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April 24, 2004
Some Slightly Disturbing Poos
While picking my mail up this afternoon, I noticed that someone with a last name that starts with a G has left the building. I know one person in this building, so it's not a big deal at all. I look at the name board when walking out the front door, so I can benchmark people leaving or moving in.
So, the person with a G last name is gone, but there was something else I noticed today. It appears that Mr., or Ms., Poos is gone. Yes, the strangely last-named person isn't living here anymore. Did I ever meet them? It's possible. Would they have told me their last name? It's not likely. Maybe they just changed it to something else. Who knows... one thing that's certain, it sucks to be Poos.
Posted by Seth at 05:35 PM | Comments (0)
April 22, 2004
New York: Bye Bye
I'm back in good ol' Kansas City now, but I wanted to make sure I properly rounded out my New York posts with a recap of the last day there.
After our second day of training sessions, Brett and I were very glad to leave that place. The client was overbearing in most respects and just plain hard to deal with in all other respects. So, saying good-bye to them was probably the easiest thing we did during those two days. We hopped a cab up to the Y&R office to have lunch with other VMLers Jeremy, Joe and Travis – Bill was out of town this week. From there we walked down to Grand Central Station and ate in the food court down there. With lunch fresh in our bellies, we walked back to the Y&R office to see the much-rumored crummy space that the guys work in. I was not let down in their description of the office. Poor guys.
Leaving Y&R, Brett and I taxied back down to the hotel area. Brett decided to walk down to Century 21 and I just walked Canal street again, I love that place. At one point I was inside a building similar to a flea market, except that each booth was selling illegal purses, cds, dvds, etc. I was walking around the place when I heard a steel door slam, and then instantaneously, all of the steel doors in the building shut down and everyone casually walked out of the building as if nothing had happened. I suppose there was a cop scare, because there was NO ONE on the street selling anything, and almost every "shop" had it's door closed. I've heard stories of that happening, and thought it was neat to see.
Not much else happened on the trip, we hopped a taxi back to LaGuardia and flew back to Kansas City. Got home and went to bed. Fun trip, not enough free time... but I can't complain since it was all free. Thanks VML!
Posted by Seth at 11:55 AM | Comments (0)
April 19, 2004
New York: Brett Arrives, Kinko's Strikes
Last night Brett arrived in New York around 10:15. After sitting in traffic in front of the Holland Bridge for five-plus minutes, Brett hopped out of the cab and walked the remaining three blocks to our hotel. Once here, we met up and trucked on over to Kinko's to pick up the User Manuals for the Training Sessions we were in town for.
The lady at Kinko's couldn't find our order. Earlier on Saturday, Brett had put in the order over their web site, and had asked for a 1 PM finish time on Sunday. The lady also couldn't find any record of that order, even though Brett had talked to someone on the phone and they had confirmed that they had the file to be printed. With Brett's help, she finally found the file and we sent it to the color printer to find out how it looked printed out. She had trouble with that, as she couldn't get the color printer to print.
After messing around with that, we finally had a print out - 35 minutes later. New problem... the color print out was in grayscale, no color. So we spent the next 15 minutes trying to troubleshoot why it wasn't printing in color. Several attempts later, Brett and I were ready to just have half the order printed in grayscale so that we could head out and eat. While they were discussing how many copies we needed, I walked over to the color printer's print queue. I noticed the several attempts that we had just done during the past 50 minutes. Oddly, I also noticed the same document being printed 70 times, at 4:00 PM.
I called Brett and the lady over to look at the entry, our order had apparently been filled already. She looked at the file name (HHC) and said, "Ohhhhhhhhhh, maybe they put it under HHC." She went up front and looked inside a cabinet and found nothing. She had a particularly hard time opening the cabinet because there was a box in front of it... WITH OUR PRINT OUTS IN IT!!! Right there, on the box, was a sticker labeled "HHC." She opened the box, and sure enough, there were all 70 print outs, in color, ready to go.
