la casa de trand: allright bitches

i have been getting some grief from some people (who shall remain nameless) about the length of time since my last post, so...

i am back on line
at least for tonight

i know it has been a minute since i wrote but life and work and friends have gotten in the way. so here it goes for the ketchup. :)

for the past week my friend erin has been staying with us. she came to see us, to see the city and to do research for her dissertation at the american museum of natural history. our journey with erin began last friday when jes and i went to penn station to meet her at the amtrak station. she took a train here from chicago. it took over 20 hours. good googely mooglely. so she had to bring this xray machine so she could xray some skulls at the museum. she also had to bring a lead vest so that the radiation would not seep into her cells. needless to say these things, along with one weeks worth of clothes were quite heavy. luckily we only made her schlep these things across the world and back (and up and down lots and lots of subway stairs). all of us were very sweaty and sore by the end of the day from carrying and/or pulling these things around. i convinced myself it counted as a trip to the gym.

so erin was not on new york soil for more than one minute and she had her first celebrity sighting: richard dreyfus.

yeah that's right: mr holland's opus, close encounter of the third kind- you know him. we weren't sure where to wait for erin b/c we had never been to penn station and when we thought we found the right gate we asked around to other folks what train they were waiting for. this nice young man said he was waiting for chicago and then he told us a famous guy just walked by. i looked and realized it was richard dreyfus. how cool is that? it was a team effort celebrity sighting, but one nonetheless. he had all these bags and could not get them up the stairs by himself so he went back into the rich people only lounge and got some help i guess.

the next celebrity sighting was on monday afternoon when erin accompanied me into the city to meet my high school friend maria. as we walked toward central park passed fancy restaurants, erin spotted uli from project runway:

i wouldn't have known who she was if she had a shirt on that said "i am uli" but when erin explained she was from project runway i had a vague sense of seeing her when i watched the show once or twice at glennda and kim's. i was impressed by erin's celebrity spidey sense, but what really put me over the edge was when she spotted alan rickman in soho on a busy shopping day. yeah, you got it, she picked out none other than snape from harry potter among six zillion consumers in soho:

she said he was carrying a dean and deluca shopping bag. erin really gained my respect on this one. i knew i was working with a top notch celebrity spotter. and on her *first* trip to nyc. very very impressive.

ok so lets move on to what we did while she was here.

on saturday jes, erin and i went to take a tour of the united nations. it was really amazing. not only do you get to see all aspects of the building, you also get to really learn what the UN does. i think both erin and i realized we want to work for the UN. I am pretty sure it will never happen to me because I only speak English and a little Spanish, but I am going to look into it just for shits and giggles. So here is a picture of the security council room (i think):

when you start the tour, they give you these very official looking badges. here is a pic of erin, with her badge, in the securities room:

what i learned most on this tour is that i know next to nothing about the United Nations and what they do. they have this one program called the millenium development goals. its like seven or eight goals that every country in the UN has agreed to work toward achieving. this is the program i would want to work for.

i forgot the name of this room, but it is where they filmed many scenes from the movie "The Interpreter" with Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn. Jes can't remember the name of the room either.