Marvelous Manhattan and Fabulous Fordham

In my lifetime I've (thankfully) had very few run-ins with the law. I may have broken some sort of record last weekend when after a mere 40 minutes in New York, the NYPD was grilling me as I sat in my cab in the Bronx. Nothing serious, but I thought it was kind of funny. My driver had no clue where he was going and pulled off the highway into a neighborhood to try to figure out where we were exactly and where we needed to be. Who knew Fordham University, located acorss the street from the Bronx Zoo would be so difficult to find. We must have been there a while ... I saw a police car pass us, and then it came back and 2 police officers got out and asked me about 100 questions - all basically making sure I was OK. After assuring them for the umpteenth time that I was, we got directions and headed out. Must have been a pretty sketchy neighborhood.

I was in town for a publications conference, and picked up some awesome ideas. We took a few field trips in Manhattan, one to the Museum of Modern Art, which was really cool. One of my favorite paintings looked like a man's face from the distance, but up close it was really created by using stick figures! There was aslo a pregnant woman sculture that everyone had rubbed the belly - felt compelled to take her picture. I was a little disappointed that we didn't make it to Rolling Stone, but I probably picked up a lot more useful information meeting with photographers and graphic artists along the way.

I met up with Melissa, Heather's step-sister, for dinner. She showed me a few sites, including the Strawberry Fields tribute to John Lennon in Central Park ... which was awesome. Also took a trip to Ground Zero, which was quite moving. It's incredible that it's been nearly seven years ago. Pictures of those two are at the bottom.

Our group held the bulk of its sessions and stayed at Fordham (in the dorms). The dorm we stayed in was by far the nicest I've ever been in. Totally made Haynie and Wright look like the hood! The entire campus was beautiful, lots of great gothic architectural features. Part of the campus was used to film portions of A Beautiful Mind. Still haven't seen all of that movie...

While staying in a dorm for 4 days doesn't make too many people jealous, when I tell them I hung out outside of Yankee Stadium before the start of the All-Star Game - that's another story. The atmosphere was pretty cool, and I picked up some souvenir gameday programs, but for the stadium as a whole I was a little disappointed. Kind of reminded me of Wrigley, but a bit more rundown. Nothing much to look at from the street (at least on the side I was on), but the new place looks pretty cool.

Next year's conference is in Rome. Let's hope there's room in the budget for me to go :).