The Mom visit

Here I am protesting a photo-op at MoMA because I felt like acting like a brat.

Seriously, it was great having my mom here so we could sort through our family's next step with planning the funeral and all. We did have a great time tramping around New York. We went to Shea Stadium and watched the Mets lose to the Nationals on Friday, we saw The Lion King on Broadway, visited MoMA, the Met, and explored a bit of China Town. The highlight was seeing the Times Square guitar-playing naked cowboy AND the Central Park opera-singing naked indian violinist — don't worry, I'm going back to get pictures later because my camera's batteries died again. Here are some other pictures for you all:


This guy was trudging around a fountain in the park looking for something, but I don't think he ever found what he was looking for.


Strawberry Fields forever...


Squishy lives in Central Park! And he has friends! Shame on all you non-believers....

I'll miss you Auntie Carol

My Auntie Carol sportin' the hat my Mom made her for Christmas.


Both of us at a Mariners' game sippin' on some brews (my mom didn't tell me she was taking a picture).

My aunt died today — it still just feels like a bad dream so I don't want to believe it. I still don't know what happened really, just that Dad, Mom and Zack are going into Homer to be with my Grandma. I just wanted to post pictures in her memory because it's all that I feel I can do right now. She was a wonderful woman — fun to hang around and always was there for me whenever I needed her. The best part about her was her sense of humor and when I was making fun of her, she was dishin' it right back to me. Here are things I'll always remember:

-Small waterfalls on the way to Crater Lake
-Pepperoncinis on windows in Pizza Hut
-Camping trips
-Knitting her scarf for her ON Christmas day
-Taking me out to Boundary Bay Brewery AFTER my 21-run and her commenting on my appearance (and lack of appetite)
-Her Christmas cookies
-Old-lady sunglasses
-Red-eye pick-ups from SeaTac
-My dad calling her "Uncle Carol"
-Trash cans with Zack and me inside
-Cat carriers
-Frozen margaritas

And that's just to name a few. Most of these things won't make sense to a lot of people, but if you were there to witness some of these events, they were mighty funny times that I'm sure can make smiles appear on people's faces remembering them — even now. I love you Auntie Carol.

I'm safe at home with Glenn and Abigail

After talking to Kelsy, Nate, Liam and my brother, I decided to post something quick just to say that I wasn't by the explosion at all in Midtown Manhattan. I'm still waiting to hear back from my friends Megan, Lauren and a few of my co-workers. My work isn't by Grand Central so everyone at the magazine should be fine. Much love to everyone I've heard from, I miss you all!

If you want to know what's all going on, The New York Times is doing a great job with updates.

A lazy wonderful weekend

Abigail, also known as the Lil' Diva, tends to get her beauty rest on my suitcase.

Wow — it's been a month already! I'm sorry to report that I didn't do anything exciting, but I did enjoy my weekend relaxing in the sun, reading my book, writing in my journal, running and eating good food. My camera ran out of batteries when I was in the park, so I couldn't take pictures of this really cool street show I watched. One of the performers completed about 10 back flips in a row without moving from the spot he started in. Two other guys were in this show and they were incredibly springy and strong too. They could walk on their hands down a flight of stairs and complete an array of acrobatic feats. This amazed me because I retired from gymnastics a long time ago when I accomplished the cartwheel — I wanted to end my career as a gymnast on a high note.

Work is still great — we put the September issue to bed on Friday. You all should read the article about the new Into the Wild movie. The final product turned out great and I actually got to transcribe the interview the reporter did with Sean Penn, which I thought was pretty cool. Now we're going to be focusing all our energy on the October and November issues.

That's all I have, I hope you all are well and at this rate, I'll be seeing everyone again in no time. Much love!!!

Into the city park

A little baseball at Central Park on a weekend afternoon.

Life is going well and city life is becoming a little less foreign to me. The only thing I'm really not getting used to is this 90 degree weather — I guess there will always be that part of Alaska in me that will never go away.

This week at work I was able to proofread the first draft of an article that is going in our September issue. It's about the Into the Wild movie coming out soon and the reporter went up to Alaska and interviewed a bunch of people. Being a former resident of the state, one of the editors let me read through the article to see what I thought of it, just to make sure the author captured the correct image of Alaskans. I was happy to see that the reporter nailed the article and it also made me laugh because so many of the people in it reminded me of everyone I grew up around. My favorite line in the whole article is this: "Here's the real Alaska state motto — 'Hold my beer and watch this!" If you grew up there you'd be laughing as hard as I was.

Nothing more patriotic than a hot dog eating contest...

The new hot dog eating record at Nathan's— they're already counting down for next year.

Well I'm glad I decided to venture down to Coney Island for this event. Joey Chestnut took the title home for the good ol' U.S. of A by defeating the six-time defending champion Takeru Kobayashi. He ate 66 hot dogs in 12 minutes while Kobayashi (who has arthritis in his jaw) ONLY ate 63. And yes, I went and ate a hot dog after this brilliant display of athleticism. The whole thing was nuts — if you just listened to the event and closed your eyes, you would of thought some epic religous judgment was about to take place and not a hot god eating contest. The crowd erupted with American pride as soon as Chestnut's victory was announced. Nothing makes my heart swell with pride more than watching an American gorge themselves on our Independance day and reclaim an eating title that has been over seas for the past six years. It was quite entertaining to say the least.


Here's the mustard making the rounds...


And this guy was just too cool to be my friend.

Mom sent me pictures!

Todd, Tracy, Stevie, me and Stewie on my last night in Bellingham.


Roomie and me in our matching Beav wear (you know your leaving B'ham when you get a Beav shirt).


Tyler and me (I always think I'm taller than I actually am).

Everyone is just so cute in these photos, I thought I'd post them for all to see.

So today was my third Monday here, but it still feels like I just got here. I must say that after so many Fun Day Mondays from working at the Manor, it feels incredibly WRONG to go to work on a Monday. When my alarm goes off my internal body clock still doesn't register that I have to be somewhere.

Last Thursday Michael Moore had a press conference at our office — and I missed it!!! I was busy doing research in the library when one of my fellow interns, Will, came in and told me all about the awesome interview I missed. I slugged him and told him next time to drag me away from whatever I was doing. Other than that incident, work is going well. I just miss writing but hopefully I'll be able to start doing that soon if my pitches work out.

I've started looking into jobs after I realized that in seven weeks my internship will be over, and I probably should have a some sort of half concocted plan of where I'm going to end up after this crazy ride. A job with some sort of vision coverage would be nice because I'm running a little low on contacts and for the sake of my eyes, that problem needs to be remedied. Unfortunatley most of the job descriptions don't entail living on a beach, sleeping in a hammock and sipping on margaritas. Oh well. I'll just have to keep looking...