Hello New York

Well, my sixth cruise has been survived...we arrived in Fort Lauderdale on Sunday morning. While waiting to be picked up by our friend Heather, Matt and I got to meet up with Nick, our friend from AK, who was boarding another Celebrity ship to begin his first contract working onboard. The timing was perfect and we got about 45minutes to hang out with him. Heather drove us to Miami Beach where she had planned for us to go on a Duck tour, a Duck being an amphibious vehicle that took down a couple of streets, then into the water where we went past houses of a couple of celebrities and our slighly annoying tour guide trying to impress us with how much each of the houses cost. After surviving that, we went to lunch on Lincoln Ave/Rd/Blvd and headed back to Heather's apartment where Matt cooked pasta and we watched the Red Sox (Heather's from Boston) game. Flew out of Miami the next morning, yesterday I guess and made it to JFK here in NYC. My friend David O from SNU has a loft in Brooklyn but I actually met up with him at NYU in Manhattan, where he is doing graduate work. He has another friend visiting this week from San Diego, Leigh so I have someone to frolic with around town. We ate really good sushi with two of David's friends, Taylor and Anaid (who just spent 2 years working on a yacht). David's loft in Brooklyn is about 2 feet away from the train tracks and the station is directly in front of his windows. Last night I watched 2 kids throw rocks at us. We sleep with ear plugs. This morning my luggage arrived shortly after Leigh and I woke up. Its the second time in the last 3 months my luggage has been delayed. Last time it was on a nonstop flight and this time I had a 2.5 hour layover in DC, so I was surprised when it didnt show up and the agent told me it would be coming on a later flight. It was actually better that I didn't have to haul it into Manhattan and I carry a backup toothbrush anyway.

Sidenote, Leigh (my co-frolicker) is currently lifeguarding in Kansas City but is returing to work in Yosemite for her second summer as a cook there. She has been is also studying to become a midwife. She also studied a year in Kenya and has done some travelling on her own. She is going to DC, Pennsylvania and Maryland after NYC. She has a degree from Point Loma in religion and philosophy. We get along and it is nice to have her here because David is pretty busy.

I have been to New York on 2 separate occasions for a total of about 36 hours. Both times I've been with friends with preplanned agendas and both times its been winter and either rainy or cold. So the city is a lot more inviting this time around. THe weather has been perfect and there is a lot I didn't realize I wanted to do. Today Leigh and I walked through downtown, more specifically lower Manhattan, we took the (free) ferry to Staten Island because it passes by the statue of liberty, then took it right back (along with a lot of other tourists who didnt want to pay or wait in line to visit the Statue for real). We walked a lot when we got back...through Battery Park and around Ground Zero. Then we met David at Anaid's apartment in the West Village area of town, had leftover fish cooked on a yacht yesterday by Anaid's ex-boyfriend who doesn't like to waste food, and now David and Anaid are in class while Leigh and I waste time on NYU computers.

I am probably going to New Haven on Saturday to see Danae. I talked to her today and she is still in a hospice facility and still heavily drugged. She says she basically just gets high and sleeps a lot. I will "Danae-sit" while Layne takes her mom to the airport. Julie might try to find a flight and meet me there (and sidenote, Julie and Mike are having a girl). Talked to Doug today, he is still planning to make it up to Anchorage for a visit in May. Also talked to Jared who needed to know the size of the window in his bedroom in the condo because he is making curtains with his grandma ("the most cabiny I can find" he says).

Gonna see whats going on in NYC this weekend, maybe go to a show or a Yankees game. I'm pretty sure I've blown the budget, so I figure I might as well blow it bigtime and just sub every day in May, whether I feel like it or not.