February: a two year success story!

We got some free passes from the Warren Miller movie to a small ski resort in Connecticut. (It actually might have been Massachusetts (?) All the small states run together for me.) Kudos to Kit for organizing the whole shindig and inviting some of our friends. 

We got up at 5 am Saturday and were skiing by lunchtime. We stayed overnight and drove back Sunday morning. We played hooky on Stake Conf weekend--which is good because church wouldn't have functioned without the people on the trip: the organist, three sunday school teachers, YM president, YW president, Primary pianist, and bishopric member.

And...this is what it looked like where there weren't snow machines.

The resort was pretty small and you were down the run in like 5 minutes. About 10% of the time you had good powder, 70% of the time you were on rough, icy snow, and 20% of the time you were on solid, clear, could-break-off-and-use-in-a-soda-glass ice.

I skied on my first ever black diamond run. It wasn't pretty, but I didn't break my leg either. It probably definitely wasn't as steep as the ones in UT, but it was 132425% more icy. So I'm still proud of it. 

Poor Kit couldn't bring his hockey sticks into the hotel lobby.

Snowmageddon came and went, snarling up my commute, but bringing us 8ish inches of beautiful, wet, heavy snow!

We got up early to shovel off the car and walked into Toys-r-us the second it opened. We snagged a $6, 125-lb maximum tube and were off to meet up with our friends and their kids. The. most. fun. I've. ever. had. sledding. I took out a big black man (who was texting at the bottom of the hill) on my first run and we broke 4 sleds/tubes, but we were laughing the whole time. Anika blogged about it here. (The video Kit took is on Anika's blog)

Anika's 18-month old fell asleep on the way and stayed asleep the whole time. People kept asking us if he was a real baby.

The patriarch of the Fortune family got baptized a few weeks ago. It was quite emotional for the ward. We've been really involved with the three youth and were thrilled to see their dad become a member. 

We went to a NJ Devils hockey game (thanks groupon!) with one of my coworkers and his family. We sat on the very top row of the arena, but still had a pretty good view. 

We decided not to go out to eat on Valentine's day because of the crowds. Kit surprised me by coming home early and making a delicious grilled shrimp meal and buying me tulips.

And Martinellis. Can't forget the Martinellis.

He surprised me with Strawberry mochi for dessert--yum!

We also celebrated our 2-year anniversary! Can't believe it's been that long. We made it longer than Scarlet Johansson and Ryan Reynolds! Kit got us box tickets to a concert performance of Ragtime at Lincoln center.

Neither of us had ever seen the show, but we were blown away. Since it was only one night, they had some amazing vocalists (including Lea Salonga), a full orchestra and a huge backup choir. It was incredible.

  

For all those wondering, we did have a fanTACHEtic Valentine's day.

One of the perks of my job is that I get to be in schools occasionally. I went to one of the black history month assemblies that featured traditional African dancing. The kids were incredibly cute and it reminded me why I go to work everyday.

Kit's "baby" from his Good Humor days. In stores now!

Kit's "Urban Professionals" Volleyball team. He is the team captain this season and they just had their first victory! He plays in the city once a week and really enjoys it.

We decided to see a bit more of the city next door and went to the Guggenheim museum. Our favorite piece was the art that went across the big middle part. It was just plastic tubing with colored water, but it looked pretty cool. It was originally staged in the trees in Japan (which would have been really cool), but still looked good in NYC.

Art

We really loved the building, but the current exhibit was only so-so. 

In between all these pictures has mostly been church, work, sleep, eating.  Wednesdays I rush straight from work to YW, Fridays Kit rushes straight from work to YM, one of the other weeknights is volleyball, so we get two nights together each week--and we capitalize on that time by cooking.

