a walk in the park

Klane and I had such a nice, relaxing Saturday together. We woke up late to the sound of rain outside, then had yummy oatmeal blueberry pancakes with peaches and cream. (They were amazing. Definitely keeping that recipe around.) We spent a lot of the day inside since it was raining, but we are loving this cooler weather. I know this summer was unusually cool for Manhattan, but the humidity and heat we did experience was quite enough. We're ready for cooler weather.

Later the rain stopped and we took a leisurely stroll through Central Park to eventually get to the Apple store. We definitely took the long way but it was so nice to hold hands with Klane and enjoy the nice weather. I've been wanting to see this famous bridge, so we walked by and took some pictures. Hard to capture, but it was pretty in real life.







At Bethesda fountain this guy was making giant bubbles and the little kids were loving it. It was fun to watch the wonder on their faces; so cute. There was also a wedding being shot, and I had to sneak a picture. I love anything wedding related, they just make me smile. The horse-drawn carriages were lined up and I thought the horses were especially beautiful. Seeing the horses made me miss visiting my grandparents' ranch in Hatch Utah!







After the park, we hit the Apple store and walked through some other stores between 5th and Lexington Avenues. It was so weird to walk through there at night; I am there all the time for work during the week, but it was like a completely different place at night. Kind of fun to see the night life side of that part of town. We rode the 6 train uptown and felt very grateful for our three subway lines on our side of town, compared to the one they have on the East Side. Maybe we're biased. I think ours are so much less crowded!

On the way home we picked up a classic New York style pizza from Giovanni's. Sometimes a giant, cheap cheese pizza just hits the spot.

i can't help myself

I was just looking at these and wanted to post a couple more. I haven't seen many sunsets this summer, and I can't get over this one. After storms and clouds all afternoon, that sky was just unreal. Gorgeous!


from our window.


from the roof.

I've been missing nature lately. Okay, I've been missing Utah specifically. It's so beautiful there. Yes, we miss our family like crazy, but at least we get to talk to them and see them on video chat. But if I think about the mountains and canyons, that's when I start crying. I miss going for drives in the canyon, running and hiking and riding bikes in the mountains. Utah kids, next time you're driving around, look up and notice how incredibly amazing the view is. I'll never take it for granted again! We're hoping to plan a weekend sometime soon to escape the city. I know there are a lot of beautiful places around here to visit. I just wish we had our camping gear out here!

our neighborhood farmer's market

Recently we discovered that there's a farmer's market practically in our backyard at Morningside Park on Saturdays. We headed over last weekend for a morning stroll. The temperature dropped a bit the last few days and the humidity has let up a little, and it has been fabulous. It was nice to be outside.

I have this complex about walking around with a giant camera attached to my face. Hence the "shot from the hip" look.



"Hmmm, wow, these are incredibly overpriced."



Found some friends in the park.


these cute red buildings brought to you by Manhattan Avenue

I realized I like the idea of farmer's markets a lot, but get there and I don't actually want to buy anything. I'm too conservative to spend more money on food than I would at the store. I don't care how "organic" it is. (In many ways, I think this city is wasted on me because I'm too conservative to take advantage of everything. But I like my money. And I like saving it. So there, New York.)

I've also realized that morning is by far my favorite time of day. The way the light slants is beautiful. It's so perfectly cool out in the morning. Morning is quiet. You can think in the morning. I love it. It was so nice to go out in the morning and enjoy a nice walk with my honey.

a gorgeous sunset as seen from our roof

took a bunch of shots and put them together. maybe i should just get a wide-angle lens!
click to see it bigger. :)

central park is looking sad

We heard that in the big storm last week, trees were blown over in Central Park by wind bursts. I didn't think much of it, until this morning when I went for a run.

I could not believe all the damage; the park looks like a total disaster area. And this was after a few days of clean-up! I couldn't believe the number of huge trees that had either snapped in two or been completely uprooted. Crazy. I had to go back this evening to take pictures. It's so sad to see the beautiful park in such a sad state. Hopefully they can get it back on its feet and start replacing the lost trees.

this is what they're doing with a lot of the big trees: turning them into wood chips.
that is a lot of wood chips.


a bunch of wood-chipper trucks




many of them were totally uprooted



there's caution tape everywhere


these ones took out half the tennis courts

third eye blind at ddb

I've mentioned Klane's favorite band is Brand New.

His second favorite band is Third Eye Blind.

On Thursday, they came to DDB and played an acoustic set for a small crowd. They played some new songs and took requests for old favorites.

Klane loves his job.




Stephan Jenkins and Tony Fredianelli playing "Summertown" from their new album.
Ah, they're so good!

let's go mets!

On Thursday my office was offering free Mets tickets to all the employees, so I snagged some and Klane and I hopped on the train right after work and headed to Citi Field in Queens for a night at the ball game! It was kind of spontaneous and so fun.

Oh, he's handsome.


Turned out they were VIP tickets, so we got to go in this exclusive (air conditioned!) lounge, and also got really great seats.


Okay, so our pocket-size camera isn't the best. Like I said, we went straight from work, it was all I had.


Brand-new Citi Field is so nice.



And... they have a Shake Shack. Oh yes. Sometimes I forget how delicious it really is. Totally worth waiting in line for two innings.




Nothing more all-american than watching a baseball game eating burgers, shakes and fries. It was so much fun.

we went on the roof in a lightning storm

Another big thunderstorm rolled through the other night. From our third floor window, the buildings around us block a lot of the sky. At the moment when the lightning seemed to be striking all around us, the thunder was so loud and buckets of rain were slamming against the windows, I suddenly decided it would be awesome to view this storm from the roof.

Klane was all for it. We donned rain jackets and climbed out the window onto the fire escape. (Yes, we are completely insane.) This happened to be the moment the storm was at its climax over our area. I've never been outside in that much rain, it was blowing sideways and honestly felt like someone dumping buckets over your head. We were immediately drenched, but excited. Each flash of lightning and the closely following thunder urged us to climb faster.

(these were actually taken on the way down, after the rain stopped)

At the second to top floor we had a better view of the sky, and the wind was blowing like crazy and the rain was still dumping. The lightning seemed so close! We were like, "This is so crazy! I can't believe we're doing this!!" That's when I looked up at the ladder to the top and imagined lightning striking it while I was climbing it, and we decided to turn around. :)

Our "scared faces." The rain smeared my make-up everywhere. But I thought these faces should still be documented.

We climbed down a few floors and let the storm pass a little before going all the way to the top. You can tell from our faces in the next picture how exhilarating the whole experience was. We had just reached the top and still were a little nervous about getting struck by lightning but really excited because we were seeing quite a show. Every few seconds, huge bolts of lightning were spreading across the sky over the city.

This was the only "lightning" shot I got, we only brought the dinky camera out into the downpour. If only we could've used a tripod and a long exposure!

By this point it wasn't raining so hard, and we were able to watch a spectacular lightning storm over Manhattan. It was amazing! Something I will always remember.