ellsworthlink.net

New York New York

If we can make it here, we can make it ANYWHERE, it’s up to us, New York, New York! Ba da da da da da…

Sorry to break out into song, but that’s just how this day has gone. After almost suffering a nervous breakdown this morning, which I tried to stop by listening to my ipod loudly, the details are finally seriously truly coming together.

The car was delivered to us on a flat bed on 8th Ave at 46th street. Matt braved the roads and drove the car up to its new home at 53rd and 8th, just one block from our new home. We are excited to have ended up with a parking garage so close to our apartment. That might not become its permanent home, but the Beetle is definitely there to stay for the foreseeable future!

Which leads me to our home. We have read through and signed the lease, all 50 pages of it, okay maybe only 20, but it did seem to go and on. Oh, and the lease itself looked to be from the 70s based on the font… We get keys to our apartment Friday morning and at 10am the movers come and use the elevator that we had to make an appointment for and our stuff gets moved in. Which is a huge relief since we only have the hotel room until Friday morning. We like to really bring things down to the wire. No leaving any breathing room, where’s the fun in that?

Matt’s adjusting to the excitement and long hours of his new job. Oh and did I mention he went to LA for the day earlier this week? Left Sunday night returned Monday night. He practically spent as much time in the air as he did in LA. I hope for his sanity this isn’t too regular a thing.

Deb’s working on adjusting to not having a husband. Well, at least only having him after 7 or 8pm at night and on weekends. She’s hoping not to have to make that a permanent adjustment. And moving into the apartment will provide her with things to take her mind off of all the time she is spending on her own. Specifically her TIVO, which she misses dearly. (I think I am going to get in trouble for that last one…)

Now that we have all of the dirty details dealt with we can move onto more important things like finally meeting up with friends, going to Ledyard, CT so Matt can finally see where I grew up, putting our name into the Wicked lottery so we can get $25 on same day tickets in the first two rows, ordering the couch, chair and entertainment center (yes, that last one’s new, but all of our stuff would fit so nicely in it), shopping at Tiffany’s, going to museums, strolling in the park, having everything we could possibly ever want in a few block radius from where we live, signing back up to get into movie screenings so we can see movies months before they come out to the public, having kitty litter delivered to our door for free, heck, having all of groceries delivered to our door if we want, going up to Maine (so Matt can have some really fresh fresh lobster), weekend trips home that aren’t spent feeling as though travelling was how we spent those weekends just to get there and back, driving 6 hours and getting to several big cities/states (Boston, DC, Philadelphia to name a few) and not just part way to LA, and, well, just being in the coolest city in the country.

We will now officially begin taking reservations for everyone to come and visit us. Holiday weekends are first come first served. We suspect Thanksgiving and New Years will be in high demand (or perhaps low demand depending on your temperament) due to our close proximity to the parade route and Times Square for the ball drop.

Continue reading...

No Email Alert When We Post Via Email

Matt was able to post a few entries by his phone, which is ultra cool, but sadly the email alert is not triggered when he posts from his phone.

So, don’t be surprised if you visit the blog because of an alert and end up seeing entries you haven’t read before!

Continue reading...

Geek Heaven

Assuming the last two blog entries showed up okay (and this one in its turn), then I’ve just posted three updates from my cell phone. Gotta love technology. I had spent a considerable amount of time tinkering around to get the blog to be able to accept entries via email. It is only a baby-step from there to post by sending an email from the Treo (new version in November!)…

The next thing to figure out is how to do a quick blog posting using a picture I took using the Treo. Shouldn’t be too hard (of course I’d probably never use it—but that isn’t the point).

Continue reading...

On the Road Again

I thought I left the West Coast to work in New York City? So what’s up with my being on a plane headed for the Pacific timezone again? At least I’m going to Southern California for a little variety rather than heading right back where we started from.

All that to say the job is going well. I’m very much enjoying the new (old?) job with Dow Jones Integrated Solutions. There are going to be a lot of similarities to what I was doing before at Dow Jones, but it looks like it will be different in all the right ways. I spent much of my first week getting up to speed, working on one particular pitch (for which I am now flying to help present; too bad I didn’t get the one also happening tomorrow—in Detroit!) and meeting with folks from other Dow Jones properties. It is exciting, but probably a bit busier than my first 8-years at Dow Jones and certainly busier than these last several months of transition.

