Raining on my parade

Three weeks ago, my friend and I though it would be a fun idea to go wine tasting in North Fork at the east end of Long Island. There is a large cluster of wineries there, and it seemed like a lovely end-of-summer activity to drive or bike around them. We planned far in advance, knowing the difficulty of working around the plans of other New Yorkers, and even convinced five other people to go with us. Alas, I am not currently swirling wine to aerate it in an austere tasting room at this moment because instead I am sitting in my apartment on hurricane watch.

Up until yesterday, I was still naively convinced that this trip would be doable as, until yesterday, there was only a 30% chance of rain today. However, now it's an 80% chance of rain, and they've also closed all public transit, so I'm essentially stuck in Astoria (not that I would ever say that on my blog as a negative thing!) until Monday morning. Luckily, assuming the power doesn't go out, I can spend this time on a sort of writer's retreat. I have a book due in a couple of weeks that is ironically on the subject of rising oceans due to climate change. The entire introductory chapter was about New York City's precarious position in the event of a storm surge. I submitted this introduction to my editor two weeks ago as a sample chapter with the note: "Too apocalyptic for 5th grade? Let me know, and I'll tone that down a bit." He told me he'd get me feedback this week, so we'll see how that goes.

I went to the store last night and was not surprised to find it mobbed. Flashlights were out, but I got a few candles. Today, I realized a few items I forgot at the grocery store, but I was scared to go back. Luckily, there is a small organic grocery store between the two larger supermarkets. There was barely anyone in there as apparently, hurricane or not, people are not willing to pay twice as much for organic canned ravioli. At least not in my neighborhood. A friend who lives in Brooklyn said there are no gallons of water left in her neighborhood so she became the "caricature of a New Yorker, walking out of the store with 2 big bottles of Evian under my arms."

Dinah's contribution to the storm preparedness effort.

Being from Houston, I'm inclined to feel this will probably just blow over with a bunch of rain and wind and not too much else. Nevertheless, it never hurts to be prepared! Especially when this means buying canned junk food in the name of preparedness. Another item on the hurricane survival list: red wine. It's one of those things that tastes just fine at room temperature. I might not be in a vineyard in North Fork, but hurricane Irene can stop me from enjoying Long Island's finest.

True, if slightly dull, confessions

The weeks seem much longer now that summer's coming. I just find it so much more of an imposition on my time to be in an office all day when the weather is lovely-like. I spent a good hour yesterday on lunch sitting in Madison Square Park basking in the sunshine.

My friends and I sat in the shade of this. It's an excellent place to observe people appreciating the artistic exhibition. And by "appreciate" I mean the singular reaction we saw was every few minutes a person would come up and touch the neck with their palm to see what it is composed of and then knock it with their fist to see if it was hollow. Humans, be they young or old, all have the same reactions to giant sculptural heads in public parks it seems.

The gorgeous weather has zapped me of all creative energy. (Yep, that's really the excuse I'm going with.) I had no ideas of things to write about today. At least not until my daily blog stalkings uncovered a previously unknown blogger convention of having periodic confessionals where the blogger reveals inane truths about themselves as a I writing exercise. I frequently feel the need to divulge minor failings of my character, but as I was raised without Catholic guilt, I've never had an appropriate outlet. Thus, today I'm purging myself of minor truths that may or may not qualify as actual confessions.

1) I enjoy hearing people lying on cell phones. When I hear someone telling someone they have to ring off because they're "about to enter a subway" when I can plainly see they're waiting in line at Shake Shack in no danger of losing reception, it makes me oddly happy. I feel like I'm somehow an accomplice of this stranger. That I know something about them that they keep from even their beloved cell phone contacts.

2) Although I'm in no way suicidal (and not trying to channel Christopher Walken), sometimes when I'm a passenger in a moving vehicle, I feel the urge to open the door and roll out into traffic. When this happens, I lock the car door so that I don't accidentally do it.

3) It says on my resume that I speak "social Afrikaans" when in reality I speak only enough Afrikaans to hit on someone. I can ask "Are you single?" (Is jy beskikbaar?) or tell someone they have a cute butt (Jou boukikes is ongelooflike), but beyond that my overall communication skills are lacking. I blame my Afrikaans teacher for this as her teaching style was to provide us with ways to get Afrikaans boyfriends and girlfriends as she insisted that was the best incentive to learn. I'm counting on it never coming up at a job interview. Or that the place I'm interviewing has a relaxed sexual harassment policy.

4) My month-to-month calendar is nearly always half a month behind. I usually only notice when I try to determine a specific date and then wonder when they moved President's Day to April.

