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May 31, 2005

Coffee

When Derek tries to say goodbye in the morning, pre-coffee, he's happy to get any response from me at all. Usually it's the least amount of movement I can get away with. Anything I say will be incoherent. Sometimes I think I'm saying something he can understand but find out later (when he calls me at work to make sure I got there) that I didn't actually say anything at all.

Coffee on the way to work is something I don't really know how to do without. If I don't have at least a few sips of caffeine before I get on the train I tend to walk into things, swipe my Metrocard upside down, or attempt to enter the turnstile without swiping the Metrocard at all.

Trying to order coffee in the aforementioned state of consciousness isn't always easy, though. Here's what I've learned.

1) There are many ways of ordering coffee.

I'm not counting the stupid Starbucks ways which are just annoying and pointless. Coffee is coffee. Latte frappe nonsense is just self indulgent. At respectable coffee establishments (delis, carts, diners, anywhere but Starbucks), there's an ancient coffee-ordering code. There is "coffee, regular", "coffee, light and sweet" (cream and sugar), and "coffee, black". I'm not exactly sure what coffee regular is, but I think it involves milk and sugar. It seems logical to abbreviate things this way, since people can't be trusted to handle complicated speech in the morning and they're usually in a rush. But I can't, for the life of me, figure out how to order what I want -- coffee with milk and no sugar -- in a shorter way than I do. The shortest thing seems to be "Small coffee, milk, NO sugar." This is specially engineered so that there will be no additional conversation -- the size and milk and sugar questions should be taken care of, right? Except it is ALWAYS followed by the question,

"Sugar?"

...to which I reply,

"NO sugar."

I still get sugar about 10% of the time.

Am I ordering wrong? Is there a New York coffee ordering code I'm not following? Should it be "coffee not regular"? I could ask someone but I'm afraid they'll mess up my order.

Once I saw a man come into a deli and say, decisively, "Coffee." I was amazed when the deli guy didn't ask for clarification. He just got the man some coffee. What kind, I have no idea, but it was impressive. This is what I aspire to.

2) A coffee vendor who remembers what kind of coffee you want from day to day is priceless.

There was a coffee cart guy on Lafayette and 2nd who always knew exactly what I wanted and didn't screw it up. Even if his line was ten people long I would wait. Nothing beats not having to be alert enough to monitor the coffee-making process for added sugar.

These days, I go to the same damn place every single morning and order the exact same thing. I see the same guy behind the counter -- there's never a line -- and he always looks at me like he's knows me but has no idea what I might order. So I say my usual "regular coffee, milk, no sugar," except it's sort of slurred because I'm still waking up, so it's "regulacofeemilk NO sugar", which, as custom demands, is occasionally followed by "You said sugar or no sugar?" at which point I wake up and clarify things because I despise sweet coffee. Even so, I get sugar once a week and don't find out until I'm just far enough away that I can't take it back.

3) You must seek out a coffee vendor of minimal chattiness.

Few coffee sellers in this city have the skill and finesse to negotiate my morning mood, make the right kind of coffee, and complete the transaction without ruining my morning altogether. Coffee vendors who like to strike up conversations before noon must be avoided. I really like the coffee at Dizzy's and I'm willing to endure a line for it, but when the guy there started to recognize me every day and make conversation I had to give it up. The coffee transaction is a ritual. You say something, they get coffee, you pay, you leave. This is necessary because a) my mood is pretty nasty before coffee and b) I'm late for work. I don't want to offend the coffee guy by being a bitch but it's unavoidable if he tries to be friendly. I really, really, really don't feel like talking about where I went on vacation or what the weather's like. I'm just there for coffee, okay?

4) Cheap coffee is good coffee.

Starbucks coffee is like burnt coffee with half the caffeine removed. The 15-word orders and the acrobatics the Starbucks people do behind the counter with the steamers and whatchamacallits are unnecessary. The coffee at the deli is good stuff. It's fresh, it's cheap, it works. Fancy schmancy crowded chains weren't meant to be part of the non-morning-person's routine. Avoid them.

Posted by csageday at 11:42 PM | Comments (3)

May 27, 2005

Curiosities

A few interesting things I've come across lately.

Joe produces modern art in the museum of the same name.

Someone has configured their many-button mouse to perform gmail functions.

Fairway does have persnickity service.

I can't wait to go to Habana Outpost, where there's solar power and composting and eco-friendly packaging and a bicycle blender.

There's an old-fashioned showdown going on in the blogosphere.

Here's a good illustrated short history of the gorgeous, shiny, dressed-for-the-oscars Chrystler building, which is celebrating an anniversary.

