NY happenings

Have been hanging out with a different crowd this past month.

Our Pommy/Aussie mate Marc has been back in Oz. Missing the bastard.
Andrew & Robyn are stuck in the same old groove.
Jean is in town. Great to catch up. She feels like family.
Angus one of the lads from the M5 office has been in town. Good to show him around.
A new girl, nothing serious, and her group of friends -- a bunch of native New Yorkers.

They organised a scavenger hunt for her birthday all around the East Village which was fun to go on. Also managed some recent trips to the Cloisters Museum and the Brooklyn Museum.

Angus enjoys a good beer, so showing him the bars and breweries has been fun. Some new discoveries and some old favourites.

For valentines day we went to some random singles gig in Brooklyn. It turned out to be in this out-of-the-way dingy little dive bar, I wasn't really sure what to expect. The whole place smelled like fried chicken for some reason. It filled with white boy hipsters at first. Think a bunch of poser guys that look like Courtney from the Dandy Worhols. Then bands were rock/punk and not too bad. Pretty tame crowd for the style of music.

Winter drags on. Some days it get up above about 5°C and if it's not breezy I'm pretty quick to get out for a ride.

Andrew pushed me into signing up for a cycling club which will start up in a couple of weeks. I have to qualify next weekend buy making it around Central Park 4 times (about 24 miles all up) within a certain time. Rides run every saturday morning. I will use his old roadbike which is pretty decent. Andrew will be in a different group so I won't be riding with him. Hope it warms up a bit in the meantime. Need to get some gear too. Looking forward to it. Should get to get out of the city more often, meet some new people and get back some fitness.

Marc has been keen to do some more trips out of the city when he gets back: Boston, DC maybe.
Also go see an ice hockey game live before the season ends.

Going to a Make event this week. Might show off the brewbot if anyone is interested.

Work has been a bit hectic lately. Some of the software Andrew and I are responsible has been falling over at times, so the onus is on us to fix it. Still the company has bought into our architecture and vision.

As always I keep getting asked about when I'm coming home. No fixed plans. If I get the sack tomorrow because of this bloody economic catastrophe then I would probably convert my Visa, buy a motorbike, travel the USA couch surfing and camping for a few months before coming home.

Otherwise I might do the same anyway later in the year when the weather is better.