Back After Winter Break

Wow! It seems that I haven't blogged in over a month now - where has the time gone? After our big trip to New York over the Thanksgiving Holidays I initially devoted a good deal of effort into post trip cleanup, organization, and blogging...and then I went dark.

I remember, with the Christmas holidays coming up, I was feeling that I should probably get some real work done so that I would keep getting paid. But, as usual, I couldn't resist becoming obsessed with some other non-work related sinkhole.

The sinkhole this time was trying to dump Comcast cable tv. It's always bothered me that we're paying for all this content that is constantly being pumped into our home and we rarely ever watch tv. The idea of all that wasted content makes me sick. I have a compulsion to right size - nothing more and nothing less than is necessary in all things.

I started researching and hatched out a plan to buy an over the air antenna and a computer with a tv recorder since I do like convenience of recording and watching later. I wasn't into doing anything hard like trying to attach the antenna to the roof, but I still thought I might be able to find an antenna that I could hook to the tv and pull in the over the air channels. Unfortunately, it seems that there all kinds of factors that go into getting good reception of the over the air channels and it just wasn't working out.

After many trips to Fry's and Best Buy, hours obsessing and researching, and many late nights of trial and error I finally decided that I wasn't going to dump Comcast. The HD DVR is just so nice and simple when you need it. We don't get our money's worth out of it, but it really is a nice indulgence.

However I did come away realizing that I really liked the idea of the computer hooked up to the tv. We have been using the Wii in our living room to stream Netflix movies and it works really well, but we usually watch tv in the family room so having a computer hooked up to our tv in our family room was something I have been wanting to do. The original idea was to justify the cost of the computer by dumping the monthly Comcast charge, but instead I ended up keeping Comcast AND the new computer.

At first, I had the computer hooked up wirelessly to our internet connection, but it just wasn't as fast as it needed to be so I ended up doing something else I had been wanting to do - run ethernet cable from the kitchen, where our internet connection is, to the family room. That involved several more trips to Fry's. It seemed for weeks that there were packages coming and going all the time, cables and things all over the place, and I was always staying up late. One morning Helen got up and I had never gone to bed. Needless to say she was not thrilled with my latest obsession. She allowed me my indulgence for a week or so before she started getting very agitated with the whole thing.

Eventually the plan came together and now we all enjoy the results - streaming movies from Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, etc. and being able to enjoy the photos, videos, and music stored on the computer in the kitchen from the comfort of our family room.

New York City (Day 6 of 6)

Somebody didn't "wike" getting up so early

Our hotel was a quarter block off the parade route but the police blocked off the street and made us walk several blocks out of our way - very irritating!

By the time we arrived on the parade route it was a little before 8 o'clock

The parade started at 9 but didn't arrive at our spot at 38th street until almost 10





We had no clue who many of the supposedly famous people were aboard the floats. The kids knew some of them from shows on TV, but Helen and I were looking at each other and shrugging.

This is a group called Spirit of America Productions. There were a ton of these kids and we saw them all over the city on the days leading up to the parade. It looks like you just pay your $2000, practice the dvd they send you, and show up in New York for the parade.


The Lassiter High School Band from Atlanta


My favorite balloon...I always like to tease the boys about girly things like Hello Kitty, Strawberry Shortcake, My Little Pony, etc







Oh my gawd - it's Kanye. There was a most annoying young woman with a terrible New York accent yelling about Kanye for most of the parade.

We pushed the kids up front so they had a clear view












Santa...finally! We thought it was neat and awesome being at the parade in person...for about half the parade...and then we were done and wanted it to hurry up and end.






We went back to our hotel to warm up and pack our stuff. Adam kept trying to warm his feet on mommy's belly.

I tried to fit in a couple more things on the way to the airport

In Bryant Park for a quick ice skate, but it was too crowded again


Back on the train to see the American Museum of Natural History

Except we mistakenly hopped on an express train that blew past the museum and didn't stop until it reached Harlem. I always wanted to see the Apollo Theater - just not like this.

Adam is gone on the bus ride to the airport

Back in Atlanta

Over to my mom's for a Thanksgiving get together

Thursday November 25, 2010

We had been told to get out onto the streets for the parade as early as 6:30, but I figured that was only if you wanted to be closer to the start or the end of the parade. I thought we would be able to saunter out of our hotel around 8 and be fine. After all, how many people are just going to stand there for hours in the cold waiting for the parade? Evidently quite a few!

