A Walk in the Park

Fall color in Central Park is beautiful right now.  For the past few days I have been enjoying the changing color from my balcony, overlooking Central Park, down Amsterdam Avenue, the roads leading toward the Hudson River:

Beautiful, huh?  So we knew that a big, big storm was coming.  You heard, right, Sandy?  Ring a bell?  I figured that Central Park might look a little different in the aftermath.  So we decided to take in all the fall color while it was still there.  It also happened to be the Pumpkin Fest this weekend.  Free pumpkins for those willing to brave the line (not us).  The color did not disappoint!




The Lake, Central Park

  This next photo is the line for the free pumpkins.  One guy saw this line and started saying right away to his wife "Oh, no!  No. No! NO!"   I last saw them walking to the line.  Of course.

Each  scene more beautiful than the last. . .



I will be interested in seeing how much of this is left after the 80 mph winds of Sandy barrel through.  Well, as with most good things, I think you need to take time out and enjoy them while you can.  I am glad we did.

Kiki's Big Day

I already posted on Kiki's Facebook page a little bit about I feel about her on this her 21st birthday.  She is the first one to make me a Mom, which is both the most amazing and scary thing I have ever done.  But oh, the rewards!  So in some moments of pure indulgence, I spent today looking at photos of her and reminiscing.  It has been an awesome ride so far and I can't wait to see what happens next!

Happy Birthday Kiki!   I love you!!!

How Expensive is New York City?

My four day car rental in Colorado is cheaper than a one day rental in NYC!!

The Daily Show

One of the items on our bucket to do in New York City list was to get tickets to the Daily Show.  For those of  you not really familiar with the show, first - where have you been?  It is a comedy show hosted by comedian Jon Stewart, mostly poking fun at the political headlines of the day, usually Republicans.  We have been longtime fans of the show. Snake has been watching it for years.  So when we moved here, I investigated how to get tickets.  As you can expect, it is not easy.  Especially in the summer months.  So I signed up to get tweets when tickets became available.  Finally about 2 months ago, I was able to obtain 4 tickets for last week.  We were very excited.  Snake took the train from DC to NYC, he came in the night before at about 2:00 a.m. and left the next night after the show.  He wasn't in the city for 24 hours.  I offered the last ticket to Goldengirl and she was nice enough to come with us.

One of the reason that we love the Daily Show is that we think Jon Stewart is brilliant.  Yes, he is funny but what is most impressive about him is that he is quick witted and smart.  He doesn't  always know what his guests are going to talk about and he seems to be able to respond spontaneously with an astute but hysterical reply.  His guests run the gamut from movie star, to athlete, to author.  But his forte is the polictical guest.  He has heavyweights on his show - Jimmy Carter, Tony Blair, Madeliene Albright, Colin Powel, Barack Obama. When we got our tickets we didn't know who the guest might be, but I was excited.  It was an election year, we were bound to get someone good, right?.  So the week of our show, I looked up the guests signed up for the week.  Monday - Kofi Annan, the ex-Secretary General of The United Nations, Tuesday - Salman Rushdie, famed author under death threat by Iranian extremists.  Wednesday - our show- Pink.  Yes, Pink.  The singer. What????  Pink.   I can't even remember a time where Jon Stewart has had a musical guest.  Pink. 

