And the Next Day

30 x 30 List

2012-01-29T18:28:00.002-05:00

We're a little late for a New Year's resolutions post, but who here is surprised? Both of our birthdays fall right around the New Year, and it seems that we are both rapidly approaching the mature age of 30 in the coming year. With that, I give you our joint list of 30 by 30 goals/our resolutions for 2012.

1. Go on a vacation
2. Try 50 new recipes (count as of 1/29: 7)
3. Go to the gym 100 times each
4. Move to a new apartment
5. Finally get all our name change documents in order
6. Get a trophy in each cup on Mario Kart
7. Read 30 books each
8. Write a new blog post at least once/week
9. Go to Delaware
10. Scrapbook our wedding
11. Make a honeymoon photo book
12. Go camping
13. Learn/Improve Spanish
14. Learn to can something
15. Go to the Coney Island Mermaid Parade in costume
16. See the rest of the American Museum of Natural History
17. Go to a concert
18. Donate more to charity
19. Volunteer
20. Get our pixy advent calendar all set up before December 1
21. Read at least two journal articles or book chapters/month for professional development
22. Incorporate a new gym activity into exercise routine
23. Have one computer-free evening/week
24. Host a party
25. Buy more local produce
26. Clean out and donate some of our old stuff
27. Use our Netflix subscription
28. Redacted
29. Redacted
30. Redacted

For the record, the redacted items are probably not nearly as interesting as you're imagining; they're just things we didn't want to share with the entire internet.

2011

2012-01-08T22:10:00.000-05:00

2011, And the Next Day style, for posterity.
And also to catch you up on the last 6 months of non-blogging.

January

Yay Becky Day to kick the year off right.

There was a snow day, and we finally finally finally went to Coney Island in the snow!

We continued a NYC restaurant week tradition. Yum, undercooked steak.

February
We celebrated Valentine's Day at home, planning our honeymoon. It may have been the only computer-free evening of the year.

Becky got her festive on with a green-and-yellow themed Superbowl party. There was a ratio of approximately 15 food dishes per guest, but in fairness there was only one guest.

We celebrated the anniversary that is not our anniversary anymore with delicious BBQ.

We went to Massachusetts to visit the family.

March
We bought honeymoon plane tickets!

We played NYC tourists. Yay spring!

We visited the nephews for 2nd birthday festivities, and also one other time for some reason I can't even identify.

April
We celebrated Easter in Massachusetts with my family (including my parents who flew in).

On a silly weekend jaunt we visited the borough where I now work, for the first time ever.

We enjoyed spring, and rented a tandem bike in Central Park.

I started my first group at work - a successful 12-week parenting group, which had the side effect of preventing a week of vacation.

May
I had surgery to have my gallbladder removed.

We traveled to Wisconsin to celebrate the end of Becky's dad's time in a position at his church.

Becky's job got reclassified, in a small but positive acknowledgement that her job entailed a whole lot more than her job description let on.

We did a lot of contemplating our life goals and priorities.

My sister and our nephews came to visit us for a fun train adventure weekend. We enjoyed the weekend, but the train trauma may last a while for the three of them.

We spent a weekend at a bed and breakfast we adore on the Jersey Shore.

June

Jen and the nephews came again, this time sans train trauma! We were the crazies at the beach.

At the end of June we departed for our Greek honeymoon!

July
We continued to enjoy Greece (including complete non-acknowledgement of the 4th of July), said a few days of hello to our old favorite London, and flew back to reality.

We went to the beach several times, and generally tried to enjoy the short summer that we were offered this year.

We contemplated moving to the city, seriously enough that we actually viewed apartments.

Becky had a job interview for a job she was not seeking, but in the process discovered she really wanted it.

We went to Massachusetts.

We went to a balloon festival!

August
We finally got our acts together to go to a free Friday bike rental on Governor's Island.

We went camping upstate with my college roommates and had an awesome mini-reunion weekend.

We huddled at home for a weekend and watched the weather channel, because a hurricane was supposedly heading directly for us for the first time in decades. OMG, tape the windows! In the end it rained a lot and everyone else got hit worse than we did.

Very unexpectedly my supervisor asked me to interview for a promotion.

September

Becky started the new job that she had not been seeking!

We traveled to Wisconsin again, this time for a long weekend to celebrate the wedding of one of Becky's cousins.

We again visited the nephews and their keepers for Labor Day.

Jen and the boys came back to visit us again. We went to the beach again, even though it was freezing again.

October

My promotion became official, and I gradually started the obnoxious new driving commute. Despite the commute, I was and am thankful for the opportunity.

We rented bikes and biked along the Hudson, and visited the Atlantic Antic street fair.

We celebrated Halloween by meeting up with friends at at a friend's apartment. Becky went sans costume (plans were developed last minute) and I revived last year's bee costume. I'll probably be wearing that thing forever, so everyone should get used to it.

We resumed an annual tradition and spent a weekend in Vermont (put on hold last year due to wedding planning) with my sister and brother-in-law and our nephews, this time for the first time at their cabin.

November
Although Becky needed to go out of town for work on our anniversary we managed to make it a fun romantic get away anyways. We spent a night at the gorgeous hotel where her event was being held, relaxed in the outdoor hot tub, and enjoyed fall colors, room service breakfast, and each other's company.

I spent a week at Thanksgiving in Minnesota with my sister and brother-in-law and nephews, and Becky flew out mid-week to join us. Just after I left her, she managed to earn herself an ambulance ride and 12 stitches. It only figures that this would coincide with probably the longest we've been apart from each other since the Belize/Israel adventures of 2008.

December

We continued traditions of viewing the NYC holiday sites, and a quirky Hannukah celebration with our good friend Kara.

We did the crazy Wisconsin for Christmas, then Massachusetts for my (supremely important golden ) birthday and New Year's thing.

Vacation Mania

2012-01-05T21:38:00.001-05:00

Welcome to 2012 everyone!

We're freshly home from holiday vacation in Wisconsin and Massachusetts and settling back down into the "real life" that 2012 brings us.

This was the third (well, technically fourth, but Salzburg was different) Christmas that Becky and I spent together, and the third year that we managed to spend time with both of our families despite the 1,000+ miles between their various homes. I fear the pattern and good luck may not hold forever, but for the past three years we've spent Christmas with one family and "fake" (aka "2nd") Christmas at New Year's with the other, and alternated which family got real Christmas.

On Christmas Eve we flew to Wisconsin to join Becky's family for the start of our vacation. (Apologies to any friends or family reading from Wisconsin who we didn't see - there was too little time and too much holiday celebrating to make it work this trip.) We got dressed up fancy and went to the Christmas Eve service at Becky's childhood church, then home to relax and wait for Santa. Her youngest sister, Jen, was home the whole time we were, and her middle sister, Angie, and her fiance, Ian, were home from Christmas Eve through Christmas evening. Which means that everyone was able to be there for present opening and the all-important-in-Wisconsin viewing of the Packers game. The rest of the week we spent relaxing, reading several Christmas books, and watching the 8th season of NCIS. And eating too many Christmas cookies (Carrie Krispies, Rice Krispie Rides Again, and Krispie Next Generation!). Not to mention of course some more quality time with Becky's family!

Mid-week we flew from Wisconsin to Massachusetts to join my family for my birthday, New Year's, and a "second Christmas" celebration. I'll save the birthday shenanigans for a future post, but suffice it to say that my loved ones made a good time out of making fun of me for being obsessed with my golden birthday. We continued with too much delicious food and lots of reading, used many many plants to protect our homes from zombies, and spent a ton of time doting on our nephews. Plus occasionally acknowledging the adult members of the family. When necessary. (Love you guys!) We rang in the New Year with Asti and chocolate cheesecake and televised viewing of Times Square.

And then we boarded a train that zoomed us back to reality. Goodbye Santa, goodbye Christmas, we will miss you and look forward to seeing you again next year! Please keep the snow at the North Pole and do not send it to New Jersey.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

2012-01-04T23:06:00.000-05:00

There has been conversation around here about re-starting the blog. I know better than to make promises, but let's see where this goes.

This is us in December at the Rockefeller tree. We hadn't had much of a chance to do Christmas stuff earlier in December this year, so the day before we left for vacation we met up after work to get some quick holiday cheer. We saw the tree and the Macy's windows, and coincidentally caught the Mitzvah tank parade. I think it was about 50 degrees so it didn't really feel like Christmas, but at least we can still say we've never missed a year since we've lived here!

2010:

2009:

2008:

2007 (with my sister guest starring - pre-nephews she could visit alone!):

AND 2006:

More Adventure than I Anticipated

2011-11-19T18:13:00.003-05:00

Today started off nicely enough. We met up in the Village with some friends for a surprise early birthday brunch for one of them. We went to Jane and had their famous Vanilla Bean French Toast--delicious and ridiculously filling. After brunch, we split off, with Carrie heading to the airport to fly home this afternoon and me heading home, stopping at a post office on the way. The walk from the post office to the bus station is where things get interesting...

For those of you who've never lived in a pedestrian- and tourist-heavy city like NYC, you probably won't understand my frustration. I was walking in Midtown and got stuck behind a huge group of extremely slow-moving tourists. As I have done hundreds of times before, I swung out to go around them. As I was passing the group, the person next to me suddenly moved left, pushing me into a standpipe (explanation here) next to the building. My leg caught on a screw protruding off of it, and I heard my jeans rip as I went flying through the air and landed face-down on the sidewalk. At this point, I was embarrassed that I'd fallen, pissed off that I'd ripped my favorite jeans, and my hands hurt from catching myself. Then I stood up, looked at my pants, and realized that it wasn't just my jeans that had ripped. I'll spare you all the disgusting details, but I had about a 3-inch gash in my leg and it was pretty deep.

Had I seen this injury on anyone else, I would have thrown up. The fact that I didn't, and the fact that it didn't hurt AT ALL makes me think I must have been in shock. Someone passing by got out a pack of wet naps from her purse and handed me one. I sort of looked at her, looked at my leg, then looked back at her...and then she handed me a handful. Someone else ran to the deli next door and grabbed a stack of napkins, and I did my best to apply pressure with my random assortment of paper products while trying to figure out what on earth to do. A man walking past asked if he should call 911. I debated for a minute because it wasn't really an emergency, but at the same time I had no idea what to do. Carrie was on her way to the airport, I could tell that I needed stitches, and I couldn't think of where the nearest hospital was or how I would go about getting there.

So the stranger called 911 while I sat down on the sidewalk, finally realizing that standing on my injured leg probably wasn't doing anything to help the bleeding stop. Two police officers showed up a few minutes later, and the ambulance arrived a few minutes after that. They loaded me onto a stretcher (which felt RIDICULOUS given the relatively minor injury I'd had, but whatever) and I got to take my first ambulance ride.

While in the ambulance, they cut the rest of that pants leg so that they could wrap a bandage around my leg, at which point I was like "oh crap, what am I going to wear home?" The paramedic said something along the lines of "Well, someone's gonna have to come pick you up so they can just bring you something else." Um, yeah, easier said than done. At the same time, Carrie was texting me about her transportation woes in getting to the airport. (I still haven't heard that whole story--the conversation kind of shifted gears when I responded with "Fyi, I am fine, do not panic, but I am in an ambulance right now." and then proceeded to tell my story.)

Fortunately, two of our lovely friends came to the rescue. They'd been shopping in Soho post-brunch, but as soon as they heard what was up, they stopped to pick up some pants for me and go to the hospital as quickly as they could. By the time they got there, I was all stitched up and almost ready to go. I ended up with a total of 12 stitches. Having made it to age 28 without stitches or an ambulance ride, I got to do both! In the same day! The only downside was they didn't turn on the siren--apparently I wasn't a real emergency or something. But they did have the lights on, so I guess that counts for something?

The doctor also pointed out as he was stitching me up that I'll probably have a scar since it wasn't a clean cut. Oddly enough, that hadn't even occurred to me until that point. It's mildly annoying, but I guess I'll have to give up my dreams of bikini modeling.

I shudder to think what the co-pays for the ambulance ride and ER are going to cost me even with good insurance, but for now I'm going to focus on just being glad I have insurance. And as a bonus, I now have lovely new pair of purple lounge pants. Other people might have thought that my outfit of red long-sleeve t-shirt and purple lounge pants didn't match, but I happen to think it's a lovely color combination!

Vikings v. Packers liveblog 2011

2011-10-23T19:30:00.000-04:00

4:16:

Becky: Did I miss kick-off because I was making a yogurt parfait?
Carrie: We should liveblog this. I’m starting with you missing kick off.
Becky: I didn’t miss kick-off, we just saw it.
Carrie: WHAT?? This always happens to me.

4:35:
Becky: How’s the liveblogging coming?
Carrie: Ooh. Oops.

4:45:
Skype conversation with the nephews while the game played in the background. They were showing off their Halloween costumes. Highlights from the conversation included “I got a long tail” and “I got a big tummy.” Also, a few trips to the imaginary playground, and Auntie Becky and Auntie Carrie calling each other from the imaginary playground on the TV remote controls. Who needs TV when you have silly aunties on Skype? Oh, and apparently the Vikings scored while we were playing pretend.

5:34:
Becky: I know what’s wrong with this game. I’m not wearing my sweatshirt! ::runs to put on Packers sweatshirt::

5:38
Carrie puts on her lamey non-Packers sweatshirt. Apparently her internal Minnesotan feels conflicted. No sign of purple though, thank goodness.

Score at half time 13-17. Boo. C’mon guys, the quarterback is a rookie!

5:43
Carrie: Oooo, I like their uniforms, those blue guys!

5:57
Becky: go go go go go!
Carrie: Go go….wait, no, stop. Whatever.
(In my defense, I did declare before the game that I was rooting for both teams – that’s allowed, right?)

6:10:
Becky: My bread isn’t going to make itself you know.
Carrie: I know, my wife has to make the bread.
Carrie: Your guys apparently got 17 points in 4 minutes or something. I don’t even know how they did that, we must have missed a touchdown.

Brief break for shaping of cheese bread (hopefully in the style of Stella’s Hot & Spicy Cheese Bread). In the process, Carrie manages to spray Pam on Becky’s Green Bay Packers sweatshirt.

Becky: Well now I have to take it off and wash it. But if the Packers lose, it’s all your fault.
Carrie: Um, your guys just scored again I think. Wow, we are really sucky football fans.

That may be true, but we are excellent cheese eaters, and that’s what really matters, right?

7:07:
Carrie: The Packers did that thing where they kick the ball to the end.
Becky: Put that in the blog.
Carrie: Not the field goal one, the other one.
Becky: Put that in the blog too.

7:22:
Carrie: They can just quit?? Well that was anticlimactic. I didn’t even know the game was ending.
Becky: It’s a little bit ironic that you missed both the beginning and the end of the game because you didn’t know what was going on.

Blogging Fail

2011-08-20T13:07:00.000-04:00

I keep staring at my blog reader and seeing our last post here fade further and further into the past. It finally switched to "two months." First the excuse was honeymoon preparation, and then the honeymoon itself, and then... who even knows. One thing led to another thing, and blogging fell by the wayside. And now it feels like there should be something monumental to say to get back on the blogging wagon. But after several weeks of resolving to blog again soon, I guess it really comes down to just doing it.

Since we last blogged:
*We spent two weeks in Greece and London
*We visited my family in Massachusetts
*We went camping upstate with my college friends
*We rented bikes on Governor's Island
*We rearranged the living room, including purchasing a new bookshelf
*We went to the shore a few times, and tried a new ice cream place
*We (especially Becky) worked way too much
*We pondered life changes, like jobs and apartments and schools, obsessively
*Probably a lot of other not blog worthy events

So, we're all caught up, right?

Ha.

My mom asked for some honeymoon stories, so hopefully we'll get back to a few of those.

The blogging drought has been accompanied by a picture taking drought. I'm sure there are a few, but Becky has her camera with her while she's lamey-cake working right now, so I'll give you a few Greece pictures in case you forgot what we look like:

And this is the two of us plus my college roommates swimming upstate two weeks ago:

Hopefully some of you are still out there, and hopefully it won't be two months until you see us again!

They came!

2011-06-13T20:59:00.000-04:00

Guess what, to our wondering eyes, appeared in our mailbox today? Our new passports! We bought our honeymoon plane tickets months ago. It seemed logical that we should purchase our honeymoon plane tickets in our married name, and we figured that we had several months to request the new ones. Enter procrastination, and applications sent much later than we planned. We were beginning to fear that they would not arrive before our trip, which would pretty much be an epic disaster. In the back of my mind I was afraid that what we had read about dealing with the same-sex marriage and the name change (i.e. that it was completely uncomplicated) would turn out to be completely false. But it was true! They're here!

The to-do list for the trip is getting longer and longer as the trip is looming closer and closer and it is starting to get scarier and scarier. I keep adding things to the list rather than just doing some of them. Events that I mentally associated with the trip, such as the ending of the parenting group I've been running at work and the start of the summer weather, are suddenly happening. Thankfully the State Department is keeping pace with the calendar even if my brain is not!

Summer, whether the weather likes it or not

2011-06-12T22:34:00.000-04:00

My sister, Jen, and our nephews came to visit us again this weekend. Jen reports that the travel was much smoother, thanks to her choice of riding in the car rather than the train. While we were driving around on Saturday the boys demonstrated what Jen told us they did for most of their awake time on the drive to/from home: "bus! bus! my side! big truck! my side!" They are both absolutely enamored with cars and trucks and things that go. At one point Thomas was looking at a photo of the boys and their aunties and he pointed at the car-shaped play structure in the background and said "truck!" as if it was obviously the most interesting portion of the photo. Matthew still frequently refers to a car or truck as a "vroom," which is quite cute.

We had all kinds of outdoorsy water based plans, but the weather forecast was calling for upper 60's and raining. This was particularly disappointing after we endured a long work week of boiling 100 degree weather. The forecasted temperatures came true, but the rain held off enough for us to summon our inner hardy Midwesterners and complete our plans anyways.

Saturday we visited our favorite beach. We were almost the only people at the beach, and definitely the only ones who were daring to venture in the water. The tide was just right for toddlers, with a very shallow and calm area along the edge, where the water was actually fairly warm. Thomas didn't seem to care at all that it was overcast or cold, and plowed into the ocean with a glee that only a toddler can muster. Matthew was more cautious, several times wanting to spend his time on the "sandbox." But he loved to fill up his bucket with water, carry it a few feet onto the sand and dump it out, and then repeat, over and over and over.

Thomas and his toy truck

Matthew and his bucket

We changed clothes, warmed up, and blew bubbles on the boardwalk.

While we were waiting for a lunch table we happened upon a vintage car show. Thomas learned the word "engine." Thomas was still a bit cold from the swimming, so we ended up draping my sweatshirt over him to help him warm up. The boys also showed off how much they love holding hands right now, with adults or with each other.

In the afternoon we went to a place Becky found on the internet called Kidz Village, which was one part indoor playground and one part children's museum. There was a series of themed rooms, such as the diner, the grocery store, the hair salon, and the construction room, filled with tons of kid sized pretend play props. Plus of course the giant playscape with tunnels and slides and climbing platforms. I think Becky and I might have had more fun climbing around in there than Matthew and Thomas did (two year olds are too young to go themselves you know!), although they loved it too. At one point I was following Thomas around and he went down a slide before me (which incidentally resulted in a few scary moments where we couldn't find him), but while I was still at the top a little girl gave me that snotty wannabe pre-teen girl look and asked "aren't you a little old to be in here?"

Sunday we returned to a sprinkler park/kiddie pool that is close to our home. Long-time readers may remember our visit there last summer. Once again it was chilly, and once again we were the only people playing in the water. And if I thought that Thomas was happy to be at the ocean, I don't even have words to describe his excitement for the sprinklers. He was sprinting through the sprinklers giggling and squeeling with his arms spread out.

We also spent plenty of time hanging out at home, playing with Mr. Potato Head, and enjoying some adult beverage after the boys went to bed. I almost can't believe how much easier is has become to manage the boys in our not childproofed apartment. Last summer having them play inside for even a few minutes was stressful, between protecting them from our stuff and protecting our stuff from them. Both of these recent weekends they've been so well behaved and had a good time with the toys we offered them (plus of course the ones their mom brought from home). Hanging out with Jen was fun as always too, but my apologies Jen, but your sons make for cuter blogging!

Health Insurance

2011-06-06T22:46:00.000-04:00

Can I just vent about health insurance for a few minutes? Of course I can, it's my blog.

I received a bill today for my co-pay for the surgery I had a month ago. I was expecting this bill, so that's annoying, but the way life goes. I was also expecting the hospital to be attempting to bill my insurance some ludicrous amount and then accepting it when my insurance offered three cents in return. But nonetheless it is shocking to see the actual numbers. For the whole surgery shabang they charged my insurance $11,329. On the day of my surgery the hospital billed $600 for two iterations of a blood type test (do they really do the same test twice?). My insurance paid $2,730 total. Furthermore, in the past 60 days (i.e. including pre-op blood work and screening and such) doctors have billed my insurance over $30,000. And you know what they've paid? Just over $5k.

Now, of course, I am glad that I did not have to pay anyone $5k, let alone $30k. Compared to these numbers my copay is insignificant. I am thankful that I have health insurance, and I know that many people are not so fortunate. But is this bizarre system really the same system that health care reform opponents are so determined to fight to the death to defend? Are these numbers based on anything? If I didn't have insurance would they actually be billing me these ludicrous amounts, and I would therefore be paying several times more than insured patients? Or are these numbers just pure fiction and some uninsured discount would appear?

I know that health care costs money. I know that it is a major issue that some people don't understand that it is an expensive commodity. I'm sure that the medication I received and the cost of the operating room and the services of the surgeon and the anesthesiologist and all of those things genuinely cost a lot of money. But why is the price for them something that is determined by a complicated closed doors political negotiation between my insurance company and some Medicare government employees and the hospitals and probably the CEO of Exxon Mobil?

These questions are rhetorical, although I'm sure some of you reading know more of the answers than I do. I'm not well enough informed to have a strong opinion on the health reform that passed or most of the alternative proposals that were made or may be made in the future. But I think the current system is ridiculous and I have no idea why health care reform opponents suddenly became so enamored with their current health insurance companies, because personally I'm convinced that mine is out to get me. (They already got my gallbladder!)

Badger State

2011-06-05T14:03:00.000-04:00

My apologies again for the lack of blogging recently. We keep resolving to do better, but the follow through has been lax.

Last week we spent the holiday weekend jetsetting our way to visit Becky's family in Wisconsin. I am told that Wisconsin is not everyone's dream weekend getaway, but for us it's always fun to go to the Midwest. Sunday was Becky's dad's final Sunday as choir director at his church, after many many years in the position. Becky's mom threw a party for him and invited several surprise guests - including us! If our traveling had gone as planned we would have arrived at Becky's parents' home just after 10pm. However, due to "weather" (definitely not holiday traffic or airline or air traffic control error!) our plane didn't even take off from New York until around 11:30pm. We surprised a very sleepy pajama-clad Becky's dad at 2am.

But we are not ones to let a short vacation go to waste! Despite our exhaustion we hauled ourselves out of bed early Saturday morning in order to drive to Madison. Motivation: fresh local cheese curds! The only place we've found in the tristate area to get cheese curds is Trader Joe's, and while decent, they cannot compare to the fresh local variety. Madison has the largest farmer's market I have ever seen, which covers the entire block around the state capital building. Like any farmer's market there are fresh local vegetables and organic crafts. There is also an over representation of delicious baked goods. Unique to Wisconsin though are the dozens of cheese shops, most with plentiful sampling options.

On the way in we stopped at Michelangelo's Coffee House. I got fair trade coffee; Becky ogled baked goods (but chose to save space for the market). Yay for cute little independent coffee shops! My friends and I used to frequent several of these in the Twin Cities back in high school and breaks home from college, but I haven't found (admittedly nor have I looked very hard) around here to love.

Bad photo of me in front of the capital

We ate and bought an excessive amount of cheese curds and toasting cheese. Becky's coworkers have fallen for them, so now whenever she (or her fellow Wisconsinite coworker) goes home cheese curds must be brought to work. By the time we made it around to Stella's we were already quite full. The crowd/line around the stand was enormous, and we debated skipping the spicy cheese bread. But the power of the crowd overcame me and I declared that whatever that many people were willing to wait for must be good. Miraculously, soon after we joined the crowd, a truck full of fresh steaming spicy cheese bread arrived. This bread is magical. It is like challah and cheese curds all rolled together in one doughy amazing ball. I declared it the best thing I have ever eaten, and I think I might stand by that.

