Collection of Miscellany

First off, a worthwhile site to check out is Drink at Work. Very silly, and short.

Second off, I'm sick. I made it through work today, but at about 2pm I was really thinking that this was just not a good idea. I made it through the day, but it was tough and pretty unproductive. Adding to my misery is the fact that I can't taste anything, so everything tastes...well, sorta like cardboard. Diet Coke? Yuck. Coffee? Double yuck. Cold food? Nope. Not interested. About the only thing am interested is soup. I'm not a good sick person, in case you were wondering. I'm a little grumpy. Because I'm pretty sure I picked this evil virus up in New York. Oddly, my horoscope before I left for my trip told me to avoid hotel bedspreads. I pretty much did, but I can't help but suspect.... Coincidence? I think not.

That said, my trip to New York was actually very nice. I went up on Saturday and stayed with my cousin Kyle and his fiancee Tracy. The weather on Saturday was absolutely beautiful, so we took the train down to the village and just walked around for a couple of hours, window shopped, walked through a street fair, and took in the atmosphere. Kyle managed to trip off a curb and hurt his ankle, but he seemed okay.

We stopped at an Italian restaurant and had some pretty good appetizers. Sunday Tracy went for a run while Kyle and I went up to the Cloisters in Fort Tyron Park. It's pricey, but totally worth it. We managed to take two tours, one was a highlights tour of the collection (it's a pretty small museum, so you pretty much see everything anyway), and the other was a garden tour. In fact, that was the coolest thing about the whole museum: the fact that they had about four cloister gardens, which they use to demonstrate both the social use of the cloisters and to give a historical view of how gardens were planted and what they grew. It was actually very interesting.

Sunday was also the day that I was revealed as an evil influence. Whenever I'm with Kyle, something bad happens to him. It's like we have bad cousin karma. Which also translated to the weather (humid, hot and cloudy), and then communicated to Tracy, who had a bad blister and then hurt her leg because she tried to avoid running on the blister. I try to keep my evil under wraps, but I was exposed.

Monday we checked out the UN and also took the tour (Kyle's big on the tours, in case you couldn't tell, there). That was sort of interesting. I'll say this about the UN building: it's like stepping back in time to 1960. The whole building is powder blue with very sixties style seating. You can tell they tried to make it very modern, but in doing so, totally datd themselves. But I admire their mission. I wish they had more power and weren't so hamstrung. After that we walked up to Central Park and walked all through the Park, up to the statues of Alice in Wonderland and Hans Christian Anderson, Belvedere Castle, Strawberry Fields and the Imagine Circle. So that was all very cool.

The rest of my time? Meh. I was in a meeting for work, and it's not very interesting, except I learned a little more about folksonomies, such as del.icio.us, which...interesting. Not practical from a structured professional point of view, but a cool toy.

And the evil overcharging Hilton? Made me sick...