That seems like enough hard-hitting honesty for today. I hope you all feel you know me a little better. It's nice to feel purged on this lovely Friday. Also, feel free to leave any small confessions of your own in the comments.

Springtime in photos

This weekend was the first weekend of the spring that hasn't been terrible. Weather-wise, that is. As such, I'm going to post pictures from my weekend of lovely weather despite the fact that it's now Tuesday. I meant to do it yesterday, but wouldn't you know, the weather was nice then too. It's actually lovely today also, but I'm making the sacrifice and posting pictures instead of basking in glorious, glorious sunshine. I can't guarantee thoughtful commentary on said pictures though. You might have to wait for winter for that. Or until it gets so hot that I prefer staying inside with air conditioning. Spring just isn't conducive to blogging.

On Saturday I went to the Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. It was the perfect day for it. And like all festivals in New York on beautiful days it was insanely packed. Brooklynites are enthusiastic about their cherry blossoms.

Straight up was the only view of cherry blossoms I could get that didn't have hoards of people in the way.

So many people. So many cherry blossoms.

The Brooklyn Botanical Gardens has a number of non-cherry blossoms. I risked my life kneeling to get these shots. Crowds of flower-viewers don't stop for anyone. Then again, I may have tripped over a couple of kneeling nature photographers myself, so I fully sympathize.

After paying the $15 entrance fee and walking amongst the crowds for an hour or so and eating a slice of cherry pie, my friends decided the sunny day would be much less crowded if we just walked around the park for free.

That's what we did. Observe Prospect Park. Try to guess which curly-haired silhouette is me.

On Sunday, it was yet again nice (sometimes New York surprises me). This time I journeyed north on the train upstate to Breakneck Ridge. My friends and I didn't complete the full hike because it's 5 miles mostly uphill and we're whiners, but we did get some lovely views of the Hudson Valley along the way.

This is the only view I seem to have gotten. All of the others have people in front of them. And speaking for myself, hiking is not when I am at my most photogenic. For one thing, putting a backpack on inevitably causes me to hike my thumbs through the loops and jut my elbows out as I like to imagine mounties do. I call it my hiking stance, but it really shouldn't appear anywhere publicly.

That about wraps up my weekend of gorgeous weather. I hope to have at least one more of these before it becomes hot and humid and walking outside makes me feel sweaty and dirty. Not that that doesn't photograph well also.

Ninety.

As of today, April 25, 2011, I have completed my 90-day boot camp under the watchful, un-judgmental eye of Tony Horton. None of you are likely invested enough in my personal fitness to really do the math, but if you did, you would know that it actually took me slightly more than 30 days to complete this last third. This is because I took three days off during the move last month. I tried to move forward with my hourly exercise in the morning while moving all of my worldly possessions up four flights of stairs in the evenings (because that's what Tony would have done), but in the end I was left with a pulled muscle in my side that hurt every time I coughed. (The coughing was--I'm pretty sure--an unrelated ailment.) Deciding that moving was the more important of the two irritants, I forwent additional exercise. And even after I resumed p90x a day or so after the move, I probably wasn't really back to fighting shape for another half week or so. I half-assed many a prison cell push-up during that time.

But enough of past regrets! These last 30 days were generally positive. I really had a handle on all the work-outs, and begun to notice that I was completing things I'd laughed at (out of nervous disbelief and confusion) mere months earlier. Granted, there are still things I can't do, that I continue to laugh at out of fear and confusion (namely, plyometric push-ups), but by-and-large I notice improvement in my overall physical capabilities. This is not to stay there still weren't a couple of surprises in the last few weeks. In the last two weeks of strength training, I was introduced to a DVD I'd never done before. This was very unexpected to me as it certainly felt like I'd covered everything. However, it was easy for one to have slipped through the cracks as all the workouts have such similar names. This workout would have been just another mish-mash of pull-ups and weight lifting to me, if not for the introduction of my new favorite character: Kate.

I'm rather glad that Kate only entered my life in the last 15 days of the program. While hilarious, she doesn't have the quiet, slip-into-the-background quality of a Dreya or an Adam. If I'd had to sit through her workout too many times, I would have no doubt learned her every line and found her more annoying than endearing. But suffice is to say, at 6 am I found her, what I hope was sarcastic, enthusiasm and ironic, chipper can-do attitude hilarious. "Bring it. Bring the pain," she'd say to Tony, in exactly the smart-alecky tone I would have tried to adopt had I been lucky enough to be chosen from the p90x test group. I admire Kate for doing corncob pull-ups (the most ridiculous of all pull-up options) during the choose-your-own pull-ups sets. But more than that I respect her ability to egg on Tony's little skits that none of the other participants ever seem to engage, such as in the following exchange during cool-down, ballistic stretching:

Tony: Do you all have your tickets?