Doughy insides of mostly consumed hot & spicy cheese bread.

Madison still felt alive with the memory of the recent protests. There were signs plastered in the windows of the capital, people passing out leaflets, "union thug" organic onesies for sale, and a People's Brat Fest in opposition to the usual Brat Fest sponsored by Johnsonville (a supporter of Scott Walker). I think it renewed Becky's sadness that she wasn't able to be in Madison for the protests, but it was fun to see the spirit is still alive. Hopefully this will translate into some political change.

On the way back to Becky's parents' home we stopped at a favorite non-farmer's market bakery, Greenbush, to pick up chocolate sour cream donuts. Yum. We were too full to eat them immediately, but they were as heavenly as ever when we got to them.

After our whirlwind trip to Madison we headed back to Becky's family. We helped a bit with the party preparation and lounged around with her family. Saturday night we ate at an Italian restaurant and were able to order Chicago style pizza - another of the very few foods we have found to be unavailable in New York.

Sunday we had a lovely time hanging out with Becky's family and family friends, celebrating the final choir Sunday. Becky joined the choir, as she usually does on Christmas Eve (I guess this is a benefit to being related to the choir director!). After church Becky's mom hosted a potluck party for the choir and all of the special surprise guests. That night Becky and one of her sisters and I played ping pong, which gave me a splendid opportunity to show off my spectacular lack of coordination. Monday we packed up, said our goodbyes, and jetted ourselves back to life in the big city.

Wedding Wednesdays: Wedding Week Insanity

2011-05-25T23:54:00.000-04:00

As Carrie has already told you, we did all of our on-site planning in short bursts in the months leading up to the wedding. We tried to do as much as we could ahead of time, but there were still lots of projects that ended up needing to be done at the last minute. Looking through our to-do list now, I'm a bit overwhelmed by how much we (with the help of many family members!) were able to accomplish in that time.

Our wedding was on a Saturday. We flew in on Wednesday afternoon. (Note to future brides planning from afar: if you can spare the vacation time, give yourself more time than this.) Our first stop was to pick up the rental car, which led to semi-awkward interaction with the rental car guy while Carrie filled out the paperwork:

Rental Car Guy: So what brings you to town?
Carrie: Um, our wedding.
RCG: Oh....blah blah blah try to upsell rental car crap...would you like to add a second driver for $$$ per day?
Me: I thought your company's policy is that spouses and domestic partners are free? (Yes, I had a printout from company's website if needed.)
RCG: Wait, are you already married?
Me: Yes.
RCG: Oh, okay then. Well if she (looking at Carrie) trusts you...

We then went on our merry way to pile our stuff into the tiniest, cheapest rental car ever--I had no idea that factories are still making cars without power locks and windows. But fear not, we had Sirius satellite radio!

Seriously, the window has a crank? Seriously?

The airport timing worked out such that Carrie's grandmother was arriving around the same time, so we picked her up a few minutes later and were off. Carrie and I still had a bunch of errands to run, so we made a quick stop at her parents' house and then headed out to buy last-minute supplies. One of the projects still TBD was the card box. Our plan was to pick up something at Michaels that we could decorate, but that plan failed when Michaels didn't have a single box of an appropriate size. Fortunately, a helpful employee directed us to the nearby HomeGoods store, where we settled on a black leather box that needed some alterations but would do. I am terrified of hot glue guns, so this entire project became a bonding moment for Carrie and my mom (with a bit of help from Carrie's dad). Sadly, it appears that despite their painstaking efforts, we don't have any pictures of the process or the finished product. This is actually sort of a theme from those few days--apparently running around like crazy people does not inspire one to meticulously photodocument the experience. We did have a relaxing dinner that evening at a Mongolian BBQ restaurant that was one of Carrie's favorite restaurants back in the day. It's hard to go wrong with DIY stirfry assembly.

In those few days, we had lots of last-minute paper projects to tackle--table signs, other random signs, and what would quickly become my nemesis: place cards. We had everything all set up ahead of time. The formatting was done, the mail merge was done, so it was just a matter of feeding the sheets into the printer and then hand stamping them. It turned out that the stamping was the least frustrating part of this process. The first few sheets printed fine, and then suddenly we had all sorts of problems. There was weird gray fringing. There was smudged printing. There were parts missing of some letters. We played with the printer settings, we shook the toner cartridge, we put in a new toner cartridge, and the gray smudginess was still there. At this point we were out of blank place cards despite having bought twice as many as we needed, and I was Freaking. Out. My mom went off on a trip to Staples, which involved her talking to a couple managers and going to multiple locations around the Twin Cities metro area before she found the cards in stock. And while she did that, Sean took apart the printer a bit and cleaned some parts so that once my mom finally returned victorious from Staples, we were able to print the rest. Oh yeah, and all of this involved me running laps back and forth between the computer that had Publisher on it and the printer in a different room. I think that may have been the only exercise I got that week, so it was probably good for me.

Me at the printer. I think the expression on my face is "Carrie, why are you taking my picture? Can't you see that I am freaking out here?"

Fortunately, Thursday evening also involved a wonderful treat: dinner at Lindey's Steak House. It's a very old-school steak place that Carrie's family occasionally visits for special occasions, and apparently wedding preparation was a noteworthy occasion. Stuffing ourselves with steak and potatoes seemed like a good antidote to the earlier stresses.

Friday, of course, brought more stress. We had planned for mani/pedis for us, our moms, and whomever of our bridesmaids were around and interested. Despite the fact that we'd scheduled an appointment for all of us, the nail salon was rather understaffed, and we ended up being there for several hours.

All of us pretending to read magazines while I'm trying really hard to suppress a giggle.

Under the dryers

We all had fun, but it was time we hadn't really budgeted for, so the rest of the day got rather hectic. Basically, we got home from the nail salon at around the time that we were supposed to be dropping off favors, place cards, etc. at the reception venue. But not only were we not ready, there were still a few random signs that needed to be made and the kids' favor bags needed to be assembled. Oh yeah, and as of this point, we hadn't even started putting together our photo slideshow; the photos had been scanned but still needed to be sorted, put in order, and set to music. And we needed to be at the rehearsal in just a couple of hours, and not only did we all need to get ready for that, but I needed to pack for the next couple of days because I was spending that night at the hotel (yeah, we're traditional like that). Carrie started the slideshow, Jen worked on the kids' bags, and I ran around like a crazy person. I'm not even sure if I was doing anything useful--I may just have been flapping my arms and making scared noises.

At one point I definitely started hyperventilating because the menu sign wasn't sized to fit right with a double matte in the frame we'd bought for it. Yes, the menu sign was where I finally lost it. The menu sign. People had already picked their meals ahead of time--this was just a courtesy at the entrance to tell them what the sides would be, etc. In other words, it was totally unnecessary, but I couldn't see that at the moment, nor could I think calmly enough to be able to handle fractions and recalculate the size. Fortunately, at this point Sean jumped in. It turns out that geeky guys are perfectly suited for measuring and aligning a beautifully double-matted menu sign. And while he did that, I finished off our list for the venue and started loading all of our paraphernalia into the car.

Carrie and I pretty much showed up at the venue in a whirlwind, dropped the bubbles, favors, place cards, signs, and whatever else happened to be in the car (I'm surprised we didn't leave them the spare tire). We were hyper-organized (and mildly paranoid about the idea of something not going perfectly as planned), so we had a list for them of everything we'd brought and where it should go, as well as a diagram of the venue with table names, high chair placement, and labels for where all our stuff should be. We talked through that list at about 90 miles a minute, then ran out the door and back to Carrie's parents' house to get ready for the rehearsal, which it was quite clear that we were going to be late for. I know that this is somewhat to be expected at weddings--lots of things don't start on time. But I really hate inconveniencing people, so I was having all kinds of stress thinking about our nearest and dearest sitting at the church waiting for us. Apparently though, these things don't start without the brides, so they were all mingling happily when we arrived.

This post has already gone on far too long, so you'll have to wait until next time to hear what happens next (I know, crazy suspense, right?) But what I couldn't really capture here was A. what a blur this whole time was, and B. how much of it we couldn't have done without our families. There were all sorts of other things happening that I haven't written about here, in part because I don't even remember who did them, but they got done. Dresses were taken to the cleaner to be steamed, lunches were made, the church was set up, and all sorts of other things that I wasn't involved in. Oh, and in case this wasn't enough insanity, there were two toddlers running around the whole time. It was certainly not a calm, quiet way to go into a wedding, but does that ever happen? I may not have reached a point of pre-wedding bliss, but we spent those days surrounded by family and friends who were willing to join us in the frantic frenzy that was necessary to make our wedding happen.

One of the little men, being as helpful as he could be. I think we all wanted to join him in that nap.

Tornado Country

2011-05-24T15:00:00.003-04:00

The vast majority of people I know who grew up in the Midwest have strong memories of a shared childhood fear: tornadoes. It wasn't until I'd left Minnesota that I discovered that other children did not have tornado drills in their schools, where they were asked to duck and cover under the desks or beneath the coat racks in the hallways. Several classrooms in my high school were in an area of the school that was intended to be temporary, but ended up sticking around for several decades. An amusing memory from high school includes a teacher announcing that although the official recommendation upon a tornado warning was that we duck under the desks, if we happened to see her running for the [solid, concrete] bathrooms we should feel free to follow. In Minnesota, every child learns that if you are out driving in a tornado warning (or in sight of a funnel cloud, though I have never actually experienced this) you should get out of the car and lie in a ditch.

I can't find the post offhand, but I think we've written here previously about the strange New Jersey use of sirens to signify snow days rather than tornado warnings. In Minnesota (and Wisconsin) a piercing outdoor siren undeniably signals that it is time to drop everything, grab your pets and a radio, and run for the basement. You may be stuck there for an hour or more, and you will spend much of the time contemplating whether you should huddle under the most structurally sound portion of the house and whether it would be safe to sneak upstairs and try [fruitlessly] to catch a glimpse of a funnel cloud. This was a several times per summer ritual. I remember once when my friends and I were out for a walk in the rain and the sirens went off. We were several blocks from home, and instead of running for it we knocked on the door of an almost-stranger and asked to cower in their basement. This seemed semi-normal at the time. Because we grew up with a shared fear of tornadoes, and so did those people, and so did their children.

Supposedly they do have tornadoes out here in the East. One weekend last summer my sister and her family were visiting us. We had just enjoyed dinner in a restaurant, and Becky volunteered to take our overtired nephews outside to burn off a little energy while Jen and Sean and I finished up. A bit later I followed them outside, and noticed a vaguely familiar green tinge to the sky. On a whim, I glanced at my smartphone and actually bothered to check the "severe weather alert." It said "tornado warning." Becky and Jen and I shared a moment of muted panic. There were no sirens announcing it; New Jerseyians were carrying on as if nothing was happening. But you can't take years of Midwestern training out of us. We rushed to a nearby supermarket and waited out the warning. Sean, the non-Midwesterner among us, was a bit bewildered about what all the fuss was about. Because he did not grow up with the constant specter of tornadoes hanging over his head.

There have been awful tornadoes in several parts of the country recently. The worst hit places are far from either of our childhood homes. But this weekend there was a tornado that touched down not far from my parents' home. The pictures bring back strong childhood memories of that intense tornado fear. I am thankful to live in a part of the world where this fear can be muted, and I am thinking of all the people in the South and Missouri and Minnesota who have lost loved ones or are dealing with damaged property.

Accidental Tourists

2011-05-23T22:45:00.000-04:00

We spent this weekend at home without visitors, and without any major plans. Friday night we went with Kara to dinner at a Mexican restaurant in the city that was tasty but a bit more expensive than menupages lead us to believe. We were intending to see the movie Bridesmaids together afterward, but when we arrived at the intended theater we discovered that it was sold out. Who knew this movie was so popular? Apparently everybody else did, but not us. Instead we split up and went to our respective homes. Becky and I watched the season finale of Grey's Anatomy. We took a long (years??) break from this show, but got sucked back in by the musical episode. Marketing success I guess!

Saturday we did all the cleaning/errands/etc. We also accomplished several of the little things that have been sitting on the to-do list forever. I have no idea why we procrastinate on things that take two minutes, but somehow it always seems like there's a long list of them that we don't want to do. You know, things like "e-mail the cat sitter about the honeymoon" and "tape the box shut on the swimsuit you need to return." Are there classes we can take to learn how to stop procrastinating on this stuff?

In the evening we had the stay-at-home version of date night. We ate steak (a rarity around here!), worked on that deliciousness Becky already posted about, and watched The Tourist.

On Sunday we went into the city to be at-home tourists. But sadly we didn't get to meet Angelina Jolie or Johnny Depp and we did not get to steal 744 billion euros. Too bad too, because the dollar is doing very little to get me excited to spend euros in just a few short weeks. Thankfully my excitement is strong enough to sustain itself! While waiting for our friend Stephanie and her daughter to arrive at our meeting point in Bryant Park we happened upon free outdoor ping pong tables. I have no idea who comes up with this stuff. But, due to the drizzly overcast weather, we were able to entertain ourselves with no wait.

We then enjoyed a leasurely lunch at an umbrella covered table, followed by a ride on the carousel. Yep, three adults and one toddler. Got a problem with it?

There's a cute little outdoor kids "reading room" right next to it. Which, apparently, you can spend several hundred dollars to rent for your child's birthday party. New Yorkers are seriously a little bit weird. Nonetheless, it was fun to enjoy for free. There's also a cool little outdoor bar in the park that we want to go back to sometime. I had no idea there was so much cool stuff in there.

When we were tired of getting damp we headed inside to the 100th birthday celebration of the New York Public Library. The main branch of the library is one of those famous buildings that I've admired from the outside but never quite gotten around to going inside. It's gorgeous! I love old buildings, and if I had a time machine I would definitely travel back to pre-internet days and see what the library was like then. Of course it's a good thing that information is more readily accessible now, but there must have been something really special about going to a huge gorgeous library when it was the only way to possibly access certain pieces of information.

They had a storytelling festival going on, with some really talented storytellers. Several kids in the audience were really absorbed by it, but Stephanie's daughter was much more intrigued by the folding chairs in the auditorium. They were obviously not designed for the weight of children, and kept trying to fold up with the children still sitting in them.

We also explored the children's center and by chance happened upon something that has been on our to-see-in-NYC list since the beginning: the original Winnie the Pooh stuffed animals! No flash photography was allowed, but you can see here Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore, Piglet, Tigger, Kanga, and of course....their friend the otter?

Pan de Mallorca

2011-05-22T21:33:00.001-04:00

I wandered into Starbucks the other morning in search of a pastry for breakfast. Normally they probably wouldn't be my first stop for breakfast (as a non-coffee drinker), but I remembered that I had a couple dollars left on a gift card and that therefore my pastry would be free! I was intrigued by a roll they called "Mallorca Sweet Bread" and decided to give it a go. It was soft and chewy and covered with powdered sugar. In short, it was delicious. Unfortunately, like most mass-produced baked goods, it had a hint of chemical aftertaste, so I set off to do better.

A quick search led me to this post from The Noshery (unrelated sidenote: the homepage currently includes a recipe for "Runny Egg on Creamy Bacon Polenta", which is now added to my must-try list.) What I learned from her post and my other internet research is that mallorcas (or pan de Mallorca) are a popular Puerto Rican sweet roll based on ensaïmada, a traditional bread from the island of Majorca.

I debated halving the recipe, but Carrie talked me into making the whole thing with the reasoning that we would likely eat more than one at a time (we both have an intense sweet tooth). I'm glad that we have plenty of leftovers, but if I'm making these just for the two of us again, I'll definitely go with a half batch--these rolls are big! We also may or may not have eaten quite a bit of the deliciously sweet dough in the process, but we still had plenty for twelve large rolls. The dough is definitely on the stickier side and was a little difficult to shape because of that. Carrie also wants to make sure that I give her full credit: she was quite helpful and skilled at shaping the rolls. (She was also quite helpful at eating the excess dough in the bowl. :))

Unfortunately, I didn't start on this project until close to 8:00 last night, which meant they weren't going in the oven until nearly midnight. I got a little impatient and put both pans in the oven at the same time. As a result, the ones in the pan near the bottom of the oven got a little overcooked on the bottom, but they're still tasty!

We sprinkled a couple with copious amounts of powdered sugar and ate them immediately.

This morning we filled two with cheese, heated them up in the oven, and powdered sugared them. Delicious! Unfortunately we didn't have any ham, so we couldn't try them with ham and cheese as is apparently traditional, but I have a feeling we'll be making these again. If nothing else, it gives Carrie a good reason to play with her beloved powdered sugar shaker!

Miss me?

2011-05-21T09:53:00.000-04:00

Well, of course we had good intentions. We were going to bring you a Wedding Wednesday. And probably a Random Thursday. And some random article/life commentary in the mean time. I'm tempted to tell you that these things did not materialize because we were caught up in living our lives to the fullest (or perhaps repenting?) in anticipation of today's zombie apocalypse. That would make for a pretty good story. Maybe I could tell you about how we called in sick to work and spent the week checking things off of our bucket lists, like Becky's dream to skydive or my dream to ride a jetski. These activities would be far less enjoyable with zombies wandering around. Especially in New York City, because there's a hell of a lot of cemeteries in the outer boroughs.

The truth, however, is far more mundane. Neither of us arrived home much before 9pm any night this week, and by the time we drag ourselves through that long of a day and the commute, blogging feels unrealistic. Somehow we can manage most of our other internet socializing from our phones and work computers, but not blogging. Thankfully though, early reports from around the world indicate that (surprisingly enough) the zombie apocalypse is not coming to pass. We had big plans to liveblog the rapture, but now it seems like that would be the world's boringest liveblog of us doing errands and cleaning the house. Due to the postponement of the apocalypse we will have plenty of time to check off some of those bucket list items, and hopefully also to write for your bloggy entertainment.

I'll leave you with a plea for fashion advice. My work dress code is relatively casual, but I fear I've been pushing it a bit lately on the casual side, so last weekend we did some shopping. I found a shirt (for a good price) and decided to buy it, despite Becky's assertion that it was the ugliest shirt she's ever seen. Or something drastic and negative like that. But now I'm having second thoughts about buying this shirt despite my wife's strong objections. So I'm opening it up to you, faithful internet friends. Should I keep the shirt? Let me know in the comments. Please ignore the goofy pose, I wasn't fully intending to post these on the internet when we took them.

Close up of my chest. What fun.

Summer Kick-off 2011

2011-05-16T00:24:00.000-04:00

We spent a very lovely three day weekend kicking off summer at our favorite B&B in our favorite Jersey shore town. Several years ago we were approaching our first summer living in New Jersey and, being beach lovers, figured we should take a trip to the shore. We found a campground to use as a home base, and spent a weekend exploring various towns described in our guidebook.

We fell in love with one town in particular, called Ocean Grove. It's chock full of gorgeous Victorian homes and cute little shops, has a non-commercial boardwalk all along the ocean, and the whole town smells like beach. Ocean Grove quickly became our getaway place, and we go down for daytrips several times each summer. We found an adorable B&B that serves delicious hot breakfast (the specialty is cream cheese stuffed French toast casserole!) and has off-season rates and a 3-for-2 deal in May. Last year we weren't able to go due to the cost and time of wedding planning trips (though we did haul a friend there to take our fake e-pics there last April and spent a week there with my family in July), but this year we continued what has become an annual May tradition.

Last Friday we later calculated that we walked nearly eight miles, as we checked to make sure that all of our favorite places were still there. The shore was abuzz with people getting ready for the summer. Beach storage bins were freshly painted and lined up to be set out, lifeguard stands and playground equipment were piled and awaiting beach placement, and everyone seemed to be out and about getting their summer homes set up for the season. I'm happy to report that no one pulled out the plug on the ocean in the last several months of our absence:

A wave surprises Becky.

Happy hour by the ocean!

The only disappointing change is that a bakery closed, but I do suppose time marches onwards. Thankfully our favorite ice cream shop is still thriving. Here's Becky with a peanut-butter-twirl filled waffle cone:

On Saturday we tried out a new activity: horse racing. We had never been before, as I'm fairly certain that Midwesterners do not partake in this sport. But we're almost always up for new wacky adventures in sporting so we decided to give it a shot. I hope we weren't inadvertently supporting animal cruelty, although Wikipedia tells me that unfortunately we may have been. I honestly had no idea that there would be so many people. Apparently large groups of friends/families/co-workers/who knows who rent out whole areas of picnic tables and bring in picnics and barbecues and coolers of beer and settle in for the whole day. We purchased a program to try to get our bearings, and ended up placing $14 worth of bets. We won back $2.60.

There was a bit of a marital snafu when Becky wanted to bet on a horse that would have won us a few dollars and I instead insisted on betting on a horse that won us nothing. But overall, the horses were sleek and the hot dogs were familiar (at one funny point I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with not knowing what we were doing and I declared that we needed hot dogs because I had eaten a hot dog before). Becky declared that her favorite moment was when, after we had been at the track for about an hour, we finally spotted a horse and I said a bit too loudly "look, there's a horse!"

We also spent plenty of time relaxing in the B&B, including reading Harry Potter (yes, the treasured books fresh from the Harry Potter trunk!) on the porch:

Becky claims she's "having fun in my mind."

And plenty of time wandering on the beach, sticking our toes into the still frigid water:

Although we somewhat jokingly agreed to call this the start of summer, I am eagerly awaiting the warm summer weather and the warming of the ocean that will allow us to return to Ocean Grove to swim!!

Wedding Wednesdays: Dress Shopping Surprises

2011-05-11T23:03:00.000-04:00

I wasn't feeling particularly inspired to write a regular recap post this week, but fortunately Carrie's mom suggested an idea for a post related to wedding dress shopping. For those of you who only had/have one bride in your wedding, be glad that you get to avoid this issue!

Carrie and I decided that we both wanted our dresses to be a surprise. Given that we normally do and choose just about everything together, keeping our opinions on dresses secret was no easy task. There were many evenings of both of us sitting on the couch with our computers angled away from each other so that we could look at dresses online without the other seeing. In addition to that, we both did much (in my case, all) of our dress shopping the weekend that we were in Minnesota in May. With the whirlwind of things happening that weekend, we also had to schedule appointments at some of the same stores in a way that we were sure to not run into each other in the process.

We had considered the possibility that we might fall in love with the same dress but figured it was unlikely since there are thousands of dresses out there and we are different people after all. But just in case, we agreed ahead of time that our moms could compare notes on dresses and at least warn us if we were picking the same one. I don't even want to think about what the negotiations would have looked like if that had happened...

Fortunately, we did not choose the same dress, but we did come rather dangerously close! In retrospect, our moms must have been cracking up when they were comparing pictures after our crazy day of dress shopping.

For your viewing pleasure:

This dress was my back-up plan in case Carrie happened to pick my first choice.

Carrie, sporting the same dress

Another dress I tried on

Carrie's actual dress (so pretty!!!)

This was in Carrie's top 3 (she actually had the consultant convinced enough that she was going to buy it that they let her take pictures despite a no-photo-unless-you're-buying policy.

My actual dress. Yes, the neckline is literally the only difference.

That last one was definitely our closest call. The store that I bought it from (Wedding Shoppe in St. Paul) was my last stop of the day but had been Carrie's first stop. I explained to the consultant that Carrie had been there earlier that day, so after I tried on this dress, tried on a few more, and then went back to this dress and declared it the one, she went and grabbed Carrie's paperwork from that morning. She then came back into the fitting room looking sort of stunned and dragged my mom out into the hallway. She tried to pretend like they were doing a good job of hiding it from me, but I'm not an idiot and knew that Carrie had either been interested in the same dress or something shockingly similar. But the advantage I had over the consultant was that Carrie had already sent me text messages at lunchtime saying that she'd liked a dress there but it wasn't her first choice. There were definitely a couple of tense days while Carrie figured out what her first choice was before I could actually order the dress, but obviously it worked out great in the end. To those of you who know us in real life, I'm sure our similar taste is no surprise, but I'm glad that we didn't both want exactly the same thing!

