Tis the season

New Yorkers were out shopping with a vengeance on Friday, many stores opening their doors at midnight, 4 am or 6 am to accomodate crazy shoppers who enjoy dealing with other crazed and pushy shoppers before the sun comes up. No thanks. I think I'm doing my shopping online and taking advantage of 'cyber monday'.

We spent a quiet Thanksgiving at the Arnabal's, great food and the travel was a breeeze (15 blocks in a cab because it was raining and we had the dessert), and then went back to work on Friday - losers I know, but it was very quiet at the office and we're saving the vacation days for New Years in Paris. Brian spent the weekend fighting with our iMac which we don't know how to use (iPhoto apparently loses pictures) and we got in some furniture shopping for our new dwelling on Sunday when it was quieter and the holiday shoppers were running out of steam. Target in Brooklyn looked like it had been raided. Brian's fiscal year is over on Friday (finally) even though there's this, and we've got 4 weeks of work to survive before Christmas in Wellesley and a getaway to belle Paris. And oh yeah... the realty company called, our "estimated" and "tentative" closing date is now in March. Whatever...

Enjoy the shopping and Thanksgiving leftovers.

November

November is a great month in NYC. The ice rinks are open for business, the leaves have finally started to turn, the Christmas buzz and holidays season is about to hit evident by the store preparations under way if not already completed for the holidays, it's sunny and cool in the morning and 50 degrees in the afternoon, and government employees have 3 days off to boot! (Election day, Veteran's Day and Thanksgiving). Sorry Brian. Oh yeah – and we finally finished off our year of weddings this month – which took us to Los Angeles, Boston, Seattle, North Carolina, Long Island and Mississippi. Phew!

We finally had a free weekend to head out to East Hampton and enjoy the serene atmosphere - and I saw Paul McCartney at the movie theatre! Looking forward to a quiet Thanksgiving in New York at my parent's house and lots of 'practice' Thanksgiving feasts at friends' houses before the real thing. Williams Homecoming was this weekend which we would have gone to except we are saving up to pay our closing costs - we watched the football game with friends in NY instead, which was amazingly cast on ESPN. Williams beat Amherst 20-0. Go ephs! Brian is counting down the days until his fiscal year ends on November 30th and finally put a tumultuous year for investors to rest.

Happy Halloweeenie

Some pics from the Halloween dachshund Meetup for your enjoyment. Bailey was dogzilla, Kahlua went as a skunk, and our weekend house guest Toby wore a tuxedo. Although the picture is a little dark, 2 doggy brothers took the cake dressed up as the titanic and an iceberg.

New construction or gotta ways to go construction?

We toured Long Island City with Lynn yesterday, the site of our newly purchased apartment and even got to go inside our unit - although as you can see, there was not much to check out except maybe the view. The layout of the unit was there but that was about it - no floors, dry wall or ceiling, there were lots of electrical wires and pipes jutting out, drawn outlines where our countertops are supposed to be, our bathtub hanging out solo in the smaller bathroom - we did have windows!

Maybe a January closing date is a little optimistic, fine by us.

Dachtoberfest

Every year all the weenie dogs in NYC gather under the arch in Washington Square Park for a little fall hurray. Many were in their Halloween costumes - we saw bees, a fire truck, a fish, a witch and of course many hot dogs. The owners get a kick of seeing so many dachshunds together in one place and they always attract a crowd of onlookers that ooooh and awwww at our short legged companions.

Bailey and Kahlua participated sans costume (we're saving those for the real Halloweenie) and Lynn came down from Boston to join us for the weekend. It is beautiful in NY as fall has finally arrived after a week of 80 degree weather. It was a cool crisp sunny day.

Entering the world of blogs

So here we are... a little late to the blog world perhaps but we've decided to join in the fun and keep friends and family in the loop. It's been a year(!) since our wedding and 2007 has been a whirlwind of activity for the Hennessey-Arnabal household. Our wedding website which I fully intended to re-do and upload pictures from that wonderful night is still sitting somewhere in cyberspace untouched. We did miraculously finish our wedding album which looked great thanks to the awesome talent of our photographer.

Much of the busy-ness has been due to our ever changing job status. I decided to leave my job at People for the American Way for a city government position as a policy analyst at the Manhattan Borough President's office. So far it's been great - and I've been able to pursue projects that I really enjoy working on. Brian has survived an interesting year at Citigroup courtesy of the ups and downs of the stock market (and hedge funds in particular) this year. So far so good, although it certainly hasn't been boring.

In other exciting news - we bought an apartment! Our 2 Br, 2 Bth brand spanking new apt is in the Long Island City section of Queens, on the eastern bank of the East River, a quickly developing area with great views of Manhattan and a nice waterfront. If you're curious you can see some pictures of our new building at www.5sl.com. Construction is supposed to be finished in the next couple of months and we expect to move in February. Needless to say we're very excited.

That's the latest for now - we're looking forward to the fall and the beautiful weather that comes with it.

Love,
Verena & Brian