A day at the beach

We've been really craving a vacation lately, but going on vacation right now is not in the schedule or the budget.  However, last weekend we decided to try to fulfill this desire with a mini one night vacation in our favorite shore town.

Becky reads on the beach.

The Jersey Shore Roller Girls were having a bout versus the Philadelphia Roller Girls.  You may remember our last (and only) encounter with roller derby, which we declared a good time worth repeating.

If we're being honest the roller derby itself was less entertaining than it's New York cousin, with fewer fans and too many bouts started with kneeling and hand holding (are we playing red rover??).  It was really interesting though to finally see the inside of the Asbury Park Conventional Hall, and they definitely get extra points for the opening and half-time band:

 I asked Becky what the connection was between bag pipers and roller derby.  She replied, "quirky."

Speaking of quirky, we had to stay in a new bed and breakfast because the one we traditionally stay in was not yet open for the season.  The new b&b featured a sort of African-ish theme and included this lovely piece of decor:

    

close up

 This creepy monkey lamp threatened to eat Becky in the middle of the night.  I valiantly offered to save her when she expressed concern at the beginning of the night, but sadly I slept through the actual attack.  You'll have to sit on the edge of your seats, wondering if she survived, until she graces this blog with a blog post.
Just kidding, here she is being attacked again the very next day:

On the way home from "our" part of the shore we stopped to tour the country's oldest lighthouse.

What's a good vacation without a little history lesson and climbing 10 stories worth of winding metal stairs?  We're so cultured.

Well, it cost a lot less than the week at an all-inclusive Aruban resort or the week of volunteering at the Sri Lankan elephant orphanage that we were dreaming about, so it will have to do for now.

More Adventure than I Anticipated

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!

New York City's Backyard

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!

Island Hopping

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!

Delicious Adventures

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!

Eating Sum Dim Sum

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.

Smith & Wollensky

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!

Zee Weekend

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.

Tis the Season to be Jolly

Another weekend recap, oh joy for you! And this one is not even a week delayed! I fear that successful blogs should probably have more content than a typical weekend at our house, but I guess one of the magical things about having your own blog (or sharing one with your wife) is that you get to dictate the content.

Friday we made a third attempt at the Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson lottery. And apparently we are unlucky, so for the third time we did not win. This time (unlike at the second attempt) we were armed with enough cash to buy lottery loser tickets. There's only an hour in between the lottery at the show so our dinner options were limited. We picked Shake Shack, largely because they're offering peanut butter hot chocolate. As a bonus the flavor of the day turned out to be candy cane crunch.

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson was a good time and definitely worth seeing, but a little more... emo? random? something? than I expected. Pretty much I thought I was going to adore it, since it's one of those liberal-message-rock-musical-cult-following kinds of shows. The theater was totally decorated in red Christmas lights and chandeliers and stuffed animal heads - more than I've seen before (and we've seen a fair amount of Broadway in the last 4 years!) The songs were fun, but nothing I'm still humming now, although I'll probably listen on iTunes and consider buying a few. I was actually surprised that it seemed to be commenting just as much on Barack Obama as on Sarah Palin and the Tea Party, but I guess that's the liberal mood right now too.

We then headed uptown to join four somewhat inebriated high school teachers at a holiday party. Cocktail franks, a few drinks, and leftover birthday cake from Billy's bakery were enjoyed by all.

On Saturday our friend Stephanie and her adorable two-year-old daughter joined us in New Jersey. We cooked stuffed shells and hung out and introduced our toddler friend to the joys of decorating cut out cookies. The specimens photodocumented here are my creations, not hers!
Our cat, Cricket, took advantage of our focus on cookies, and decided that the stroller was a great place to take an afternoon nap. Our other cat, Piccadilly, was busy cowering in the bedroom. Gaining a little human sibling someday in the future is going to be rough on her, I think! Cricket may adapt better:

We helped Stephanie navigate the bus back to the city and ended up visiting the Rockefeller Center tree with them, since I missed it last weekend. Apparently we were not the only ones who had this thought - the crowd was crushing. Becky and I played bouncers for the stroller (although of course the biggest risk was probably one of us getting run over by someone else's renegade stroller).

