Visitors and Celebrity Sightings!

One great thing about living in New York is that people tend to come visit you a little more than if you were living somewhere boring.  So Sara and I have definitely had our fair share of friends and family come to see us.  Some of our recent visitors...

Kristi, Shahla, and Candace came over Labor Day
Us at Coney Island

My good friend Erin
I can neither confirm or deny that this was taken at the NKOTBSB concert

The Mennings, some sweet friends from Round Rock, were in town and came by my office to have lunch with me

My sister Kristi, and her fiance Corbett, were just here last weekend (sorry I don't have a pic of him, but this is the ONLY picture we got all weekend!)

And let's be real, it just wouldn't be life with me without a few sweet celebrity sightings...

One was a little obscure.  In fact, those of you who even know this guy may not want to admit it for fear of showing your age.  But nonetheless...

This is Mike Bivins, or the "Biv" in Bel Biv Devoe.  You might think you don't know who that is, but trust me, you know the song that made them a one-hit-wonder..."Poison" (That girl is poisoooonnn...).  We just so happened to run into them at a hotel after their guest appearance at the aforementioned NKOTBSB concert.

I also saw Pete Wentz from Fall Out Boy over near our Chelsea office the other day, but it was raining and I had to get back to work, so I didn't get a pic.  But you know who I DID get a pic of??

This guy.

Oh yes, the extremely talented and ridiculously handsome Hugh Jackman is in town doing a show on Broadway.  Kristi, Corbett, and I just so happened to pass by his theater when he was arriving one night and taking pictures/signing autographs/etc. One of my favorite sightings to date.

You can be sure I will be spotting some more A-listers (and B and C and even D-listers) in the near future, so I will keep you posted.

What, Janell still has a blog??

I am not going to spend a bunch of time apologizing for being a sucky blogger.  Suffice it to say, I'm sorry, I am still alive and kicking, and I will try to do better. :-)

Sooooo, how do I sum up the last 5ish months for you?  It would be hard.  So many amazing and wonderful things are happening up here in NY and I certainly don't have the time or energy to tell you about all of them. So I'll give you the highlights.

I am coming up on my 9-month anniversary here in the city.  Since I last blogged, I have moved apartments (and boroughs, for that matter).  Sara and I are now proud residents of Brooklyn (Prospect Heights, to be more specific).  We love the new place, and it's SOOOO much more accessible to Manhattan, which is nice.  It cut my commute by more than half.  Sara wrote a great blog about the apartment, so rather than repeat everything she said, you should just read her post here.

I also just celebrated my 6-month anniversary at my job.  I have been so incredibly blessed with the people and the work I get to do there, and I am really looking forward to my future with this amazing company.

Sorry it's so blurry, but it's the only picture I have of the 3 of us

Shortly after my last blog, I went back to the great state of TX to see my family and attend my cousin April's wedding to my lifelong friend Clay (we went to kindergarten together!!).  It was a beautiful ceremony, of course, and really special for me because I got to see so much family and tons of friends from growing up as well.  So very happy for them, and thrilled to have Clay be a part of our family.  Some of my favorite memories from the trip...

My big sister, Alecia

Finally got to meet baby Eli! His mom, Rebecca is one of my oldest and dearest friends.

SOOOOO happy to see my sweet niece, Bella!

And, of course, this little man, my nephew, Cooper

It was definitely hard coming back home, but I have to say, fall in New York is absolutely breathtaking.  All around me, the trees are changing colors and losing their leaves, and there is this wonderful chill in the air that reminds me the holidays are just around the corner.  I took this picture the other day just down the street...

And best of all, I saw this the other day when I was walking past Rockefeller Center...

That's right, folks, the tree preparations are underway, which I am super pumped about. :-)  Holiday decorations are popping up all over the place, and I LOVE IT.

Ok, time to close for now, but I'll leave you with a story...

On Veterans' Day last Friday, I was walking down my street to the subway station.  All of the sudden, I hear some stomping and huffing and puffing happening behind me.  I turn around and there is a little guy, probably like 8 years old, wearing his backpack and clearly frustrated.  He is repeatedly letting out these huge sighs and literally stomping and shaking his fists.  My curiosity got the better of me, so I asked him what was wrong.  He very angrily said,

"THOSE IDIOTS!"
Before I could ask him who the idiots in question were, he says,
"You know where I go to school??" (I did not)
"ALLLLLL the way up there at PS 43!"
"And you know where I live??" (Also did not)
"Way down here at 1015 Washington Ave..." (His mom should probably have the "stranger danger" talk with him, come to think of it...)
"And THOSE IDIOTS did not tell me there was no school today!!"

