The sunset from the train window this evening is a fantastic apricot color. I just had a great evening walking around Greenwich Village with a friend- we got sandwiches, got lost, walked past the house where my maternal grandma grew up, and then got some delicious hazelnut gelato. Yum. It was an evening to remind me why I moved to NYC, there is really no where else quite like it. I do miss Belltown incredibly and I'm looking forward to spending a few weeks there soon, but it's hard to top the Village when the weather is perfect on an early Friday evening.
And to go with my appreciation of life as a Jersey girl, I'm listening to some 80s hair metal music on my ipod- Jump, Come on Feel the Noize, Lay Your Hands On Me. Also in there is Hunger Strike by Temple of the Dog because I realized recently it's long been one of my underappreciated favorites. I'm sitting sideways on the train, watching the sun setting out the opposite windows, just enjoying the glimpses of the sun through the trees as they run past. If summer could last forever I would freeze it right here.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Monday, June 25, 2007
USCGC Biscayne Bay
I need to find my old HEALY photos. Would someone like to volunteer to find them on one of my old backup CDs? I've been on vacation, but I haven't gotten anything useful done with all this time, like organizing my photos. So here is one of the few photos from Dan's boats that's on flickr, from the USCGC Biscayne Bay in Michigan.
Friday, June 08, 2007
going places
My to-visit list next week:
* Ryan told me that decent lattes are available in Manhattan! at 9th St Espresso. I didn't make it this week, so I plan to go next week
* Battery Park City. I've never been to it, and it sounds like an interesting place to see
* The Christopher St PATH station, to see how long the walk to SoHo from it is
* Ryan told me that decent lattes are available in Manhattan! at 9th St Espresso. I didn't make it this week, so I plan to go next week
* Battery Park City. I've never been to it, and it sounds like an interesting place to see
* The Christopher St PATH station, to see how long the walk to SoHo from it is
Thursday, June 07, 2007
navy blue
This evening I stumbled over an old blog post I'd written about remembering what Dissolved Girl sounds like. It made me pause for a moment and think about my color memory vs my sound memory. I stopped at MJ Trim this morning to pick up a ribbon to match some green and blue material, and I've got the ribbon I picked out next to me. I haven't yet laid it next to the fabric it will go with, but I don't need to. For whatever reason, I can picture colors of things I've seen perfectly in my head, and when I looked at ribbons this morning I could see the exact olive and navy shades that I needed to match. Compared to my memory of songs, which are little soft, too loose, memories that unravel rather than get crisper when I dive in closer. Anyway. I like my color memory, but I wouldn't mind having a better memory for songs. When I read a lot of what I've written about music, I talk about what I see when I hear it and describe it in terms of spaces it suggests. I have a one track visual mind sometimes.
Kittah
This page, on the evolution of "kittah"/"lolcat" speak, was making the rounds today, and since I wanted to bookmark it so I'd be able to find it in the future, I figured I'd just toss it up on my blog.
A Special In-Depth Analysis of the cat image macro speak world.
On a similiar note, I was thinking this week about 1800s era novels. There's a particular feature of many of these novels that characters are called "Mr. R---" or "Mrs. L---". It's kind of cute, and occurs in a lot of writing from that time. This came up because I had four different conversations with friends who I've worked with in the past/work with now and in each coversation we were typing "A" and "G" (where "A" == amazon.com and for today you can guess what "G" is). This occured independently in each of those separate conversations, and it occured to me that it's a sort of convention among some circles these days to refer to employers by a single letter. For one, it's much shorter to type, but for another, it's a weak defense against the monitoring of email/IM/network traffic/etc that we all know goes on. It's just a little quirk that I noticed, and I was kind of fascinated how conversations adapt to limitations like the realization that the text being transferred between the participants is almost certainly being logged somewhere. Anyway, go read the kittah blog post. It's a neat analysis.
A Special In-Depth Analysis of the cat image macro speak world.
On a similiar note, I was thinking this week about 1800s era novels. There's a particular feature of many of these novels that characters are called "Mr. R---" or "Mrs. L---". It's kind of cute, and occurs in a lot of writing from that time. This came up because I had four different conversations with friends who I've worked with in the past/work with now and in each coversation we were typing "A" and "G" (where "A" == amazon.com and for today you can guess what "G" is). This occured independently in each of those separate conversations, and it occured to me that it's a sort of convention among some circles these days to refer to employers by a single letter. For one, it's much shorter to type, but for another, it's a weak defense against the monitoring of email/IM/network traffic/etc that we all know goes on. It's just a little quirk that I noticed, and I was kind of fascinated how conversations adapt to limitations like the realization that the text being transferred between the participants is almost certainly being logged somewhere. Anyway, go read the kittah blog post. It's a neat analysis.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Thomas
Isn't he just the cutest little boy ever? He's finally waking up a little and peeping around instead of sleeping nonstop.
Friday, May 25, 2007
a snowy treat
I almost burned to a crisp walking through the West Village today (easily 90F) so here's a nice, cool, snowy treat- Declan in a rare Seattle snowstorm!

Friday, May 18, 2007
Lullaby of London
I haven't posted about music in a long time, and certainly not the long essays I used to write. One part of that is that I've been too busy to track down new music much these days, and I'm now cut off from Amazon's great music editors.
