It's Just Micheal

Last week Jenny and I flew off to San Francisco, CA to be with her brothers during their liver transplant. Trent donated 60% of his liver to their brother, Nick. Both are still in the hospital, but recovering very quickly and will be going home soon! I came back to Missouri yesterday, but Jenny will stay in San Francisco to help out with taking care of her brothers during the long recovery from home. Today I’m driving to Springfield to pick up Kodi so that Jenny won’t have to worry about it when she gets back, so tomorrow I will be making a larger post with pictures!

My much needed time away from work and Columbia has finally started. I made it down to Springfield yesterday around 2pm. I was wanting to head down the night before, but I just had too much to get together and cleaned up around my apartment, plus I got to sleep more. It is so nice to not have to worry about work.

So last night after dinner Jenny, Mark and I went to the Mudd House in downtown Springfield. I had a frozen Tahiti Vanilla Latte. It was amazing, very well balanced between a coffee flavor and vanilla. We then walked around the square, decided that there wasn’t much to do downtown other than bars, so we came back to the Talbert’s house. We just chilled a bit, I took Mark back home, and then came back and went to bed. I slept for 13 hours!! I couldn’t believe how tired I was. Today we will be heading down to the Arkansas border to go camping. I’m extremely excited about this weekend. I will be writing a new blog post when I get back on Monday about the weekend. Until then…

Ok, so here’s my NYC post as promised. We got into NYC Thursday evening and made it to our hotel without any problems. The hotel provides a shuttle service from the airport to the hotel, as well as to the nearest subway station. The radio is set to a talk radio station, an extreme right wing talk station. So right, that they have a commercial against gay marriage. It starts with a child saying, “If I had two daddies, where would my mommy be?” Then it gets into a woman talking about how the governor is messing with marriage instead of doing his job. We hear this commercial twice between the airport and the hotel, my grandma completely missing it and thought that we were laughing at an inside joke between each other. That was humorous. At least the next day was a different driver.

So Thursday night after we checked in we headed out to go into Manhattan. Dawna, Mark and I decided that Times Square was the place to break Grandma into NYC. Throwing her into the busiest part of the city right away. She loved it! Getting there was the best part. I had tried educating my grandma on how to get through the turnstile at the subway station. I told her that she had to move quickly or she wouldn’t be able to get through. She moved too quickly. Once she got the turnstile to move, she got caught and ended up straddling the turnstile!! I wish I had pictures or even a video to post to show how funny this was. Great times! She got the hang of it after that. We looked, and walked, and looked all around us at Times Square. It doesn’t matter how many times you come here, it’s still amazing. We went to Bella Vita Pizzaria for dinner and had the best pizza. The price wasn’t bad, but when we got the check we quickly saw that they charge for water! $12 for the 4 of us!! We couldn’t believe it.

We left Times Square to find the store that I will be interviewing at Monday at noon. It took us a little while to figure out the direction to walk, but we found it. I love the area! It’s a huge store, but the area is amazing! You can see the Chrysler Building and the Empire State building outside the store. And there’s a park right across the street. It’s really an amazing location. I wish I could live in an apt in the are, but that would be way too much money. But at least I would be working in a good area. We walked down to the Empire State Building from there, and then to the subway to make our journey back to the hotel. This time there was no straddling.

Yesterday we got up at 7:30 to start our apartment search. Our first apartment was in Brooklyn, so it was a long trip to get there. Once we got there, we did not like the neighborhood at all. So after a quick look, we got right back on the subway and headed back to Manhattan. We got off the subway at Wall St and walked around there for a bit while looking up available apartments on my iphone. We saw the New York Stock Exchange building, and the a short walk to ground zero. At that time, my iphone shut off. No warning, just went black. When trying to turn it back on, all that was displayed was the image telling me to charge it. The battery indicator had just shown fully charged. So I immediately said that we needed to go to Apple. To SoHo we go! We dropped by Aveda because Mark needed to go pee again. This had become a regular occurrence because he insisted on drinking Venti sized drinks from Starbuck’s anytime that we stopped by. These frequent bathroom breaks and his extremely annoying “tick” sound that he makes every two seconds is pissing me off. What irritates me even more is the, “I can’t help it” excuse that he gives. After Aveda, we went to Apple. They said that my battery must have gotten out of sync with the phone, and that the phone thought it was charged when it wasn’t. Solution: hard reset and recharge. So we’re going to see how that works today.

I got a hold of Eric Arevalo and he recommended that we look at the Inwood area. I looked up some apts in that area and called and headed up that way. It was quite a ride to 157th St., but we made it. After viewing two apartments, we went and saw Eric at his apartment. Then we journeyed back to Astoria, ordered some chinese food, and crashed. Now we’re trying to find something to look at, but not many places are answering their phones today. And I’m kinda tired of it anyway. It’s hard when your roommates parents are only going to pay $500 per month and are expecting something really nice. I think this might be a flop. Time will tell.

Alright, this concludes my first post. I will update soon again with apartment hunting search. Be sure to check out the gallery for pictures that I have so far, more to come.