Mid January I found myself in New York City for the first time. A lot happened during a short period, and I would like to share with you the story of how I got there. Welcome to a weekend in New York.
To start, I should first give you some background as to why I was in NY in the first place. One of my clients is a household name in the baby products area (if you have a cute baby, you say they look like my clients logo). Their offices are in New Jersey, about 30 minutes via train away from NYC. To get to NJ, I fly into the Newark airport, which is literally across the river from the city. Close enough that you can see statue of liberty out the plane window as you land.
The first time I visited this client, I vowed to make a serious effort to stay the weekend in NYC while I was there. My reasoning was simple; there are a million things to do in NYC, I had never been there, and I have friends who presently live there. When booking flights for the next trip, I told my boss to book my return flight for Sunday, because I was staying the weekend in the big city. This actually happened to work out perfectly, because we had been in talks with a similar company to ours about licensing a piece of software. Their offices are in Brooklyn, so we would be able to meet with them during our client trip.
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Traveling Ground Zero, Hudson River, New York, Sully
1. I think I could be a stand up comedian, but my jokes would be filthy. Sort of like Bob Saget in the Aristocrats. You wouldn’t see it coming (unless you’ve been to bachelor parties with me). Speaking of Bachelor Parties, I once had a flex off at 4 AM with my buddy Kev. Neither of us were worthy of a victory, so it will go down in history as a tie.
Most Underrated Movie Ever?
2. It is quite possible that I am the biggest fan of the movie Cable Guy in the world. I genuinely think that it’s a hilarious movie. Plus the fact that it bombed in the box office and a lot of people didn’t like it just adds fuel to the fire. America just wasn’t ready for Cable Guy!
3. I have gone to several countries without a plan. Each time I was able to get around via public transportation and order food by pointing at menus. Now that I think about it, I guess I did have a plan for where I’m staying, so saying I have no plan was a lie.
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Random Cable Guy, Corvette, Ditka, Heroes 2, Kristi, Nieces, Random
Funny Video Search
I have done a horrible job of promoting my own projects recently, so most of you have no idea that I have been posting videos on Funny Video Search since September of this year. It really has been an easy gig finding videos (tons of friends and web sites post great videos), and I’m able to update 1-2 times per week… which is far more frequently than the once every 3-4 months that I have recently been posting on this blog.
One of my 2009 goals is to publish more content on Jeff Sauer dot Com, as well as get Funny Video Search to reach thousands of visitors per day (right now I get less than 20… almost all through search engines). Hopefully if I have my friends help spread the word, this can be a reality.
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Websites Funny Videos, Portfolio, Tracy Morgan
During the (rare) occasions that I see my readers in person, a common sentiment I hear is “you talk about Chipotle way too much!” Well, I guess I am sorry, but I write about the things I love.
Fortunately, I don’t have bad break-ups more than once a year, so I need some material to plug on this blog in order to keep it afloat (and yes, I realize that it is barely afloat, but fuck off if you’re going to give me a guilt trip). Unfortunately, my fat ass eats Chipotle like 14 times a week, so it is usually what I am doing when it comes time for blog posting.
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Stories arizona basketball, arizona wildcats, lute olson
My Grandparents have been married for 60 Years, and this past Sunday my Grandpa was asked to MC/Speak at the party. The speech went over very well. Everyone laughed when I had hoped they would (and sometimes when I didn’t expect it) and I got a little emotional at the end… and from what I hear, there weren’t many dry eyes in the audience. Thought I’d post it on here in case anyone wanted to read about my awesome grandparents.
Hello, my name is Jeff Sauer, Grandson of Norb and Lenore, and welcome to our celebration of 60 years of marriage between Lenore and Norby, or as we affectionately call them; Lenorby.
I will be your master of ceremonies for this event, and I hope that you’ll soon find that you are in good hands. Grandpa chose me to host this event because he says I remind him of a young Bob Hope.
I have no idea what that means, but I am taking it as a compliment.
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Stories anniversary, golf, grandparents, insurance sales, speeches
By the time we woke up on Thursday morning, the ship was already docked in Ketchikan. We only had a few hours in port, so we hastily got ready for the day and got off the ship as soon as possible. The ship was required to leave at 11:45 AM, so we wanted to make the most out of our short time in the city.
Ketchikan is a very unique city and I found it to be very beautiful as well. We were told that the city receives rain over 200 days a year, so it was surprising to see the sun while we were there. We also learned that the climate of Ketchikan is actually much warmer than Minnesota’s climate, that it rarely gets below 30 in the winter, and the summers are mild and not nearly as humid. I always thought Alaska would be much colder than Minnesota, but that’s not always the truth.
