NYC Trip

Spent December 16, 2004 - December 18, 2004 in NYC with Marcos. Stayed in his student housing room, sleeping on a cot that he had rented from downstairs. Flew in from Greensboro via Detroit on Northwest Airlines. Left GSO about 12:30, arrived in Newark at 5:09. Waited 20 minutes for my bag, then another 40 for the shuttle to take me to M's apartment. When I first "checked in" with Super Shuttle, the shuttle company, a lady on the phone asked for my confirmation and told me to sit down in the lobby and wait for them to call my name, but that it might be up to 45 minutes. I sat and waited, and watched, as people came down, handed a card to the desk and then left with a driver a short time after. After the second group went without me, I asked and they immediately put me on the next shuttle. The shuttle they put me on was driven by a guy who was really ticked off that they added me. The girls at the desk had given him about 9 people to drop off, and then one of the girls and I went chasing after him to add me (since I had asked why I was not being put on a shuttle). The girl said "my supervisor said you are supposed to take this customer, he's been waiting a long time." The driver got all ticked off and started cursing in Spanish, talking about how they were all screwed up and didn't know what they were doing. I wound up having to sit in the front seat because there wasn't any room in the back for me. That was an experience. 5:00 traffic in NYC, with an annoyed van driver, who is all the while talking on his Nextel phone in some form of Spanish, apparently complaining to his buddy about what they made him do, and also talking on his cell phone with the other hand to someone else. I'm not exactly sure HOW he was driving since both of his hands were busy. Luckily I was the first to be dropped off, and didn't have to ride around while he dropped off the other nine people. M and I decided to go out to eat that night, then see some sites. I told him I wanted to eat some "real" Italian food, since Shena doesn't necessarily like it that much in a restaurant. He talked to a friend, who recommended a little place in Little Italy. We walked over, and had a pretty nice dinner there. I got my 2nd dose of NYC hospitality there, when the waiter asked what we wanted to drink. On the table was a bottle of sparkling water already. He asked if we wanted any wine and we said no, we'll just drink water. He said, "do you want sparkling, bottled or tap?" We said, "tap will be fine," and he says, somewhat under his breath, but loud enough so that we can hear him (which is what I think he wanted) and VERY sarcastically "of course, tap water." Other than that, dinner was pretty good. I had a plate of cheese ravioli that was pretty tasty, but there wasn't a lot of it. I was hoping it would be like Olive Garden, all you can eat pasta, but it wasn't that kind of place. We finished dinner about 9:00 and I thought M would be ready to go, but he said "let's go see Times Square." So we hopped the subway up and walked around Times Square for a bit. Looked at the huge signs, TV screens and tourists, then stopped by the ESPNZone. We wandered around the game room on the fourth (top) floor and decided that was where we would eat dinner Saturday night to watch the Panther's game. About 11:00 we headed back towards his apartment, but stopped by NYU's campus and he showed me around a little bit. We also went to Washington park and he told me a little about it. Nothing historical, that is. He just mentioned that it is known for its drugs and chess players. As evidence, he pointed to a great big Policy motor home type set up right next to the park. He said there were constantly undercover cops walking around and hiding out watching for drug deals. I also got another taste of NYC there in the park when we walked past a guy sitting on one of the bunches who said somewhat quietly, "I got smoke." Marcos laughed when he heard it, but I couldn't really tell what the guy had said. M then told me he was selling weed, but was trying to be smooth about it. We wound up getting back to his apartment about 12:30 and then going to bed about 1:30 by the time I got my bed made and ready for bed etc. FRIDAY Got up about 7:30, because I couldn't sleep. The cot that M got for me was fine, but I only had one pillow, and that makes it hard on my back to sleep for too many hours in a row. I was afraid to wake him up, so I just read the news, sports, etc. on the internet. Made some changes to my fantasy football team, since we start playoff games this weekend. I've been the biggest trash talker in the league, so I have to back it up a little or get all kinds of crap from everybody. About 9:30 M finally woke up. We got ready for the day and about 11:30 or so I walked with him over to one of the law buildings so that he could study for a couple of hours, and he pointed me to the