NFL sunday

This weekend was busy with a 6am work shift on the back of about four hours sleep but on Sunday I finally got to attend my first NFL game. Heather's cousin plays for the San Diego Chargers and ever since he signed on at the beginning of this season I had scouted the fixture list and marked down the 23rd in my diary as they came to town (actually 18 miles away in New Jersey) to play the New York Jets.

We managed to get three tickets and invited one of our friends (that has a car!) while her husband and two of their friends came along after picking up tickets online. Normally the games are hard to get tickets for but as the Jets are doing so poorly and it's the end of (their) season they got some online the day before. So at halftime we switched seats to sit all together too.

Three tickets and wristbands to get into the family meet and greet the players tent afterwards.

It was also my first time on a yellow schoolbus as we didn't buy a prepaid parking permit to park in the stadium grounds and so followed the non-permit signs to a couple of miles away and got the shuttle (school)bus there. Got to see all the Jets fans tailgating in the car park with their BBQ's and drinking away.
If you look closely in this picture you can see some have just laid the BBQ coals directly onto the pavement.

Walking to the stadium there was already a sense of a more loud, had a drink type fan than I've experienced at the baseball or other sports I've been to here.

The heavily sponsored Metlife stadium, we entered through the Pepsi gate.
I am still just awaiting delivery of my winter clothes so this was the warmest clothing I could muster, combined with my handwarmers and hat it was just enough although I did need the blanket our friends took as once the sun went down it got really cold just like Pittodrie, ha ha.
Luckily the game wasn't Saturday as that was the coldest day since I've been here as the winds were strong and really cut right through you, much more than back home.

Sunny but cold

Unfortunately we just got in as the game kicked off and before we found our way up to our seats the Chargers returned a punt to score in the opening minutes! I just got over to the back of the first level of seating to see the big-screen replay and them kick the extra point.

View from the posh seats

View from our (free!) seats

You get a good view from anywhere though, we were higher up but you could see more of the player movement etc although the Jets in particular were really really poor. It was funny listening to the fans moan as they got called for a couple of penalties and especially the really stupid one for a player not signalling to fair catch a punt correctly, a rare in-game penalty that the fans were laughing in disbelief. The other crowd spectacle was listening the them chant "ass..hole, ass..hole......" to some guy who was escorted from the crowd by security for upsetting the fans around him in some way.
There still was very little bad language compared to football back home, amazing considering they are downing beer from glass bottles too!

Heather's cousin 88 in action

The ladies arrive at halftime with my food

Wishing I had a heated seat like the players

Action shot

Ffffffreeeeezing at the end

The 'luxury' post-game tent

Dante Rosario and Heather with our gift of some baby clothes for their recent new born. There were about 40-odd people, friends and family, waiting in the tent for a handful of players to see them while they're in NY. A couple of players came in wearing sweatpants and hoody, the rest were dressed as above or jeans and jumper but one guy was so funny as he was in a suit, diamond stud earings and a full length fur coat, apparently made from chinchilla fur..... as he stood eating the same battered chicken and fries we had at halftime.

It's Christmas

On Saturday afternoon we took a trip to Rockefeller Centre to check out their famous Christmas tree. I didn't force her, but Heather had never seen the tree in the ten years she has lived here, probably because locals hate touristy crowds!
And it was completely mobbed around the whole area and walking down 5th Avenue, where a couple of luxury retailers were using projectors to display Christmas scenes on the side of the buildings thus making people take up the whole sidewalk while they stood and watched. Damn tourists.

Radio City Music Hall

The Rockefeller Tree

Cleaning the rink

People watching the projections

We walked down to Bryant Park to see some of the Christmas market stalls and they have an ice rink set up on what is normally the lawn.

In other news, I have occasionally been cycling to work when I have been starting late morning, leaving my bike there, and then cycling home when I've been finishing the early shift while it was still daylight so I could get used to the route. After a few times I felt confident enough to tackle it in the dark armed with my super new bike lights (good work discount) and then having layed everything out the night before I cycled in just after 5am one morning.

I stopped on the Manhattan Bridge at about 5.20am to take a picture as there is a water tower that is unusually covered in a stained glass type material and in the dark it was lit up and flickering away as if there was a candle inside.
You can tell you work in a healthy workplace when out of the 8 or 9 staff that started work at 6am that day, at least three of us cycled in!

Columbus Circle

A couple of Sundays ago on a foggy winters morning we went up to the Columbus Circle monument at the south west corner of Central Park to see a free exhibition, Discovering Columbus.
This is what the monument normally looks like:

A Japanese artist (Tatzu Nishi) had turned this into a living room with the statue in the centre of the room!

Even after seeing all the scaffolding surrounding the monument and climbing the steps, when you stepped inside it was so weird to think this was the top of that statue you see so many times when we visit Central Park for a run.

With the misty morning there were some good views from the door when we exited too.

Upon leaving, we also spotted another random piece of metal down one of the streets so we photographed that too.

And as Heather went home I headed north to Van Cortland Park again to do another cross country but a 15K course this time. I wasn't looking forward to it that much and it took all my energy not to head home with Heather but once I got going I really enjoyed it. Back home doing any kind of hill race I am decidedly middle of the pack when it comes to descending (albeit steeper hills that this) but here I was passing, flying past, everyone else until the very end when I must have caught up with a couple of guys my pace.

In other work related news I am still getting used to the hours. Deciding which ones I like (or hate) most, ha ha. The shifts run for 8½ hours with two 15 minute breaks and one 30 minute break. All other time is literally spent on my feet and with a lot of warehouse type work reaching for shoes and on some days unpacking footwear and hats, gloves & sock boxes it is quite tiring work. When you throw in a typical really busy Saturday or Sunday and (occasionally Mondays) it can be pretty hard going and warm through the back of the storeroom!
The shops staff hours run from 6am to 9.30pm or even a few upcoming 10.30pm's when we open late until 10pm in the run up to Christmas and therefore I have worked a variety of shifts:

6am to 2.30pm shift - getting up at 4.40am which isn't early morning, it's the middle of the night has got easier and this shift passes the quickest and allows me to cycle home in the daylight but with limited sleep the night before and surrounded by other working days means I feel like falling asleep by 5pm.
1.00pm to 9.30pm shift - the later start means you can run an errand or go for a run beforehand but it also means I'm not home until about 10.20pm and you don't feel like eating that late and going straight to bed but I'm often hungry for a snack as it's difficult to eat a full 'normal' evening meal in 30mins and be able to move about comfortably afterwards.
There are some in between shifts too and as I'm classified as part time I have had two or three days off per week but I did just work seven days in a row, all various shifts and by the time it was the last day of those I really was just destroyed and shuffling about but as I said before at this moment I'll take anything as I need cash money $$$.

Last week I was also the victim of credit card fraud. I got an alert after $300 was debited and it was from some website in Florida. Probably not connected but it's still weird that unless you select 'debit' and key in your pin it goes through as credit and you have to sign the slips where nobody ever checks the signature on the back, EVER.