I’m back in New York tomorrow evening. Can’t wait.

Continue reading...

Home Sweet Home

It is Sunday, September 26th and we just found out for sure we have a home here in New York City. We’d been waiting for our "credit" to get approved despite the fact we handily beat the 40x-47x formula (yearly income at least equal to 40 to 47 times monthly rent) they require as a proxy for risk. Ahhhhh, paperwork.

In any event, Debra and I just heard this morning that we’ve been approved. All we need to do is have a cashier’s check FedEx’d from our bank for the lease signing on Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. We’ll try to schedule our mover’s to drop the stuff at the apartment on Wednesday or Thursday just in time for a quick trip back to Michigan for a friend’s wedding.

Still don’t know when the car will show up. The later the better as far as I’m concerned.

We now (or will, rather) happily reside in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen/Theatre District. I prefer to think of it as more the Hell’s Kitchen area since I don’t want to concede living in a tourist area, but 10 yards from our living room window is the enormous Neil Simon Theatre sign (wonder what that will be like at night?), since we are literally right next door. Currently playing at the Neil Simon Theatre? Hairspray—a favorite of ours.

260 West 52nd Street #6k
New York, NY 10019

It’s a great doorman building (the building is called The Ellington, but I don’t know why—I think Deb looked it up once, thought) with a nice lobby and we get a lot of space for the money. We’re located right on the corner of 52nd Street and 8th Avenue. That puts us a very short walk to Central Park (jogging in the park!), the enormous Whole Foods at the new Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle, any subway line we’d ever want, my office, and least important of all: Times Square (yes, least important).

We’ll post some pictures once we have them…

Continue reading...

HAPPY 2nd ANNIVERSARY!

Today is our 2nd wedding anniversary. We don’t have big plans, but we will probably go out to dinner tonight!

Our present to each other is a couch and a nice chair, I can’t wait to order them!

Continue reading...

We’re Still Here

Matt and I are still hanging out in the hotel room in Times Square. We had a busy weekend apartment hunting and shopping. We saw one apartment, the first one actually, that we really like at W 52 and 8th. We liked it so much we actually put some money to hold it. But since I knew we would regret taking the first thing we saw we spent some more time looking around. Happily enough it looks like the first apartment is big and a good price so now we are just waiting on the credit check to go through. Fingers are crossed that all goes well and we hear on Wednesday or Thursday that the apartment is ours.

Matt’s first day back to the office was today, but I will let him tell everyone about that.

Apparently both Bush and Kerry are in the area this evening. Kerry is up a few streets north at the Hilton and Bush is somewhere around here too. It’s crazy to think that the President and the presidential candidate are both in the same town as me and I only know because of a brief news clip and some talk around the elevators. Apparently the police here are frantically searching for someone who poses a threat to both Bush and Kerry.

The cats are doing well. I think Nala really enjoys the big bed with the nice comforter. Tundra adores the view from the 17th floor. She definitely spends a majority of her time looking out the window. I think their bodies must still be on west coast time because they haven’t adjusted to the new eating schedule. As soon as we put food out they are ravenous and eat it all up really fast. I hope they adjust soon.

We will write more and post pictures about the apartment once it’s officially ours and we can actually take pictures. I am really looking forward to having my own stuff back. It’s only been about 5 days and hotel living is already getting old.

In particular I can’t wait to order the couch and chair we have been eyeing at Macy’s! Although we will be without a place to sit in the living room until we can get it ordered and delivered since the old couch was left in good hands with a friend in San Francisco.

Well, I am going to attempt the whole sleep thing…

Continue reading...

Safe and Sound In NYC

We arrived safe and sound and only a little cranky last night in NYC. The flight was pretty good. We were very lucky and got an extra seat to ourselves. Nala completely passed out under one of them, but Tundra was very uncomfortable. She meowed a lot and could not get to sleep. We spent most of the flight with her on one of our laps with our hand in the carrier.

They both seem fine this morning, eating well and sleeping well. Tundra definitely enjoys the view from the 17th floor!

I have to work today and Matt appears to have some great leads on apartments already. The weather doesn’t look so great, grey and should be rainy, but that’s something we should get used to now.

Continue reading...