I mentioned that we missed out on seeing the July 4th fireworks (on the actual July 4th) in Jersey City. It turns out our township’s planned fireworks display got postponed due to the weather forecast not looking promising. It was postponed to the following Saturday night, and we were free. Hey, that worked out well!We invited our friends the Winters over for dinner beforehand, then we all went over to the park. The weather was great, and the display was quite nice.
Well, it’s been quite a busy year so far, and the Ipes collectively agreed that we needed at least a short vacation or time away. Why? How so?
The kids graduated from their respective schools and are now heading off to the big leagues – middle school and high school. Josh especially had finals and final projects and he was stressed out and tired.
Nums has had a busy year so far at work, and ‘graduated’ recently by finishing all of her physical therapy after fracturing her arm in a slip back in late January. It was a long painful road for her.
And as for me? I had multiple projects and audits to wrap up, and I was starting a new job without a decent break in the middle.
The Ipes were sorely in need of a vacation, but how would we do it? All of our 2019 vacation time was locked in for India in August. I started a new job and you can’t take a day off after arriving for an extended family getaway. We decided on making use of the July 4th weekend for an extended weekend in NY. We stayed up at the Sheraton Lincoln Harbor in Weehawken, and we planned to explore new areas, but focused on relaxing. I’d meet them at the hotel after work on the Wednesday that week, we hang for July 4th, I’d work on the Fri, and rejoin late Friday for the rest of the weekend.
It was crazy hot that weekend, but we survived! And we did a bunch of fun new things. Let’s see, there was:
On Wednesday, I ended up getting out of work later than planned, but still earlier than the rest of the family. I took the light rail north to Weehawken, checked into the hotel, and chilled out for a while. Once the rest of the family arrived, we went out to dinner at Rumba Cubana in Guttenberg.
Heading out to the hotel
Let the weekend begin?
Now the weekend truly begins!
Dinner @ Rumba Cubana
View of Hudson Yards across the Hudson River
View of Downtown across the Hudson River
On Thursday, we planned to check out Roosevelt island for the first time, and even take the tram. Josh & I hit up Hoboken to get breakfast for everyone. Afterwards, we took the NY Waterway ferry across the river to the West Side.
The ferry service includes bussing across town, uptown, and even downtown, but there was limited service July 4th weekend. We waited 15 minutes for the next bus to arrive, and take us as close to the East Side as possible, then we jumped off and walked the rest of the way.
It was very hot outside, but nobody melted. We grabbed picnic lunches from Whole Foods and a deli, then we took the tram over the Harlem River onto Roosevelt Island. I’ve never done any of this, so this was all new to me. Fun fact – the tram service accepts Metrocards!
Once we got onto the Island, we walked along the river, enjoyed lunch on a park bench, then did some more walking southward to check out the old smallpox hospital and the FDR Memorial.
My roommate & I used to get pizza here when we lived in JC
There were too many people there for us to get close to the stage. We stood nearby a large screen to watch the show, but Lily could not see anything. You could say we sorta saw Pitbull performing at the Jersey City 4th of July festival.We sorta did not see the fireworks as they were very obscured due to the tall office buildings.
Hudson Yards
July 4th Pitbull show @ Exchange Plaza
On Friday, Namita and the kids explored Hoboken while I was at the office.
Checking out Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken after brunch
On Friday night, we met up with friends John and Barbara (who were visiting from Virginia) for dinner and drinks on the Village.
A very chocolatey souffle
On Saturday, we explored Greenwich Village. The Villlage was interesting, but the heat and humidity was mildly oppressive. We went through our checklist of famous sites in the Village, and tried to get lunch at a hole in the wall Ethiopian basement, but they were too disorganized for us. We left and got lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant instead. We found it humorous when a woman took our order on the sidewalk as we waited 15 minutes for an open table.