This little guy had gotten up out of bed and walked all the way to school on a holiday.  Poor thing. I tried to help him see the bright side by reminding him that no school was most definitely a good thing.  He wasn't really having it.  He finally said,

"I guess you're right.  It is a nice day out."

Such wisdom.

When we got to his apartment building, he goes,

"Well, this is me. Catch ya later!"

Haha.  He totally made my day, and I hope he ended up enjoying his day off, however unexpected it may have been.

So here's to looking on the bright side.  Catch ya later! :-)

Running For The Hills

So, I randomly decided to read back through my first foray into blogging today.  For those of you who don't know, I chronicled my half-marathon training back in 2009 so that the world could laugh at me as I feebly attempted to be a "marathonist."  I had forgotten what an idiot I was for ever doing that in the first place, but I'm glad to have the blog to remind me (and hopefully deter me from ever doing anything like that ever again...haha).  Also, Sara is currently training for another one (without me, obviously), so I thought this would be a good time for me to encourage you to support/heckle/harass her if you feel so inclined.

I thought I would share the link for any of my new blog readers (or old ones who want to relive the torture all over again).  Rest assured, there are no running endeavors in my immediate future, so this is the closest you'll get. :-)

www.runningforthehills2009.blogspot.com

Happy Monday!

Christmas in June...and a Bunch of Other, Unrelated Things

Let me start by wishing everyone a happy June 25th!  What is so special about June 25th, you ask (or don't ask, if you've ever spent one with me)?  Well, my friends, June 25th means that we are exactly halfway to Christmas.

Yes, folks, I am one of "those" people.  I love Christmas, in a ridiculous, over the top, kind of way.  I can't explain it.  I feel like I am relatively normal in every other way (though some of you may beg to differ), but this is my one true quirk.  If you were to look at my iTunes, you would find over 3000 Christmas songs in my library.  When I worked at the children's home, my kiddos would play a guessing game called, "How Many Different Versions of {insert cheesy Christmas song here} does Miss Janell have on her iPod?" It would keep them entertained for hours.  :-)

Something that I have done for at least the past 4 or 5 years is that every June 25th, I throw a HUGE party for the kids in the gym.  I personally think it is one of the richest traditions we have (had, I guess :-(  ) there. Haha.  I would get on the internet and order a bunch of crazy Christmas-themed prizes (CD's, movies, shirts, etc) and things like "Snow in a Can" (which unfortunately cannot be bought in stores year round).  A bakery in town even made special Christmas cookies for the event.  We would go up in the attic and pull down all the Christmas decorations and turn the gym into a winter wonderland...keep in mind this is Texas in the summer, so it's usually anywhere from 90-110 degrees outside.  In fact, it was always hard to keep the canned snow from melting off the windows.

But anyway, it was always a lot of fun.  We would play games, watch Christmas movies (my kids almost always chose Elf), eat tons of Christmas goodies, drink hot chocolate, and at the end, I would always read the Christmas story from Luke 2.  Seriously one of my favorite days of the year.  I love that the kids would get into it (or at least pretend to) as much as I did.  That's the stuff I miss the most.  I am a little sad today knowing that there is no "Christmas in June" party being prepared for right now at TBCH.  I truly miss those kids and getting to pour my life into them through that ministry.

But before I get too sappy and depressing, I tried to find some pictures of this infamous party, but it appears I never took any, or they got lost in the shuffle of the move.  So, as a consolation prize, please enjoy this adorable picture of some of my kiddos at the TBCH Christmas program, circa 2009, I think.

And now, a few little nuggets from the past month...

I got to indulge my love of all things Broadway in late May/early June when I got to see two fantastic shows in one week.  I think I alluded to it in another blog, but Rachel got us rush tickets to see How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying when she was in town.  I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised, especially with Daniel Radcliffe.  Don't get me wrong, I don't want him to go out and record an album or anything, but it was obvious he trained really hard for this role, both vocally and...choreographically?  Is that a word?  Anyway, he's a good dancer.
The other show I saw was Memphis.  I went with my mom and dad while they were in town, and we had a blast.  Probably ranks in my top 3 shows I've seen, ever.  I totally get why they won the Tony for Best Musical last year.