Kate (innocently): The tickets? What tickets?

Tony: The tickets to the show.

Kate (against the pleading silence of the others): What show, Tony?

Tony (flexing, naturally): The gun show!

She even laughed. She's his Zeppo, although only if Groucho hadn't been in on his jokes. But enough about my crush on Kate. I'm finally ready to show a little "after" photography.

I'm supposed to be fist-bumping Tony. Perhaps it's best to focus on my right bicep instead. That didn't use to be there.

Having completed 90 days (albeit not 90 consecutive ones) of grueling, extreme workouts, I have to say--I feel pretty good. I'm already starting to plan my maintenance routine, so that I don't return to what I once was: an un-toned naif who quailed at squat runs and strength training. That said, I do plan to drop all the p90x cardio routines. They were quite fine for those miserable winter days back in February when the city was blanketed in brown sludge and doing karate in my living room was the only option. But now New York is entering into the one month of the year where the weather is truly lovely (before it gets hot, humid, and dirty--seriously, why do so many people live here?). I think I'll take my cardio outside in the form of running for the summer. As an added incentive, my new apartment is now closer to the park in my neighborhood, which has a nice running track. I'll (hopefully) supplement this exercise with at least three days of strength training a week and perhaps yoga on the weekends.

Thank you all for reading the trials and tribulations of my 90-day journey to physical betterment. It's been an enjoyable ride, and I consider the program well-worth the money, although I can't help but admit I'm really looking forward to taking tomorrow off.

Whining, maligning, and past-timing

I'm in a bit of a malaise right now. It could be because James Franco just got nominated for an Oscar (Or that he fancies himself a photographer now). More likely it's this terrible winter that involves temperatures below 10 degrees and far too frequent snow storms. I like the hibernating inside and using it as an excuse to bake thing, up to a point, but I'm finding even with the p90x, I'm feeling lethargic lately. And, frankly, a little bored.

I am usually a champion for all seasons, but I'm growing weary of winter. The snow is pretty when it's first fallen, but in the city, it so quickly transforms into a canvas for dog urine, spilled coffee, dirt, and cigarette butts. Which I guess is what the sidewalk is covered with usually, but at least it doesn't have the whiteness to highlight it. Also, people take up twice as much space on the subway with their puffy coats. Gone are the days of easy to sit next to skinny jeans and tank tops! Now the ride to work feels like being suffocated by giant black and gray marshmallow peeps with wet shoes and bad attitudes just waiting to spill their coffee on you if a snow drift doesn't present itself.

Since I can't change the weather, the natural solution is to change my outlook. I think I'm bored because I'm not taking on anything new. Sure, I've been doing the fitness thing, but it doesn't help to get me out of my apartment. I've also recently started up tin whistle classes again (we're focusing on ornamentation this semester!), but now that I've been doing it for a while the mysterious patterns created by a mere six holes is starting to feel like less of a challenge. To sum up, I think I need a new hobby.

There are no shortage of classes in New York, including everything from butchering your own meat to learning to pole dance. There's even an entire school devoted to training yourself to be a reality tv show star. I would think taking acting lessons would defeat the purpose of reality television, but this would explain why I lack the marketable appeal of, say, Snooki. The Wall Street Journal hilariously says about the New York Reality TV School that they teach you to "be yourself, to the max, only more so!"

But I digress. The class that really does appeal to me, and has for quite some time, is in aerial silks. I took a trapeze class a year or so ago and through it learned that I'm not as afraid of swinging upside down as I thought I was. Also, I hear it's a great overall core workout. And it meets the criteria of getting me out of my apartment, but also being warm and indoors somewhere. In the past, the limiting factor for me has been cost. But now I'm thinking: it's cold outside; don't I deserve nice things like aerial silks classes?


Presumably this isn't part of the beginner class. Otherwise, I should probably reconsider pole dancing.

Anyway, thanks for reading through my wintry woes. Complaining incessantly is seldom the answer, but it can help. As can baking brownies. Also, eating brownies.

A white post-Christmas

I spent a lovely Christmas holiday in Texas with its warm weather and delicious Czech pastries. It was a particularly fancy and well-0rchestrated Christmas in which both the good silver and holly-embroidered napkins made appearances. My mother and I even briefly thought that it would be a good idea to make rolls from scratch (er, or with the help of my mother's bread machine). This seemed like a good idea when we gamely wheeled our cart past the inferior brown-and-serve rolls in the grocery store. Less so on Christmas morning when we realized it still takes about 3 hours to go from ingredients to completed rolls even with the help of the modern technology of rapid rise yeast and an Oster. Also, we think we may have made some errors in the dough making as what should have been soft, yet malleable, bread dough turned out as this:My mom insisted we capture this moment for posterity. Or perhaps as a cautionary tale.