subway. He told me that he thought he would be about 2 hours to prepare an outline for his exam, and then we could go down to the financial district. I decided that I would go up to the Museum of Natural History and spend a couple of hours there. Unfortunately, when I got there it was $13 to get in. I figured I would only have two hours and I didn't feel like paying $6.50 an hour to go in. I just looked at the lobby for a bit. They've got some life size dinosaur skeletons there. The brontosauras was especially impressive. I wandered out of the museum and since I was in now hurry, decided I would start walking south to at least the next subway station. It was a fairly nice day (not warm, but not freezing) and the sun was out, so I figured "what the heck." The buildings along Central Park West were pretty cool. I wanted to say that I had been in Central Park before, so I went through the first entrance I came to and walked along a path to the south on the western side of the park. I followed the path down to Columbus Circle. I didn't know it was there, but knew there was a subway stop there. When I came up to it, I looked to my right and there were the Trump Towers. Nothing real exciting. I didn't see The Donald himself, but I at least saw the towers anyway. They had a Christmas craft show type thing going on with about 40 booths set up. I walked through them, but didn't find anything I just had to have. There was a statue mime there, wearing bronze clothes and he had painted his face and hands bronze too. He was standing on a plastic milk crate, with a noise maker in his mouth (the kind that when you blow through it, it makes a "whizz" type sound). When someone would put a tip in his jar he would do robot type moves and bend down and pick up a candy cane for them. He would usually tease the person he was giving the candy cane too a little, which made his show funny. I chuckled anyway. I decided not to try to go into any of the buildings there in Columbus Circle. I wasn't sure if they had tours or anything like that, but I'm not the kind of person who would just wander into a building and ask...plus I was getting hungry and it was about 1:00. I rode the subway back down to 4th St. and then called M when I got off. He claimed that he had two more hours of work to do, but I talked him into going to lunch anyway. We went and got a couple of slices of pizza at a pizza place. Of course it was NY style and pretty good. I had planned on going to Ground Zero by myself, and meeting up with M later, but he said he would just blame me if he got a B or B+ instead of an A in his class. So we hopped the subway to Ground Zero and that was pretty humbling. There were, of course, tourists everywhere. They have put up pictures and descriptions of what happened and what it was like before the attacks. I was a little bugged by people (many) walking around trying to sell picture books of the towers to people trying to view the site. Posted right there on the fence is a sign that says you aren't to sell anything within 35 feet of the fence, but they were all over the place harrasing you. Made me mad that they would try to make money off of that, but then again, this is America. We are a capitalist society, and if someone will buy it from you, you may as well sell it. While I was there, I looked around and tried to imagine what it would have been like to be walking around or even standing close to the site when the attacks happened and when the buildings fell. I couldn't get over just how big the buildings were (the biggest we have in Greensboro right now is Jefferson-Pilot - 21 stories, 371 feet). Right next to the site where we were standing was a building, I don't know, about 60 stories high or so. We were across the street from it, but it felt like it was right on top of us. I tried to imagine the towers, twice as tall (110 stories, 1,368 feet), as the first one begins to fall. What would I do? I asked M. He said "I'd run." I thought, would I? COULD I? Would that instict kick in? Or would I be shocked at the sight of it coming down? Would I feel like it was hopeless to try to run? How far would I run? Would I knock people down trying to get away? What WERE the people thinking who were standing so close? As I said earlier, very humbling. It makes me realize just how scary the situation must have been. They found a steel cross in the wreckage of two I-beams intersecting, which has now been placed in a semi-permanent place on the site. After a bit, we went into a Century 21 Department store, because I wanted to look at dress (cashmere type) overcoats. I don't know if I need one right now, but I really don't have anything nice that I could wear with a suit. All I have for cold weather right now is my leather jacket, and that doesn't look real dressy. Deedee Plummer had suggested that I try this store, said they had good deals. We spent about a 1/2 