Entries from December 2005 ↓

Tidied up the Welcome Back orange balloons at my desk:

My gift from the $5 mystery Christmas Gift exchange at our team Christmas picnic yesterday in the Otari-Wilton bush:

Managed to take this picture out of the car window coming back from Petone on Saturday afternoon – that fog just rolls in from nowhere and really sticks!

After eating all that New York cheese cake *in* New York, I made my first one at the weekend … cooked for an hour then sat in the oven for 6 hours then in the fridge overnight so was well worth waiting for!

A ‘real’ Christmas Tree – sort of – pine branches from Moore Wilson’s:

King Kong – saw it, liked it, did not need my hanky. An amazing film - hard to believe it was acted out in front of a blue screen. Music was a bit disappointing – seemed a bit cliche, or rushed or something …

Aro Bakery mini Christmas mince pies are ALL GOOD. One or two bites, lots of soft pastry and not too much mince. Just fab with a cuppa in the mornings.

My team decided to decorate my desk to welcome me back to work.

New York was pure magic. Right now I feel that nothing can ever be better than the time we had there - no words and no photos can describe it. However, as a bit of sum up, we:

• SHOPPED: Macy’s (our longest stint in the store was their entire opening hours on a Sunday, from 11am to 8pm!), Bloomingdales, Saks 5th Ave, Tiffany, Victoria Secret, FAO Schwarz, Times Square souviner shops, Gap, Banana Republic, Barnes & Noble, City Market (jam packed with groceries), Duane Reade (jam packed with chemist-type stuff and more);
  
  
  
• ATE & DRANK: at posh restaurants requiring a tie and reservation, American style diners & cafes, sushi, hot dogs on the street, Italian (dine in and take out), New York cheese cake, ghastly jumbo-popcorn-sized cups of milky coffee, bagels, granola, cookie dough ice-cream, fantastic Californian chardonnay;
  
  
  
• GOT AROUND: on foot – up and down Broadway, 6th, 5th, Madison, 10th and many cross streets in between (walked about 57 blocks on our first day in 0*C to fight off jetlag), in a taxi, on a horse and carriage, on a bus, in a helicopter, on the subway and in a Lincoln Town Car;
  
  
  
• SAW: the city from the top of the Rockefeller Centre and the Empire State Building and from the Staten Island ferry, Ground Zero, Grand Central Station, Central Park, Trump Tower, Woolworth Building, squirrels, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Metropolitan Opera House, limousines, live television talk shows being filmed through street-facing windows, crowds and queues everywhere, ice skating at the Rockefeller and Central Park rinks, Rockefeller Christmas tree, logs of cookie dough like luncheon sausage chubs for those ‘real home-made cookies’, the sound and light show on the side of Saks 5th Ave, a wild mangy street cat, dogs in little outfits, steam coming out of the street grates, 2 million people at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, security guards, the Broadway show The Produces, Jai from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy;
  
  
  
• LIVED: New York style by way of doing laundry in the basement, getting takeout, eating apple pie in front of the telly on Thanksgiving, going to the Black Friday sales, hailing cabs, reading the NY Times, giving directions to tourists and becoming ‘regulars’ at a couple of restaurants and cafes.
  
  and,
  
  
  
• GOT MARRIED