Climbing Manhattan Hill

Me on top of Manhattan HillSo yesterday my buddy Matt came into town.  He's from Lincoln, so we don't get to hang out as often as we used to, but neither of us have class on Thursdays, so everything sort of worked out.  We didn't have any big plans, so it was a lot of video games, barbecue, and just hanging out.  We did go visit one of Manhattan's landmarks though, the giant "MANHATTAN" letters on the aptly-named Manhattan hill.

The letters are made of concrete and painted white (and are more than visible on google maps) but have recently been covered in purple cloth for some reason.  I've heard it's part of a fundraiser, but I don't know any details.  I originally thought the letters were only reachable from the bottom of the hill, so we ended up climbing up some short but pretty steep trails.  Once we got to the letters, however, we found that you can get to them from the parking lot / picnic area at the top of the hill really easily.  Whoops.

There were some other really interesting areas, like what appears to the foundation of an old building (a large, smooth concrete surface) which is now covered in paintballs and broken glass.  It's inaccessible by road, so I imagine it's been a while since it was used for anything legitimate.  It did have a neat devil face painted on a concrete post though.

All in all, it was fun to see Matt again and visit the huge letters in person.  I may have to start exploring more places around Manhattan — it's a really nice time of year for it.

The devil-painted concrete post.

Halloween!

My jack-o-lantern during the day

It was recently Halloween, which means in addition to my normal fall regimen of sleeping through football games, I carved a pumpkin and bought candy for local children. It had been a long time since I'd made even a basic Jack-O'-Lantern (like 15 years) but it turns out that if your design consists almost entirely of straight lines, it all comes back pretty quickly. I got pretty fortunate with the pumpkin selection — I bought the pictured squash at about 5.00pm on Halloween.

Though everything is officially over, I'm not ready to give it up quite yet. Our house only had two groups of trick-or-treaters, so there's a ton of candy left, and the smallest package of tea lights Target was selling was a 100 pack, so there's lots more of those too. I suppose I could save all of them, but when you move houses / apartments almost yearly, stuff like tea lights get forgotten pretty easily.

Since it isn't Halloween without a scary movie, my roommates and I sat down to watch a vampire movie called Let the Right One In. I really hate scary movies, but I was told by my brother (who recommended the film) that it was "Art-House Horror" and not actually all that scary. I'd have to agree — there were scary parts, but it wasn't ever really too much.  The film was very good, though it's subtitled, so if you hate that you'll want to stay away.  Then again, if you're the type of person who hates subtitles, art-house anything probably isn't your style ;)

My jack-o-lantern during the night