Labor Day, How Awesome are Thee

Before I start this post, how about a quick round of applause and perhaps even a shout out for the awesomeness that is Labor Day weekend.

Tracy and I were remarking yesterday about how we had no idea why we celebrate Labor Day.  A quick Wikipedia search educates us to the fact that Labor Day actually began as Labour Day (with a “u”) and is a direct result of trying to appease organized labor many moons ago.  Now I’m usually organized labor’s biggest critic, but in this case, the collective desire to not do work has translated into a national holiday and a fantastic way to celebrate the final days of summer.

We did it big this Labor Day, and even kicked things off a bit early as we hosted our friends Brent and Andrea who were in town for a swanky Manhattan wedding.  While our hosting consisted mostly of providing a place for them to rest their heads (since they were busy with wedding festivities), it was a blast to catch up on life from the Radius, talk Fantasy Football smack with Briz, and catch a few pointers on parenthood from the experienced (a few months or so) pros.  We even found time to introduce Brent to the Shake Shack, which I believe may have made his top 3 list of things to do alongside mock fantasy drafts and saving kids’ lives.

Friday night we were able to cross off yet another item from our New York To-Do List by taking in the US Open tennis tourney.  We bought a couple tickets off eBay to attend the night session and watched from the top row as Venus Williams took care of business against a young Russian whose name escapes me at the moment.  The marquee match was Rafa Nadal against Nicolas Kiefer, and the play did not disappoint.  Kiefer was invisible in losing the first set 6-0, but harnessed the energy of the crowd to win set 2 and push Rafa to the brink the rest of the way.  We moved down to some great seats midway through the match and can unequivocally say the Open is one of our favorite experiences yet in NYC.

Saturday morning called for my longest run to date in the Marathon training, and I’m happy to report that 17 miles were conquered with relative ease - by which I mean I was tired and sore for the remainder of the day, but all in all felt pretty good.  The nice thing about running 17 miles in a morning is that you can a) eat whatever you want the rest of the day and b) lay on the couch watching college football’s first weekend with nary a hint of guilt that you should be doing something more productive.

Yet we didn’t spend the whole day on the couch.  Saturday late afternoon we caught the Metro North train to Connecticut to visit Will and Rachel, the entrepreneurial couple I wrote about last week.  We were able to spend an hour at the new coffee shop (where I had the delicious cappuccino shown below) while playing with some of Will’s Tegu blocks.  During a delicious dinner in Rowayton, we got the inside scoop on what it’s like to start two companies during the same week - exhilarating and tiring are two words which come to mind.

By Sunday we were understandably tired from the prior couple days of activity, and thus crashed for an epic nap post-church.  That’s what you can do on a Labor Day weekend, as we crushed 3 hours on a Sunday afternoon snooze and didn’t feel bad about wasting a day because we had ALL DAY Monday to hang out and not Labor as well.  Awesome.

We took advantage of this gift from the union gods by making our way late Monday morning to St. Luke’s Roosevelt hospital to meet Austin Webb Smith, the 2 day old son of our great friends Jordan and Trevor.  We’ve been 3 months behind J&T during the entire pregnancy experience so it was absolutely mindblowing to hold their little one and fast forward in our minds to when we’ll be doing this with one of our own.

Wow.

The whole visit left us giddy and awestruck all at the same time.  Are we really going to be parents in a few short months?  Apparently so.

I guess that means we should pack as much as possible into the weeks ahead.  In other words, kind of like this Labor Day weekend.  And after taking a quick glance at the calendar, it looks like there’s no shortage of fun on the horizon.  Should be a fun ride.