Top 5's of 2008

As you know every year about this time of the year all the newspapers and TV shows start running out of real news and put together their "Best of . . " lists, so in a moment of inspiration, or utter lack of real events or time to put together a new post I've decided to come up with my Top 5's of the year. It seems like the thing to do, since I am living in such a media savvy little town. Here goes, enjoy!

The Top 5 places I visited this year!

Battery Park: The tip of Manhattan Island where after a long walk from my home at 97th street I ended up in the sunshine looking out at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. This walk reminded me of what a strange and HUGE city I live in, but how quiet and peaceful it can really be. Oh yea, there was a crazy guy just down the boardwalk kicking cans into a man hole.

The Middle of the Street on St. Patrick's day: There we were, walking down the street with thousands of other people that we didn't know, and they were so happy that we were there. It was cold, but the sun was out. There were drums (which sound really cool in the middle of huge buildings), flags, and people waring kilts. How can you go wrong?

Under the George Washington Bridge: Molly wanted to rent a car to get out and see the Fall colors. I was really against the whole idea. Needless to say she won and we proceeded to get lost in northeast New Jersey trying to find some town that someone told her about. I was cranky, so she took me to a park she knew off under the GW bridge. They had a hot dog stand and made hot cider. I was happy again. That's the Hudson river and the Bronx in the background.

Beth Ann's Wedding: My cousin Beth got remarried this past June in Madison WI. and she (foolishly) invited my whole family out. I was able to see a lot of family members that I normally never see and got to hang out with my little cousins. We had so much fun playing baseball, running around the house, and just being with everyone, for just one weekend.

Steamboat: Winter Carnival, family, friends, the High School Marching Band! Can it get any better?

UCD Reunion ( 11.1.2007 - 11.4.2007 )

(Molly Post)

The first weekend of November brought Team Fortescue back together for our UCD Reunion. Jess came in on Thursday morning straight from a business trip in San Francisco. She worked from home for the day while Cody and I worked. Megan's flight arrived around 7 PM, so we figured we would have a nice dinner and go out in our neighborhood by 9. However, Megan ran into some problems. Jet Blue lost not only her bag, but all of the passenger's bags who got off in New York and didn't continue onto to Richmond. It could only happen to Megan...

She got to our apartment around 9 PM, after yelling at every Jet Blue employee at JFK. We had a quick bite to eat and headed out to Kinsale Tavern to help Megan forget about her baggage troubles. Fortunately, it gave Cody time to close the store and join us. Aren't we lovely?

For this year's reunion, we had a few additions to Team Fortescue: Amber, Tim, and Charles. The three of them ended up hanging out with us for the entire weekend, and we had a blast. We hung out at Kinsale for hours catching up and joking around.

Friday, Cody and I took the day off work to hang out with Jess and Megan. However, both Jess and I had a good amount of work to do (so much for vacation days...). Megan spent a good portion of the day on the phone with Jet Blue trying to track down her bag. In between losing her temper, she ended up making friends with the baggage claim employees in New York and Chicago (where she was coming from).

James arrived around 7, and he and Brian came over for a family-style dinner at our apartment. We were very excited to see James!

We enjoyed a lovely dinner with fruit salad, Indian-style chicken, and rice.


After dinner, we headed out to Heidelberg for some boots. We also went to a local bar for some dancing. I should mention that we are not the best dancers...between Megan hatching, all of us doing the "Terry dance", and a lot of arm waving, we probably looked like idiots. However, I know we had more fun than everyone else in the bar that was trying to look cool! :)

Saturday, we had to take Megan shopping for clothes (her bag still had not shown up). We also made the long trip downtown for some great pizza at Lombardi's. By about 5, we started getting ready for the dinner. It was Megan's birthday on Sunday, so Brian and James picked up a cake for Megan and we surprised her with before leaving for dinner. She was very surprised and even though we were all stuffed from lunch, we managed to eat a piece. At 7, we made our way downtown to the reunion via the subway. James and Brian always find a way to entertain themselves...

The dinner was wonderful - UCD again paid for a great dinner at Rose O'Grady's. In between stuffing our faces with the amazing food, we managed to get a picture with Enda, the study abroad manager.

Keeping with tradition, we went to the bar in the basement of Rose O'Grady's after the dinner for some traditional Irish Music. However, this year it was incredibly crowded! Megan was still trying to track down her luggage, and actually got on the phone with JFK while we were waiting for Cody, Amber, Tim, and Charles to arrive.

From dinner, we headed downtown to a bar for dancing. However, the place was too "cool" for our style of dancing, so we headed to Charles' apartment in Soho for some music and dancing.

Sunday morning, everyone came to our apartment for a big breakfast. Afterwards, James and Megan had to leave to catch trains/planes. While I did laundry and packed for my trip to LA the next day, Cody, Brian, and Jess went to Central Park to throw a football around. Jess wasn't so great at football...

Overall, it was a great weekend and it was very sad when it ended. Can't wait for next year!!

ps. Jet Blue still has not found Megan's bag...

Random Photos . . . . We are way too lazy to update right now!

As most of you have figured out, we are way behind in updating our blog. So in order to calm the angry masses of viewers, here are some very random photos that have been siting around with no home.

Some stairs in Central Park. You can walk up them! You can walk down them! They are quite useful.

This is the corner where my store is. Just past that fine little tree on the right. If you look up the street on the left you can see the strange castle thing that was built in the 1800's. Not sure what it protected.

Our grocery store. It may be the worst place I have ever had to shop.

That's me! In my closet. We don't have a lot of space so we have clothes that go up the walls and hang on the doors. It's like living in a college dorm room all over again. Just Molly doesn't smell as bad.

I realize that this is a lame excuse for a blog post, and it truly amounts to a few useless shots, but it does show some of the truly mundane things about my fine city life. I suppose that's what this whole thing is about anyways.