As soon as we got off the ship, we were once again greeted by several people trying to sell us day trips. Since we only had a limited amount of time in port, we decided to forgo an excursion and play things by ear for the day. My dad had heard about a lumberjack show that was taking place, and really wanted to go. I wasn’t too interested in going because it seemed like a ripoff ($36 for a one hour show… and the show went until 11:45 AM), but I caved when I realized there really weren’t many other options.
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Traveling alaska, cruise, ketchican, lumberjack, minnesota, Photos, st. cloud, travel
This morning we woke up bright and early for the scenery highlight of the cruise; Tracy Arm Fjord. We had been hearing about the beautiful Fjord ever since we first boarded the ship, and it did not disappoint.
The Tracy Arm Fjord was a very narrow passageway that was carved out by a glacier. Since it was carved out by a glacier, the Fjord was over 1000 feet deep, which allowed our ship to navigate the passages with no concerns of being in too shallow of waters. We were immediately greeted by some bright blue ice chunks. I can’t do them justice, so make sure to look at the photos throughout this post.
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Traveling alaska, blackjack, cruise, glacier, michael modzelewski, sawyer glacier, tracy arm fjord, travel
Day 4 of the trip was Tuesday, and our port of call was Skagway. We actually pulled into port some time during the early morning, so by the time we woke up, we were already docked.
After getting ready, we left the ship to go on a hike that was an “unpublished” free excursion that took us a few miles out of Skagway. My dad had received an article about this potential excursion from his neighbor, who had ready about it in AARP magazine. Sounds like quite the workout if it comes from AARP (American Association for Retired People). That was sarcasm; it didn’t really sound like it would be too strenuous at all.
So we took off walking and looked for the trail just outside of town. We found it pretty easily and crossed a very cool foot bridge that overlooked a flowing river. From there, we started on a path to Yakutania Point, our intended destination. It was about a half a mile hike to the point, and we ended up getting there pretty easily.
The point was pretty cool, and I was able to get some good landscape shots from that point of view. There were several very smooth rocks that we had to climb over in order to get an unobstructed view of the water and the harbor where our ship was docked.
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Traveling alaska, cruise, Photos, skagway, trains, travel, yukon territory
Monday morning was our time to see whales. Dad and I woke up early and perched on our balcony the entire morning in search of some whales. We learned during the talk yesterday that this was one of our best chances to see whales during our cruise. That’s all we needed to hear, as dad and I got out our respective digital still cameras, dad’s HD Camcorder (1080i beeehotch), and some trusty binoculars.
We sat out there drinking coffee on and off for several hours, and I was the only one to see a whale (I saw two, but I mostly only saw the whale tails… and I’m not talking thong underwear). I was actually a little disappointed, because I was so focused on trying to get a photo of the whale that I didn’t even give myself a chance to appreciate the beauty in real life (thank god for photos!) We whale watched the rest of the morning (with a gluttonous stop at the breakfast buffet once again), and sat on the balcony up until the point the ship landed in Juneau for the day.
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Traveling alaska, cruise, escargot, food, glacier, juneau, mendenhall glacier, Photos, travel
Woke up pretty early Sunday morning, feeling very refreshed after the long travel day Saturday. Utilized the amazing on-board room service option to have some coffee and grapefruit to the room for an early morning pre-breakfast. Read on my computer for a little while and then got ready to go to the real breakfast.
Much like my other two on ship dining experiences, the breakfast buffet proved to be an excellent spread with several options. I ate a LOT. It was awesome. I tried to stick to foods that were natural (fruits, eggs, bacon, etc.) and not highly processed, and I would say I did a decent job. Still ate more than I should have.
After breakfast I went down to the casino again to see if I could still play blackjack. Turns out that I needed to wait until 10 AM. I went back to the room and chilled out a little bit and then eventually went down to the casino to test my luck. I didn’t fare nearly as well as the night before, losing $80 in about 25 minutes.
After lunch (I am not going to go into food details as much during the rest of this diary, otherwise this would turn into a food blog. If that’s what you want, you should check out my sisters Twin Cities Restaurant Blog, which kicks more ass than you could ever imagine. It is the Chuck Norris of Twin Cities area restaurant review blogs) my dad went and watched a guy speak about living on an Island in Alaska by himself. I watched the replay on TV later in the day, and it was very informative. He was like a real life version of the guy from Into the Wild (I suggest you watch this movie if you haven’t already) *spoiler alert* only he doesn’t die at the end. *end spoiler alert*
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Traveling alaska, blackjack, cruise, gallagher, travel, ventriloquist