lately, in new york

Life here in New York is good. I'm not trying to make you jealous on purpose, but it just is pretty fabulous. Unfortunately, my camera decided to delete all of the pictures, so there is no proof of the fabulousness going on here, but I will try to use my words. Maybe I will make a list. Bullet points, because it can't really be numbers.

• Halloween Parade. Sure, I wasn't in a costume and I had to stand on my tippy toes to see, but the fact that there is an entire parade (a mile long!) in the village dedicated to the fine art of Halloween celebration will make some of my family members green with envy. The costumes were extreme, and the best part about the parade were definitely the things tall enough for me to see, namely, these puppets on huge sticks waving around eerily like ghosts. That, and and entire troupe of zombies doing a choreographed dance to Thriller all along the parade route.
  
• Fall. The weather is crisp and clear, cold, but not to the point where the nose freezes. The leaves are changing and I keep collecting brightly colored leaves and bringing them in to admire them.
  
• The farmers market. I hope it is still open tomorrow, since it is now November. I hope so, because I need some Butternut Squash for soup.
  
• Dinner at Aditi's house with Melinda, Mario, Kathleen, Kate and Chris. You get a little bit of food and alcohol into people, take away the Wagner talk, and put a wii in front of people, and man, you start learning all sorts of things that you didn't know about them before. We decided to give up Grey's Anatomy and invite boys to our fun girls night Thursday dinner because grey's started to suck and the boys were feeling left out.
  
• The man practicing tap dancing under a bridge in the park yesterday.
  
• The orthodox Jewish guys playing soccer in the park last week.
• Hearing Paul Farmer and Jeff Sachs speak this week and get inspired about ending poverty in the world. Wow. Seriously, those are some inspirational people who are doing good things in the world. I also went to a symposium at the law school on Law and Policy on the Sub-Saharan African Child and of course, I was giddy and loved learning and thinking about all of this development stuff again. More on that later, because I'm formulating some ideas.
• David Bazan, of Pedro the Lion. I was so sad when they broke up. And I was so happy to go hear him play on monday night. And so glad that Melinda was game for going (ahem, elly) because it was such a good show (wow, and he sang this amazing version of Halleluja that is going onto his new album). So good. And seriously need to start going to more shows.
  
• Parents in town. So glad to see them, and so excited to show them around and welcome them into my new home. It is funny, I finally feel like an adult, a real one, because I got to entertain my parents and didn't feel like a college kid.
  
• Wagner. School is great, and the Wagner community is special. I had no idea grad school was like this.

That isn't even all, but all that I will mention for the time being. Love this place. And since I don't have any new pictures to post about all of this stuff, I'll post one from a little while ago, with a view of the city and a dude that I like and wish would come visit again.