At any rate, I'm now back in Astoria, although just barely, as I caught one of the last flights out on Sunday before a massive storm hit the east coast. Although I think the media dubbing the storm "Snowmagedon" or "Snowpocalpse" are over-stating the case a bit, we did get a solid 20'' of snow which they've yet to clear from all but the major avenues of Astoria. Yesterday, I just stayed inside, watching the blizzard and the unluckly few floundering through it. I also, naturally, took a few pictures. Behold! Astoria in Snow.

This was the friendlier snow that I was willing to go out in because I didn't have food in my apartment.

30th Ave this morning. Suddenly glad I don't own a car.

I was hoping the office would be closed this morning, but considering the owner of the company lives in walking distance, it was sadly not to be. Since I have no personal days left at work and live within 3 blocks of a train that was inexplicably running on time despite being an above-ground train, I really had no excuse to call out. I showed up at work and was one of 15 people (of a total of about 100) who did so. Those of us who showed up were treated to lunch and got to leave an hour and a half early (despite most of us showing up at least a half an hour late). I could get used to this snow business. Also, going into the city enabled me to take some lovely Manhattan-in-snow shots. Here I am walking down the middle of Broadway. Luckily there were no cars because the sidewalks were not yet shoveled.

A path forged through Madison Square Park.

The few. The proud. The true Shake Shack devotees. Heat lamps or no, I have no idea why these people are eating outside.

Things are supposed to return to business as normal tomorrow (sadly, likely no more free lunches). Also, the snow will all transform into brown slush and treacherous ice. That said, perhaps because I had so few of them in my youth, I'm quite the fan of snow days.

Pumpkin and meatballs--the flavors of fall

As you know, here at Living the Astorian Dream, we can't let a season change without commenting on it. Perhaps it's the fact that I grew up in a place without seasons (well okay, it had one, maybe one and a half seasons), but I never get tired of this natural phenomenon. As much as I love seasons in general, fall is my favorite. The first day of fall is technically not until Wednesday, but I'm already enjoying the crispness in the air and the joy of waiting for the train underground without breaking a sweat. But my favorite thing about fall (or any season really) is the food. Suddenly you can get everything from pumpkin donuts to pumpkin spice lattes. I also find myself baking, with pumpkin and otherwise, a lot more.

Last night, I made some pumpkin zucchini bread. It was originally supposed to be muffins, but I left both my cupcake pans at work (happens more than you'd think). Here's the recipe: http://www.fitsugar.com/Healthy-Recipe-Pumpkin-Zucchini-Muffins-2361954. Zucchini or no zucchini, I'm not sure how anyone can call this a "healthy" recipe when it contains no less than two sticks of butter.

Just picture these, but loafier

Another thing to enjoy about autumn in New York is the annual Food and Wine Festival in October. Not that I go to that, because so many of the events are rather expensive. And I'm not quite enough of a foodie to invest money in learning about food. I'd rather use my food budget on cheese. Nice cheese is never cheap. However, these is one event at the Food and Wine Festival that has my interest piqued. It is called Meatball Madness, and it's pretty much what it sounds like. Tickets are $200 a piece, and it's already sold out. I found a contest online where you can win tickets every Monday by answering meatball related questions. I need to find it to post it here, so that my New York readers (and especially those who might use the second ticket to take a certain non-food-blogger) might enter. I can't seem to find it though. Or remember how I got there. I guess I'll have to solve this snafu by next Monday or suffer the tragedy of letting another Meatball Madness go by without attending.

Anyway, I wish you a happy last few days of summer, readers! As a final note on fall, I'm also looking forward to my parent's coming this weekend as we're going to head upstate to see a little fall foliage. Pumpkin, meatballs, foliage, and family. It's really all you need.

Why I depend on the kindness of google

Last night, I was walking back from the gym just as a light, not-quite-enough-to-justify-an-umbrella mist was starting. It had been an unsuccessful gym mission during which I walked all the way to the gym, discovered my class was canceled, used a couple of the machines, and walked most of the way home before noticing that I was somehow wearing two completely different shoes. Different colors, and, once I noticed, completely different amounts of arch support. So yeah...it was one of those days.

