NYC with the ELE
I could be miffed today. It would be very easy, and very understandable. My independent work is not working. Java doesn’t compile, and I can’t get a new linux kernel to work on my computer. But today was a good day, so I’m not going to fret.
Why was today a good day? Well, I spent most of it in New York City with Nicole. I mean, great day. Period.
What did we do in New York? First, we went to the Toys R’ Us in Times Square. I had never been there. Now, Nicole had been telling me how awesome it was, but I was pretty skeptical. If you’ve seen one Toys R’ Us, you’ve seen ‘em all, right? Wrong. The store is absolutely crazy. Its got four floors, a Ferris Wheel, and one of the most elaborate set ups of any store I’ve seen. There were massive Lego buildings, as well as a giant animatronic T-Rex from Jurassic Park. Plus they had an uber-video game section. I mean, this place was gianormous.
After Toys R’ Us, we stopped in the Virgin Megastore in Time’s Square, just to take a peek. Neither of us had any desire to buy music from there, but we were very interested in taking a look in what was available to be purchased. While huge, this was definitely not as cool as the Toys R’ Us, and we only stayed for about ten minutes.
After that, it was off to the Metropolitan Art Museum by way of Central Park. I like Central Park, and it is very gorgeous in the fall, as I was fortunate enough to find out. Nicole and I made our way through the park, stopping to look at various sites along the way. It was one of the many cute things we would end up doing through the day. Of course, the walk through Central Park was convenient because it took us to our next local, the Met.
Now, I am a huge art dork. I have been, and probably always will be. So you can imagine how excited I was to go to the Met. Now, for those who haven’t been there, the Met is huge. It’s not quite Louvre sized, but it’s massive. In the three hours we were there, Nicole and I only got to see the El Greco exhibit, the Arms and Armor, the Ancient Egyptian and Greek collection and the Modern Art exhibits. That was maybe, a third of what was up. Now, not all of the galleries were open, but still, it’s pretty frickin’ crazy. I had a good time dragging Nicole to the Modern Art exhibit. I got all excited seeing the Mondrian’s and the Picasso’s, and she just kind of looked at me like I was nuts. *shrugs*
After getting tossed out of the museum (stupid 5:15 closings), began our search for food. After calling her friend, Sonia, and Amalea, we hopped a cab and went to Patsie’s Pizza and Italian Food. Amalea recommended the place, and I’m glad she did, because it turned out to be quite tasty. Even Nicole felt this, and she’s Italian (which she is very proud of).
So after dinner, we didn’t know what to do. Normal people would have gone home, having had a full day. We didn’t do this. Instead, we start walking down 5th avenue. We ended up walking into both the Disney Store (which is awesome) and the H & M as well. Of the two stores, the Disney Store was by far the most fun. They have all of this Disney…stuff there. We spent a good deal of time just looking at all the artwork they had around depicting the various movies.
Now, eventually 5th avenue runs past Rockefeller Center. This proved to be both good and bad. Bad because it kept us in the City till around 11:00, but good because we were staying to ice skate. That’s right, to ice skate. Neither Nicole nor I had ever actually ice skated at Rockefeller Center, yet we’d gone skating before. So, we spent the next hour, hour and a half going around in circles, talking and avoiding other people in the plaza. It was very cool to be skating with all the lights and buildings around. It was also another really cute moment.
So after skating, I walked with Nicole back to Grand Central Station. We waited a bit for her train and then it was off to Penn Station for me so I could return to New Jersey. So yeah, that was a good day. Of course I didn’t really sleep when I got back. Had work to do.
Yeah, so, my computer situation is fun, again. I’ve decided that getting dual processors to work on the file server isn’t going to happen. So I’m currently backing everything up to the TSM we have at Princeton, and then I’m going to install Windows Server 2003 and restore. Unfortunately, this means that I can’t really use my Windows Machine Since I need it to do the backup first. So I’m going to get a more regular usage of my Linux Box. Shrugs, oh well. This will work out for the best. This also means I need to reconfigure a few things. Like switching graphics cards. Yay…
So yeah, I’m pretty tired. Think I’ll head to bed. Yeah…that’d be great.
