Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

It's been quite an uneventful week, but kind of eventful at the same time. As much as I want to go out ice skating again, the knee's still a bit too sore for that. It's usually pretty good, but when I hit it or go up or down stairs, it hurts. Hopefully by next week, I'll be fired up again.

On Tuesday night, we went to the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade. It was a lot of fun to watch; there were floats and people dressed up as all kinds of spooky things. Kyan loved watching the people go by. Luckily, the weather was beautiful. It was around 63 (18 degrees C), so that seemed to bring the crowds out. Apparently there were 2 million people along the parade route, so we were lucky to get a good vantage point, although we walked for about half an hour to find it.

The next day, I was off to Chicago (again). Because it was an overnight trip this time, we got a hire car. More accurately, I got the hire car and the other guy just kicked back while I drove. No problems at all this time driving. It doesn't take long to get used to driving on the other side of the road. It's certainly not intuitive yet, but I'm getting there. On the morning of the second day, the car had totally died. While the AAA (=RACQ) was playing around with the car, I was standing around absolutely frozen solid. The actual temperature was 28 (-3C), but with the wind, the apparent temperature was 19 (-7C). To cut a long story short, I got another car and on my way to the client (about 10km), it started snowing. At first it kind of looked like raindrops that couldn't make up their mind if they were falling or rising with the wind. Once I got out of the car, it was pretty obviously that it was snow. It's not like the ground was white and people were in toboggans or anything like that, but apparently this was unseasonal for Chicago. I'm going back there tomorrow for a couple of days, but it's become warm again.

Yesterday, the New York Marathon was held, going through all five New York boroughs (Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, and Manhattan). It went straight past our place, so the street was completely blocked off, as was the entire 42 km route. It must have played havoc with traffic in Manhattan, because it certainly did in Brooklyn. It was great before any of the runners came through. It was the first time the place was actually quiet since we moved in. I've got a feeling it's going to be the last time before the marathon next year. There were 37,000 people participating. We were at about the 4 mile (of 26) mark, and the spread between the front runners and those at the back was about 5 hours. I can only assume some people are still going!