hour in there...what a mad house. There was practically no room to walk around...both because of the amount of merchandise and how close the clothing racks were to each other, and the number of people inside the store. I found a couple of nice coats...but they either didn't fit or weren't the style I wanted. The other option was to buy an Armani for $1,400, but I don't think Shena would have gone for that. After the store, we walked into the guts of the financial district. I say guts, because you are suddenly walking down streets that feel about ten feet wide. They are wide enough to be two lane roads, but the buildings are so tall in there that it feels narrow. It was weird because it was about 3:00, not middle of the day, but the sun was certainly up...but you wouldn't know it through here. The buildings didn't let any light in. I'm sure there are certain places in there that only get a few minutes of light...if any at all. We just kind of wandered around a little bit, then finally decided to pull out a map and find Wall St. and the NYSE. We walked past, I took a quick picture, then we kept going. I didn't want to linger too much...there were policemen standing out front with machine guns and dogs. I didn't want to bring any attention to myself that might cause them concern. Just a general rule of mine...don't mess with: policemen, policemen with dogs and policemen with machine guns and body armor. I sure wish they still had tours through the NYSE, though. That would have been interesting. M said that he wanted to show me a statue of a bronze bull that was down there in the financial district, but he didn't know where it was and of course neither of us is going to ask anybody. We walked over to Battery Park and looked out over the Bay to the Statue of Liberty. The sun was beginning to set, so we could see her silhouette, but not her very well. Good enough for me, though. It was too cold to take the ferry, plust we didn't want to take the time, since we didn't have much of it that day. We walked back through Battery park, found a subway station, and headed back to M's apartment so that we could rest a bit before we went to dinner with his friends. We had been talking about playing ping pong in their lounge, but hadn't done so yet, so before we went up to his room, I took him out 3 games out of 3. He didn't even really get close. I suggested that since we had about 2 1/2 hours before we had to meet up with them, he should study. But of course if he studied then he couldn't blame me if he didn't do as well on his exam as he thought he should. He thought that he should take a nap instead. I laid down to rest, but never got to sleep. It was too quiet in the room or something, I don't know. I finally got up and surfed a bit online while Marcos took his nap and got ready to go out. He got all dressed up in his "metrosexual" clothes. I felt pretty out of place, since I was wearing jeans a button up shirt and tennis shoes, while he was wearing these "cool" (his opinio" square toe boots and jeans from Bloomingdale's, that I thought looked like they belonged on a girl. Anyway, we had a few minutes before we were to meet up with his friends, so we decided to play a quick game of pool, so that he could beat me and feel better about his recreational sport skills. We played, but it was ugly...took us over 15 minutes to play one game. Not pretty. But he did beat me with one ball on the table, and I think he felt better about himself. We met his buddies, Matt Jackson, Mike and Sammy as we were taking the pool cues back to the front desk and we walked over to the restaurant where we were meeting his other two friends (Matt Moses and Meredith Block). We had talked about taking a cab, but since there were four of us, we would have had to take two, and we could hardly find one. By the time we go to the restaurant, we realized it wasn't that far and we would have saved maybe five minutes. We had reservations at 9, but when we got there @ 8:50, the place was packed. We went to a place called "The Elephant." They said they served French-Thai food. I was told by Moses that meant it was Thai food served in a french manner. I didn't figure out what the "French manner" was, so I'll have to take his word for it. The place was VERY small, and very hot. Probably sat about 40 at the most. You sat right next to other parties and there was no room to push your chair out when you stood up. In addition to the seating, they had a bar and while we waited, there were about 20 people standing at the bar or in the door waiting to be seated. Pretty wild - and LOUD. None of the items on the menu sounded good, so I tried to order something that I thought would be ok. I ordered "Chicken" which the menu said came with sticky rice and green curry. Well, the chicken was boiled I think...and it looked like the back of a chicken cut into fourths...I swear I could see