Since Sharon is neck-deep in schoolwork before the end of the semester next Friday (yay!), I will highlight a few of our moments from last week when Sharon was here on Thanksgiving break.
Meet Trevi, (named after the fountain), my parents' new pup:
So, he's pretty cute. He's all puppy and everyone is excited about his arrival, especially Mason (his big brother), as seen here:
He looks thrilled that a new sharp-toothed pup is running around. Anyhow...Sharon and I decided to take a trip to Manhattan a few days before Thanksgiving. New York is always busy, and when I went there with the arbo-interns I thought it would be fun to go back and spend a night, so we did. We took the Bolt Bus up (which was a mistake, as a MegaBus stopped at the same location to pick up passengers and seemed to be running like clockwork -- Bolt, on the other hand, was 30 minutes late and when it finally did the driver blamed a cleaning person that didn't clean the bus). Buses these days do have wifi and electric outlets and tons of leg room, so hooray for that; MegaBus, though, is a double- decker which is simply incredible.
So we got off the bus, rounded the block and stepped into our hotel, which was about 50 feet away. We dropped off our bags, checked out the room, and resisted the urge to revert back to our Haiti days whereupon entering a hotel room we would immediately turn on the TV and get hot showers and enjoy flush toilets. To sum up our trip, I can use two words: We walked. A lot. From midtown to the High Line in Chelsea to Chinatown and back up to the Upper East Side to check out a few thrift stores, a coffee shop, Macy's parade preparations, and ice skating rink where we watched folks skate (poorly) and some delicious hot cocoa. The next day we walked a lot (shocking, l know) and filled the day with similar activities. It was relaxing and fun -- and we did check out the American Folk Art Museum, which was amazing. See below:
And we went into a pretty cool old (for the U.S.) church, though I can't remember its name:
We hot-footed it around the city and tried to get into the International Center of Photography, but we got there too late to be admitted without being rushed around. Instead we went into the bookshop and browsed a little and warmed up a bit too. We'll have to go back next time we are in NYC.
We went from NYC to Norfolk (that's Naw-fick to you), where we had the usual abundance of food to show our thankfulness for an abundance of stuff the previous year. Lots of good food which we enjoyed again and again the days following Thanksgiving (it's worth all the effort of cooking to only have to reheat the following 2-3 days, right?).
Somewhere during all of this some wigs were discovered, so they made the rounds.
After the wig finished a tour of the Nowak household we assembled ourselves for the customary photo whenever people are together.
(Judging by the darkness in some of these images, the changes I've made in Picasa are not making their way into the wonder web. Well, imagine everything brighter and sharper.)