Here's a diary in food: We made pesto last week and a good chickpea pasta dish. We made lasagna on Sunday and invited some friends over for food and boggle.  Two weeks ago we made Navajo Tacos and had some friends and the missionaries over for food (no one had ever had navajo tacos before!) and Nerts. We kicked the missionaries out after an hour so they could get home, but played Nerts with the Larsons for awhile.  We had the missionaries over for correlation on Saturday morning and I made monkey bread and eggs/sausage. Kit pulled together an asparagus pizza (better tasting than it sounds) when I had a late night at work. We had vegetable/feta quiche for dinner tonight.

snowmaggedon (again)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schoolhouse_Blizzard

Imagine living in a world where you send your children to school in the morning on a relatively mild day. It gets a little colder, the winds pick up and it starts to snow. A lot. With wind. And lots more snow. Nbd, right? Send the kiddos with their eskimo suits, water-proof uggs and have some hot chocolate ready when they get home. 

Except in 1888, they DIDN'T KNOW the storm was coming. And over 200 kids died. 

There are droves of spiritual metaphors to be derived here, I'm sure. But for the moment, I'm grateful that we knew a hurricane was coming last year (and the year before) and that we know a decent snowstorm is coming tomorrow. So we can send the kids with coats. 

(the commercialization and shock factor of weather reporting is the subject for another post on another day, but I suspect it's producing a sort of boy-cries-wolf with the "snowmageddon" "snor'eastercane" "winter storm draco""you-better-cancel-school-tomorrow-because-we're-getting-two-inches-of-snow-oh-and-by-the-way-stop-by-our-website-so-it-will-get-another-couple-hundred-thousand-hits-and-drive-up-our-click-through-rates" forecasters... probably not the best consequence)

I'll let you know what the real world result of shock-and-awe weather forecasting is this time. (Since we've only gotten snow a couple times since we've moved here, more than an inch of the stuff merits photo documentation.)

P.S. to all the moms out there: we have our battery powered radio ready to go...just in case.

Don't you wish you had 70,000 people per square mile?

 

 This is my life.

So. Many. Lines.

There were actually three more turns of this line that are unpictured.

NYC is filled with a lot of people and that means a. lot. Of. Lines. It also means that you will probably spend the same amount of time parking as you do driving.

These pictures are from Port Authority Bus terminal and they were taken before the hurricane. (The three pictures at the end were taken POST hurricane.) It has only gotten exponentially worse since the hurricane. After two bad days in a row I have abandoned traversing midtown and reversed my commute to get a ride home with Kit every night. It takes a little coordination from us, but only takes an hour and I get to spend half of it with my wonderful husband instead of strangers standing too closely, talking too loudly, and smelling too strongly.

Plus giving me the stink-eye for no reason.

I really like NYC and think it's a great city.
HOWEVER.
Here's to the glories of the west: wide open spaces, large road shoulders, expansive parking lots and a reasonable population density. And perhaps the biggest plus: no one leaves/smears their dog's poop on the sidewalk.

(Nothing ruins your day like non-chalantly traipsing through someone else's dog's poop. I mean COME ON.)

Pickin' up what I'm layin' down?
Are you smellin' what I'm steppin' in?

Getting back to normal--Post Hurricane

As I write this, I'm sitting on my comfy bed, in my warm apartment with the overhead lights on and my laptop plugged in--isn't electricity wonderful? Here's a little recap.

Sunday night. We topped off our gas tank. Turned out to be very smart!

Hurricane Sandy hit on a Monday night. We watched the coverage on the news, made some treats, and enjoyed working from home on a stormy day. Tuesday night around 8:00ish, the storm came ashore. We felt the house moving in the wind (it feels creepy) and cuddled up to watch "Dial M for Murder." We could see the blue and white flashes of transformers exploding in the distance. About five minutes before the end of the movie, we saw a flash close by and our power went out.

Kit around 5:00pm on Monday. It was almost too windy to walk.