spinal cord sticking out of the spine. The chicken was in the curry and the rice came on a side dish with bananas and mangos. I really didn't like my food much, but I ate as much as I could so that M's friend's wouldn't be offended. Especially Meredith. She seemed like a really nice girl and I know that she had made the plans that night. I'm sure she would have felt bad if she found out I didn't like the food. That or think I was a punk. Either way, I didn't want her to feel it. M's friends were pretty cool. The place was so loud that I couldn't talk to them much. After dinner, his friends went to a bar, while M and I headed over to Rockefeller Center. At least, we TRIED to get to Rockefeller. He wasn't exactly sure how to get there, so we wound up walking from Grand Central Station, to Times Square and then we finally decided to ask a street vendor. He told us we were about 5 blocks away and told us how to get there. Not much to see once we arrived. They were closing down and had turned the tree off, so we didn't even get to see much. We just walked around the block, looked in the NBC Today set for a second and then headed back to his apartment. We had done quite a bit of walking that day...especially me, and so we were pretty beat. As usual, we wound up getting to bed about 1:30 am. Saturday The next morning (Saturday, December 18) we decided that we wanted to head early to the game to try to get autographs. The shuttle buses left the transit station about 2 hours before kickoff, which meant they would start leaving about 11:30. We got up around 9:00 ish - out the door by 10:15. We stopped at McDonald's and bough a McGriddle and a OJ to give us some energy, then caught the subway to the transit station. You could buy round trip tickets for $7 or $4 each way. We thought we would save a $1 and buy the round trip tickets. There weren't many people at the station yet, and we walked right up to a bus (which was about 90% Steelers fans), which left as soon as it was full, which was about 5 minutes after we got on. The drive over to the Meadowlands was about 20 minutes. When we pulled up I expected the parking lot to be pretty sparse, considering it was 2 hours before kick off. But the area where the buses dropped us off was PACKED with tailgaters. And, of course, lots of Steelers fans. We had to walk to the opposite corner of the stadium from where we were dropped off to get to the section where we would be sitting. We got to the stadium at about 11:00, and they didn't open the gates until 11:30. M and I decided to just get in line and wait until they opened. We wound up being the first ones through the gates in our section. We headed straight down to the edge of the railings and to find out where we might have the best chance of getting autographs. I asked one of the ushers where he suggested, he said we should head to the West endzone tunnel, because that was where the players came out. I stayed on the sideline, but got down in the bottom row, in the far end zone corner. M sat right behind me, and we watched the players out on the field warm up. We were on the Steelers sideline, and there were several players warming up (sans uniforms) on the field. Antwaan Randle El was catching passes from one of the coaches. Ben Roethlisberger and Hines Ward were practicing patters up and down the field from the West end zone to midfield and back. Several times Hines would run a rout that had him running towards the sideline and he would wind up 10 or 15 feet out of bounds, which put him close enough for us to see his trademark grin. Big Ben also "rolled out" several times and wound up close to where we were sitting. Most of the time that they were out warming up, there were Steelers fans yelling to them, trying to get them to come over and sign autographs. But, no luck. As a matter of fact, I didn't see ANY Steelers players sign ANY autographs. Not even for a couple of kids who had footballs tied to strings hanging down into the tunnel where the players went in and out. At one point, I yelled at Ben to come over and sign my football. The guy sitting next to me said, "Yeah, come on Ben. I came all the way from Pittsburgh for this!" Ben yelled back "So did, I!" We all chuckled. I guess when Shena and I went down to the Panthers/Steelers game in pre-season last year, the players probably were much more relaxed and felt like they had time to sign autographs. I'm sure the fact that this was a regular season game affected why they didn't sign any autographs. No big deal. Maybe I'll mail a football to one or two of the players and see if I can get them to sign it that way. It was cool to see the RB's come out on the field to warm up a little bit. When Jerome Bettis came onto the field to warm up, the whole crowd (which at this point was still mostly Steelers fans) started cheering and going crazy. The RB's took one lap around the field, and