Saw this great little photo series on the New York Times website today. And it was especially exciting to see that we’d been to almost all of the places – brought back lots of memories.

Have spent the last 4 months commuting downtown on the subway – the sights and sounds and stops have become second nature. Thought I’d immortalise our view of the stops in a photo series.

We get on at 33rd Street

Then stop at 28th Street

23rd Street

14th Street – Union Square

Astor Place

Bleecker Street

Spring Street

And get off at Canal Street

Have really enjoyed getting to know another Community Manager over here – Karen’s from Harvest, a company that Xero knows about as many of each others customers want us to integrate. It turned out that the Harvest office is just around the corner from the office we were in so we’ve had a couple of lady lunches and other meetings. Nice to chat about common quirks of our jobs, things we do the same and things we do differently. I’m not sure that I have an easier job; other Community Managers I’ve met here seem to be the conduit for all customer queries where as I’m really just at our social media doorway. However, have picked up a few good tips and will miss having Karen so close by.

I know I’ve got to stop going on about the heat, and obviously it’s going to be a shock to go from 38 degrees to 7 degrees when we get back to Wellington, but there are strange things to experience when it’s hot that I hadn’t noticed before – things other than the most weird prickling sensation coming from the roots of your hair when every pore in your body is trying to get cool:

• When you first get outside from being in the air-conditioning you feel like you are walking in a warm bath if you have shorts on (yes, talking about me here) – the heat is so enveloping and so hot it feels just like water
• The floor in the apartment is almost hot, like underfloor heating has been left on high and it doesn’t cool down, not even by 4am
• The metal bars on the subway entry carousels are very hot to touch
• Liquid that comes out of pump-pots, hand soap, moisturiser and the like is warm
• Glasses and plates from the closed cupboards are warm
• Potato chips are warm
• Window glass is almost hot
• I now have a new appreciation for labels on bottles and packets that say “store below 30 degrees C” – I always used to think that was some kind of warning to not keep the item in the oven for some dope that might, but I know now that ordinary cupboards in ordinary houses can actually become like ovens in some climates!

Boy I am sick of looking at my greasy face in the mirror, pores wide open gasping for air so from that point of view, winter will be welcomed.

Sipping my last cappuccino from Saturdays Surf as I type – what a hole that’s going to leave in our lives! Who knew when we visited them for our first coffee back in March that we’d become regulars … well actually, I kind of had an inkling after tasting the coffee.

How time as flown by and we’ve gotten to know the guys and certainly don’t feel like non-surfer-dudes any more! We’ve taken our visitors there, have gone just about every day over the last 4 months, have watched the guys build up their little backyard and tried not to listen to their banter about arranging stuff in the new garden shed, tried to talk surf stuff, have got Saturdays Surf t-shirts, have gotten to know which surfer dudes make the best coffee, showed them Xero and have had some great coffee.

Behind the scenes I’ve also had to put up with The Mister miming being a surfer at his desk and saying “surf’s up” when he’s ready to go get coffee … and surprisingly he’s come with me to get the coffee every day except one so I hope that continues when we get back home!

So thanks Josh, Morgan, Mitch and most of all Casey for the welcome and the fantastic coffee. It was great having you as part of our daily New York life and of course when we come back we’ll be coming in to say hi.

Following true to our offer to take ingredients over to Cousin Grant’s flash kitchen to cook him dinner, we shopped, prepped and transported food, tinfoil, apron, salt, napkins and oil (it’s a New York bachelor pad after all) over to his apartment in Soho. He was away in London for the weekend so we had to let ourselves in and work out how to use the oven and locate dishes so that dinner would be on the table when he arrived back that night.

This presented the perfect opportunity for The Mister to try pulled pork. We’d got into a long conversation with a chef at Williams & Sonoma (kitchen store) a few weeks ago about it after going to the Madison Square BBQ Block Party and after that and the pulled pork he always orders at Morrell’s he was really wanting to try it.

So when Cousin Grant said he loved pulled pork there was no holding us back.

In a very cool cooking 2.0 experience, The Mister tweeted @EatMeaty – the butcher in Chelsea Market and asked if they had pork for making pulled pork and any advice. They responded and expected our visit on Sunday morning. Very cool.

