Appreciating the silence of Vermont

As a writer, I tend to use ten words where five will do, and while usually I embrace the verbosity because it's my blog, and I don't actually have to scroll through it once I press "publish post," today I'm going to try something a bit simpler. I know some bloggers subscribe to a "wordless Wednesday" post where they just post a photo and let it speak for itself. I don't think I could show that sort of restraint, but today I am going to try with "word-low Tuesday" (which, I acknowledge, is sadly less alliterative). To that end: I went on a trip to Vermont this weekend. It was a lovely getaway with friends. See photos below.

Word-low or not, I can't help but add that this particular photo will be my album cover when I finally put out my first tin whistle CD "The Wandering Whistler."

I hope you enjoyed word-low Tuesday. Your feedback is, of course appreciated. Did you find it refreshingly austere? Or smarting of laziness? Or perhaps, like me, you're starting to feel like all I do anymore is post pictures of snow.

A white Halloween: Second Sequence

Despite inches of slush in the streets and cold, wet snow and rain falling from the sky, we actually had a pretty decent turnout at the Halloween party last night. Naturally, a few people bailed (and I didn't blame them at all--it was ridiculously miserable outside), but we had plenty of friends to eat all the food I prepared as well as go through many a bottle of wine and pitcher of Ginger Alice punch. We decorated the apartment with fairly minimalist decorations: cobwebs in various colors, jack-o-lanterns with fangs, a well-placed REDRUM facing the bathroom mirror. The real focus of party funds and energy, as with any party I plan, went toward the food. We served the following:

Monster brains! Actually, guacamole served in a hollowed out cauliflower. Always a good addition to any party.

This is just regular gouda, but I really like this new mouse trap cheese board and slicer I found in San Francisco. Also, not pictured here is the delicious lavender honey goat cheese a friend brought later.

The cupcake graveyard was one of the least popular items in terms of actual consumption because full sized cupcakes are a lot to commit to when compared to mostly bite sized finger foods. People were willing to steal the milano tombstones though.

I'd seen this recipe absolutely everywhere online lately, so I had to make them. They're almond shortbread cookies with almond fingernails (and a little strawberry jam for just the right touch of gore)

Here's the whole spread including a couple of things I didn't get good individual pictures of. Next to the cupcake graveyard is the bowl of weasel brains (bacon wrapped dates stuffed with almonds) and adjacent to that are the mummy dogs (I really wish I had a good picture of these, but they looked similar to this, except that I cut the hot dogs in half for more of a baby mummy effect).

I also wanted to post a few pictures of the party people who consumed these edibles:

We'd talked of having a costume contest and even bought a prize, but then in the heat of the action completely forgot to award it. The next morning we awarded it to the person who had crashed on our couch because he was the only guest still in attendance. He's pictured at right and was "The Economy." However, the three of us all agreed that the man to his left had the best costume of the night as some sort of masquerading Mozart. Hopefully, he won't be too upset that he did not receive his well deserved award, because the prize was actually just a yellow ribbon that said "I'm very special!" If only he read my blog, he could receive his proper accolades.

More friends: Sookie Stackhouse of True Blood, creepy "I like Santa" kid from A Christmas Story, egg, tiger, and bacon.

Our friends Rocky and Bullwinkle. Bullwinkle did a decent impression of himself. It's a hard voice to master.

You can't really see me that well, but I was the one legged table lamp from A Christmas Story. I stood sideways in all picture so it would appear as if I only had one leg. However, in this picture, you can't really see my leg, so the illusion was for nothing.

Hope you all had happy Saturday-before-Halloween nights! And hopefully better weather than we had here in Astoria. Luckily, it's now sunny and beautiful (if a touch chilly) today and tomorrow. It is especially important that the weather be decent on Halloween itself because I'll be dancing in the Village Halloween parade again this year. Those of you longtime readers may remember I danced "Beat It" in the parade last year, but this year have upgraded to the more Halloween-themed "Thriller" group. I will continue my marathon of posts by updating on Tuesday on what is hopefully a successful parade Monday night. Which means I need to figure how to zombify myself sometime today.