When we'd had our fill of crowd we got some dinner at Five Guys. Yum. And now this blogging effort is making me realize we need to eat out less and eat some real food! Becky and I split off from Stephanie and daughter and revisited Columbus Circle. Still just as magical as previously advertised!

Sunday we stuck around home, cooking, cleaning, and watching movies. Thanks for making homemade rolls, Becky. I'm counting down the days to Christmas vacation! (And yes, Sean, I still need homemade rolls then even though I got some today!) We're now settled in with the ridiculously cheesy yet eternally beloved Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Happy Weekend to All, and to All a Good Night.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas

Last weekend was filled with all kinds of holiday festivities. Becky's mom came to visit us from Wisconsin to enjoy New Yorky Christmas goodness! Sometimes New York can be really obnoxious, but it really is a magical place to be at Christmas time. On Saturday Becky and her mom hit up Christmas markets at Bryant Park and Grand Central, viewed the Macy's windows and the Rockefeller Center tree, and visited the Bronx Botanical Garden Holiday Train Show. Becky and I also went last year, and learned that we probably would have gone much sooner if we had realized it was in fact not really about trains at all. There's an electric train that runs through it all, but the main attraction is all sorts of New York buildings rendered in natural materials.

Unfortunately I missed all of this (and therefore am going to make Becky re-do much of it), but fortunately it was for a good cause. Every year my work has a holiday party on a Saturday in December for all of the families we work with. We work really hard to decorate the gym, and then we have food and music and raffle prizes and of course Santa! It's a lot of work, but it's also fun to see the families in a more relaxed atmosphere and just have fun. I can't post pictures of the families since I don't want to get fired for not protecting people's privacy or anything, but here's a view of the gym before any of the clients arrived.
Afterwords we met up at Columbus Circle to shop the market (although I was running a little late and missed most of this) and view the magic. A few years ago Becky declared that walking through the Shops at Columbus Circle at Christmastime made her feel like she's in a movie, and even though I laughed at her at the time I actually have to totally agree. It's the quintessential mall-at-Christmas, with colorful flashing lights and a cheery holiday soundtrack, and sometimes even a sprinkling of fake snow.
We then enjoyed dinner at Acqua, an Italian restaurant we'd never tried before, and headed home to collapse.

Sunday morning dreary and early we geared ourselves up for a 9 am performance of The Radio City Christmas Spectacular. Apparently it is so popular that on peak weekends they pack six performances into a day. On principle we pretty much refuse to pay full price for theater and we could only find a good coupon for early morning or late evening, so 9am won out. The weather gods decided to pour rain. As a Midwesterner, rain in winter causes a lot of cognitive dissonance for me. But here on the East Coast, rain is known as a normal, if unpleasant, wintertime hazard. Standing on the street in New Jersey waiting for a bus while sheets of rain pour from the sky and 40 mph gusts of wind whip your umbrella around is a distinctly un-Christmasy way to start a day of holiday goodness. By the time we got to Radio City we were more than ready for some hot chocolate. Thankfully, they anticipated our needs and had a stand all set up. I asked Becky if she wanted some, and she jokingly asked if we could buy it and then take it to the bar and spike it. Why yes, in fact the hot chocolate bar will do that for you! Hot chocolate, caramel liquor shots, and fresh whipped cream quickly erased any memory of the out of doors. Our orchestra seats absolutely rocked and the show was full of Christmas wonder.

Next we braved the still-wet out-of-doors for much too long, in order to experience all the deliciousness that Sarabeth's has to offer. Sadly by the time we got seated they were no longer serving the Big Bad Wolf Porridge (or any of the other lesser porridges), but crisp potato waffles with chicken apple breakfast sausages can make up for pretty much anything. Seriously, those things are delicious. And I recently learned that they are not on the menu at Sarabeth's Central Park South location. Isn't that disappointing and odd?

By this time we were a wet and generally exhausted, so we returned to the Jerz for relaxing and Christmas cookie baking. This is Becky's yearly obsession, so perhaps she will regale you with tales from the kitchen. Let's just say, in one afternoon I think she finished off five varieties. Yum.