Have a great long weekend!

Posted by csageday at 01:51 PM | Comments (0)

TV Culture

I stopped by the Time Warner Center this evening and found tourists swarming around various Time Warner TV exhibits. Sets from Friends and Seinfeld are reproduced on two floors and costumes from various prime time shows are scattered about the hallways. The whole thing is sort of creepy and corporate -- the same way that tours of CNN studios or talk show sets seem like big ads. You start to wonder if the tourists realize that they are paying to see the real version of something that's not real in the first place. The out-of-towners were eating it up, though. One over-eager twenty something was gleefully quoting from episodes of Friends while taking pictures of Joey and Chandler's leather armchairs (omigod!!). I almost puked. I thought a picture of this group of friends taking pictures of the Friends set might be interesting -- perhaps a little silly, though. Still, I found a few interesting subjects for my Flickr-induced photo frenzy. Here they are (click to see the larger sizes).

On an entirely different note, I was looking at the Time Warner Center site and noticed a curious photo of the bronze sculpture. The male one with the, um, appendage? There seem to be a few first graders hanging off of it here (here's a direct link).

Posted by csageday at 01:34 AM | Comments (1)

May 25, 2005

Flashback (oops)

I touched base with an old friend today via email and sent along my blog URL, which is becoming a habit (skip the long email -- send the blog!). When I got a reply I realized my clever friend, looking for some other clue about what the hell I've been up to in the past 10 years -- the blog, though entertaining at times and full of great plumbing advice, is not heavy on facts about me -- removed the "/blog" part of the URL. Unfortunately, this reveals the rather uninspired 2001 "online Christmas card" I put up three-and-a-half years ago.

I probably should have figured out that enterprising blog readers might go hunting and find vestiges of bad design and photography from my past. Oh well. At least I look younger in those photos. Anyway, it's fixed. Now, you can go to an exciting new About Me page and learn all about me. In total, you can learn my name, relationship status, and location. I can't think of anything else to add. I'm not very interesting. You can also visit my Flicker site. And as an added bonus, there's a particularly strange photo of Derek and me from last week -- it's the only recent photo of the two of us that's sort of passable (well, not really. I look like a Stepford wife. I might have been drunk.).

With that out of the way, maybe I'll be able to find myself a domain name instead of mooching off the family site. bluesage-dot-anything isn't an option, although cindyday.net is available. Kinda lame, though. Suggestions are welcome.

Update: The photo was just too weird. I updated it. Now Derek looks drugged, but it's my blog.

Posted by csageday at 12:47 AM | Comments (0)

May 24, 2005

Flickr Update

I just uploaded a few more photos to my Flickr page. Since the first go-round I've learned a few things.

1. It's best to upload the high resolution versions of photos (thanks Tony)
2. You can list other Flickr people as contacts (again, thanks Tony)
3. Flickr can extract more information that I knew existed about each photo -- time, date, focal range, camera, whether the flash was used and if so whether it was on auto mode...
4. You can track how many people view each photo, and whether they marked any as favorites
5. Random people leave comments!

Posted by csageday at 02:12 AM | Comments (0)

The Force of Nostalgia Is Strong In This One

Oh, George Lucas. Horrified as I am by the awful love scenes, I can't help but smile like an idiot when I see "Lucasfilms" and then ... after a pause ... the huge STAR WARS taking up the whole screen with that opening music and receding into the starry background, followed by the scrolling story and inevitable pan down to a droning ship. I am a geek at heart. These things appeal to me. Especially when plot lines developed over decades are finally resolved.

We saw Episode III at the Ziegfeld tonight (the PROPER place to see such a movie) with a huge tub of popcorn and hundreds of other people. Cliche after cliche should have worn us down but there's something to be said for Jedi fighting -- no matter how bad the dialogue is or how much of the plot is borrowed -- those robes and light sabers are awesome. And it's a damn good story.

The audience tended to laugh at the goopy stuff -- Annakin-Vader's "Nooooooo!!!!", for instance, and the soap opera love scenes (I could barely watch it was so embarrassing). The nostalgic tie-ins to other episodes were satisfying -- Chewbakka makes an appearance, twins are stashed on separate planets, yoda speaks bad English, epic battles are fought. And of course, Darth Vader gets his famous headgear, at which point I had a vivid flashback to Space Balls and Dark Helmut ripping it off and saying, "I can't breath in this thing!"

Posted by csageday at 02:03 AM | Comments (0)

May 23, 2005

Tossed and Found: A Good Yarn

My advance apologies for 1) the bad puns in the title and 2) another post devoted entirely to yarn.

