Imagine

Back to New York.... One place on my list of must visit was Starwberry Fields, the portion of Central Park dedicated to the memory of John Lennon. I've been a Beatles fan since about the age of nine (my sister sent me to into my nephew's room to get the stereo turned down and eventually had to come in herself since we both had headphones on at that point - I think the album was either Abbey Road or Let It Be).

It was nice to just sit on one of the benches around the Imagine and knit and people watch. Imagine is also my favorite John Lennon song - when I was in high school I had to give a speach on the meaning of a song or peom and that was the one that I chose.

Several walking tours came by and listened to the presentation of Gary, the "mayor" of Strawberry Fields explaining how the area came to be.

After I left the park I stopped by the actual Dakota. If you look closely they now have signs stating that only authorized people are allowed beyond the gate.

We interrupt ...

the business trip photos for another sock "adventure."

The sock and I went to a book signing at one of the local library branches yesterday.
Laura Lippman was promoting her latest book What the Dead Know. I have read all of her other works (the Tess Monaghan series and the "stand alone" books) and have enjoyed all of them. I haven't read the latest book yet, just picked up my copy at the signing yesterday so I don't have an opinion on it yet.

I will say that Laura was a very engaging speaker and very nice as well. She oh so kindly posed with the sock after signing my book.




The scary thing is that so far (granted I've only asked two people) no one thinks that posing with a half knit sock is the strangest thing they've been asked to do while on their book tour. Makes me wonder what in the world OTHER people ask them!

Central Park Part 2

(blogger didn't want to show the picture when this was part of the other post so we'll try it by itself)

I didn't realize that there was a carousel in Central Park so this was a great find. I really like finding different carousels when I travel and seeing the different styles of horses. According to my friend Judy (who is a REALLY big carousel buff) this one is a Stein and Goldstein. They were known for carving large, ornate horses and the only other complete Stein and Goldstein carousel she knows of is at Knoebel's Grove in Elysberg, PA.

Central Park Part 1

One of the first places I went to in NYC was Central Park. I actually went there twice (Saturday and Sunday). These pictures are from Saturday.

This is the mall which was pretty gorgous even without leaves on the trees - I imagine that in a few weeks when spring finally gets here it will be even more spectacular.

This just seemed like such a quintessential NYC picture. You have the trees from the park and then the skyscrapers behind them. If you look in the bottom right corener of the picture you can see the skating rink.

Culinary Adventures

Well it wouldn't be my blog if there wasn't at least one picture of my dinner every once in a while. This time we get TWO dinner pictures (can you stand the excitement???).

While I was in NYC I managed to have some really good meals and one VERY VERY expensive hamburger. We'll start with the burger - after my first full day in NYC I was too tired to go back out and find somewere to have dinner. The hotel restaurant wasn't open for dinner that night so I got room service. What we have here is the most expensive burger I've ever had. By the time they added all of the room service charges on, my bill was almost $42.00!!!



It was a good burger but I must say I wouldn't consider it $42.00 worth of good.

On my last night in the city I went to this little sushi place that I could see whenever I looked out my hotel room window.

I had the sushi box dinner and it was AWESOME!!!



It came with sushi, tempura, sashimi and teriyaki chicken. I got to sit at the sushi bar so I got to watch the sushi chefs making all of the sushi. If I had known how great the food there was I would have dragged myself over there for dinner after sight seeing instead of getting the room service burger.

I also had a phenomenal meal at Dawat restaurant. It's an Indian restaurant owned by Madhur Jaffrey (she's ther person that Martha Stewart has on her show when she wants to talk about Indian food). I had the Rogan Josh which is normally made with lamb, but at dawat they make it with goat. It was a really good meal and I even had dessert - gulab jamun..... YUMMY!!! No pictures of this one though.

Jersey Adventures

While on my trip in New Jersey I had the "pleasure" of being rear ended on the freeway on my way to work one morning. Luckily the damage to the rental car was minimal (couldn't say as much for the car that hit me). I was also VERY VERY happy that I carry my knitting with me since it helped calm me down a great deal while waiting for the police to get all of the information they needed from both of us.

I figured that the sock deserved to have it's picture taken with the damage once I finally got to the office. Between that and getting lost almost every day I wasn't very sad when I got to turn in the rental car early and move to NYC for the remainder of my trip. Not only are the streets there a grid I could walk or subway any where that I wanted to go.

Home Again

Still no pictures (but there will be several in the near future). Spent the last five nights in NYC. After I finished my week at my branch in NJ I was sent to midtown to work at a branch in the city. It was actually a very enjoyable trip and I think I walked almost the ENTIRE island while I was there. (I never made it past the upper 70s so I guess I didn't really do the entire island but it sure felt like it).

Today was long day - in part because my car service guy apparently had some awesome driving mojo going on this morning. They told me it would take an hour to get from midtown to Newark (I allowed over an hour - just in case). Ummmmm they don't know that Mario Andretti works for them.... midtown to Newark 25 MINUTES. Which means I was checking in for my 10:10 flight at 6:30 in the morning!!!!! Ummmm yep that's me taking that homeland security check in two hours before flight time really seriously.....

Of course once we were on plane we had an adventure. They almost threw a couple and their child off the plane. Apparently mom was accidentally placed in an exit row and they gave her an upgrade to first class. She took little child along and was politely asked to have child move back to coach with dad since junior was kicking the seat in front of them. That wasn't working so they had to get the gate agent involved and he flat out told them that if they didn't start cooperating they would be thrown off the flight and rebooked on a later plane cause at this point even THE PILOT didn't want them on board.

Unfortunately they calmed down and stayed on board ... why do I say unfortunately??? I'm the lucky person now sitting in front of them.

I guess I forgot to tell the airline I wanted the no screaming baby flight.