Thanksgiving in NYC

Hi! I know it's been a while since I've updated, but that's because Nick and I are in New York right now celebrating Thanksgiving with his brother and his wife, Jason and Anna. We arrived Saturday afternoon, after a 5 hour flight on JetBlue. I had never flown with that airline, but I enjoyed the personal TV's and the huge number of channels that they had available. Unfortunately, I was so tired, that I basically slept for the first two hours while listening to HGTV. I think I randomly woke up hearing things about concrete and bricks...it was strange.

That night was probably the most eventful for Nick and Jason. You see, Jason and Anna's friend was celebrating his birthday in the city. So we went to meet up with him and his posse after having dinner. We crowded around this one table at a bar, and after a few beers, some of his friends decided to go home. The group shrank to just the five of us, so we went around trying to find another bar. We settled at a wine bar and sat and talked and their friend realized that the last train to Jersey would be leaving at 1:30. Since he wasn't going to make that, he said that he would need to wait for the first train which departs at 5:30 (or something like that). All of us were tired, but Jason didn't want to abandon his friend, so he said that he would stay up with him, and Nick joined in as well. Anna and I went back to her place so that we could get some sleep.

I tried to stay up until Nick and Jason got home, but I was just too tired. Since Nick and I are sleeping in the living room on the sleeper-sofa, I woke up when they returned home at 6:00 in the morning. They were very tired and slept in the next day, for obvious reasons. I'm not sure what they did during that time, but if Nick is up for it, I'll have him describe the events in a later blog post.

The next day, Nick, Jason, and I went to the Brooklyn area to go to the Jacque Torres chocolate store where I bought a box of chocolates and a cup of hot chocolate. Since we were there, and since the Brooklyn bridge was nearby, we decided to walk across most of the bridge. It took a while to find our way up there, but we made it. It was cold, but the sight of the city was amazing from the bridge. We decided to take a picture on the bridge, but the only one that came out relatively well was the one below:

After our bridge walk, we walked around the beautiful Brooklyn Heights area. I was joking with Nick that if we ever make enough money to afford a second house, we should buy one there, but there's no way that that'll happen anytime in the near future. Later, we met up with Anna and watched "Pride & Prejudice." And then we went home to get ready to start our work week in New York.

We woke up early to the sound of the doorbell...I guess Jason and Anna were expecting a repairman to fix the floor around the vanity of the bathroom. However, neither of them were expecting him to show up at 8:00 in the morning, so that took us all by surprise. Anyway, we got ready as quickly as we could and walked to the subway station...rode it for 25 minutes...and then found ourselves at the corner of the block that Google's office was on. So it was a great commute for us.

The office was bigger than we expected. Nick and I thought that they occupied three floors of the building, but I guess they had just recently acquired two more floors, and had moved people around. So our office was on one of the original floors, and is actually much better than our office. We shared our own office with a window view of the next building. It is a big improvement over our cubicles at Santa Monica.

We had dinner with Eileen at a nearby Japanese restaurant, and that was a lot of fun. The restaurant, Hakata Grill, offered a really great prix fixe menu for $25, which consisted of 5 courses. I wasn't that hungry, so I ordered an entree instead, and then realized that for $6 more, I could have had 4 more courses...but that would have been too much food, so I'm happy with what I ordered.

Thanksgiving day was hectic. Jason and Anna spent the morning and afternoon cooking everything. All I had to do was make a pumpkin pie, which I did. But after I was done, I quickly got out of their way. Their friend, Flora, arrived at 4:00 and then dinner started. First was the cheese and spread platter, followed by potato and leek soup. And then a break, and then the main course: roasted turkey, cornbread stuffing and sourdough stuffing (yes, there were two stuffings), brussel sprouts, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and cranberry sauce. And then another break. Around 9:00, Anna's mom and Flora's mom showed up with some guests, and we had dessert while they were there. And then we had a break, and then we slept.

On Friday, Nick and I thought it would be good to go shopping...so we headed to the 30's and found ourselves right outside of Macy's. It was incredibly busy on the streets around the store. We then headed to Times Square to go to the Virgin megastore where I bought a PSP game, and two X-mas CD's: The Barenaked Ladies holiday CD and the Hampsterdance x-mas single. Nick joked that we should have a holiday party solely so we can play that single over and over again.

Later that night, we met up with Eileen, Jason, and Anna for dinner. Afterwards we went to a nearby irish bar where Susan met us. It was a lot of fun just sitting around talking about random things ranging from Susan's auditions and how she seems to get roles in horror films to the number of bars that Eileen, Jason, and Anna have been to. We went home late, woke up early the next day to get on the plane to LA.

