Friday, September 4, 2009

Life in the city (area)

The never-ending list of things to do is, well, never ending!

We've learned that our security system cannot transfer the way it was supposed to, which means - you guessed it, more money gone! And of course, the cell phone change has upped that bill a bit, what with us bringing our plans into the 21st century and all. Columbia also sent me a bill, and we have become even better friends with our loan provider. I should really be on their Christmas card list by now.

In other news, I'm finishing up registering for courses. I'm taking a course on how DNA technologies changed various legal fields; a course on church and state (first amendment); a course on current copyright developments; a course on international copyright law; and a course on law and technology/computers. I plan to write am article in three of those, so it should be a busy and interesting semester. Classes start next week.

We have almost finished setting up our apartment. We just need one or two more basic furniture items and to unpack a few more boxes. The ferrets seem pretty happy with the new place - they love to dig into the boxes we are storing some clothes in and to run around near the bed. We are also out of the boil water alert we were in for the prior several days after a water main broke. That was an interesting reminder of how important clean water is to much of what we do daily.

In other news, we recently met some friends in NYC for dinner on the gift certificate David and Rachel sent us. We had a great time at this authentic Italian restaurant and (I thought) ordered reasonably conservatively. When the bill came, well, I was wrong! You know how a $ sign is often made with two vertical lines through an S? Well, let's just say that when the bill came I thought one of those vertical lines was just marked a little too far away from the S. Oh that it were so.

Want to guess the total for 4 people? ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY DOLLARS, pre-tip. Now the scary thing for me was that it didn't even phase one of our guests as she eats at that cost all the time. More power to her, but for me, that's an insane amount to spend. This was a good introduction, though, to eating in NYC at nice places since it will keep us on our toes in the future.

On the plus side though, it was a great meal and we had good conversation with our friends. We really did like the restaurant too. So the sticker shock really faded in a matter of minutes for me and the night remained very enjoyable.

Not much else to report. Watched The Haunting in Connecticut and The Knowing this month. We thought both were pretty good. We also saw Eagle Eye not too long ago, and it was excellent. Still listening to Fauxliage (lead singer from Sixpence None the Richer) and less so Natalie Walker's Urban Angel a lot.

Finally, anyone know of any good Blackberry or iPod/MP3 language programs that I could use while on the Subway to work on French, Spanish, or Chinese?

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