Derek and I took a walk around the neighborhood this evening and made an interesting discovery. It's that time of the week when large trash items -- cabinets, tables, chairs -- are on the sidewalk, so we were keeping an eye out for any salvageable items. I checked out an iron-wrought bench and then checked out some boxes near 7th Ave and 15th St. On closer inspection of the boxes, I found old tapes, a vase, and ... bags and bags of fabric and yarn. I noticed one circular needle and some decent yarn and got excited (good yarn can be pretty expensive). I found a needle measurement thing and probably squealed. I started grabbing skeins I thought I could use. Eventually I grabbed one entire bag. I thought, if I can't use it I can donate it all to Church of Craft.

Since Derek knows what I'm like in a yarn store (or any store, really) -- I stand in one spot for minutes on end, staring at two types of yarn, paralyzed by indecision -- he suggested picking up all the bags and sorting through it at home. The stuff looked pretty clean and dry so I agreed. There's always a hazard to bringing other people's junk home, but if we hadn't done that I would probably still be hunched over the pile on the curb. On the way back we speculated that someone had probably died and the person's yarn stash and fabric had ended up on the street after no one was interested in it.

At home, I unloaded hank after hank of good wool yarn. The labels are pretty dated -- everything seemed to be at least two decades old. The knitter clearly had a tweed phase, and some interest in Norwegian wool at one point. There were also some unfinished projects -- the start of a pretty odd-looking (though impressively knitted) cardigan, and the front and back of a child's sweater. The fabric was a combination of some godawful retro patterns (almost cool in their 70s ugliness) and some good quality tablecloth stuff. There was some complicated red silk fabric that could work as an elaborate kimono, and a mishmosh of shiny nylon and felt.

As the pile of usable yarn (in other words, the yarn that wasn't involved in the huge primordial knot I found in one bag) grew, and a number of "moth proof" labels appeared, I considered the worst possible explanation: the whole treasure trove was moth-infested. Since everything looked like it was in good shape, though, I repressed the thought and charged ahead. Still, the threat to my current, expensive yarn stash isn't something I was comfortable with.

Eventually I took a break and sat down somewhere. When Derek came over to see how I was doing, we both noticed something deeply disturbing on my wool sweater: a moth larvae casement. A yellow one (no, I'm not posting a picture). I'm still in a state of shock. From what I hear from other yarn hoarders, moths invade your house, eat all your clothes, cause tremendous heartbreak by destroying handknit objects and NEVER LEAVE. There are things you can do -- boil, freeze, bleach, dry clean, iron -- but they're not guaranteed.

I immediately headed for the computer -- after carefully removing the disgusting little thing -- and looked up moths. Since the casement is not white, it may not be the type of moth that eats wool, so I'm settling into a kind of mild denial. I'm hoping it's the food kind -- a kind of moth we've come to know and kill regularly in the kitchen. The food kind doesn't even like wool. So we're good. But the timing was a bit too coincidental. It appears on my sweater right after I sort through five bags of yarn?

So all of the found yarn is back in bags and may be carted back to the curb tomorrow morning. Someone else can take the risk, damnit. I mean, the yarn wasn't THAT great. Ugh. Then again, it may just stay in quarantine for a while.

Posted by csageday at 12:20 AM | Comments (1)

May 20, 2005

Flickr

I finally joined the rest of the blogging universe and tried out Flickr. I just got tired of exporting my photos from iPhoto and then running search-and-replaces to fix the HTML.

Flickr lets you upload photos, label them, add descriptions, and show them to the rest of the world for free (there's a 20MB/month upload limit, but if you resize and optimize your photos beforehand that's not too bad). Best of all, Flickr, unlike Ofoto and other photo-sharing services, doesn't require a username and password from people trying to see your photos. It's also very blog friendly.

There's an "Organizr" feature, but so far it seems to be allergic to both of the browsers I use on the Mac (Firefox and Safari) -- probably because my OS is a little out of date. Or maybe it's a Mac issue. Here's my first Flickr "set" of photos, taken last Saturday at Sebago (we're doing some construction -- more on that when I get around to writing an entry about Sebago, my favorite Brooklyn canoe club. Yes, canoe club. Go to the website.).

Posted by csageday at 01:20 AM | Comments (1)

May 17, 2005

The New York Public Library

After a picnic in Bryant Park on Sunday we ended up at the main branch of the New York Public Library on a whim (well, actually, we were looking for a bathroom and pretended to be interested in the Before Victoria exhibit). I had tried to do research there once when I was writing my thesis at NYU but wasn't allowed in with my backpack, so it's one of those New York institutions -- like the top of the Empire State Building -- that I have never seen.