One piece of music that I've recently fallen for, though, is "Lullaby of London" by the Pogues. It's probably about as old as I am these days but it's a beautiful song. When I first moved to NYC, I was working in Times Square, but moved down to Chelsea at the end of last summer. Midtown and Times Square are quite literally the canyons of NYC while Chelsea and the West Village area are not so tall. One bitterly cold day this winter, I set out up 7th Ave to walk to Penn Station, with the Pogues playing on my ipod. As I walked up 7th, wrapped and bundled in a coat and scarf to my eyes and still shivering, I sort of fell into this song. As I kept walking, the huge towers of Midtown started looming over me, making the wind sharper and colder and darker. It all fit together, the appearance of the gray bleakness near Penn Station, the cold, this incredibly beautiful song. Whenever I have to walk up 7th Ave, even now in the warm spring, I try to play it at least once, as it's so tied to this one area for me.
One piece of music that I've recently fallen for, though, is "Lullaby of London" by the Pogues. It's probably about as old as I am these days but it's a beautiful song. When I first moved to NYC, I was working in Times Square, but moved down to Chelsea at the end of last summer. Midtown and Times Square are quite literally the canyons of NYC while Chelsea and the West Village area are not so tall. One bitterly cold day this winter, I set out up 7th Ave to walk to Penn Station, with the Pogues playing on my ipod. As I walked up 7th, wrapped and bundled in a coat and scarf to my eyes and still shivering, I sort of fell into this song. As I kept walking, the huge towers of Midtown started looming over me, making the wind sharper and colder and darker. It all fit together, the appearance of the gray bleakness near Penn Station, the cold, this incredibly beautiful song. Whenever I have to walk up 7th Ave, even now in the warm spring, I try to play it at least once, as it's so tied to this one area for me.
Lilacs and Rhubarb
I left work early today, and my grandpa met me at the train station so that we could pick rhubarb. While we drove over to his farm, which is very close to the train, we talked about the Mets game I'd seen yesterday (I'm a lifelong Yankees fan, but I will happily admit that was a truly inspiring 9th inning yesterday!), and baseball games he went to when he grew up in Quincy, Mass. Then we went out to the field and picked tons and tons of rhubarb. As always, he tried to get me to take a bite of one of the stalks, which I didn't fall for. Rhubarb with strawberries and lots of sugar in a pie is wonderful. Raw rhubarb is...bitter.
Their lilacs are all blooming, so I also picked some of those, and a bit of arugula. What inspired this blogpost is that I just yawning and rubbing my forehead and I smelled the rhubarb and lilac on my fingers still. That's what spring always smells like to me, a sharp mixture of both tangled together.
Their lilacs are all blooming, so I also picked some of those, and a bit of arugula. What inspired this blogpost is that I just yawning and rubbing my forehead and I smelled the rhubarb and lilac on my fingers still. That's what spring always smells like to me, a sharp mixture of both tangled together.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Kate on the Train
and to go with my other train post, here is Kate riding the train into NYC
sunrise
Sometimes I wonder at the ability of my brain to drive down to the train station and get on the right train on basically autopilot every morning. My brain is not particularly functional before I've had 2 cups of coffee, and I only have one before I leave home. This morning was a nice example of how useless I am uncaffinated; last night I'd sat on the right side of the train heading out from NYC and had horrible sunglare in my eyes the whole way. This morning in picking a seat my logic was:
1. the right side of the train had glare going West
2. we are now going East this morning
3. so that means that the right side of the train is on the other side in this direction
4. I'm sitting on the right side
Of course, you see the flaw there, right? Yes... the sun comes up on one side and goes down on the other. So I'm riding along... with the sun right in my face again. Oh well!
1. the right side of the train had glare going West
2. we are now going East this morning
3. so that means that the right side of the train is on the other side in this direction
4. I'm sitting on the right side
Of course, you see the flaw there, right? Yes... the sun comes up on one side and goes down on the other. So I'm riding along... with the sun right in my face again. Oh well!
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Redhead
We went to Morristown today to watch the St Patrick's Day parade. Declan got quite into it- he said hello to every single person sitting near us, and he loved all the dogs walking by in the parade (Irish Setters! Irish Terriers! Irish Wolfhounds! Seeing Eye dogs!). He had a cute little shamrock kerchef around his neck, so he fit right in with all the dogs wearing green.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Sunset at 7000 feet
Sunset as seen flying over NJ, heading back to Rhode Island last night. The Air and Space museum at Dulles was lots of fun!
Friday, February 02, 2007

- sabayon (yum!)
- chocolate sabayon torte
- truffles
- buttercream cake
- sponge cake
- lemon buttermilk cake
- Raspberry coulis sauce
I've made a few other recipes, but I haven't exactly mastered them yet... created mushy messes would be more like it. One important recent discovery: the kitchenaid whisk mixer is a necessity for sponge cake, just as the recipe says. Fail to use it, and you will end up with something that falls in on itself.
Monday, January 08, 2007
Bounce
I love traveling, but somethings things start looking a little crazy. I'm trying to figure out my schedule for one weekend in Febuary, and this is what I think I'm going to be doing:
Friday morning: skiing in Vermont
Friday afternoon: go to NYC
Saturday morning: train to Providence, RI
Saturday afternoon: fly to Washington DC
Sunday morning: fly to Rhode Island
Monday morning: train to NYC
I believe I'm going to wake up on Monday and not know where on the east coast I am.
Friday morning: skiing in Vermont
Friday afternoon: go to NYC
Saturday morning: train to Providence, RI
Saturday afternoon: fly to Washington DC
Sunday morning: fly to Rhode Island
Monday morning: train to NYC
I believe I'm going to wake up on Monday and not know where on the east coast I am.
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