Friends, protests, and things that go bump in Anderson Cooper's West Village town house

This weekend one of my best friends from college was in town. Normally, when people are in town, it's an enjoyable excuse to eat out far too often and also to visit some tried and true New York tourist attractions. After over three years here, I feel like I've seen most of the big sites, but I always enjoy seeing them again with friends. However, this particular friend, henceforth to be called Beth, brought a list of things she wanted to do, and many of them were actually new experiences for me as well. Even better many were things I'd had on my own list for a while.

New experience #1: Occupying Wall Street

I know, I know, it has been a month--I'm a little ashamed that it took me this long to get down there. I'm not a member of the Tea Party, and I don't think that big corporations should pay a smaller percentage of taxes than I do, but I just don't like going downtown because it brings back painful memories of temping at Merrill Lynch conference services in the World Financial Center when I first moved to the city. In the less than a month I worked there, after cleaning up after snotty interns who didn't realize they were physically capable of taking water bottles and napkins with them rather than leaving them on conference room floors, I really started to dislike the financial industry. I was hating bankers before it was cool. Beth and I wandered Zucotti Park and chanted a couple of times; however, we didn't stay too long because we came during lunch time and we were evidently getting in the way of the sandwiches being passed out.

See that hair in the foreground? That's me. Occupying.

New experience #2: New York Ghost Tour

Beth got us tickets to a ghost tour of the West Village. I was initially skeptical of some of the stories our inimitable tour guide told, but in the end, I do feel like I learned some things. For example, I now know where Anderson Cooper lives. Also, that the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory is now an NYU building and that Washington Square Park was once a public burial ground. Naturally, now the ghosts of female workers and colonial epidemic victims haunt the Village. Except Anderson Cooper who quietly refurbishes old firehouses.

Our tour guide. He kept referring to some unnamed "friend" who was "highly sensitive to paranormal activity." When he would take his friend to the spots on the tour, what she felt mysteriously corroborated every one of his stories. Spooky.

New Experience #3: Tenement Museum

I tried to go to the Tenement Museum once before, but all of the tours were sold out. The only way to go to the museum is to do one of the tours where they take you into a tenement building and tell the story of one of the immigrant family's that lived there. Or at least that's what they did on the tour we went on. They also did a great job of setting the scene and describing how people would heave excrement from chamber pots down onto the streets and sidewalks. It really makes you appreciate living in the relatively hygienic, post-germ-theory world of today. We couldn't take pictures in there, but I can tell you, it was pretty small. Sort of like apartments in the Lower East Side today actually. Fairly unrelated to immigrant history in America, but very related to the Tenement Museum by virtue of being a couple of blocks away: we got donuts here. And they were heavenly.

New experience #4: That one Indian restaurant on 1st ave.

I never went in it because it looked like a Christmas tree on acid. Turns out eating there is sort of like sticking your head into a Christmas tree. And also (I assume) being on acid. Here's a shot of the exterior.


And here we are on the interior:

It is hard to tell in this picture, but suffice is to say, a person could not stand upright while in this restaurant. That said, the food wasn't bad. Also, it was apparently a popular birthday restaurant. To celebrate each occasion, the waiters would turn off all the lights and run around in the dark.

New experience #5: The Book of Mormon lottery

I was not as lucky as my friend in town this summer who ended up winning tickets, but I was surprised at the ease of the process. I am determined to win front row center tickets for $32 a piece. And I will go every Saturday and Sunday morning until this occurs.

In addition to all of these exciting, new experiences we all did some old favorites: the Met, a walk through Central Park on a lovely fall day, brunching, shopping, and stops at numerous chocolate purveyors. Thanks for visiting, Beth! I'm happy you're one yellow coat richer for the experience.