Hey, I'm walking here!

    Shortly after moving here, I was having a discussion with other new employees at my company about living in the city. One topic that came up was whether or not people would want to have kids and raise them in the city. For most of them, it was "no way, it's a crazy place." One even made the comment that they'd have to be pretty tough kids to live here. I'm more in the camp of "sure, why not?"
    Now that I've been here a while, I realize that I don't often see kids in the city. Rarely on the trains, never on the buses, rarely on the streets. I see high school kids on the morning train, but really not many under the age of 15 or so. Maybe the timing isn't right and they've all been taken to elementary school or something. It is a little strange now that I think about it.
    I did have an interesting experience this last week though. I was waiting for my wife on a street corner in midtown. Since it was really cold outside, I was strolling a little just to move and keep a little warm. I was looking all around just to people watch and pass the time. I noticed a girl - maybe 8 years hold - and her mom walking down the street in the same direction as me. The sidewalk was mostly clear and I figured they had plenty of room to pass by.
    When they got close, I felt this little arm on my side, pushing me to the side. At first, I thought it was someone trying to get my attention. But no, it was just the little girl, pushing me out of her way. She didn't even say anything like "excuse me." So the only person (so far) that's pushed me out of the way on the streets of NYC is this 8 year old girl. I guess they do grow up to be pretty tough.

Empire State Building Colors

    One of the nice surprises we had after moving to New York was that we have a nice view of the Empire State Building from our upstairs window. Not only that, but it was nice to discover that the colors of the lights on the building change fairly often. Most days, it is its signature white color, but for other occasions, they switch it up a bit.
    For example, for the New York Rangers opening game night, it was colored in Rangers colors - Red, White, and Blue. For Thanksgiving, it was fall colors. This one is my favorite so far, Christmas colors between Christmas and New Years:

    Sometimes the colors are weird. Like on Christmas Eve, it was half Christmas colors and half Hanukkah. Which means that it didn't really look good either way.