A Month and Then Some

It's been a month and then some since we've moved to New York, and it's crazy to think that much time has passed. In all honesty, living in the greatest city in the world has become mundane. It isn't that the awe-inspiring man-made canyons of glass and concrete have become less stunning, or that the rich histories are no longer meaningful. It's that you forget they're there.

On Friday, we went to become official New Yorkers, on paper. My drivers license from Virginia is being revoked since I'm not longer a resident, so there was some urgency. On Thursday, I worked late into the night (not really, after pulling late second and the occasional third shift in Virginia, 9pm is nothing to complain about) and earned myself a three day weekend. Friday morning I cleaned the apartment, which badly needed attention since both of us had been feeling under the weather, and then met Zack in Herald's Square. I don't go to the touristy areas of Mid-Town often, or ever if I can help it. I'm usually only in the Upper East Side where we live, or the East Village where I work. I've hit SoHo every now and again to shop, and the FiDi once or twice to run errands, but that's about it. Zack's bar prep class meets right across the street from Penn Station, only a couple blocks from the Empire State Building, and just a few more to Times Square. This was actually my first time in Herald's Square, a small islet of green in the middle of a thoroughfare, where you can dodge the crowds but not the noise. After enjoying our lunch in said small haven, we walked to the Manhattan Mall and stood in brief awe of the shrine that consumerism created. Zack had been to the DMV before when we sold our car, but I was working then, and he didn't really remember where it was. He knew it was on the 8th floor, so we checked out the elevators in the Mall. It's in our best interests to note here that our iPhones were both unusable. The first elevator wasn't working, we pushed the button, the door closed and it would shake, but not actually move. After three of these efforts I'm rather glad it didn't move. The next one would only go to the second floor, fat lot of good that did us. We circled the mall a few times before finding an information desk. The sweet lady at the information desk kindly told us we had the right floor but the wrong building, it was the building next to the Manhattan Mall. When we finally arrived, there were easily 150 people in line in front of us. We waited in line for almost two hours, before finding out that my paperwork was incomplete and I have to come back another day, oh joy, and then proceeded to wait another hour and half to get Zack's license after they took his picture. Three and a half hours were utterly wasted. We called it a "Kingdom of the crystal Skull day", as in, it never happened.

If Friday was a fourth-Indiana-Jones-movie-that we refuse-to-acknowledge kind of day, then Saturday was a Raiders of the Lost Ark day. We woke up early, made it out to beach at a decent time and we've discovered a much faster way to get to our favorite beach on the subway, it actually cut half an hour out of the travel time. We love the Rockaways, especially since it's a free beach, and on our unlimited subway cards, it doesn't cost us anything extra to go. It's a surfing beach with decent waves, so we always get to watch surfers do their thing, but this weekend was a big surfing festival. The beach is long enough that it's never crowded, but this weekend the surfing-only sections were packed. It's amazing to watch people on their boards stand up and ride a wave in. Zack and I now have a life goal to learn to surf, we're looking into lessons here to get started. It just looks cool! The beach was the best it's ever been, and our burned skin unfortunately tells us we enjoyed it a little too much. Or a lot too much, as my poor shoulders are saying. totally worth it though. The section we were on has a deep tide at the beginning of the water, but as you walk in there is a huge sandbar, and a long stretch of waist-deep water and perfectly sized waves. The ocean was just cool enough to be refreshing, just what we needed after this awful northeastern heat wave.

We finally forced our burned bodies to part ways with the beach and headed back to Manhattan. The famous subway series (Yankees vs. Mets) is going on this weekend and we wanted to try to get tickets. We didn't know what scalpers would have, but we also didn't want to spend $65 to get altitude sickness in the nosebleed section, so scalpers it was. When we got to Citi Field, cops were everywhere, probably expecting fights since it's a local rivalry. Unfortunately, having so many smokies around meant scalpers were laying low. If you've scalped enough tickets, you know the profile, and we tracked down everyone who had tickets for sale. All three of them. That's right, literally 3 people were selling tickets. They all had incredible seats; 4th row behind the Yankee dugout, or club seats just below the press box behind home plate. Unbeatable really, but we didn't have the asking price of $200 (1/4 of the actual price) in cash on us, so we finally turned around and went home.

A friend we know from Wisconsin was visiting New York with a group of her fellow interns, and we'd said we would try to meet up in Times Square, so we decided to just head there early and do some shopping. I forgot how incredible Times Square is at night. We got on the big screen, met a guy who told us we were going to have the most beautiful babies, and I got my favorite chicken pita. I'm addicted to those things, but why they cost $3 in the Village and $7 in Times Square I'll never know. It was great to hear a Wisconsin accent for a moment and ever so briefly catch up with someone from the homeland. After saying goodbye, Zack and I decided to walk to the Manhattan Mall instead of taking the subway. It was a gorgeous walk. I forget where we live in my busy life, forget all of the things that make this city so great and so unique, compared to every other place on earth. I forget why we wanted to live here, why we were drawn to this monument of man's accomplishments. Saturday night, walking through Mid-Town, seeing the colored lights on the Empire State Building, I remembered.