Category Archives: rhinebeck

Seven random things.

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Filed under health, rhinebeck

I’ve been tagged a bunch of times for the “Seven Random Things” meme that’s been going around for a while now, and it’s high time I came up with a list to share. Rather than just do it straight, though, I think I’m going to base all seven random things about myself on this photo:

Yes, that’s me in my bedroom in the fall of 1992. My senior year in high school. Rhinebeck, New York. Sixteen years ago.

What can we learn from this photo? Let’s see…

1. I used to be a slob. This photo actually makes my room look sort of clean. Believe me, it wasn’t. I remember having to clear a path to get to my bed. It wasn’t food-and-waste dirty, mind you, but there were clothes, magazines, art supplies, records, tapes, posters, shoes, everything, EVERYWHERE. I am now a reformed slob, so I try to clean everything up before I go to bed. Or at least shove it in a box and hide it.

2. I look weird without bangs. For some reason, I decided to grow my bangs out in 1992. It didn’t last—by the fall of 1993, they were back (and they meant business).

3. The Cure will always be my favorite band. Yeah. Putting aside the fact that they haven’t made an album I’ve liked since the year this photo was taken, they were still a really important part of my life for a really long time. And they still are. I don’t like to talk about it much because I get very defensive. There are categories of fandom, and I fell into the obsessive column throughout the formative years of my life. I breathed the Cure. I celebrated Smithmas.

4. Chuck Taylors are the only sneakers I wear. I’ve owned a couple of pairs of “real” sneakers over the years, but they never feel right. I’m just not a sneaker person unless we’re talking Converse. Low-tops. Black and white. WITH LACES, not those weird elastic ones they make now.

5. I’ve always been particular about my surroundings. Note the purple walls, the black satin sheets, and the zebra print bedding. This is not stuff that happens by accident! I can remember having a “vision” for my bedroom going back to a very young age. I can also remember having to paint over all of that purple (and the black marker and the Fun-Tak residue, ugh) when I moved the following summer. My tastes may have, um, matured since then, but I can’t say I wouldn’t still feel totally at home in this room.

6. I used to have lots of penpals. I wish I could make out who the letter on the bed is from! My friend Nicole and I used to find penpals through Other Voices, a Cure fanzine (later, I also met people through the classic Morri’zine), and through friendship books (I love that there’s a Wiki page for FBs!). This was pre-internet (at least in its current form), and this was how I connected with people like me. I made some very real, very deep connections with people from all over the place, and I’m still friends with a lot of them all these years later. I truly miss the luxury of writing and reading letters on paper; of making a fancy envelope with glitter and magazine clippings and clear packing tape; of stuffing a package to the gills with tea and incense and mix tapes; and, most of all, arriving home after to school to find that it was a “good mail day”.

7. I didn’t wear pants for over a decade. No, really. I think between the years of 1991–2002, I probably wore pants/jeans a grand total of 5 or 6 times. I wore tights with skirts or dresses virtually every day (very occasionally I would go bare-legged, and then spend the day feeling self-conscious about my legs), usually with boots or heels. It wasn’t until I met Evan that I started wearing jeans. Nowadays, I wear jeans roughly 360 days out of the year. I still don’t own a single pair of non-denim pants, though!

And yeah, I still almost always wear black. It hides the coffee I’m constantly spilling on myself.

Old school.

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Filed under friends and family, rhinebeck

Sunday was a wonderful, sweet day. I got to see Nicole for the second time this year (!), which was great in itself, but spending time with her in our Upsate New York hometown, Rhinebeck, was truly the icing on the (belated birthday) cake.

We had a post-birthday (hers, not mine) lunch at Terrapin (ooooooh, roasted garlic soup!), marveled over how different our little town is from when we both moved away 15 years ago, and even spent some time in our favorite cemetery. Cemeteries were, of course, the “photo shoot” location of choice for Young Suburban Goths in the early ’90s, and Nicole and I were no exception!

Our lipstick might not be as dark as it once was, but our hair is just as black as ever. Our waitress even did us the honor of asking if our hair is real! You could not write a better script—well, she could have asked if we were sisters…

And we didn’t see a single person from high school. A perfect day, indeed!

I’m posting this second photo (even though I have buttery croissant-face) just because Nicole looks so beautiful in it!

Record sleeves.

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Filed under rhinebeck, scavenged

Two more finds from this weekend! These records came from a church flea market in Rhinebeck, 25 cents each, bought solely for their sleeves.

record sleeves

The illustration on the left is by Alex Steinweiss, awesome as always. I don’t know who’s responsible for the sleeve on the right, but I really dig that drumming cat. Look at those little arms!

Weekend junk score.

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Filed under house, rhinebeck, scavenged

Arthur Umanoff bar cart

We found this Arthur Umanoff bar cart at a junk shop in Kingston for $30 yesterday. The doors were missing, but I was able to make new ones very easily—handles to come. We’ve admired Umanoff’s carts since seeing one at an antique shop last year (way out of our price range), so this was a real score. It was hiding behind a row of discarded shutters and windows, stashed under a plastic roof in the lot behind the junk shop. I still can’t believe I actually saw it. I feel so smug looking at my $30 find and knowing I didn’t spend $500 for it!

The best part about this particular score (well, aside from bringing home a really nice piece of furniture) is that it came after spending a depressing couple of hours wandering around the Rhinebeck Antiques Fair, watching rich, old white people shop for overpriced furniture sold by rich, old white people. Yawn.

It’s hot out again.

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Filed under food, rhinebeck

After a week of colder than usual days, it’s a scorchingly hot and humid weekend. A caffè freddo from Bread Alone in Rhinebeck takes the edge off (a bit).

evan without glasses

caffe freddo

Dutchess County Fair.

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Filed under food, four legs, rhinebeck

Today we went to the Dutchess County Fair in Rhinebeck, which meant lots of greasy-yummy foods and smelly-cute animals!

We started the day with deep fried Oreos. Seriously, could anything possibly be more distinctly American? They were good, but not quite as good as you might imagine such a thing would be.