there were Steelers fans all around the field on the lower couple of rows of the stadium. As they passed by, the crowd would yell for them. Like a victory lap or something. Pretty funny. Shortly after that several Giants came out to warm up, and they didn't get the same warm reception. About an hour before kickoff, off to my right, came two people who I overheard tell the guys next to me..."excuse us. Sorry. These are our seats, may we please sit down." I expected them to ask me to move also. I looked up and said "I guess I need to move too, huh?" The lady (Beth, I later found out) said "actually, we think that seat should be open. We had three tickets for the game, but couldn't find anybody else to come down with us. We aren't sure which side of us is the open seat, but you are welcome to sit there as long as you want." WOW! I turned and looked at M and he just kind of raised his eyebrows. I immediately felt guilty, so I said "oh, no, thank you. I'm here with my brother and I don't want to make him go sit in our real seats while I stay down here." We talked for a minute or two, and came to find out that they got the tickets from a sales rep for the company that the guy (Brian) worked for, AmeriSuites. Brian grew up in Pittsburgh, so was a Steelers fan, and Beth said that she had "converted" when they got married. We laughed about that and I explained how Shena had been "converted" also and we shared several stories with each other (Beth went to FSU, talked about hating all the other ACC schools, Brian had been to Greensboro several times, Brian has two boys who are huge Steelers fans...etc). They were a really nice couple. At one point, about 1/2 hour before the game started, Beth & Brian were talking with themselves, I turned and looked at M and said "What do you think?" He said, "If the roles were reversed, and this was my favorite team, I would take it. Don't worry about me, no big deal, I'll go sit in our real seats." I tried to get him to stay until they at least came and kicked him out, but he said he didn't want to get kicked out. I kind of felt bad, but he really didn't seem upset at all, and I think he was genuinely excited for me. I spent the first half of the game enjoying my seats. We were able to see a Steelers touchdown in our end zone and several other amazing plays. I also got to talk to Beth & Brian quite a bit and talk some trash to a drunk Giants fan who was sitting right behind us. He was drunk, but he was nice. I had been afraid to leave my seat because first, I didn't want to miss any of the game, and second because I was sure that they were checking tickets and if I got up, I would not get back down to the seats. Beth realized this, so at half-time I asked if I could borrow her ticket to go and check on M and then come back down. She and Brian had just been up to use the rest room about 15 minutes before, so they said they weren't going anywhere in the mean time. I left all of my things in the seat (jacket, binoculars, camera) so they wouldn't be concerned that I was up to something. It took me the entire halftime to get up to M's seat. It was literally wall to wall people. You had to PUSH your way to get anywhere. I really should have waited or left earlier than half time to do it. By the time I got up to him, there were 2 minutes gone in the 3rd quarter. I checked on him, he swore he didn't care that I was down there and said he was having a good time. The seats, even up there, really weren't bad. Of course you couldn't see the players as well, but you could still see alot and you had a better angle on the action. I told him I was going to go back down and finish the third quarter from the end zone and then I would come back up for the 4th quarter so we could be back together for the bus ride home. I rushed back down to the seat I was in before, only to find a guy sitting there, telling Beth & Brian that he had spent the first half looking for his seat and that he was in the wrong place during the first half. They were trying to get my things out of his way so that he could sit down when I got there. When they saw me, they said "Sorry" and handed me my coat. I wish I could have told the guy he was in my seat, but I couldn't really ask to see his ticket, even though the more I thought about it, the more I was sure that he didn't have a ticket to be sitting there, he just saw an empty seat and tried to grab it. What could I do? I didn't have a ticket either. So the drunk Giants fan who was sitting behind me said "you can sit in my buddies seat until he gets back." I said "thanks", and watched about 3 minutes of the game from there before his friends came back. I told Beth & Brian "Thanks" for letting me sit with them and told them to drive safely back to the Poconos (where they were currently living). I wish now I would have given them one of my business cards because Beth had a cool digital camera