Nemo Found Us

I’m writing today from of our warm bedroom with a view of a very wet, snowy, grey NYC landscape. Today is a “flex Friday” off from work for Jen and I certainly have plenty of studying to do so we’re spending the day defying the weather by staying indoors. From what we’re hearing the weather will soon be getting even more wintery. Nemo, as it’s being called, is about to take a big white number two on the North East.

We honestly don’t know what we can expect to see in the next 24 hours. Newscasters themselves have been jokingly giving predictions of “2-30 inches.” We both got very alarming emergency alerts on our phones yesterday requesting that we prepare for the storm and limit travel. The mayor’s office has seemed to over-prepare for every snow storm since the record breaking blizzard that caught them off guard two years ago. That was a mess! The city has 250,000 tons of salt being spread. It’s a good thing, considering I just read on Twitter that we have 6,300 street miles to plow if the snow fall is heavy enough. It’s equivalent to plowing from NY to L.A., twice! Jen and I don’t typically get too hyped up and tend to side with the more conservative weathermen that are predicting less than six inches. There’s also the fact that this storm shares its name with a talking, crippled clownfish from a Disney/Pixar movie that makes it hard to take seriously. We found NEMO! You can’t always judge a storm by its name though. My Aunt Sandy is a lovely person, but Hurricane (Super Storm!) Sandy was a b*tch.

Weather permitting, we’ll go to White Plains tomorrow for Jen’s Grandma’s 83^rd birthday luncheon. It’s been a while since we’ve eaten at The Cheesecake Factory, one of our all time favs, so we’re hoping it’s a go.

No matter what this storm entails, one thing you can be sure of in this city is stupidity. Someone will decide to go for a drive through the snow with their kids, get stuck, and blame the city when they almost freeze to death. There will be people scraping the bare sidewalks with their shovels at the first sign of flurries and calling it plowing. And someone will give their gasoline powered generator a precautionary test run…indoors

P.S. Something about a commercial I saw recently filmed entirely in the city, inspired me. I might be getting the Sony Handycam out again to do some filming and play with some more effects in my video editor. So look for that, hopefully next week!

Un-Pop Music

This post is taking a particularly long time to write because the American Music Awards are on and so distracting. The performances are so bad that, much like a train wreck, I cannot stop watching. I can’t decide who looks, dances, and/or sounds the worst. Maybe I’m just outgrowing popular music. It’s possible.

As of Friday I’m officially done with all clinical affiliations. ‘Bout time. This past assignment at Lutheran Medical Center was such a great experience. As promised there was medicine, neuro rehab, and just a lot of aspects of therapy that I hadn’t seen before. Leaving the hospital and my wonderful patients was bitter-sweet. I could see myself working there and made sure to leave a good impression. The PT staff continued to remind me to leave my resume with the director when I left, which I did, and I took that as a good sign. If it’s meant to be it will work out.
At this point I’m just a board exam prep test and a temporary license away from finding a job in the new year. I can take my permanent license exam in April (it’s only offered a few times a year, unfortunately).

Those who know me know that I love to have my holidays off. And by that I don’t just mean Thanksgiving Day or just Christmas Eve and Day… I mean the weeks surrounding them. I don’t know what I’ll do when I have a real job (that I like enough not to quit) that only allows Locationa few weeks of vacation time in a whole year. Eek. Luckily it worked out for us again this year. Jens amazing employer has never given her trouble about time off and I’m quitting good ‘ole Bourbon St. before we leave for Christmas. The restaurant has been good to me in many ways and I’ve technically been there longer than any other job… almost three years! But it’s time to say goodbye.


I’m sure you’re still getting earfuls about the ongoing hurricane recovery in NYC area. Other than Staten Island and the low lying beach areas, things are almost back to normal. We donated some clothes that we don’t wear any more to Staten Island families that lost everything which felt good… we really needed the closet space (kidding). Businesses in our neighborhood that were severely damaged, like LIC Bar and City Vet/LIC Doghouse on our corner have just reopened in the past few days. Although we don't visit the bar that often, it really brings life to our block. While it was closed we realized how eerie and quiet it would be at night without them.

Our apartment still doesn’t have heat which hasn’t really been a big deal. Electricity and hot running water are the big ones. Our landlord is supposedly having trouble finding a boiler that will work in our building. Anyway, we should have heat by the time we return from Thanksgiving in FL

Scary, Spicy, Sandy Weekend

After a very busy week Jen and I were looking forward to going out Friday night… so we did laundry. We REALLY needed clean clothes and worked up quite the appetite while doing a few weeks worth of wash. The restaurant Spice (originally of the West Village) recently opened another location in our very own LIC. We decided to finally try it. Like Tuk Tuk, one of our favorite places to eat on Vernon, Spice serves Thai food. We thought it was just ok. We shared a duck salad, spare ribs, and a shrimp stir-fry with garlic sauce. It just wasn't very fresh or tasty… needs more spice if you ask us. Although their noodles might be amazing, which we didn't try, I think we’ll be sticking with Tuk Tuk.

We left dinner with plenty of time to make it to Times Square to see a movie, but got a little distracted by filming just outside of Spice. Edie Falco was shooting her show Nurse Jackie and was like five feet from us (obviously didn’t have my Canon with me as illustrated by the awful quality of the pics). They were filming a scene in a cop car which was being towed down Vernon Blvd. We debated skipping our movie because it was fun to watch, but finally waved bye to her and headed to the train. We saw “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” which was pretty good. I originally thought it was a movie for teens but it had some pretty serious and depressing themes. It was aiight.

Saturday night was Bourbon St’s annual Halloween Party. And I can’t believe it’s my third one! Among my crazy coworkers in costume was a cow, a zombie, red riding hood and wolf, Katniss from The Hunger Games, the news team from Anchorman, farmer in the dell (a cowgirl in a Dell computer box), a nurse, and an evil doctor (me!) Jen did an AMAZING job making my face look bloody and gross. No one could believe we did it all ourselves. FYI: Corn syrup, red food coloring, and cocoa powder make very realistic fake blood.  And you can make fake wounds with toilet paper and Elmer's glue.

We both have the day off today and are just hanging out at home, waiting for Hurricane Sandy to pass. So far (as of 4 pm) it’s not bad, although I've seen some video online of flooding down at Gantry Park on the water. I was supposed to observe an orthopedic surgery this morning at the hospital and will not be happy if I don’t get assigned another one. Safety first I guess.