When I was almost back to my apartment, a woman stopped me on the street and asked if I lived in the neighborhood. Now having lived in New York a couple of years now, I know there are only four reasons strangers on the street try to talk to you: 1) they want to give you something (fliers, newspapers, coupons, tickets to what will inevitably be the least funny comedy show with two drink minimum of your life); 2) they want you to give them something (spare change, your voter registration information, credit card numbers); 3) they want directions, or 4) they're insane. This woman turned out to be in the third category (and perhaps a little in the fourth).

She told me she'd just moved from Manhattan to Astoria. I assumed she was looking for directions to a specific restaurant or perhaps a grocery or drug store. Her specific request was for a branch of the ASPCA. Now I happened to have adopted my cat from the ASPCA, so I was able to tell her that the closest branch is in Manhattan in the 90s. She pursued it a little longer, asking if I was sure. I told her there was a Humane Society a little closer and she momentarily perked up, until I mentioned that too was in Manhattan. She said she'd already checked the internet and that's what it said there too. However, rather than accepting the internet as law (as I generally do), she decided the next logical step was to wander the streets looking for one while asking strangers for their assistance. I told her I was sorry I couldn't help, and she took off in the direction of Broadway, presumably to comb it for very specific nonprofit animal control organizations.

The move to Astoria can be a tricky one for some Manhattanites, it seems. The part that really concerns me about this encounter is that she picked me, with the mismatched shoes, out of all the people on the street to ask. I'm thinking I need to invest in lint rollers before going to the gym in a black tank top again. (For those readers who haven't met my cat, she's mostly white...and a shedder).

Sunny day at Storm King

So I'm not coming through with my Astoria photo collage this week because I spent the weekend out of the city. This was far better than my Memorial Day weekend last year when I developed a horrific cold, lost my voice, and was alone (save Dinah, of course) in my apartment for three days because my roommates had both skipped town. Leaving town for a three day weekend is always preferable to sitting alone, sending pathetic emails to people for human interaction, and watching The Other Boleyn Girl on my roommate's netflix. This particular leaving town was especially nice, and really doesn't deserve simply being compared to my crappy holiday weekends of yore. Because I went here:
Ah yes, the bliss of leaving the city. The above picture is from Storm King Art Center, an enormous outdoor museum featuring large scale sculptures. It was a hot but lovely day for an art walk. Here's another picture featuring some strangers (a picture I took not for the attractiveness of the strangers, but to get a sense of scale):
Alas, the photos take too long to upload, so this will be the last one. It's of one of my favorites of the sculptures I saw. You'll note I'm not including the names of the artists (I think Calder did some?) because I don't know them. And really shouldn't art transcend the artist?

You may also notice that I'm not including any pictures of me at Storm King (you'll just have to trust that I was there). This is because I looked sweaty and gross that day. And really, if I wanted to make this blog a forum for unflattering photos of me I would just link to my facebook highlighting pretty much any photo of me taken during my college junior year, or as I like to call it: the year of the open mouth smile.

Hope you all had a happy Memorial Day weekend, dear readers!

Autumn in New York...in May

A bizarre cold snap has hit New York this spring. Two weeks ago it was in the upper 80s, and this week it's dipping back into the 40s. On the downside, this means my new summer haircut (which after an overzealous Italian hairdresser was done with it, can best be described as a "bob"), that was acquired mere hours before the mysterious cold snap, is now impractical. Especially because of its unfortunate quality of looking silly under hats. On the plus side, I can now blame the temperature of my apartment for the death of my fuchsia plant--a slow demise that previously could only be attributed to my either over or under-watering it. Or maybe it's because I'm not supplying it enough "strong, indirect sunlight." I'm really not even sure what that means.

My cat, Dinah, who will likely be a regular feature of this blog (because she's cute and more interesting than talking about the weather), also prefers the cold weather. Being stuck at home all day, she experiences the bulk of the heat in my un-air-conditioned apartment in the summer. In the height of summer, this results in extreme cat wilt. She lays around, preferably on surfaces of clean laundry in dark colors that will best highlight her massive shedding, and moves as little as possible until fall. This year, she's had to deal with a new hot weather horror because I now have a ceiling fan in my room, which for some reason she finds incredibly threatening. Here's a photo of what Dinah would look like if she were typing this post:
In unrelated news, the film Something Borrowed is currently being filmed on the street where I work. The movie stars Ginnifer Godwin, Kate Hudson and (the reason most of the girls in the office have been taking a lot more coffee breaks to walk by the movie set) John Krasinski. I haven't personally seen him, but I can say that his trailer is the only one with an awning. Yep. Big news.

I think this post was done for when I started resorting to cute pictures of my cat...