Musings From New York

Going Into Labor* (Day Weekend)

Got a long weekend coming up now, with The Lady spending all of it here in the City. So far, I've got a couple of things planned (that I'm willing to reveal at this time):

1. A chocolate tasting at MarieBelle Chocolates ... sounds interesting; I've been to a wine-and-cheese class, but never a chocolate-and-X (where X = {Coffee,Tea,Wine}) class. And I love dark chocolate ... the darker, the better in my book.
2. The US Open ... Picked up a couple of tickets to the top-most tier of seats for Sunday night at Arthur Ashe stadium, and will be facing down the court rather than across. Sunday evening will have Men's Third Round & Women's Quarterfinals matches, so this should be a lot of fun.

* Hey Ruchi :-)

Summer Song

As has been reported in other esteemed publications, the Lady & I went karaoke-ing ... er, we karaoke-d ... er, we went to a karaoke bar last weekend. Although it was a double-date - which is to say there was another couple there, not that we were there with our dates - it was a blast.

We'd booked a booth in anticipation of a larger group, so it was the 4 of us singing the songs we wanted to sing, without having to wait through other, interminable songs sung off key by complete strangers. We sang songs spanning decades, and genres, and here is my list of favorite songs to ... umm, "sing" (in no particular order):

1. Anything by Elvis
2. Anything by The Beatles
3. Livin' On A Prayer by Bon Jovi
4. Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond
5. Jeremy by Pearl Jam
6. The Look by Roxette
7. (Dude) Looks Like A Lady by Aerosmith

If you have any suggestions of good songs to sing, post a comment below.

Subway Shuffle

I took the subway on the way back from work last night. I was standing next to a Latino woman and her children, including a 2 or 3 month baby* in a pram**. I was, as always, listening to my iPod, which at this point happened to be playing Slow It Down (Mathilda Mix)

The baby was starting to wake up, and was starting to stretch and yawn, and wave it's arms and legs about ,,, weirdly enough, in time with the song in my head. From my perspective, it looked like the baby was dancing, and I gotta say, he had some mad skillz!

Yeah ... that baby danced like me. But he was definitely cuter. And better.

* What's the difference between baby, infant, toddler, and child? I know it has something to do with the age of the person, but I can't remember what the distinction is.
** What's the difference between a pram and a stroller?

Double Vision!

I've hooked up my old HP LCD monitor to my iMac now. Pretty sweet experience, although
the HP monitor seems somewhat faded in color & contrast.

I've set up the windows such that things like iTunes & IM programs reside in the HP monitor, but main apps that I work with (Firefox, Mail, iPhoto, etc.) are on the iMac monitor.

An Inadvertant Pun

For those of you who might not have heard, the City was subjected to torrential overnight rains with the effect that a every subway line is running erratically.

Said an MTA spokesman on NY1 this morning:

"The situation is fluid."

Hah!

A Musical Recommendation

Check out Rodrigo y Gabrielle. iTMS has a couple of albums for sale, featuring some excellent covers of Stairway to Heaven & Orion. I hope to see them on tour this year, and recommend any lover of good rock/ world music to do the same.

I should give credit where it's due ... Kartik showed me this artist's MySpace page back in March. I was totally blown away by the cover of Orion.

Update: More video goodness.

I'm Not Dead (Yet)

Yes, I know, I did one of my frequent slide-under-the-radar deals recently, but I had good cause. Those of you who are on my many IM-buddy lists would've seen the status/ mood changes ;)

In any case, my project in KC has been wrapped up, and I've now started my next project right here in NYC. I'm a little hazy on some of the details of the project, but in any case, I should be here in the city till the end of the year.

There goes any hope of retaining Gold member status on Marriott!