Auntie Blogging, or choo-choos and school buses

2011-05-08T22:45:00.047-04:00

My sister Jen and her adorable sons Mathew and Thomas came to visit us this weekend! They rode Amtrak in to the city and left Sean at home to work on the house. This seemed like a great plan for Jen to have an independent adventure weekend with her vehicle-loving children (big truck! choo-choo!) and for everyone to get to spend more time with the adoring aunties. What is not to love about riding a choo-choo to New York City? Well, apparently a lot, when you are an over tired and over stimulated two year old. Jen had a rough go of it on the way in, and was quite relieved to have help wrangling her toddlers when they arrived. Thankfully Matthew and Thomas had a much better time during the visit than they did on the trip to get here.

Friday night we all headed to Shake Shack in Madison Square Park. Jen and I took the boys to the playground so they could run off some of their energy from being cooped up on the train, while Becky took one for the team and waited in the famous line. You really do have to be a bit patient to be a New Yorker, which I seem to have grown accustomed to, but am often reminded of when people come to visit. All five of us enjoyed our burgers, fries, and custard, and the weather was absolutely perfect for eating outdoors. Unfortunately given the aforementioned circumstances on the train, none of us were with it enough to pull out a camera on Friday, so you just have to take my word for it.

Saturday we spent the morning and early afternoon hanging out at home and at another playground much nearer to our apartment. For so-far childless adults we managed to come up with a pretty good showing of our toys (is it odd that Mr. PotatoHead is part of our normal knick knack selection?), plus of course a bunch of their toys from home.

Auntie Becky plays with toys

Matthew at the top of the slide...

Matthew at the bottom of the slide...

Thomas insisted on trying on Auntie Becky's rain boots.

This meant that we were able to let the boys nap at home, which I think may be key to avoiding two year old meltdown. Jen also fell asleep in her efforts to get nap-resistant Matthew to sleep, and I decided that the end stages of my surgery recovery would be helped by joining them. Becky apparently threatened to draw sharpie mustaches on all of us while we slept, but thankfully she thought better of it!

We then headed in to the city for the late afternoon and early evening. Matthew and Thomas loved the "school bus" that we rode to get in, and also loved watching all of the different types of cars and trucks and buses going by. They live in a sort of distant suburb/small town/semi-rural area, so the sheer amount of vehicular and pedestrian traffic in New York was extremely exciting but also a little bit overwhelming for them. Even at our apartment, which is in a neighborhood we think of as very quiet, we can often hear police/ambulance/fire sirens. Thomas was surprised to hear them and wanted to rush to the windows to watch the "fire truck!" go by. Unfortunately for him this is often not something visible from our windows. We also must have sounded like such silly tourists endlessly talking about the subway as "the choo-choo" for the boys, but we were trying to talk up trains for their return journey, and also....they are tourists, so why not enjoy it, right?

We rode the ferris wheel at the Times Square Toys R Us flagship store (no decent pictures, but Becky and Matthew and I were on the other side of the car):

And then we got sandwiches to-go from PB&Company and ate in the park. Some random strangers actually came over and asked if they could take their picture with the boys because they were looking so cute. Complimentary of course, but still, who does that? Odd. The boys were unbelievably sticky by the time they were done.

We went home and watched part of the first movie that Becky ever saw in a movie theater: Follow that Bird, the 1985 Sesame Street classic. Still accessible today! I was a bit dismayed by its less than complimentary portrayal of social workers and much to Becky's dismay playfully threatened that I won't let our kids watch it. Mathew and Thomas went off to dream land after such a busy full day, and the adults stayed up to chat and drink Asti and eat dessert.

This morning we had an informal Mother's Day brunch (with mimosas!) for Jen, played of course, and then shepherded everyone back to the train station and wished them luck on the return journey. We haven't gotten the whole report yet, but from a few quick text messages it seems that it was rough but not as bad as Friday. Poor Jen. But everyone made it, and we absolutely loved having our very favorite visitors this weekend!

Happy Mother's Day Jen!

We spent the afternoon relaxing, recovering, and of course wishing our own mothers (and my grandmother) Happy Mother's Day!

Random Thursday: Surgery week edition

2011-05-05T17:11:00.002-04:00

When I started this I wasn't fully intending it to be a weekly thing, but it seems to be turning out that way. Apparently even in weeks where I do not go to work things are dragging a bit by Thursday, and it's easier to write thoughts out in random lists than in full blown posts.

1. We finally got moving again on honeymoon planning. We stalled a bit a few weeks ago when the hotel we picked for Athens was booked for our dates. But we have picked ourselves up again and are now debating the risks vs. rewards of seedy neighborhoods in Athens. To be within walking distance of attractions, or to not be within walking distance of prostitutes and junkies...

2. My ideas about good and bad neighborhoods have evolved a lot in the last three years of doing home visits for a living. I've seen a lot of things that would probably not make my mother too happy (sorry Mom). But no one on the internet seems to be able to tell me how sketchy Athens compares to my experience of sketchy New York.

3. I watched a bunch of episodes of the show Parenthood on Hulu.com today. It's like Modern Family, but less funny and more dramatic. I like it. I think I will put Season 1 on our Netflix queue.

4. The pain from surgery has definitely gone down a lot, but my patience for any pain/discomfort has also gone down a lot. I'm ready to be fully back to normal now please!

5. Getting new passports in our new name is going to cost us $110 each. How annoying. Technically this is just the renewal fee, but we renewed in summer 2009 so it's annoying! I suppose I should just be grateful that they will recognize our name change (because Massachusetts considers the marriage a legal name change the feds apparently have decided there's no way around honoring that) and not require us to jump through any additional hoops. But I can think of better uses for our $220! Like, oh, a semi-private Santorini sailboat tour?

6. Jen and the boys are coming to visit for the weekend, so you can expect Auntie blogging on Sunday or Monday!

7. The cats are really unamused that I have been home all week but not really letting them jump on me and generally maul me the way I usually allow them to do.

8. Today was the first day since surgery I was able to stay awake all day. I know napping during the day sounds luxurious and/or lazy, but earlier this week I was so freaking exhausted that I couldn't possibly stay awake so it was absolutely a necessity!

9. Somehow our commute seems a lot longer when I'm sitting at home and Becky is doing it by herself...it feels like forever between when she tells me she's coming home and when she actually gets here. I sincerely hope that we can someday live and work much closer together than we do now.

10. I'll leave you with pictures of the cinnamon rolls that Becky made for me a few weeks back, but then I forgot to include in the weekend recap:

Yum.

Wedding Wednesdays: Planning from Afar

2011-05-04T14:28:00.001-04:00

The first decision we made about the wedding was where to hold it. It was always a given that we would have a legal ceremony in a state where it would be called marriage. But whether that ceremony would be the ceremony was initially up for debate.

When we got engaged in November 2009 there was buzz around New Jersey that New Jersey would pull it together before Corzine left office, and we dreamed briefly of asking our friends and family to travel to our home state to hold a single celebration of a newly legal marriage. We also pondered acting politically with our financial investment of a wedding celebration and holding our party in Massachusetts or Connecticut, where same-sex marriage was already legal. But in the end we decided that the best answer for us was to hold the wedding we would want to have if it were legal, and not let haters dictate where or when we should celebrate our relationship. Sadly, the Minnesota government is currently seeking to reaffirm their disdain for our relationship by amending the state constitution to ensure that our marriage could not be recognized.

In an acquiesence to political reality, we did conduct a tiny legal ceremony in Massachusetts, which you can read about here and look at pictures of here. But for the most part, we consider the Minnesota ceremony and party to be "the wedding" and "our anniversary." (And it was certainly the bulk of the wedding spending!) I grew up in Minnesota and Becky grew up in Wisconsin, we both have family and friends and family friends centered in these two neighboring states, and we were able to get married in my childhood church. Initially the decision felt like we were selling out the idea of putting our money where our politics are. But ultimately I have no shame in financially supporting all of the wonderful, supportive vendors we worked with.

So, planning a wedding in a state you don't live in is a lot like planning a destination wedding. Except my impression is that when you plan a Jamaica wedding or a Mexico wedding, most of the vendors are geared towards destination wedding go-ers. Apparently Minneapolis isn't high on the destination wedding list. So we had to sort it out ourselves. To be fair, we had a bit of a blue print in my sister's wedding planning from five years ago, but she was primarily willing to allow my mom to be her wedding planner. In our case we had not one but two brides who wanted to control every little detail, and also not one but two mothers-of-the- brides who also had opinions and needs.

Our overall strategy was to do big chunks of planning in marathon wedding weekends, during which Becky and I, Becky's mom, on a few occasions other relatives, and my mom had wedding retreats in my parents' house. This involved some quick bonding for our mothers who had only met for the first time in December 2009!

Our first trip to Minnesota was in January 2010. We toured four potential reception sites, were stood up at one arranged site tour, and drove by two other potential sites. We met with six photographers and were canceled on by one additional photographer. And even just reading that right now I feel like we were crazy. But part of the stress of planning from afar was that we had to have lots of options lined up, because we didn't have the luxury of loving one vendor on the internet and then going in person and hating it/him/her and then trying again the next weekend. This whirlwind approach forced us to do our internet homework and then jump in and do. I think it was an advantage that we saw everything/met everyone all at once so we could easily compare and choose. But it certainly felt stressful at the time! When I got the e-mail from the photographer who canceled (she had a family emergency) I almost broke down crying, because somehow her cancellation solidified for me that she was the one photographer we were destined to love. Crazy much? Never fear, we picked ourselves up and loved another.

This is me diligently studying the reception contract, ever cautious to not sign away the rights to parent our first born (I'm fairly certain we avoided this, but I won't be entirely shocked if one of our vendors shows up at the hospital someday expecting that!):

I think the whirlwind version may have been good for our indecisive selves also, because at the end of the weekend....we obviously weren't going to pick a photographer we didn't interview or a venue we didn't view, and thus we had to just freaking make a decision. And ultimately, those big decisions from weekend one were the easiest. We loved in person the same venue we loved online. We both easily agreed that the photographer we thought we loved online was unnecessarily expensive and not a personality click, and that the photographer we did pick was an easy personality match. Of all your vendors, your photographer is the one whose personality you should like. Ours felt like she could have been one of our college friends. Win.

Our second trip to Minnesota was in May 2010. We managed to connect it to a Wisconsin trip we were planning to take anyways. We got a private food and wine tasting at our reception venue (special perk of long distance planning!), met with four florists, met with four bakers, took engagement pictures, scoped rehearsal dinner venues, met with the minister, shopped for invitation supplies, and shopped for wedding dresses. Once again our selection of vendors was probably overkill, but I don't regret meeting with any of them. I like to make informed choices! The one thing we really could have done at home was wedding dress shopping, but we wanted to have our moms in on part of it at least. I ended up buying mine off the rack at a boutique in Minnesota and then conning my mom into shipping it to New Jersey for me to have altered. Becky ordered hers through a shop in Minnesota and they mailed it to her to have altered here. Alterations was one of the most stressful parts of the wedding planning, and I would highly recommend buying your dress from a shop where you plan to get it altered. While in Wisconsin we also went bridesmaid dress shopping with Becky's sisters and made a tentative decision. Like the colors??

We didn't go back to Minnesota until three weeks before the wedding. Pretty much all of the detail finalizing with all of the vendors we did over phone and e-mail, we hired DJ and limo companies over the internet, we instructed our wedding party to order outfits over the internet, and we worked on all of the paper goods and favors and all the little details from home. We ordered box after box of stuff to be sent to my mom, who would open boxes on Skype and show us our unity candle or our boxes of dozens of bubbles. We also asked each of our mothers to take care of buying or doing certain things for us, like sorting out only red and purple Hershey's kisses from dozens of bags, or tying personalized ribbons. Not everyone was equally enthused about ordering their outfits:

In October the whole gang descended on Minnesota again, and we did hair trials, had a shower, re-tasted our cake (to be sure of the flavors!!), and worked on finishing and folding and organizing all of that stuff that our moms collected for us!

People on the wedding internetz talk a lot about wedding planning taking over your whole lives.... we definitely had lots of days where we didn't really have any wedding related tasks we had to complete, but that freedom was obviously created by these intense whirlwind planning weekends. I might be a little crazy, but I liked the intensity of being forced to get so much done at once, and of having our families with us in our intense focus for just those weekends. When my mom first warned us of how many planning trips we would need to take to Minnesota I was a doubter. Now that we've done it I think it's a miracle that we didn't need more.

ETA: ARGH, I did it again!!! :( This post was written by Carrie, despite Blogger's claims that it was written by Becky.

In Sickness and in Health

2011-05-02T22:45:00.000-04:00

Well, "in sickness and in health" wasn't actually explicitly in our vows... but trust me, it was there in spirit!
On Friday morning I had my gallbladder removed, and I honestly don't think I could have made it through the last four days without Becky. She has cooked and cleaned, waited on me, set an alarm to give me pain medication in the middle of the night, and helped me in/out/on/off the couch/chairs/bed/toilet/car/pretty much every surface in our home. I have no idea how single people have surgery.

Overall, the hospital staff was really great about not missing a beat when we answered "she's your friend?" with "no, wife." I didn't really expect anything less from a hospital in Manhattan, but you never know for sure. Before surgery they took my blood pressure and it had spiked; I attribute this partially to the fact that they made me leave Becky. (Thankfully they let me have her back again before the surgery, and before she left that time the anesthesiologist gave me some Valium in my IV...haha.) Before surgery they also made me take a pregnancy test, despite my best assurances that I was 110% definitely not pregnant. Apparently their results concurred because the surgery went forward.

As they were starting to think about letting me go home, the volunteer lady (aka meanie head visitor gatekeeper) told me that she was sending "my friend" up. Usually I am not one to get annoyed about these things, and given that standing up was taking all of my mental attention, it was certainly not my moment to complain out loud. But in that moment of being seperated from her and really wanting/needing her to come back and take care of me, I was definitely reminded of the profound difference between her being my friend and being my wife.

My brain is still a little fuzzy, probably from a combination of surgery fuzz and pain medication, so this post isn't the most coherant. But I hope the underlying message of how much I love and appreciate my wife is coming through! Thank you Becky!

On Handwriting

2011-04-29T14:00:00.002-04:00

The New York Times had an interesting article about cursive handwriting on Wednesday: The Case for Cursive. Go read it. I'll wait. But if you hit the paywall, well, I'm sorry. And if you hit the paywall and really, really want to read it, email me and I'll send you the article!

Unsurprisingly, but apparently still newsworthy, the art of cursive handwriting is going down the drain as we all rely more and more on computers. In addition, the education system's current focus on standardized testing means that teachers are dedicating as much time as they can to topics covered by those tests, leaving very little time for handwriting classes.

I'm a little torn on how I feel about this. I remember being so excited about learning to write in cursive in second grade. And I remember being quite smug about how good my cursive was and the amount of praise I got from my second grade teacher for my handwriting. I continued to use cursive most of the time up until probably sometime in middle school. (I would give you an exact year, but sadly, my old yearbooks are stashed in my parents' house so I can't say for sure when I transitioned back to printing. Sad, right?) But since then? Printing all the way. And now that I'm not taking notes in class anymore, even my printing suffers on occasion.

Something about cursive still appeals to me though. It's pretty and fancy in a way that my printing will never be. And I like the fact that it looks a little old-fashioned to my modern sensibilities. And I chose to address all of our wedding invitations in cursive for both of those reasons and also because it felt proper to me--like my grandmother would have approved.

Despite the fact that I like the way it looks, it's not a skill that I need in everyday life, so I guess I'd be hard pressed to say that I think it's a terribly crucial skill for children to learn. The article does raise some interesting points though, particularly that kids who don't learn to write well in cursive have difficulty reading cursive, including important historical documents. This sounds a little crazy to me, until I remember that cursive writing looked like a mysterious secret code to me when I was in first grade. Will cursive handwriting become a skill that history students study in college in order to read primary sources?

Do you typically use cursive or printing? Do you think cursive is a skill that matters? Are you shrugging or appalled by the idea of the next generation not having cursive signatures?

Ten Random Things, Take 2

2011-04-28T22:28:00.001-04:00

1. I bought a bag of Godiva Gems Truffles the other day (hurrah for half-price Easter candy!) They're decent enough, but they can't hold a candle to my beloved Lindt Lindor Truffles.

2. I scraped my elbow and wrist going down a slide with one of the nephews last weekend. I then tried to be a good girl and keep it covered with neosporin and band-aids, but alas, it seems that I am allergic to some varieties of band-aids. Now I have not just a scrape but also red itchiness around it.

3. I finished re-reading the first Harry Potter book--6 more to go!

4. On Wednesday at 5:00 a.m. one of the smoke detectors decided its battery was dying and it started chirping. I stumbled around in the dark with a chair taking down smoke detectors until I found the right one. And then just as we were falling back asleep, the cats decided to be noisy and obnoxious.

5. I took the day off work tomorrow, and today I suddenly wondered if people think I took the day off to watch the royal wedding. I didn't. Promise. If it weren't for Twitter, I probably wouldn't even know when the wedding is.

6. Honeymoon planning seems to have stalled. Anyone have recommendations on a cheap hotel in Athens?

7. We started scrapbooking the wedding and wedding planning, but that also seems to have stalled. Scrapbooking stuff is still strewn all across the kitchen table though, so we either have to get back to it soon or put it away so I can bake more cookies.

8. Inspired by a couple blogs mentioning kale chips being delicious, I bought a bunch of kale at the farmers market yesterday. I'll let you know what I think after I make them this weekend. But pretty much, I read multiple places about "this vegetable that my picky, vegetable-hating kids love" and figured I had to try it.

9. Our cat Cricket seems to think she's a dog. Instead of just letting us pet her like a normal cat, she insists on licking our hands.

10. One of the things I love about living in this part of the country is all the flowering trees in the springtime. (My allergies don't love this, but fortunately they hasn't been bad at all this year.) Case in point: this is the tree in front of our house right now.

Wedding Wednesdays: Bachelorette & Shower

2011-04-26T21:48:00.009-04:00

When we started planning the wedding we weren't really expecting much in the way of a bachelorette party or a shower. We don't have a huge circle of friends (moving around too much combined with being introverts?) and our close friends and family are fairly widely geographically dispersed. For the most part I had accepted this as a sad but true reality, while Becky was privately pining for these celebrations. Blame it on the big evil Wedding-Industrial-Complex (or just theknot.com) if you will, but somehow having a bachelorette party and a shower felt like an important right of passage as brides/further legitimizing force/just plain good time.

Happily, our friends and family came through. And they did it in fun ways that fit us. I apologize for the exceptionally poor quality of some of these photos; we were having camera issues.

Bachelorette

Our friend Kara, who has been featured in several of our bloggy adventures (Staten Island, Superbowl, Dim Sum, probably lots more...), had vaguely hinted that she might do something bachelorettey for us. We even had a suspicion on the day that it might be the day. But then when we confirmed plans it seemed to genuinely be a low-key business as usual meet up in Central Park. And truth be told, Kara is usually a horrible liar, so we took this at face value. In fact, so much so that we called and told her we were running 20 minutes late because we needed to do an errand. We were quite surprised when we approached the appointed meeting spot to see two other friends (Kim and Stephanie) and learn that another was supposed to meet us later!

Kara delivered us goody bags filled with candy and plastic engagement ring shot glasses and dorky bride-to-be tiaras and water bottles filled with Strongbow cider. She even decorated our water bottles in our wedding colors (and apparently also deserves an award for securing bachelorette swag that did not have penises on it!). Here's us in Central Park with the lovely tiaras:

We then started off a whole afternoon/evening full of shenanigans with our friends sponsoring a carriage ride in Central Park. Becky and I started a New York City to-do list before we moved here, after having had tons of fun checking things off of our Boston and London to-do lists. Almost five years settled in to our Big Apple experience we've gotten lax with the tourist pursuits, and there are still items unchecked on our original list. Kara secretly consulted the list, which is scrawled on the back of an envelope and attached to the side of our fridge, and picked an activity to help us complete. I apologize to the animal rights activists and cheeseyness police, but the carriage ride has been a quintessential New York experience in my head since early in my Midwestern childhood! And now I can happily report that we did it on our bachelorette day.

From there we headed to a delicious dinner (and drinks) at Five Napkin Burger. Becky and I try hard to be frugal when it comes to eating out, but Kara knew we had been salivating over the idea of these over-priced burgers and so she put them on the itinerary. And I can tell you they're seriously worth the price. Yum. Definitely competition for the best burger I've had. We followed that up with drinks at a local bar, and then capped the evening off with desserts at Edgar's Cafe. We cannot thank our friends enough for pulling off such a fun-filled surprise day of bachelorettey-ness. And, we especially enjoyed spending time with these lovely ladies, as they were among the young friends who were decidedly unable to make it to the also amazing shower.

Shower

The shower was not a surprise, as that would have been logistically impossible considering that it took place in Minnesota. But initially the fact that a shower was being thrown in our honor was definitely a surprise, as was the content. My sister (and matron of honor) was the mastermind behind the shower, though she also had a lot of help from both my mom and Becky's mom, and from a family friend who is also the mother of my bridesmaid. Neither my bridesmaid nor Becky's sisters (her wedding party) were able to make it, but my bridesmaid did make an appearance on Skype live from her German home!

We managed to coordinate a weekend about three weeks before the wedding for a whole host of people to descend upon the Twin Cities for wedding-preparation-palooza. Becky and I flew in from New Jersey, Jen and her son Matthew (free under-2 flight FTW) flew in from Massachusetts, and Becky's mom and aunt drove in from Eastern Wisconsin. We did hair trials, tied ribbons on favors, re-tasted cakes, folded program parts....and partied! (And yes, you read correctly, we tasted cakes for a second time.)

Our lovely hosts did up the fellowship hall of my church for a delicious English tea, and invited all of the women who were invited to the wedding. There were tables set up with small flower centerpieces in our wedding colors, several kinds of tea, fruit, scones with jam and clotted cream, and finger sandwiches. But most of all, there were three desserts, all cut into scrumptious tea-style bite size pieces. The desserts were designated Carrie's dessert, aka a childhood favorite called Chocolate Indulgence, Becky's dessert, aka pumpkin bars with cream cheese frosting, and the joint dessert, aka the cake that we adored at cake tasting but rejected due to the personality and attitude of the baker herself. It was pure caramel apple deliciousness, and for a shower cake the baker apparently did not feel the need to insult our design choices or stuff it full of styrofoam dummy cakes. A few points off for my mom though, who accidentally revealed my sister's well plotted surprise by including Becky and I on a planning e-mail. Oopsie!
Becky's mom planned a fun little trivia game regarding places that we have traveled together, and put together a photo album for us of pictures from many of those travels. She also supplied many of those pictures (y'know, the ones of us with food...because we apparently love to take them!) to my sister for use in an ingenious shower gift, especially for people with lots of long distance friends and family. We received a cookbook filled with recipes and memories, submitted by tons of our wedding invitees including many who were able to attend the shower and many who were not able to attend. It was especially nice to see some of our younger friends represented who both couldn't attend in person and weren't able to send shower gifts - but obviously still wanted to send love! Here is us examining our cookbook with my sister:

And here is an unfortunately blurry picture of our mothers bonding at the shower (note our purple and red wedding colors in the centerpieces!):
But yes, we did also receive lots of very generous shower gifts for which we are very grateful as well. During the gift-opening Matthew entertained himself very well by ferrying gifts to us and used wrapping materials from us to the trash bag. He also did an excellent job helping set out folding chairs and helping my dad load our presents into the car at the end of the event!

Hippity Hop (on Easter... Bunny Cookies*)

2011-04-25T22:58:00.001-04:00

Happy (now belated) Easter to all who celebrate!

As any of you who have been following for a while or who know us in real life could predict, we spent the holiday weekend in Massachusetts with my sister and her family. My parents also flew in for the holiday (and of course the grandbaby time), so we spent lots of quality time with my family.

Becky and I lived with my sister and brother-in-law for eight months several years ago, back in their relaxed pre-children days and our pre-grad-school days. I've always been close with my sister, and I have recently been (lovingly) accused of being obsessed with my nephews. They live near enough that we can easily go for a weekend, but far enough that it really does have to be a full weekend. We have their garage door opener, know the security codes, and pretty much get how the place runs. Which all leads to the fact that their home is kind of like our second home. I must say that I am very lucky that my wife for the most part enjoys spending time with my family, and has also become close with my sister and brother-in-law and of course adores our nephews. (And I like her family too, but unfortunately they're a bit farther away!)

