So Feb found us slammed in the doldrums of winter: T was working long hours, I wasn’t flying, and even the dogs were down in the dumps. Deciding it was time to finally pay up on a long-overdue debt to Teresa, President’s day weekend we jumped the train up to NYC and got our New York on. We stayed at across from WTC ground zero-it’s amazing to see how much of a mess the site is, even after all this time. You also realize how much of a miracle it was that only a few buildings were heavily damaged…our room was on the 42nd floor-there were still 60+ stories above us. It wouldn’t have taken much to knock many more buildings over.
But on a lighter note, T and i did our best to cram as much new york as possible into a long weekend.

We walked Central Park, window shopped down 5th Ave, ate our non-Valentine’s day dinner @ Del Monicos (inventers of Baked Alaska, Eggs Benedict, Lobster Newberg, and the first place in North America to use tablecloths) saw family (3 of our nieces plus T’s brother Bob & his girlfriend) got a tour of NBC studios (T helped a student get into NYU, which led to an internship at the BBC, which led to internships w/ Conan Obrien and SNL…so i got to interview Teresa, we saw the Jimmy Fallon Show sets–great sets, awful comedy–and got to walk through the SNL set) all before we caught ‘Mary Poppins’ which was incredible–the music was as good as the movie, the sets were better, and they effects people went overboard (Bert tapdanced around the stage–as in up stage right, across the top upside down, and down stage left).

Freshly exhausted from our vacation, we jumped back into our day jobs, where T started prepping for her hell-week of retreats…she did 2 retreats and an overnight prepping for a third inside 5 days. But she pulled through because it was time for us to host our one ajor event of the year, our Annual St. Patrick’s Day party. When our RSVPs doubled our total attendees from last year, we called for re-inforcements: Kevin and Erin prompty bought tickets and brought toasted ravioli. I made 2 batches of home brew…including “Scout Stout” on tap. So the party began. And people showed up. and kept showing up. we ended up with 31 people (and 2 dogs) in the house…including my 3 full bird colonels, the base command chief, 5 people in mess dress, a random Australian (human, not shepherd) and, surprisingly, no police. after abour 7 hours of guests, we kicked everybody out the door, shoveled the beer bottles out the back door for the neighbors to deal with, and passed out. Mission accomplished.

so it’s been busy here. T gets back into the retreat game in the next few weeks, i start my master’s degree hot and heavy, and with any luck the weather will change from the very Irish weather we have been having and move into a real spring.

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