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Alaska 2005

2012-01-26T23:08:00.000-05:00

I've been catching up recording video tapes to DVD, and this gem came to light -- the husband describing the food we had procured for camping in Alaska without a cooler or ice.

"Squeeze jelly, spray cheese and coffee syrup."

Where Were These Guys in Long, Fur Coats Going?

2012-01-22T14:24:00.000-05:00

To get tattoos.

Oh What a Night

2011-12-24T14:03:00.000-05:00

While a third of New York goes "home" for the holidays, I wish I was going somewhere for the holidays, but alas, here I am, at home (no sarcastic quotes), and on top of that terrible realization, I came down with one of those nose colds that spews a whole lot of gunk and makes a very sore, pink nose before you have a chance to say "buy me those Puffs Plus with Lotion please."

So, two sleepness nights of waking up screaming sporadically through the night because I thought I was dead when I couldn't breathe through my nose, when there was loud noise on the roof. One thunk was so dramatic I got out of bed and so did my son. We met in the kitchen. I was ready to put on shoes and go upstairs to shut those darn kids up, but Max wouldn't go with me and at 5:30am I thought maybe I shouldn't go up there myself because any yahoo could take me on pretty handily, even without a nose cold.

So back to bed we went, when a few minutes later, I opened my eyes to see a man facing me in my bedroom window, scurrying across the ledge TOWARD the fire escape. Not sure if I was seeing some bizarre shadow, thinking I've been waiting my whole life for this scary home invasion, I found out exactly what I would do in such a situation. Scream, is the answer. I waited until I saw him in the living room window (next window over), then shouted and got on the phone to 911. I am an excellent blind dialler, by the way. I got it on the first try with no light.

Apparently I was unintelligible because the operator kept asking me the address even though I am certain I was saying it very loud and very clearly. 27th floor? No! Top floor! Brooklyn? No! Manhattan! Etc. Plus, I was blocking the husband's glasses and didn't understand his gesticulations, thinking he was looking for a hidden weapon somewhere in the loft (they are scattered around and I'm never sure exactly where they are socked away) so it took him some time to get his eyes on and down to the window.

By then there were ten thousand cops on the roofs all around and above, and shortly after they had a man cuffed and face down on the cop car. I thought he was wearing something darker, but I now think I'm wrong. After piecing together the story, all I could get was that this guy was trying to break into apartments when the cops started chasing him all over the rooftops and up and down the fire escapes. When I saw him, he had jumped from our roof to the next door roof 1 story lower, and then proceeded to run to the EDGE of the roof and jump onto a 6 inch ledge and shimmy across (6 flights up) to the fire escape, where he went down and tried to get into a window, but was chased away by the tenant (who says insurance lawyers aren't tough?). He must have continued down after that because that was about the time for him it took to get caught.

So no sleep last night either, it was way too exciting.

And how about all those deaths? More on that later, but the list is very long this year.

Happy and merry to all. And PLEASE install gates on your windows.

Oh Just Some Stuff

2011-11-28T22:41:00.000-05:00

Boy has it been a long time, yes it has. I'm no longer committed to this blog, so every post from now on will start with my recognizing that this post is an anomaly and I feel bad that I have nothing interesting to say anymore. As the years go by, my boring life is now so boring I can't even make stuff up to feel like interesting things are happening. Mostly I think about finding the perfect boots, but that's not going to happen, which is good, because then there would be truly nothing to think about.

Herewith some recent news items that are quite significant if you have nothing better to do for the next minute of your life:

A Colombian woman in the husband's class opened a fortune cookie during their annual "pot luck but no turkey please" Thanksgiving feast and shouted angrily, "There's paper in mine!"

The husband seems to have a bunch of bites (but really it's hard to tell due to his being fairly mole-y by nature) and has spent the last 3 1/2 hours (I am not exaggerating, the man is very focused) hunting for bed bugs. He hasn't found any, which is why I'm brave enough to write this. He did gather a whole bunch of gross shit on pieces of tape that we gazed at through a variety of magnifiers, loops and light tables, comparing the teensy crap to photos in books and websites. All are completely unidentifiable, but definitely none are bed bugs, which is all that matters. He then spent the next hour (so far, it's not over) vacuuming thoroughly in and around the bed. He is vacuuming inside the bedside books, photo albums and magazines (there are a lot) as I write this.

A man has been sleeping in the roof vestibule the past couple of nights. He has a white down blanket and a bottle of red wine.

About a week ago a slightly crazy woman got locked out of her apartment (or wandered into our hallway from somewhere else) and sat there for hours until she peed herself silly. After she left, a neighbor covered the area in baking soda, thankfully. The last guy who did that didn't make it through the ordeal alive. Sad.

I got my hair cut, so if you don't recognize me, it's because I left about 30 pounds of hair on Michael's floor. According to co-workers I look like a flapper. Or maybe they said call girl. Not sure what they said, I was too busy basking in the compliments about how beautiful and young I look.

Hope you are getting crazy good deals during this patriotic shopping season, which will keep the economy humming, because if it's good for giant stores and hoarders, it's good for Jesus. Or something like that.