And so, yes, we spend a pretty large percentage of our holidays in Massachusetts.

Becky decided last week to get her bake on and whip up a batch of her aunt's delicious sugar cookies, with anticipation of convincing the nephews to help decorate. On rainy Saturday afternoon we stripped them down to diapers and set them to work. The highlights were probably Matthew's decorating technique of biting jelly beans in half, eating half, and using the remaining halves to decorate and Thomas' technique of letting us know he was done by picking up an undecorated cookie and licking the frosting off of it.

The finished toddler cookies:

And some for the adults (haha, we continue the ruse as if we are football fans):

We also had a lovely Easter morning, complete with baskets from the bunny for the little boys. Sadly my mom seems to have declared that we are adults now that my sister has children (it's my blog I get to say it, Mom!) But here's a nice family picture of all their booty:

And here are the boys playing with their new toys. Cardiologist Matthew is carefully ministering to the heart health of his monkey:

And even the doctor needs a check-up now and then:

Thomas invited the monkey to enjoy some tea with him:

And Auntie Becky read the monkey a bedtime story (that is one spoiled monkey!):

We also had a lovely time at the playground and just hanging out around the house. And lest you think that the weekend was entirely focused on babies, Becky and I also got out of the house in the glorious weather on Sunday and had a long walk around a local lake. I actually think I got a bit of a sun tan on my pasty pasty self for the first time since last summer! (Don't spite me with skin cancer for saying that, please?) I dipped my toes in the frigid lake and we wandered in the woods. It was a very nice break from the wilds of NYC, and of course the horrid stand still traffic in the Bronx that awaited us on our trek home.

* Jen - is it Easter... Bunny Cookies? Or Easter Bunny....Cookies?!?!

Ten Random Things

2011-04-21T22:45:00.000-04:00

1. We used gift cards from our wedding to purchase a lovely expensive set of Calphalon pots and pans. For completing this item on our registry (and filling out some paperwork) Calphalon sent us a free 11" round "griddle gift." So far the pan we've used the most is the free one.

2. Our cat Cricket loves boxes, especially boxes that are a little bit too small to entirely fit her chubby body. She really enjoyed wedding gifts, although she is also still enjoying a shoe box my brother-in-law left here several years ago. Yes, we indulge her by keeping these ridiculous boxes.

3. In the 16 months since we got Android phones I fell in love with the NY Times app. It recently broke my heart. No, not by introducing the pay wall, but by ruining the app. I am so sad for this loss.

4. My favorite ice cream is Blue Bunny's cookie dough, because it has a delicious cookie batter ribbon.

5. We are spending a 3-day weekend in Ocean Grove in May and I am seriously impatient for it to come. The shore is by far and away my favorite part of living in New Jersey.

6. For the past 3 years we've had 10,000 places to see before you die wall calendars. This month we're visiting China's Yunnan Province. There will be pandas, which will make Becky happy.

7. Once I went to Edinburgh, Scotland and knowingly chose not to go see Emperor penguins at the zoo. I have regretted this decision since.

8. Becky made sugar cookies today, and she saved a tasty chunk of uncooked dough for me (true love). We're planning to decorate them with our nephews in Massachusetts this weekend; maybe we'll let the other adults play too.

9. Our cat Piccadilly has been waking us up precisely at 6:00am several mornings this week. This has led her to receive death threats from her mommies. Kitty needs to remember that tired mommies are not fun mommies!!

10. Happy Easter and Passover to all who celebrate either!

Wedding Wednesdays: Invitations & Paper

2011-04-20T23:05:00.008-04:00

Our wedding was almost 6 months ago, but we never really did full-on recaps afterward. And since I know a few of you wandered here via the wedding blogosphere, we figured a few pretty wedding posts couldn't hurt! For the next few weeks, we'll (try really hard to) have a Wednesday post with wedding-related content. If weddings aren't your thing, well, we'll see you next post!

To kick things off, I wanted to tell you a bit about our invitations and other paper items. Sadly, we forgot to have our photographer take a picture of our invitation, so some of the pictures here aren't the best. (memo to brides-to-be: send an invite to your photographer or have an invite there on the day of and then remember to give it to him/her to photograph.We missed that step.)

We sent out Save-the-Date postcards about six months before our wedding. We designed them in Microsoft Publisher and then got them printed through Vistaprint. If you're looking for cheap postcards, they're a great source, but make sure you do a quick search for freebies first! We got our postcards free but had to pay for shipping and a set-up fee for the custom design.

Image came out a little blurry here, but they printed great!

The back of the postcard had information about the where/when and a link to our wedding website. We had to send out the postcards before we had our actual engagement pictures done, but fortunately we were able to con a friend into doing a photoshoot for us in Asbury Park and Ocean Grove, our favorite spots on the Jersey Shore.

The invitations...were probably the one area of the wedding where I went the most insane. From the moment I heard the word "pocketfolds", I was in. They're so organized! And neat! And all the little cards line up so nicely! Also, they are expensive, so clearly we needed to find some ways to make them less so. We ordered the folders and envelopes from Cards & Pockets, and I seriously cannot say enough good things about them. The prices were great, quality was excellent, their shipping was quick, and the customer service was awesome. We designed the invitations and inserts in Publisher, with a little bit of work (map cards, some image stuff) done in a free 30-day trial of Adobe Illustrator. I used this tutorial to design the map card, and I am proud to say that I managed to get through it without actually throwing my computer out the window, though I was tempted at many times.

We then had the lovely custom printing people at Cards & Pockets print the invitations. Our printer is ten years old and we don't bother to keep color ink in it, so printing the invitations ourselves would have involved buying a new printer. By getting them to do the printing, we ended up saving money and avoided the hassles of printing and cutting all of the pieces. And their rates were extremely reasonable--much cheaper than we were quoted anywhere else.

Once we had all the pieces, step 1 for us (well, me) was addressing the envelopes. Since I did these by hand, in cursive, it took a little longer than I anticipated. While I worked on that, Carrie painstakingly stamped our return address and the little squares we cut for the belly bands. For those of you who are new here, check out these awesome pictures of us hard at work on these projects.

Once those steps were complete, we dragged everything up to Carrie's sister's house for a weekend of invitation assembly. We set up a big table in their living room, and Carrie, Jen, and I became a craft factory, while Sean kept the boys out of the way for a miraculously long period of time. (Thanks again, J and Anonymous!)

Important lesson: old medical school textbooks are extremely good weights for ensuring your adhesive is stuck.

Finally: the finished product!

We used the belly band squares in place of the inner envelope, so for everyone else, these said the guests' names.

Once those were on their merry way, the biggest paper project left was the ceremony program. We designed these in Publisher, and after trying to find a local printer that was even remotely reasonable, we decided to have Cards & Pockets print them as well. Then all we had to do was cut the vellum, hole punch them, and tie ribbons through each one. Voila:

Photo by Becca Dilley

You can't really see it at all in this photo, but each program has a red ribbon, similar in style to the ribbon on the belly bands but much thinner, tied in a bow. And here's a tip: if you're printing something that has to be hole punched, mark the holes on your design so that they're printed right on the paper and you don't have to mark it on each one later.

For those of you keeping score at home, here's what we used and where we got it:

Folders, envelopes, silver backing for belly band squares, and printing: Cards & Pockets
Purple hemp paper for backing on main invitation panel: Paper Depot, Minneapolis, MN (also great customer service and lots of ideas--definitely worth a trip if you're in the area!)
Adhesive: Tombow MONO adhesive (Bought at Paper Depot but I've since seen at A.C. Moore)
Custom return address stamp: Etsy seller kiss + tell
Ribbon: Michaels (gotta love their coupons!)
Swirl stamp and ink pad: The Ink Pad (super-cute stamping store in NYC)
Vellum paper for programs: Paper Presentation (in NYC)

Fancy Shmancy Trunk o' Books

2011-04-18T21:15:00.007-04:00

This evening Becky crawled to the back of our storage room and pulled out an unopened cardboard box. On the side of the box is printed "Harry Potter boxed set 1-7. Do not display before October 16, 2007." Seeing as it is now 2011 I think she's safe from the publishing powers-that-be coming after her! Inside the first cardboard box is a spiffier looking cardboard trunk, which I suspect in turn contains the aforementioned books. I tried to open the trunk and check on the books while Becky took a break to dish up some ice cream. But I got yelled at for my actions. So I guess I will just have to have faith that the trunk truly contains all seven books. For now I'm enjoying the "Deliver to: Hogwarts" label, the yarn handles, and the printed hinge graphics.

Although I already owned several of the books (and now of course cannot find most of them), in 2007 Becky and I were not anywhere near engaged, and therefore she felt a burning desire to own them all herself. She obsessed. She pre-ordered. She obsessed more. And then she stashed. Every time another of the movies has come out we have chatted about a need to re-read the books. Every time we have chatted about pulling the trunk out. And every time we have eventually gone to see the movie without re-reading the books. But this summer the final movie is coming out, and by golly (haha, I can't believe I just wrote that), this time we're going to re-read the books.

I'll keep you updated on whether Becky lets me peek in the trunk. In the mean time, here are some pictures from way back in 2007 when we attended the book release party at Scholastic for book 7:

UPDATE: After exclaiming "My trunk got locked!" she figured out how to open it, confirmed that her books were still shrink-wrapped, and started playing with the enclosed bonus stickers for decorating the trunk. And then she declared that her books are exempt from the joint property conferred by marriage, and that the trunk is locked so I cannot get in. I am feeling the love, how about you?

P.S. For some reason blogger is having a lot of issues with my attempts at spacing lately. I apologize.

New York City's Backyard

2011-04-17T22:02:00.006-04:00

Yesterday we enjoyed a day that I previously dubbed Becky-style (although that's a bit of a lie, since I like 'em too). The weather gods poured buckets and buckets of rain on us as we sprinted between the car and the various stores we needed to visit. And we hung out at home and relaxed.

Today though...we got to have a previously dubbed Carrie-style day! (Also a misnomer, since Becky had an awesome time too.) It was the first really gorgeous spring day that happened to fall on a weekend, which felt especially lucky after the end-of-the-world storm on Saturday. But first we enjoyed nutella-filled Frenched tortillas.
Then we headed to Central Park, which was swarming with people who obviously had the same train of thought as we did. Sheep's Meadow was filled with little groups of people sunbathing, tossing frisbees, and watching their adorable children toddle around. It's intriguing to me the way that people in cities do so many things in public that suburbanites save for private, but city dwellers do them in parallel, hardly acknowledging the crowds around them.
Tavern on the Green, formerly a fancy iconic New York restaurant, re-opened as a parks gift store and food truck food court. To celebrate the re-envisioning and kick off the season they had sample day today. Each cart offered part of their usual fare for free! Rickshaw dumplings were delicious as always; Pera Turkish tacos left something to be desired (unadvertised pickled beets have no place in my lamb taco, and cheap grocery store tortillas are not alternatively called "lavash bread"). Even standing in line forever for hit-or-miss food felt lovely though, with the live band, warm sun, and cool breeze.
After eating we decided to do something unplanned: we rented a tandem bike! Becky had never ridden one, I had not ridden one since childhood (Itasca State Park, family?), and between us we've logged about 3 hours of bike riding total in the past 10 years. Becky's going to come back and argue that she rode occasionally in college, but I'm not sure you can call the hunk of junk that she rode in college a bike. We managed to survive a full 6 mile loop around the park, including hills! And it was pretty freaking awesome! On several occasions Becky whimpered that I was trying to kill her, but that's all part of the fun, right? Unfortunately while on the bike we were too focused on pedaling and not crashing to try for a decent picture, but here's one of Becky steering it back to its owners:
We then wandered to the east side (a place we typically avoid going!) to attempt to use a Crate and Barrel gift card before a wedding completion discount ends. We couldn't choose though, so ended up just browsing. And then for some inexplicable reason we decided to walk the 2+ miles back to the bus terminal. On the way we happened upon a premiere party for the new movie Water for Elephants. Quintessential New York, right? (It was a fabulous book too, so hopefully the movie is good!) As proof, here is the back of Reese Witherspoon's head:
In other news we did make a decision on the cable issue, but probably not the one Cablevision or Verizon wanted us to make. We canceled the cable, to save us about as much as Fios would have saved us. And this way we don't have to spend an entire day at home, get landlord permission, or otherwise deal with the hassle of changing providers.

I hope all of your weekends were as lovely!

Clutter

2011-04-15T23:37:00.002-04:00

In case you haven't sensed it from our blog, the last few weeks have been...insane. Both of us have been pretty stressed out by our jobs and putting in a lot of hours at work. By the time we get home, we end up throwing something together for dinner, leaving the dishes for later, and sitting on the couch staring at our computers.

Needless to say, this cycle isn't doing much for our individual mental health, nor for our relationship. (The delay in dish-washing doesn't do our kitchen any good either.) I mean, we're surviving just fine, but our lives are definitely a much happier place to be when we're both feeling less stressed and exhausted. Of course I know what some of the most obvious solutions are to this problem: sleep more, clean as we go instead of letting it pile up, spend less time online and have more quality time together, and spend less time at work. All of these are logical steps to take, but all of them are much easier said than done. For example, the irony is not lost on me that I am currently writing a blog post about spending less time online and more time with my wife. I swear that as soon as I post this, I'm going to put the computer down. Pinky swear, even!

I posted this picture of us (from our engagement pictures, by the lovely Becca Dilley) because we look so calm and peaceful. It's one of my favorite pictures from that day, and it's actually the wallpaper on my computer desktop. Unfortunately, I rarely see the full picture because it's covered with a ridiculous assortment of files saved on my desktop. I've frequently noted throughout my adult life that my mental health bears a strong correlation with both the state of my home and the state of my desktop. All three seem to get cluttered up and reach a breaking point of "OMG something needs to change NOW" around the same time. I don't know if there's a cause/effect here and if so, which way it goes, but I seem to have reached a point where all three need some attention.

The desktop, of course, is the easiest thing to organize. And the apartment, while a disaster, is a fairly straightforward set of tasks--it doesn't even really matter which one I tackle first, as long as I just do something. But getting the rest of my life sorted out in a way that I'm able to spend quality time with my wife, have some time to myself, get my work done, and keep up with online friends and interests, is a little trickier.

So I ask you, dear readers, how do you balance all of these issues? And since I'm currently looking for ways to de-stress, what's your secret?

Today I gay worked. You?

2011-04-13T22:43:00.000-04:00

(As seen on Queer Skies Ahead and A Homegrown Wedding.)

Ima sucker

2011-04-11T21:55:00.003-04:00

I sort of maybe kind of got talked in to actually buying something from a door to door salesman today. I'm a little bit ashamed to admit it, and now I can't decide what to do about it. I signed away my first born to the Verizon Fios men. I thought I was being smart. I asked a million questions, tried the "I can't make a decision without talking to Becky" line, and asked about fifteen times if I could change my mind fee-free. I even almost walked away at one point when we were doing some wacky over the phone government registration of the phone line thing. (Not that I even want a phone line, mind you, but every cable/internet company seems intent on discounting my internet by giving me a phone line I don't want.)

And yet, here I am with a contract in my hand. How did that even happen?

Luckily my contract does explicitly state that I can cancel within three business days and the whole thing will be forgotten. Ignore the fact that the salesman (accidentally?) back dated the contract by a day. So now I'm stuck. I almost want to call and cancel because I'm just plain mad that despite my best efforts I fell for their song and dance about discounts and good deals. But then I remember that if it's real, it could actually save us $30/month or so, which is pretty decent for Austerity April. Given that Frugal February and Moneyless March both failed it'd be nice to have a win for one month!

I wonder if other people feel as much annoyance at falling for gimmicks as I do. Decisions, decisions.

Recharging

2011-04-10T21:25:00.001-04:00

We spent this weekend mostly hanging out at and near home. We did not even leave the state once. Our activities included grocery shopping, finishing our taxes, movie watching, baking homemade cinnamon rolls, Wii Sports Resort, cleaning, laundry, and scrapbooking. And rumor has it that Becky is going to play her trumpet in a little while! Rest assured, I did my part on cinnamon roll making….when an excess of frosting called for emergency action I was ready, willing, and able.

Although I enjoyed the weekend, I call this a Becky-style weekend. You see, we have somewhat of a fundamental difference of opinion regarding optimal weekends. After long draining weeks, which face it, we’ve had too many of recently, I believe that a weekend filled with some sort of exciting outing or adventure is the best way to recuperate and prepare for what comes next. Becky prefers bumming around the house, spending time together doing routine errands, baking, and taking time for other at-home hobbies.

I think this debate is a little bit like the introvert vs. extrovert question, except that we are both decidedly introverts. Introverts prefer to recharge their batteries by spending time alone or with small groups of closely known people; extroverts prefer to recharge their batteries at big parties. I learned in a psychology class in college that something like 75% of the world is extroverts. I think it might be lower among people who like to socialize on the internet though!

Our difference of opinion has caused many an argument, but I suppose this kind of disagreement is part of marriage. Do you and your spouse/significant other agree on how to recharge after a draining week? What is your point of view on lazing about vs. adventures?

Exhaustion: Better with Cookies!

2011-04-07T23:50:00.000-04:00

Yet again, it's been one of THOSE weeks. You know, the kind that leave you completely, totally exhausted. And then you're too exhausted to even make yourself go to bed, so the next day you're even more exhausted and you're completely ineffective at work and you come home and all you can do is stare at the computer but then you still don't go to bed and it's a big swirling vortext of tired.

Or maybe that only happens to me? Maybe the rest of you are smart enough to just put down the computer and go to bed already? I hope so because I think it's probably a much happier way to live your life. I keep meaning to try it.

Fortunately, the weekend is coming soon. Oh, sweet weekend. I am trying to ignore the pile of dishes that we didn't wash tonight after dinner and therefore will still be around tomorrow when that weekend begins.

But because I love you, dear readers, instead of pictures of my exhausted life, I will leave you with lovely pictures of a recent baking escapade. I made snickerdoodles a couple weeks ago. Who'd have thought that a cookie scoop and the perfectly even cookies it produces could bring me such joy?

Before

After

Just to clarify, I am not so neurotic that I lined up the cookie balls intentionally like that. I didn't even realize they were all in a nice line until I looked at the pictures tonight.

Island Hopping

2011-04-04T21:45:00.007-04:00

This weekend we went island hopping! We visited the exotic locales of Manhattan and Staten Island. Manhattan fed us, with a brunch at Good Enough to Eat and world famous cookies-as-big-as-your-head at Levain's Bakery. Staten Island entertained us.

Although Staten Island and its ferry have been on our to-do list since we moved here several years ago, we have never gotten around to it. The closest we've come was several years ago when our friend Kara and I made a date to ride the ferry, but at the last minute completely switched plans and ended up tubing on the Delaware River. But somehow, on Saturday, the time seemed right. So we made another date with our friend Kara and headed for South Ferry. The ferry terminal had scrolling ads that at first we thought were advertising liquor prices. We still aren't entirely sure what exactly they were advertising, but after our adventures we remain fairly certain that despite Manhattan's best efforts Staten Island is in fact not a separate country (and therefore there is no duty free shopping at the ferry terminal). I am happy to report that the ferry did not tip over from tourists crowded on one side to view the Statue of Liberty. And also happy to report that we did get a view of the statue, because it's always fun to see even if you've done it before. It is really very random that France decided to send us a statue of a giant green lady, and somehow she ended up on a tiny island of her own just off of Manhattan.

Once on Staten Island we boarded a city bus for an incredibly long bus ride. Whoever designed the bus route was apparently in a contest to see if s/he could design a route that drove on every single street on the entire island. At the end though, we were rewarded with a glorious view. We tried several times to take a decent hold-out picture of ourselves, but apparently I was in an unphotogenic mood. Plus I neglected to bring sunglasses like those smarties. This is the best we managed to produce. We wandered the boardwalk and admired the view. We also decided that we were not too sad that it was not swimming weather: It may be gorgeous, but it's still Staten Island after all. (Hey, I live in New Jersey...there has to be somebody left to make fun of.)

The internet informed us that a common Staten Island beach conversation involves the phrase "meet me at the Dolphin Statue." On our approach to the statue we split up and pretended to meet at the statue. Yes, this is what we do for fun on the weekends. And we wonder why we don't have more friends. :) Kara and Becky practiced meeting while I took their picture.After that we headed back towards the ferry terminal. We attempted to get a drink at a random Russian/Greek restaurant, but they didn't seem to want us. So eventually we ended up at a decent little pub and enjoyed a drink, then tried to get on the return ferry. Due to an issue with the ferry we had a little extra time to kill and wound up wandering in to a high school baseball game at the minor league stadium. The stadium is right on the water and has a really nice view behind the field; we're considering attempting a Staten Island Yankees game this summer.

We enjoyed another drink on the return ferry, because apparently drinking beer on the ferry is "a thing" and that's just the sort of thing we do. We waved to Lady Liberty and returned safely to the island from whence we came. And that concludes another chapter of Weekend Adventures!

Crafting for a Cause

2011-03-31T22:35:00.002-04:00

I first started doing origami (the Japanese art of paper folding) when I was in fourth grade. I took a summer school class and quickly became obsessed. I'm sure that somewhere in my parents' house there's still a box of all the "treasures" I folded in late elementary school. When I was in sixth grade, my grandmother (who suffered from horrible allergies) was very ill, and I remember painstakingly folding a bouquet of yellow and orange paper lilies for her.

In high school, I earned my Girl Scout Gold Award. For those who don't know, this is a big. frickin. deal. It's the highest award in Girl Scouting, similar in many ways to the Boy Scout Eagle Award. It's pretty customary to hold a ceremony and reception when the award is presented, and for mine I decided I wanted to fold gold paper cranes as favors for each person who attended. In the week or two before the ceremony, I folded somewhere between 100-150 gold foil cranes.

Fast forward to 2011. I learned a couple weeks ago about an organization called Students Rebuild. They're collecting paper cranes as a fundraiser for rebuilding efforts in Japan.For every crane they receive, a foundation will donate $2 toward reconstruction. As of today they've received 21,000 cranes, but their goal is 100,000. If you're sending over 50 cranes, they'll even send you a pre-paid shipping label so that you just have to drop the box off with UPS! By sheer coincidence, my work has about 600 cranes (we were trying for 1,000 but quit early) sitting around that we've been trying to figure out what to do with, so tomorrow I'll be dropping off a rather large box at the UPS Store.

I wanted to get us to a round number (something about sending 604 cranes seemed a bit odd to me), so I figured I'd fold a few more at home tonight. And I'm still going to do that, but I also remembered that somewhere in my origami stuff, I still had a few leftover cranes from that Gold Award ceremony. Yes, I am a pack rat. And yes, that means that these cranes, stored safely in a box of origami paper, have moved from my hometown, to college, back to my hometown, to Massachusetts, and now to New Jersey. Now 15 of them (I saved two for myself out of pure nostalgia) will be packed in a box and sent to join thousands of others. I folded them 12 years ago and have kept them ever since, but now they're actually worth something to someone else.

Yeah, I laid out my cranes and took a picture for the blog. What, is that weird?

If you've got a few minutes to spare, find yourself a square piece of paper, fold a crane, and send it in.Or get a group of people together and make a party of it! It's not hard, I promise. Here's a video tutorial. If that doesn't work for you, we can set up an individual lesson on Skype or something. I've taught 8-year-olds to fold them. You can do it. Promise.

100 Posts! And a New Name!

2011-03-29T21:30:00.001-04:00

Well, despite our silence for all of last week, we have reached a blogging milestone: this is officially our 100th post! So thank you, dear readers, for sticking around even when we fall off the face of the earth for a bit. We're hoping that last week's insanity in our lives will be an anomaly, and we'll be around more to give you a little somethin' to read.

In celebration of actually sticking with this blog thing, we have a super-duper exciting announcement: we're changing our name. No, not our real names--we already did that. We're changing the blog's name. We finally admitted to ourselves that "Adventures of Two Midwestern East Coast Liberals" was about the most ridiculously long-winded blog title on earth. It seemed cute to me when I first came up with it as "Adventures of a Midwestern East Coast Liberal", but somehow the pluralization of it when Carrie came on board just made it feel even longer. It's time for a change. Fear not, we will still regale you with tales of our adventures. There are still two of us. We are still from the Midwest and live on the East Coast. And despite the best efforts of one family member, we are still liberals.

