Birthday Dinner #2!!!

Here I am with my future room mates having yet another birthday dinner!!! am i spoiled or what? FYI - First pic is Ray, Eunice and Moi : ) Second pic is Jean, TJ and Elbi

Birthday Dinner

My 26th birthday on Sunday was great! I spent the first part in Flushing Queens with friends that I fellowship with and ate lots of good Chinese food and then had great Greek food at night with my co-workers Chi, Jake, Christian and Virginia. They gave me the best gift!! a huge Sponge Bob chair I had admired at a balloon shop near our office (they also gave me flowers). It was a great surprise that garnered me all kinds of attention when I took it on the subway with me : ) For the moment I had to deflate the poor guy though since my bedroom in my apartment is hardly big enough for me much less sponge bob too!

Top of the Rock

I went to the top of the Rockefeller Building with some friends this past Friday night and the views were fantastic! There was also this great room with all these funky lights that moved according to your motion.

Long Beach Island Retreat with Brothers and Sisters

I had a great time of fellowship and fun with the brothers and sisters I meet with here in Manhattan. We drove about two hours outside the city to Long Beach Island in New Jersey. We rented this great house for a great price since it is still off-season.

I made so much guacamole you would not believe it, silly little tid bit but thought i would add it. I think these northerners are deprived of their guac (as jen calls it) fix and they could not get enough!

In addition to all the food and cooking there was lots of good fellowship too and time in the Lord, not to mention singing and getting to know each other better. Ok got to get to work, here are a few pix.

All in a days work- Visiting RPI

This week I had the opportunity to visit one of the office projects under construction, it was so great!! We rented cars and left from the city in little groups. The project is in Troy, near Albany about 3 hours north of the city, so it was great to drive thru the hills forest. I left most of my pix at work but here are a few I had in an email.

The project is a series of performace spaces for the , Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

A little bit of Traditional Japanese Drumming

A friend from work is part of a traditional Japanese Drumming group and I took these pix of her performance today. It was such an amazing event, it was so great, and free too!

Staten Island Ferry Ride

The Poor Mans Cruise


Riding the Ferry to Staten Island is the best FREE thing to do in New York!! It was a bit gray when i started out so the pic of the statue of liberty is sort of gloomy but as the sun went down the city looked so amazing.

Lunch at the park with Grimshaw Friends

It was a beautiful day today, a wonderful unseasonably warm day. I was soooo happy : ) A few of us from the office decided to take advantage of the weather and have our lunch in a park near the office. It was a bit windy so my hair was going crazy, but it was a nice day none the less.

Nice projects- News from an old co-worker

i just got an email from a co-worker i had back in paris a few years ago. he sent me a link to the office he is working at in jackson, wyoming. here is an image from the stephen dyhni architects site.

some nice woody projects, they are all set in wyoming so it's hard to go wrong with all those beautiful mountains.

this is not really anything to do with new york : ) but thought i would share anyway, that's why i called it "+ other random thoughts" .

can't get enough of central park

I live a few blocks from central park and I can't seem to visit it enough. It’s such an amazing oasis in the middle of the city. It was particularly beautiful on Saturday with the last bit of melting snow on the ground. It’s still cold to linger too long in the park, but as spring approaches I hope I can have a picnic there and enjoy just hanging out.

Harlem Film Festival

I have been my usual busy self which makes for a bad blogger :) but I managed to download a few pix from my weekend activities.

Over the weekend I went to the Harlem Film Festival. It was great, and it happened to be the night they were having a series of short films all by women. All the movies were great, with various political and social ideas behind them. I would write more about this but have to get to work. You can read more if you click Harlem Film Festival above. Here is a pic of the ladies involved. I took this during the question answer time after the movies.

BLOG PANIC.....i have a graphics complex

i just tried to change the template and add some links and now my text is huge and OUT OF CONTROL....sorry for the terrible graphics!! I'll have to work on this later. Seems I copy pasted the wrong thing in my little template and messed something up :( and the font is hideous........ more on this later

closet dunkin' donuts lover....some meaningless rambling

well i just grabbed a few munchkins (donut holes) and a coffee during lunch after eating part of my organic/ vegan meal from the health food place across the street (bell bates). there are so many dunkin donuts' here in nyc (there are actually 5 in my area less than 1 mile away :o). it's like they are calling my name every day i walk by them, and i always resist but today i could not bare it. i gave in and now i sit here as if everyone knows i just stuffed four in my mouth as i rounded the corner back to the office.

no one in the office ever eats them or brings there coffee to the office in the morning, but i have a hunch they are closet donut lovers too! when i got here i went to the bathroom to make sure i had no glaze flecks clinging to my face as evidence, what a pig huh!!!

how i can eat what i ate for lunch then have a wonderfully bad for me donut full of bad for me stuff i am not sure, but here on my blog i am free to profess my love as all my family knows i have a weakness for donuts :)

Sylvia's Soul Food - Harlem

I went with some friends to check out Sylvia's in Harlem today. We had some delicious Soul food. I even met Sylvia herself as I was leaving the restaurant. This is yet another great New York gem. We even had great live music to go with our corn bread, grits, fried cat fish, fried chicken and collard greens....yum yum :)

not to be cynical or anything but this does has some truth to it : )

double click on comic to see bigger and more clear, ahhhhh i love being an architect : )