Soho then Chelsea for Art

2011-11-13T11:39:00.000-05:00

Baltimore

2011-11-05T17:17:00.000-04:00

Go back a few weeks when the leaves were turning splendid colors, it rained suddenly and hard, there was a Dewali celebration, we had one of the last crab dinners at the long open and now sadly closed Obrycki's, our hotel was straight out of The Wire, the toilet function was super-futuristic, and the son seemed settled and doing well in college. What more could one ask for? Ok, I can think of plenty, but for this moment I can happily say that this weekend was wonderful.

Jackson Hole Diner

2011-11-05T17:02:00.000-04:00

I was amazed to find out that this diner is still open, tucked by the side of the Grand Central in a neighborhood that is somewhere between Astoria and Jackson Heights, near LaGuardia and the Bulova factory, the Jackson Hole Airport diner. There are also outposts in Manhattan but this Queens location is a classic. I remember many years ago a car crashed through the front window of one on the Upper East Side. It's a classic, old style diner, completely authentic. The tableside jukebox is still a quarter per song, and it works. I played I'm in Love With My Car by Queen.

This diner (formerly known as Air Line diner for which the sign is still in place) was the spot where the famous 1978 Lufthansa heist at JFK airport was planned, and was portrayed in the movie Goodfellas, filmed on location.

City Weekend

2011-10-11T21:19:00.000-04:00

Yay global warming for giving us such great weather. Sorry Texas that you have to suffer for our pleasure.

And speaking of global warming and its repercussions, I found out that our landlord hasn't repaired the ceiling of my downstairs neighbor which was destroyed during the hurricane over a month ago. (They haven't fixed the hallway ceilings either.) The landlord is trying to strong arm him into taking a buyout in lieu of getting it fixed. (Don't know how much he was offered but not enough that to jump at it immediately.) Next time I see him, he will get an earful of advice from me on housing rights.

RIP Bob Arihood

2011-10-04T22:20:00.002-04:00

Local photographer and blogger celebrity Bob Arihood was found in his apartment last Friday, dead at 65 from a heart attack. His last post was Sept 25 so it is possible that he had been there the whole week until some worried friends finally decided to break in.

One of many memorials took place tonight at Bob's "post" in front of Ray's Candy Store. Lots of people spoke about their memories of Bob. Their was uniform agreement that he had a giant, gold heart. He chronicled the usually invisible people who hung around Ray's and Tompkins Square Park on his two blogs.

I knew Bob from around the neighborhood, and we always nodded hello. Once, when I was buying a milkshake, he came up to me and said, "Aren't you Jill?" Somehow he knew who I was, and I felt momentarily famous. He was one of the most easy going and engaging guys.

His blogs are here and here.

Bluth Family Reunion

2011-10-02T20:33:00.001-04:00

So the word on the street is that the movie script for Arrested Development is half finished, and that they are going to try to get 9-10 episodes on TV (or the internet) to catch up with the characters prior to the movie being released. They will film next summer.

Missing from the photos is Ron Howard, who was on the phone. The 2nd photo is the cast doing the chicken dance. According to The New Yorker, they will air the interview, conducted by Nancy Franklin (sort of, they rarely ever let her speak), on their website.

Herewith a montage of various chicken dances from the show.

Tenth Avenue

2011-10-02T19:58:00.000-04:00

Tenth Avenue in midtown is a serene place, a little gassy from the buses heading to the Lincoln Tunnel, but nonetheless one of the last streets where New York feels like the New York of my childhood despite the glass buildings that loom in the distance. The Yotel is just an oddball thing.

Some Stuff

2011-09-21T20:23:00.000-04:00

As the five readers I have left might have noticed, I haven't been posting too much of late. I haven't been inspired, mourning the loss of my baby who has abandoned the nest and gone south for the winter. It's quite disorienting.

Some interesting things might have happened worthy of relating, but now I can't remember them. I'll try.

Today I was sitting in the outdoor part of a restaurant on the very west side, when an M8 bus went by and the bus driver leaned out the window and shouted "hello" to me and waved furiously. That he 1) knew who I was, and 2) recognized me from so far away, was exciting. My lunch companion was duly impressed. Now I need to learn his name so we can move this relationship to the next level.

Last Saturday evening, if you were wondering where all the white people went, I found them at the Stone Street Oyster festival. Seriously. All white. Like the suburbs somewhere in the 1950's. Sorry I have no photos, it was so crowded I couldn't move my arms.

After escaping from that oyster nightmare, I ran into the Wall Street sit in, and marched with them for a while and ate one of their peanut butter sandwiches. First time I've had white bread in about 20 years. Ran into some of my son's ex-high school friends, one of whom had organized a couple dozen people and some buses from Ohio to attend. She's my hero.

Last week I saw former President Al Gore give his 24th hour presentation of his new slideshow. Powerful stuff. Claimed that over 8 million people around the world saw it, but I have yet to find one of them who wasn't with me in that auditorium. If you care one little bit about our earth, please watch the video. It's an hour long, but well worth the time. Step two is work toward not having nightmares of alternating flooding and drought.

