Uncle Rich & Carter Hale

This was the first time I got to meet my new nephew Carter Hale. He's awesome. What a joy and I was very happy see him and his parents (my sister Kathleen and her hubby Jeff)

DDR!

Jennifer & Marianne bust a move on DDR at Dave & Busters. Or at least we were pretending to bust a move. I think Marianne got the best score with an A on just 1 easy-level song. My personal best was only a C, all the rest were F's! We had a blast learning to play and acting like goofs at D&B.

Christmas Day at the Rumbles

Merry Christmas from Pittsburgh, PA!

Christmas Eve at LGA

Quite a far cry from my trip last year.
Scroll down here for my trip last year.

Macy's open 24 Hrs

Macy's was open for 24 hours from Friday morning until midnight Sunday night. Seeing this, LM decided we ought to visit them in the early morning. I think we got there close to around 4am and it felt like we had the whole place to ourselves. This is the Christmas shop on the top floor at 5am.

Neil's Coffee Shop

I love these old neon NYC diner signs. Too bad the food was terrible, the service was horrible and the diner was cold. Ah well, at least they have a nice sign.

100 Million Pennies

100,000,000 pennies in Rockefeller Center for the holiday. This is a penny drive from schools across the five boroughs. Kids were asked to bring in pennies and the result is being displayed in Rockefeller Center for the season of giving. It's an impressive site to say the least. And where else can you put 1 million dollars out in the open air without fear of it getting stolen?

Ted downtown

Paul and Ted were in town for a day or two. Of course it involved plenty of kicking around downtown on a Friday night.

FAO

The International Association of Microsoft Certified Partners (IAMCP) New York City Chapter (that's a mouthful), to which I belong through work, took part in Microsoft's annual Toys For Tots drive at FAO Schwartz. It's a great program. We do our Christmas shopping in FAO for the morning and get 15% off our purchase. Then turn in a copy of our receipt and Microsoft matches dollar-for-dollar what we spent in the store with a donation to Toys For Tots. Plus we are encouraged to buy a gift or two to donate. The total number donated by Microsoft just form the few hours of shopping and just in NYC was over $15k. I wanted to take home R2-D2 and C-3PO in Lego form, but apparently they were not for sale.

Mom & Kate

Rounding out the trip to CT, we stopped by Yale to see my cousin Kate Grace. We saw her quad and the college she belongs to within Yale. It's absolutely spectacular. It has this fantastic old world class and comfort, and all the beauty of a college campus that you would expect. I can see why she chose to come to Yale.

Mystic Seaport

Mom & Dad came to town and we promptly got outta town and went up to Mystic Seaport for the weekend. A great excuse to get out of the city. Of course, it was the coldest day of the year. Here's Mystic at night.