Trip to New York

So we decided to head down to New York City last weekend. A total of seven of us went, five of us took the train down on Saturday and two went down by bus on Friday.
I was with the train group and we had to pretty much get up at the crack of dawn to catch the train, which we than literally had to run to catch. Always an adventure!
We arrived at Penn Station at around 9:30, where I was meeting my good friend Allie. Allie currently lives in Ohio and her husband is in New York until the end of January. I was Allie's lacrosse coach at Davis and because we were the same age, we hit it off instantly. I left the group and was set to meet up with them sometime later that day. Allie, Aaron and I headed off to their apartment near Columbus Circle. We hung there for a while, then headed in through the mall which had a Dali inspired exhibit. I am a huge fan and was super excited. I had been just been to a recent exhibit in Atlanta and loved it.
After the jaunt through the mall we ended up at Central Park. This park is AWESOME. First off it's giant and you can walk forever and it feels like you are in another place. We stopped at all the major spots and enjoyed a nice stroll through the park. It was actually a very nice day! People keep asking me what I did in NYC, and really not much. It was mellow and nice to hang out with Allie and Aaron. We did go through the largest cathedral in the city, where outside was this crazy statue, telling the story of good vs evil. I also saw the RESTAURANT from Seinfeld, who knew it was called Tom's Restaurant! After that, we headed to a bar to watch the Ohio State game. After the game was over, I headed to meet the group at the hotel to check in. We decided to shove five people into one room and it worked!
We were planning on going out on the town and headed to grab some street food, then take the subway to Greenwich Village. First stop was the Village Tavern. It was okay, didn't have that great of ambiance but Thomas had been to a place called the Slaughtered Lamb, http://slaughteredlambpub.com/. We headed down to the dungeon as there was a table for the five of us. We were just enjoying our drinks, when I caught the conversation at the table next to us. The waitress was challenging the patrons to a drinking contest and apparently if they lost, she got to spank them. Now, I was a little surprised at this, but was like, hey cool job, you get to spank your patrons and drink with them! Well, she got one of their belts, had them bend over the chair and man, she went after it. I saw those guys flinch. She did not hold anything back, and my guess is that the next day they probably couldn't sit down! It was very interesting.
Well, after than bar, we headed to another bar, which wasn't as exciting by any means. It was already two and we were pretty much done, so we searched for the subway back to Time's Square. Of course we had to stop out for a post drinking snack and made it back to the hotel at around 4.
The next day we headed back to the park as the group hadn't been there yet...so it was another good day at the park. It was a bit colder, but still nice out. After the park, it was time to catch the bus back to Albany.....only to return another day!

Life in a hotel

It's been a while since I've blogged and wanted to give an update on my last couple of months.

First, I actually enjoyed living in the ATL and was sad to go. For the first couple of weeks, work consisted of mostly online training modules required by the Army, such as Risk Management Assessment, Fire Extinguisher Training, Drug Prevention, etc. Pretty boring and really not enough to fill two months of work. Every two weeks we would get a new group of people into s our office, which was really a trailer, not anything fancy and I basically thought of us (EFD) as the red headed step child of the FAD. Oh, yeah, if you didn't know the Army is full of acronyms, so if you don't know what it is, don't hesitate to ask. I will supply a list one of these days. Some easy ones to remember....


USACIL-United States of America Criminal Investigation Laboratory


So after finally feeling more comfortable with Atlanta, it was time to leave for our 20 weeks of training in Albany, NY. Basically each unit, DNA, Fingerprints and Firearms all went to training academy's all over, we were the lucky ones that get to be up north for winter. If you didn't know, I currently call the Holiday Inn my home. It's not ideal, but it's okay.

There are eight of us here right now and we have a pretty great group of people. I better like them, cause not only am I spending the next five months with them, but I will be spending eight months with a few of them when we are in the big sand box.

School, is school. The first week, aka hell week, was indeed that. Basically they take a semester's worth of info, from genetics to laboratory safety and shove it into a week. At the end of the week there is an exam. At first we were told that in order to pass each module we needed to have a 90%, thank goodness that was lowered to 80%, which took some pressure off. We are now doing serology stuff, which is much more exciting.

Haven't done or seen too much, but we are planning some great trips. First stop is the NYC next weekend........