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Yes, I am Filling Up on Bread at the Bryant Park Grill

On Thursday, Janna and I shared a lovely lunch at the Bryant Park Grill.  I, of course, filled up on bread and made no apologies.  The parsnip soup starter was delicious.  The Vegan Organic entree was truly awful.  If you’re going to offer a Vegan choice on the menu, you need to provide massive chunks of lots and lots of hearty root vegetables, not a chiffonade of greens with a sprinkling of quinoa and a few, limp, tiny pieces of eggplant; and you certainly don’t put the main dish star — the portobello mushroom — in a side cup chopped up like a disrespected, diced, carrot!

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Failure of Verizon LTE on the New iPad

I had high hopes for Verizon and their LTE network when I first unboxed my new iPad. I knew the LTE spec could be as high as 20Mbps down and 10Mbps up — but I’d settle for half of those numbers.  I’d read reports that people were getting LTE speeds in NYC of 10Mbps down and 6Mbps up and I’d love to be able to live that fast on the web.

Unfortunately, my initial tests in Jersey City were lousy, and yesterday, I did some informal LTE testing around Bryant Park in New York City.  You’d think at 6th Avenue and 40th Street you’d have a saturating LTE signal from Verizon.  Here are the results of my first, dismal, test:  Two Verizon LTE bars and 1.7Mbps down and 1.47Mpbs up.  Ugh.  That’s miserable 3G territory!

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Lessons Viewed from Afar: Yoga at Bryant Park

One of the greatest things about living and working in New York City is seeing real life happenings that look like staged events.  Janna and I are currently teaching together in Manhattan, and all Summer we have had the pleasure to watch — from our classroom perch on West 40th Street — weekly group Yoga sessions in Bryant Park.  Last night after the final class, I flung open the window and took this image.  You can see the Bryant Park carousel in the foreground and at least 300 yoga students congregating and sprawling on yoga mats on the green.  The students change poses in unison.  It’s like watching a beautiful, magical, dance from afar between the trees.

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Kate: Chapter 17

“Looks like somebody’s just about ready to have tea for two, or maybe tea for two hundred by the looks of it. I wasn’t planning on bringing a small army with me – was there something you hadn’t told me, Jean-Michel?” That was Kate, standing behind him.

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