piles and piles

I have so much stuff. Why do I keep the most inane objects, which eventually accumulate to create a massive amount of items I could never need, nor want for that matter?

At least I can justify the clothes. They go out of style, what have you, but the rest of this junk is ridiculous. Here is a before picture of the clothes-cleansing process:

And here is the after:

That's right, two large contractor garbage bags full of clothes that will be donated. What's funny (or not) is that I actually did this last Christmas with Whitney, who enjoyed pilfering through and purging my closet a little too much. I suppose it's a good thing, though, to make the tough decisions: will I ever need this troll doll again or will I wear this tie that was worn during 8th grade. Of course, the answer to both is a definitive "NO", but it takes time. Lean and mean, that's what I'll be running after this weekend - at the very least, I hope I got rid of enough to fit in our apartment.

swingin'

Often times throughout this political season I have felt as though I were right in the candidates shoes on the campaign trail. Driving around the country, in a different city almost every day, and sending out a message for the people to hear. We're promoting rubber shoes instead of running for president, but that's not important.

Never more have I felt like we're making the final push than this week - hitting the crucial battleground states leading up to the election. We made a stop in DuBois, PA followed by our stay in Cleveland tonight, Iowa tomorrow before landing in swing state Colorado for election results. It's a long road, but someone's got to do it - power to the people!

that's amore

Well, the moon has hit my eye like a big one of these:

Rosa's Pizza. It's one of a million similar pizza shops in New York City, but it sure is delicious. I ate there three times this trip, each time getting a slice of the Margherita. Euphoria in my mouth. For your viewing pleasure, here is a previously posted picture because it just looks so good:

One thing that amazes me about virtually every store front in the City is the trap-door basements. Notice the metal square in front of the building:

These all lead to secret wonderland's of magic and wishes. Actually, I do constantly find the forethought put in to designing big cities truly fascinating. It's interesting this is simply "they way they do things" here. Delivery trucks stop on streets, clogging up all but the width-plus-one-inch of a car to fit through, unloading their deliveries to "true" New Yorkers through ground holes like this:

Pretty cool system. Of course you don't see this anywhere else because it won't work anywhere else, but each city has it's own system and that's what is amazing. Goodbye NYC and goodbye Stephen, you'll be missed. (I guess that kind of sounds like Stephen died, but he didn't; he's just going on a Mediterranean cruise and I won't see him again - thanks for everything.)