My Co-Workers

It was recently Mark's 24th birthday (in chair), so some of us took the opportunity to sing and celebrate. For the first time ever, I feel old at work. With one exception, I'm over 5 years older than everyone in this picture, which is pretty representative of the general GMI employee base. 

Mary's Dairy

They say you can find anything in New York...I guess this proves true, as Mary has found a creamery named after herself! 

Charmed

My sister gave me a cell phone charm for my birthday, and this was the first time I had ever heard of such a thing. I didn't realize what a craze these are until I visited Chinatown! The number of charms displayed in store windows was dazzling. 

China Town

After watching part of the marathon, Mary took me to Chinatown. For some reason I was expecting it to befilled with tourists, but it didn't seem to be. We were some of the only non-Asian people there. After walking through crowds of people and street vendors, and receiving several offers for designer purses, we slipped into a restaurant for lunch. It sure seemed like an authentic experience! 

NY Marathon

The outside of Mary's apartment consists of the 2 windows above the "Nails by Dina" shop. It's really neat that the marathon goes right past it, and we were awakened that day by the sounds of audience members cheering on the wheelchair participants. However, since access to the rest of the city is on the other side of the street, we had to be sure we got ready and crossed before the crowds came through. 

Interesting Find on Our Pilchuk Hike

This is some sort of mushroom we saw on our hike. No idea what type it is, but it certainly looks interesting! 

More fog...

This pic was actually taken on our Mount Pilchuk hike (looking down), but it's pretty representative of our weather over the past few days. The fog is supposed to continue throughThanksgiving, and a stagnant air advisory has been announced. 

Hike Into the Abyss

The last hike we've done this season was Mount Pilchuk. Anup went with us as well, but it unfortunately was not a particularly rewarding hike. When we started, skies were a little overcast. When we were about halfway up the mountain it started to rain. and then the last part of the hike was completely in the coulds. We could barely see anything! At the top there was a little shack (thank goodness) that we could spend a few minutes to get out of the wet, cold outdoors. It was still cold in the shack, but not as cold as outside! As you can see in this picture, we totally missed the supposedly spectacular view at the top because we were entirely cloud-covered. 

Top 7

I’ve been tasked with listing 7 songs I am “into” right now. That’s actually a tough task for me because most of the music I listen to is on the radio while I’m driving to/from work, and of course the DJs almost never report the name of the song or the artist. So, here’s my best shot:
1. Barber’s Adagio for Strings. Caught the second half of this the other day - it still gives me the chills! When I listen to something like this I am truly amazed at the power of music, and it reminds me of an org I sometimes donate to that specializes in music therapy.
2. Kanye West’s Gold Digger. Love the beat and background wails in this song. I didn’t realize until recently that it’s based on a Ray Charles song. Good stuff.
3. A Gorillaz song I don’t know the name of…
4. Don’t Cha by the Pussycat Dolls. This would be a really fun song to karaoke.
5. Pretty much anything by Audioslave
6. Beck’s latest. Again, don’t know the name, but it has a really catchy beat and psychedelic video. “Na, na..Na na na na na, na.”
7. Hunted by a Freak by Mogwai. My co-worker Mark sent this to me. I didn’t like it at first, but I never should have judged this song based on what I heard coming out of my crappy laptop speakers. I flew from Seattle to Newark on Saturday and my MP3 player died after about 15 minutes into the flight. I didn’t have any music on my computer other than this song, so I decided to give it another shot. Glad I did…I listened to it on repeat for as long as my computer had battery life.