Family and Feist

Today was the Fourth Annual (or is it Third, I can't seem to remember how long we've been doing it) Perkes Family reunion in Blackfoot, Idaho. But instead of being there with my aunts, uncles and cousins I was at the Crew. And even though New York is pretty cool, I still wish that I had been at a park in Blackfoot. But since I couldn't be there this year, I'll just post some pictures from last year.



I made it to my first outdoor, network television concert Friday morning. The Today show had Miley Cyrus, and had to close down a record two blocks to accommodate all the people that wanted to see her. Some even waited in line starting at 3:00 AM. But just a few blocks downtown at Bryant Park, Stefanie and I got in to see the much cooler Feist. I'm pretty sure many of you reading this don't know who she is, but I can assure you she's much hipper than Miley Cyrus. Plus, since she's fairly unknown (at least when compared to the everywhere-ness of Hannah Montanta) we only had to get there at 6:30. Well, I got there at about 6:15, as I can never quite judge how fast the train's gonna get me there. Stefanie had the same problem, except just the opposite. They started letting us in and Stefanie wasn't there yet. I was nervous she wouldn't be able to find me once we got in. Not a problem; she was able to walk right in and find me with no problems




Whenever you see one of those concerts on tv it always looks so exciting. That's because being a tv watcher you don't have to sit thru all the commercial breaks and endless host chatter; you can go to the other room, get something to eat, even change the channel. But we had to wait three hours before Feist even started to sing. At least it was nice weather.

This is Feist's most popular song, "1,2, 3,4" and it's quite catchy. For the rest of the day Stefanie and I were singing it... "ba da, da da da, da duh...."

She put on a pretty good show, even if she did sing just three songs. It felt rather small and intimate, something I'm sure none of the twenty thousand people felt at Rockefeller Center.

Happy Pioneer Day!

Unfortunately, the 24th of July is not celebrated in the city. No bank closures, no holiday, no parade, no rodeo and no fireworks. Just a day like any other in the city. I hope some of you are enjoying the fireworks at Liberty Park as I type this and that you had a good day off from work.

Also want to give a Happy Birthday shout-out to Tina!

Movies in the park

Summertime brings some pretty "cool" things to do in the city (none of them so far have been actually cool, as I can actually feel beads of sweat rolling down my back while I'm just standing doing nothing but breathing) and Monday night brought me to the Summer Movie Festival in Bryant Park. Now, the city is full of great parks, and Bryant Park is definitely one of my favorites. It's just a few avenues over from the craziness of Times Square on 42nd street but at times feels like it's a hundred miles away.




The festival goes on all summer long, playing all sorts of films. Monday night was Arsenic and Old Lace, an old classic I hadn't seen til then but really enjoyed. Isn't Cary Grant amazing?! I've just recently discovered this, having rented The Philadelphia Story from the library just a couple weeks ago. He has some really great moments in the film, and his lady love in the film is wonderful. Prior to the film there was a trailer (the Dark Knight) and a Warner Bros. cartoon (The Racketeer Rabbit) with Bugs Bunny as an unwitting mob accomplice , and then people started standing. And then we all sort of danced around to the music playing readying for the film to start. And when it started, we all clapped and cheered. Here's a picture of the film just as it was starting.




The film takes place in Brooklyn, so the crowd would cheer when it was mentioned. That's what I love about these public viewings. We'd all cheer when Cary Grant was first seen on screen, and when he'd kiss his girl, and we'd all laugh when he'd make those crazy looks with his eyes as he's just discovering something. And then when it ended we all clapped. It was pretty fabulous.





It was probably one of the coolest things I've done in the city.

Stairway to....

I live on the sixth floor. And occasionally the elevator breaks down. Something to do with the humidity making the doors stick and the cables not work correctly. This generally sucks, but sucks even more when you get home from a run and find that you have to climb the stairs instead of resting comfortably in the elevator for the short ride up. And that is what happened this morning. I find it hard enough to get up the energy to walk up the three steps to the front door of the building when I finish a run let alone six flights of stairs!

And of course I have chosen to day to do laundry. Down to drop it off, up to wait for the wash to finish, down again to take it out of the wash and put into the dryer, up again to wait, down again to take it out of the dryer, and up again to fold it in my room. Sheesh, who thought laundry would be such a work. So thank you New York for making doing laundry exercise!

It's HOT!!

Yes, I'm still alive here in the city. Just barely. It is super hot here! Yesterday we were walking to the subway to get to church and I thought I was going to die. Thank goodness for air-conditioned subway cars. although sometimes you get into one that isn't and you either realize it too late and are stuck in it until you can transfer at the next stop or you just deal with it. Dealing with it really seems like a stupid idea, however, because it's an awfully long subway ride when there's not AC. The platforms, however, are not air-conditioned and they have to be the single worst, hottest and sometime smelliest places to be in the summer months. This is also where most of my sweating is done. And trust me, I'm not the only one sweating. Everybody is sweating, and it seems to be something we just accept as New Yorkers. I actually saw an article in either AM New York or Metro that said New York was the sweatiest city in the nation, producing the most gallons of sweat in an hour. If any of you come out to visit (note to Mom and Emily) you are warned.