And then the unexpected happened (because really, what could possibly happen next that we weren't expecting). Chuckling to herself, she looked up, smiled, and said, "Oh my god, I was the one who filled this order." WHAT!??!? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? YOU WERE THE ONE WHO FILLED THIS ORDER, AT 4 PM TODAY, AND YOU DIDN'T REALIZE THAT WE WERE LOOKING AT THE SAME DOCUMENT FOR AN HOUR NOW??? AN HOUR!!!!! Ready to get out of there, we paid for our copies (an amount worthy of a lottery-winning), and as we walked out the door to her yelling this advice to us, "next time tell them to put it under the person's name." Translation: next time tell ME to put it under the person's name. There won't be a next time, I promise.
We returned to the hotel, dropped off the copies, and walked around the block to grab a bite to eat. It was super late, but we were both very hungry. We had supper at The Blue Ribon and got back to the hotel around 2:30 AM. What an extremely eventful day, only to be nearly topped by our morning at the training sessions with our clients. That's another story, for another time, and probably not on this blog.
Tonight, I'm feeling a bit under the weather... need to catch up on sleep. So, I'm staying in, ordering pizza from room service, watching television, and doing nothing else. A bit lame to do in New York, but that's what I'm doing. G'night.
Posted by Seth at 06:36 PM | Comments (0)
Panic: We Are Hanging Here...
My computer has decided to give up for a while. I'm not sure exactly what the problem is, and won't until I return to KC. So, please excuse the lack of posts until I return... at which point I will have a hefty post full of the rest of my NY trip.
NEVERMIND, I'M A GENIUS!!!!
Posted by Seth at 06:06 PM | Comments (0)
April 18, 2004
New York: Puhs, Puhs, Puhs
Sunday in New York. Supposedly a day that doesn't have too much traffic, foot or otherwise. This morning, instead of lugging my luggage on the subway, I grabbed a taxi from my aunt's to my new place of residence... the Soho Grand Hotel on West Broadway. Wow, what a swanky place! I forgot to pick up my complimentary goldfish for the night - no, not the edible kind, the swimming kind (which, I suppose, is still edible). Apparently it's a new trend to allow hotel guests to have a fish overnight, the swimming sounds are soothing.
Anyhow, after getting set up in my room, I decided to view the World Trade Center and then went to Century 21 - the number one department store in the world, according to Zagat. Wow, with no real organization in the store, you could spend an entire afternoon in there finding cool clothes and pretty nice deals.
From there I walked back up to Canal street, just to wade through the craziness. When I arrived, it appeared that there was a cop scare. Doors were closed, sheets were thrown over products, and oddly, there were ZERO street vendors (no dvds, cds, watches, oakleys, etc.). Canal was still overly crowded and sometimes a struggle to walk through. Hungry from not eating anything all day, I stopped at the most authentic New York spot - Sbarro... ugh. My gallbladder-less body taught me a lesson to NOT eat chain-food while in New York.
The oddest part about Canal was after all the vendors had returned. Walking down the sidewalks, practically getting grabbed by every watch salesmen, you would get stopped in front of ladies with trashbags full of purses. They weren't looking up, but with about 10 purses hanging from each arm, they were repeating the word "puhs" over and over and over. As if anyone walking on Canal didn't know what they were selling down there. I chuckled and thought about the seagulls from "Finding Nemo" who constantly yelled, "Mine!"
Posted by Seth at 08:22 PM | Comments (0)
New York: Simon MUST Be Jealous
The second half of my Saturday turned out to be a lot longer than I expected. After rendevousing at the Grigsby's pad, we ventured into Central Park amidst the 5,000 other people that had the same idea. It was like we were in a movie. There were people playing softball, laying out, walking their dog, jogging, riding bikes, rollerblading, whatever they could think of just to get out of their home and into the small bit of nature that New York has to offer. It was unreal.
Joe and I then took the subway down to Union Station. Inside Virgin Records, I found two CDs that I've been looking for lately, so I bought them... yay! After that, we went to a cool comic book store and then to Strands - a huge used-book store. Then, while talking, Joe and I basically wandered all the way down to Canal street before realizing where we were. From there we took the subway back up to the Upper West Side, and he went home while I came back to my aunt's.
I stayed briefly, only to clean up, and then met another co-worker of mine (Travis) and his wife (Rachel) to see some improv at The Producers Club. The comedy team consisted of no one famous, but was a pleasant act. I wasn't rolling in tears, but it was pretty entertaining. After the show, we walked to Hamburger Harry's to eat, wait for it....., hamburgers.