It is gorgeous. Everything is made of marble or mahogany and it has a very quaint, Ivy League feel. Most of the signs look like this (with engraved letters filled in with gold paint). The doorways and ceilings are elaborately decorated. Even the fire hoses are beautiful. The Rose Reading Room wasn't exactly what I expected -- I had imagined less wood and more blue in the ceiling, but if anything it was more impressive. I love old, traditional roman architecture and I especially love old libraries. My grandmother had a collection of books from around 1875 -- all of Dickens, all of Jane Austen, etc. -- that filled up a wall of dark shelves in her living room. It always made me want to grab one of the books and start reading in an armchair nearby.

The logistics of the NYPL are still a bit of a mystery to me. There are flat screen terminals for CATNYP everywhere, and I think you can request to see a given book from downstairs and read it upstairs, but the architecture made it all a bit intimidating. We saw some fantastic Charles Addams sketches upstairs in a hallway, though, and took a look at a Gutenburg bible and a globe from 1510 that was missing North America. Oh, and the bathrooms were nice, too. :)

Posted by csageday at 01:44 AM | Comments (0)

Parking is a Nightmare in Park Slope

I brought my car into the city last week and have been reacquainted with the ordeal of Parking The Damn Car. The car spends its winters in New Jersey, in a nice secluded driveway where there are no street cleanings, no traffic cops, no drive-by sideswipes, and no auto thefts, and where my father -- a True Friend to All Automobiles -- keeps it from falling apart. In the summer, I keep it in the city so I can go upstate and get to Sebago without taking three trains and a bus.

When I first started keeping my car in the city I was happy to have it but astounded by the ritual of parking -- and the incredible lengths that people take to park their cars. I have watched someone drive FOUR BLOCKS in reverse, slowly, following some movie-goers leaving the theater and heading to their car. I have see people "steal" spots by squeezing into a spot from behind while someone else who has been waiting, with their turn signal on, to parallel park (this usually results in a loud confrontation). I have ripped my own side mirror off my car while backing up too quickly to grab a spot that opened up half a block behind me. I have scotch-taped a car-shaped note "Park me!" note to Derek's toothbrush. I've been in bed, lights out, when I've remembered that I need to park the car that night or the following morning. We have an iPhoto Album called "Parking Ticket" from an unsuccessful attempt to fight a ticket with evidence. And last but not least, my car was pretty badly sideswiped while parked in Windsor Terrace. I like to think that the residents knew I was using their neighborhood for parking and decided to send me a message. It was probably a renegade car service, but the aura of a very competitive, possibly Mafia-controlled parking hierarchy persists in my mind.

Anyway, my first summer of parking was 2003, and I was so frustrated and amazed that I wrote up what I was going through. It was a pre-blog blog entry. If you're a parking junkie and want to share my pain, read on. If you have any insider advice, share it, will you? It's pretty long, though -- I'll forgive you if you skip this one.

Parking, from September 2003

I have just returned from moving my car to a new parking spot, 3 avenues and 3 blocks away from my apartment. Finding the spot took a half an hour, since I am a novice and don't know this business well enough to scout quickly. I still have to squint at the signs on each block to see which day they have to be cleaned. I know the basics now, which is much more than I knew a few months ago.

I know here is a charmed time -- the early evening, in which prime spots can be had right on my block. There are other charmed times that are unpredictable, unless you're really good, and always seem to happen just after you've parked your car a mile away and walked uphill for a good ten minutes.

I know that summer is easier than any other season, and that parking at night at the end of a long weekend can be impossible. I know that if I'm too close to a hydrant, or do anything else wrong, I will get a ticket. I know how expensive these violations are. I know where the hydrants and driveways are on my block, and a couple of neighboring ones.

I know to go directly to the Mon/Tues areas if I need something on Thursday night. I know where spots can be found on Friday morning, and I know to look around the corner for garbage trucks on narrow blocks before turning into them in the morning. I know a little about etiquette -- if you see someone leaving, turn the blinker on and get behind the spot, leaving them room to exit. Grab it as soon as possible. Park close to the curb. Lock the club onto the back of the steering wheel, because it's harder to saw that way (possibly a novice habit, as I've already stopped doing that). Don't park near to auto mechanic garages. Avoid: the park, questionable blocks, below 4th avenue. Go south if you're in a pickle.

