My 1st Trip to New York City and Philadelphia

The last couple of months have been busy as always and of course there have been ups and downs, but luckily more ups than downs. I’m in midst of preparing for a career “jump”. I’m hoping that within the year I will be leaving the world of bench science and entering the world of technology development and intellectual property law. I’m not sure how this will unfold and I’m continuing to keep a foot in the door of a science policy career, but right now it seems to be steering more towards the law end of things. My boss is finally aware of these plans and I can’t say I made his day, but now that we both know where we’re coming from I’m hoping for a more peaceful co-existence. Cory is busy studying for the CPA exam. He took the first part in August and passed with flying colors. So he’s now preparing for the second part (of four) and will hopefully sit for that at the end of October.

We’ve been up to a lot and I will probably do a few entries in order to catch up with our goings on. So I guess I’ll back up and start with our August trip to New York and Philly first. Cory’s friend Tim lives in Delaware and of course, Ginger is in Philly so we decided to hit the road and do some visiting. It was also a convenient excuse for me to go see New York City and Philadelphia for the first time. So we hit the road after work that Thursday evening and began the long drive. We arrived in Delaware, at Tim’s place, somewhere around 4am Friday morning, hit the bed, and then awoke again around 7 to head into the City. Since we only had the one day I wanted to just walk around and get a general feeling for the city. So we did just that. We went to the site of the World Trade Center, the NY Stock Exchange, Times Square, the Statue of Liberty, and Central Park to name a few. I managed to grab a great picture of Cory literally grabbing the bull by the horns…I thought this was a nice touch for my “super investor” boyfriend. I also enjoyed some spectacular silliness with Cory and Ginger in M&M World in Times Square. (We all know how much I LOVE silliness!!!) (The picture of Cory is below and the picture of the church beneath this is one I took of a church in NYC that I just thought was cool. I'm really starting to adopt photography as a hobby and it has been fun.)

On Sunday, Cory and I went into Center City, Philadelphia. It was fun just strolling around taking in the sites. We went in to see the Liberty Bell and enjoyed a nice downtown farmers market amongst the historic homes. Somehow we managed to find the only cheap parking in all of Center City and spent the day boasting of our $3 spot right next to the parking garage that I swore was charging $25 an hour (that may be an exaggeration, but not by much!). We ate lunch in a cool little pub downtown and then drove over to meet up with Ginger and Pete just in time to avoid a complete downpour. We went to go see SuperBad (HI-larious!) and then went back to their place to goof off and partake of the “Margarita in a Bag” that Ginger scored while interviewing in Texas. Well, let’s just say they were a little more toxic than we anticipated…so in my normal fashion, 10 minutes later I had become a giggling school girl and was very happy that Cory was in charge of getting us home that night. So all in all pretty good!! It was actually nice and cool up north, so it was a cruel reality when we got out of the car on Monday at a rest stop in Virginia where we were abruptly greeted by 100% humidity and burning temperatures. Although, I promise I’m not complaining. The traffic up north was unbearable and well the place is full of Yankees. I did have a blast checking out the sites but I’m so proud to be a Southerner!!!!!! I (along with some help) am doing my best to try to convince Ginger to come back down here to God’s country.