Just another manic Monday

The weekend in the hotel may have been somewhat relaxing but Monday was another full-on day.

Up at the back of 6am to head back out to JFK to pick up Heather's cousin who was on a 12 hour layover from the Dominican Republic back to Portland. Rather than sit in the airport we thought he could use a walk around DUMBO (down under the Brooklyn Bridge) after he had been up all night :-)

Had a wander through the really leafy brownstone area of Brooklyn Heights, past the area where Gabriel Byrne has his house in the second series of In Treatment (that only I watch?). Actually, Heather's cousin Sergio watches it as he is doing psychology at Uni, in between playing basketball for a living and they made them some episodes as part of his course.

Then down onto the area overlooking the ongoing redevelopment of the piers on the Brooklyn side of the East River, looking across to Manhattan.

Looking across to Manhattan

Then you can walk along and come out under the Brooklyn Bridge area. This was the original intended location for our quickie marriage ceremony until we discovered it cost $400 for a permit.

Since last year there has been this big carousel situated there, and it would make for some great photographs if we could come back at night when the area is all lit up.

Jane's Carousel

It was Heather's birthday on Monday and although the overall feeling was kinda lost amongst all the busy stuff we did, including dropping her cousin back at the airport mid afternoon, it just happened that back in March she had registered us for two tickets to the taping of The Colbert Report!

This guy AND this girl!

So into Manhattan we went and queued up for nearly two hours to get into the studio. They only had an audience of about 100 or so, and we were given instruction by some "super" enthusiastic staffers on making noise, laughing loud, etc. "We can't hear smiles on the tv, people".

They have a comedian to warm the audience up for nearly 30mins and he was really funny and interacts a lot with the audience particularly when learning there were two (separate) people from Iraq in the crowd.

It was interesting to see how the studio and cameras and stuff all worked and as the show is pre-taped to go out later that night, how they make last minute script changes during the breaks and how they re-shoot a couple of the video comments to substitute for the previous ones.

Monday May 7th episode if you can find it

We didn't get out until about 9.30pm an hadn't eaten for ages so we had dinner at a local Afghanistan restaurant. Ironically, only in the USA (or, maybe only in NYC) can I spend a night in the company of Iraqis and Afghanis!

So again, a long and tiring but fun-filled day.

I'm still waiting to see whether when I get employment I'll get to have some kind of regular daily/weekly schedule? I think I might spontaneously combust if this is actually the regular NYC way to live life.