Almost Christmas

I left the city to spend a Christmas break in upstate (not that far from the city but I call it "upstate").

There are crazy Christmas lightings - not sure you can see this well but it is CRAZY like some Italian neighborhood.

I have not eaten any meat/fish since coming back from the cruise where I ate meat/fish in every single meal. We cooked salmon - not too heavy to prepare for up coming Christmas (even and after included) meals.

Stay turned to see all the meals my stomach needs to digest over a few days...

Working from Home (and Break)

It is nice to be able to work from home - I don't have to take a shower first thing in the morning to go to the office by a certain time and I can utilize my time (going to the gym in the middle of the day or eating lunch at 11:30 if I wish) wisely.

Since my living room is very hot (I can't control the temperature), I moved my desk to the bedroom, which has my favorite view in my apartment. I made a hot apple cider with cinnamon stick. I did not drink any kind of fruit drinks warm before in Japan, but I sometime like to drink it warm especially during cold months. You can buy apple cider at any store, but I like the one sold at the farmers' market in Borough Hall. The taste varies time to time depending on the apples they used.

Feels like it is winter, right?

Snow Storm Weekend

It was snow over the weekend - Saturday afternoon through Sunday morning.

I had a haircut appointment on Saturday in East Village so I met up with my friend - Brendan for lunch to catch up. We were originally planning to go to a Japanese restaurant, but that restaurant was closed. Since we did not have that much time and did not see that many choices in the area,we went to Curry-Ya on 10th despite I cooked vegetable curry on Friday. I had seafood curry while B had dry curry. It was OK but nothing special... I wish we went to a Ramen store next to this which I was craved for.

Sunday morning, when I opened the drape, it was beautiful outside - maybe 8 inches of snow. There were strong winds over night so some of the snow was blew out from the fire escape. On the way to and from the gym, I took some pictures - dogs and kids were the ones enjoying this winter wonderland most.

We are Penn State...

I know it is not as big as football or basketball, but Penn State has dominated women's volleyball last three years. Yes, THREE years. Last night was the final against No. 2 seed Texas. Penn State came here without any loss this season (37-0) - as a matter of fact 101 straight wins since 2007 September which is longest strike in NCAA women's any sports history. (102 after this final)

We lost the first two sets, so I thought OK this was it. Oh boy they came back to tie to 2-2 and the final set was something to watch. Final point was made by our ace killing their ace, which was very dramatic ending.

I can't believe I am so into Penn State, by considering I did not know where Penn State was located when I applied over 10 years ago, but now I am one of the biggest fans.

We are - Penn State...

Wonderful Cruise - 4

Day 4 - landing at Grand Cayman in Cayman Island.

As usual, we started our day by eating breakfast outside. It was so nice to have a nice breakfast delivered to our room and we could have it at the terrace by looking at beautiful ocean and sky.

While there was only our ship in Jamaica, there were total of FIVE including ours in Cayman Island. I had never seen this many cruise ships at once, so it was very cool.

Jamaica was a nice island in terms of nature but we felt that it was very poor country - people were begging for money everywhere we went.

Cayman Island was much more upscale island. We had a plan to play with stingrays (Aka-Ei in Japanese) and snorkeling. I have a scuba diving license, so I know it is difficult to see them in the ocean, but there is a famous spot in Cayman Island where they are swimming in a shallow area in the middle of ocean. After 20 minutes of boat ride, we arrived at the spot where several boats were already parking. It was only 2-3 feet deep and there were tons of stingrays swimming between the people. They were like dogs - liking to play with people. We were able to touch them (up to 5 feet long) and actually to kiss them which was considered "good luck" there.

Day 5 was all day on the ocean, so we did not do anything special, but hanged out at the pool side.

Last dinner on the ship was very memorable. One of the couples at the table - Greg and Holly from Ohio (in the right picture) celebrated their 20th anniversary. We were fortunate enough to be part of their celebration.

The other couple - Eric and Laura (in the left picture) were from Alabama and she had her birthday on the first night.

We were lucky to have TWO extra cakes because of these two celebrations. We will keep in touch with them and maybe we will meet up in NYC, Ohio or Alabama some day.

Great cruise trip and we will do it again maybe to Alaska next time (but not next year though...)

Wonderful Cruise - 3

It was day THREE - landing in Jamaica. Look at our ship sitting at blue ocean and unbelievable blue sky. Aren't they sexy or what? Our room was located on the 10th floor, so you can imagine the view from our room.

We made a plan to see local sites and to climb famous river fall. During the local site visiting, I found this beautiful tree and very interesting tree with NUT's, they looked like big grapefruits but the guide said that it is not eligible.

The river fall climbing was fun. It did not seem too hard but boy it was a great exercise and there were a few fun spots to dive into the deep spot and to be hit by tons of water fall. Holding each other's hand to climb up the fall was what we excepted.

Dinner was as usually good (not as good as the best restaurants we can go in NYC for sure), but look at this desert. There were always THREE new choices along with another THREE standard choices, which meat total of SIX choices every night. This night, we chose dark chocolate cake and banana pudding (I believe). Imagine eating this desert every night and day - lunch time there were at least FIVE different deserts.

When we came back from the dinner, there was some sort of theme event at the pool side - samba or Caribbean night, so we hanged out at the pool deck for a while.

Another great day but we were a bit tired and we went to bed early on that night.

Wonderful Cruise - 2

We were on the ship entire day on the 2nd day... Woke up late and had breakfast delivered to our room. It was very nice outside and we had a terrace, we had it at the terrace - like a movie.

Constant ocean sounds and unbelievable blue colors - the sky and the ocean matched to the food - pancake, eggs, bacon, and on and on...

We did not do anything special during the day (did we???) but hanged out on the pool side listening to the music, ate lunch and snack (our dinner was 8:30, so we needed snack time every day). Oh wait, we participated in the gym class - total body conditioning. I go to the gym often so I didn't think I was out of shape, but boy it was a tough class and I was glad that it was only 30 minutes.

It was a formal night (black tie optional) - some people were wearing black tie paired with a formal gown, like stars on the red carpet. I wondered what size of luggage they needed to carry...

Guess who was waiting for us at the room when we came back? A dog wearing sun-glassless. I heard/saw about this but it was very creative to make an animal shape out of towels along with the glass we left at the room.

Next stop - Jamaica, which I will talk about tomorrow so stay turned...