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.

Lazy days. Watching the Olympics, drinking tea, folding laundry, and staying up late. All of these things meet with the approval of Fritz and Bruno.

For those of you who aren’t going to work tomorrow (it’s Presidents Day in the U.S.), what do you plan to do with your day off?

Happy Valentine’s Day, Evan. I love you!

Manhattan is so beautiful in the snow, especially up here in the Heights where nature still runs (a tiny bit) wild. I love having views of trees and primordial rocks.

I’m sure that those of you living in parts of the planet where it hasn’t been snowing like mad are starting to roll your eyes and say Enough already with the snow photos, everyone, but I can’t help myself. It was hard enough to limit myself to two!

I put in a 3/4-day at work, then headed for the apartment to hole up with Evan (also home early), Bruno, Fritz, and a big cup of lemon-ginger tea with raw honey. I’ve been fighting a cold for the last couple of days, and right now, nothing is better than being inside while looking outside at fluffy, falling snow.

Do you ever forget that you know how to make stuff? Like, with your hands?

My first impulse when I need something that’s sewn is to look on Etsy, so I suggested as much to Evan when we decided we need a draft snake for the front door to our apartment (we installed a door sweep already, but the dogs still obsess over the sliver of light that creeps in at night). He quickly located a cute one, made sure it was long enough, and placed an order.

Then the snake arrived, and we filled it with rice. All was grand until we put it down in front of the door and discovered that a rice-stuffed snake is shorter than a snake skin. It was also so skinny that it wouldn’t reach over the threshold to actually cover the gap under the door. Oops.

I was all set to hop back on Etsy and look for a replacement snake in a large enough size, when I remembered that Hey! I actually have a ton of fabric and a sewing machine! And I know how to sew! I’m no master seamstress by any means, but I can certainly sew a flat rectangle when the need arises.

And so, I got to work on the World’s Largest Draft Snake. It’s 38″ long, 16″ around, and filled to the fangs with 7 pounds of rice. It’s a DRAFT PYTHON.

I used a piece of my precious linen Grea fabric (previously seen acting as a curtain in the dressing room at my house), designed by Maria Vinka for IKEA’s 2007 PS line. This fabric makes me so happy. I don’t mind that it took me almost three years to find the right use for it!

No, I’m not going to post instructions. Okay, yes I will: (1) Measure fabric. Cut. (2) Fold in half, good side in. (3) Stitch on three sides. Invert. (4) Fill with dried rice or beans. (5) Stitch open end. DONE.

As I write this, the dogs are sleeping peacefully, draft python in place, hallway light sliver obscured. 60 miles north of here, the too-small-for-the-apartment draft garter snake is doing a great job blocking the gap under the door to the attic in the house. Everyone wins!

This is my mouse path for today, from 10:00am until 5:30pm. The lines are movement, and the dots are periods of inactivity. (The bigger the dot, the longer the rest.)

Makes a very busy day look beautiful, doesn’t it?

ETA: The application appears to have been created by Anatoly Zenkov. You find more information and links to download the app here.

I’ve loved you (and felt your love) since Day One.

Please be well, all of you.

I’m a sucker for a bargain, and the DWR Annex in Secaucus (almost) never fails to disappoint. This Saarinen side table looks totally fine, right?

From this angle, too! I can’t see anything wrong with it. Why would it be marked down EIGHT-FIVE PERCENT??

Ah-ha! I see why now—there’s a chunk missing out of the edge. Oh well. Doesn’t bother me! It’s near a wall, anyway. You have to really look hard to see the damage, and even if it were more visible, who cares?

I’ve gotta say, I highly recommend that anyone who thinks IKEA is somehow inferior to so-called “high-end” goods in terms of overall durability spend an hour at the DWR Annex. Trust me, a $430 laminated side table chips just as easily as an $80 (for two!) version (and looks just as bad afterward). You need to look at the quality of individual products. Don’t worry about the brand name!

(Also, tulips. They make everything more beautiful.)

In case I don’t say it enough, I love these guys. Even though they bark every time they hear the elevator open (and every time they think they hear the elevator open, too). I love them even though they put up a struggle every time they have to go out for a walk. And even though they take up so much bed space that I sometimes wind up sleeping with one leg on the floor.

Bruno and Fritz are the best. How I ever existed without either of them in my life is unfathomable.

Our little apartment has three closets, all quite generously-sized. Since we don’t have lots of clothes or need excessive amounts of storage space, we decided to turn the largest of them into an office. We don’t watch much television these days, but this setup meets our needs in that area as well (no need to miss episodes or Project Runway or American Idol just because we’re in the city!). We have a Slingbox connected to our cable box at the house, so anything we watch up there can also be viewed through our computer in the city. Nice, huh?

Plus, when we’re not using the computer (for work or TV-viewing), we can just shut the doors, return the chair to the kitchen, and the whole thing disappears. It’s nice to be able to shut out technology sometimes.

Check it out—I have a white painted floor in my apartment! Okay, so it’s just the closet floor, but still. All of the closet floors are painted white. They had already been painted previously (the same grotesque shade of flat mayonnaise yellow as the walls, which was badly chipped and extremely dirty), so I’m not breaking any “rental rules” here. (Hah.)

The desk itself is cobbled together out of 3/4″ plywood that was already in the apartment (the building super had attempted to build some sort of closet divider with it). I painted it black to match the wall (that’s the same color as in the kitchen: Benjamin Moore ‘Soot’ (Aura Matte finish). It’s resting on two plywood cleats attached to studs on either end, and gets extra support in the middle from two diagonal braces (pieces harvested from these IKEA trestles). A $10 pull-out keyboard shelf completes the desk. It’s a bit of a Franken-creation, but it works, and the total investment was less than $30.

(And yes, we have wires just like anyone else! They’re all running through this nifty cable organizer which hangs on the back of the desk, and are then attached to the wall with cable clips completely out of sight. I loathe visible power cords and wires, especially in a working environment.)

Oh, and did you notice the Componibili storage unit? That’s the same one we scavenged for $29 back in August 2008. It gives us all the storage we need here. Perfect.

The cute Asteroid bud vases are designed by Koray Ozgen (the creator of our matching Asteroid lamp).

I’m still trying to find just the right place for them, but right now Martha McQuade’s beautiful “Dipped Horizon” and “Marfa Path” prints have taken up temporary residency in the closet office.

My desktop wallpaper is made from a picture of Michael Jackson in photographer Todd Gray’s INCREDIBLE book Before He Was King. (Raindrops added by me, of course.)