Weekend Recap

There was no theme of this weekend per say, but we did manage to pack a lot into it! Friday evening Becky's friend Meagan came over to discuss music for our wedding ceremony. Becky whipped up some delicious spaghetti and garlic bread (I'm jealous of summer Fridays!) for us to eat and we busted out some champagne and orange dreamsicle cocktails (the Becky and Carrie signature cocktail??) and ended up having an enjoyable social evening talking about pretty much everything you could think of. By the time we were thinking about bed Meagan realized it was really late to be dragging herself back to Brooklyn alone and decided to crash on our futon. The next morning we continued the music conversation (have I ever mentioned that we're crazy indecisive people, which makes planning a wedding a close to impossible feat?) over pancakes. Yum.

Meagan had hardly left us and we had barely settled into some productivity when who should appear on our doorstep but Kara! Two friends in one day is pretty much unprecedented for New Jersey lepers! We had another nice chat and then sent Kara off on her way to sit in horrible traffic on the George Washington Bridge.

Saturday evening we did something we had never done before. Roller Derby! Spectating, not participating, because we're way not anywhere near hardcore enough to do that. We watched the Bronx Gridlock face off in a bout against the Queens of Pain. In usual Becky-and-Carrie-watch-sports tradition we each selected at random a team to root for at the beginning. I ended up with Bronx Gridlock, while Becky took Queens of Pain. She won, but only because Suzy Hotrod could pretty much eat any of us for dinner. We quickly learned to appropriately use words like "jammer" and "blocker" in sentences, and actually somewhat passionately rooted for our teams. Which is saying a lot, if you've ever watched sports with us (or, you know, read our fascinating live blogging of sporting events). Roller derby is a very random mix of gay, punk, and awkward misfits. You decide where we fit in there.


Sunday we headed the other direction to Six Flags: Hurricane Harbor. It was on our summer to-do list, and we had $10 passes from earlier in the summer when Becky and a friend experienced electrical problems at regular Six Flags. We had a fun day in the end, but let's just say I wouldn't go if you don't have $10 passes. As best I can tell proximity to the ocean is inversely related to quality of a water park. Hurricane Harbor staff could learn a lot about efficiency, cleanliness, and friendliness from Noah's Ark staff. At one point we waited forever to be allowed to put our tube in the water while listening to a SEATED lifeguard complain about how the waterslide we were not choosing to go on was better. Then, when our tube was stuck the lifeguard didn't bother to get up and instead let a little kid behind us in line get off of his tube and come push us off and yell "have fun!" after us. We also probably stood in line for about an hour at one family tube ride because they didn't have enough tubes so the line had to stand and wait for tubes to come up the conveyor belt, the staff were only loading one tube at time, and it took approximately 5 minutes to load because of all the needless steps the lifeguard created (get in the water to position the tube, get out, unhook the chain, let us through, re-hook the chain, get in the water to hold the tube, allow us to get in...). The wave pool was only 5 feet deep, had no tubes, and was about as packed as a mosh pit. Not to mention, we had to pay $17 for a locker that we opened only at the beginning and end of the day, and we decided to pass on food once we saw that a single Italian sausage cost $9. I think the only reason we ended up actually having a really good time was that we got to go on 5 or 6 slides right in a row at the end of the day as the park was clearing out. Plus, the next door KFC was cheap and deliciously fried.

However, as Becky noted on facebook or twitter or whatever she was doing while I was driving, the fabulous Noah's Ark is a sixteen hour drive. Guess that'll have to wait for another summer.

Weekend 'o Fun

This was a lovely summery weekend! Playing outside makes me seriously wish I was a teacher looking forward to two months of this, but I guess I have to just appreciate what I do have. Friday night we finished watching Nurse Jackie and then Valentine's Day while Becky threatened to die of a cold. Saturday we woke up and the weather forecast said 90 degrees and sunny so we took off for the shore! We're both scared of sand in our cameras and leaving valueables on the beach while we swim, so sadly there are no pictures from this adventure. But rest assured, we conqured waves for hours, ate too much delicious Nagle's ice cream (but they were out of their flavor of the day - chocolate cake better!), and made our feet hurt from wandering on the boardwalk too long. I seriously can't believe how far the Asbury Park boardwalk has come since we first started going there a few years ago. Where once we tried Taylor Ham at a rundown beach grill with one table, now there are fancy restaurants. We planned/schemed/dreamed of our upcoming shore vacation with my family. At one point Becky commented "I hope everybody else has as much fun as I plan to have." Me too!