After the meal, I met up with yet another co-worker of mine (Jeremy Kaiman) for some drinks in the Upper West Side. We hung out for about three hours between the bar and his place, talking about work, catching up with his girlfriend Haesan, oogling over his super X-Box, and finally meeting his twin brother.
Overall, a great night that ended about now - 2:36 AM.
Oh yeah, and Simon will be jealous to learn that cat owners frequently take their pets to Central Park. On the subway ride to meet up with Travis and Rachel, I sat across the train car from a cat in a carrier bag. How cool.
Posted by Seth at 01:32 AM | Comments (0)
April 17, 2004
New York: The First Entry
New York is truly an amazing town. I got in last night around 10:15 and caught a cab to my Aunt's place in the Upper West Side. We stayed up and chatted for about an hour and a half, I drank some Coronas while I unwound. I slept on the couch last night, waking up several times around 7:30 AM, but managing to keep myself in bed until 10:00-ish (keep in mind that it's only 9:00 Central time). After we both woke up, we took showers and got ready and headed out for brunch.
On the way we sent some mail and went to a drug store so I could get some deodorant (not anti-perspirant) since I forgot mine at home. Our destination was Time Cafe, an offshoot of the original Time Cafe downtown. It was here that I had some of the best pancakes mankind has ever seen, err tasted. Three blueberry pancakes, with a strawberry on top. They're served with a side dish of butter, which is very unnecessary since there seemed to be thin layer of butter on each flapjack (who says flapjack???). The pancakes were so light that I might have been able to eat five or six. That is, until you're done and your stomach is so extremely full. Good thing I'm in NY, where walking is king.
I love the atmosphere here. Granted it's a very nice day outside, but the energy that you sense from all that's going on around you is insane. You can look at one street corner and count more Taxis than you would see in nearly a week in Kansas City. Not that it's a good thing, but it's just different and fun to see.
I'm about to head out to see more friends and hopefully tonight I'm going to see a comedian and have supper with some co-workers of mine. Probably no boxing, but hey, you can't win 'em all. Now if this post-gallbladder feeling would just subside for a while, then my stomach wouldn't hurt... ah, the life with no gallbladder. I don't recommend it.
Posted by Seth at 12:15 PM | Comments (0)
April 11, 2004
Happy Easter!
Bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny goes hop.
Posted by Seth at 03:29 PM | Comments (0)
April 07, 2004
Goin' to the Big Apple.
Good news! I'm venturing to New York for a VML-project! I'll be in town from April 16 (evening) until April 20. Planning on seeing several friends and my aunt... oh, and working too. Maybe I can convince someone to take me to see the Mets play, but probably not.
Posted by Seth at 04:03 PM | Comments (0)
April 06, 2004
And I Will Drive 50k More
This Sunday, I rolled the 50,000th mile in my car. That puts me averaging approximately 12,500 miles a year, 1,042 miles a month, or 10.6 miles a day. I've loved my Jetta ever since I bought it. I've even loved it ever since it rolled out of gear and into a metal pole, smashing the bumper. I love it even though I've had the front windshield replaced - thus making it not the car I originally bought. In fact, I love my Jetta so much, that I'm finally going to have it registered in my name - coming up to a year after the fact that I bought it.... *grumble* stupid people at VW.
I'm not sure how much longer I'll have the Jretta (as Trip would call it). I've always wanted a truck. So maybe here in the near future I'll have me a truck. Or, maybe not, I'm not sure. Anyway, here's to 50,000, Blue! And many, many more!
Posted by Seth at 10:25 AM | Comments (0)
April 01, 2004
Babysitters rule!
This weekend I'll be doing a favor for Aaron and will be babysitting his two cats (Charlie and James). It should be interesting to see what they think of Simon's scent which is all over my place – and by all over I even mean on top of my kitchen cabinets. Thanks Simon.
I'll have the kitties until Monday, it should be a fun time. Maybe they'll like the Christmas lights I hung in my bedroom today. Pretty noice!
Posted by Seth at 09:29 PM | Comments (0)