Special Projects

With my significant lack of blogging lately, you'd think I haven't been up to much. Oh contrare, monfrare (phoenetical spelling). Last Sunday morning I had a conference call setup with my friend Roland in Slovakia to discuss "special projects" for his hotel that he runs. So, since then, my nights have been spent refreshing my Microsoft Access skills and creating a baby database for him to track who's drinking Johnny Walker and who's drinking Coke from the mini-bars...

Last weekend I had nothing planned, but it turned out to be quite busy. Friday night I was verbally dragged from my bed by Paul and the gang to go hang out at Brandy's, the piano bar down the street. They had a visitor in town and had just finished watching Hairspray and were all ready to get the night started. I had gone to happy hour with Alan a few hours earlier at Calle Ocho and had a few tasty mojitos before heading over to Kitchen 82 for one of the best reasonably-priced ($25) prix fixe dinners around. So by 10:45pm I was done for the evening - until Paul called. He even put his guest on the line to beg me to clothe myself and head over. I finally bowed to the pressure and met up with them at 11:30 and headed down to Brandy's, where we had a great time until about 3:00am. There were a couple girls celebrating a birthday that Cathy and I both recognized but we couldn't for the life of us figure how we knew them. Hopefully it will dawn on one of us oneday, cuz it was driving us nuts that night....

Five hours later, I had my volunteer project with the kids down at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. That place is beautiful! Right across the street from Prospect Park, they had rose gardens, a cherry tree promenade, fountains, etc. etc. It was quite large and was a beautiful day, so it was a worthwhile trip. Add that to the list of places my visitors should visit.

Sunday I had my conference call in the morning, going fully interactive with Microsoft's application sharing and Skype for audio. Pretty neat how these tools are all available now. Anyone need remote technical support from Justin? Just let me know! Afterwards, Paul and the gang won some standing room tickets for the show The Putnam County's 25th Annual Spelling Bee, so he called me and I had to rush down to get there in time for the afternoon's matinee. The show was all about a spelling bee (go figure!) and was very very funny. Just imagine an elementary school spelling bee and the kinds of kids that would be in it and you have the show's cast. You've got the fat science nerd who thinks he knows everything, you've got the Eagle Scout who wins at everything he does and is the runner up, you have the Chinese girl who acts robotic, you have the liberal, politically driven girl who's fathers (yes, plural ;o) will only accept winning, you have the social outkast who makes his own clothes and frequentlly embarrases himself, and you have the good poor girl who's parents couldn't make it to the show. It was very well done and very very funny. I highly recommend the $25 standing room only tickets!

This week has been busy with the special project and all, but I found time on Wednesday to go to Central Park for one of their Summer Concert events - free performances on the Great Lawn. This week they had the New York Philanthropic orchestra, which was amazing. Thousands and thousands of people were camped out on the ground with their wine and blankets, listening to classical music. Now, I'm not a huge classical music buff, I don't really know that much about it. But this is the second live performance I've attended in recent history and I am very much inspired and put into a sort of trance by it when it's live. It really is fabulous stuff, I just wish I knew a thing or two about....

Anyway, the weekend is starting. I've got to do stuff around the apartmento tonight and then Sunday I'm going to a wedding in Jersey with Joclyn. Ahhh....Jersey. I hope it doesn't rain on us :-/ !

J. Riley.