If you're hopeless, there's a parking garage on 11th and 8th Ave. I have not used that yet and would probably consider parking in a completely different neighborhood and taking the train home, or parking in a spot that's only good for a few hours, before forking over the cash they ask for. I can't say that for sure, though. If I were tired enough I might do anything. Looking for parking is such a monotonous, frustrating, pointless, mind-numbing task.

Another bit of knowledge I've gained: There is an elite force of parking veterans in each Brooklyn neighborhood. The owners of brownstones, if they don't have their own driveway, seem to have a secret system that I have not cracked. First, they always have spots on their block. Second, someone will double-park their car while the street-cleaner goes by, so they can grab the space as soon as it's legal again. I don't know yet whether the owners themselves do this or whether they hire a parking guru that only owners know about, but I have a feeling that know-how and money are involved. They're all in on it together, somehow. Perhaps there are parking posses -- a group on my block, for instance. The grumpy men in the building across the street have probably been doing this for decades. A few long-time resident families probably control most of the spaces on the block.

For a while, there was a deep hole in the pavement across the street, toward 7th Avenue, which I guessed was related to plumbing reconstruction. It was surrounded by flimsy sawhorse-things, and I normally wouldn't have given it any thought, except that a parking space opened up just behind it while I was waiting for one (another tactic I've developed -- double park and be patient until something opens up -- which can be infuriating because you can't read or you'll miss it, and you can't listen to the radio or the battery might go dead, and if you're in a rush, the block will show no sign of movement). Suddenly, as I pulled into position, close to the hole, I realized that I could easily lodge a tire in the hole if I misjudged the delicate art of pulling the front end in while parallel parking. So I let Derek do it, and he parked rather far away from the actual hole, which was fine my me. I checked the car a couple of times during that week and noticed that space had opened up behind the car as well. I thought of moving the car on the way to work one morning, but decided against it because I'd have to undo the Club and I was in a rush. A bad decision, apparently. When I finally got into the car to move it, I noticed a little white, handwritten note on my windshield. It started with "Please", but the handwriting seemed to suggest that it wasn't meant to be all that polite. It said "Please be kind enough not to take up 2 parking spaces!!" I felt miserable, as if I had been banished forever from the club of savvy parkers. I wanted to explain about the chasm that prevented parking too close, or explain that I wasn't the one who parked it, so it wasn't really my fault ... but I knew my excuses were pathetic. Especially when I saw cars parked up right against the barrier around the hole for the rest of the week.

When I first kept my car in the city for a week, I was thrilled. A car meant that we could go anywhere -- upstate, cross-country, to parts of Brooklyn not listed on the subway map. It meant I could buy furniture and transport it home myself -- or take laundry to someplace other than the godawful Russian establishment nearby, or go that big Queens shopping center for kicks. At first, it was an illicit pleasure, something that my father didn't want me to do because, as he explained to me in detail, the car was insured as a "garage car" in New Jersey that was only used during weekends and vacations (it had Jersey plates). If it got stolen or into an accident, the insurance company might somehow find out (how?) that it had been staying in Brooklyn and they could refuse coverage. I heard this argument constantly while I kept the car in the city over the summer (easy parking season) and finally got my act together to get it registered in New York (quite an ordeal). The plates were switched upstate, where we submitted all the paperwork (easier than doing it in the city) and I felt duly proud of my New York plates. Now maybe the traffic cops would treat me differently! Now maybe I wouldn't get those notes from my neighbors! Now my aggressive driving would seem authentic.

I'm still clueless about the nuts and bolts of owning a car, but I did get the thing inspected and made sure the sticker was in the windshield where it was supposed to be. At least I thought I did. I didn't realize there were supposed to be two stickers, so I got a nice $55 ticket less than a week after changing the plates. Nice little welcome-to-the-club gesture from the traffic cops.

I'm not sure this romance with having a car in the city will work out. I cannot seem to remember when I need to repark the car. I'm not used to having this extra member of the family. I need freedom but it might end up making me feel a little less free in the long run. Right now, I rely on Derek to remind me to repark -- if it weren't for him it would have been towed last week. And would be tomorrow. I have "MOVE CAR" stickies on my alarm clock and mirror, but they have lost their urgency. I need a method. This may get easier with time and it may not. We'll have to wait and see.

Posted by csageday at 01:07 AM | Comments (1)

May 12, 2005

People Who Run

I know a couple of People Who Run. Rob runs obscene distances every week. This in addition to holding down a job. He has placed well in the Chicago Marathon twice and recently took a shot at Boston. This is a recent running chart:

Yes, a hundred miles per week. Over-achiever. Ambitious.