I was super pumped when I scored some free tickets to the Black-Eyed Peas concert in Central Park for June 9th.  Alas, not so pumped when a freak storm hit the city and it got cancelled (only after Andrew and I stood out in the storm waiting on the official word).  But, we drowned our sorrows in some Shake Shack and now await the news on the reschedule.

We had our company picnic on Wednesday.  I am under strict orders not to reveal anything about it until our cohorts in San Francisco have theirs this Wednesday, but I will definitely be sharing about that soon, and bragging on my friend/co-worker/party-planner extraordinaire Jason for making it a pretty awesome night.

My 29th birthday was on Thursday.  It has been pretty much a whole week of celebrating (with still more to come tonight and tomorrow). I'm not a huge birthday person.  I just don't get really excited about them.  But I have amazing friends and family that insist on making me feel special, so who am I to deny them that? :-)
Tuesday, some of my friends took me out to Lombardi's in Nolita.  We ordered tons of pizza that I have now dubbed as the best in New York (at least until I find something better) and tried not to stare too closely at the table of huge, scary, Italian mafia guys sitting next to us.  However, they were clearly paying attention to us, because at the end of meal, our waiter told us that the bill had been taking care of by the lovely gentlemen to our left.  What exactly does it mean when the mob pays for your meal?  Am I indebted to them for life now?  Are they going to make me offer I can't refuse?  Will I wake up with a dead horse head in my bed tomorrow?  It all remains to be seen, but for now I am just happy for the free meal.
After Lombardi's, we went to my FAVORITE place in the city, Rice to Riches.  They have all these different flavors of rice pudding, which kind of sounds gross at first.  But it's awesome.  Andrew and I split the honey graham flavor with some homemade whipped cream on top.  Um, yes please.

My actual birthday (Thursday) was pretty chill.  I slept late (which was awesome because I was super tired from the company picnic) and then I worked until like 9:00.  Several of my very sweet co-workers offered to take me out after work, but we all knew that we really just wanted to go home and go to bed.  So we did.  I got a couple of nice surprises at work.  My sister Kristi and my best friend Shahla sent me an Edible Arrangement.  My co-workers and I tore that up.  SO good.

That empty tupperware container used to have some brownies in it from my sweet friend Kathleen, but I took care of those too.

And just when I thought my day couldn't get any sweeter (in the literal sense), as I'm walking past the elevators at the end of my lunch break, I hear a familiar voice.  It's Leticia, holding a box from...

full of...

She trekked all the way up to my midtown office to bring them to me!  So amazing.

I forgot to mention that my mom and dad, upon hearing my complaints that I could not find any chocolate almond bark here in NY, sent me this in the mail.

This probably doesn't seem like a big deal to you, but it was the BEST gift I could have gotten.  It is SO hard to make oreo/cream cheese balls without good almond bark.  And apparently it's trans fat free - so it's a healthy snack!  Haha.

So, needless to say, between all these yummy treats, lots of calls, texts, Facebook wall shout-outs, tweets, cards, and packages (and several lovely renditions of "Happy Birthday", both live and via voice message), I felt very loved.  This is my first birthday to be so far away from most of the family and friends I usually celebrate with, but it turned out to be out of the most amazing I've had (sorry this post is so superlative-heavy...it's been an exceptionally good month...haha).

And finally, something that happened just last night/this morning...

It's about 1:00 in the morning.  I'm sitting on the L train heading back home.  At this point in the night, the trains are still pretty crowded, but you have a pretty wide variety of folks onboard.  There is almost always at least one homeless person camped out taking up like half the bench (not cool, by the way, homeless people).  My car had a very loud and interesting guy on this particular night/morning.  Every 10-15 seconds or so, he would just scream.  Not words, just screams.  He was clearly getting irritated with all of us.  For what, I don't know.  I guess our very existence was annoying him.  Since I was sitting closest to him (bad call on my part), that fool starts trying to kick me.  And actually somewhat succeeded before I jumped out of the way.  This set off a whole chain of events, the first being that this guy sitting across from me jumped to my defense and starting screaming and swearing at the homeless guy.  There was some more things that happened over the course of the next few minutes, but the end of the story is that the homeless guy got punched in the face and passed back out on the bench.  I'm not sure how much of this was because he got punched and how much was because he was already pretty intoxicated to begin with.  Either way, I got on a different train.

See what fun you guys with cars are missing out on?  The joys of public transportation are boundless.