Since I haven't posted in so long I should mention a few of the cool things I've been doing. Stefanie and I went to an improv show at the Upright Citizen's Brigade and not only saw Josh "Tad Hamilton" Duhamel and Justin "I'm a Mac" Long but ALSO laughed hysterically!! We were lucky enough to see Amy Poehler, Rachel Dratch and numerous other funny people whose names I don't know and if I did you wouldn't know who they are anyways. It was by far the funniest thing I've seen; I've been to this show three other times and nothing has compared to that time two weeks ago.





I also rode the Staten Island Ferry (which is free and something I want to do at dusk to see the city and Statue of Liberty at night), found Alexander Hamilton's grave at Trinity Church, celebrated Maria's birthday, saw Utah "celebrity" Carole Mikita at the Crew and then the next day at church (when I first saw her at the crew I wasn't quite sure it was her, but couldn't verify with anyone because no one there is even aware of who she is. I was going to go up and talk to her but just couldn't. My instincts were confirmed though when I saw her in our chapel on Sunday.)





There was also Maria's birthday on July 8th. Mark got Maria this totally awesome chocolate cake from the bakery down the street, Village Cafe, and we all got a little sick from it (but totally in a good way!) We played Settlers of Catan before heading out to a movie (The Happening). Marky Mark had to go to work (what a loser) so Rosemary, Stefanie, me and Maria went to the Indian Cafe, where Stefanie had the waitress surprise Maria with ice cream and all of them singing Happy Birthday! She was quite surprised. I pretty much love Maria and Mark to pieces.




Today is supposed to be really hot again.....

Fourth o'July

My first Fourth of July in the city was pretty good....except for the rain that barred me from going to Coney Island and watching the hot dog eating contest. I guess I could've still made the trek, but it's rain out here is not cool and refreshing. It's probably the exact opposite--hot and muggy and pretty much awful. So Mark, Maria and I played Settler's of Catan, which is pretty much the best game out there, next to Nerts and MadGab.

Maria was clearly sitting in the Winner's Chair because after totally creaming us in the first one she also went on to beat us in the we-have-to-play-again-to-prove-we're-not-awful second game.
Then it was off to a BBQ. Yes, a BBQ in the city. A girl in my ward who live just a few blocks up on 146th has an apartment on the first floor that includes a small backyard area. So we had a hot dogs from the grill, chips, fruit and goodies. The rain that had let up for the food-eating started up again just as we were getting ready to leave for the fireworks. Good thing I brought my umbrella.

We decided to watch the fireworks from Brooklyn. There was probably about fifteen us. We hopped onto the 1, transferred to the 3 at 96th street and rode it to the first stop, Clark Street, in Brooklyn.

It was still raining when we got out of the subway but thankfully not too hard. More of just a light sprinkle. There were tons of people at the Promenade. And it's not like watching fireworks in Salt Lake where people bring blankets and chairs and it's sort of relaxing. There's too many people for that so we all just stand. I won't complain about that or the rain because it was totally awesome and well worth it. Here are a few pictures.



The pictures don't really do it justice--they were AWESOME! And it went on for thirty minutes!! The rain was pretty much a moot point because, being a lover of fireworks, I was basically in nirvana. And the crowd was just as excited as me; we all clapped and oohed and aahed. Sometimes we would even cheer, and it was like all my inner excitement was being manifest in the people around me. What was really cool was watching the reflections of the fireworks in the buildings in Manhattan and all the smoke that eventually blocked the buildings as the fireworks went on. So did I mention that I totally loved it?!



The picture on the left is to show the rain on my shirt, and the non-flash one on the right is to show the Manhattan skyline from where we watched in Brooklyn. For how much I loved it I feel I must also profess my love for sitting on my Grandma's porch in Moroni, Utah and watching fireworks; I got a little nostalgic for it and the firemen-served breakfast while I was standing in the crowd of mostly strangers watching the fireworks

The subway ride home was a little crazy. We even waited a little while before leaving so to miss some of the crowd. But the subway entrance was kinda small and has an elevator that takes riders from the turnstiles to the trains. Policemen were there to help facilitate it all and it was actually quite easy. But then the train started going local, then express after we finally reach Times Square and then we stopped for what seemed like twenty minutes...while three (!) local 1 trains passed us. The train was completely crowded by this point, but since we had gotten on in Brooklyn we thankfully had seats. The train finally started moving again, and this is one of the reason why I love New York, we all started clapping and cheering and someone yelled out "Happy Birthday America!"

A New York moment

So I woke up this morning starving. I've been meaning to go the grocery store but haven't gotten around to it (for one, I'm poor and it seems like I'm always out of food and money, and two, I really hate grocery shopping). But I was hungry and when I woke up all I wanted was a nice egg sandwich with tomato, cheese and avocado. Mmmm, I was smiling just thinking about it. One minor problem, though: I was out of bread. And I have been for about a week now. Which means no peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to take to work and no egg sandwiches for breakfast. And so you know what I did? I walked to the corner "Poo Store" (hopefully the name is self-explanatory and says why I only shop there when it's an emergency--it smells like poo!) that's just up the street in my flip flops and wet hair and bought a loaf of bread. I'm pretty sure there's no where else I could do that except New York. So thank you New York, for letting me have my egg sandwich breakfast and a PB&J to take to work!