Tuesday was spent assessing the damage and waiting for news from the outside world. Since the power outages were so extensive, a lot of the cell towers were down and our phones didn't really work. (So THIS is why they tell you to get a battery powered radio...) Our computer and phone batteries made it most of the day. We played Scrabble. I took a nap. We taped our freezer shut so we'd remember not to open it. Our neighbors  about 1/2 a mile away never lost power. They invited us over and we took a casserole in our power-less fridge to bake. They let us shower and charge up. And play with their kids.

We got home and the power came on for a few hours, then strangely went out again.

Wednesday, we really needed to get some work done. We got up early, drove to a McDonald's inside a Walmart and camped out for a few hours. Then we went to the Weehawken library for a few hours. Too many people on the Internet--it was extremely slow. Then we went to Kit's manager's house (who never lost power) and worked through the evening. We went back to our neighbors with power that night. Watched the 'Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin!'

Thursday. It was impossible to get into the city, but Kit's office in Englewood Cliffs had secured a generator and was open for employees and employees' families. We jumped at the chance to go to work! Almost every person at Kit's work was out of power. We got a full day of work in and got to charge our cell phones and be in a heated area to boot. That evening we drove over to NYC (took the bridge) and spent time with Brent and Hannah, Kit's colleague and his wife. That night we arrived home to electricity! We were incredibly fortunate.

 Kit putting his arm up to the high water mark on River Road. We are at least 150 yards from the river's normal banks. You can see all of the debris that the flooding brings behind Kit. You can also see that any cars in the parking lot behind would have been flooded.

 Hard to see, but the high water mark goes halfway over the Weehawken track. 

 Our neighborhood suffered no flooding, only damage from wind. This downed line was still there four days after the storm. Shows how busy city and power crews were.

Hard to see, but a huge piece of scaffolding and a canopy off of one of the apartment buildings flew off and landed on two cars. This is why you don't walk around during hurricanes!

We saw several large trees that pulled up the sidewalk. Luckily this tree didn't really damage the house--not even the glass globe ceiling in the sitting room.

Downed trees everywhere. 

Friday, I was able to make it into the city because NJ transit busses were running again. It was good to be at work! However, most of my team was still out of the office. I left early to meet Kit on the other side of the bridge. We didn't have much food and our grocery stores were either still out of power or waiting for shipments of food, so we decided to go out to dinner. The problem was finding a restaurant that had power! We drove west for about 20 minutes and found a mall we heard had power. It was amazing seeing how much of the state was still without power after five days. 

The mall we went to had a staging ground for the local utilities trucks. There were probably 300 basket-trucks and other vehicles there. It was obvious that they were working very hard. 

Saturday we went down to Hoboken to hand out food and hygiene kits to the people there. They were still pumping out water when we arrived. Later that night we made pumpkin pie and BBQ chicken with our friends Aaron and Olga. Sunday we had church in a different location (still no power at our normal building) and then we went to hand out food in Hoboken again.

This past week has been pretty normal except my commute to NYC has been horrendous. Getting to the city is not too bad, but the lines in Port Authority are very long and terribly managed. The PATH train (that normally takes a lot of NJ commuters) will be out of service for several more weeks. 

Our grocery store has meat and dairy again and the gas crisis is pretty much over. Commuting is not as smooth as it could be but it's not terrible.

This week we've gone to lower Jersey City to help take out soaked drywall and other ruined belongings. The people there got around 5 feet of water in their homes. When the storm surge hit, the water started come up through the drains.

The stories go on and on. Our area didn't get hit very hard--just lost power for a few days. Some areas however, (Jersey City, Hoboken, Staten Island, Long Island, the Jersey Shore) all got hit incredibly hard and the cleanup is still ongoing. Tens of thousands are still without power, almost two weeks later. Some of the stories from coworkers about relatives or friends in Long Island, Hoboken or Staten Island are dreadful. 

It was a fantastically powerful storm that essentially shut down lower NYC for a week. What's crazy is that some people's houses were destroyed and some people didn't notice a difference in their lives at all.  It's very sad to see the devastation in flooded areas. Flooding is incredibly destructive--something I didn't completely get until I saw it first hand.

