March 25, 2004 [Thursday]......Anh's Trips
Anh was out on day trips for her work this week, visiting some other locations. On Wednesday she was upstate at Kingston, New York and then today she was over in Jersey.

Tonight was my last NY Rangers hockey game for the season, this time against the Nashville Predators. Not sure what will happen next season as there is talk of a lock-out and half the season could get cancelled until the league and players strike a new agreement before the clubs go broke.

March 21, 2004 [Sunday]......Here Comes Vegas
Anh has finished booking our trip to Las Vegas which will be in mid April. We'll fly there Saturday and leave Tuesday afternoon and are booked in to stay at Caesars Palace. Anh's friend Tien is flying in for that week from Sydney on a work convention so we will catch up with her during the stay. Besides the usual gambling attractions, we have booked tickets to see (at Anh's request!) Celine Dion in concert and also to the VH1 Divas concert which is held once a year, coincidentally the weekend we are there. When we booked that we didn't know it at the time, but they have since announced that none other than Kylie will be performing at the show which is great news.

This afternoon I went over to see the Nets play Dallas Mavericks.

March 20, 2004 [Saturday]......NYC Photos now posted
I have started using the Fotolog.net website to host some of my photos I have taken over the last year. The interesting news today is that my fotolog page was featured on the fotolog.net home page as the "Featured Patron of the Day", so there was a link to my page and one of my photos was there.

Here is the link to my Something Snappy [NYC] fotolog page. To date there is around 30 photos on there, more will be added.

This afternoon we went for a walk up to 34th street. As it turned out there was a protest march against the war in Iraq in New York today, marking the one-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. The march came right up 6th Avenue right past our window, we could see the throngs moving up 6th avenue 17 floors below us. When we went outside we were about 3 blocks ahead of the first protestors as we walked in the same direction to our destination. The roads were all blocked off to traffic and the NYPD were out everywhere, probably 10 were insight of just our apartment building street corner alone. Here is a link to a news report from the New York Times. They say the protestors numbered anywhere between 33,000 and 100,000. I can't verify that apart from the fact that there was a constant stream of marchers passing our apartment window for over 90 minutes, so it was a tonne of people.

March 19, 2004 [Friday]......And the Snow Continues
Overnight we had another snowfall, a couple of inches. My boots came out once again, and walking to the subway this morning there was a nice snowfall coming down. Snow is better than rain as you don't need an umbrella.

Originally I had a ticket for the Knicks v Nets game at MSG tonight. This was a sold out game for a cross-town matchup. What I actually did was sell my ticket, as I got more than double what it cost me and ended up watching the game at home with Renard who came over. We planned on buying some cheaper tickets from the scalpers out the front of MSG, and indeed did get them down to under face value of the tickets but we wisely passed it up as we later saw that Jason Kidd was out of the game injured.

March 17, 2004 [Wednesday]......Aussie Invasion in NYC
There are 4 Aussie bands on a 30 date tour across the US currently. They are Jet, The Vines, Living End and Neon. Tonight they rolled into town for a gig at Irving Plaza. I picked up a ticket a month ago luckily as the show was sold out. I skipped Living End and Neon and arrived in time to see Jet, a Melbourne band that has gotten worldwide publicity as Apple is using one of their songs in its present iPod ads on TV. Jet were awesome tonight, better than The Vines who were not as good as when Anh & I saw them a year ago on their last tour.

I did note that the tour got some big press back in Australia on news.com.au and was one of the featured news stories. The show at Irving Plaza is just near Union Square and I walked there from our apartment as the F train was not running due to some track problems. There was a light drifting snow fall as I walked, which by the time I came outside at the end of the night had turned more icy rain. Weather presenters on tv here seem to have 4 or 5 terms to describe when its not quite snow, but not quite rain.

March 16, 2004 [Tuesday]......Snow Before Spring
Last night I was over at MSG for the NY Rangers v NJ Devils hockey game and it was good to see the Devils who won the championship last year and have a good team. Overnight, some snow started, we are in for an up & down week weatherwise.
We had up to 4 inches of snow and the streets & sidewalks have a good lining. Also gives me a reason to finally wear my waterproof boots that I got last month.
Tonight I got the bus from Port Authority back over to see the Nets basketball game against one of the top teams, Sacramento Kings, who the Nets rolled over.

March 14, 2004 [Sunday]......Wrestlemania XX
This afternoon we did some browsing around stores down in the SoHo area. We walked along Wooster Street, around to Prince Street and a stop in at the Apple store and the cool new Kid Robot store. Then it was over to Broadway and south down to Canal Street & the Chinatown area. The crowds seemed to be larger than normal and we had to especially watch out for the asian ladies speedily pushing their carts full of pirate dvd's away from the NYPD. They were racing through traffic on the road which was a sight to see considering they really couldn't outrun anyone loaded up as they were.

After those hijinxs, we stopped for lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant before walking back to Spring & Prince Street and ending back over at Broadway - LaFayette.

In the evening, it was time for the much awaited and much hyped Wrestlemania XX over at Madison Square Garden. This sold-out within minutes of going on sale, and were in high demand in the lead up to tonight. We were a few levels up and our tickets were $120 a piece, but closer down ringside they were several times that.

The card for tonight was:
* WWE Championship : Kurt Angle vs Eddie Guerrero
* World Championship : HHH vs Chris Benoit vs Shawn Michaels
* Goldberg vs Brock Lesnar
* The Undertaker vs Kane
* US Championship : John Cena vs Big Show
* Rock 'N Sock Connection vs Ric Flair, Randy Orton & Batista
* Women’s Championship : Molly vs Victoria
* Christian vs Chris Jericho
* Evening Gown Match : Sable & Torrie vs Stacy & Miss Jackie
* Open Cruiserweight Elimination Match
* World Tag Team Championship : Booker T & Rob Van Dam vs Mark Jindrak & Garrison Cade vs La Resistance vs The Dudleys
* WWE Tag Team Championship : Scotty 2 Hotty & Rikishi vs APA vs Basham Bros vs SPWGTT

March 13, 2004 [Saturday]......Back in Action
Returned to normal activities today, still sluggish from Vertigo which hasn't completely gone away, but I went out to play ice hockey this afternoon in Central Park. The lake which surroundes the northern end of Lasker Rink where I play has now completely returned back to water, as it was still all ice when I was there 2 weeks ago. The "Danger...Thin Ice" signs were still out, but this time I even saw someone with a fishing pole out, who knows what fish could be in there.
I played hockey for a couple of hours which was quite challenging at times as I was feeling a little shaky still.

March 8 [Monday] - March 12, 2004 [Friday]......Vertigo continues
No activities planned this week, still recovering from vertigo.

February 29 [Sunday] - March 7, 2004 [Sunday]......Vertigo Strikes
I was knocked out of commission this last week after I came down with a bad case of Vertigo. Didn't leave the apartment once as it was challenging enough to walk to the kitchen without bumping into the wall or falling on the floor.

All activities cancelled for the week.