Because you love photos…

These are from a really great night – in fact, quite possibly my best night in NYC so far. I have a saying that in my life, just about everything good comes from sailing, and even in the concrete jungle of New York this has managed to hold true. I applied for a sailing instructor position at the Manhattan Sailing School, and the interview involved large amounts of alcohol and a lot of talking about sailing in the Caribbean. The school is really a money machine, having a monopoly on sailing that can be reached using only the NYC subway. This is huge for a lot of people who despise buses, and the fact that they will pay $400 for two 8 hour days of sailing shows it. If you want to make money sailing, Manhattan is the place to do it…as long as you keep the bar tabs under control.
The position is great – show up on Saturdays and Sundays, take people for a sail, teach them only if they want to be taught, making $20 an hour doing by far my favorite activity. The camaraderie within the sailing community is exceptional, too. Honestly, it’s where I belong – and I am exceptionally excited to have found a little niche of wind and water in this terrifying city of steam radiators and concrete.
But really, I know you just want photos. So..here!

Well, I’m adjusting to life here. I still owe you a photo filled post, no, two photo filled posts, one of where I work, and one of where I live right now. And by the time I do that, I’ll likely be on the hook for another, where I live *then* , because yeah, Brian the magical traveling NY gypsy is not ready to be staying in one place.

Highlights so far!!

Sunday-night happy hours
Shopping at Marshall’s post-Christmas
Managing to have, so far, not eaten dinner at a restaurant or have food delivered, (besides pizza, twice)
All the awesome dinners I have cooked, and grocery shopping experience
A very strange 3 days where the girl, who’s bedroom I am subletting, was here and sleeping on the couch
Manhattan sailing club
Thursday night happy hours
Pizza Friday night board games. (I learned here that at work, the days of the week are Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Pizza Friday)
Lazy Saturday’s trip to the Bronx, mission to fix the stove in my apartment
Sunday night extended happy hour
Realizing I need a new home in about 7 days. Damnit!
Terrible Subway disaster
Snow!
Oh yeah, and I switched to Mozilla Firefox

Yes, yes. I realize how disappointing a list like this is without any details. And details I shall add. But not now, I need to eat. And between the “publish” button and the “save for later” button, I’m going to submit to instant gratification and publish this list-in-place of a blog.

Who leaves Times Square, 11 hours before midnight on New Year’s Eve? This guy.

Yes, you read the title correctly. For my new year celebration, I took subway, bus, and automobile to travel from the heart of NYC to the lovely rural village of Douglassville, Pennsylvania.

Here you will find the home of Mr. L, my scout leader from days long gone. Year after year I find myself celebrating the period resetting of the MONTH column here. Sometimes there is home-brewed Absynthe and straight liquor, always good beer, sometimes cheap beer, usually unhealthy snack foods all night but *always* a great breakfast served up for us the next morning.
The real reason I go though, is to keep up the tradition with my friends. Few..no…none of us live within an hour of here anymore. And year after year, the number who come dwindle, to I think an all-time low of 6 this year. The “core”, you could call it. Now, I don’t have a problem with this, really. These guys are awesome, and have been in my life for a long time. But on the other hand, we’ve always had the small gathering on Black Friday, and NYE was the real party. So, for next year, I think we need to step it up. Chris is pretty busy, being a Dad and all, maybe someone else should host. A change of locale, perhaps, but we need to start winning over those who have been bailing out, or else the tradition will die. Stagnation for eternity is not an option.

Also, I don’t even use twitter, but I found their error-message image entertaining. The little birdies can’t handle the whale!  They just can’t do it!!!