My Kids & Me

Oscar has know Ethan since they played U5 soccer together. They don't see each other that often, but they talk about each other all the time. Oscar calls him his "bestest buddy ever."

I took a walk during lunch today through the park that is behind our office building. It leads to the Chattahoochee River and is part of a National Park.

Butterfly


Fly Fishing


Tree on a Tree


Foot Bridge


Purple Flowers (I have no idea what kind of flower it is)

Pre-game reading


Jenny from Forrest Gump


The Very Hungry Caterpillar



First pitch

I didn't get to spend nearly as much time sightseeing in LA as I did in NY, but what I did get to see I liked. LA and NY are very different cities. NY is much more compact and crowded, you see many more people on the streets, and I found strangers easier to talk to in NY.

Food
Fernando's Taco Inn


Fisherman's Outlet


Le Oriental Bistro


Architecture
US Bank Building (tallest building in LA and another place where I got in trouble for taking pictures)


Walt Disney Concert Hall


Urban Light


Beverly Wilshire Hotel (location of Pretty Woman)


Los Angeles Convention Bureau


Coke Plant
Fanta Orange


Warehouse


Complete Album

Big Daddy would have been doing his fake cry with the hanky today at the site of the burger joint we went to today for lunch. We ate at Tommy's World Famous Hamburgers.

This was far and away the sloppiest hamburger I have ever eaten. These aren't just burgers either, they are super greasy, cheese, chili burgers, but they are oh so good. Also, no tables; you stand and eat.

I suppose the grossest part was watching them take the fried burgers off of the grill and dragging all of the grease off with the spatula. Literally a pool of grease.

Other than that, the weather has been gorgeous. The city is quite different from NY, but I haven't had a whole lot of time to explore. Maybe tomorrow.

Today we went to another really local place for lunch. Fernando's Taco Inn is located inside a car wash. You could never find it if you tried and there is no sign on the door. A great spot for mexican food.



Nitza gave us tickets to the Coke suite at the Staples Center to see the Clippers play the Nuggets. The Clippers really suck. They got blown out, but the arena is beautiful and the seats were incredible. They wouldn't let me take my long lense in, so no real good pictures from the game.

Jeff & I at the game


More pictures.

Nothing says "Welcome to LA!" like a nice peaceful drive through Compton. Yes, THAT Compton. In order to avoid traffic on the interstate heading back to the hotel, I decided to take some back roads. It really wasn't too bad, but it is a really, really poor area.

Lunch today was absolutely incredible. We have this challenge to each of the people that we are visiting that they need to take us only to local restaurants, no chains whatsoever. Today I was taken to Fisherman's Outlet. This is a "cash only" place and it was very crowded, even at 1:30pm. The food was to die for. I had seafood soup, Sea Bass and fries for only $19. This was some of the best fish I have ever had.





Tomorrow we switch hotels. Beth is a bit worried about me driving through Compton at night.

John and Jack Brooker invited Michael, Oscar, and I to the Braves game today. This was the 3rd time we've gone to a game together, but it was Oscar's first. We had great seats 24 rows behind the 3rd base dugout.

Oscar loved the "cheerleaders" and stopped them every time they walked by to get a hug. That's my boy!

Oh, there was a baseball game too. John Smoltz vs Johan Santana. They lived up to the billing. The game was 1-0 in the 8th until Mark Teixeira hit a 2-run homer. The final score was 3-1. Most importantly, the Braves swept the series with the Mets and Chipper continued to own them.

Pictures









He's got good taste


Turner Field

Click on the pictures to see larger images.

Empire State Building


Manhattan Skyline


Grand Central Station


Yankee Stadium

College football in the south is quite a bit different than what I grew up in Philly. Every college program has a spring practice season and the spring season culminates with an inter-squad scrimmage. Last year, there were over 90,000 people at the Alabama spring game, yes 90,000, totally insane.

We had planned to go to the annual G-Day game over at Georgia today, but it has been raining since Friday and we decided to stay home. It shouldn't be surprising at this point that the game was televised live. It's so strange to me that a SCRIMMAGE would be on TV, but that's just the way it is. It looked like there were about 20,000-30,000 people there. We heard it would have been much more full if the weather had held off.

The kids were pretty disappointed, but the boys made the best of it. They put on their Georgia uniforms and went outside to play in the mud. They've been best buddies lately. Michael played QB and they were huddling up before each play where Michael would giv…

I kept noticing this castle way up on a hill on my way back to the hotel from work, so tonight I decided to go find it. While I was out, I found downtown Tarrytown and it had all kinds of interesting buildings.

Pictures


Castle on the Hudson


Christ Episcopal Church (also known as the "Washington Irving" church)


Warner Library

Last night Dave and his brother-in-law Eric came up from PA to meet me at the Yankees game. The new Director that we are working with this week in NY gave Kristen (my coworker) and I tickets to the Coke suite. I was not able to get Dave & Eric tickets to the suite, but I was able to get them some nose bleed seats (and they were way, way, way up high). We were, however, able to get them in the suite after a few innings.

Growing up as a baseball player and fan, this was one of the stadiums that I remember as a shrine. It has so much history, but a very short future. After 85 years, it's going to be torn down and the Yankees will move into a brand new state-of-the-art facility right next door. I was glad to have the opportunity to see it before it was too late.

The bars were crowded before the game, the vibe was fantastic and we got to see a small part of the Bronx.

Here are all of the pictures. I'm going to stitch some of these together when I get home, so I'll post …

Here is a slideshow of my NYC trip.


If you want to see a larger version of the slideshow, click here.

It's hard to believe that this was my first trip ever to NYC, but it was. I arrived around 11pm on Saturday night and my best friend from college, Liz, met me there with her mom. I haven't seen Liz in about 4 years, but it was like we had just seen each other; we picked up right where we left off. I guess that's the way it is with best friends. Though she doesn't call me back and is generally pretty horrible about keeping in touch, I still love her to death.

We stayed at the Hilton Times Square. It was really neat for me to get into the city so late and get such a good feel for the city immediately. I arrived at Grand Central Station, which was quite overwhelming. I had seen pictures before, but seeing it in person was just amazing. It's so, so beautiful.

Sunday was tour day. We were up bright and early and took a tour of downtown. The tour basically went from Times Square all the way down to Battery Park and back. It's one of those hop on hop off tour…