Today we headed the other direction into New York. We went to Governor's Island for the Veuve Clicquot Polo Match, featuring His Royal Highness Prince Harry (last name, Windsor, as Google tells us - who knew?). By far the highlight of the day was when the prince fell off his horse just in front of where we were standing. He laughed it off and climbed right back on while the crowd cheered excitedly. That's him in the white outfit walking up to the horse. Apparently the crowd around us knew about as much about Polo as we do, since we overheard them asking each other things like "how do they score a goal?"

Unfortunately the weather was just as hot and sunny as Saturday, but with no swimable beach in sight. We asessed our finances and determined that we are a bit too poor to enjoy the $70/bottle champagne being served. $3 bottled water seemed overpriced but do-able. Except that one cafe, two food stands, and a hot dog cart were all. sold. out. Seriously people? Did you not anticipate high demand for water on an island with no potable drinking water in 90-degree sun? We eventually did find something cool to drink, but not before we'd ruled out bike riding as a viable activity for the day. We'll have to go back another weekend, especially since the vendors seem to have vastly increased the amount and variety of bikes available for rent! 6-person surrey bikes seemed to be the Sunday activity of choice for several Orthodox Jewish families visiting the island. Come July and we'll be hauling Jen and Sean and Matthew and Thomas on an Asbury Park surrey bike!

Although we were tired and hot, we did decide to swing by the NYC Pride festival on the way home. Sadly I think we missed most of the free stuff and hadn't had nearly enough alcohol (aka none) to make it a good time. But here's some photographic proof anyways.


Back at home we enjoyed a relaxed dinner and a movie. Goodnight weekend, we'll miss you bunches.

Toddlers Do New York

This weekend we were honored with a visit from Jen, Sean, Matthew, and Thomas. Saturday we packed ourselves up and braved the bus ride into the city. Babies' first bus ride, complete with mommy singing the wheels on the bus! We visited the Central Park Zoo, which had lemurs and penguins but none of the other animals featured in the movie Madagascar. I guess you can't believe everything you see in the movies. Thomas seemed to like the penguins best, both boys liked the bats, and the whole experience was somewhat overstimulating all around.

While we were at the zoo we heard a clock ringing, and looked up to see this very cool clock with metal animal sculptures holding instruments. Becky commented, "I think that clock is famous or something." And so we did what you do when being touristy and viewing something famous - took several pictures. Here's one picture of mommy and baby kangroos playing French horns.






We then traveled back to the lovely New Jersey and visited a playground with tons of cool fountains not too far from our neighborhood. I've been wanting to go to this place since I first saw it from the bus, but apparently it's really sketchy to go to a kids playground as an adult without any children.







I still think it probably would be/will be more fun with somewhat older kids, but it was still enjoyable to do with the nephews. In keeping with their personalities, Matthew wasn't so sure at first, but Thomas jumped right in. Matthew finally got in to it when he found a Matthew-sized water fountain - aka the somewhat broken, smallest fountain in the park that none of the big kids were interested in.

For dinner we dined at a delicious recently-opened local Indian restaurant. Matthew and Thomas trashed the place while the adults tried to enjoy conversation and tastiness. Exhaustion was had all around and no photos were taken. We continued to screaming overtired babies, Asti drinking (21 lbs and over), and a viewing of the Princess and the Frog.

Sunday morning Jen and Sean packed up and all of us headed to Father's Day at The Edible Garden exhibit of The New York Botanical Garden.

We wandered the park, ate some tasty but excessively expensive BBQ, putzed in the children's exhibit, and attempted to watch a butcher demonstration. Sadly though the presenters declared it "too hot" to butcher a pig. Alas.









And here are the boys with their favorite aunties (note how Thomas is reaching into my shirt and Matthew is tiredly attempting to blow raspberries at the camerawoman - aka Auntie Becky):