Rose is a new runner working up to the NYC marathon this fall and making great progress. Via her blog, Miles of Yarn, I found this description of a marathon and was sort of horrified and intrigued. Marathonning is most definitely scary. Rose is brave.

Derek runs the loop in the park WITHOUT STOPPING every couple of weeks, which I find extremely impressive because of the big, long hill in the middle of it. D has a heart-monitor doohicky and does special stretching things afterwards.

I, on the other hand, am not a Person Who Runs. It is a painful activity, and aside from that ostensible but not-really-measurable cardio gain and those fabled endorphins, I don't really have a compelling reason to punish myself in this way. I did the Prospect Park loop once without stopping but I did it at more of a shuffle than a run. When I'm out there, I enjoy the park and finishing the loop -- even if I walk half way -- is always gratifying. I just can't get myself out there more than a couple of times a year.

Still, since I joined a gym a month ago I have been trying out the treadmill. Running with TV is a unique experience. I didn't watch much TV as a child, so when you put me in front of a TV my mouth will drop open slightly, my eyes will glaze over, and I'll be uninterruptible unless physically proded. I never learned to tune it out -- I am completely engrossed by the magic glowing box with the little people in it. TV shows, no matter how bad they are, can draw me in and make me completely lose track of time. So combining the dreary treadmill running with the TV is brilliant. I am hypnotized just enough to forget the annoying physical reality of running and can make it through a mile without stopping. Here's my mileage (if you can call it that):

Oh, and the little comments Rob has? Mine would go something like this:
4/15 15 minutes impossibly hard torturous horrible
4/20 22 minutes god when will it stop?!?
5/8 20 minutes tv good. don't know what watched.
5/10 no idea on time. tv. might have drooled. running sucks.

Here's the kicker. Right after the day I managed to run one-AND-A-HALF miles on the TV-aided treadmill I got an email about the 5k Corporate Challenge at work. The email mentioned the option to walk the whole way. I thought... 1.5 miles, 3 miles, walking, evening, Central Park -- well, that sounds nice. I figured someone I'd know would sign up, so I added my name to the list.

The registration process gave me a hint of things to come -- I signed up quickly and only realized when I got to the confirmation page that I had spelled my name wrong. Yes, my name. And yes, there was a "Review your information" page that I clicked through. I spelled both my first and last name wrong. Cubdt Dat instead of Cindy Day. There must have been something horribly wrong with me that day. I had to email a guy at JP Morgan or whatever to get it fixed. Humiliating.

Then, today, I got an email that mentioned "practice runs" and "headbands" and cc'd a lot of people I didn't know. Images of Richard Simmons danced through my head. Then Jane Fonda in spandex. What have I gotten myself into??

Posted by csageday at 11:52 PM | Comments (5)

Dean Sage House

My great-great-grandfather's house showed up on Brownstoner today. I was so excited that I posted a gushy, self-indulgent comment immediately. It's very cool that I have ancestors who lived in the same borough, though. Don't know too much about them, but isn't that house gorgeous? I know Henry Sage (father of Dean) grew up in boarding houses, made a ton of money on lumber in Albany, and gave a lot of money to Cornell to start a women's college and build a chapel. I should probably do some due diligence and find out what Dean did in Brooklyn.

Update: Henry Sage moved to Brooklyn because of "constantly expanding business interests...in 1857". There's a biography of him collecting dust somewhere. Another descendent actually went to Cornell for undergrad and asked a question about Henry on the Cornell website. Also, "Henry W. Sage was a 'warm friend' of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn." My liberal roots run deep!

Posted by csageday at 05:23 PM | Comments (0)

May 10, 2005

In a Huff

The Huffington Post launched today. First impression: It's like a whole bunch of famous people are at a cocktail party and they're tipsy enough to start talking about their favorite subject.

Posted by csageday at 02:08 AM | Comments (0)

May 09, 2005

Clog: The Sequel

We thought our plumbing adventures were over after sucking up two decades' worth of sink drainage, but no such luck. When we got home after work the next day I found two things: 1) there were some suspicious-looking, recently-regurgitated pipe artifacts in our sink and 2) we had a message on our answering machine from our downstairs neighbors saying there was a leak in their ceiling. (Oops.)

One more thing: The message from our neighbors was left right around the time the brokers were showing the apartment.

Derek went downstairs to apologize and investigate and found out that the leak (surprise, surprise) was right around where our bathroom sink would be. I reluctantly looked under the sink, and found pretty much everything soaked.