So what's the new name, you ask? (Okay, maybe you don't ask cuz it's staring at you from the top of the page, but humor me here.) Our blog is now called "And the Next Day".

The new title is actually a reference to our wedding vows. We wrote our own vows for our ceremony; I read them first and then Carrie read them. At the end she said, "And when I wake up tomorrow, I will promise this all again." I replied, "So will I. And the next day. And the next, each day choosing us again." It was really important to us that these aren't promises we're making to each other once. They are promises that we make to each other constantly, choosing one another and our relationship every day.

Now that the wedding is over (we're still contemplating a recap series though--despite it being several months ago. Any interest, dear readers?), I feel like it's a particularly appropriate title. The wedding is over, we're together for ever and ever and the next day after that. And also, let's be honest, some of our posts are a little "We did blah blah blah and the next day we did blah blah blah." So, all around appropriate!

What do you think? And more importantly, what do you think of this winter that just. won't. end? I got all excited when it got warm earlier, but that seems to have come and gone. Please come back, spring?! Please?!

We're back and a birthday

2011-03-28T19:07:00.011-04:00

It's been way too long since either of us posted, I know. I don't even have a good excuse. Last week was one of those weeks where nothing you resolve to do gets done, where the exhaustion from one work day just drags into the next work day, and you just don't feel like blogging.

Last weekend though we did have a lovely time celebrating the 2nd birthday of our favoritest (okay, I admit it, only... but still totally awesome) nephews, Matthew and Thomas. I remember so clearly the weekend two years ago, when on Friday afternoon my brother-in-law called me and let me know that my sister was being prepared for a c-section. After getting through the initial shock, Becky and I threw ourselves together as quickly as we could and frantically drove to Rhode Island, all the while fretting about making it before visiting hours ended. We didn't make it, and had to beg our way into the hospital. Mean security guard made us promise "only 3 minutes!" By which we meant "we will spend the vast majority of the next 72 hours as visitors in this hospital." This is helpful Auntie Carrie a few weeks later after both little boos were home from the hospital (April 18th, 2009): Here's Auntie Becky with both of them from May 2nd, 2009: And this is Auntie Carrie and the little boos on March 20th, 2011 (please note their obsession with Elmo, despite the fact that they've never seen Sesame Street... Elmo is apparently like crack for babies... and for some reason the Elmo birthday balloon seems to be wishing happy birthday to drunk Elmo... odd.): The birthday party was tons of fun, with a bouncy castle: And two awesome custom cakes, not harmed in the least by Mr. Matthew sticky his bare little toes into the green frosting:

We also made our usual stop at the YMCA for swimming, went to toddler gymnastics class, and did all the usual hanging out with the family.

We've spent countless hours with Matthew and Thomas in their first two years of life, from weekends in NY/NJ to weekends in MA to trips to Vermont and Minnesota and Colorado and the Jersey Shore. I've babysat and otherwise worked with a lot of kids over the years, but these two little munchkins are our family. I come from a very small extended family, so maybe it means more to me because of that. But they're going to know us for the rest of our lives, they're going to be our children's cousins, and we love them so very much. Happy Birthday Matthew and Thomas! (And since we're a week late, fingers crossed for their mommy on the big test she had to take today!)

It's Different

2011-03-17T23:48:00.002-04:00

After we booked our honeymoon tickets the other day, I tweeted something about needing to get a new passport. Someone tweeted back about the fact that she'd been married several years and hadn't bothered to get a new passport.

And my first thought was simply, "It's different."

She's married to a man, so even though they don't have the same last names in their passports (she did choose to take his name, but the same rules apply to the many women in hetero marriages who don't change their names when they get married), their marriage is likely to be recognized wherever they go. If they approach the immigration officer at the airport together and say they're married, that person is unlikely to declare that they're not a family and must go through immigration separately. And if some tragedy were to befall them, either in the U.S. or in another country, and one of them were to need medical attention, the hospital staff would likely take their word for it when they say they're married.

It's different.

In contrast, it's only in the past few months that the U.S. government declared that patients have the right to decide who has visitation rights, even if that person is a same-sex partner. That directive grew out of a Florida case in which a woman and her children were denied visitation rights to their wife/mother as she was dying, despite the partner having a health care power of attorney. And outside the U.S. the situation can be even scarier. We love traveling, and we're not about to abandon our desire to see the world just because we're a same-sex couple.

But it's different.

So not only will we both update our passports to contain our new shared last name, but we will travel with a certified copy of our marriage certificate. And we will travel with originals of our healthcare proxy and power of attorney documents. And I'm already working on scanning electronic copies of these documents, along with our wills, so that we could access them online anytime if needed. Yes, we have wills. We've been married 4 months, we have no substantial assets, and we don't have children yet, but we have wills. Our families are very supportive and would no doubt follow our wishes to the best of their abilities, but depending on where we are, our marriage has different levels of recognition. (The drive home from MA to NJ is always fun: now we're married, now we're not, now we're married, now we're sorta-married, now we're maybe civil-unioned?) I'm generally a pretty risk-averse person anyway, but on these matters, I'm taking as few risks as possible. So yes, we'll be spending that $220 to update our two passports as one more marker of the legitimacy of our relationship.

I don't mean to sound bitter; I don't begrudge the privileges of anyone who's in a hetero marriage. I just wish those privileges could be shared by all of us.

I wish it wasn't different.

So all of these thoughts were running through my head yesterday, when I got a bit of a reality check. I was about to leave work when my director asked if I knew of resources for someone claiming asylum. I didn't have much, but after hearing the story behind the question, I spent a good hour Googling my heart out for resources. Without giving out too much identifying information, she was asking on behalf of someone who had recently come out to his/her parents and been met with a very hostile reaction. This individual comes from a country where homosexuality is illegal and potentially punishable by death, and after successfully re-entering the U.S. following this traumatic coming out experience, this person is now trying to figure out how to apply for asylum in the U.S.

That's different. In a way that makes my passport concerns seem rather insignificant.

I did find several resources to pass on to that individual, but I'd also like to share one with all of you. Immigration Equality is an organization that is working to change immigration laws as they impact LGBT people and also help LGBT people who are struggling with the immigration system now. They do advocacy, they provide information, and they provide legal assistance for people who couldn't otherwise afford it. So I'd urge you to take a few minutes to at least read about their work, read the stories of people they've worked with, and get involved if you feel so inspired.

Help make it different.

Delicious Adventures

2011-03-16T23:01:00.005-04:00

Last weekend was another relatively low-key weekend at home and/or enjoying the lovely city we happen to live quite near.

On Friday evening the weather was lovely, and thus (the quickly approaching expiration date had nothing to do with it...nope...nothing at all) Becky decided to talk a meandering walk to the Lower East Side to spend a Livingsocial coupon we had purchased nearly a year ago. For the unfamiliar, Livingsocial is a lot like Groupon, where they have one really good deal a day. You pay the coupon site, and I assume they pay the company that offered the product. And then eventually (if you remember, and have the energy to, say, walk to the Lower East Side) you take the coupon to the store and redeem it for your merchandise. So our coupon was for a dozen mini cannolis from Stuffed Artisan Cannolis. Yum. Birthday cake was the most delicious to me, but Becky said it was too sweet. Cinnabun tasted like a giant stick of Big Red gum. Most predictable of all, Becky loved peanut butter cup.

Sunday we decided to play NYC tourists. We met up with our friend Stephanie and her adorable 2-year-old daughter for lunch at Ollie's Noodle Shop. Watching a little person slurp udon noodles is pretty freaking adorable. After Chinese food we strolled down 9th Avenue and ended up at Chelsea Market. It's an awesome urbany warehouse space that used to be a big industrial bakery and then some industrial railroad thing and has now been reborn as an upscale collection of bakeries, restaurants, and a few stores. A few delicious bakeries, including Sarabeth's and Amy's Bread, have both storefronts and giant glass-enclosed kitchens where pastry chefs are held captive like zoo animals.

After enjoying ice cream and the children's section of a book store (at which our 2-year-old friend "read" stories to us...aww...) we left our friends at a subway stop and continued the wander down 9th Ave. We picked up ground coffee from an awesome old-school coffee shop that is crazy expensive but we don't care because we buy so little coffee and it's just so damn cool, bought camera lens cleaner from Orthodox Jews, and ended up over at the High Line. Verdict for old elevated rail platform turned urban garden: pretty cool. I think we'll have to return when it's not so frigid out, as it was by this time of the evening.

Bad picture of me, and bad picture of us, but I wouldn't want you to forget our smiling faces. Or worse yet, disbelieve our adventures!

All in all it did not turn out to be as epic as we had hoped, but much fun was had. I would definitely still classify it as an adventure!

Greece-ward ho!

2011-03-15T23:30:00.000-04:00

In less political news, the honeymoon is inching towards being a reality rather than a dream! Both of us have successfully acquired our work's approval for summer vacation. And both of us have once again been laughed at by our offices for putting in the earliest vacation requests.

We've spent the last several weeks stalking every travel website we'd ever heard of in search of a combination of flights that didn't make our eyeballs pop out of our heads. We've pretty much been operating under the assumption that if we just searched hard enough (and crossed our fingers, and chanted, and threw in a rain dance for good measure), then cheaper flights would appear by magic.

Shocking news: that hasn't happened so far.

Normally under these circumstances, I'd be inclined to wait a bit longer in the hopes of summer sales appearing. But unsurprisingly, we also did a whole bunch of research on that and read from many "experts" that summer sales aren't all that likely this year, between airline consolidation, rising oil prices, yada yada yada. And the flights currently available are at perfect times and are in/out of the most convenient airport to our home. So tonight we finally bit the bullet and bought our plane tickets! We are officially going to Greece and London!

Inequality

2011-03-11T21:18:00.003-05:00

Well, I'm not the Wisconsin girl, so I will leave any lengthy commentary on that to her. But suffice it to say that this was a sad week in cheesehead land. "Where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost." -Ronald Reagan

This is what class war looks like. It's all about priorities, but I especially don't see why children/education/the future should suffer to provide tax breaks to billionaires. Eat the Future, in the words of Paul Krugman. Helping children, even poor children (maybe even especially poor children), improves our country in the long run.

You all know by now that I love nifty county-by-county maps. Today Becky found a new one for me. I don't love this one as much as some of the others and I'm honestly not entirely clear on what message the creators of it were trying to send, but it does show some interesting national trends. I grew up in what The Atlantic defines as Industrial Metropolises; Becky grew up in an Emptying Nest. I can't see the map well enough to figure out if our current county is an Industrial Metropolis or a Monied Burb, though I'm quite certain that our town would be defined as a Monied Burb. We have strong interest in moving to a Campus and Careers (or y'know, more Monied Burbs) county. I'm particularly intrigued by their definition of large areas of the upper Midwest as Emptying Nests. We've always heard about the Midwestern brain drain, although Brookings tells me that according to 2000 census data, in fact the Midwest has large numbers of young educated workers while the Northeast has large numbers of aging educated workers in addition to young educated workers.

And that's probably enough demographic nerdiness for you for one Friday evening. Happy Weekend!

100 Years of Solidarity

2011-03-08T22:18:00.001-05:00

Happy International Women's Day! This year marks the 100th anniversary of the holiday. I spent my day at work handing out roses, chocolates, and information about events happening in the NYC area in honor of the day. Despite washing my hands half a dozen times since I got home, my hands still smell like roses. But today gave me a chance to talk to lots of women about their experiences. I talked to young American women, who had either never heard of the holiday or were super-excited that our handout included information about their upcoming V-Day event. And I talked to young women from other countries, who were excited to see an American celebration of a holiday they know from home. And I talked to older American women, many of whom self-identified as second-wave feminists, who told me about their experiences fighting for women's rights. It was a good day, and an educational day, but also a long, exhausting day, so I'm left with few eloquent words for you about the significance of this holiday. But I'd invite you to stop by One Cat Per Person, one of my favorite blogs, and read some of the really thoughtful posts submitted for "In Her Own Words: In Celebration of International Women's Day 2011".

And then go find an important woman in your life, and tell her that you love and appreciate her.

And while I really don't want to entirely politicize the day, I was reminded by several women today of the hard-fought rights that Congress is threatening right now. If you support women's access to basic healthcare, as well as a woman's right to make decisions about her own body, please take 30 seconds to tell your Senators.

The Value of Talk

2011-03-07T22:32:00.007-05:00

I have a New York Times widget on my smartphone. It allows me to amuse myself in the excessive amount of time I spend on public transportation, by reading the most e-mailed articles. At the top of today's list this morning was Talk Doesn't Pay, So Psychiatry Turns Instead to Drug Therapy. I have undergraduate and graduate degrees in psychology, and I work in social services, so this article should clearly appeal to me. Except all it did was annoy me.

The article implies that the troubled patients come in seeking help and are unjustly sent away with nothing. "Hold it. I'm not your therapist. I could adjust your medications, but I don't think that's appropriate." What's wrong with that? Talk to your therapist, that's what he or she is there for. Oh, you don't have a therapist? "So Dr. Levin sent the man away with a referral to a less costly therapist and a personal crisis unexplored and unresolved." Okay, so call the referral. Is this the first time you've ever asked someone to help you with something and been told that someone else was better suited to help you and therefore you should get your help from them?

"Competition from psychologists and social workers — who unlike psychiatrists do not attend medical school, so they can often afford to charge less — is the reason that talk therapy is priced at a lower rate." There's so much wrong with this sentence I don't even know where to start. Maybe I'm projecting the condescension on the phrase "do not attend medical school," but I doubt it. Medical school is hard, doctors learn mountains of valuable information in medical school. But nothing about medical school is training anyone to be a competent therapist. You know what is? Psychology degrees. Social work school. Supervision in jobs and internships doing therapy. And the cost of medical school has nothing to do with reimbursement rates. The only thing it has anything to do with is the value that insurance companies and society put on medication management. The price of those degrees depends on whether your institution is public or private and whether you have assistantship funding (in the case of psychologists, for PhD vs. PsyD, both of which are psychologists).

Two years of an MSW at a private school will cost you about $68,000 (based on NYU, but it's all pretty similar), while four years of medical school at a private school will cost you about $185,000 (based both on NYU, and what about.com tells me is the AMA's statement of the average). According to payscale.com a fairly generous average pay for social workers is $45,000, while this NYTimes article claims $190,000 for psychiatrists. Soo... a little math. The education cost difference is about $117,000, social workers' favor. The pay difference is about $145,000, psychiatrists' favor. Even throwing in a generous bit for lost wages in two extra years of school and student loan interest, I give it about two years to pay off. I guess the other 38 years of your career are just a bonus. I don't have time to look up the costs and payscales for PsyDs and PhDs, but trust me that the math won't look that different. And once you throw in the public vs. private divide this whole paragraph will be pointless anyways.

"Dr. Levin has found the transition [from talk therapy psychiatry to medication management psychiatry] difficult." Okay, I understand. Your career changed mid-life. You're doing something different than what you anticipated spending your career doing. That can be disappointing. It must be very depressing to sit in your cushy office with "matching leather chairs, and African masks and a moose head on the wall." Also, "the median annual compensation for psychiatrists was about $191,000" and I can pretty much bet that an experienced psychiatrist in New York City makes a hell of a lot more than that. So forgive me for being a bit doubtful when the psychiatrists moan that taking a pay cut to do talk therapy "was no longer economically viable." You're making a choice. That's a fine choice, and I don't have a problem with it. But just own it, you want the higher paycheck, you take the medication management career.

"Recent studies suggest that talk therapy may be as good as or better than drugs in the treatment of depression, but fewer than half of depressed patients now get such therapy compared with the vast majority 20 years ago." This is not because psychiatrists do not do talk therapy. This is because marginally effective psychiatric medication with not completely debilitating side effects now exists and because people want a quick fix and because insurance companies limit access to social workers and psychologists. Twenty years ago lengthy Freudian psychoanalysis was all we had to offer depressed patients, so that's what they got. Yes, Prozac, widely accepted as the first SSRI (though it was not quite, technically), was approved by the FDA in December 1987. Nostalgia for that era in mental health is like nostalgia for HIV/AIDS treatment of the early 90's.

I mean, it's an interesting story of this man's life, but it says so little about the actual state of mental health treatment and what it does say it says poorly. Really, New York Times? I expect better.

On eggs and crusts

2011-03-06T19:02:00.008-05:00

As I type I am waiting on our lovely Kitchen Aid mixer to do its work on perhaps, in my opinion, the most exciting part of the weekend. I am making a French Silk Pie. It contains four eggs, each of which must individually beat into the filling for a full five minutes. Eggs are pretty much the most fun food to cook with, because they are in so many delicious foods, and they behave so differently than you might expect. I really love beating egg whites. In fact, I like it almost as much as I like petting whipped cream. I'm realizing I have some cooking quirks. But anyways, you can imagine that adding chocolate, sugar, and butter to the egg mix could only improve it, right?

This was my first attempt at making pie crust, and I have to admit it did not go quite as well as I hoped. But it will suffice.
As my family loves to remind me, Becky is usually the baker in our relationship. I am the primary beneficiary in this arrangement and do not wish to take this role away from her. However, I have also realized that I don't want to become completely incompetent at baked goods (nor do I want our future children to ever perceive me that way!). My mom baked and cooked pretty much everything from scratch, and although she bemoans the fact that neither my sister nor I have followed in her kitchen footsteps, some of her baked good values certainly did rub off. I don't want future pie crusts to come pre-made from the baking aisle at Pathmark, or to only spring from Grandma's kitchen or Uncle Sean's kitchen, or even to be Becky's speciality alone.

And so I resolved to learn how to make a pie crust. I think today's will be delicious despite its lumps and that slight crack down the middle. But I also foresee the necessity for many pies in our future so that I can perfect this art. Good thing the first one is so drool-worthy that Becky just asked if I would kill her if she took a spoon to it while it cools! I answered yes, so you'll have to check back to see whether Becky survives the two hour cooling wait. UPDATE: She lived! And it's delicious!
Also, in case anyone is wondering, I obsessed about the Greek hotel to the point that Becky gave me the go ahead to book it. Santorini here we come! Now to find some plane tickets and get that vacation request in...

To book or not to book

2011-03-05T14:35:00.003-05:00

So, I'm sitting here trying to work on planning the honeymoon. Although we both grew up smack in the middle of the American heartland (except without sounding like a Republican campaign ad) and we were introduced by a fellow Midwestern friend, we met and got to know each other in London. And then after we graduated from college we returned to London for six months together and really cemented our relationship. So London has a lot of importance to us. But we also love travelling, so it wouldn't really feel like a honeymoon if we didn't go somewhere new and exciting. And we love the beach, so that also seems like a natural honeymoon choice. And so, our intention for the honeymoon is to primarily go to Greece, but to also spend a few days in London on one side or the other.

We are a bit spoiled living [basically] in New York City, home to three international airports, and tend to expect that relatively affordable flights will be available to nearly anywhere. Unfortunately, we are finding that flights to and from Athens are actually somewhat horrifyingly expensive. As of a week or two ago we had agreed to wait a few weeks and see if prices come down at all as airlines open up inventory, seeing as how not everyone books their travel four months ahead. For fairly obvious reasons we prefer to book plane tickets before we start booking hotels or excursions or anything of that sort.

Today however, because I am neurotic, I happened to check the availability of a hotel in Greece that I have been superly excited about staying in since I read about it. Previously the hotel was available for all of our proposed honeymoon except three nights, which were easily avoidable in our potential itinerary. It is now only available for three nights within our proposed honeymoon. I am freaking out and want to book it! Although Becky is not here with me, I have her voice of reason in my head telling me that there must be other affordable and perfectly wonderful hotels available for those dates on that island. But the panicked voice telling me that I want this one and it's getting away from me is yelling much louder! Hopefully Becky will be home soon to add volume to the voice of reason...or give me permission to book it...

What would you do??

Thing 1 & Thing 2

2011-03-02T20:29:00.006-05:00

We spent last weekend in Massachusetts visiting my sister and brother-in-law and adorable nephews. The little cuties have not been sleeping well and their parents have been busy and thus the stress level appears to be high. Jen was on-call, which means that she had to go in to work on both Saturday and Sunday, and Sean had some projects around the house that needed to be done. Enter babysitting aunties!

The boys are superly crazy about books right now, which is in sharp contrast to my clients who use books as a form of punishment. Matthew and Thomas will ask you to read book after book after book and then start it all over again. It's so cute! In addition to playing at home we took the nephews on tons of adventures. These included Target, Famous Footwear, and Stop and Shop. Oooh, fun, right? But toddlers (and their handlers) both seem to do well with changes of scenery. Stores include all kinds of opportunities to ride in carts, "chuch?" (touch) everything, and lots of fun new things to climb on. Here they are with Auntie Becky:
And riding in the twin cart with Auntie Carrie:

And Matty practicing for his Famous Footwear audition:
As usual Sean cooked tons of delicious food for us (deep dish pesto pizza? yes please!) and we finished off the weekend with family swim at the YMCA.

We both love spending time up there and watching the little munchkins grow, but doing the drive so many times in the past two years is getting tiring. Speaking of which, I cannot believe that it is so close to being two years! Jen's big birthday party celebration plans are in full swing for next month. I'm sure we'll be regaling you with reminiscing when the time comes, so you can look forward to that!

Sniffle

2011-03-01T21:56:00.000-05:00

I think there should be some natural law that dictates that no more than one person in a household can be ill at any given time. I know, I know, you're going to tell me that that is, in fact, the exact opposite of how your average virus works. And then you will probably try to tell me that it only gets worse when you have kids, etc.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I really shouldn't even be whining because admittedly, neither of us is THAT sick. Carrie's been feeling pretty crappy the last couple days, and this afternoon at work I started to develop that lovely "oh no, here comes a doozy of a cold" feeling, coupled with a little good old-fashioned nausea and feverish feeling. But admittedly, that last bit could just be because the thermostat was acting up at work--happens pretty regularly.

So really, in the grand scheme of things, we're not doing so badly--no one's dying of the flu or norovirus or any of those fun bugs. (Please join me in taking a moment to knock on some wood?) But both of us feeling like crap means that no one has the energy to do things like make dinner, wash the dishes, etc. And the fact that I didn't get home from work until 7:45 tonight doesn't really help matters. But really, isn't it only fair that there be someone else to take care of us?

Fortunately, at least for dinner, the local Chinese restaurant was on standby to help out. Tonight, for the first time, I was that girl who orders Chinese on the bus on the way home. And it was pretty magical. The delivery guy showed up at our door with dinner about 5 minutes after I got home. Carrie was feeling pretty crummy, and I have lovely ideals of taking care of my wife by making homemade chicken soup and all of that. But tonight, when I was exhausted and feeling sick too, love looked a little less like grandma's secret chicken soup recipe and a little more like pork fried rice.

Dinosaur Bar-B-Que

2011-02-23T22:51:00.005-05:00

On the far western side of Manhattan, far north of where many white New Yorkers ever venture, there is a little enclave of deliciousness. Its name is Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. You may remember it for its extremely long wait times. I'm happy to report that if you arrive before your movie, rather than after it, the wait is much more bearable. Yes, last Friday night we decided to make a second attempt. Because we like to declare dinners out for a reason we declared that it was in honor of the Valentine's we didn't really celebrate and the anniversary that is not our anniversary anymore. It would probably be just as accurate to say that we really wanted BBQ ribs and cornbread. Dinosaur has also been on our infamous NYC to-do list for several years and we are perpetually [talking about] making efforts to accomplish these things.

For appetizers we ordered the sampler (spicy shrimp, chicken wings, fried green tomatoes, and deviled eggs) and a brisket slider. When the sampler arrived Becky stared at it for a good long time. Because the shrimp had legs. Can I just say...ew? It turned out that she wasn't actually as disturbed by this as I was, but she wasn't quite sure what to do with them. She muscled through and reports that they were tasty. The bodies, not the legs.
For dinner we shared the Sweetheart Deal for Two, which consisted of a full rack of ribs and four sides. We went with French fries, cole slaw, macaroni and cheese, and salted potatoes. It was all delicious, both at dinner and at home as leftovers the next day. If you're in New York and not a vegetarian I highly recommend taking the trip uptown. (And for the record, there's actually a lot of Manhattan past 125th street!) If you are a vegetarian...well, maybe you should stay downtown.

