Today is a nearly-perfect-weather day in New York City, and with work letting out early for the Memorial Day weekend, I decided to do some walking and touristy picture-taking again (don’t worry, I stayed in the slow lane). Armed with a fry cone (average-but-okay fries; too much ketchup), I started at Rockefeller Center and walked up Sixth Avenue to Central Park. This is some of what I saw in those 10 blocks:
It always amazes me how many ice cream trucks there are in Manhattan. Nearly every block in midtown! (No, they don’t roll around with Scott Joplin music playing, they just park & sell.)
William Crovello’s great “Cubed Curve” sculpture at the Time & Life building. Photos never quite manage to capture how vibrant the blue is.
Black Rock (CBS headquarters), the only skyscraper designed by Eero Saarinen. Construction was not completed until four years after his death. The black granite exterior is phenomenal, as is the lobby. (The upper floors are less impressive, sadly.)
Jim Dine and Robert Indiana…
I love the tippy-top of the Barbizon Plaza Hotel (aka Trump Parc). Great colors.
There are a lot of beautiful things in NYC, and Central Park is a pretty big one. So lush and green right now. Can you believe these photos were only taken 2 1/2 months ago?
1) No, I’m not dead!
2) Yes, I am super-duper busy.
3) Wow, it’s really hot out.
4) Indeed, I will be back soon.
In conclusion: How are you? What’s going on out there that I should know about? Can you even believe how cruddy this season of Project Runway has been? Ugh—I’m all about RuPaul’s Drag Race these days.
And another question: When you see someone out and about with a really cute dog, do you feel comfortable asking if you can pet/snorgle it? I get so shy and can never bring myself to do it.
(p.s. Spring!!!)
I’ve often thought that I’d like to be able to see New York City through the eyes of a tourist. I suppose this is probably the case with every city, but the longer a place is part of your everyday life, the less you tend to observe in your surroundings. This is especially true in “vertical” cities where above-ground traveling is primarily done on foot. Who remembers to look up? Tourists, that’s who.
So when Evan and I went to MoMA (something I do embarrassingly infrequently), I tried to pretend I was a tourist. I wasn’t really successful, but I did manage to get over my fear of looking like a dork (um, I look like a dork no matter what, so I might as well do it with a camera in my hands) and take a few pictures.
Filed under food, voyages
Morning coffee is a big deal for Evan and I. We like to take our coffee to go and enjoy it during our commute. We brew Illy Medium Roast at home every day. It’s definitely not the cheapest coffee in the world, but it still costs less than buying from a coffee shop every day.
A few weeks ago, I began a quest to find the best travel cup ever, and after sifting through a lot of recommendations on Twitter, I decided to order two medium (12oz; equivalent to the “tall” size at Starbucks) Keep Cups from Australia.
The Keep Cup comes in three sizes, and is made from thermal, non-leaching, recyclable, BPA-free polypropylene. There’s a silicone band around the middle for grip and heat protection, and a leak-proof lid that doesn’t drip when you drink.
There’s no handle (I hate handles on travel mugs, because they eat up valuable space in my bag), and best of all, the cup is sized small enough to fit in the automated coffee/tea machine at my office.
I always put a little bit of whole milk in my coffee. We’re lucky to have a very good dairy farm in the area that sells their milk in thick, glass bottles that can be returned for a $1 deposit each time. They sterilize and reuse the bottles.
Ready to go, and out the door!
p.s. The Keep Cup comes in a bazillion size/color options, and the cost for TWO medium cups (including shipping) to the US from AU is only about $32.
p.p.s. The truly is not a paid advertisement! I just really love my Keep Cup. And my coffee.
Evan and I are back from a long weekend spent in Carefree, Arizona for a friend’s wedding. (Click for enlargements!)
A series of errors on the part of the car rental company culminated in us riding around in a red Ford Mustang. If there were ever a car less suited to our personalities, this is probably it.
The upside was the satellite radio. I still can’t believe I actually heard “This Corrosion” on the radio (introduced by Richard Blade, no less) in 2009.
From Evan: “That Mustang made me feel like an underage joyrider. Since I could barely see over the wheel, the entire car was a blind spot. Note to Ford: Please post height requirements on all vehicles.”
The desert gets COLD at night! I was not prepared. We made s’mores.
The best part about leaving New York is coming back (even if you fly into New Jersey).
It was a long, long weekend. Some good finds, some progress in the house. Photos to come…
(Hello, September!)
To get to my job in Manhattan, I travel 60 miles from my house in Newburgh. It’s not a short commute, but it is a pleasant one (most of the time), and I don’t need to use a car. The first part of my daily trip takes me across the Hudson River on a ferry. I get to do this on the way home, too. It’s a pretty great way to start and end the day.
Looking south, I can see Bannerman Castle off in the distance. Later, on the train, I go right past it.
Just a few things…
→ I feel nice wearing magenta.
→ I’m feeling extra good about where I live lately, because we’ve finally started meeting more like-minded people nearby. It’s amazing how just meeting up with a new friend for coffee can make you feel a million times more positive about just about everything.
→ (Which makes me want to host dinner parties.) (And makes me miss Brooklyn a little bit less.)
→ The weather today is perfect. Sunny, cold, clear.
→ We have a new plumber coming this weekend to assess the bathroom situation (yes, it still looks like that) and see if maybe we can get going on the work that needs to be done. I didn’t mention it here before, but our previous plumber kind of just never showed up again after a certain point, and, well…it would be really nice to have a second bathroom.
→ That kind of work will take money, though, so it looks like we’re not going to be traveling to Sweden for Midsummer as I had been hoping. Another time!
Some photos from our trip to Scotland in 2002. We stayed at Borthwick Castle, just outside of Edinburgh. The quality of the daylight in Scotland was unreal; the sky was hazy and washed out, but it was bright and damp enough to make colors appear super-saturated in contrast to the grays. These are some of the last photos I took with a film camera. I don’t do so well with digital.
Evan has to work from home late tonight (on his birthday!) on a site launch, and I am staying up late out of sympathy (and because I am full of coffee and carrot cheesecake from Junior’s and can’t sleep). Bruno and I are camped out on the sofa watching a ridiculously bad movie on the Lifetime channel.
