Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

Whew. Lots to tell, lots to tell. Let's try starting with New York.

We got an early flight out of SLC, carpooling with the other girl, LaReina, who was attending the conference with me. It was hard to sleep on the plane, and hard to concentrate on the papers I brought along to grade, but I had a good book with me that helped pass the time. Wayne thought the flight took forever though (he didn't bring a book!).

What *did* take awhile was figuring out how to get from the airport to our hotel in Manhattan. We had a crash course in NYC's public transportation system. I had done research before we left, determining that a week's unlimited pass would be the best deal for us to get around, but did not know where to obtain such a pass. Apparently they were *supposed* to have them in the terminal when we landed, but they were out and we had to walk to another terminal to find a pass for sale. We took the bus to a subway to our hotel, and quickly decided we liked the bus better. Who knew? I absolutely hated the buses in San Diego and Los Angeles. But the buses in NYC weren't so bad at all. I vote that it's because *normal* people ride public transportation there, and in CA it's mostly just crazy people who think they are Christ that ride the bus. :) [oh MY!]

So we checked in, grabbed some food at a fun pizza place with a horrible waiting staff. At least the ambience was good. They built the restaurant in a building that used to be a church. Really fun place with drawings on the walls themselves.

Thursday LaReina and I went to the conference all day while Wayne visited the first of many art museums. It was an interesting conference - more Linguistic-y oriented than what I've been doing my thesis on, but still an interest of mine. There were a lot of talks on eye-tracking people reading and measuring brain waves while people read linguistically interesting sentences and such. Wayne had trouble pacing himself at galleries on Thursday, spending a long time in the Guggenheim and breezing through the MoMA because he thought he was running out of time for everything. When we met up that evening, we were both over stimulated, and so we found a place to eat with singing waiters and waitresses [I believe this was the sort of place people who can't get jobs on broadway yet go to make money while they try to get their good "break."]. Another win.

Friday was similar - conference for me all day, art museums for Wayne. We presented our poster, I took lots of notes. Some guys at MIT had a system for using the mouse as "the poor man's eye-tracker." Another talk was on how people use private and shared information in the course of a conversation. And in the evening we both went to the Museum of Modern Art for free (yay for Target!) [Friday evenings are free courtesy of Target stores. However, that means they're also packed!]. I finally got to see lots of good art too! :)

Most of the time we felt pretty safe in NYC. Out hotel was on a pretty busy street so even walking home in the dark wasn't bad. There was only one alley I made us walk fast down to hurry through, and one other Wayne just turned the other way and we went down a different street. So we felt lucky that between the precautions we took in making ourselves not look like easy targets, our paranoia was fortunately not validated.

Saturday was the last day of the conference. I went by myself (LaReina's dad flew into town to hang out with her), but it was the best day of the conference (not because I was by myself, but because of the talks... :) ). Wayne saw the Met pretty much all day, and even took time to do some sketches [roman sculptures do a good job of holding still and presenting great lighted poses]. In the evening we wandered around in the shopping district window shopping at really, really big stores. Too bad we didn't need anything, but we had fun just looking.

Church on Sunday was at the temple in Manhattan. Church was on the third floor, the temple was on the fourth. Cool. Right by central park. So afterwards we had a small picnic lunch (we brought PB&J and fruit and crackers with us from Utah, to try and cut back on expenses as much as possible since BYU wasn't paying for the food).

We visited the Met (i.e. more art). Monday we checked out of the hotel and dragged our suitcase to another gallery in Queens, featuring contemporary art [i really appreciated this one video/social project piece where an artist went to film practice sessions of children singing "magical world" in Bosnia. quite a pragmatic and dramatically thought provoking piece. The James Turrell room was closed for repairs. I was unhappy, so i poked my head in anyways. -wayne].

That was an adventure, and we were a little worried about finding our way from there to the airport, since we hadn't spent much time in Queens and didn't even have a bus/subway map of the area. But we made it. The one unfortunate part is that our butter knife is still at the airport. We brought it without even thinking about it, to spread the PB&J with, and were only "caught" in a New York airport. Hehehe. Somehow I'm not surprised. Well, at least we still have 7 butter knifes...we'll just have to invest in plastic ware if we ever have more than 5 guests to our house. That, or make sure everyone knows it's BYOK. :)

Whew. So that was NYC. Wayne posted pictures on the website.

Last week we just played catch up mostly. I have lots to do before the paper deadline my advisor wants me to shoot for. Wayne had an exam the day after we got back. We went to a ward dinner on Friday. We made it up to SLC for general conference this morning, and came right back afterwards to Karl and Angela's for the afternoon session and dinner.

Oh cute story about Star. We came back late Monday night, and when we opened the door, she raced past us and up the stairs, heading for our upstairs neighbor's door! We were most confused, until we saw our neighbors the next day. We found out that they heard Star crying for attention while we were gone (thought it was their own child), and decided to leave our door and theirs open so she could come visit as she pleased! What good neighbors. Granted Star is still terrified of their two year-old (interestingly, she doesn't mind their dog). But at least she had human companionship while we were gone!

And we're still waiting for the last two schools to make up their minds, so we can make up ours. :)