another productive day

for me that is. i can't say how joe's was. but i do know that he was very excited this morning when he didn't have to leave until about 9:45. he had a meeting at his job site that is on our street about 5 blocks down.

for once i was up before him! i had an interview/meeting at CGR/seven. its basically a staffing agency that focuses only on jobs in the creative industry. they do freelance as well as permanent placement in positions. the woman i met with, Rita, was great. we went through all of my work and she got a feel for the type of job i'd like. hopefully she finds me one soon!! i'm getting tired of staying home all day -- yes, i know, but it is possible.

also today i updated my online portfolio. so everyone should check it out. you can leave comments on any of the images.

yesterday when we were out we took some more photos of the neighborhood:


this is a view down the "main drag" of our neighborhood, Bedford Avenue.


this is the Bedford Cheese Shop. an entire store of cheese! i have yet to patronize this establishment but hope to soon.


and this is probably the busiest intersection of the area, Bedford and North 6th Street. On the left corner is the awesome restaurant/coffee shop Blackbird. and look mom and dad, kids! yes, our neighborhood does have kids and families everywhere. please also note the absolutely adoooorable puppy in the little jacket. this is also a common site on Bedford. City pups may not have grass to poo on, but they sure have style!

a dress, a mirror, and books

this is my dress for jess' wedding. yeah!! it fits and everything, right out of the box. i think i'll just need to get it pressed. and finally a picture of the mirror. isn't it GINORMOUS!


with my gift certificate to The Strand Bookstore i bought these 2 wonderful books. Woman in the Mirror is a book of photographs by Richard Avedon. they are these great portraits and fashion photos. and then Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events The End. so now i have the whole series!:

my first meringue

so last week i made a banana creme pie from scratch, and topped it with my very first meringue. it was labor intensive, and it was beautiful…for about 5 minutes. until joe comes over and sticks his big finger in it and takes out a chunk (see exhibit A below). i had the previously beautiful pie sitting on the counter next to the sink cooling. then while i was doing the dishes…a catastrophe!! the cutting board fell into a bowl which fell into the glass carafe which fell into the sink and crashed and broke. oops.

joe, hearing the commotion, came out to the kitchen and proceeded to pick up the carafe with the broken glass and shake it over the pie!!!! dropping invisible glass shards into my meringue!!! i said STOP the shaking!!!

so then we had to shave off the top layer of my meringue so we wouldn't ingest glass shards (see exhibit B below)

why.


Exhibit A


Exhibit B

a view of the neighborhood

i've had a request for a little tour of my surrounding neighborhood. so on my way to get coffee this morning i took some photos…


this is my most used corner of the neighborhood. the awning on the left is the store where we go for little things that we need like a can of dr. pepper, or a pint of ice cream, or toilet paper. that kind of stuff. then across the street, the blue awning, is the laundromat we go to.


this is the view out of our bathroom window. a few of our neighbors keep pretty nice backyards. also, this is the scene of my locked out fire escape adventure.


if you were to look out the front window of our apartment and to the right this is what you see. on the closest corner is the small grocery and laundromat. please note the small white puppy with the group of people on the sidewalk. on my way inside i got to pet him!!


and if you look left out the front window this is the view. the yellowish building on the corner is this great french restaurant called Fada. we've only been there to hear music at the bar, not to eat dinner, but i had dessert and it was absolutely delicious. its a bit expensive so we're saving a dinner there for a special occasion.


this is joe yesterday at our front door. he's waiting for me because i have the keys. he's naturally on the phone, a common site, and is holding a coffee and chocolate croissant from Blackbird, this little cafe up the street.


this is the building directly across the street from our building. right now they are fixing the roof, and apparently the plan is to turn it into apartment space.


this is one block away from our place -- the subway station!!


this is the corner opposite the subway picture, and where i got my coffee -- joe's busy corner. they also have a deli counter with sandwiches and salads and things.


and this photo isn't of the neighborhood obviously. this is the typical site when i go to joe's office to meet him for lunch, usually about once a week. that's joe's back on the right, and the cat's name is Pierre. he loves joe. he is always laying somewhere around joe's desk. this time he stayed asleep, but sometimes he gets up and glares at me. he stares me down with looks of hatred because i am taking joe away from him. he doesn't like me, and thats just fine. i don't like him either -- i'm allergic to cats.

new things

so we picked up the huge ginormous mirror last night. a picture will be up soon. joe wants to wait until he makes it level, none of our floors are level and everything has to be shimmed.

but i also picked up our new coffee table today. i must have looked very interesting carrying the huge box down the street by a makeshift handle made of tape. luckily the store was only 3 blocks away and i didn't have to walk down a busy street. so isn't it beautiful? i'm going to go watch some television and enjoy it right now!

traumatic experience

phewww. i had a traumatic experience yesterday. joe was working (on sunday...i know) and i ran up the street to the hardware store to get some 3m hooks to hang my belts on. i was wearing 3 quarter length yoga pants, a t-shirt, and a fleece. then, trauma, i come home an realize: i have no keys and i have no cell phone!!!!!

