NY Mini

Last weekend was the annual NY mini, which meant volleyball in the sun and downing Gatorade with dumplings. Girls played regular indoor rules. Guys play this crazy 9-men set up, five blockers, three back row and one setter. Anything goes, I mean ANYTHING- you can hit, spike, dump, hook, slap, throw...CRAZYNESS!!!
It was my first time playing in this tournament and it was awesome (after my headache from the heat went away). Our team played well considering it was the first time the seven "Stealth Assassins" played together. We got creamed by the "amazon" team! But hey, so did everyone else. Man, I wish I were 6 feet tall! I still think I got stiffed as an embryo, I should have gotten the tall genes!

Montreal

Here some pictures I took when I was in Montreal for a conference. Conference was fun, but I didn't have a whole lot of time to walk around before flying back for a crazy volleyball weekend.

Texting girl and stranger

Coming home

I really should be sleeping now instead of posting these pictures of clouds (of all things!)
I took these during my return trip from Montreal.
In the air-

On the way down-

Landed-

Queensboro

I definitely have a borough bias. But given that I live SO close to the Queensboro bridge, I finally decided to turn right instead of turn left when I "went running" in the morning. I even went more than half way to Queens. I really wanted to take a picture of the sun shinining behind the tram crossing the East River, but I think I would need to park myself on that walkway for a lot longer to capture that money shot.

Blast from the past

Given my introduction below, I thought it would be appropriate to post pictures of my latest adventure around the city. My friend A and I, along with 300+ subway fanatics, got up on Sunday morning and took a ride on a super old train from midtown to Coney Island.
Here are a few pictures:

I will post more pictures of our train ride on subwaytourists.blogspot.com. It's a new blog that A and I are starting to document our adventures as subway tourists around the city. It should be interesting to see how that blog develops. I envision it being kind of schizo, since you have A who knows all the bells and whistles of a particular train model, and you have me, who only wants to know if those bells and whistles come in a different color/sound/shape/etc. What can I say, I am rather simple :)

Ok, it's now 2:30, how quickly do you think I can pick out the outfits for the next 3 days...

Inspiration

It's 1:30 in the morning, WAY past my bed time. My only excuse is that I don't have to be in the office in the morning because I am flying out to Montreal, but I am not even packed!!! Well, I sort of started last night when I decided on the dress I was going to bring (I am such a girl sometime!!!), but have not made any progress since then... well, that's not entirely true... I picked out the shoes to go with the dress! (Darn it, there is the girl in me AGAIN!)

Truth is, I was distracted. Being a planner, I had a schedule in mind. But that all went out the window when once again I realized how small the world truly is!

JY and I went to a firm event out on Long Island. On the way there, we chatted about older friends and characters from our years at Scarsdale High. Random names came up with associated random news. JY informed me that M.E. was blogging about his trip crossing the country, as part of his self-discovery trip. http://michaelerbsen.blogspot.com/ I made a mental note to look him up on facebook and check out his blog when i get home and perhaps add him to my google reader. (Note to self: I really need to get internet at home and forget about this being zen at home bit, i HATE seeing that have 1000+ unread items when i open my google reader! It really adds a lot of stress to my relatively stress-less existence)

Anyway, after the event, I stopped by the office to pick up my laptop for my trip. Got home, decided to whip out the laptop to check the weather and the dress code of the conference. Of course, being a secret nerd, i cannot NOT check my email when i turn on the laptop. And what do you know! On the top, in my inbox was an email from facebook informing me that M.E. has just added me as a friend. Yipeee! .....WOH!!!

So I added him. Quickly sent him an email telling him this weird deja vu moment. Well, that's when I got distracted.

I decided to check out his blog. I sat on my bed and read it cover to cover. What an incredible blog! Such an inspiration. His writing seems so effortless and HILARIOUS, making my blog seem silly and inconsequential. OH well, I've learned long ago that I am NOT even close to being the best (Thank you MIT!).

I totally understand what he went through about turning 30. I remember how I totally freaked out before my birthday, only to to wake up being 30 and loving the fact that I am no longer in my 20s. Weird.

So after reading his inspiring blog, it made ME want to post another entry... so here I am, less than 10 hours from departure, still only have a dress and a pair of shoes packed...

WOH, i think this is BY far the longest entry, if not the longest, definitely the wordiest! And no pictures either, not even crappy ones!

So this entry is really turning out to be the introduction for my next entry, which is to appear on top... aiyaya, somehow I always seem to have more than one reason to laugh at myself.