I have to admit I was disappointed but we had the tickets and I have never been to a television show, so what the heck!  It is a very complicated procedure once you get the email indicating you have "reservations" for tickets.  The email clearly indicates you don't actually have tickets but the email gives you the opportunity to stand in line for tickets.   The Daily Show and other shows like it, overbook the tickets for every night in order to guarantee a full studio audience.  So Snake and I went down a bit earlier than the appointed time to stand in line.  I felt pretty good about our place in line.  Goldengirl and Chizz were going to meet us later.  We had time to kill.  I started talking with the woman next to us in line much to Snake's disgust.  He would prefer total silence in line, leaning up against the building, checking in on the last football spreads.  Me - I prefer a little more human contact.  So I talk to people.  As it turns out, this woman was the opposite of us.  She was there for  Pink!!!!  She was the worldest biggest Pink fan - and I can prove it.  She actually came to see Pink perform on the Today Show that week. Apparently as all PInk fans know, she released a new album last week.  So when this woman heard that Pink was going to be on that show she started planning her trip.  She also saw Pink on the View and on the David Letterman show.  Although to be truthful, she didn't see Pink on Letterman. Much to her disgust, Pink was bounced from the Letterman show for Obama.  Superfan was very upset.  She said Obama make a huuuggge mistake because everyone knows what a big Obama supporter Pink is.  So that was a disappointment.  We chatted in line.  She showed me her Pink tatoo.  At one of the 14 (!) Pink concerts this woman had gone to, Pink autographed her body, her left hip.  So the woman did what anyone would do, she hightailed it to a tattoo artist to memorialize the signature on her hip.  Of course.   Trying to think of any Pink knowledge I had, I said something about Pink just having a baby in the last year or so, right?   Superfan said "no, 16 months ago, her birthday is June 2"   Okay Superfan just went to Superfanatic. A tad over board.

So once we got our tickets we had some time to kill and we went to the park across the street from the show.  The park is part homeless, part dog park, part soccer field, part playground - basically typical NYC park.  As we are sitting there, we see Pink come in the park with her entourage of about 15 people.  She is carrying the baby.  I am sure Superfan would have burst a kidney or something.  One thing I will say, Pink seemed very into her child.  She put her down to take a few steps and she couldn't have been more thrilled when the little girl walked a few steps.  It just looked like she really liked being a mom, pretty genuine. 

So after we got into the studio, which has some fairly tight security, we were ushered to our seats.  It is a lot of hurry up and wait.  There is a warm up comedian who was okay, he did single out Chizz and Snake, making a comment about Snake seeing his future in Chizz's hairline. Snake was wearing his GW t-shirt hoping to score some tickets to the Jon Stewart/Bill O'Reilly debate at GW in October.  No such luck!  The show was interesting and we enjoyed two different comedic segments, one on the Romney 47% video and one on the Democratic/Republican conventions.  Then Pink came on and sang her two songs.  She has a very good voice and obviously very talented.  I peeked over at the Superfan.  She was gone, had a look on her face that I get when I see a 70% off sign at Nordstrom.  Pure rapture.  I get it.

I enjoyed going to the Daily Show.  It was a good experience, I am just disappointed that I didn't get to see Jon Stewart at his best with some political foe.  Although Snake pointed out it is probably best for Salman Rushdie that we didn't have tickets that night, with Chizz's penchant for being at all things terrorist related.  You are welcome, Mr. Rushdie.   If I had tickets to the View and Pink was the guest, I would have been a-ok with that.  But I didn't.  Oh yeah, the guest the night AFTER we had the tickets?  Bill Clinton.  Sigh. 

Trouble with Trojans

I set aside the other morning to do some long overdue paperwork.  I needed to pay some bills, make reservations for an upcoming trip and give the kids some spending money for the next week or so.  The infuriating thing about college kids is that they like to eat.  A lot.  Sometimes they even want 3 meals a day.  Unreasonable. 

I do most of my banking on line.  It is pretty convenient.  Except when it isn't.  I signed onto my bank account and instead of my bank balances popping up on the screen or limping onto the screen as it were, I got something else.  This:

I have a long running battle with Citibank about the type of information they occasionally ask me for when I am logging onto their website.  They will sometimes ask for my address, or my date of birth or the last 4 digits of my social security number.  What drives me absolutely crazy is when they have asked me for my debit card number and my pin at the same time.   Ask me for my debit card number and the last 4 of my SSN, ask me for my debit card number and my birth date or my mother's maiden name.  But don't ask me in the same document to provide both my card number and the pin necessary to use it.  I think it is just asking for trouble.  It doesn't happen often but when it does, I always refuse and write a very strongly worded email to Citibank voicing my displeasure.  I don't think this is providing additional security, this combination of information is asking for trouble.  This has gone on for a few years.  Like I said a long running battle, although I think it is more on my side than Citibank.  I don't think they would lose any sleep over alienating me and losing the lucrative Wendy accounts.  Not a wink.