In the afternoon, we did a little more walking, reloaded our coffee reserves from Porto Rico, hung out at the Strand bookstore, then we took the subway to 34th St to see Spider-Man: Far From Home. After the movie, we walked back in some slight drizzle to catch the NY Waterway bus and then the ferry. We didn’t plan to take the ferry back, but it was hot and we were tired. Once back, dinner at the fancy shmancy Weehawken Houlihan’s.
Vietnamese lunch
A very narrow building
It’s the real-life apartment building from “Friends”
Stone Tavern
View of the Strand Bookstore
Wow, there’s a Forbidden Planet store in the Village?
Sunday morning, we packed up, checked out, then drove out to Brooklyn to check out the DUMBO area (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass). We walked around for a while, took pictures, and got lunch at a nice place along the water.
After that, we picked up the car, and went home.
I’ll admit the extended weekend blew the budget a tade, but I don’t think vacations are ever going to be cheap. Hotel rooms, food, transportation, and activities will all cost more than you planned. If you go back to the original requirements, we needed to get away for a few days to relax, and that mission was accomplished. You could stay home all day, but you miss out on the family bonding time, and enjoying each other’s company.
It was nice to walk around (even in the sweltering heat) with the family, picnicking along the Harlem River, eating cookies together, walking around together. That’s more important than checking off items on a list, or catching up on work at home.
While we were out and about during our extended July 4th weekend in New York, we made plans to watch the new Marvel-Sony Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) film after hanging out in Greenwich Village. Since we knew it was going to be super hot that day and raining in the afternoon, we would hunker down inside where it should be cool and dry. We made our way to the East Side and 34th St, stopped to pick up some cookies to eat during the film, and went to the AMC Kips Bay theater. We soon settled in to eat some delicious cookies and watch the show.
The film is the last one of Marvel’s Phase 3. It takes place about eight months after everyone comes back in Avengers: Endgame. I still think it’s awkward that half of these kids are 5 years older than the others, and now they have to figure out how to handle it. It kinda gets glossed over in this film, but Aunt May mentions how when she came back, someone had moved into her apartment, so she had to move out. I don’t get how the whole thing works. Wouldn’t people who disappeared while flying on airplanes suddenly reappear in mid-air?
Moving on — Peter’s school organizes a two-week field summer trip to Europe, and Peter and his friends go. Peter clearly wants a vacation to forget about getting erased from existence, forget about fighting for his life against monsters and aliens, and to focus on unwinding and wooing MJ. Fury does try to get in touch with Peter before the trip, but he avoids it. Meanwhile, these ‘Elementals’ begin to show up in various locations and wreck destruction.
As you could tell from the trailers, the Elementals show up in Europe as well. Fury finds Peter and co-opts him into the battle. Peter joins with Quentin Beck, AKA Mysterio from the comics. Now, Mysterio had been a founding member of the Sinister Six, so long-time fans and readers are well aware of this. The writers can change lots of things, like whether Peter has mechanical or organic web-shooters. But Mysterio is a villain. It’s only a question of time before he reveals himself.
What did I think of the film? It was pretty good. They did a nice job of demonstrating that Peter is struggling whether he wants to be a teenager that occasionally fights crime, or he is a superhero battling to save the world. Lot more pressure in the case of the latter. I also thought they took an interesting take that Peter may eventually replace Tony Stark as the brains of the next version of the Avengers. He doesn’t officially inherit everything, but he’s clearly comfortable at the end using Tony’s technology.
I’ll also go out there and say I really liked how they demonstrated the dangers of Mysterio’s power of illusion. He can easily kill you.
Two post-credit scenes at the end – stick around and don’t miss either of them.
June 21st came along and the kids officially finished another school year. I can’t believe how fast this year went by. And now they’re heading off to middle school and high school in two months. It’s very easy to have your head down focused on the daily ins and outs (being in the weeds, so to speak), but all of a sudden here we are.We’re always pushing the kids to do more, think more, plan more. We want them to learn good lessons on managing their time, thinking critically, prioritizing tasks in a project. And writing neatly! I hope they don’t think we’re crazy, and appreciate that we’re trying to help them be their best.We may never know until the kids drag us onto Maury Povich to tell us how they really feel.
