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This time, for the kids. To the Maplewood Village for the annual parade – which is actually more of a mob vaguely moving from store-to-store to get candy.

And the candy was flowing like wine. Sort of.

Eddie and Kelly’s house with the old Maplewood crew. Then to New Brunswick for a smelly basement party off-campus at Rutgers. Gotta love Halloween.

Winter comes early to New York as Bryant Park is transformed into an ice skating rink, complete with figure skating performances and a Zamboni machine and all that. Shame I missed the penguins though. A little early for me.

Wait, it isn’t even Halloween. Ice skating?

And so Charlie and I are whisked away to the West Side of New York for a little Halloween shindig for Update Graphics. Oddly, perhaps, Charlie seemed to get much more attention on the streets. Seems that a graduate is more out of place these days than a soldier in full BDUs with a helmet and smoke grenades and shit. Strange times.

The lights stay on all day, but on an overcast, London-like day, Times Square just seems a bit more interesting.

Chinese anti-torture protesters? Better than the Naked Cowboy.

Cryan’s again. Except this time we left a live Jazz band and a John Corzine fundraiser event at the Goat.

Ok, from now on, Cryan’s is off limits.

Visiting Johanna for a weekend at Maryland University and her awards ceremony for the College Park Scholars.

Uneventful, but at least the rain stopped!!

Rain is natural. But forty days and forty nights of constant down-pouring, well, that could be something to get concerned about.

New Yorkers are generally pretty calm and can handle whatever nature, or man, may through at the city, but even they tend to freak out a bit when the wet stuff starts to fall. Unlike London, this rain is for real, its comes down hard, it splashes up, its cold, and it doesn’t stop! And also unlike London, people carry umbrellas which makes the otherwise-adequately-wide sidewalks turn that much more treacherous.

And, as if the rain wasn’t enough, the trains decide to shut down, or at least be massively delayed. This is sort of thing I would expect in London, but not in New York. Its actually pretty interesting (or scary) to think that Penn Station is entirely underground, which means when there are delays, its just a whole lot of people packed into a basement, of sorts, with only a few very narrow escape tubes. Not a good situation.

I hate commenting about the weather, but I suppose I have to comment on something. I’m losing my perspicacity, or whatever the written equivalent of perspicacity would be.