What's in a name? That which we call...

2011-02-22T21:20:00.001-05:00

This is my post in honor of blogging for Modern Families week at Goodkin.

As we were planning our wedding last year we settled on most of the big decisions pretty easily. A lot of the decisions, like where to hold the ceremony, how formal it should be, whether we would both wear white dresses, whether to invite children, just seemed obvious to both of us. We had already agreed on colors and patterns to decorate our home, and the decision to reuse those choices came easily. Overall, we found most traditional wedding planning and customs to adapt easily to a same-sex wedding. It’s surprisingly easy to read bridal magazines and wedding planning sites without even encountering mention of a groom, and when he does show up rarely do his jobs require him to be male or dressed in a tuxedo or called a groom.

One of the decisions we found the hardest to make was the one about last names. In the last name business we found little guidance from tradition. The night before the Massachusetts marriage license application (at which we needed to declare our new names, in order to benefit from the free name change granted by legal marriage) we spent hours debating back and forth, practicing writing and signing all combinations of possible names, and generally obsessing about the right choice. We had previously agreed that we would not share our debate with friends or family until after we had made a decision, because we wanted to feel confident that it was our decision. In the end we made one of the most nontraditional decisions of the whole wedding/marriage/anticipated life. We decided to merge our names. We kept part of mine and part of hers, and we ditched part of mine and part of hers. We would each have the same name, which would convey the connection to each of our extended families, and any future additions to our family would also be able to share that name. Our new name identifies us quickly and easily as a real legitimate family in a way that no other marker could.

When I told my mom she initially reacted with surprise. I can’t even remember now if she had expected us to keep our names or to hyphenate, but she did not expect the merge. My mom at times in the past has been a recreational genealogist, and thus one of her initial arguments against our decision was that creating a new name would make us difficult to trace for future genealogists.

Creating our family our way will probably cause many headaches for future genealogists. We hope that Partner 1 and Partner 2 on the marriage certificate will eventually pave the way for Parent 1 and Parent 2 on countless forms (unless conservatives have their way, in which case we'll have to flip a coin on who gets to be the "father"). We're stretching our own imaginations, and asking those future genealogists to come along for the ride. I commented on this to my mother, and eventually we agreed that it is a new world out here on the family frontier.

I have a feeling that our whole lives together are going to be a mix of repeating familiar traditions that are surprisingly non-gender-specific and occasionally needing to sit down and come up with creative solutions that may challenge us and the other people in our social worlds. In later conversations with my mother I have gotten the impression that she came around to our new name. Her initial reaction was more surprise, needing a moment to ponder and understand, than disapproval. So I can only hope that future genealogists can manage as well as my mother, with that decision and all the others we will have to make in the years to come.

Trying to be Functional

2011-02-21T23:02:00.000-05:00

Carrie and I have many skills, but unfortunately, keeping things neat and organized is not high on the list of either of our abilities. I mean, we're not completely inept at it, but we do struggle to keep things organized. We also both have packrat inclinations, which means that not only is our stuff not organized, but we just have altogether too much stuff.

We also got married recently. You may have heard. And we were very, very fortunate and blessed to have many friends and family members who felt inspired to buy us wedding gifts. And we are extraordinarily grateful to our loved ones for their generosity. But this did leave us a bit of a conundrum: where to put everything.

The last few weekends have been an ongoing effort at reorganizing our kitchen to better use the limited space we have and also get some of our presents out so that we will use them regularly. When we first began this venture, I thought we would finish in one weekend. I have a history of taking on overly-ambitious projects and vastly underestimating the amount of time or energy required. And by "history" I mean "this happens every time I try to do anything". Anyway, we didn't finish in one weekend, but we did persevere, and our kitchen is a much happier place because of it. Here are some before and after photos for your amusement.

Disclaimer: We had decided that we were going to tackle this project a few weeks before we actually got started, which means we stopped trying to put things away nicely altogether. I swear, we weren't normally living quite this messily--it's just that once you've decided to reorganize the cabinet, why WOULDN'T you store the colander in a way that predicts a certain avalanche should anyone ever be foolhardy enough to open the cupboard door all the way?

Note to our moms: maybe you just shouldn't look at the "before" pictures. Then you can live in happy disillusionment that our apartment is always as clean as it is when you come to visit.

That unhappy cupboard above, with a little of help, was transformed into this:

Its neighbor, which looked like this:

is now full of pretty new pans and looks like this:

And our pantry cupboard, shown here:

is now a much more organized place.

And that, right there, is all the cupboard space we have. If you live in Manhattan or otherwise have a tiny kitchen, you are probably in awe of this much space. But if you have a reasonable sized kitchen and spend much time in it, you will understand our plight. This is why our pantry is full of dishes instead of food. We've therefore had to get a bit creative with shelving for storage, and all of it was thoroughly overhauled too.

We cleared off the small appliances on these shelves in order to make room for the food items that previously lived in the pantry:

So now (with the addition of another super-fun gift: pop top containers) those shelves look like this:

But then the small appliances needed a place to go, so these shelves

were rearranged to look like this:

Um, everyone has a wine rack full of cat toys in the "after" pictures of their kitchen reorganization, right? Right. Also, I think it might be time for the new Advent calendar to get put away.

Also, we had several new cookbooks that didn't fit in the existing space we had for them, so we put a new bookshelf in the kitchen/living room area, which now houses cookbooks and a few other randoms:

It ended up being a lot of work, but I'm so happy to have an organized kitchen. And hopefully soon I'll remember where everything is and stop looking in the pantry for snack food! As you may have noted in the pictures, there is definitely less "stuff" in the after pictures. In the process of reorganizing, we finally took the time to review everything we had out, decide what we wanted to keep but didn't need immediately accessible, and figure out what we didn't need and could donate. Next project: actually donating stuff so that we don't just have donation boxes taking up space in our apartment. The project also did end up costing about $20, all of which was at The Container Store, and all of which was definitely worth it. We got organizers for the cookie sheets/cutting boards, pan lids, and sandwich bags/foil/etc. and we also got a shelf so our dishes weren't all stacked on top of one another. I was quite proud of myself for practicing restraint and not buying the entire store, since they had about 11,000 other things that looked like good ideas for getting us organized.

Next step: keeping it organized in the long term. Anyone have any tips?

Eating Sum Dim Sum

2011-02-20T18:41:00.004-05:00

I am happy to report that Hop Shing Restaurant, or as it is affectionately known on Yelp, 9 Chatham Square, is in fact not closed. I know this because we enjoyed dim sum* there this Saturday. The restaurant came highly recommended from Becky's coworker, who billed it as the best pork buns in Chinatown. With that kind of praise it is no wonder that we went quickly; I have been in love with the pork bun since the day I found out what dim sum was.
After triple checking that it was not Chinese New Year (we had a bad experience with a several hour wait at dim sum on Chinese New Year a few years ago) we headed out. Along for the ride was our friend Kara, of Superbowl live blogging fame. We were seated within minutes of arrival. Kara started in with stories of her recent shenanigans while Becky watched the carts emerging from the kitchen like a hawk. Apparently she had been warned that pork buns often go quickly and may sell out in early afternoon. We loaded up on all sorts of dumplings with an assortment of delicious doughy outsides. A few even had the pillowy soft dough of the much sought after pork buns, but still no pork buns came. Fear filled us. Finally we realized that several delicious items seemed to be emerging from a bakery counter at the front of the restaurant, while Becky's eyes were peeled on the kitchen. Although we were already stuffed to the brim we inquired and learned that yes, our heart's desire was in fact available by request from the bakery. Aah, pure delicious holy grail of dim sum.
You're probably wondering why it took us so long to ask. Partially that would be because we are all polite and introverted and therefore assume that it would be best to just wait. But partially that would be because this apparently is a relatively authentic dim sum experience, and therefore few of the patrons or staff spoke much English. In fact, when we finally took the leap and asked, we had to be passed through several wait staff before someone understood our inquiry well enough to get us pork buns. Throughout the meal we were stared at by our fellow diners, most prominently an elderly Chinese woman. For lack of a better explanation we assumed this was due to our white American-ness. Until we got the camera out that is. All further staring we attributed to our strange habit of photographing our food.

The most interesting food that we purchased (and photographed) was what seemed to be a dim sum breakfast sandwich. The outside was the aforementioned pillowy soft dough, and the inside was some combination of eggs and sausage. Good try, but not really my cup of tea.
The best part though? Somehow the mountains of food that we ate came out to only $15. No, not per person, total. I have a feeling that this may be due to a miscalculation of the bill. But since the prices are a Chinese mystery we figured that we had caused enough trouble, paid our bill, and went on our merry way. Yum!

*Becky reminded me that some readers may not be famililar with dim sum. For reference, the kind people at about.com offer a wordy but informative summary.

This is What Democracy Looks Like

2011-02-18T23:54:00.002-05:00

I know most of you don't live in Wisconsin, but the political conversation happening in WI right now could have a huge impact across the country and across politics for the foreseeable future. Honestly, the best summation of this situation that I've seen anywhere is this clip from Rachel Maddow:

But for those of you who don't have the patience for a 14-minute video, here's my brief summary of what's going on. Yes, I have a bias. I lived in Wisconsin for the first 22 years of my life. I graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And I am an unabashed liberal. I also no longer live in Wisconsin, so I can't give you any first person-insight into what's happening right now, though I am certainly hearing a lot from family and friends who've been at the capitol these past few days.

In his first six weeks as governor, Scott Walker created an extra $140 million in new spending, largely going to corporations and the wealthy.

To be clear, at the time that he took office, Wisconsin was anticipated to have a budget SURPLUS at the end of this year, but he created new expenditures without balancing them.

He then turned around and declared that the state of Wisconsin is broke, and the only way to fix it is for public employees to foot the bill. His proposed emergency budget bill would include all public union employees in the state being forced to pay 5.8% of their salary toward a pension plan (note: unlike a 401(k), employees wouldn't have the option to contribute less) and to more than double the amount that they currently pay toward health insurance. For someone earning $40,000/year, this amounts to an 8.4% paycut.

After making this proposal, he declared that because the state is broke, there is no room for negotiation on this, or any other aspect of his bill. And because Republicans hold a majority in both houses of the state legislature, he seemed sure that passage of this bill would be swift (allowing only 3 days for debate) and easy. In announcing this proposal, he also declared that the National Guard would be on standby to deal with any unrest. I thought this was the Midwest, not the Middle East?

Okay, 8.4% is a big paycut. Huge. But the unions might even be willing to accept that, were it not for the rest of his proposal. You see, the rest of the proposal would demolish every right that unions have fought for over the past century. Under his plan, unions would lose ALL of their collective bargaining rights, with the exception of base salary. Issues of benefits, working conditions, overtime, etc. would no longer be on the table. And raises beyond the consumer price index would require a referendum, and we can all imagine how that's going to go. And none of this impacts the current budget. This is union-busting, pure and simple. Scott Walker is trying to make real a Republican wet dream to wipe out the major organizational base of their opponent.

Oh, but I lied up above. I said it would impact all public employees, but that's not true. You see, state troopers, police officers, and firefighters would be exempt from these changes. Why, because they're more important than teachers, nurses, prison guards, and other state employees? No, because the Milwaukee firefighters and police unions, along with the troopers' union, were the only unions in WI to support Walker in the gubernatorial election. Yes, it's just that blatant.

Needless to say, unions are irate. Over the past week, tens of thousands of people have been gathering at the capitol each day to protest and to make their voices heard during committee hearings. But the Republicans have continued to claim that there is no room for negotiation and therefore have largely refused to negotiate the terms of this bill. So yesterday, the Senate Democrats made a bold move: they left the state.

The Wisconsin State Senate has 33 seats, of which 19 are currently held by Republicans and 14 are held by Democrats. Senate rules require that a quorum of at least 20 Senators be present in order for a vote to occur. Republicans had repeatedly refused to negotiate the bill, knowing that they had the votes in the bag. So the Democrates left. And they didn't just leave the capitol, or the city--they left the state and are now beyond the reach of the State Troopers, who were otherwise being sent out to find them. The Democrats' hope is that by delaying the vote, Republicans will have to come back with a better bill; meanwhile, more people will get a chance to have their voices heard.

Was this move smart? I don't know. It's certainly not going to win any friends from moderates, and it's giving the right all sorts of ammunition. But I'm not sure the Dems had much choice--this seemed to be the only way they could have any say at all in this debate. And I will say this--it was brave. This was not a move for the squeamish. There was no room for waffling. It was all or nothing--one Senator caving to pressure means the vote can go on. This is solidarity. For realz.

And lest you think that only the Democrats are pulling unusual and perhaps less-than-honorable tactics, the State Assembly was scheduled to convene at 5:00 tonight to discuss the bill. But Assembly Republicans started the meeting early and began a voice vote before Democrats could reach the floor. This meant that the bill could no longer be changed and no new amendments could be introduced. After much, much argument, the Republicans finally relented and reversed the decision. They'll reconvene on Tuesday.

-----------

If you made it through all of that, congratulations. But here's what I couldn't find a way to say in all of that synopsis: I AM ANGRY. So, so angry about all of this. And frustrated. And distraught. This is my home. This bill affects family members, friends, and the communities in which I grew up and went to college. If this passes, it will have a huge lasting impact on the state of Wisconsin. And that is my immediate concern. This is my home. These are my people. And I really, really wish that I could be in Madison right now, raising my voice with thousands of other people who care deeply about the future of the state.

Wisconsin has a long, proud progressive heritage that goes beyond the Republican/Democrat divide. But the current government took its victory as a mandate to implement whatever changes they wanted. And they thought we wouldn't fight back. But we are proud, and we are scrappy. Those of you on the coasts may disdain Wisconsin as part of "flyover territory," but I betcha don't know that we have one of the best educational systems in the country, we were the first state to allow public workers to unionize, and we were the first state to outlaw discrimination against gays. And I don't know what the end result is going to be in all of this, but I do know this: Wisconsin progressives are a powerful force, and even if you knock us down, we will get back up over, and over, and over again. This fight is far from over. Bring it, Tea Party.

Oh, and by the way, to all of the WI legislators in favor of this bill: please go visit all your K-12 teachers and thank them for helping you get the education to get to this point in your career. And then explain to them why you want to cut their pay and steal their voice. But don't be surprised if you don't get a warm and fuzzy welcome.

Aphrodite

2011-02-15T20:54:00.002-05:00

We both feel that Valentine's Day is a little silly, considering the overcrowded restaurants and the skyrocketed flower prices and the overall cheesyness. We mutually agreed that in honor of Frugality February (ha) we would not buy flowers or gifts, and in honor of not enjoying crazy overcrowded restaurants we would not go out to dinner.

But it sounds pretty lame to not celebrate our first married Valentine's Day, now doesn't it? We both got a kick out of buying Valentine's Day cards from the "wife" section (and I was happy to discover that, like wedding congratulatory cards, there are a surprising number of V-day "wife" cards that don't require a "husband"!) but weren't sure what else to do. In brainstorming over the weekend we joked about making it a computer free zone. And then we realized that that was actually the perfect non-commercial but right to the heart of what V-day is solution. We're both sort of internet addicts, and sometimes we're certainly guilty of paying too much attention to our computers and not enough attention to each other. So for one night we agreed that we would not pick up the ubiquitous laptops and would instead spend quality time with each other.

We cooked and ate dinner together as usual, and then sat down on the couch, sans computer, and worked on reading the pile of books about Greece that Becky brought home from the library! We stared lazily at pictures of sail boats on azure water and the tall white columns of Greek ruins, studied ferry and airplane timetables, and dreamed about our honeymoon. We didn't go on a proper honeymoon immediately after the wedding because the planning and the paying and the implementing of it was just too difficult to do at the same time as the wedding. Plus, we want to swim in some of that azure water, and we got married in November! It's really nice to have something else fun to look forward to now. I must admit that at the current moment we're both feeling more inspired by relaxing at the sea than learning about Greek mythology and archaeology, but regardless this post is dedicated to Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love.

Happy Valentine's Day, a day late!

P.S. Hot chocolate and cuddling in front of Modern Family DVDs was also enjoyed by all present, including our kitties (well, no cocoa for them)!

A low key weekend in the Jerz

2011-02-13T21:26:00.002-05:00

We went into this weekend with basically nothing planned, which was a welcome change.

Last Thursday night Becky mentioned off hand that she turned down an invitation to a coworker's boyfriend's birthday party on Friday night. It wasn't starting until late and the location was not the most convenient for us. One of the unfortunate things about living in New Jersey is that it's really annoying to come home and then go back in to the city again. Which means that we almost always opt to stay in and wait if there's something else we want to do. After some joking back and forth about being old ladies and coming home to our cats we decided that Becky should rescind our refusal and accept the invitation.

And so, on Friday night, we had date night and then joined her coworker at a bar. For date night we first went to a movie on opening night. Oooh, exciting, right? What movie? Gnomeo and Juliet. Yep, for realz. We apparently have a strange thing for children's movies, judging by our date night and our DVD shelves. My verdict on Gnomeo and Juliet is that it would have made a really funny and cute Pixar short, but there was not nearly enough material for a feature length film. We then attempted to walk in to Dinosaur BBQ at 8pm on a Friday night. Bad idea. The wait was an hour and forty five minutes. Having nothing to do in that two hours and not wanting to be ridiculously late to the birthday party that inspired this madness, we left. Instead we traveled downtown and dined at another famous New York City restaurant, the 2nd Avenue Deli. It was decent, but not nearly as good as Dinosaur smelled. We're plotting a BBQ return in the near future, this time earlier and with more time to kill. We then meandered our way to the birthday party where we enjoyed not yet being old ladies! For one night anyways. The rest of the weekend was back to our usual ways.

Which means, we relaxed at home, watched some movies (Juno, which we own and I love! and Sex and the City 2, from Netflix, which was ridiculous and well, ridiculous.) , did laundry and dishes and cleaning, and did errands. We have been avoiding moving the car much since the snow is taking up several of the parking spots on our street, but we finally decided we needed to just go for it. Unfortunately we made this decision on Sunday, which meant that we had to go to a Target that we don't like as much. Yes, we've staked out all of the Targets within driving distance and have clear favorites. Our favorite Target is located in a county near us that has declared that stores in the entire county shall be forbidden to open on Sunday.

And now Becky is in the process of baking some bread pudding with brown sugar sauce for an end-of-weekend dessert. I bet you're jealous.

Chocolate Makes Life Better

2011-02-10T22:45:00.000-05:00

In reviewing our last few posts, I fear that any new readers may have gotten the wrong idea. I mean, I think it's clear from our posts that we are not particularly knowledgeable about football, but you might get the idea that we are rabid fans. Or just bizarrely obsessed. Well, okay, I may be bizarrely obsessed with the Packers. But the season is over, so you can pretty much bet that will disappear until sometime next fall when they happen to be playing someone in the northeast and therefore the game is televised here. Sports fans, we are not. So if you were about to write off our blog because we post too many nonsensical football liveblogs, please don't leave!

Believe it or not, we did other stuff this weekend that didn't involve the Super Bowl. Weekend recap girl seems to have worn herself out with liveblogging, so I'm here to report on Saturday's events. We spent part of the afternoon at our friend's house in Queens, hanging out with her and her two-year-old daughter. Saturday afternoon festivities involved gorging ourselves on chips and guacamole, and making homemade valentines out of construction paper and paper doilies. Carrie tried to pretend like hers was for Cricket, but then she caved and gave it to me after all.

For the sake of upbeatness, I will try to not dwell on the fact that getting to Queens took us almost two hours (should have taken one) and that much of that time was spent standing in miserable, cold, windy rain. I will also not dwell on the part where I cried in public (apparently complete and total exhaustion + cold and wet + just missing a train = Becky has a meltdown.)

Fortunately, the day did look up, we had lots of fun with them, and then we headed back to Manhattan to hit up the Hot Chocolate Festival at City Bakery. They have the most delicious hot chocolate I've ever tasted--it's like a melted candy bar with a little bit of cream thrown in for good measure. And they have homemade marshmallows. Saturday's flavor of the day was caramel, and we had to get some. I think maybe Saturday was a little too busy for them to keep up or something--the chocolate was tasty but not very caramelly and not all that warm. Fortunately, they redeemed themselves. I went back today (the place is only a couple blocks from my office--it's dangerous!) for Darkest Dark hot chocolate, and it was both delicious and hot. On an impulse, I also bought a package of a dozen marshmallows, which Carrie gave me a little crap for but then admitted they are delicious. Okay, they were still insanely overpriced...but delicious. And now we will have them to put in our own fancy hot chocolate at home this weekend!

Hot chocolate, marshmallows, delicious chocolatey cookie, and a pretzel croissant. Yum, yum, yum.


Carrie demonstrates the proper method for consuming hot chocolate

And now that I've told you about last weekend, it's nearly the weekend again! Hurrah!

Judgy Internet Commentators

2011-02-09T20:52:00.007-05:00

As I have started to watch people close to me get pregnant or consider pregnancy, and we have started contemplating a future pregnancy, I’ve thought a lot about babies and pregnancy. Between the internet and real life I’ve gotten to know the stories of many people who have started families with varying degrees of medical assistance. And, as someone in a same-sex relationship, I’ve thought a lot about conception, pregnancy, and parenting with the added complications of fertility treatment, donor sperm, and a judgmental society.

A conversation I had today sent me hunting for this article that I stumbled upon at some point in the past. Apparently, in the UK at least, there are women who go through the whole process of IVF and then decide to have abortions. The article alleges that many of these abortions are elective and not inspired by health concerns or viability of the pregnancies. On a basic emotional level this sounds confusing and disturbing. Why would women pour so much money and time and emotional energy into becoming pregnant only to change their minds? A doctor quoted in the article calls each abortion a “tragedy” and some anonymous group of opinionated “family campaigners” apparently accused the “women of treating babies like ‘designer goods’.” The comments, like comments on many online articles, are mostly angry and judgmental.

It makes me crazy how one-dimensional and uninformed people, particularly on the internet, are about issues like this. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. I am pro-choice, but I admit that I have hesitations about abortion, and I can’t imagine ever having one myself (even in the case of an accidental pregnancy, although that obviously is not a concern where I am in life now.) But Nicholas Kristof informs me that worldwide allowing 100 selectively aborted female fetuses would prevent the deaths of 15 infant girls per year. And I've met several women who do not regret their decisions to have abortions (not sex-selective or after IVF, but in general). Of course there are a lot of difficult issues that need to be addressed concerning fertility treatments, and more so as the procedures get more invasive. Of course new family compositions require adjustment in unexpected ways.

But just because I would not make the same decision as you, it does not mean that whatever you want to do is nonsensical or should be illegal. Sometimes we need to be comfortable with “I don’t know” and with big grey areas where a solution is right in the case of one particular family but wrong in the case of another similar particular family. In some ways we need to lower our expectations of women to not expect new moms or potential new moms to have all of their complex emotions worked out. And in other ways we need to raise our expectations of women to accept that new moms and potential new moms are uniquely situated to sort out the emotional complexity of their own life situations. And when the reality is in the middle, and those moms need to have their emotions worked out in order to make life changing decisions but aren’t there yet, we as friends, sisters, social workers, doctors, etc. need to step up with services and support, not criticism.

Super Bowl - Now With Photos!

2011-02-08T00:02:00.000-05:00

We were definitely not organized enough yesterday to compose blog entries that had both words AND pictures (translation: we were too lazy to download pictures off the camera), so here's a photo wrap-up of yesterday's events.

Carrie's lunchtime snakebite. Note the cooling black bottom cupcakes and vegetable chopping in the background. We were busy!

Making the shells for Broccoli Croustades. And yes, as a matter of fact, these are the same fashionable pajama pants I was sporting for my Zumba efforts.

Cupcakes: better with frosting.

Coffee table decor (note the easily accessible computer, for your liveblogging pleasure)

Cricket watches pre-game commentary from the safety of an inflatable helmet.

Kara keeping the deviled eggs safe.

The spread (featuring cupcakes, cheese/sausage, nachos, deviled eggs, and broccoli croustades--as green and yellow as we could get!)

The entire guestlist at our party (minus the cats)

And finally, a photo of the Empire State Building, all lit up in green and yellow tonight!

I hope all of you had an enjoyable weekend, whether or not you watched the Super Bowl!