So when I got this pop up, the first thing I thought was that the only items missing on this list were my height and weight.  Then I thought "Citibank has gone too far" if they require this from me, I don't care we are moving our accounts.  I was outraged.  So I called and expressed my outrage.  At first the customer service representative was apologetic, she could understand why I was upset and agreed that I should not have to provide this information.  She was going to check with her security team and get right back to me.  I was put on hold.  For 12 minutes.  Then she got back on the line and told me after conferring with the security team and the online banking representative, they concluded that I had some kind of virus or malware on my computer that generated this form.  And I needed to get rid of it in order to access my accounts.  And I should not access any of my financial accounts online until I was sure this "thing" was off my computer.  And, thank you and have a good morning.  WAIT!!  Can't Citibank help me?  No. Not their problem.  Doesn't Citibank want a copy of what they are asking for so they can tell other customers?.  No.  Really?  Really.  They have no evidence that this is a problem with any other customer than me, I should contact my anti-virus software manufacturer and have a good day.  Hmmm. 

So I called my anti-virus company,McAfee.  I expected good service. After all,  I had just renewed my account for $79!   After my agent "Leisl" (I kid you not) connected, I ran through the problem with her.  We spent an agonizing 10 minutes spelling and re-spelling my name, my address, the city in which I live in (New York), my email address so she could determine I was actually a paying customer of McAfee.  It was during this time, I figured out Leisl was not from Dusseldorf.  After getting remote access to my computer, the first thing she did was run a program to determine if the software on my computer was functioning.  After running the program  she determined, or more accurately,  the software determined that the other software on my computer was running correctly.  She didn't run the anti-virus software, didn't run a scan, didn't do anything but run the program and accept its findings.  It is like bringing your car into the shop complaining of the car not running well and the mechanic turns it on and says "it turns over, it's fine".  So she was done.  Could she help me with anything else?  But wait, Citibank says I have a virus.  You don't she said because the "is the anti-virus software working correctly" program says the anti-virus software is working correctly. So you can't have a virus.   But how do we know that is working correctly?  Having seen the pop up, it seems to me that this is not the work of Citibank (begrudgingly) and that I do have a virus.  How do we explain that?  She just repeated that the Virtual Technician software said we don't.  So you are saying, we don't have a virus or malware or bot or trojan.  She reassured me we did not, the software was working because the other software said so.  Somehow, I am not reassured.

After Leisl and I said farewell,  I decided to run a full scan on our computer to check for viruses with the recently renewed McAfee Software.  I started the scan at about 1:00 p.m. my time.  It took over 20 hours to complete.  The result?  I had a total of 80 files corrupted with viruses.  80!  This is with McAfee's own software. So apparently the godly Virtual Technician software is infallible.  After fixing 40 of the files, McAfee couldn't resolve the other problems.  So I downloaded something for free from the Microsoft website.  After running its scan, which took about 30 minutes to run, it identified 2 Trojans still on my computer infecting files.  It removed the trojans and it is done.  I can now get on the Citibank website without getting the pop-up and I feel pretty confident that I can pay bills and other such duties without subjecting myself to total financial ruin.

So during my 1+ day of dealing with this problem, I thought quite a bit about Trojans.  Is there any kind of Trojan that is good?  Football teams - uh nooooooo!   Computer viruses - no!   The only good kind of Trojan that I could come up with was the prophylactic kind.  I just wish I had some kind of "sucker" prophylactic that worked when I was taking out my credit card to pay for the McAfee virus software, preventing me from separating from my money. 

Auf wiedersehen. (And go Bruins!)

Laundry Room Etiquette

When folks ask me the downside to moving to NYC or what I don't like, I have to think hard.  I really like living here most days.  I enjoy the energy of the city, the fact that there is always something going on here - both good things and bad.   When you pick up a newspaper no matter what city you are in, you will find at least one story about something going on in NYC; whether it be the mayor outlawing large sodas,  Beyonce's baby's latest outing, or a visiting foreign Prime Minister looking for a UN sanction or two.  99.9 % of the time, things are pretty hunky dory.

