tropical storm alert

guess i don't necessarily visualize myself on a map to realize how close to the eastern coast i am. never having spent any amount of time near a coast before, let alone live there, i was shocked to see the tropical storm warning for our area. hurricane hanna's projected path is supposed to affect our area late tomorrow night to early sunday morning. guess it'll be like tornado weather, only with a lot more water, right?

gone tourist

the bull








wall street











ground zero. i had to stick my camera through a hole in the fence to get this snap.










um, ok...so something about walking by this cemetery struck me funny. how the heck do they expect anyone to "rest in peace" in the middle of new york city?









hehe, just ripley's believe it or not








hmm...don't know what this is, but i liked it =)











St. Peter's Cathedral











in the subway








this was as close as i could get to lady liberty...and the picture is zoomed & cropped =)







a couple fellas break-dancin'











the front of grand central station








the chrysler building. is king kong the first thing that pops into anyone else's mind when they think of the chrysler building, or is it just me...?










just another street








my only companion...she's not much for conversation or physical touch, and she only comes along on sunny days. but on those days, she keeps up with me wherever i decide go to =)






some freakish jekyll & hyde club...interesting building, though!

this might be news to some of you, but just for your information, although i absolutely love to travel, there's something about being a tourist that i don't love. so my first several trips into the city, i kind of avoided the tourism and just tried to find my way around the places i needed to know...to familiarize myself with certain areas and with the public transportation systems. but a few sundays ago i finally broke down and took my camera out of its hiding spot in my backpack. i walked the whole day! i arrived in the city around 11.30 a.m., stopped for a 20 minute lunch break around 2, and then walked until i boarded my train at 7.30 p.m. i probably could've covered the whole length of manhattan that day, but i wanted to book it to one touristy site just to take a picture then book it to the next one =) it felt great to walk so much, though! and it feels even better to be confident in being able to find my way around.

"cool, big guy stuff"

i took tati & ian and their cousin max to bear mountain state park for awhile this morning...

...then tati went to a birthday party while i took the boys to the beach to do "cool, big guy stuff," according to ian. it's ok though, it's not much of a stretch for me to do things with the "guys" since i have a long history of tomboyishness =) the other little guy in the picture is our friend tomas. he's in ian's class and his sister is in tati's, so we hang out a lot.

just us

the kids and i had a great time making movies the other night =) once (if) i get the video uploaded on my computer, i'll post it. but i would start to narrate to help get their minds going a little, then leave a blank where they had to decide what their character was going to do or say next. the funniest was when ian wanted to be a "knitting boy who has no answers," meaning, he only knew how to knit and he didn't have a voice. hehe!

train ride

i love the last 10 or so miles on the tracks along the hudson back to the garrison station, when i get a seat on the left side of the train. ((the other side...not so interesting))

this is bear mountain bridge. it was built privately by some family way back when.