So... Did the plunging CAUSE the leak?? Did all of that seemingly productive work completely mess up the pipes? And how?? And more importantly -- what the heck did the real estate people do? Were they inspecting something? Why did the sink leak through the floor when they did something if it didn't when I was plunging for, like, half an hour? How could something this simple be so complicated?

We haven't heard a word from our brokers. Well, actually, we did hear some positive things about a possible sale to people who would be interested in renting to us -- yes! -- at which point Derek really didn't feel it was appropriate to say something like... "you didn't use our sink, did you? Because there's this awful leak..."

Our very nice landlord has promised to send a professional. Until then I'm stuck brushing my teeth using the triangular contraption in Derek's bathroom. And no more plunging.

Posted by csageday at 10:07 PM | Comments (1)

May 06, 2005

Photoblogs and Kid-Sized Bento Boxes

Because Gothamist posted this awesome subway graffiti photo today from joe's nyc, I went on a tour of photoblogs. There are a bunch of fantastic sites out there but after checking out a few I think I like joe's nyc the best -- possibly because of the twins set and the park slope photos. Bluejake has some nice shots of the Cherry Blossom Festival, though.

Next, because someone mentioned moblogs today and I didn't know anything about them, I did a bit of clicking around. Moblogging is updating a site -- with text or a photo -- using a mobile device. It's been around long enough that a moblogging news site (Busy Thumbs) is talking about the next trend -- vlogging (video blogging).

Cell phone photo moblogs (photomoblogs?) seem to be pretty popular. One of the first sites I found was this bento moblog. Go and take a look. There are endless photos of perfectly packaged Japanese/American lunches prepared for this blogger's kids. It's fascinating. Each one is a little work of art -- neatly organized with balanced colors and a complementary food groups. It's full of culinary culture clashes, too. And I love the little sauce containers. There are more things in these lunches than I know how to make -- the variation is impressive. And the kid-sized portions and perfect presentation make these look like little gifts or postcards. This person has transformed an everyday task into a creative exercise. The blog is also interesting because a daily domestic task is something you really can't quantify, but the combination of all the photos on the opening page makes it feel like an accomplishment. Does that make any sense? And damn, these kids eat well. Hopefully the other kids in their lunchroom at school aren't the kind that prize Lunchables and scorn anything they can't pronounce.

Posted by csageday at 01:25 AM | Comments (1)

May 05, 2005

Subway Photography

Patterns appeal to me, and patterns with little irregularities appeal to me even more, so I love subway stations. I always want to document the endlessly repeating iron-wrought gates (with their little embellishments from different eras) or tile designs that accommodate the shape of the tunnel or have been altered by water damage. Usually I'm too shy to whip out my camera -- and my photos usually suck when I do -- but the proposed banning of photography in the subway has given me a push.

So far my technical ignorance has been making things difficult. Things that look beautiful to my naked eye look completely different once they appear on my digital camera screen. The flourescent lighting gives everything a blue tinge that doesn't translate well. Killing the flash helps, but then I need a tripod if I want a non-blurry shot. Here's the best of the bunch so far.

Posted by csageday at 12:24 AM | Comments (1)

May 04, 2005

Clog

Now I know why plumbers make so much money.

If you are easily disgusted by plumbing adventures, skip this post. Really. I don't want to be responsible for any loyal blog readers puking at work.

Ever since we moved in here I've had a temperamental sink. It doesn't like to drain. I always feel bad, because it clearly has digestive issues and there's something plumberish I should be doing to help. Still, I know that if I wait long enough the water will make it down the drain. Tonight, though, it just quit. The sink had had enough. It was crying out for help.

Under the sink, also from when we moved in, there's some scary-looking toxic Draino-type liquid. I've thought about using it a few times but I know it's bad for pipes and horribly bad for the environment, so I avoid it. While browsing through the books at Whole Foods, I came across an eco-friendly home cleaning book and looked up plumbing for kicks. The book recommended using a plunger for clogs. I read the section twice, looking for a solution for a SINK clog, but couldn't find anything. Then I realized that the advice was for any clog -- sink, kitchen sink, toilet, tub. I couldn't exactly bring myself to imagine using the plunger that I pretend doesn't exist in the same sink I use to brush my teeth. So I never tried the cure-all plunger solution. Until tonight. I was desperate.

My newly-finished knitting project needed to be soaked and blocked (stretched into shape), but the sink was dirty. I started to clean it, but found that without any drainage the cleaning wasn't really happening. Derek's sink is this weird flat-bottomed triangular thing with the hot and cold fixtures reversed (even if you KNOW they're reversed it still messes with your head). Out of the question. Tub, no. Kitchen sink, no. I had to do something. So I got the plunger, which is actually kind of new and not disgusting after all, put it in the sink and plunged.

