many, many thanks

Well, I have to admit, today was a near-perfect Thanksgiving Day here in New York.

The temperature rose to 68 degrees today (the weekly average being in the 40s around this time of year), and it was crisp autumn weather – exactly the way it’s supposed to be around this time of year.

Chip, Pinky, Miles, Veronica, Joseph and I met in the early afternoon at Central Park near Strawberry Field for our second annual photo shoot (it helps that we have a former fashion photographer in the family). Walking the streets of the Upper West Side today reminded me of why I love this city.






Afterwards, Elaine met up with us. We had a lovely four-course Thanksgiving meal and a couple bottles of wine at Arte Café with Chip’s newly transplanted friends Mitch, Susie and their three-month old Isaac. It was so nice to not have to slave over a hot stove and let the restaurant handle everything. Even better – no leftovers or dirty dishes!!!

To reward Miles for his good behavior, the final component of the family outing was a trip to Lincoln Square to catch BEE Movie. I’m not typically a huge fan of cartoons… The flick fit in nicely with our previous activities -- it was set in the Upper West Side and had a lot of funny moments. Plus, Pinky and I were able to catch a few minutes of zzzzz’s throughout the flick (dang tryptophan)!


As mentioned in a previous post, there are a lot of reasons to be thankful this year:

1. I’m finally at a stage where I’m really happy about the direction my life is going. I’ve never felt more confident and self-assured. Not sure if it has anything to do with turning 35, but I’m not going to question it… just going with it.

2. My family – both at home in California and here in New York. My brother is home and away from the dangers in Iraq. My mom and dad are gearing up to get settled in their home in Vegas. Chip and Pinky just purchased a new house in Jersey while Veronica and Joseph recently settled into a lovely duplex in Brooklyn.

3. My friends – for the first ten years of living in NYC up until my cousin and aunt moved out here a few years ago, they were/are my urban family. I am truly blessed, and I am happy to see that they have a lot of cause for happiness in their lives as well. New homes, jobs, business ventures and loves.

4. I started the year working for a great company and collaborating with a wonderful set of colleagues. I’m ending the year leaving that great company (with mixed emotions), gaining new friends/colleagues, and moving on to another job that’s imbued with a wider set of possibilities, more responsibilities and a greater sense of financial stability. Even better, the new opportunity was not something I sought… it came to me.

5. Traveling outside my comfort zone – whether it be geographical, physical or emotional. Yes, I threw my back out earlier this summer, but you know what – I was forced to see a physical therapist and hit the gym. I visited London for the first time in my life and am gearing up to check out Paris and Southern Spain.

Posted here are the non-professional pics taken with my trusty Canon. Joe’s supposed to send over the ones taken with his fancy camera and telephoto lens, which I’ll post at a later date.







Hope that you and your families had just as nice of a holiday as we did.

HAPPY TURKEY DAY!

appreciative inquiry

I'm reposting an e-mail sent from a former business partner/vendor introducing me to the concept of "appreciative inquiry"... It was an unexpected but nice sentiment in line with the spirit of Thanksgiving. For a number of friends and myself, there is plenty to be thankful for this year (more on that tomorrow)...

Dear Lynn,

Recently I have been introduced the concept of Appreciative Inquiry or AI, as a simple method of recognizing the extraordinarily wonders that fill my world and more importantly, of appreciating and engaging the opportunities that are continually present around me. Imagine how much of our awareness of our world is created through the conversations we have describing it.

We have the remarkable ability to describe situations and events by either what was missing or what was there… by what went right or what went wrong…by what we want or by what we don’t want. One of the principles of AI is that our conversations play a significant role in what we experience in our life. The inquiry part of AI says that it is the questions we ask that shape the direction of our conversations.

You are such a welcome part of my life. As either a friend, a client, or a colleague, your conversation has brought light to my world. It has shown me new opportunities and new ideas. It has brought energy to my work. It has added color to my vision.

I thank you so much for how you have touched my life. Imagine how many other people you have touched with your conversations. What if you could see the differences you have made in all of those lives?

