New York summary

Wonderful time had in New York City. I keep waiting for the pictures from J, as I only have a few from Madison Square Garden.

So, I'll try to recap as best I can, a solid week out:

Wednesday: Arrive late, meet Ted and Nada (I'm sorry, T, I have no idea how to spell her name) for dinner. Great thai food, continue with drinks with Ted for a few hours. Very thankful that I was able to meet up with Ted before he left for New Orleans.

Thursday: NBC Studio tour. Fun little tour, getting to see the today show studio, the NBC News studio (Yes, I did want to play around a bit), and then just some of the other areas behind the scenes. There was a part of the tour where they asked for two volunteers to do some anchoring to show how things work. Yes, I did volunteer. And for $35, I could have had a DVD of it!
Next was a long walk up to Central Park, and then a stop in the WCBS Radio studios, where we hung out for a half an hour with Steve Scott, former WLS News Director and Bulls PA Announcer. Great studio, and he and his partner were gracious to let us sit in the corner and watch them do their thing. It made me think I could certainly be an anchor in a major market, but I don't know if I have the newswriting chops, or new sensibility to do it.
Next, drinks at the Australian, the Illini bar in NYC. Met up with poker superstar Taylor Caby, who was incredibly down to earth and fun to talk with. Got recognized by a couple of people who really, really like the stuff on fightingillini.com. Loved the ego boost. During the game, I actually sat with Taylor, which was a nice opportunity for me to watch the game with some rabid fans, and yell and cheer.

Friday: LONG walk to the Guggenheim. Really fascinating piece of architecture. Highly recommend it just for that, if nothing else. The artwork...well, yeah, I mean, I'm not a huge art person. But some of the work was from immediately after WW1, and for some reason, I like more morbid works.
Walk back, go to the game, sit with Julia, which was also fun. Afterward, drinks with Popeye, and then later, we were joined by Lucia, and her husband Mike. I haven't seen Popeye in about 6 years, so that was incredibly fun. We still could do a spectacular morning show, for sure. He's very gifted. It's too bad Champaign-Urbana wasn't able to handle us.

Saturday: Ellis Island. Probably our least favorite of the 3 "tourist" things we did. IT was nice to see the Statue of Liberty up close, but I think they could do a lot more with Ellis Island, for sure.
Got to go see the legendary 4th street basketball court (major disappointment, no streetball legends, only 40 year old overweight white dudes), and Washington Square Park, two of my favorites. Julia was attacked by a overweight squirrel.
We had a wonderful dinner at Kean's Steakhouse, home of the pipe club, and then, on to Promises, Promises, starring Sean Hayes, Kristin Chenowyth, and Molly Shannon. Really good show, and yes, even I enjoyed it. We then took a bike taxi back, which was thrilling and terrifying, and overpriced.

One cancelled flight, and two delays later, we were home.

That is the best summation I can put together without taking up 2 hours.

But it was fun.

This week, Julia's 30th birthday. Yikes!