new york, new york

what a day

i've been up since 6, was out of the house by 7:30, and just got home within the past 15 minutes... jealous, i know, right?

here's the scoop. my friend josh is working in jersey city until april (since college he works with an IT company that sends them out around the country for projects for months at a time). since he's all of 40 minutes north of me, we agreed back in like august that we should hang out for a day in NYC sometime.... so today was finally that. here's the catch though. josh was a commuter at college and i wasn't. i basically saw him in classes and hung out with him a little more at math conferences. we've kept in touch, have fun, and get along well,... just like today, after about 2 hours was the longest by far i've ever hung out with the guy.

it wasn't just me and josh though -- he flew his younger brother ben out to see the city this weekend too. ben is probably about my brother's age.

it was a crazy long day, but lots of fun -- we even managed to do touristy things that i hadn't done yet.

*6am : up and about, breakfast, etc.

*7:30am : out the door to park my car and get train tickets

*8am: on a train to NYC... worked on math hw the whole way

*9am: in penn station, got a snack, and then headed down to the WTC train station where i was supposed to meet up with josh and ben... camped out in a corner and did math sitting on the floor for half an hour -- it was great, especially since i actually solved a few problems on the combo "final"... when you're just sitting in a corner scribbling on a piece of paper, people stop and look over your shoulder as they pass -- when they saw *what* i was writing, they tended to look at me really strangely before moving on... heh.

*10am: ben and josh show up (i arrived early b/c if i had taken the *next* train from my part of jersey into the city i would have been late)... even thought it was FREEZING, we walked our way down the battery park, via wall street and walking along the east river in order to maximize famous things to see along the way.

*11:15am: we buy tickets to take the ferry to liberty island. actually going inside the base of the statue is free, but requires advance tickets they hand out at 8:15 so we weren't planning on doing it; HOWEVER, the people in front of us had just showed up to turn their tickets in because they didn't have time to do it anymore, so completely by chance, the cashier handed us 3 tickets to go INSIDE the statue, which i totally didn't get to do the other time i was there.

*12:45pm: after waiting an hour in line, going through ridiculous security (since we were all wearing so many layers to fight the cold, taking off all the required items to put through the scanning machines was like stripping then redressing for all of us... it was a bit of work), and then going through even more ridiculous security (there was one set of stuff to go through to get on the boat to liberty island,... then there was an even more high tech set of security to go through in the base of the statue before they let you on a tour), we were set to see the inside... a park ranger gave us a talk on the history of the statue, then we went through the museum in the base of the statue.. at the top of the base, they turn on lights and let you look through a glass ceiling into the inside of the actual statue (which has been closed since 2001 and still hasn't reopened mostly because it doesn't meet code for being able to evacuate people quickly)... it was majorly cool. also, when the security guard marked my ticket to indicate i'd passed security and already entered the statue for the day, he drew a smiley face on the back... i didn't see him draw than for anyone else... it made me laugh. :)

*3:30pm: after getting food on liberty island (i got surprisingly fantastic bread-bowl chili), we headed back to mainland manhattan... it was 4ish before we were actually off the boat again.

*4:30pm: done with lady liberty, we headed uptown... when i watched the local news when i was up at 6:30 this morning, i heard that the small book publishers group was having their 18th annual book fair today and tomorrow, and josh thought it sounded really cool, so we scoped it out... they had a panel from 5-6 about "is blogging dead?" that we went to too... ben slept.

*6pm: we fought our way up 5th ave. to the rockefeller tree, and got caught in the worst people traffic jam ever... the tree is gorgeous as always though.... josh and his brother periodically burst out into random songs, some of which i knew, and others which i didn't but were just plain amusing... it was an entertaining walk.

*7pm: after wandering some more, we made it up to planet hollywood and waited in a killer line for some food

*8:30pm: happily full we did some random shopping and spent quite a bit of time in the virgin records megastore on times square... i ended up with the new james blunt CD which i'd been pondering getting for awhile, and now, after hearing it out, i'm glad i did get it... i also ended up with a johnny horton CD that josh picked out and said i needed, and i helped him pick out some johnny cash for himself.

*10pm: at long last, caught a train home and was stuck next to a loudly snoring narcopleptic guy most of the way... oh well.

anyhow, super long day, and now i'm really ready to crash.

i bet *you* didn't see the inside of the statue of liberty today. :)

night y'all!