Lucky Day
So, it turns out that yesterday was actually a pretty lucky day for me. I was offered a position as a full-time senior kindergarten teacher at my school next year. Yay! It’s not in writing yet, but I’m hoping it won’t take long for them to write up a new contract and get everything completely official. One of the current SK teachers has her Montessori training but decided to go back to school to get her B.Ed. She just found out that she was accepted into at least one of the schools she applied for. That left an opening, which I asked the administration to consider me for and here we are now. :) I think this will be a very good thing for me.
I’m in a bad mood right now from staying home all day. I don’t know why it happens, but if I stay home for an entire day without going anywhere, it’s pretty much guaranteed that I will be in a crappy mood by the evening.
I haven’t updated in forever, although I’ve meant to. I’ve been reading a lot, but can’t really remember what the last books I posted about were. I think since then I’ve read at least the following:
Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O’Neill
Lucky by Alice Sebold
A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby
And in older news, I started an update about my trip to NYC, but I never got around to finishing it, so I guess I’ll just post it as is.
Back from our trip to NYC. As usual, I meant to update earlier, but it’s takes a couple of days to get back to a somewhat normal routine.
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Just before Christmas Jen heard from her oldest childhood friend, Jessica, who lives in New York City. The big news was that after nearly ten years Jessica was planning on leaving New York to follow her boyfriend out to Colorado. She invited us up for one last visit. Since we wanted to see Jess, and this might be our last chance for a while, we decided to go. The travel gods were on our side and we found plane tickets for $75 (round-trip!) each.
THURSDAY MARCH 15th
A week ago today we left. The flight was a little turbulent, but nothing unbearable. We got in to La Guardia around 9:30pm and after a short
cab ride were at Jess’ before 10:00pm. She called her favourite Chinese delivery place and we sat around eating lo mien and chatting for a
couple of hours before calling it a day.
FRIDAY MARCH 16th
Friday we got up, got ready, and headed into the city with Jessica. We hadn’t really planned a lot for this trip, so we figured we’d spend the
morning walking around Manhattan.
Unfortunately the weather was horrible. Freezing ice pellets whipped us in the face before falling down to the street turning into an icy slush. At about 2:00pm we headed over to Jessica’s theatre and together we all got on the subway to 58th and Madison to check out Tao, a restaurant that had come highly recommended to me by some of the parents at the school where I teach.
I’m so glad that we decided to go to the restaurant. The atmosphere was amazing and the food was delicious. It was a little pricey, but the prix fix lunch was a good deal. The three of us all ordered different appetizers, main dishes and desserts and then shared them amongst us. We then took some pictures of the giant Buddha and headed out.
Due to the weather, Jen and I decided to spend the afternoon indoors at The Met. Unfortunately, we didn’t realize how long we had spent at the restaurant and so by the time we got there we decided it wasn’t worth while to pay the admission fee because we’d only have a short time to look around before having to head back to Times Square to catch Prelude to a Kiss which Jessica had used her theatre connections to get us tickets for. So after a quick browse around the gift shop we got back onto the subway. We got to the theatre a little bit early, but were happy to relax in the lounge before the show started. Our tickets were comped, so we had to get in a line with two other couples who also had comped tickets, which means we got “best available” seating. “Best available” ended up being second row! The play was pretty good. Wash from Firefly was one of the leads, along with the dad from Fraser.
After the show we got back on the subway to Jessica’s. Now, we’re no experts when it comes to the New York City Subway system, and we were too tired to really be paying attention, so it took us about an hour to realize that maybe we weren’t quite where we were supposed to be. With the assistance of a very nice New Yorker, we figured out that we had taken the right train, only in the wrong direction, so instead of being in Queens, we were in Brooklyn. We got off the train, switched platforms, and got on the right train. Jen called Jessica along the way to let her know that we’d be back a little later than expected. She felt horrible for not having given us better directions, but really, it was our own fault. Eventually we made it back to the apartment, where Jessica had the biggest bottle of Yellow Tail I’ve ever seen waiting for us. We stayed up past 3:00am talking and drinking. It was a lot of fun, but not the kind of fun we’re really used to, so the next morning we were a little worse for wear.
SATURDAY MARCH 17th
Again, we got up and took the train into the city with Jes. Grabbed some bagels before heading over to MoMA to meet up with Dino, a guy Jen went to high school with who now manages The Modern, which is MoMA’s fancy restaurant. He was super-nice and after chatting for a bit he walked us back through the kitchen and right into MoMA! We decided not to try to take in the whole gallery, but stuck mainly to the impressionist and post-impressionist painters, which still took us a couple of hours. Before leaving we stopped back at The Modern to thank Dino and say goodbye.
From there we headed into SoHo to do some window shopping. We weren’t fully decided on where we wanted to go, so we ended up walking in the aforementioned crappy weather (although, today it was more just cold and slushy than spitting freezing ice pellets) until we ended up in SoHo. Looked in a couple of shops and realized that we should have just planned on coming here all along and skipped our afternoon stroll. Grabbed some pizza at Uno and then met up with Jessica before heading to The Catty Shack in Brooklyn to meet Lorraine and her friend Nicky.
We got to The Catty Shack fairly early and were practically the only ones there. Jes’ lesbian yoga ex-friends (long story, but basically they dumped her once they found out she was straight) had told her about it and she thought it would be a fun place for us to check out. With no one there it was a little awkward and strange but the company was good and there was a Ms. Pac-Man video game to keep us occupied. Eventually it started to fill up after a little while and started feeling less awkward and strange. Lorraine and Nicky arrived and not long after some girls who work at NYU came up and challenged Jen to a game of Ms. Pac-Man. Jen kicked their butts, but they were good sports and stuck around to chat, which I thought was pretty cool. Actually, once it had filled up a bit, I really liked the vibe of the place. The music was good and everyone there seemed really friendly and approachable. Friday had been a late night though, and I think we were all pretty tired, so we didn’t stay super-late. We decided to take a cab back to Jes’ and called it a night.
SUNDAY MARCH 18th
-Bagels in Queens
-Bodies exhibit
-South Street Seaport
-Pinnochio (Greek food) with Brian and Jeremy
Sunday night we crocheted. I know, not typically what one would go to New York City to do, but it’s something Jessica’s been into for a while, and Jen wanted to get some beginner lessons from her.
MONDAY MARCH 19th
After having some breakfast at a local diner ($3.25 for two eggs, six pieces of bacon, hash browns, toast, juice and coffee/tea!), and a walk over to the park to see the view of Manhattan from Queens, we headed back to the apartment for a little more crochet practice.
-Packed
-Left
Other than New York, I’ve spent a lot of time this past month in Pennsylvania. Got to hang out a whole bunch with my super-cute baby nephew and the rest of the family. But now that March Break and Easter are over I don’t think I’ll be going back until it’s time to get Jen packed up and moved here. I have a lot to get organized before then! Speaking of, if anyone who lives in Toronto hears of a great two bedroom place that’ll be available come July, please let me know! That’s it for now. Bye.