Ok, this is getting a little lengthy (see, at least when I go a month without posting, I make up for it!), so I will wrap up with one last thing.  Since you only have six more months to get your Christmas music ready (or like 3-4 months if you're me), I thought I would make some suggestions.  Here are my top 5 Christmas albums, in no particular order.

Mariah Carey - Merry Christmas

Nothing makes me happier than "All I Want For Christmas Is You."  And her version of "Joy To The World" is ridiculous.

Straight No Chaser - Holiday Spirits

These guys are an incredible, 10-member acapella group.  I saw them live for the first time last year and I can't wait to catch them again.  Favorite track on the album has got to be their live version of "The 12 Days of Christmas"

Sufjan Stevens - Songs for Christmas

This is a box set with tons of great songs...hard to even pick a favorite on this one, but I would probably go with "That Was The Worst Christmas Ever!" or "Come On! Let's Boogey to the Elf Dance!"

Point of Grace - A Christmas Story

These ladies have some sick harmonies.  Plus, this album always reminds me of TBCH because we sang "When Love Came Down" and "Not That Far From Bethlehem" with the kids' choirs. 

The Maybe This Christmas Series

I am counting this as one even though it's technically three.  These CD's really bring out the hipster in me.  Haha.  Where else could you find Christmas music by Death Cab, Ben Folds, Ron Sexsmith, Phantom Planet, Copeland, Barenaked Ladies, The Flaming Lips, and Pedro the Lion?  Doesn't get any better.

Wow, I hope you guys made it to the end. I'd hate for you to have missed out on the hipster Christmas music section.  :-)  

Much Love.

Blogger Stats

I just recently discovered a pretty interesting little feature on Blogger (Blogspot?? What is this thing called anyway?).  If you go to your dashboard, you can see several different statistics about your personal blog.  See below.

It tells you who is referring people to your site and what people are searching to find you.  

**FYI - I learned my lesson on clicking the links I didn't recognize.  Apparently, I am big hit with the porn-watching crowd and some of those links are NOT family-friendly. Yikes.

One of the coolest things is that it shows what countries your blog readers are in.

Obviously, most of you guys are in the U.S. and I know who is reading my blog in Poland (Hi James and Angela - love you guys!), but it is pretty incredible to think there are people reading my blog literally all over the world. Would love for you to comment and let me know how in the world you ever stumbled across it. :-)

So anyway, to my fellow bloggers, go check out your stats.  Might just surprise you.  :-)

Keep an eye out for my "real" blog to follow shortly.

More Celebrity Sightings!

Well, it's no secret that I run into a lot of celebrities.  I suppose it's just because we celebrities run in similar circles.  :-)  Haha, seriously, I think I am just super observant and I notice them more than other people.  In the last month or so, these are some of the celebrities I've seen.

John Larroquette

Most of you will remember him from his days on Night Court back in the 80's (early 90's? I don't know, too lazy to Google it right now).  He is currently starring in "How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" on Broadway, and having just seen it on Friday, I can say that he is truly fantastic in it.  But this was from like 3 or 4 weeks ago.  Actually, it was on May 5, because I was walking to the subway after a Cinco de Mayo Mexican dinner with some friends when I saw a bunch of people crowded around the How To Succeed theater.  I actually thought I was going to see Daniel Radcliffe when I got up there, but turns out it was just John Larroquette heading home after the performance.  Haha.  Still cool though.

Anjelah Johnson

It would be hard for me to describe how much I LOVE Anjelah Johnson.  She has been my favorite comedienne ever since her Bon Qui Qui days.  If you haven't seen that or her nail salon bit, you need to click the links and watch them immediately.  FYI, they are both clean, because not only is she hilarious, she's also a Christian.  In fact, in like 2 weeks, she is marrying one of my favorite Christian artists, Manwell from Group 1 Crew. Super excited for both of them!

Anyway, we had gotten tickets to see her show at the Gotham Comedy Club last Friday.  I was closing up the office downtown, so I was rushing to meet Sara, Leticia, and Andrew before the show.  Gotham just so happens to be right next to Doughnut Plant (which you'll remember from my previous post) and they were hanging out there until I got there.  When I walked up to Doughnut Plant, Anjelah was standing right outside of it!  I was like, "Dude, I am going to watch your show in like 30 minutes!" Well, I didn't actually call her dude (I don't think).  But I did ask her if she would wait right there while I grabbed my friends from inside to get a picture with her. But they had already gone in to get our seats. :-(  Anyway, I went back outside and got this solo picture with her, and actually chatted with her for like 5-10 minutes, about everything from my move from Texas to her upcoming wedding.  She was SO genuinely nice and funny, and she even said hi to me when she was walking up to the stage later at her show.  I would HIGHLY recommend you doing whatever it takes to see her if she comes to your town.

