My POV

When it rains it pours. Which is why you get two lovely posts from us today and not just one.

First of all, a funny comment from Becky regarding her new Etsy addiction. "What I need right now is a "not ugly" search. But apparently that's sort of subjective."

We've had yet another lovely weekend around here, this time bidding farewell to a wonderful summer. Friday we braved a hurricane to attend a Brooklyn Cyclones game, which turned out to be a lot of fun. I noted to Becky that baseball is the one and only sport that I can actually watch and generally understand without asking her a lot of inane questions about the rules. This led us to the general realization that one of us (Becky!) is going to have to get a bit smarter about sports before we have a child. We contemplated our usual tactic of each choosing a team to root for, but decided that the song commanded us to root root root for the home team, and so we did. A good thing too, since they won. Fireworks were sadly canceled due to "high winds" from the aforementioned hurricane (aka a few clouds in the sky and a slight breeze).

And here's a picture of an eerily glowing Nathan's hot dogs (where we stopped in after the game... apparently the only way to make Nathan's prices look reasonable is to buy food when trapped in a sports stadium.) I admit, the creepy glow is an element of the photo and not representative of reality. But it looks pretty cool.

Saturday we had a picnic in Central Park with our friend Stephanie and her one year old daughter, who has mysteriously turned into a preschooler while we were looking the other way. I'm tempted to post pictures, but I think it's bad internet karma to post pictures of other people's children without their permission. Trust me when I say she's adorable. From there we did some clothes shopping (including a dress that Becky might wear for the legal wedding! And, by the way, being two women makes it very complicated to select clothing because for EVERY event related to this wedding we have to have the debate about making our clothes look good together but not be matchy matchy and be balanced in terms of formality and femme-y-ness and style and...), and then headed to a housewarming party for Kara and Joe's new place. Much jealousy for living facing Central Park!

Sunday.. I guess Sunday we did a lot of boring stuff. But we did watch a movie - Ghosttown - which I rated as "pretty good" and Becky deemd "disappointing." And then today I guess you already read about in Becky's post. So really I guess the excitement was Friday and Saturday. To make up for it, I'll leave you with a picture of us at the beach last weekend, since I obviously never got around to regaling you with stories of beachy goodness.

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.