For a while now I’ve been thinking about getting a scanner and so the other day I took the plunge and I bought one. We have all kinds of pictures floating around the house from over the years, like pictures of me when I was Andrew and Alex’s age, and some of them are starting to fade and look a bit grungy.

I hooked it up this morning and the first two things I scanned was an original Alex Mason T-Rex in construction paper and Andrew’s first piece of school art work, “Blue Hand Fish”.

Now that I have my new play toy I’m going to start a new mfdc/slotmf feature “Pictures from the Past” (Ok, the name might need some work but if you think you can come up with something better let me know.) where I’ll pick some of the better pictures and post them.  Hey, I might even pick some embarrassing pictures too, not of me of course :-).

I went to go buy some milk tonight and I was standing in line with my three gallons freezing my fingers off I suddenly realized that I had no wallet with me, hence no way to pay for said milk.  I had to get out of line and put the milk back in the fridge, drive home, get my wallet, and drive back to the store.  I figured as a consolation for having to go to the store twice I deserved to get myself a package of brownies.

They finally posted the meet results today. Jen and I managed to win our age group in everything we swam but before I start gloating there were a couple events that we were the only swimmers in our age group.  In fact in most of the events there was only one or two heats for all age groups but what really matters is that we were there.  Yeah, so there.

Overall we were pretty pleased with our times except I was a little disappointed with my 200 free time.

50 Meter Fly
1 McEachern, Jennifer 33.56
1 McEachern, Derek 27.75

100 Meter Free
1 McEachern, Jennifer 1:07:01

50 Meter Free
1 McEachern, Jennifer 29.75
1 McEachern, Derek 26.05

100 Meter Fly
1 McEachern, Jennifer 1:15.39

200 Meter Free
1 McEachern, Derek 2:15.30

The highlight of the meet for me was the 50 free where I got to swim next to Jim Montgomery.  Yes, that Jim Montgomery, Saturday morning trivial push ups “Who was the first person to break 50 seconds in the 100 free?” Jim Montgomery.  Incidentally I ended up beating him but then again he is 18 years older then I am.

On Friday Jen and I took Alex’s four year pictures and Andrew’s one year pictures to be framed so I thought it was about time I actually got the pictures on the web site.  Here are Alex’s pictures and here are Andrew’s pictures.  At the bottom of Alex’s page I created an animated picture that has a picture from each of the past four years.

Jen and I swam in our meet this today and I’m happy to say that we did pretty good but more on that later.  I’ll post a whole meet update once they post the results on line.

I’ve kind of been a slacker this month and haven’t been writing much. It’s not that there hasn’t been anything to write about I’ve just been too lazy to sit down and write anything. But you know now that I’ve actually sat down to write my mind has gone absolutely blank. Nada, I haven’t got a thing.

I wasn’t sure I was going to write about this before the actual event in case it turned out to be an absolute disaster and then I could pretend it never happened but on Saturday Jen and I going to swim in a meet. I’m going to be doing the 50 Free, 50 Fly, and 200 Free. (I’m not sure what I was thinking signing up for a 200 free.) Jen is doing the 50 Free, 50 Fly, 100 Free and 100 Fly.

We’ve been encouraging Andrew to try colouring with crayons but so far he doesn’t seem very interested in doing any actual drawing but apparently the crayons are pretty tasty. He started chewing on one before we managed to get it away from him and in the short time he was chewing it he managed to turn it into a pulpy mess. Andrew is one of the pickiest eaters I’ve ever seen but he seems to have no problem munching away on crayons.

Happy Canada Day!

The NYC trip pictures are finally done and you can find them here, enjoy.

Continuing with our journey we started day two by taking a cab from our hotel down to Battery Park on the southern end of Manhattan where we caught the ferry to Liberty Island.  No tourist trip to NYC would be complete without visiting the Statue of Liberty.  We didn’t have tickets to actually get inside the base of the Statue but I wasn’t disappointed about that since you aren’t allowed to climb into the Statue anyway.

When we were done we hopped back on the ferry which then takes you to Ellis Island.  When we got off the boat a park ranger was just starting a tour so hooked up with him as he walked us through the same path that newly arrived immigrants would have gone through.  In going through Ellis Island the typical amount of time it took from arrival through complete process was only a couple of hours.  After five years of process just to get a temporary residence card it’s hard to believe that the entire process only used to take a couple of hours.

From Ellis Island the ferry dropped us back off at Battery Park where we walked up to through the financial district to the site of the World Trade Center.  Just knowing the events that took place there and standing outside the site is a moving experience.   As for a memorial nothing has been done but they do have displays with all the names of people who died, a timeline of the events from that day, and stories from some of the rescuers who were there that day.

From the WTC site we headed up into Chinatown and then into what’s left of Little Italy.  After eating dinner in Little Italy we took what I would have to say is probably the most frightening cab ride of all time back up town.  Our cabbie was weaving in and out of lanes, between cars, around buses, through almost red lights, and all the while not leaving more then a couple of inches between us and any other car on the road.  The Riders Bill of Rights apparently meant nothing to our driver.  As we were clinging for dear life in the back seat of the car we ironically happened upon an accident involving two cabs.  Our driver quickly dodged through the intersection and around the accident and when we had to stop at the next red light he and another cabbie started discussing what could have possibly gone wrong.  They were completely mystified how this could have happened.  I wanted to suggest that it just might have something to do with the driving but thought better of it.