Video streaming by Ustream

Governor's Island

2011-09-21T18:29:00.000-04:00

There are one or two more weekends to make your last foray out to Governors Island (free ferry! see art!) to see this art fair. In addition to interesting art, seeing the inside of the barracks is also fun. Two bedroom apartments with river views, and built in telephone caddies in the hallway. Remember telephones? Ha!

Above head by Janice. See more here.

Western Landscapes

2011-09-10T17:21:00.000-04:00

Where Do Porta Potties Go When They Die?

2011-09-10T15:01:00.000-04:00

Barstow.

Barstow in Summer

2011-09-08T00:01:00.001-04:00

Barstow is more than just excrutiatingly hot. It was 105 when we were there last week. I don't think it ever gets much cooler than that. And no breeze. But it has some beautiful old signs and a pretty great train station.

A Nice Wall

2011-08-21T15:21:00.002-04:00

Taconic State Park

2011-08-14T16:18:00.000-04:00

Another great place a few hours north, in our lovely upstate watershed. Any place called Bash Bish is good enough for me.

Appalachian Trail

2011-08-10T19:41:00.000-04:00

A two hour ride on the Metro North brings you to a piece of American history and the Appalachian Trail. It's a great day out of the city but be sure to bring supplies as there are no bodegas anywhere to be seen.

The West Side

2011-07-26T19:57:00.000-04:00

For years we kept our garbage that we couldn't throw away in a storage space on Charles Street. A few years ago they sold the building and now it looks like this.

One of the delights of going to storage was passing by this little house on Weehawken Street. There is a sign on the street saying it is the last original house on the block, from the 1830's, formerly the site of a prison and market. There are 2 signs asking people not to urinate. Read more about this historic district on New York's shortest street here.

Around the corner is another building that is about to come down. Losing this great Hotel sign is sad because it will inevitably be replaced by another ugly fishbowl building.

Around the corner again, on Christopher Street is this faded sign of times gone by. The ground floor is for rent. I'll bet inside is fabulantastic.

A Brooklyn Journey

2011-07-26T19:42:00.001-04:00

So I don't have to tell you how hot it was this past weekend. Or maybe I do. My indoor/outdoor thermometer was 97 degrees at 11pm on Friday night in my living room and 98 degrees outside. Nutty cuckoo.

We holed up in Max's tiny little bedroom which has an air conditioner and watched movies and TV until I started to hallucinate that I was in prison. A prison cell, by the way, is larger than the bedroom.

Friday night I had an interesting conversation with three youths on the roof. They thought we were insane for living here, and, made us feel good by not believing we were as old as their parents. "You don't look like my parents," was my favorite compliment of the evening.

Saturday we spent yet another day in prison, adding Janice to the mix which makes the tiny bedroom crowded like the L train, watching Song Remains the Same. Starving because going into the kitchen requires sweltering in 100 degree heat so we didn't eat. Buzzer is broken so we couldn't order anything without going up and down 76 stairs.

She convinced us to go to Brooklyn to see a band in Prospect Park. The heat. Brooklyn. A mediocre band. Not things I'm in love with. But off we went, anything to break out of prison.

And then Brooklyn won. On the F train a woman sat next to me with a cake box. I told my husband in my quiet whisper voice that I was going to snatch the box away from her. He said, in his quiet whisper voice that he thought she was going to offer us some the way she lurched as she got on the train. Then, the woman, with a very keen sense of what's going on around her, asked, in a regular outdoor voice, if we wanted doughnuts. YES I WANT ALL THE DOUGHNUTS. And she gave me a delicious donut with a very light cream filling, sprinkled with donut crumbs.

And the other highlight of Brooklyn was seeing this Stag Beetle on the sidewalk.

The band was meh. But who cares, I broke out of prison and got a free doughnut. What more can a sweaty girl ask for?

Pennies and Nickels

2011-07-16T00:58:00.000-04:00

Creme de Cocoa

When at the racetrack, one spends several hours thinking about money. How much to wager with each race, how much you won, how much you lost, how much life costs, how a big win could change everything. And so on. Do you tip the waitress the full 20% even when the food is tasteless and the drinks watered down to practically their bare essentials? And so on.

While negotiating the final distribution of the dinner bill, and contemplating the having and not having of cash, recently unemployed but with a life nicer than most of us will ever know, Bill meditated for a while on the concept of inflation and how it's surprising that we haven't yet rid ourselves of small denominations such as pennies and nickels. We nodded and walked downstairs to experience the last three races outside, and not through a big glass window complimented by a close up on a tv screen.

Minutes later I went to the window to make the next bet, which left me looking through my wallet for forty cents. I came up with a quarter and a dime, but couldn't find a nickel. I put another dime on the counter and the woman said, "We don't do nickels. Or pennies." It made all those dimes I had been getting all night for change make sense, and easily gave her four dimes instead. Bill's desire had come true, and so quickly.

The husband, reflecting on the properties of a nickel, said that when nickels gather in his pocket they form a wad the size of a golf ball, swinging around, changing his rhythm, while dimes stay neatly aligned, causing no pain.

I would miss nickels and pennies. I think rounding up and down would drive me crazy and my excel-related ocd would careen out of control.