But if I am forced to admit something I am not thrilled with, I pretty much always say the same thing.  I hate the fact that we don't have a washing machine and dryer in our apartment.  When we moved here that was high on my list of must-haves in our apartment but as often happens, I had to change my priorities.  Quite frankly, about 75% of the apartments I looked at did not have washing machines.  So I altered it to requiring a laundry room in the building. I am past the age of schlepping my laundry down the block to do at a laundromat or don't necessarily want to spend the money to send our laundry out.   And I really wasn't willing to pass on our apartment which was pretty much the best we saw because I didn't have laundry in our apartment.   So I adjusted.  Truthfully, it really isn't that bad.  The worst part is taking the laundry down the 24 flights in the elevator.  I always take a few moments before I get in the elevator and "adjust" our laundry, making sure our dainty underthings are not on view for the entire building to see. 

As far as laundry rooms go, the one in our building is not so bad.  I saw a few when we were apartment so I have some experience.  The room is pretty big and bright.  There are 8 front loading washing machines and two supersized machines.  The same for dryers, 8 dryers and 2 supersized dryers. 

I pride myself on being a good "laundry neighbor".   Since I have a pretty flexible schedule, I try to do my laundry during the day so as to keep the laundry room free in the evenings for those people who have little choice when to do their laundry.  I rarely do laundry on the weekends for the same reason.  I don't use all the machines at one time.  I have come in sometimes when the same person is there using all 8 regular sized machines.  Usually I do two loads at a time and if I have more to do, I wait until those 2 are done then I put 2 more in the same machines.  I always empty my lint trays after dryer loads.  I don't move laundry out of the machines.  I don't want people touching my laundry so I don't touch other people's laundry.  That being said, I also set up a timer so I know when my laundry will be done.  I don't necessarily want to hang out in the laundry room waiting for my laundry to be done, so I usually drop it and come back when my timer goes off.  But I will say, there are some that will leave their laundry in the machines for hours, sometimes (ugh) days.    

I try hard to be considerate.  Sometimes some of my neighbors don't try as hard.   Recently, I was in the laundry room and of course, one of the machine hogs was there, using 6 of the 8 machines.  I came in just as she was putting her detergent in, like an assembly line.  I used the 2 machines left.  When I came back with my next two loads, I put my basket on the two machines I had used while I was putting my wet clothes in the dryer.  I turned around just to see another woman start to use the machines I had "marked".  Mind you, there were 6 other open machines after the machine hog had finished and was now using  6 dryers!  I pointed out to her that I had those machines.  She gave me a big eye-roll and sigh.  So I put my second loads in the machines and realized I missed a shirt that needed to go in the dryer.  I go back to the dryer, put the shirt in, turn around to get my basket off the washing machine just in time to see another woman yanking on the door of my machine, which is currently running.  These machines are not quiet and while they are running they have big red numbers on them indicating how much time is left.  I could see from across the room I had 32 minutes left.  All the yanking on the door, caused the machine to stop.  I went over to the woman and said "this machine is taken".  She looked right in my eyes and said "I didn't touch it"!.  I had just seen her pulling on the door.  I just looked at her then slammed against the machine, got the door to close all the way and the machine restarted.    No, "I am sorry" or anything.  Just lied straight to my face and moved on. 

All in all, I love New York City.  I have seen nothing of the "mean streets" of New York that you hear so much about.  Now the "mean laundry rooms", that's another matter!  It is kill or be killed in there.  I am hoping it won't harden me. Time will tell.

Anniversary

I have not run out of things to say about today, but I fear I might have run out of interesting things to say.  I have to walk a tightrope between being too trite and being too personal.  But leave it to Kiki to figure it all out.  She posted on her Facebook page today and I think it sums it up pretty nicely. 

"I don't think there will ever be a September 11th when I don't look at the date and immediately wish I was with my daddy to hug him and tell him how grateful I am to still have the ability to do so, when so many other daughters are looking at the calendar and feeling a loss that my family so narrowly escaped that morning eleven years ago. Never forget."

Pretty good, huh?  I think I will let Kiki and this photo taken from our apartment tonight of the memorial lights from the World Trade Center site speak for us today.

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