that she was taking pictures with and it had a zoom on it, so I'm sure she got some good ones. I would have liked to have them. Anyway, I went back up to sit in my proper seat and watched the rest of the game with Marcos. I was actually a bit relieved because this was I didn't have to feel guilty about ditching him, especially since he isn't a big Steelers fan (or Giants, for that matter) and part of his Christmas was blown on buying his ticket, and then I ditch him. I might have felt a little cheated in the same situation. The game was a good one. The Steelers SHOULD have blown out the Giants, but Eli Manning had his best game as a pro yet and the Giants hung around. It wasn't really "over" until the Steelers scored with about 5:00 left and then Manning threw an interception on the next possession to allow the Steelers to run out the clock at the end. There were more Giants fans there than I expected. I really expected it to be split 50/50, but the Giants fans showed up. Maybe because they wanted to believe the Giants would knock off the Steelers and give Big Ben his first NFL loss. I would say the split was about 70/30 Giants fans maybe 65/35. One drawback of the game being so tight was the mass exit that took place once the game was over. We had heard that by the 4th quarter half the stadium would be empty and it wouldn't be a big deal to get back to NYC. But because the game was close, by the time we got in line to take the shuttle back to the city, the line was about 1/2 around the stadium. It took us about 35-45 minutes standing in line waiting for the buses. And I'm sure they were slowed down by the traffic from the cars leaving the game too. It was no big deal, though. We didn't really have anywhere to be. We got back to M's apartment about 6:30 or so. We took enough time to wash our faces and take off our cold weather gear. I changed jersey's from my Steelers Bettis jersey to my Panther's jersey. The Panthers were playing the Falcons on ESPN that night and we wanted to watch the game at the ESPNZone where we could yell and scream as much as we wanted. When we got there at about 7:30, we were a bit concerned that we would be seated in time for the game. There was a line outside, which they held up until they let you inside to get in ANOTHER line to get a pager to hold while you waited for a table. We wound up finally getting a table in "The Screening Room" which has two big screen TV's surrounded by 19 or 21 inch TV's. We got a table directly in front of the big screen that was showing the football game at about 8:35 or so, just a few minutes after kickoff. Our waiter didn't like the idea of us being there for the entire game, especially since we didn't order any drinks. I'm sure he thought he was going to get shafted on the tip. We spent the first half at our table, which was right in front of a group of Steelers fans who had been to the game that afternoon also. They were pretty cool and we chatted for a minute. They said they were cheering for the Panthers because they had money on them to beat the spread (not sure what it was). We had also run into several people who said they were from the Carolinas and who where ther to watch the game also. There was a pretty good contingent of Panthers' fans and we were all yelling during the game. We ordered an appetizer (cheese fries, that weren't that good...they had regular, shredded cheese, but they also had a nacho cheese spread over them, which we didn't like) and then our dinners (I had a cheese steak that was pretty good, but after the appetizers I couldn't eat all of the sandwich). At halftime, we noticed some over-sized recliner type chairs behind our table that would give us a better view of the game and that would allow our waiter to have someone else sit at our table. We asked him if he cared and he said he didn't. So we took the two available chairs and watched the second half from them. Marcos took the seat closest to the middle of the screen, I had to take the one next to him, which had another seat next to it where there was a girl sitting. It was fine for a little while, but towards the beginning of the fourth quarter she started to try to talk to me. A couple of problems with that. First, I am trying to watch a football game, and I HATE to be bothered when one of my teams is playing...especially when the game is as important as this one was for the Panthers. The Falcons had won the NFC South and were in the playoffs. The Panthers pretty much HAD to win to have a chance to get in the playoffs and we always seem to have a hard time beating them when Mike Vick is playing. Second, I am married and I felt pretty uncomfortable at first. Not that I thought she was hitting on me, but she was somewhat attractive and I didn't know how M would feel about it and I didn't know how it looked to everybody else in the room...especially to one of the managers of the