Glad it's over and things are getting back to normal.

Halloween and Hurricanes

Before we move on to the hurricane  halloween festivities, a brief recap of Kit and Lynne's week)

Monday: FHE at home (whew), made cookies to bring to dinner on Thursday

Tuesday: Lynne's Chinese class

Wednesday: Lynne's work poker event

Thursday: Dinner with friend Charles in Guttenberg, NJ

Friday: Ran out of gas because gas gauge wasn't working; Carve Positive halloween party for Kit's work

Saturday: correlation for Kit, Hobooken 5K for Lynne and Kit, Kit got the car inspected, Lynne made enchiladas for the ward party, finished costume preparations, went to ward Halloween party, prepared for "Sandy" and wrote our talks for Sunday

Sunday: Finished talks in AM, Kit meetings AM, went to church, gave talks, hurricane prep.

 

Every year my organization hosts a poker benefit. Guests can purchase tickets (or entire tables) for the right to play poker and win prizes (like lunch with a successful hedge fund investor--which amazingly sounds interesting to most people here).

This year the benefit was hosted at Gotham Hall in NYC, which is an ornate bank-turned-events hall.

Our CEO Eva speaks to the crowd and this year our guest speaker was award-winning journalist Campbell Brown. After dinner, the poker playing began!

 

I helped out at the registration table, then with random things throughout the night. I also learned how to play craps and roulette--both more fun than I expected! (Although, I think it was the most fun because when you were out of chips, you just had to ask the dealer for more--nothing was on the line except your pride.)

 

  

Friday night, we picked an entire patch of pumpkins and made our way to Kit's manager's house for "Carve Positive." Kit and his Lipton teammates carved tea-themed pumpkins in an effort to win "best lipton gourd" and make it on the Lipton facebook page. Kit had a strong contender, stay tuned to see if he wins! 

 

My pumpkin (right) is not tea-related at all, but would probably win if our pumpkins had a throw-down. Also, enjoyed the "shaving" style of pumpkin carving, courtesy of Martha Stewart and some person who came up with a mummy pattern.

 

Our Ward Halloween party included "thriller" by the young women and the YW Pres' 3-year-old son.

 

pure chaos.

 

Adventurers of the last two frontiers. 

 

This isn't the best picture, but we have a cupcake-mom-extraordinaire in our ward.

 

And....Sandy.

Sunday morning I wrote my talk while Kit was at ward council. Kit stopped at Walmart on the way home to get some extra flashlights for ward people --no luck, they were already cleaned out.   

After we gave our talks at church, we spent the second hour calling our region's phone tree and the third hour of church was canceled. We gave a few people rides home from church, stopped by the store to get some produce (you know, to ward off scurvy) and made it home to "batten" if you will. 

We have good windows, but taping them makes me feel about going to sleep in there.

The NYC subways started closing last night at 7:00 pm, NJ transit started closing in phases as well. All NYC schools are closed today, most workplaces are as well (mostly because of lack of transit).

Even though the transit doesn't need to be closed right now, they couldn't close the transit system in the middle of the day because people would be trapped. The only option is in the middle of the night Sunday (early) or the middle of the night Monday (too late).

 

My work-at-home-space. 

 

Kit's work-at-home space. (we rescued our plants from the wind)

 

You can feel our apartment sway a bit in the wind sometimes, but we feel like we are in a good position. During Hurricane Irene, our roof leaked a little bit, but that was all. Our apartment is situated on a cliff above the Hudson river. We have a good view of the NYC harbor and some apartments just along the shore. 

We have flashlights, water, blankets, taped windows, food, games, good company and an adventurous attitude. We are concerned for all of the people in central Jersey who were hit so hard with Irene. We're praying for them and hope things go better this time--we are prepared as we can be! Bring it on!