Slowly discovering New York City & preparing for student orientation

Second Ave (...I think). One of my favorite
things about cities on a grid is being able to see
straight shots down the city streets.

Very slowly, I'm starting to come out of my shell and explore New York City.

Last weekend my girlfriend and I went out with our friends from Clark University (our alma mater) again for some dinner and Mean Girls Trivia at a bar. Our friend Maxie, who is from a NYC commuter town, knows the area really well, so she was able to find us a good, cheap dinner during happy hour before we were due to go to a bar for trivia. Apparently we got to the bar early enough for 2-for-1 drinks which made the deal even sweeter. (By the way, I swear I'm not a big drinker even though I've brought up cheap alcohol twice in this short paragraph.)

Unfortunately, I've only seen Mean Girls twice (but we watched it the night before trivia obviously), so I wasn't much help at trivia. However, I am proud to say I was correct on a few questions we got wrong because we didn't go with my answer. We finished at the middle of the pack and had a good time.

Half of us went to another bar after said goodnight to the other half, and I'm really glad we did. Because we found THIS:

Um, best interactive advertisement EVER.
Left to right: take your picture with Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) and email it
to yourself; a portrait of How I Met Your Mother that makes NPH's forehead
look bigger than it already is (his forehead is a source of self-consciousness); and an
interactive pinball machine game! Go touch screen pinball go!

Our friend Ryan dominating at touch screen pinball, obviously.

Yours truly dominating (cheers to Ryan for the picture!).

Me and the lady frannn with some awesome people.

Suit up!
(This is my current Facebook profile picture and it's awesome
 because NPH is in the foreground!)

We saw this ridiculous sunset on the way home the other night.

Overall, things have been really quiet with little adventuring. It's kinda hard to be motivated to travel around the city when it's so hot out (consistently in the mid to high 80's). I know I'll make up for it this fall when the temperatures are more decent and I'm more excited for the beautiful fall weather. Fall is by far my favorite time of year, and I'm determined to make it the best fall I've had in years. Anyway, with a quiet few weeks in the city, I've mostly been venturing out to to grocery shopping or something like that. The other night we saw this awesome sunset after picking up a few things. On a separate venture to acquire groceries, we tried the Trader Joe's down by Union Square. This ended up being quite the experience. Never have I ever been in such a packed little store. It was our fault really, for going in on a weekend day (something we don't do again). It was really overwhelming, but it reminded me this is what city life is going to be like: sometimes it's going to be really crowded and I'll have to wait in line a while. I'll just have to learn when I can do things off of peak hours for the best experience possible.

With grad school orientation this week, my girlfriend and I did a dry run on the subway so I could find my way around (this was most of my traveling for that week). I mean, it's a really easy ride from our apartment on the 6 train to the Graduate Center, which took us about 33 minutes this morning. I also wanted to make sure I knew where the classrooms/auditoriums were for my orientation meetings, because there's nothing worse than showing up late to orientation after being lost and looking like a complete noob. I don't want to look like a complete noob. A regular noob is just fine, thanks.

I have four days of orientation events to attend this week starting on Tuesday, where I'm meeting with the other biology students. Apparently this is my first time where I'll get individual attention and get questions answered. For Wednesday, I signed up for a one-on-one session to pass in paperwork and make sure everything is all set, which is really great. Best of all, I get to meet my potential adviser for the first time on Thursday after one of my sessions. His office at Baruch College is easily accessible on the 6 train as well.

A local soul/jazz band rocking out by the 6 train on 125th.

After looking back at my sparse collection of photographs thus far in my time here in New York City, one thing is certain: I need to start taking more pictures.