And my final (and by far favorite) celebrity sighting of the past month, would of course be...

Ryan Gosling

About a month ago, Sara, Leticia, Andrew, and I were strolling through the East Village, heading to a movie (Water For Elephants) to kill some time between brunch and church that night.  There was like a little street fair happening (think flea market meets ghetto garage sale meets yummy Houston Rodeo food), so we decided to walk down that street and check it out.  There weren't that many people around and all of a sudden I see this guy walking toward us that looks suspiciously like RG, munching on a slice of pizza as he walked and talked with his friend.  As he got closer, I realized that it was in fact him, about the same time as Andrew did.  Andrew and I busted a U-ey, followed by a rather confused Sara and Leticia (who had not noticed that the insanely hot actor had just passed right by us), and followed him down the street.  Hey, there's no shame in our game.  We were debating whether or not to stop him and ask for a picture when two other girls stopped him, and he happily obliged.  We figured this was our moment and Andrew asked if he would take one with us.  He was super nice and asked his friend to take the picture for us.  He didn't act annoyed or inconvenienced at all, just took the picture, said it was nice to meet us, and went on about his way, eating his pizza.  I love that he was so cool.  By the way, here is the original picture if you're interested.  I cropped the one above for my own pleasure. Haha.

Funny thing - one of the previews for Water for Elephants was for his new movie, Crazy, Stupid, Love in which one of his co-stars proclaims (regarding his abs), "It's like they're photo-shopped!"  Not sure about the abs, but he is really, really, ridiculous good-looking, both on-screen and off.

So that's all the celebrity business for now.  I did want to take a minute to answer my sweet friend (and new mommy!!) Rebecca's questions from the comments of my earlier post.
--
So was he hot? (in reference to the aforementioned maintenance guy)
Haha, I don't actually know because when I went in there, he was behind this big cabinet and it would have been awkward to try and get a good look.  Maybe next time...


I know you have had a lot of celeb run ins but is there anyone in particular we are on the look out for? 
That is actually a really good question that I have been thinking about lately.  There are definitely some celebs I want to see, and even find myself looking for specifically when I am in certain parts of town.  To name a few...Daniel Radcliffe (I have seen him, but on stage doesn't count), Kelly Ripa, Anderson Cooper, Neil Patrick Harris, Jimmy Fallon, and/or any of the cast of SNL


Do you miss having your car? You says its not much of an adjustment but I wonder if you ever walk out your front door thinking that you're just going to hop in your car and suprise no car! 
This really does happen!  There are some days when I miss having a car SO much. Like this weekend - construction on the L train meant that my usual 35-45ish minute commute into the city became more like an hour and a half.  But then I think about the logistics of having a car here (driving in this crazy NY traffic, cost of parking - if you can even find it!, and gas prices) and I am kind of glad to not have to deal with it.  But some days I miss it a lot.
--
Last, but not least, a few random pictures from the last few weeks.

Doesn't that look appetizing? This was in one of those big Italian markets.  Gross.

Springtime in New York! Saw this on the way to the subway.

Thought this was cool.  The flags that are usually from all different countries in Rockefeller Center were all US flags in honor of Memorial Day

As promised, the view from our Financial District office. Yes, that is the Statue of Liberty off in the distance there.  Beautiful!

 Alright, well this has been quite the day of blogging.  It's nice to have a holiday. :-)  So very thankful for those who have given their lives for my freedom.  Enjoy your Memorial Day, everyone!

Still Not A Yankee Fan (Or a Mets fan, for that matter...)

Well, I bet you thought this post was never coming...a big reason why I started this blog was to talk about baseball, so it's time to get back to my roots here. :-)

As I mentioned in earlier posts, back in April, both the Rangers and Astros came to town in the same week.   At the time, I had been in New York for about a month, was right in the middle of my job search, and was feeling a little blah.  Some Texas baseball was just what I needed.  On Friday, April 15th (my one month NYC anniversary), I had my one-day at One Medical, which was basically like an all-day interview.  As soon as it was over, I jetted off to meet Leticia and head to Yankee stadium (where we would meet up with Sara and Andrew) for the Yankees/Rangers game.  Back in December 2005, on my very first trip to New York, Kristi, Shahla, Ashley, and I had taken a tour of the old Yankee stadium, but I had never been to a game (or to the new stadium).  It was pretty nice (though if I had to choose, I would say I'm a little partial to the old one...).