Have a wonderful and blessed Thanksgiving!!

don't mess with me and my friends

When I transferred to a new high school in 1988, it was a little rough. I had spent most of my childhood in the west side of the Valley -- attending some highly sheltered parochial and prep schools. Because two of my closest friends and my favorite twin cousins, Chip and Dale, were over on the east side of the Valley, I decided that I wanted to experience something new. Over there, the place was filled with kids of a more socioeconomically diverse background -- majority of students were minorities, primarily Hispanic and Filipino. It was the complete inverse of the reality I knew.

During the first few months, a bully named Cookie (seriously, that was her name), tried to pick a fight with me, which if anyone who knows me can attest to is quite the joke. She and a group of girls surrounded me one day in the playground, accusing me of talking about them (I had no clue what I could have possibly said, so I just stared blankly, let them yell at me for a bit, and when they realized that I wasn't going to engage, they realized their efforts were futile and let me go). Anyhow, almost 20 years later, I've learned a few tricks and could likely take her on, although rumor has it she's a soccer mom now.

This is thanks in large part to my friend, Marisa, who enlisted us for a women's self-defense class at Fighthouse in Chelsea. The 2.5-hour seminar was run by a Filipino martial arts group, Kuntaw Kali Kruzada | Acosta Fighting System International. It was quite the workout, highly informative and is something I'd highly recommend to my female friends. Most of all, it was FUN.

They taught us tricks to "defang the snake" -- basically enough to distract and hurt an assailant so that there was enough time to get away from a bad situation. We kicked, punched (I kept on picturing a certain ex's face so it was a great way to unleash some pent up anger), grappled and rolled around the floor -- not our most flattering moments since we were sweating up a storm, but we got the gist of what to do. It's amazing what you can do with a ballpoint pen, rolled up magazine or bandana.

Here's a pic of me making some strange fight face at one of the instructors...


Here's a good one of Marisa getting ready to make her move...



All in all, the women's self-defense seminar is worth it... even if we ended up sore for days!

"the hideout of choice for greenwich village transplants and uptown intelligentsia alike..."

If you're interested in finding out where the cool kids hang or the latest on NYC neighborhood restaurants, check out my friend's reviews online at New York magazine.

the [other] festival of lights... diwali!

In honor of this week's holiday, here's a link to a television interview I set up for my friends at Rajbhog Foods/Bombay Kitchen with NY1. The segment closed out the Sunday NY1 News at 11 show. My best friend, Suzy, did a fantastic job coordinating the shots with reporter Shazia Khan (on the NY1 site, click on the Real Player video link to watch).

“When the mouth becomes very sweet then whatever you talk also becomes sweet,” said Rajbhog Foods co-owner Lata Mody. “They say [during] Diwali time that whatever happens in the past they forget and they exchange the sweets.”

Happy Diwali to my Indian and "Crindian" friends!

brunch with deephers

Despite the crisp, cold weather and a bunch of last minute dropouts... a small group of Hunter DphiE sisters were able to reconvene after 10 years for brunch down in the Village at Miracle (one of my favorite spots). Some pics... Manny brought her precocious daughter -- absolutely gorgeous, smart and quite the photographer (she liked playing with my camera and, in fact, took some of the pics below).

hunter dorms and depression food long gone...

I had the opportunity to hang out with Jenn today who was visiting from Modesto, Calif... We've come a long, long way since over 14 years ago when we were Hunter dorm mates struggling on East 25th Street. It was good to catch up, walk around the city, gossip about folks like Sunflower Guy and the MLS kids, and catch some educational fun at the American Museum of Natural History in the UWS. Jenn is a lot older than me (although with the purple streaks in her hair you wouldn't know it), my dad and hers are close friends from the Phils, and she basically adopted me as a kid sister, really showing me tips on how to survive in NYC. I don't know what I would have done without her during my first six months living away from home... It was fun to remember the days of "depression food" (in lieu of ramen noodles -- it was microwave-baked potatoes and eggs when we were low on cash). It's a bit ironic that the former hardcore New Yorker is now living in the middle of a Central California agricultural/cultural wasteland -- we've switched places big time.



By the way, I love the Rose Center for Earth and Space and the Robert Redford-narrated space show, Cosmic Collisions. The scary reptile room and primates --- um.... freaked us out a bit, and I can only imagine what little kids must think. We were a bit bummed that we were a day too early for the opening of the Water H2O exhibit, and we had fun connecting with our roots walking through the Hall of Asian Peoples.