It was great hanging out at Cousin Grant’s and using his kitchen – his place has central air (we were there one of the days of the heatwave when it was 39 degrees C outside), extremely sharp knives and a massive gas oven. Eventually we found the light switches, a casserole dish and some piggy salt & pepper shakers (felt kind of cruel putting them on the table but they were orange), and luckily we took a few other supplies of our own because everything I didn’t think he’d have, he didn’t!

We put the pork in the oven for 4 hours and enjoyed a nice cool quiet afternoon working.

The house smelled great! And Cousin Grant said so when he burst through the door right on dinner time. We toasted the family gathering with champagne, assembled the burgers with pulled pork and some caramelised onions I’d made the previous day and coleslaw I’d made that afternoon and sat down to an extremely delicious family dinner.

So now we have to set about finding BBQ sauce (not something you’d normally find in our pantry) and other tomato-based basting ingredients to try it at home ourselves. Perhaps our Thanksgiving Dinner this year will be a burger feast!

So America has celebrated its birthday weekend in true American style – everyone is so proud to be American and everywhere we looked over the weekend there were American flags and people wearing t-shirts with flags on them.

The Rockefeller Centre had swapped its flags of the world for all American ones.

The 4th of July fireworks were a much anticipated even for us and we decided to splash out and get one of the 3000 tickets for a seat on the flight deck of the intrepid (retired aircraft carrier now a museum on the Hudson River). We’d seen the ship before when we went on the Circle Line tour with Mother and Father and it was cool to finally get on it. We had to join the world’s longest, sweatiest line to pick up our prepaid tickets but once we got into the cordoned off area we felt quite the hoi-poloi seeing the crowds of people along the closed off WestSide Highway.

Up on the ship we found a great posi behind the seating where we could stand and see the crowds on the massive cruise ship docked alongside, the water cannons from the tug boats and of course the fireworks off 6 barges along the Hudson River.

The fireworks were really great – I reckon from each barge they didn’t do anything more spectacular or larger than the Wellington fireworks display but with it being from 6 barges, perfectly choreographed and lasting about 30 minutes it was rather impressive. They were set to uplifting orchestral music, the last piece being the American National Anthem at which point everyone leapt to their feet and there was no chattering – just the booming of the fireworks and fighter jets doing fly-by. Very patriotic.

Here’s a 40-second snippet on video.

The walk back in to 42nd Street was hard work – the night was extremely muggy and 33 degrees, even at 10pm and a million people (literally) were all heading towards the subway.

Hung out in Central Park for a few hours this weekend thinking it might be a way to escape the heat. Hmmm, kind of if you could find a leafy path that hadn’t seen sun for a while. We were keen to see if the Bethesda Fountain was out from under it’s scaffolding and it was! It was great to see it and such a summer scene.

While we were there I noticed 5 jets flying in what I thought was formation except the jet streams coming out of the back of them were more like coughing dots than a stream that I worried they might be in trouble. The Mister went to a clearing to take a couple of photos and when captured as a still pic it was clear that they’d been squirting out words! Really clever.

We recognised some advertising for GEICO (insurance) and a phrase that said ‘hot summer days’.

Went through our little notebook of clippings that I’d collected before we left New Zealand to see if there was anything we’d not yet seen that we’d be disappointed to miss. Seeing as we were uptown we thought we’d go and see one of the inner-city waterfalls that I’d clipped an article for. On 53rd Street there it was – in between 2 buildings a little tree-lined courtyard with a rushing waterfall – well, water feature really but it was awesome like a waterfall and made a real waterfall rushing sound.

I was so amazed by how cool the courtyard was and the closer I got to the water the cooler I felt. It wasn’t stinking hot when we were there and I could just imagine how busy the courtyard would be on those days – a real oasis.

Had a wonderful coffee catch-up with cousin out-law Charlotte today. I haven’t seen her in over 10 years and she’s now settled in New York with a family. Actually I think we only met and talked that once all that time ago but it was like catching up with an old friend – such a shame that we discovered her here when we’re just about to head home! However, great to know another semi-permanent here for when we come back!