lemme do the usual "omg i haven't posted since [x] date." hey, at least i've actually been out of town and shit so i've got a good reason.

me & laynie took up dad's offer of free AA tickets and chose to go to NYC. 4 night stay, cost us a grand. which basically means we ain't doin that every other month.

we had a good time, and it was pretty successful for our first real vacation together. we had to do our best to avoid burnout, cuz all the walking and the godawful heat really exhausted us, so i had to kinda push to make sure we were out enjoying our time there as much as possible. it's almost impossible to leave a place like new york and not feel like there was more you could have done, but we achieved plenty.

we didn't really wanna be all touristy, but it kinda ended up that way. you can check my photo page linked to the right for all the details, basically so i don't have to go into all the details about everything we did everyday, heh.

some tidbits about NYC --

i had looked forward to hittin up the nintendo world store, but it was kind of a letdown. the gamecube section isn't all that impressive, and they obviously care more about showing off the DS than anything. i've always kinda found the DS to have a really sharp learning curve, so it's not exactly fun to pick one up and fuck around with it. i got a $6 beanie as a souvenir, and deemed it as a bit overhyped.

another letdown... central park. i'm sorry, but central park's kind of just a shithole of a park. i think it's just overhyped cuz NY is basically nothing but buildings, so any open space is a big deal. it looks alright from overheard cuz it's encouraging that the city has at least *some* greenery, but walking through the park just ain't that impressive. washington square park and battery park were also kinda letdowns.

i thought it was kinda fun to see just how rampant iPods are in NYC. i couldn't believe how many we saw on the streets and subway. it's at least encouraging how quickly mp3 players have been adopted in one of the largest urban areas of the world. they even had little ads on the subways telling people to mind their headphone cord since they're giving away that they have a valuable little gadget on them. you couldn't swing a dead cat without seeing iPod ads all over the place.

it was cool to see that each neighborhood/area of manhattan actually had differences in things like the people and buildings. it's strange to think that just a mile away the streets are just absolutely packed (think midtown) whereas there's plenty of open air on the southern tip near battery park.

continuing with the high-tech theme, it was sweet to see all the NYU kids in one of the 10,000 starbucks (we went to this one!) they have. apple notebooks everywhere. even people meditating and shit, we were giggling.

check out my photos link to the right to get a sense of what we did.

time to hit the gym...

--j