Superbowl XLV

2011-02-06T18:26:00.044-05:00

Welcome back! The three of us have settled in on the couch with full plates of green and yellow foods and alcohol. Even Kara managed to wear a green sweater in support of Beck...er... the Packers. Go Pack Go!

Edited to add: For the record, this blog entry was once again written by Carrie but posted by Becky.

5:56pm:
We attempt to open the bottle of Asti. It is difficult and I fail.

Kara: Do I have to use my brute strength?
Carrie: Are you strong?
Kara: Well, no.
Carrie: Ok. You try then.

5:58
Kara:What is this? The declaration of independence?
Carrie: I don't know, who is that with Colin Powell?
Kara: You're the political one.

6:03
Carrie: What is this, superbowl X L 5?
Becky: Can you please put THAT in the liveblog?

6:11
The Steelers look mean. I keep forgetting there are people rooting for them.

6:13
Becky: Go Pack Go.

6:13b
Becky: Christina Aguilera is signing the National Anthem? That's disgusting.
Me: She actually looks kind of..normal.
Becky: It's kind of difficult to eat through the inflatable helmet.

6:20
Becky: What's Lea Michelle doing? She's warming up the crowd!
Kar: Is she wearing PANTS?
Becky: Is that offensive to you?
Kara: I mean, well no.

6:21
Kara: That guy has a rug on his chin. I mean, not Ben Roethlisberger. The other guy. It wasn't good.

6:22
Becky: What, no 9-11 flag stitched by tornado victims??
Carrie: Not a real sporting event people.
Becky: Are they cheering because she got the words right?
Kara: What just occurred? That guy was NOT that hairy before. Did he just like shove a rug on there, I don't understand?

6:28
Kara: Is this still the pre-game?

6:30
Kara: I need to release my pants. ..... Aaah.
Kara: He's in the hall of fame already? He was a referee in X X X 5!

6:33
Carrie: I want them to interview Baji or Raji or whatever his name is. He's my favorite player.
Me: Silent stare
Carrie: What? At least I called him a player this time, not a character!

6:35
Carrie: It's very confusing to me that they're ALL wearing yellow pants!

6:36
Becky: His name is Zombo.
Kara: That's a good name. I always pick the guys with the good names that I like.

6:40
Becky tells us the story of Donald Driver, after I accused her of not knowing who he was. Apparently I was wrong.

6:42
Carrie: Seriously, look how hairy he is.
Kara: He's so hairy!

6:45
Kara: Oh, the game's back on, I can go to the bathroom.

Cupcakes are delicious, but the chocolate part is dry. Becky and I agree that we probably should have cooked them a little bit shorter. I have a mimosa. Becky watches the game.

6:54
Kara: Oh, oops, I buttoned my pants back up again.

6:55
Becky and Kara break out in song to The Blackeyed Peas halftime preview.

7:00
TOUCHDOWN! YAY!
Becky: I hope the neighbors aren't planning to go to bed early tonight.

7:02
Dorritos make dead people come alive again. Impressive.

7:07
INTERCEPTION! TOUCHDOWN! Becky didn't start yelling and we all wondered why.. turns out she was getting food. But she caught it on the replay.
Carrie: There's a flag for excessive celebration??

7:22
Becky: I don't know who he is. But I'm glad he's limping. Hallefrickinglujah.
Kara: Where's the small animal on Roethelisberger?
Becky: That was someone else.

7:23
Carrie: Wait, Do they get points for that?
Becky: Yes, they kicked a field goal.
Then she points at the blog and insists that I record this interaction.

7:28
Carrie: Will you leave them [the Packers] if they mess it up?
Becky: Of course not. I have a life long commitment to them, just like I have to you.
Aw, true love.

7:33
Cute VW commercial with a little kid being Darth Vader. Becky declares that it would make more sense if she had seen the movies.

7:34
Oh noez. Becky's guy is leaving the field. Poor Mr. Driver!
Kara: Quad injury. I still don't really know what quads are.

7:37
Kara: How long does it, like, take these guys to get in to their pants?
Laughter.
Kara: Well, they're just like, so tight. They're like Olivia Newton John getting sewn in in Grease?

7:38
Carrie: That should be an excessive celebration flag!! Lame!

I think when Becky liveblogs there's probably more information about the actual game. But I think the Packers just intercepted.

7:45
Touchdown! Woot.

7:52
Carrie: Another one of your guys is injured, Becky!
And then Woodson is slow to get up
Carrie: Is he important?
Becky: I don't know. But I've heard of him.
They docs check him out while Kara tells a story about her cat throwing up in her bed.
Becky: He's back on the field, we're okay.

7:57
Steelers touchdown. Saddie.
Becky: In case you were confused, they get points for that too.

7:59
Hm, the commentator just commented that the entire Packers defensive line is in the locker room. Jokes about quickies and orgies ensued.

8:00
Half time! Also, Kara farted.

8:12
This Blackeyed Peas thing is like Matrix meets Michael Jackson meets KISS. Kara says it's the first time in a long time it hasn't been someone old. So "this is, like, ground breaking or something." The shoulder pads on the girl are particularly disturbing. Becky and Kara are now reflecting on the fact that we have somehow become old.

8:14 My sister IMs me:
Jen: hm... your later blog entries make me ponder how much alcohol has been consumed since I last spoke with you.
I read this to Kara and Becky. Kara replies, "It's just that I'm feeling comfortable with you, to share all of my thoughts!"
Is Usher really saying Oh My Gosh? Really?

8:28
Sean inquires via Jen via IM how many dozen broccoli puffs we ate. I sent Becky to check. The verdict? 26. Total, not dozen.
There's a commercial for the Glee commercial. And Kara declares that she might be able to re-button her pants.

I did some internet research and learned that the Pittsburgh Rug is named Brett Keisel. In case you wanted to know.

8:36
Becky, giving her guys a peptalk: Guys, you've managed to accrue 35 yards of penalties in the last 2 minutes. Don't shoot yourself in the foot.

8:42
The Packers got cocky. Touchdown for Steelers. And now Kara has to get agitated, despite the fact that she doesn't care.

8:59
Becky: Somebody was wearing a Favre jersey!
Carrie: Wait....who?
Becky: Not on the field you dummy.

9:05
Becky: I think Kara might be right. If they were wearing underwear you'd be able to see the lines.
Kara: Well I think they're wearing cups.
Becky: I should hope so!
Kara: Maybe it's like a cup-underwear combo.

9:16
The mood is somber. Becky's guys are not doing very well.

9:22
Becky: I'm tired of getting my own drinks. This bar needs a waitress.
Carrie gets Becky a drink
Carrie: Only cuz your team's doing crap.
Becky MY TEAM IS NOT DOING CRAP!!!

9:23
Carrie: There's more eggs, Kara.
Kara: That's alright. My pants are feelin' okay.

9:25
Becky: Run run run.
Kara: Run fast not slow!

9:28
Becky: Sorry, I farted.
Kara: About time somebody else did!
Carrie: We're so going to regret this liveblog.

9:30
WOOO!!!! Touchdown!

9:42
Nnnooooo........... touchdown Pittsburgh. And a 2-point conversion. :(

9:48
Becky: Hairy man is back.

9:51
Carrie talks crap about Green Bay Packers.
Angry Becky: Clap for Tinkberbell.
Kara: What does that mean? I never saw Peter Pan.
Becky: What kind of Disney employee are you?

9:54
Carrie: Kick him in the teeth!
Kara: It's always fun to say anything "in the teeth."
Becky: Number 37. Jazz hands?? Are you getting ready for Glee??

10:04
Kara: Oh my gosh. Seconds are so long. In football anyway.

10:06
Did they get it, did they get it? They got it! Becky's guys did it! YAY!!

YELLOW PANTS WIN THE SUPERBOWL! That's a good end to the first season of football I ever watched. Congratulations Wisconsin. Congratulations Becky. Congratulations the real Yellow Pants.

And now time for Glee. But I will not liveblog that.

Superbowl Preparation Liveblog

2011-02-06T13:57:00.007-05:00

Welcome to Superbowl Sunday at our house! I asked Becky if she would liveblog this event for us, as we've all come to expect such high quality comentary throughout this football season. She declined, and informed me that she cares too much about the game to liveblog it. And thus I was appointed family liveblogger of the day. Forgive me, for this is my first attempt! Not to appear overeager in my first attempt, but I decided that I would try to one up Becky and bit and not only liveblog the event itself but also the madness leading up to it. An event as momentous as the Superbowl deserves no less.

10:04am IM conversation with my sister:
Jen: who's coming to your party?
me: kara
Jen: wait. just kara?
me: yes
Jen: funny
me: yes
Jen: she sorted the M&Ms and made decorated cupcakes and stuff just for you and kara?
me: yes
Jen: ok

10:26am
Becky: I just realized your mom’s recipe for the broccoli and cheese things makes four dozen. I wish I would have thought of that when we were buying the ingredients.

10:29am
Becky asks me to make her some breakfast, because she just took Exederin migraine. Quote, “unless you want to see me go real crazy.”

----------------------------------
A long break in which I make some quick breakfast and we both cook and clean and generally pick up. This basically means I spent an hour sorting advertisements and credit card offers into the recycling bin. And Becky swears a lot at the people who wrote the cupcake recipe and neglected to list “water” in the ingredient list, which she eventually learned by googling. Much stress, but delicious looking cupcakes appear. And an oversized bag of recycling.
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1:21pm
I realize, mid-sandwich-making, that I stopped vacuuming in the middle of the rug to make lunch. I then forget my sandwich mid-sandwich in order to change the laundry. I decide that this is a hilarious clear sign that it’s time to have a Snakebite (Strongbow hard cider with Ribena).

1:46pm
I inquired whether I was allowed to eat potato chips for lunch or if they were reserved for the party. Becky informed me she was not a food nazi and then said:
Becky: “I think we may have an excessive amount of food at this party.”
Carrie: “I think you’re the first person to notice that.”
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Cooking continues. Also, I nominate myself to be on the decorating committee and put out the coffee table decorations. This includes yellow napkins, two different sizes of green and yellow confetti stars, football confetti, and a candy tray (wedding present alert!) filled with the famous green and yellow m&ms (peanutbutter and plain) and Milky Ways.
----------------------------------
3:16pm
Becky: Oh no, I have extra frosting! Extra frosting alert!
Carrie: Ooh, I can help with that!

3:19pm
Becky: Well, even if the others [cupcakes] completely fail, these look AWESOME.

4:32pm
Carrie and Kara text back and forth regarding Kara's anticipated early arrival, as she is apparently coming straight from brunch.
Me: Better make space fast cuz we've got food. :)
Kara: Haha I know don't worry. Am tipsy already though
Me: Nice. We've got beer and mimosas.
Kara: Haha mimosa number 5.

This is shaping up to be a good party people. I'm going to take a break from the day-of liveblog and catch you on the flip side!

I'm burned out, but my baked goods aren't!

2011-02-02T22:44:00.000-05:00

Sadly, it seems that Despair, Inc's designs are not covered by the good ol' Creative Commons license, but I'd ask you all to take a moment to check out this de-motivational poster for a sense of where I'm at today.

Funny stuff, eh?

To be fair, I'm not quite to that point yet, but I am feeling pretty exhausted. One of the women in my office will be going on maternity leave soon, and I'll be covering many of her duties while she's gone. Fortunately, someone else in my office will then be covering many of my duties, so I shouldn't be stuck entirely in the situation of trying to do two jobs at once. It's a really great opportunity for me, and in many ways I'm really excited for it. I'll get a chance to work in some areas that I'm not currently involved in and fill in some gaps that I feel are missing on my resume right now. But with any new challenge comes new stresses, and the weight of all of those new challenges is suddenly hitting me. I'm also in the midst of training for that position, organizing training materials and training the person who will be covering much of my work, and trying to do all of my regular work at the same time. Yesterday I sat down and plotted out all of my meetings and training times on my calendar, and I discovered that I have about 4 hours free in the next week--to do 35+ hours of work. Yikes.

It certainly doesn't help matters that I'm a bit of a workaholic. Even without all of this crazy added stress, I'm usually at work much later than I need to be. And to some degree, this is pretty common in my field, but I absorb much more work stress than is healthy. I need to find a way to A. be more efficient while I'm at work and B. learn to tell my supervisors when I've reached my limits (instead of smiling and saying "No problem, I'm not sure when I'll have time for this, but I'll make it happen.")

All of this stress has led to a near explosion of baked goods in my kitchen. Some people stress eat. I am one of them. But in particular, I get cravings for baked goods, and homemade is always better than store-bought. So apparently I also stress bake. In the past two weeks, I've made two pans of brownies (one was tonight, so they should last a bit yet), peanut butter chip cookies (those went to work, so we were saved from ourselves), and a batch of butterscotch/chocolate chip cookies. We are suddenly remarkably low on chocolate chips, butter, eggs, and flour. I'm not sure how that happened...

If you're looking for a good brownie recipe, I would highly recommend these Extreme Chocolate Brownies, which I made tonight. The first step is a little putzy, but not hard, I promise. (Okay, third step I guess. If preheating the oven and greasing the pan are too difficult for you, please put down the recipe and go buy some brownies in the bakery at your local grocery store.)

How do you deal with work stress? Any tips to share? Or any recipes for chocolate baked goods?

Smith & Wollensky

2011-01-31T17:22:00.007-05:00

As I hinted at yesterday, Becky and I both took the day off work today. Call it a one day "staycation." We did this in honor of New York's Restaurant Week, which has become a bit of a tradition for us. During Restaurant Week a large selection of participating restaurants offer three course meals, with lunch for $24.07 and dinner for $35.00. They offer a limited menu and if possible pack the tables a little closer together. But at the nicer restaurants that price is a steal for that much food. So, you might think that our tradition would be to try out a selection of different restaurants that would otherwise be inaccessible to us. That was actually our original intention. But then the first time we tried it (in 2008) we abandoned thoughts of going elsewhere. Our restaurant? Smith and Wollensky.

For appetizers, Becky enjoyed fried calamari (which she proclaimed to be the best she's ever had) and I ate split pea soup (not exactly my favorite, but theirs is good and I didn't love the other options). Mostly though, during this course we enjoy the bread basket. It is piled high with four different types of bread, plus some crispy chip-like deliciousness. I'm a sucker for a good bread basket. As best I can describe, the options are pretzel bread, sourdough bread, crunchy delicious oatmeal bread, and strange fruity bread.

For main dishes, we pick the obvious. Do I even need to tell you that it is the 10 oz. filet mignon? Well, I probably do because I haven't actually linked you to the menu yet. But nonetheless, obvious. Since becoming my significant other, and being influenced by the uncooked steak love that runs rampant in my family, Becky has been on a slippery slope towards ordering rare steak. Today she took the plunge and, for the first time, ordered a rare steak in a restaurant. When she did this the waiter questioned, "would you like a warm center or a cool center?" It turns out there is a super secret "extra rare" option, which of course Becky passed on (she's still on the slippery slope after all) and I of course gleefully accepted. Steak verdict? Delicious. We also enjoyed adding some hash browned potatoes and some white wine on the side.

For dessert we again selected the same option. Chocolate mousse cake. Rich, creamy, chocolaty deliciousness for the win.

One of the things I like about this restaurant (and other similar restaurants) is that all of their stuff is personalized with the restaurant name. As in, the plates say "Smith and Wollensky" and the silver is engraved with "Smith and Wollensky" and the napkins have a woven likeness of the restaurant facade and even the mints have "Smith and Wollensky" candied right in.
To justify the price (even with the deal this is a lot more than we would usually pay for a lunch, once you consider wine and side dishes and taxes and tips!) we called it a late joint birthday celebration, despite the fact that they were both about a month ago. A very happy birthday to us! Long live the Smith & Wollensky tradition!

Still one day left!

2011-01-30T22:41:00.003-05:00

While all of you suckers (er, loyal blog followers...) are preparing to go back to work tomorrow, Becky and I are still lounging and enjoying the weekend. One of us will update you on that tomorrow, I promise. But I figured in the mean time you need something to tide you over, seeing as how for you the weekend is over! So what kind of adventures did Becky and Carrie have this weekend?

Overall it was a pretty uneventful weekend. We watched both our Netflix movies: Love Happens and The Informant. The Informant sucked. Seriously, don't waste your time. I guess maybe it was supposed to be kind of a spoof, but we found it neither funny nor interesting. Becky actually asked me if we could turn it off, but I hate turning off movies once they're started. Love Happens was at least worth watching.

Saturday we spent almost two and a half hours outside digging my car out of the snowbank. We didn't actually want to move it (and in fact were afraid to move it, since we'd risk not having a parking spot when we came back, due to snow covering so many parking spots) but we were afraid that if we didn't put some work into uncovering it that we'd never see it again. We managed to anger two different neighbors in this process, who both accused us of trying to put the snow into their driveways and an empty parking spot. Yes, we were guilty of putting the snow in the empty spot (because it has to go somewhere!), but seriously, we were working so hard to be polite and not put the snow in other people's way. And what did we get? Neighbors yelling at us. Apparently snow brings out the crazy. We both really like people to like us and have strong Midwestern Nice streaks, so having the neighbors yelling at us was really stressful.

We also managed to make some progress on the kitchen reorganizing project. Part of this project is so that we can actually take some of our wedding presents out of the closet and put them somewhere accessible. We now have PopTop containers, a coffee machine, a hot chocolate machine, cutting boards, steak knives, champagne flutes, and a bunch of other random stuff! Woo!

For probably the first time ever we saw an ad on an internet TV show (Modern Family on Hulu, in case you're wondering) that we were actually interested in. Vittana is a non-profit that provides micro loans to students in developing countries who are completing college or vocational schools. Theoretically anyways you loan the students money and a year (or so) later they repay you. At which point you probably roll your money back into another student. Becky and I are both intrigued by the whole micro loans to individuals in developing countries concept, and of course we both support higher education. So there you go, we're helping sponsor a young Nicaraguan woman in her pursuit of education. Check it out.

Snow Day!

2011-01-27T20:01:00.007-05:00

Apparently this January has been the snowiest January on record in New York City. I honestly never imagined we'd see this much snow here. It is the snow of our childhoods in the Midwest, which even they haven't had for many years. I'm definitely one of the first ones to jump on making fun of New York for considering itself a cold place, or a place capable of handling snow. But, especially considering they have no where to put the snow here, this is pretty crazy.

We woke up this morning to Becky's phone ringing with an automated message letting her/us/the neighborhood know that her work was closed. This noise was followed by the siren alerting us that local schools were closed. Now seriously people, the siren? That is supposed to go off when meteorologists have spotted a giant spinning funnel cloud. It tells you loud and clear to grab your battery powered radio in one hand and your cat in the other hand and run to your basement. It does not tell you to go out and play in the snow! I don't even know how to describe the siren or the noise without describing it as a tornado siren. In the absence of much tornado risk, I wouldn't have even guessed that northeastern cities would have them. But our town does, and apparently they use it to announce school closings. I knew my work would be open, so I didn't even bother getting up, despite the fact that my annoyance kept me from falling back asleep.

But then, at the normal time, I did get up, and found that our busses were not running. Which of course makes it less than easy for me to get to my annoyingly open work. After much conferring with the appropriate powers-that-be I determined that I could in fact use some leave time and reschedule my appointments. And hence, a snow day was born.

That's each of us with snow piled up over our heads! Unfortunately, my poor car is also piled up well over its head.

Yep, there's a car under there. And it belongs to me/us. If we ever find it again that is. I joked about it before, but I'm now a little bit concerned that we might actually not be able to move it again for a while. Especially because we're supposed to get more snow this weekend!

We decided we needed some delicious snow day dinner. So, we pulled out the awesome cookbook that we received as a wedding shower gift and selected a Cheddar Ham Soup. The cookbook was a project headed up by my sister (and Matron of Honor). She sent out blank recipe cards to all of the women who were invited to the wedding and asked them to submit a recipe (and a memory too, if they chose) to include in a cookbook for us. So at the shower we received a cookbook full of the favorite recipes of a whole bunch of our friends and family members! We thought it was a really neat way to include all of our long distance friends and family who weren't able to attend the shower, and now it's a fun keepsake. I can happily report that Becky's aunt's soup is delicious! So we'll be eating soup and enjoying this lovely view out of the windows, possibly for months to come.

Computer Lab Nostalgia

2011-01-26T23:10:00.000-05:00

I read some huge exciting news today via the little birds on Twitter: Facebook versions of Carmen Sandiego and Oregon Trail will be released in February!

Someone mentioned in the comments on this article that she remembered playing these games 20 years ago. Which caused me to realize "Holy crap, it really HAS been 20 years! How is that even possible?!" You see the problem here is that someone who can clearly remember things that happened 20 years ago must certainly be a grown up, and I am certainly not one of those.

But this realization got me to thinking about the good ol' days in the computer lab at my elementary school. My school got a computer lab when I was in 3rd grade, and let me tell you, it was a BIG. FREAKIN. DEAL. I think some PTA members may have sold organs on the black market to fundraise for that thing or something. It was awesome--each of us got to use a computer at the same time. And the computers had games! Two of them! Those games were Oregon Trail and....something else. I think maybe it had dragons? And something about designing your dream bedroom? Anyway, Oregon Trail was clearly the superior choice. I have such fond memories of watching my little green oxen plod across my tiny black monitor, and my incredible inability to shoot anything in my efforts to hunt. Seriously, that buffalo could stand right in front of me and stare me in the eye, and I wouldn't figure out how to shoot it.

A year or so later, my family got a computer at home, and in addition to Oregon Trail, we acquired several different versions of the Carmen Sandiego games. Each of these games of course included about 7 installation disks (and I seem to recall a fair amount of swearing from my parents when the computer didn't seem to want to recognize them in the right order) and a world almanac or similar reference, which was of course absolutely necessary for answering questions in the game. Oh, life before the internet. (I admit, I do sort of miss those pages in the middle with the pictures of all the countries' flags.) I'm curious to see how they've modified the game to make it a little more challenging in the age of Wikipedia.

Do you have any fond memories of early computer games or experiences? Are you as crazy excited as I am for these games?

Groceries

2011-01-25T23:51:00.001-05:00

As a follow-up to Carrie's weekend post, our groceries from Fresh Direct arrived last night. It was pretty sweet that someone else packed them and hauled them up the stairs for us, but it's a little strange to get groceries in boxes. The service is great, the food looks fresh, but they don't sell many of our staple items (and only have name-brand options of many products) and their regular prices really aren't competitive with what we usually pay for the same foods.

Plus I just really LIKE grocery shopping. I used to be obsessed with reading grocery store sale flyers, looking for the best deals, but my lust for that has dulled with time. Admittedly, our usual grocery-shopping routine probably sounds a little crazy to some. We do a big shopping trip every 3 weeks or so. We plan out meals for the upcoming few weeks before we go, and make our grocery list based on that. The Target store near us has a pretty large selection of groceries and some of the best prices around, so we start there for a lot of our staples. We then head to the Trader Joe's that's about half a mile past Target and stock up on produce and most of the other items that Target doesn't sell. This does tend to leave a couple of specific products that aren't at either store (we're picky about tortillas--go figure), so one or the other of us will walk to the grocery store that's a couple blocks away to fill in any remaining gaps. The whole project takes a couple hours, but we get most of our food at the best prices we can find, we get good quality meat and produce, and by planning our meals ahead of time, we don't end up wasting much food. Having a plan also makes us less likely to come home from work and say "I'm tired, let's just order take-out, eat mac & cheese, etc." It works for us.

But since I view the Saturday grocery shopping every few weeks as a sacred activity, I'm even less likely to be sold on Fresh Direct's services. But thank you for the $50 coupons--we do appreciate them!

piccadilly-cat sez "ur soda runned away"

O hai, NFC Championship

2011-01-25T23:42:00.000-05:00

In case you haven't heard yet, THE PACKERS ARE GOING TO THE SUPER BOWL!!!

Alright, I admit that I am no die-hard fan and that I only watch the games that happen to be televised here, but the Pack will ALWAYS be my team. Fortunately, one of my co-workers is also from Wisconsin and IS a die-hard fan, so I get to hear all about what I missed and what's new in the world of the Packers. Said co-worker is also a regular at Kettle of Fish, the best Packer bar in NYC. I'd been saying for years that I was going to go watch a game with her, and somehow this game, against Da Bears, no less, seemed like the perfect candidate. But there's something you need to understand about the patrons of this bar, and Packer fans in general--we're crazy.

