Chad & Casey in NYC

There's almost nothing we like more than having visitors in our own city (except maybe going to new cities ourselves).  It always gives us a good reason to act like tourists and not feel weird about it.  So we were totally stoked when Randy's brother Chad and his wife Casey came to visit.  Their visit was full of eating and sightseeing as any good visit would be.

Times Square: Mandatory tourist stop

One of the highlights was accompanying the Cs to a fancy pants restaurant, Le Bernardin, that we never in a million years would've thought to go to on our own.  The food was as interesting as it was delicious and the extremely attentive staff helped us push in our chairs, provided us with an unlimited supply of interesting breads, and even gave us "purse stools" for our handbags.  It was by far the best treatment myself or my fake Chloe handbag has ever gotten in a restaurant.

Striped bass entree.

Randy pondering his unusual looking dessert.

The Foodie Couple

Other fun times with C & C included seeing Wicked on Broadway, eating bonofide New York style pizza, walking around Lower Manhattan and Battery Park, and going to the Met.

Baby bump posing with the very distant Statue of Liberty.

The Gender Mystery

Now that we've made it past our anatomy scan without finding out the gender, I'm feeling confident that we might actually make it all the way to the end without knowing.  We successfully turned away at all the right times to keep Little Munchkin's gender a secret and keep ourselves in deep suspense.

21 Weeks with Mystery Baby

So why, in this day of coordinating the crib sheets with the wallpaper and having a whole set of monogrammed clothing before the baby is born, would we decide to deny ourselves such valuable information?

1.  More Excitement in the Delivery Room

How often these days does a doctor get to exclaim “It’s a [boy/girl]!” after catching the baby?  Gender reveal seems like a great joy of the profession and it’s been taken away by the ultrasound.  I also had someone tell me she was extra motivated during labor to get the baby out because she was dying to know the gender.  Hard to argue with that!

2.  We're Used to Being Under-Prepared

Living in NYC and Randy working as an airline pilot for the first 5 years of our marriage has resulted in us adopting a fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants lifestyle.  One time we decided to go to Budapest and that very evening we were on a plane over the Atlantic.  I’m sure having a little one will settle us down considerably but why rush things?  We are decently organized but long term planning remains outside of our comfort zone.  It’s best to keep things sudden and unexpected for as long as possible.

Ahhh, the carefree days of our twenties.

3.  Yellow is Swell-O

I have already been informed that our baby will be wearing yellow for the first year of his or her life.  That’s okay because thanks to this place we love yellow.  Also, it really keeps gift-givers on their toes.  Have you ever tried looking for gender neutral baby clothes?  It’s hard!  Only people who really love us will go through that, which may keep our inventory to a manageable NYC-friendly size.  Plus, there are some great looking gender-unspecific goodies here. 

And if you think it's impossible to find cute stuff in yellow, clearly you haven't been shopping with my mom or my Aunt Jane...

Thanks for the early gifts, folks!

4.  Down on Decorating

We won’t be decorating a nursery because…we don’t have a nursery!  At the risk of blowing a few suburban minds, I will inform you that we live in a one bedroom apartment.  It’s possible we might be moving but we have no firm (or even loose) plans yet.  So for now baby will either be bunking with us or in the living room.  Those are the only two options.

Note:  Decorating is my life’s weakness so I’m actually happy to skip the curtain hanging, room painting part of this whole baby thing.

And now for the most recent pic of the ever expanding bump...

22 Weeks and the belly's first time dressing up.  

Scrap Metal Collecting

Owning a storefront comes with a never-ending to-do list.  The last store owner left a ton (well at least half a ton) of useless junk in our basement and Randy's been wanting for months to clean it out so we have more room and can better organize our own stuff.

The junk in the basement was primarily wood and metal scraps from who knows what in the past.  Most notably there was an enormous metal air conditioning unit that was bigger than a refrigerator and taking up some serious floor space.  We store most of our inventory downstairs and space is at a serious premium in this city.

On day one of major basement clean-up, Randy hauled all the wood and trash to our dumpster and arranged for a special heavy pickup.  On day two, he rented a U-haul and carted all the metal out of the basement to take it to a scrap metal facility, including the a/c unit he dismantled - motor, turbine, shell, and all.  You'd have to see how narrow the stairway is between floors to truly appreciate the difficulty of this.

Randy scrapping with the best of them!

We went to the 24-hour scrap metal yard around midnight which was originally due to poor planning (and a lets-just-do-this-thing-now attitude) but ended up being good planning because there was hardly anyone else there at that time.  It's pretty cool, they weight your vehicle when you arrive and again before you leave, and pay you by weight.  The only downside is they don't handle money at night so we had to return the next day to get paid.

It's a seriously busy operation during the day.  There were about 10 vans dumping at one time.

Thanks to all my construction site experience, I felt pretty at home among the cranes, loud noises, and male dominated crowd.

The bottom line:

Total metal weight from the basement:  540 lb (Randy has sore arms!)

$45        450 lb #1 Steel
$24        8 lb #2 Copper
$72.50   58 lb Aluminum/Copper Radiator
$4.80     24 lb Electric Motor
$50        Money saved using U-haul truck for lumber delivery (for new shelves)
($110)   U-haul rental

($65)     Ticket for parking the U-haul in a residential area at night.  Doh!
$21.30

Getting this junk out of our basement and a metal scrap yard adventure...Priceless.  And approximately $200 saved by not having it done professionally.

We hoped to come close to breaking even by doing it ourselves, so mission accomplished, but it stings that we would've come out more ahead without the darn parking ticket.

Of course now we see metal ($$$) everywhere we look.  Trash can!  Car bumper!

And just so you know he cleans up well...

Randy's BBQ Birthday Dinner from earlier this week.  Happy 32 years!

This guy deserves some meat!