We got in and found our seats...

...then it was time to go get my hot dog on.

Ok, I feel like I need to stop and give you a little background here.  There are very few things I love more than a ball park hot dog.  It is like the missing piece of the puzzle that allows me to enjoy the game, regardless of the outcome.  I really only have one requirement for my hot dogs.  It is IMPERATIVE that I have some nacho cheese to dip it in.  Back in Round Rock, Monday home games for the Express were dollar hot dog and soda games.  Nothing cures a case of the "Mondays" like dollar hot dogs. I used to go and get several hot dogs and a cup of nacho cheese (which, at $1.50, cost more than a hot dog), and watch the games in a state of nacho-cheese bliss.  Those were good times. (A friend told me today that Monday games are just not the same without me... :-)  ).

But I digress.  Strike one against the Yankees (and their stadium) is that you cannot get nacho cheese.  Well, not in the conventional way, anyway.  They don't have regular "ball-park" (translation: orangey cheese-ish stuff) nachos.  They only have these specialty stands where you can buy traditional Mexican nachos with fancy cheese, sour cream, guacamole, the whole shebang.  So what did I do???

I think you guys already know the answer to this.  I paid $8 for those stupid nachos JUST so I could dip my hot dog in the cheese.  Not my proudest moment, but you do what you gotta do, I suppose.

Anyway, we had a great time at the game, and the Rangers were victorious. I always love a Yankees loss, and it was even sweeter knowing it was a team from the great state of Texas that did the damage.  I will say the Yankees fans around us were pretty cool and fun.  We got a normal amount of heckling, but it was all in good fun.

Here are a couple of pictures from the game.

It was really cold and windy, and these Yankees fans are a bunch of wimps!  Look at how empty this place is (this is like the 7th inning) - Minute Maid Park fills more seats than this on a Friday night!!

Speaking of Minute Maid, let's get on to the real highlight of that week...seeing my Astros for the first time this season!!  They came into town April 19-21 for a 3-game series with the Mets.  The first game of the series was on a Tuesday.  It had been cold, rainy, and miserable all day, and it was looking like it was not going to be a great day.  But a few hours before the game, I got a call telling me that I had gotten the job at One Medical!  And then the rain finally stopped.  So the day was turning around and I had my fingers crossed that the game wouldn't get rained out.  I was meeting Angie at one of the stops on the 7 train and we were going to ride in together and watch the game.  Angie tries to act like she is not a baseball fan (she says she only goes for the hot dogs, which is not necessarily a bad thing), but I think it's growing on her. We got to our seats and after spending like 10 minutes (and a whole lot of napkins) wiping all the rain off of them, we settled in to watch the game.  CitiField had already won my heart with...

Yes that's right, ball-park cheese!  I love that orangey cheese-ish stuff. :-) And it was only $1.50, which was a much more acceptable use of my resources.  

As you can see from the tarp on the field, the state of the game was still undetermined.  But they did end up playing.  As miserably cold and wet as the weather was (it was raining on and off the whole game), I couldn't have been happier.  It was like having a little bit of home right here in New York.  Eventually, we did go down to the concourse because of the rain, but we watched the rest of the game from the back of the lower sections.  IT WAS FREEZING.  

But we survived, and the Stros pulled off a win!  Which, if I'd known at the time how hard those would be to come by this season, I might have been more excited about.  Haha. Thanks for being a trooper, Angie, and for sticking out the whole game with me!! Here are a few more pictures from that game.

Nothing like looking into right field and seeing Hunter Pence

I also went to the Thursday game of the series, with my friend Ronnie from college, who also recently moved across the country to New York!  We had a different view...

...and much better weather...

...but alas, the Astros couldn't pull off another win for us.  

It's all good though.  The Astros won't be back in New York at all this season, but they will be in D.C. in September, so I am hoping to make it to those games.  Until then, I will have to keep watching my MLB TV and rooting for them from afar.  And going to Mets and Yankees games to get my "baseball fix." 

But I will never be a Yankees fan.  Never.