On Sunday, the game started at 3:00 p.m. The bar was opening at 1:00. This naturally meant that in order to be guaranteed a seat to watch the game, we needed to get there and line up early...just after 10:00 a.m. In case standing outside a bar in the West Village for three hours on a Sunday morning doesn't sound crazy enough to you, keep in mind that it was only 20 degrees outside. But I put on all the warmest clothes I had, packed my thermos of hot chocolate (after nearly scalding myself checking to see if it leaked. It did. I responded by wrapping it in a plastic bag and keeping it upright. It worked.) and trekked into the city while Carrie stayed in our warm, cozy apartment.

Fortunately, the wait passed relatively quickly, and just as I began to fear that I may never feel my toes again, a kind stranger appeared with extra hand/foot warmers. Hallelujah! To give you an idea of the scope of the line (and the craziness of those in it), here's a picture I took shortly before the doors opened.

I knew I was in the right place when I saw cheeseheads.

Once inside, there were drinks, plates of summer sausage and cheese, and Usinger's bratwursts to help us warm up. I was sadly lacking in Packers garb (a situation my mom is remedying as I type this), but fortunately my co-worker brought me a spare jersey, and another kind stranger was passing out green and gold beads (and cheese curds--yum!)

Anyway, I would describe both that game and the bar as somewhat ugly but awesome. The bar was seriously a little trippy--with the wood paneling, ceiling tiles, and several people in very un-ironic plaid, I could have sworn I was in someone's basement in Wisconsin rather than in the West Village. But it was also refreshing to just be able to give the name of a town in response to "Where you from?" And I think the last time I was surrounded by such enthusiastic sports fans must have been in the student section at a UW-Madison football game. The air in this place was electric.

Oh yeah, and did I mention SUPER BOWL?!?! I am already scheming plans for green and gold foods to make for that day. Suggestions are welcome. And so far the list of attendees at said party includes Carrie, me, and our cats--so if you're going to be in the neighborhood, please feel free to stop by!

After I got home from the game, Carrie and I feasted upon leftover homemade chili in homemade bread bowls. The bread didn't turn out quite like I'd hoped--all four bowls mysteriously shrunk just before I put them in the oven, but they were delicious nonetheless.

On home ownership and New York

2011-01-24T23:10:00.001-05:00

Well, I had Becky all lined up to blog for you tonight, but then she got busy with other things and couldn't do it. So I guess you're stuck with unprepared me!

A few weeks ago Becky apparently decided that she was sick of feeling impoverished and decided to take a whole pile of personal finance books out of the library. She has since been methodically making her way through them, while I occasionally pick one up and page through in a sign of support. I certainly got a few laughs out of Suze Orman of 2005 waxing on about the wonders of investing in home ownership. But despite the change in circumstances since 2005 I hear it's still a pretty decent investment. And it's something we aspire to do someday. But not here. Gothamist illustrates plainly and easily why not. Why is New York so strange? It is at the same time a cultural capital of the United States and not in the slightest bit quintessentially American. And apparently it's become the city I love to hate (okay, and just plain old love too, despite its crazyness and insane cost of living).

While I was browsing over at Gothamist I also came upon this Walk of Shame, which has a similarly favorable outlook on the great New York experience. Woo-hoo longest commute in the nation! Of course I'm not sure if they calculate this based on where you live or where you work, so I don't know whose commuting average we're driving up...either way I think we're clearly hurting someone's average. Does that make me a New Yorker yet?

So I hope that wee bit of mappy goodness can tide you over until tomorrow night!

Depths of January

2011-01-23T15:13:00.005-05:00

I know I'm a wimpy Minnesotan, I know that the weather in NYC/NJ is nothing compared to what it has been in the Midwest, but I'm officially tired of winter. And I didn't even stand outside in it for 3 hours today like Becky did. But I'll let her tell you about that insanity. This has probably been the snowiest and coldest winter since we moved here (and this is our fifth, believe it or not!) Something about the combination of the snow strategy here (pour an ocean of salt all over everything, let the cars create huge slushy puddles to get rid of snow bulk) and our lifestyle here (walking to public transportation, on-street parking, me walking all over the place for my job) makes the tropical NYC winter still feel unbearable.

Friday night we hung out at home and watched Inception from Netflix. I liked it a lot, but probably not as much as I thought I might, based on descriptions I've read referring to it as a mix of Memento and Eternal Sunshine. I've been thinking about it since then and I still don't understand why Cobb and Saito end up in the same place in the end, nor do I understand how they managed to get back to "reality." And pretty much the entire winter wonderland 3rd level scene confused me. But I love both Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page, so two thumbs up from me.

Saturday we avoided moving the car, and hence dealing with the aforementioned annoying weather and parking situation. How did we do that you ask? A seemingly too-good-to-be-true coupon from Fresh Direct! Fresh Direct is one of those grocery delivery companies, which of course we are usually way too cheap to consider utilizing, even on frigid days. Apparently they are hard core trying to push their service in this area, because they sent us a coupon for $50 off a $125 order and free delivery - and we can use it two times within 60 days!! So I spent way too much time on the eternal grocery list and now some poor Fresh Direct shmuck has to carry our milk and soda and 8lbs of meat through the cold and up the flights of stairs. I'm sure they anticipate I'll get addicted to these amazing benefits, but between the extra cost and not having a lot of the exact products we like, I think we'll only be using it for the two awesome deals.

We went to see The King's Speech on Saturday night (go indoor entertainment!), which was also fun. I'm glad none of my clients are royalty; that sounds hard. Scenes of the commoners when the air raid sirens were going reminded Becky and me of the children of war exhibit that we both loved at the Imperial War Museum of London.

Today I'm relaxing as a bachelor with my Sam Adams blackberry witbier, my pizza rolls, and my televised football game. Yes, that's right, I am watching a football game alone. I know this sounds seriously crazy to any of you who know me. But I wanted to know what happened! Sorry for the lack of live blogging, I know how you all love a good live blog!

The one where she comes home late

2011-01-21T18:52:00.004-05:00

I start blog posts in my head all the time about work. And then I remember how dangerous it is to write about work. I have all of my clients' stories bouncing around in my head all of the time. I feel like I should write about poverty and intergenerational trauma and systemic dysfunction and transference. But I don't know how to talk about any of these topics without telling you pieces of their stories. Even sanitized of names and personal details it feels too dangerous to talk about.

In the marginally safer world of offline conversation, my work stories sound different outside my office walls. At work, stories that include drug abuse and incest and suicide attempts and prison and foster care sound normal. Outside they sound a lot more intense. I think there's a certain amount of desensitization necessary for doing this type of work. Sometimes though I fear that it holds me back from providing everything that I should to some of the families who need it the most.

This post isn't flowing the way I want it to flow. Perhaps I should have stuck with my original topic: exhaustion. Sometimes it feels like the exhaustion is related to the stories bouncing around in my head is related to the desensitization. Or maybe it's just the 1am bedtimes. Either way, it has been a long week (despite only being four days!), after a few other long weeks. Monday we did the drive back from MA, Tuesday evening we had an insane rendezvous with a lawyer and two other lesbian couples (more on this some other day), Wednesday I worked late and then we socialized at Kara's until much too late, Thursday I worked late again, and now it's finally Friday.

Another worker said to me tonight "I just can't fight anymore," regarding trying to summon the energy to argue with a supervisor about whether to indicate a case. We spend enough time dealing with exhaustion from our own lives and exhaustion from the intensity of the clients' issues. Why do we also have to fight with the system itself to get anything to work right?

Home again home again

2011-01-17T22:13:00.003-05:00

We're back from another voyage to Massachusetts. After picking the car up at the car repair shop (and a whole fiasco where they lost the car's proof of registration. gr.) on Friday night we left late and arrived even later. Saturday we slept in and then spent the day hanging out at home with Jen and Sean and Matthew and Thomas. They're adorable as always, but apparently hanging out there is enough like hanging out at home that we completely forgot to take any pictures. Sorry. Saturday night of course was the famous yellow pants game, with the fondue and the wings and the champagne and the chocolate cake.

Sunday the family went to a multiples playdate while Becky and I hung out at home and then went to get haircuts. One of our oddities is that even though we get super cheap haircuts, neither of us ever gets our hair cut at home. Apparently living in the land of ridiculously expensive haircuts means that cheap haircuts are exceptionally bad. In the afternoon we went to family swim at the Y (Thomas is amazingly close to learning how to swim considering he's still under 2!), dinner at Olive Garden (sorry Italian food purists, it was convenient and someone had a craving), and home for baby bedtime and Despicable Me.

This morning we packed our car full of our wedding presents (which my parents brought from Minnesota at Christmas) and did the long trek back to New Jersey. Suffice it to say that I am sick of that drive. This afternoon and evening we've been much too lazy, and now the week is about to begin. How do we always end up back here, at the beginning?

I hope your weekends were refreshing and maybe had a bit less driving and/or car drama than ours!

Packers/Falcons Liveblog

2011-01-15T20:19:00.024-05:00

I'm writing from snowy Massachusetts, where we are watching the Green Bay Packers/Atlanta Falcons playoff game. The cast of characters: Carrie, me, Jen, Sean, and Matthew (asleep, hopefully to stay that way). Thomas is sleeping in his crib (also hopefully to stay that way).

In case there is any confusion, we are rooting for the Packers, a.k.a Yellowpants.

8:10
Everyone: Who's the Zac Brown Band?
Carrie: Holy crap, that's a big flag.

8:12
Carrie: Wait, maybe we're not all rooting for Green Bay.
Me: Yes we are. My blog.
Carrie: Jen, who are you rooting for?
Jen: Becky's team. She's scary.
Carrie: Sean, who are you rooting for?
Sean: Green Bay vs. the Falcons? I don't really give a crap.
Carrie: See, I guess we're not all rooting for the Packers.

8:13
Jen: I miss the light.
Sean: You could have watched the boys when they were in here pushing it over.
Jen: I had an urgent situation.

8:15
Sean taught Carrie how to stir...a valuable skill to acquire at age 28.
Jen: Do you think cheese fondue and champagne is a good food for a football game?
Me: I come from Wisconsin.

8:16
Carrie: Okay, I am not missing the kick-off this time. Is this it? Yay, I saw the beginning! That's the beginning, right?

8:19
Carrie: I am actually capable of following this game now if I'm paying attention.

8:28
Packers fumble
Carrie: They took the ball! Is that legal?
Everyone: Yes.
Jen: You would have them play a very calm game.
Carrie: It's MEAN!

8:35
Falcons touchdown. Sad face.
Cheese fondue all gone. For the record, it was Pesto Fondue with hot Italian sausage and bread. Delicious.
Here comes the chicken wings! (Jen: Can we eat wings with fondue forks?)

8:45
Jen (to Carrie): It's a little weird that you know about football.

Yes, and it also makes for less entertaining live blogging. Sigh. Oh well, I have wine. Perhaps that will liven up the liveblogging!

8:51
Sean explains random facts about football.
Carrie: I didn't even know you LIKED football! Is it like in your genes cuz of that Y chromosome?

8:54
Touchdown Green Bay! W00t!

8:56
And the Falcons ran it all the way back for a touchdown. Lame.
Carrie: Can they even do that?

9:02
Carrie: They're playing really rough.
Jen: It's the play-offs.
Me: It's FOOTBALL.
Carrie: But it's MEAN!

9:09
Touchdown Green Bay again! Huzzah!
Sean: Yellowpants just needs some defense
Carrie: Well, they need someone on their team other than Aaron Rodgers. Apparently they forgot.

9:20
Interception. Woo-hoo!

9:32
Touchdown!
Carrie: That made up for his (Jones) mistake earlier. SEE?! I also have increased memory!

9:36
Jen: Wait, you drank more Pinot? How are we gonna drink that whole big bottle of bubbly if you keep drinking Pinot?

9:40
Interception/Touchdown!!! Carrie and me yelling...fortunately this did not wake Matthew.

9:44
Sean explains something about eligible receivers and various positions...
Carrie: Sean uses a lot of words I don't know when he talks about football.

10:00
A giant slice of chocolate cake with Bailey's frosting appeared in front of me, along with a glass of bubbly. Magic! Also, the Packers are rockin' the house.

10:07
Rodgers runs it in for another TOUCHDOWN!!!

10:13
Me: Do you think if I went to the gym more often, I'd look like them? I mean, the cheerleaders, not the players.
Jen: I think you'd have to go a lot more often. And not eat so much cake.

10:23
Insightful lesson on challenges courtesy of ehow.
Jen: Is there anything we do that doesn't involve Google?
Sean: Yes, sometimes you can use Yahoo.
Me: Ew.

10:26
Another touchdown! Awesome!

10:47
Carrie: If your team messes this up, I'm gonna be so disappointed in you.
Me: In ME, personally?
Carrie: In your ENTIRE STATE.

10:48
Oopsy, just realized I forgot to mention a Falcons touchdown. Jen and I weren't paying attention then anyway.

11:09
So there was a fieldgoal, and the Packers picked up a fumble. But there was also a champagne flute that broke here, so several of us were consumed with that clean-up effort.

11:13
Field goal. Also, my cousin's wife, who's from the Twin Cities and part of a family of die-hard Vikings fans, just declared herself a Packers fan. Huzzah!

11:19
Victory for the Packers! NFC Championship game next weekend!

And now, I think it's time to put my sicky wife to bed. She has been complaining off and on all night that her head feels like it's full of syrup. Between her cold and the cold that Matthew and Thomas both have, I think it's only a matter of time until I get sick...

Smooth Moves

2011-01-13T22:31:00.000-05:00

Well, in the spirit of trying to get my butt off the couch more often, I decided this week to try out one of my Christmas presents: a Wii game called Zumba Fitness.

Hahahahahahahahaha.

What, you don't think that's hilarious? Well, that my friend, is where you are quite wrong.

So for starters, the game requires wearing this belt around your hips (the Wii remote goes in the neon green pocket).

Zumba belt of awesome

Since photos and video were strictly forbidden, you'll have to just form a mental picture of me in my living room wearing pajama pants (circa 1999) with turquoise cow spots, a magenta t-shirt, and this really awesome belt velcroed around my hips.

I then fired up the game (which by the way, has the most annoying interface I have ever seen in a Wii game. It's like they forgot that the Wii remote could be pointed at the screen to select things. Who knew the arrows on that thing could be used outside of Mario Kart?) and proceeded to the Learn the Steps section. Each style of dance (calypso, salsa, merengue, etc.) is divided into several levels.

I started with beginner calypso. The first step is pretty much put one foot in front of you, then back, lather, rinse, repeat with other foot. I got that part. The game then decided I was so good that it would just fly through the rest of the steps in the beginner lesson, with the instructor telling me how great I was doing the whole time! Let's just say that the motion sensor on this thing leaves a bit to be desired. My best recollection of this scene:

Glowing green Zumba instructor: You're doing great! Keep it up!
Me (blank stare): What the hell just happened?
Carrie: Bahahahahaha
Cats (blank stare)

I tried another learning level thing and concluded that it was not going to work, so I figured I'd just jump into a beginner song. Following the steps actually went a little better that way. And I decided that since the motion sensor was off, I'd just keep jumping around and the stupid machine wouldn't know the difference. And it worked! I got all kinds of bonus points despite the fact that my "dance" probably would have horrified any real-life Zumba instructor. (That is the good part about the Wii game: glowing instructor on screen is very non-judgy of my sad, sad dancing.)

The downside of switching from learn the steps to the do the routine? Shimmying. And lots of hip rotating. And all sorts of other things that my joints do not do. Seriously, I have the stiffest, whitest hips on earth. I am astounded by dance moves that other people can pull off, but I cannot do any of them. Instead, at this point I just looked like a sweaty, out-of-breath, pajama-ed fool doing some combination of calypso, Jazzercise, and that Cotton Eye Joe line dance from 5th grade gym class.

I'm pretty sure even the cats were laughing by this point.

Carrie showed her support by standing up and imitating me.

But Carrie can't laugh too much, because I have one chief advantage over her: rhythm. Yes, I may have no sense of how to dance to said rhythm, and my coordination is so limited that I will likely trip over myself if I try, but I can find the beat and at least do some basic movements in time with it.

Anyway, I'm pretty lousy at the game. But since the game is a little lousy at figuring out that I'm lousy, it's all good. And it gets me off the couch for 20 minutes at a time, and it doesn't require going outside in 20-degree weather, which is always a plus.

Besides, I think I'm getting better. The second time I played, I only grape-vined into the Christmas tree once.

Happy Snow Day Recipe

2011-01-12T21:54:00.000-05:00

We did not actually get a snow day today here--all the dramatic lead-up (and New York does drama and anxiety in preparation for snow like nowhere I've ever seen before), and then we only ended up getting around 9 inches. And after the disaster that was the snowstorm a few weeks ago, city governments apparently figured out how snowplows work and got things cleaned up. But it did snow, and therefore it was a perfect day for making soup!

Wild rice soup is a favorite of both Carrie and me, so I thought I'd share our recipe with you. Both of our moms had slightly different recipes, and we've incorporated bits from each into our version.

Note: if you don't live in Minnesota or Wisconsin, wild rice may be tricky to find or obscenely expensive at your average grocery store. But I have good news--Trader Joe's sells it for a completely reasonable price! As an alternative, you could wait to see if Carrie's mom brings you some the next time she visits, but I think that's probably not the most reliable plan for most of you. If you don't have a Trader Joe's near you, I am truly sorry.

Wild Rice Soup
Makes 4-6 servings

2 cups cooked wild rice (2/3 cup uncooked)
5 Tablespoons butter
1 small onion, chopped
1 cup grated carrots
1/2 cup flour
4 cups chicken broth
pinch of pepper
pinch of turmeric
2 bay leaves
1 cup diced ham
1 cup half and half

Cook the wild rice first; it takes about an hour total, so you'll want to start this a little in advance of the rest of the soup. I generally use about three parts water to one part rice, so 2/3 cup rice and 2 cups water (this leaves a little extra water in the pan at the end, but you can either drain it off or just pour it into the soup with the rice). Put rice and water in a pan and heat to boiling. Reduce heat to simmer and cover. Cook for 45-55 minutes or until most of the rice kernels have popped.

Melt butter in a sauce pan and sautee the onion and carrots until tender. Blend in flour. Slowly add broth stirring constantly (A whisk helps at this point to keep the flour from getting lumpy). Keep stirring until mixture thickens slightly. Stir in pepper, turmeric, and bay leaves.

Add ham and cooked rice. Simmer for about 5 minutes. Stir in half and half and heat to serving temperature. Don't forget to remove bay leaves before serving!

We usually make a double batch of this--the leftovers are delicious! If you double it, make sure you use a stock pot or dutch oven because it's a lot of soup.

Fun with Census Maps

2011-01-11T23:13:00.003-05:00

Hello friends. I could come here today and moan and complain about the buckets of money that we are pouring into my eleven year old car. I was actually going to do that. But I did a lot of private moaning and complaining, to Becky, to my coworkers, to my family. And now I'm moving through the stages of grief into reluctant acceptance.

So instead I will share with you a fabulous New York Times creation that Becky found for me to play with. You might remember my fascination with interactive maps. This one is pretty cool, huh? I love how populated New York is, and therefore how clear the neighborhood distinctions are. By either income or race, there is such an obvious line where Harlem meets the Upper East and Upper West Sides. By pretty much any measure Manhattan below 110th street is so very unusual; it is richer, more educated, whiter, rent is higher, and an absolutely insane percentage of elementary kids go to private schools. The whole crazy I-95 corridor from Boston to DC has these peculiarities to some degree too. The map of percentage of people without high school diplomas has a swath of color across the southern United States, even more than I would have expected. Check it out! And then come back and tell me what exciting things you learn! I need something to distract me from my poor decrepit car and its health care bills....

Knitting--No, I Haven't Forgotten How

2011-01-09T19:48:00.002-05:00

It's been a slow knitting year for me; as with many things, it took a bit of a backseat during wedding planning. In the months leading up to the wedding, I did manage to finish off three pumpkin hats (last year's version featured here, and this year's version is here, both modeled by our favorite nephews) for Matthew, Thomas, and our friend Stephanie's daughter.

The pumpkin hat, along with the Christmas hats I made for the nephews last year, are from Susan B. Anderson's itty-bitty hats, which I highly recommend. I also came across a pattern in that book for a hat with little pigtail tassels, which I knew would be adorable on Stephanie's daughter--the perfect complement to her mischievous smile. I don't have pictures of her in the hat, but here are a couple pictures of the finished product.

I've knit a lot of baby/toddler hats in the last couple of years because they're so fun, so cute, and SO quick, but I think it's time to branch out and tackle something else. I haven't yet decided what that should be, but I suspect Carrie will probably argue that I should finish one of the several projects that I've started for her but never finished!

Are any of you knitters? If you're on Ravelry, add me--just search for duhbeckster.

Zee Weekend

2011-01-09T19:10:00.003-05:00

Last week felt a little bit like it would never end. I think this might be the unfortunate but inevitable result of an extended vacation. But the weekend did finally come, and we did our best to enjoy it.

Friday night we met up with our friend Kara, who is usually up for the wackier of our entertainment choices. For dinner Becky wanted to try something new (Shake Shack overload I guess) and suggested a Bosnian restaurant called Djerdan. I was doubtful, but agreed. Since I was running late Becky and Kara ended up first having a drink at a Spanish place down the block. Suffice it to say that the sangria was made with Carlo Rossi's finest. Alas. But Djerdan was excellent! We shared an appetizer of some doughyness in yogurt sauce that was decent. The highlight though was the main dish, the house speciality, burek. Becky and I shared, so we got to try slices of cheese and meat (spinach is the third choice). Burek is apparently a scrumptious stuffed phyllo dough pie. It was savory and greasy in the most delicious way, and each slice only cost $5! I'm quite excited that we now know of another tasty and inexpensive option that is convenient to Port Authority and most Broadway theaters.

We then headed over to Madison Square Garden for the entertainment portion of the evening: the 2011 Professional Bull Riders Invitational*! I had no idea there would be so many cowboys in New York City. The festivities started while Kara and I were buying pretzel beer (pictures of which are sadly on Kara's camera and therefore not currently available to me). But, as photodocumented by Becky, they poured gasoline on the dirt and lit a giant PBR on fire.
Good start, good start. An invocation was prayed, and then we sang the national anthem while saluting a giant waving American flag stitched together by tornado survivers from flag pieces somehow associated with 9/11. I think that speaks for itself.

Then came the bull riding!
Trusty Wikipedia, via the Motorola Droid, filled us in on the rules and various controversies related to the sport. Basically, each rider climbs on a bull and has to hang on with only one hand for eight seconds. If he (as far as I can tell, they're all men) succeeds, then his performance is ranked 0-50 and the bull's performance is ranked 0-50. The scores are combined, and the rides are ranked. Watching the bull-riding was moderately exciting for eight second increments, but overall a bit slower paced than we expected. At one point a rider was dragged behind a bull for a few seconds, and at another point a bull with a lasso around his neck pulled free of the cowboy who lassoed him.
Saturday we planned to do errands and all kinds of boring stuff around the house. We debated about whether to walk to the closer grocery store or to dig the car out of the snowbank and drive to Target and Trader Joe's. Digging out won. That is, until we went to start the defroster and found that the car didn't start. I spent nearly an hour on the phone with AAA and another hour idley waiting for the tow truck to come. Despite fears that it would be worse, we're fairly sure that the car is fine, but that the battery just couldn't hold a charge while parked in once place for three weeks in cold weather. Friendly tow truck operator jumped us and away we went. Except for one catch. The hood of the car will not completely latch, which seems to be related to some fraying of the cord near the hood release switch in the car. Becky and I know pretty much nothing about cars (a cause for some concern), but the tow truck man told us not to drive on the highway until it somehow starts latching... Troublesome.

Sunday we headed to Queens for brunch with our friend Stephanie. She made the most delicious baked French toast, eggy casserole, coffee cake, homemade hot chocolate, and served us mimosas. Yum. We provided raspberries, blackberries, and thawed strawberries from our summertime adventures. We had a lovely time chatting with Stephanie and playing with Stephanie's two-year old.

This evening we watched the Packers beat the Eagles - go yellow pants!

*No Friends of Animals protestors were injured in the writing of this blog entry.