We wanted to celebrate it in some small way, so we all went out to dinner at Brick House Tavern & Tap. We ended ordering a bunch of appetizers and drinks for everyone, and the food was good. I’d certainly come back.
A few short months ago, I received an offer to come in and interview for an interesting role. It was in the IT audit, but there was also an opportunity to enhance existing processes and to build new capabilities within the audit department. I have only been with Deutsche Bank for three years this May, and I had considered staying there long term. It took until my 2nd year at DB to finally build a small network, get to know the processes, understand the bank, etc. It’s about pros and cons, but the opportunities at the new place are very interesting to me. There are always opportunities if you know where to look or how to create them.
But I was finding challenges working at DB. In no particular order:
I was finding that all the best career advancement was going to happen for those based in London or Frankfurt. It wasn’t impossible to move up here in the States, but…. it’s always better to be closer to home base. And home base was Frankfurt.
My last audit was a vendor operating in Germany, and for about a year, I had been really looking forward to going to Germany. It was sold to me that I would be there for a few weeks, I’d get to network and meet many people, build connections, etc. It would help cement staying at the Bank, getting invested, making this relationship long-term. At the last second (and I really mean right before I was going to book the trip), all these travel restrictions came in, and I would be required to work remotely. And only the German and London folks would be meeting together. See bullet above.
The Bank has been in the news a lot recently…. and my Spider Sense was tingling.
It was an interesting job, but I was travelling less and less, and it was getting less rewarding.
Despite all that, it was tough to make the decision to move on. I had learned a lot, and made some good connections along the way. I’d miss my team, despite them being all around the world. I also had a lot to wrap up, including my audit, another project, and two other audits that I was supporting. By mid-to-late June, I got everything wrapped up, and I was happy to move on.
I’ll miss working at Deutsche Bank. I learned a lot being there, especially in the past year. Both of my managers that I had there were great, and I’ll miss my regular conversations with them. I’ll also miss my colleagues. But nothing lasts forever.
I’ll be based in Jersey City, with 1-2 times a week working in NY in Midtown. Being in Jersey City isn’t bad, because you can wear jeans. And it’s 20 minutes closer each way. That’s right! 40 mins shorter round trip. Not bad.
Our second graduation of the week was here. Josh was graduating from middle school after surviving 6th, 7th, and 8th grades, school lockers, running between class periods, and learning new skills on how to manage his workload. All in all, Josh accomplished a good amount, and I hope he learned a little bit more about himself. He also went from one honors class in 6th grade to four honors classes by 8th grade.
The weather was not as nice as it was yesterday — we had torrential downpours to darken everyone’s mood. Thankfully, the graduation ceremony (the 2nd one of the day) went well.
June 19th was a big day for Lily. She was graduating from 5th grade in elementary school, and moving up to 6th grade at the middle school.
It was a different year for her this past year. In order to accommodate all of the kids, our school district shuffled all of the kids from kindergarten to 5th grade among the four elementary schools. Instead of finishing out at the same elementary school she started at, she had to spend her last year in a new school. Furthermore, a lot of her friends got moved into a group, so she barely saw them this year. Totally sucked. To add insult to injury, with all of the kids and parents to accommodate, each school had to schedule two different graduation ceremonies. So Lily didn’t even get to graduate with all of her friends finally together. I’m aware that a few parents were really angry about the whole dual graduation situation, but it wasn’t the end of the world by any means.
Here’s to hoping that middle school will be better for the kids her age. Even if she doesn’t personally get into classes with her old friends, she’ll have opportunities to meet new friends with all of the switching of classes, clubs and organizations, etc.
Afterwards, we went out for lunch to one of our local Japanese restaurants for sushi. The rest of the day was pretty laid back, except for me catching up on work. There was just one more graduation to go the next day — for Joshua.