It's been a few days since our return, but it's nice to be home. Kitty is still fiesty as ever, but her cuteness makes up for it.

And that's the end of this entry. I promise, I'll stop with the really long entries since no one ever finishes them. Hope all of you had a great Thanksgiving weekend!

Jerry and Nick

A new car!

Hi! So, this is probably the shortest interval between blog entries, but I couldn't wait to share the news.

Anyway, Nick's lease on his current car ends this month, and since we'll be in New York next weekend, and are returning the following weekend, we realized that the only free days we would have to test drive some cars would be this weekend, or the last sunday of the month. We didn't want to push our decision to the last moment, so we looked for cars this weekend. The short list of cars were: the BMW 325, Infinity G35 and the Honda Accord Hybrid. Nick actually test drove the Accord Hybrid a couple of weeks ago, but hadn't tested the other two.

So we went to the local BMW dealer only to find ourselves waiting for a salesperson. After about 15 minutes, a salesperson was forced upon us by the manager (or some other important looking person)...the salesperson didn't seem interested in helping us at all. In fact, we were thinking of leaving the dealership 'cuz of the wait, and in retrospect, we probably should have since the salesperson told us that the dealership had no 325's available. So we left and walked next door to the Infinity dealership only to find out that they didn't have any G35's in stock. This left us with the Accord Hybrid (which we initially preferred among the short listed cars), so we went back to the dealership where we test drove the car. We asked for the salesperson who helped us during the test drive, but was told that he no longer worked there...it was sad, but another salesperson showed us the car.

Unfortunately, the 2006 Accord Hybrid isn't available until the end of December, which would be a little too long to wait considering that Nick has to return his current car at the end of this month. The dealership only had a couple of 2005 Hybrid availables, so we sat in the only one with the Navigation system and tinkered with it for a while. We were also informed that the car has a voice recognition program which can be used to change stations, adjust the temperature, and control some of the Nav system functions. Unfortunately, it didn't do too well with some of Nick's commands, but that wasn't too detrimental to the overall appeal of the car.

We decided to get it, although I didn't like the color of the only car that met our specifications (it was some metallic silver color). I wanted blue, of course, and Nick simply wanted a darker color. We were told that there were only four colors available for the hybrid: white, silver, some light gold color (I think), and graphite, which is a dark gray...and so we chose the graphite. This meant that they would have to get the car form another dealership, but that was fine, we could wait a couple of hours. We went home and when it was time, I drove Nick back to the dealership so he could drive home with the new car. But before he was able to leave, the salesperson showed him how to use the Nav system and also took the following picture of Nick and the new car:

And I guess he put this picture onto a calendar, so now we have a 2005 calendar with this photo on it.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the car is equipped with XM satellite radio, which we've been playing around with for a while. Actually, that reminds me that Nick and I wanted to go to the XM website and see what the current channel listing is. So that's what I'm going to do now. Hope everything is well with y'all!

Jerry Liu

a choir flashback

So this entry is for those who were in the Eckstein choir. I just finished watching the last episode of Alias, and guess what song they played at the end? No, it wasn't "Like an Eagle" or "Song for a Russian Child." They played "The Water is Wide!" I'm not sure how popular this song is, but this is the first time I've heard it outside of choir, so it was a pleasant surprise. Although, I seriously don't know the words except for the first line.

"the water is wide, I cannot get o'er.
And nor have I, the wings to fly"

I think those are the words, but I could be wrong. Aaah...flashbacks to middle school...how joyous!

And that was all I wanted to say.

Jerry Liu

Guess who is about to celebrate a birthday?

Our turkey! Yes, the turkey in our freezer is about to turn one year old. We got the turkey last year because we spent enough money at the grocery store to qualify for the free turkey. We didn't roast it then because we went to Joyce's to celebrate the holiday with her and her family...and then we came home to a still frozen turkey. We kept contemplating cooking it, but were too lazy to prepare it (i.e., defrosting the turkey for several days, brining the turkey, and then roasting it). So it just kept sitting in our freezer taking up a lot of space...we would place everything else on top of it, around it, behind it...but we never actually got rid of it. And we still haven't done anything with it, and by now, I'm sure that it isn't safe to eat it so we have no reason to keep it, yet Nick doesn't like throwing it away. After we get back from New York, we'll sing happy birthday to it, and then dump it down the trash chute.

Seeing all of the USC-ers was great, and we really wish we could get together more often. Maybe once the semester ends, we can find a time to get together for a holiday party.

And that's all I had to say. Have a great week everyone!

Jerry Liu