so after standing in my building's very small little "lobby" for about 5 minutes i decided to go get myself a snack at Sweet Farm, this little sweet shop on Bedford Ave. I got a coffee and a delectable mud pudding.

so that took about 20 minutes. then i went back to my building and stood in the lobby some more. for like, an hour. reading, ironically, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Wide Window. mind you, this lobby is not heated and i was freezing. finally, i decided to look for a hidden key into the building and sure enough, there was one. so after an hour in the unheated lobby i was in to the heated stairwell. i continued to read.

then, after another 45 minutes, our next door neighbor came out, leaving to go to dinner, and she said i could climb out their window and around the fire escape and into our window. i knew that i had left one of the windows open. so i'm out on the fire escape and the window that is unlocked is the one that's not "on" the fire escape, its the one with nothing but three floors of air below. so i opened that one all the way and tried reaching in to unlock the window that was "on" the fire escape. but i couldn't reach.

then i used my awesome skills and used the watering can that we had sitting on the fire escape to reach in and push the other window lock open. then i could maneuver myself in the window and into a nice warm apartment.

anyway. on to other exciting events. on sunday morning joe and i decided to make breakfast. we had bacon, tomato, and red pepper omelets. this is me cooking the bacon. the omelets were delicious, of course.

around 8:00 our FreshDirect order arrived. how exciting. its like magic.


and this is the mirror we are getting on tuesday. one of joe's client's at work can't use it in his new apartment. so we get it for free. a $2,000 mirror! all we have to do is pick it up of course. so we're getting another zip car. this time a tacoma pick-up truck. and joe and i are going to move this mirror up the stairs and into our apartment. it is sure to be an adventure.

a productive saturday

today joe and i got up early and rented our first zip car. it was so exciting. our volvo S40's name was Solana. joe was sooooooo excited to be driving a car with a decent engine. and i must say that when driving around in this city you sometimes need that extra ooomph to prevent getting hit by other drivers. man. i'm glad i don't have to drive.

we went to ikea in elizabeth, new jersey (right next to the newark airport), returned picture frames and light bulbs, and bought some new window treatments. since we went so early it was not neeeearly as insane as the first time we went when i needed several hours afterward to recover from the madness. its like a favorite pastime on a Saturday afternoon is to take your extended family and your crying toddlers to ikea and walk slowly with a large cart.

anyway. this is joe installing the hardware for the windows. i was the manager of the window treatments but i needed help when it came to the actual installation. so joe was the "installer" of the window treatments. and it was quite a production because we had to move the desk...and use the drill...and climb up onto small step ladders... this is when joe claimed that since he is an architect i cannot question anything he is doing that involves the use of a tape measure or level.

so these are our beautiful new shades. (special note: three of the four window panels have since fallen down and need to be reattached.)

we also embarked on a new adventure today. we ordered our groceries for the week from Fresh Direct. They are being delivered tomorrow between 7 and 9. joe got all of his lunch supplies, including boar's head deli meat. i got my yogurts and cinnamon toast waffles, and then we got ingredients for dinner for the week. i will be making 'Country-Style Chicken, Corn, and Lima Bean Chowder with Basil' from the soup cookbook i got for Christmas. I'll also be making 'Lemony Linguine with Shrimp' (from another cookbook) and a honey-herb glazed pork tenderloin (you can buy it ready-to-cook from Fresh Direct!). we're hopeful that we enjoy riding the Fresh Direct train and that it saves us cold walks to the grocery as well as money.

i may be the chef when it comes to dinners, but joe is in charge of the coffee in the morning. it is helping me to wake up and not be such a late sleeper. we've been getting Gimme! Coffee. This week our flavor of choice is the Guatamala blend. i picked it out because we had some time left over with our zippy little zip car and drove over to the coffee shop.

so we again tried the video thing. this time with joe's camera. now i can't figure out how to even get the videos off his camera and onto the computer. the experimentation in that arena continues.

a romantic friday evening

Joe and I went to dinner at Baci & Abracci last night. It was so delicious. We had asparagus wrapped in prosciutto for an appetizer. Joe had Ciopinno, a seafood stew, and I had Pappardelle al ragú d'agnello, pasta with a lamb ragu. yum. oh and we had some Montepulciano wine. this restaurant is about a 10 minute walk from our apartment. it was so so cold. and joe thinks my patagonia hat is not appropriate for public viewing so i had to go sans hat and freeze my little ears off.

so we took several videos of lovely little tours through our apartment and neighborhood, but haven't quite worked out some technical difficulties. they look great on the camera, but then when i bring them onto my computer there is no video--only audio. hopefully we figure that out so you can all see.

below are some photos of our apartment. before and after the unpacking.

now we've got everything pretty much put away except for some clothes that don't really fit anywhere. it should be interesting how we resolve this since joe thinks the solution is to get rid of more clothes.


this is right after we finished bringing everything up from the truck. ahhhh!


i'm selecting a recipe to make for dinner. how domestic of me.


our lovely living room


our lovely living room again--note joe's new large tv