We were thwarted right away by the police barricade erected right outside our hotel so we couldn't walk the short distance to the parade route as we had anticipated. Instead we got herded into the general flow of parade traffic. One of the benefits of getting a hotel nearby was supposed to be for better access.

It ended up being okay, but just barely. We got to the parade route at 38th street about 7:45 and the crowd was already a few rows deep. It wasn't long before we could feel the mass of people building behind us. We got the kids to squeeze their way to the front. They had a good view but we didn't like that we didn't always have a clear view of them.

There were some pushy people but also some very nice people. We struck up an enjoyable conversation with a large extended family from Chicago. We worked with some of them to erect a shoulder to shoulder barrier so nobody could pass. Unfortunately just before the parade started the police moved a barricade and created some space that ruined the tenuous steady state that had existed. Some of the pushy people took advantage of the situation and forced their way to spots they should not have gotten. The vigilante in me was not happy but I relieved some of my frustration by sticking it to people around me that I felt were invading the personal space I had carved out.

I was thinking the parade wasn't such a great idea but then it started and there was a definite wow factor. That lasted for about half the parade and then we were ready for it to be over. We had all been standing in one place in the cold for so long that when the parade ended and we started to walk back to our hotel, we all had a good laugh about how difficult it was to get our legs moving properly.

We grabbed a quick snack from a street cart and headed back to the hotel where we warmed up and finished packing. There were still plenty of things I wanted to do and I figured we had a little window before we had to be at the airport for our 4 o'clock flight.

The crowds around the hotel had dispersed by 12:30. We took the train to Bryant Park where I had hoped to finally ice skate, but again it was too crowded. It was a neat park with a carousel and lots of booths surrounding the ice rink. There are neat parks all over the city that are bustling with activity.

With ice skating not working out I fell back to Plan B - run by the American Museum of Natural History. We hopped on the train and stopped at a couple stations, but then just as we were approaching the museum station the train quit stopping and proceeded to blow through each station instead. It turns out we were on an express train that didn't stop at every station. You think you have things down and then there are little nuances that keep popping up to thwart you.

The train didn't stop until it got to 125th street in Harlem. We got off the train and we definitely weren't in Kansas anymore, Toto. I saw signs that said that we could catch the M60 bus to LaGuardia from there so we walked out of the station to find the bus stop, which seems like it would be straightforward except that the intersections are pretty big and busy and it's not very clear exactly where you need to be to catch the bus that you want.

A light rain was starting and we were a little tense about the situation. We weren't sure when the next bus would come or if we were even in the right spot. We weren't sure how long it would take to get to the airport and we weren't sure how busy the airport would be. We could see buses passing by and we weren't sure if one of them was our bus or not. Another person waiting at the bus stop answered some of the questions we had and calmed our nerves.

The bus came and we made it to the airport in plenty of time. The airport was pretty empty and we were able to grab something to eat before we got on the plane.

The flight landed ahead of schedule and the offsite parking van took us right to our van. I don't think we went the most direct route to my mother's house from the airport, but we made it. We enjoyed a Thanksgiving meal and visited with everyone. It was nice to see my brother Jason and his wife Laine who were visiting from Florida.

Overall we really enjoyed the trip and will always look back on it with fond memories. I would love to go back to New York for the holidays again some day, but we've found that you can never duplicate that "first time" feeling. We've tried going back and repeating experiences we loved and we've found that you might achieve a "different" experience, but you just can't recapture the "wow" feeling of the first time.

On this trip we loved riding bikes through Central Park and the Broadway shows - especially Billy Elliot. We loved seeing so many famous places that we've only read about or seen on TV or in movies. We loved the holiday decorations and general festive feel of the city. We loved riding the trains and buses on our 7 day Metro passes and feeling comfortable about navigating our way around the big city.

We hated overdone security, crowds, and lines. We regretted not being able to ice skate or see so many of the other things on our list. We wish we had more time to really experience the unique vibe of all the different areas of town (SoHo, Greenwich Village, Chinatown, etc) and we hated that we didn't come close to getting to all the wonderful restaurants we thought we would.