Back to Reality

Good morning readers!

Today is Monday July 6, and after my long weekend it feels good to be back in the office. Last week I left off telling you about my work week and that I had some plans for the 4th of July weekend, and so I will tell.

After leaving work early on Thursday just after 1pm, I volunteered to help my friend Aamna (fellow SWD intern) move her mattress and bed frame she had just bought on Craigslist from the sellers house to her apartment. Since I’ve had some experience moving furniture and mattresses to and from school I didn’t think it would be too challenging. We met in Williamsburg, a city in the borough of Brooklyn at the sellers house. We got the mattress and box spring down from the 3rd floor to ground level, and it was pretty heavy for us to carry about a half mile so we we’re looking for a dolly, or something on wheels to carry it on. We asked the Popa Johns pizza store that was right next door if they had one, but the manager came out with this little cart on wheels thing, like something you would put garbage cans on to wheel down a driveway, or 10 pizzas I guess. It wasn’t exactly what we were looking for but it worked to carry the mattress, for the most part. We got to her apartment, but with both of us being T1D’s, we checked our sugar after that long haul and we were both pretty low, so we took a short break and then went back to the sellers place to grab the box spring and frame. We agreed that this wheely thing wasn’t going to help very much to carry the frame, so we stopped at gas stations and some markets to see if we could borrow a real dolly. Luckily, we found one and we returned the other as we picked up the box spring and frame. I’ve never felt more like I was living in the city when we were wheeling a mattress down the sidewalks of Brooklyn. After the 2 trips back and fourth, we were both exhausted and hungry so we found a pizza place on the way back to my subway stop and called it a job well done.

When I got back to Manhattan it was just after 7, so I continued to explore a little bit. I found out that Jay-Z and Beyonce owned an apartment in TriBeCa so I wandered over there just to get a glimpse. I found a “famous” ice cream shop, Morgenstern’s Finest Ice Cream on my walk back near SoHo. I waited in line for 35 minutes just to try the 4 different types of vanilla ice cream they offered, and after all that I ended up getting one scoop with some caramel on top. Friday morning I thought I’d catch up on my sleep a little. I made myself breakfast in my dorm’s community kitchen and headed out to Central Park for a couple hours with my longboard and hammock. I love Central Park. The atmosphere is great and all the different sceneries and attractions are really cool to explore. Even with the thousands of people walking their dogs, and riding Citi bikes, it’s probably the only place that I can safely cruise on my longboard while listening to my favorite band of all time, The Beatles.

Saturday the 4th was a great day. Logan and I started early at about 9am to get to Coney Island to watch The World Famous Nathan’s International Hot Dog Eating Contest, and what a wild contest it was. First up was the women’s competition, and after watching these women eat 30+ hot dogs in under 10 minutes we thought we’d seen enough. Unfortunately, the men’s competition wasn’t scheduled to start until after 12:30 and we planned on backtracking to a subway station to catch the Long Island Rail Road to get to Long Beach for the afternoon. It was real nice to get out of the city for a short while and fall asleep on the beach with the Atlantic ocean waves crashing into shore. We stayed on the beach until about 7pm until we headed back to the train station to catch the train back to Brooklyn.

When we got back to Brooklyn, we met up with our friend Jennifer (another SWD intern) and her roommates to watch the Macy’s sponsored fireworks show over the East River. Luckily, Logan’s rooftop probably has the best view of all so we went up there and had a good time. Finally, on Sunday one of my old friends told me she was visiting her roommate from school that is also interning this summer in NYC. We met at Shake Shack in Madison Square Park for a late lunch, and then we explored the financial district as I showed them around downtown and battery park. I’ve only been here for just over a month but I feel as if I’ve already lived here for much longer.

she said she’s never been to Shake Shack

Anyway, back to reality this week in the office as my work will definitely pick up some more. This was basically how I spent my 4th of July weekend and I enjoyed it very much being in the city. I can’t wait for my mom to come visit me in 2 weeks so I can show her around too! 🙂 As always, thank you for following and stay tuned for more posts and check out the pictures tab for more photos!

-Tyler