Greetings from New York City

Empire State Building

View from our apartment’s front door

I’m writing this post is to give family and friends an idea of what the hell I’ve been up to in the last month or so. I’ve been super busy so I haven’t had a chance to catch up with everyone and I apologize for that.

Its been a little over a month since I’ve moved to the Big Apple with my lovely fiancé and we’ve been settling in quite nicely. We reside in Chelsea on 9th Ave, a short distance from where we work (hers is a 15 minute walk uptown and mine is a 30 minute walk down to Soho).  We’re located on a block with a bunch of nice Asian restaurants and we get to look at the Empire State Building every time we leave the apartment. Its about a 10 minute walk to get to Penn Station and Madison Square Garden, and about 15-20 minutes to get to the Empire State Building.  I feel that because I’m living so close to these iconic NYC landmarks  I should be playing it cool, but I think its freaking awesome so whatever.

Our apartment is a tidy little place that is technically considered a studio. However, it has a nice little archway that separates the bedroom from the kitchen. Here is the grand tour:

Lovely, aint it? I will say that despite giving up all the space Pittsburgh has to offer, I feel very much at home here and love our place, neighborhood and the city in general.

My work is going very well. I work for Pod1, which is a London-based digital agency, as a web developer. It’s a great casual environment in Soho and I work with a great bunch of people. I’m coding and developing rather than designing, so its an interesting and exciting step to focus more on functionality rather than aesthetics. Here’s a shot of the office:

For the past few weeks me and Melissa put our apartment together, went on vacation, and have been trying to get things sorted out for the wedding, so I haven’t been out and about as much as I would like. I’ve made it into Brooklyn a few times, where Melissa lived for a year and where most of her friends still are. I have a good feeling we’ll be spending a great deal of time there, between Melissa’s band’s shows/practices, Will living there and a bunch of concerts.  Living in Manhattan is great as far as transportation is concerned, so we can get anywhere pretty easily.

I started rollerblading to and from work which definitely makes the morning commute a lot more exciting. I can get to and from work in 15 minutes, which isn’t bad at all. Melissa and I also live really close to the West Side Highway where there is a very nice designated bike/skating/running path right along the Hudson. We skated from our house all the way down to Battery Park and checked out the Statue of Liberty.

In the coming weeks I’ll try my best to keep everyone updated.  It should get calmer (I hope) but for some strange reason, I always seem to find ways to fill any free gap of time.
Well, here I am…GREETINGS FROM NEW YORK CITY!