restaurant, who had been checking on this girl every 15 minutes or so, as if he had some kind of special interest in her... and I didn't catch on at first to what was the third problem. After a couple of minutes of this girl (never did get her name) talking to me, I figured out she was a little tipsy. Not sloppy durnk, but overly-friendly drunk. I realized that she was just buzzing pretty good and was just being really friendly. Which made the first two problems I was having with her even bigger problems. She was nice enough, but she kept talking even when I was completely ignoring her. We did figure out that the Panthers did something good when she was either gone or not paying attention to the game. She said that she used to live in Raleigh and so she was a Panthers fan, and so we (both M & I) kept encouraging her to look away or go to the bathroom or something. Long story short, the game was a GREAT one (two in one day...and I got to experience both of them with my brother)...and the Panthers wound up losing in a heartbreaking overtime period. They had the Falcon's down with just a few minutes to go, 4th & goal (12 yards out). Mike Vick made an incredible play...dove for the end zone and seemed to float in the air. The ball got across the goal line by merely INCHES (one, two tops) before his knees hit the ground and he was down. This tied the game and then Delhomme threw an intereception on the third play of the overtime that Atlanta ran back to the 20 and then they kicked a field goal. It was tough to take. M was getting embarassed by me, I think, because I was doing a lot of yelling and screaming...especially at the TV. He was probably the only one in the room (besides the waiter) who knew that I hadn't had anything to drink and that I wasn't drunk. I'm sure other observers in the room thought that I had had too much. After the game, some guy walked up to me from the back of the room and was like "Man, be proud of your team. They got heart. Even if they don't make the playoffs, they should everybody just how much heart they have. Be proud." Kinda weird, but nice of him to try to make me feel better. I guess he thought that I was going to be distraught about the game or something. I was upset, but not too badly, because they had played well and I got to experience the game on a big screen TV, yelling as loud as I want and, again, with my brother. Fun, fun experience. We got our check and headed back to the apartment. It was well after 12:45 before we got home and we were both beat. The bad thing was the shuttle was going to be to M's apartment between 3:00 and 3:20 am to pick me up to take me to the airport. It was about 1:45 before I got showered and packed, so I decided that I better not try to go to sleep or I might not wake up in time for the shuttle. I spent the rest of the morning typing up the first part of this journal entry. My plane left Newark at 6:00 am for Detroit. I slept most of the way from Newark to Detroit...but it is only an hour and 15 minute flight, so it wasn't much sleep. In Detroit I had a two hour layover, so I tried to find a seat near my gate...I happened upon one that was next to a column, so I leaned my head against that and got another 1/2 hour of sleep. I then slept for about 45 minutes on the plane from Detroit to GSO. Again, only about 1 hour 15 minute flight time. By the time they gave me my drink and pretzels it was time to land. Mom picked me up at the airport Sunday morning at about 1:00. Instead of going to church, I went home and layed down for another quick, 1 1/2 hour nap, until the family got home. We went to eat dinner at mom and dad's and I told stories and then I went back home and got another 2 hours of sleep. Bad news was that last two hour nap made it so I couldn't get to sleep that night...it was midnight before I got to sleep. Next thing I knew...it was back to work! Expenses of trip: $5.50 - Lunch @ Detroit Airport A&W $20 - Dinner @ Italian Restaurant - Thursday $16 - Subway MetroCard - Whole trip $5 - Lunch (2 pizza slices) - Friday $25 - Dinner - The Elephant (French/Thai food) - Friday w/M's friends, Matt Jackson, Mike, Sammy, Matt Moses, Meredith Block $7 - Breakfast at McDonald's (both M & I) - Saturday $7 - Round trip bus shuttle to Giant's Stadium $4- Return ticket to NYC from Giant's Stadium (lost my return ticket during the game, apparently) $30 - Dinner @ ESPNZone - Saturday night, watching Panther's game - picked up Marcos' tip $3.50 - Breakfast @ Detroit Airport (turnover, milk)

Steelers boys - Cade & Kelson

At Steelers v. Panthers Pre-Season Game, 2003

Set Up

Journal? Diary? Philosophy? Political musings?

Probably more of a place for me to ramble. Utnil I get going, find out who Dr. Z thinks is the best team in the NFL...and who he thinks might sneak in (hint they were in the Super Bowl last year).

22 Shopping days left! Have you bought my present yet?