, it started to snow....and I mean SNOW....very hard.

Jen wasn't sure she wanted to walk back in the wind AND the snow, but the Watts siblings ended up convincing her, and it turned out to be a good thing, because once we got on the bridge, the wind stopped, and we just walked among the snowflakes...totally cool visual, of which you can see above this post (thanks for the pictures, Sister Jen!)

3. Grimaldi's: This is the pizza joint at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge on the Brooklyn side. Really well known, and annually picked as having the best pizza within the five boroughs. And they aren't lying. We ended up ordering a white pizza with pepperoni, garlic and basil, and they mistakenly brought a regular red pizza with pepperoni and onions. We weren't all that upset, and began to eat, and about halfway through our pie, they brought out the pizza they were supposed to give to us...and left it there...two pizzas for the price of one!

Anyways, the pizza is spectactular...definitely going back there...though Jen says she'll be taking the subway next time and avoiding the bridge.

4. Serendipity 3: The famous dessert restaurant from the movies. Sister Jen wanted to go there on the Monday she was in town, so after I got off of work, I met up with her (Jen was at work) and we headed over to the place. We avoided the frozen hot chocolate (its their specialty, but it was also 22 degrees outside that day..and I didn't want a frozen ANYTHING) so we each had sandwiches, which were to die for. Sister Jen had a turkey apple brie concoction, while I had some sort of croque monsieur type sandwich, and both were delicious...plus, it was a neat place to go to...highly recommended.

5. Regis and Kelly...the Jens took in Monday's show while I was at work...Jen was able to go because the show lets out at 10am, right when she's due at ABC. According to the girls, they had a good time. I didn't, because I was waiting outside for them for 30 minutes in 20 degree weather...literally went to the nearby Starbucks afterwards and ran hot water over my hands for 5 minutes....

Sister Jen likes to bring her little Pluto doll when she goes on vacation. She then takes pictures of Pluto at a bunch of sites, and creates photo albums so it appears Pluto is having the time of his life. By the way, did I mention she's 28 years old?? Actually, who am I to talk...I'm 31 and still watch professional wrestling.

Anyways, here's Pluto at Regis and Kelly and the World News Tonight set!

There were a lot of other fun times to be had in the days Sister Jen was here...I was so glad she was able to come and visit us. Cooper was thrilled to see his Aunt Jen (and was very sad when she left) and we can't wait for her to come back...next time we'll make sure she's here for trivia night!

Now we prepare for my parents visit at the start of April. Unlike my sister, my mother has never been to NYC and my Dad hasn't been for about 30 years, so they will be in full tourist mode...I better start preparing now!

Mike

No Computers at this Holiday Inn

I'm so sorry we haven't posted anything in so long. Our computer is now dead again. I blame Mike.
Geek Squad- who I also blame - says that we need to buy a new hard drive... download everything we'd like to keep and re-install windows.
So, basically 2 months ago we should have just bought a new computer and we'd be done with this mess and able to blog.
To catch everyone up... The day before Mike left for Atlanta Will (former News10er now at ESPN) and Jenn Selva were in town celebrating Wills bday. That same night my sister Rebecca flew in from San Francisco for a girls weekend. I met Becca at the airport and then we headed over to a bar near Lincoln Center to hang out with Will and Jenn and some of their friends who also live in the city. It was super fun. They live in Connecticut now only about an hour away. We'll most definitely have top get together soon.
The next morning Mike left for ATL and I had a long weekend with my sister- just the girls it was great. We went to Soho and had brunch at Cipriani's which was amazingly chic and delicious. We knew we were surrounded by celebs, but with out my paparazzi hubby we couldn't really tell who anyone was. After going home and googgling we realized that the people behind us were Javier Bardem and Harvey Weinstein. We then went to Century 21 (the worlds greatest designer discount store) and then had dinner w/ my coworker dawn another great place on the Upper West Side called Rain.
On Saturday Bec and I had a girly spa day at Mario Badesco- the best place EVER. After she told me about his products about 2 months ago I have been using them religiously. My skin has never looked better. I highly recommend!
On Sunday we went to the Natural History museum and saw the planetarium show- It was awesome.
All in all it was a great visit.
Last weekend Mike's sister Jen came to visit. That was awesome too. The highlights of that trip were.. a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to this amazing Pizza joint on the Brooklyn side. Best Pizza that I have ever had in my life!!! On Monday I got us tickets to go see Regis and Kelly. That was WAY fun. The guests were Rachel Bilson (Summer of the OC FAME) AND Enrique Iglesias. Then I went into work and Mike and Jenn got to tour the city.
I'll let Mike write more about her visit. All in all- it was super fun!!
Go to love sibling time. Both Mike and I were lucky enough to have great sisterly visits!
This week we have our Friends Liz and Lincoln and their 20 month old Emma visiting. They came in on Saturday afternoon. They are here following around the San Jose Sharks as they make their east coast tour. Can you say die hard fans? We saw the Sharks play the Rangers on Sunday and today Mike and Lincoln are off to see the Sharks play the Islanders. I'm at work (loving the computer) access and Liz, Emma, and Cooper are hanging out at our place.
All and all we've been busy with work, house guests and computer problems.
Just call us the Holiday Inn. We've got Free HBO- but no computer access!
Much love to you all!
Jen
P.S. I will update this post with pics from all of our guests ASAP.
Please excuse the tardiness of our blogs- all complaints can be directed towards the Geek Squad

I Fought The Law....

...and the Law won.



When we rented a car to drive to Canada to visit my grandmother back in December, we ended up parking it overnight in front of our building the night we got home. The plan was for me to take it back to the rental place in Jersey the next morning.



When I awoke, I found that we had a ticket because we were too close to teh fire hydrant...the ticket specifically said "car four feet from hydrant."



Which was BS...we weren't anywhere near 4 feet from it. Stupidly, I didn't take any pictures, but drove the car back...took a bus home, and stewed over the ticket before finally deciding to fight it...



In NYC, you can fight such tickets online...so I drafted a pretty good plea and argument that would win me the decision from the judge...

Well, the verdict was mailed to us yesterday...

and the law Won...

Grand total? 115 bucks...

Reason #7459 why I'll never have a car here....

Sigh....

Mike