Chrissy's Blog

Sometimes when I am feeling adventurous I will walk around Greenwich Village after work, eventually making my way to Union Square. I saw that the Empire State Building had changed its colors to blue and white which perplexed me, until I remembered Hanukkah. This is New York after all.

I bought these tights thinking that they were just black with pink hearts. They are actually crazy sparkly. It’s hard to tell with the image-killing flash on my camera, but they are super super sparkly.

Courtesy of Travis’ mom, better known as Mom C (how she signs her texts to me). She sent us two huge boxes of Christmas decorations, cookies, and presents. I knew I’d miss being close to my parents, but I had no idea I’d miss spending time with Travis’ parents. But I really do! I’ll never forget the breakfast when Travis broke to his parents that he was moving to New York and that I was going with him. His dad was not pleased. But he turned to me and said, “I can’t say I’m happy about this, but I’m glad that he’s keeping you. Welcome to the family.” And I have always felt welcome to their family.

So even though we didn’t get to see the Rockefeller Center tree, we have our own special tree, and Franklin Gutierrez bobblehead is excited about it too!

Another exciting Saturday that we spent in our pajamas watching movies streaming on Netflix! The only exciting thing that happened was our toilet broke. I don’t know what happened, but it wouldn’t stop flushing. Usually, I would know how to fix this, because I’m an adult, and I’ve dealt with toilets in the past. But what the heck is this?! There is no tank! SO out of my plumbing league. Luckily Travis figured out how to deal with it. There is a screw in the upper left that controls the flow. So we just had to unscrew it to flush, and screw it completely in to stop it. A HUGE pain, but our landlord fixed it a couple days later.

Travis’ company had their annual Christmas party. Always entertaining when a bunch of finance employees get together with an open bar. I suppose it is always entertaining when any group of people get together with an open bar. Once everyone got warmed up, a soul train line formed. I was talking to a friend of mine and turned around in time to see Travis doing a strange dance that I later learned is called “The Dougie.” It is odd, and I was very surprised. I frantically tried to get my camera on and ready, but he was done before I could snap a picture of it. Sadly, I was unable to capture the moment in time, and he has since refused to repeat the dance. So I had to settle with taking a picture of his co-worker doing the worm.

Travis found this in our kitchen. I heard him scream and when I ran into the room he was pointing in terror at this little thing lying on its back in the middle of the floor. Travis had a cockroach scare when he first moved in, so he bought a ton of boric acid and lined our entire apartment with it. If cockroaches come into contact with boric acid, it dries out their exoskeleton, and they slowly die. That is why we found this one pathetically kicking its creepy little legs in the air, in the throes of death. EEEWWW!!!!

It is finally winter here. Still no snow, but it is dark a lot more and stupid cold. This was a rare day when I didn’t have to work the 1-7 shift. Instead I worked from 10-5. At about 1, my left contact fell out. I am blind as a bat without aids, so it was a difficult afternoon for me. I developed a dull headache, and my depth perception went nuts. I would look at something and it would go in and out of focus, my mind trying to decide which eye to trust. It was frustrating. At three-thirty when it got slow, I asked my co-workers if they would mind if I headed out early. Think Coffee is always overstaffed so they didn’t mind at all. I felt like a wimp for leaving, but the fact is that they didn’t really need me, so why not. It was a rare sensation to leave work and have it still be daylight, albeit a gray, wintry daylight.

After work, boyfriend and I tried to go to the Rockefeller Tree Lighting Event. The event was from 7-9, and we arrived around 7:30. Police were surrounding the area, checking bags, filtering where people could stand. We tried a couple of different streets. One street just had a huge screen mounted on a semi, broadcasting the event. But we couldn’t see the tree or anything else. So we tried another street where we could see the tree at a distance, but we couldn’t really hear what was going on. We did hear them say that there were 500,000 people there. That’s…a lot. I don’t think I’ve ever been in such a large throng in my life. We tried approaching from the West. We were able to see the above scene, but there were plenty of police standing around telling us to snap the picture and keep moving. It was not “a viewing area.”

We wanted to be there to experience this part of New York, but we weren’t really experiencing anything. We could have stuck around for another couple of hours just to say that we were there, but we figured we would just come back another night and enjoy the decorations without the mob. We headed home and stopped off to get some burritos.

Sister Kate. This was her last day in the city, and we had realized that we hadn’t taken any pictures together. So we stopped on this ridiculously well-lit corner in Greenwich Village and snapped a couple. This reminds me of almost every picture of the two of us as kids. She is breathing into my ear, which is ticklish and kind of weird. Anyone who ever had an older sibling that liked to mess with them will understand this. Sometimes older siblings just like to bug their younger counterparts. It’s instinct or something. But in all seriousness, it was great to have her come visit. I wish I had more time to show her around the city, or that I even knew what to show her in the city. I can’t wait to head up to Boston for her big 3-0.