TMI!!!

Well, it is Wednesday afternoon (IN MY WORLD ... OK, it was Wednesday afternoon when I spiritually created this blog - but couldn't get to the nitty gritty typing it up until now ...) So ...

It is Wednesday afternoon and all my camera batteries are charging ...


The laundry is laundering ...


The dog has been taken care of - has a home lined up for while we will be gone ...


I've watered all the plants ...



The kitchen is clean ...


I have bulldozed the office into some form of organization ...


The living room is clean ...


Wha?!?!


Hey!!! Dude - I'm taking pictures here ... go away ...


Charlie seems to think that she is not taken care of!

Oh! Her pills! Totally forgot.

Again ... Charlie has been taken care of - her pills have been forced down her throat ...


So ... pretty cool, yes?

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!


Help!!!!!


What HAVEN'T I DONE? Well, pretty much PLAN MY TRIP! I am so afraid this is going to turn into Prague all over again ...

Thing is? I have a TON of help - the book I bought is fabulous, excellent, wonderful, packed full of excellent information.

So ...

whats not to like?


What's the problem?



There IS TOO MUCH INFORMATION. WAAAAY TOO MUCH INFORMATION!!!

Got the book, started reading it. I was doing great! It takes New York City:


And breaks it down into zones. There are fifteen of them.


OK, that's quite a few - I will have to work out something for a three day trip.

It took me - seriously - a week of thinking about it but got it down to:

1) Lower Manhattan, SoHo & TriBeCa and if I have the energy Greenwich Village
2) Central Park, Upper East Side, Upper West Side
3) Midtown Manhattan

Looking good!

ONE. WHOLE. WEEK.

They all lie within this part of the map:


So - narrowing it down a bit!

So now it is THE ACTUAL DAY BEFORE WE FLY TO NEW YORK and I am working on #1.

Yep - NUMBER ONE.

Which basically keeps me below 14th street:


Figured out the subway system today, what we needed to do to just get over to New York from our hotel in Jersey City. Luckily it is a piece of cake! Get on the subway right by our hotel and it takes us across and dumps us out at the World Trade Center.

Hopefully that is a big hub since that is the ONLY place it dumps us!


So, I started working out from there:


Got into the book section on Lower Manhattan and the first three pages (ok 6 pages) had so much information in them that I basically stopped and started to take notes on all the places that it had mentioned and all the snippets of architectural information on this building or that building that I JUST HAD to put them on my list of things to photograph!

Seriously? I should have got a crappier book - one with no helpful information at all. Then I would be oh, so, blissfully ignorant when I have to cross off at least 75% of all the things that I want to take photos of ...




DANG BOOK! It's not like I can go and UNREAD that chapter - it has ruined me! How am I going to fit all this in?

*sigh*

I go back to Google Earth / Google Maps to try to map out a walking tour that will maximize my photo opportunities and minimize my walking.

In this clump of map alone (with the WTC showing in the upper left part of the screen - so just below where we get off the subway) there were too many places to even begin to map out anything that resembled something other than a police forensics grid search ...


So I decided to focus on the Trinity Church - A MUST. And work my way out from there ...


Zoomed in near it and started to itemize all the places around - that I wanted to photograph - and it was still overwhelming - too much! Too many wonderful things to take photos of and too much information for me to compute properly without my brain exploding!


In addition to all the information packed in that wee little 1 1/2 inch thick book and the 'Map' section of Google Earth or Google Maps - there's always PHOTOS!


You know, just in case you didn't have enough information to sort through as it was - add all the visuals - yeah - that is going to help me immensely ...

This was not going well, so I decided that I was 'just going to wander' ...


Literally! Took that little fellow down in the lower right and plonked him down smak dab in the center of the street in front of the Trinity Church - and started turning in a circle by dragging the 'N' on the circle in the upper right corner (I know MOST of you know all this - but my parents might not and it is so fantastically wonderful to be able to do this I thought I would add the "how to's" ... just in case):


Turning, turning ....


More turning ... and I see I am at the intersection of Broadway and Wall Street ...


A little bit more turning and HERE I AM! Right in front of (kinda) the Trinity Church!


Decided to take my mouse and click and drag to see up ....


And up some more!


This is SO COOL!

I am seriously having fun, so I decided to take a walk down Broadway and just see what I see ....

Hmmmm - it's the Wall Street Bull? Maybe I wasn't on Broadway? I notice here that EVERY SINGLE SOLITARY PERSONS face is blurred out! Later I notice the same thing about the license plates of the cars. How many photos do you think it takes TO COVER THE ENTIRE EARTH! A bazillion or two?


Blurring faces out! Fun, fun, fun ... and it looks like people are aware that the photo is being taken - so many are looking straight at the camera. And one guy with his hand raised in a fist ... or maybe it was something else to start with ...

WHAT A FUN JOB. I can envision it now - sitting on a plane, trapped next to a guy trying to make conversation, be polite ....

Me: "So, what do you do?"

Him: "I blur out the faces of everyone in the entire world in all the Google photos."

Me: "OH! How ... fun?"

Him: "It beats my old job."

Me: "Oh, really? What was that?"

Him: "I used to blur out the license plates of all the cars in all the Google photos for the entire planet. Roger does that now. In my job there is a little variety, plus I get to photoshop out all the guys flipping the camera the bird!"

Me: "Oh, well, it sounds really fun."

At this point in my musings I frantically try to find my iPod and headphones - because I can tell THAT HE IS JUST GETTING STARTED ...

Hmmmmm, sorry about that - I might be a little ... punchy ....

~~~

I continue my walk. Which is rather fun - you take your mouse and there is a flat oval that is depicting the cute little yellow man and move him up the road a bit and click the oval down on the road and ... ZOOM ... the photos blur by and we arrive!

Click.

Zoom!

Click.

Zoom!

Turn a corner - Click, zoom a teeny bit, click, zoom a teeny bit, click - then ...

Oh! I think I know where I am! I tell myself to hang a right - and see if I am where I think I am:


YES!!!!

I found the Brooklyn Bridge - all by myself!


So, so, so very cool ... and

weird


my feet don't hurt AT ALL!!!


i sigh, decide that I really need to get serious about things - this trip apparently is not going to plan itself.

I make an about face - just to see Manhattan one last time ...


And I can see in this photo about 10 shots that I would kill to take.





I guess I will find out soon enough ....