We were pretty beat but the day was not yet over.  Packing up our paparazzi gear we headed back to the theatre district to see if we could catch a glimpse of Julia Roberts as she was leaving the theatre.  Based on the police crowd control from the previous night we scoped out a sweet spot to get a good view but that night the police decided to abandon any type of crowd control and our sweet spot wasn’t so sweet after all  We did manage to catch just fleeting glimpse of her but not get any pictures but were still counting it, we saw Julia Roberts. Total Celebrity Sightings: 9.

That pretty much wrapped up the trip.  We slept a little later on Sunday morning and when we ventured out of the hotel 6th Ave. completely shut down for a street fair with vendors selling all kinds of stuff.  We got some lunch and headed back to Rockefeller Center where we went up to the 67th floor observation deck and took some scenic pictures of the NYC skyline.

There you have it, NYC in two and half days.  We survived and more importantly Kelly and Wade survived the whole weekend with the kids.

I’m finally getting around to writing about our trip to NYC and I’m going to get through everything I’m going to have to break it up into a couple of posts.  Jen and I had a fantastic time and we managed to cram in all kinds of stuff in the short time that we were actually there.

On Friday morning we started out and headed to Rockefeller Plaza to see NBC Today in person. (No, we didn’t get on TV.) Since it was a Friday they had the outdoor concert series going with special musical guest Earth Wind and Fire. I don’t want to say that I’m not a fan of EWF, okay, I’ll be honest, I’ve never really listened to enough EWF to know if I’m a fan or not, but the following week the musical guest was Phil Collins so lets be honest, we got gipped. It’s not like we had front row seats, or even a good view for that matter, so I don’t feel like it was that much of a loss.  The concert area and the outdoor studios that the Today show uses are across the street from each other and we managed to position ourselves at the back entrance to the studio so we got pretty good looks at Campbell Brown, Matt Lauer, and Al Roker as they were moving from concert to studio.

After EWF had completed their performance we walked around to the front of the studio to get a glimpse of interviews but security was pretty heavy and kept people moving so we didn’t get a chance to linger very long. However, we did manage to linger long enough to see Ann Curry doing an interview with someone and Cambell Brown do an interview with Jean Chatsky from Money magazine.  Total Celebrity Sightings: 5.

After the Today show wrapped up we went on the NBC Studio Tour where we actually got to stand in the Dateline studio, the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams studio, and view the Saturday Night Live Studios. We never bumped into anyone famous walking the halls but it was still neat to see the studios in person. Each studio is much smaller then they appear on television, especially the SNL studio. Both the Nightly News and SNL air live with no tape delay in the Eastern TZ so if they screw up it goes on the air as is. Brian Williams writes about 95% of all his own news copy so what he reads during the broadcast is what he wrote himself. The tour guide said he is typically in the building from about 9:00am to 9:00pm every day to make sure that when the news airs across all time zones he doesn’t have to update any of the stories in the event that things have changed. The SNL studio was originally built to broadcast symphonies so apparently it has very good acoustics for musical performances. The tour guides comment was that if the band you hear during SNL sounds horrible it’s because they are. (They didn’t bring up and I didn’t have the guts to ask about the Ashlee Simpson lip syncing incident but I have to think that would be an exception.)

With the NBC tours wrapped up we walked on over to the United Nations. The guide book we had suggested “for an unusual treat try a multi-ethnic meal while visiting the UN at the Delegates’ Dining Room.” With voracious appetites we entered the UN only to find out the guide book apparently failed to mention that to get to the Delegates’ Dining Room you had to pass through security and to pass through security you needed to know someone inside the UN to sign you in. We ended up settling for multi-ethnic UN Coffee Shop kosher hot dogs instead.

The official UN tour was pretty interesting. You go into the Security Council Chamber, the Tursteeship Council chamber, and the Economic and Social Council Chamber which are all different branches of the UN. The tour then culminates with a visit to the General Assembly chamber which is the one you typically see pictured in the media. After the tour you can explore the UN grounds but unfortunately for us the main garden had been closed off by the Secret Service for “someone really important.” And before everyone asks, yes it looks just like it did in “The Interpreter,” though now that I’ve been there I want to see the movie again since I have a better idea of where things are.

When we were done at the UN we walked back to the hotel for a little rest but not before stopping at the Grand Central Terminal just to say we’ve been there.

We wrapped up the day by going to see the Broadway show “The Wedding Singer” which was fantastic. I highly recommend it if you can see it.  I still liked Mama Mia more since I’m such a big Abba fan but this came in a close second.

We were still on our celebrity look out and who was sitting two rows behind us during the show but David Copperfield. You read that right, we had better seats then David Copperfield. I’m not quite sure how that happened but somehow we managed to pull it off.

After the show we were walking up 45th Avenue heading towards Times Square when we passed the Bernard Jacobs Theatre that was showing “Three Days of Rain“, which was the Broadway show starring Julia Roberts. There was a huge crowd gathered outside the theatre entrance we assumed trying to catch a glimpse of Julia Roberts but it turns out she had left just before we got there but we managed to catch glimpses of her co-stars Bradley Cooper and Paul Rudd as they were leaving. Total Celebrity Sightings: 8.

After walking around Times Square for a bit we headed back to the hotel where we collapsed in bed from exhaustion.  Actually, I take that back, we did make one stop on the way back to the hotel to listen to NYC’s emanate Barry White impersonator caroon at the corner of 6th Ave and 50th.