A hot, sticky, and demeaning week in New York. What fun!

Well. we made it to New York, our soon-to-be-home. Since we got here late Monday night, we've pretty much been walking - first (on Tuesday) through Brooklyn neighborhoods (we like Brooklyn but found it a bit quiet), then up to Queens to see our friend Scott in Astoria:


(We allowed ourselves a brief respite from walking to have dinner and drinks with Scott - who has excellent taste in bars.)


On Wednesday we checked out Astoria in the daytime, then headed Downtown to Chinatown ...


... for a VERY tasty dinner and stimulating conversation with our friend and former roommate Vinh. Still thinking about that beef dish - YUM!


Here's the view from our now-regular breakfast place down the street from our hostel, which is in Chelsea. One of the only nice things about Midtown is the cool views of the Empire State.

On Thursday, we talked with brokers in Astoria. They showed us crappy places. We decided maybe we want to live in Manhattan.


Today I had my NYU orientation, after which we had lunch at a sandwich place in the Village. Scrambling for a table in the over-crowded restaurant, we happened to get the table with a downtown Seattle map handpainted onto it. Weird!

The orientation was good - I like the departmental advisor and I think it's going to be a good year.

This afternoon we saw a broker in Manhattan, and saw the depressingly small places you can get for $1500 a month. Yes, a 10 x 10 room with a kitchenette.

Our feet our sore. We have sunburns. But we do like New York...

We come back to Seattle on Sunday.

*Sigh.*

flags and fun

As if there weren't enough celebrations happening already, we wanted to celebrate Chance's birthday - and mine too, since I'm going to be far away in New York by the time it comes - and our engagement, and it being summer ... so what better way to do that than play a giant game of Capture the Flag? I can't think of anything. We played in Ravenna Park near our house, where there is fun, tree-filled terrain.


Because we played by the Official Boy Scout Handbook Rules for Capture the Flag, we thought we should dress our teams appropriately for the activity. Chance's team got blue bandanas; mine got yellow. It poured rain on us, and we had SO much fun!



Here are our participants, from the left:
Michael, Karly, Chance, Gillia, Ben, Elyse, Kristin, Paul, Jeanette, Jenn, Kaela, Kyall, Candace, Lisa, Brook, Mark and me! We went home and chowed down on Ezell's Fried Chicken afterwards - mmmmmmm. What a fun day!!


The next day, a good friend of Chance's mom threw me a lovely bridal shower over on their side of the Sound in Gig Harbor. Here we are with our parents - from the left, my mom, Bizzie, me, Chance, Chance's mom Kris, and my dad Jon.


And here is Chance with his Grandma. So sweet! It was a lovely afternoon -- the boys took off and the girls played fun shower games and opened gifts. What a weekend!

hours of boredom / moments of panic

Well, HELLO!

I do still exist. I promise. I have just been ... as usual ... well, stressed. To prove it, here are pictures. I left out all the boring parts (i.e. 80-hour work weeks, deciding on wedding invitation paper, obsessively combing craigslist New York for apartments) and put in the good (non-stressful) moments. I hope you appreciate it.


I'm starting you out easy with a picture of cherries in Paul's garden. We've been spending lots of time out on the veranda enjoying the gorgeous sights and smells of the backyard ... it really is its own little paradise!


One distraction from blogging: here's Wendi shooting her second instructional chess DVD, which I then edited on nights and weekends. Yes, chess for second graders. Don't ask.



Kyall's birthday got a little out of hand here. Gillia and my sister-in-law Candace thought they was fly or something.


Then came Kristin Hollywood's fabulous Easter Egg Hunt. Quite the production. There were two teams, each with 66 eggs (hidden by the other team) to find. Team with the best time won.


We were nice and hid the eggs in NORMAL places.


They were mean and hid the eggs in EVIL places. Therefore we lost. That sucked. But we did eat a lot of good food!


Our next Easter-related celebration was a Jesus Christ Superstar party hosted by our friends Morgan and Amy. We went as Romans.


In May we celebrated my friend Jenn's birthday with a long night out - here we are with Gil at the B&O.


At the end of May, our roommate Jennifer told us if we all came to a barbeque she would eat a 4-lb. steak. We all thought that was funny because Jennifer herself doesn't weigh much more than 4 pounds. She did eat a big steak! We are sad that she left us and moved to Salt Lake City, but she and her fiance Scott are doing very well and we're happy for them.


Our next outing was to the Georgetown Music Festival to see one of our very favorite bands, the Supersuckers. We took our sisters Gillia and Elyse. Elyse is laughing at Chance in this picture. One of her favorite pastimes.


They just rock.


Georgetown is pretty cool, too. It's sort of early-20th-century industrial, with brick factories and planes flying over to land at Boeing field. It's still pretty sparsely populated, but the couple of blocks around this area are full of artsy types. There's a cool coffeeshop and a couple of bars. It was a lovely afternoon.


I wish I was doing this. (This is Ash, my boss Susan's cat.)


In June we walked in the UW graduation ceremony. It was the one day of the year that it rained ALL DAY. We were soaked, even though they distributed emergency ponchos and we had an umbrella. This picture is from our roommate Sune, who, being Danish, was fascinated by the spectacle of an American graduation, even in the pouring rain.


Here we are, after sitting for three hours, about to walk up and be greeted by the UW president and get our diploma folders (they don't give the three thousand undergrads their diplomas that day - thank god - or we'd be there all night!) You can see that our hats are sagging in the wet. I'm glad we did it, but I'll be honest - it was miserable.


Sune was very excited, though!



Just a couple of weekends ago, we went to Ellensburg for our annual Cousin Get Together, where we meet up with a our Greene cousins. Here's my cousin Noah and my niece Sonja.


Sonja had a very good time accusing the guys on the porch of something. We still aren't sure what exactly.


If you look in the reflection in the window, you can see me.



From the left, top row: Noah, Michael, Gillia, Chance, me, Kyall

Bottom row: Hannah, Karly, Lisa, Sonja, Auntie Jan, Erin, and Candace.


Finally, just this last weekend my Auntie Anne threw me a lovely bridal shower with the help of my mom. Here's Karly amusing the public (from the left: Gil, Auntie Anne, Karly, Kristin).



Opening presents is weird when you've registered. It's kind of like you know what you're getting, but it's still a surprise. (On the left is my Aunt Betty, on my right is roommate Kaela.)


Next week we're headed off to New York City to look for an apartment! When we finally move there at the end of August, this guy, Rosco, is coming with us. Isn't he cute?

Wish us luck apartment-hunting!

That's it for now. Lots of NYC pictures to follow ...