If you ever do this, try to remember that there's a safety drainage thing somewhere else in the sink. If you try to force water through the drain and it won't go -- it WILL come flying out of the safety drain.

Thinking, like an idiot, that one good plunge would undo a year of cloggage, I plunged with confidence. The force of it drove the water straight out of the safety drain and UPWARD, nearly missing my face, and all over the vanity.

The plunging was kind of satisfying, though, because I heard a really disgusting sound and something gray appeared in the sink. Encouraging, no? So I tried it again, and again, and again. I created a little roof over the safety drain with a sponge to avoid the fountain effect and watched as all sorts of stuff came out and into the sink.

The sound and the chunky water was eerily similar to vomiting. I even felt a little queasy. And I have a pretty strong stomach for this stuff. The nauseating thing was that the stuff in the sink was clearly NOT MINE. All I put in the sink is toothpaste and water. There was silver gray stuff at first -- possibly paint from my artist landlord? Slivers of it. LOTS AND LOTS of it. Sometimes it was a little yellow or brown. Then I found a PEBBLE -- but not just any old pebble -- a pebble with bright pink paint on it. Eventually, yellow sand came up. Then cat hair, caulking, possibly kitty litter, human hair, some kind of string, and rust-colored stuff that is hopefully not -- but most likely is -- the inside of the pipe.

At some point I decided I'd had enough plumbing and having that much STUFF out of the pipe meant it would probably drain well enough. Ten minutes of this was heroic enough. There's no reason to endure more than necessary, right? So I grimaced and got the gunk out of the sink. I turned on the water. The sink filled up. No drainage. AT ALL. Despite all of the effort and the stoic endurance of REALLY DISGUSTING stuff, the sink was not cooperating. I realized in complete horror that I had probably just been cleaning the passage between the safety drain and the regular one the whole time. Which, tragically, turned out to be true.

I called in reinforcements. I held the safety drain closed, and Derek plunged mightily. BLACK stuff came up. Derek looked very disturbed. We tried again. It looked like someone might have dumped an entire fish tank in there -- the gunk looked like multi-colored pet store pebbles. During an intermission, I started pulling on some hair poking out and it KEPT GOING. All told, the knotted hair excavated was one-and-a-half-feet long. (Are you still reading??)

The two-pronged attack plan worked. The sink now drains. There's more plunging to do but we're not sure we can take any more of this. We just ate dinner. We both feel sick. And I really won't ever feel quite the same way about that sink again. Which makes me glad that we're going to take a look at a rental tomorrow. Ignorance is bliss, when it comes to your sink's past.

Posted by csageday at 11:44 PM | Comments (5)

May 03, 2005

Sakura Matsuri

The Sakura Matsuri (Cherry Blossom Festival) was held at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden this past weekend and it was gorgeous. The Garden is always perfectly maintained and full of interesting finds, although I always feel a little bitter about not being able to bring a picnic in and enjoy it while sitting on the grass. They're very particular about things and have lots of rules. But as a result the place looks like a royal estate garden and the plants take center stage. If you missed it, take a look at our photos.

Since Saturday was rainy the place was packed on Sunday and there was a bit of a line to get in. True to form, my allergies exploded the moment we were reached the Cherry Esplanade. Sneezing, watery eyes, snot everywhere -- and no Claritin in sight because I had practically no warning (not that it works anyway). They catch me by surprise every year, and every year they get a tiny bit worse. I place all blame squarely on the air quality in the city. Days like today make me think seriously about Derek's preferred solution of eliminating traffic completely from Manhattan.

Anyway, the cherry blossoms were something else -- you can sit underneath them and be completely surrounded by plump pink bouquets. And since the lines for food or beer were ridiculously long and the stage was pretty hard to get to, that's pretty much all we did. I worked on my shawl, Derek read about Argentina and we both sat back and tried to enjoy the sun and assault of pink without succumbing to the floating masses of sneeze-inducing pollen. Dinner at Scottaditto made us feel better afterward -- the $15 prix fix there feels like a steal. The $20 we spent on drinks kind of evened out the price, but it was still a fantastic meal, complete with good coffee and a glass of porto at the end.

Posted by csageday at 12:38 AM | Comments (0)

May 02, 2005

Next Thing You Know I'll Be Baking Apple Pies

Finally, after years of collecting bits of material and old clothes for some vague future use, I've learned to use a sewing machine. I took a sewing class at Church of Craft Saturday, even though it meant missing the season opener at Sebago and getting out of bed before noon on a weekend (I was so tired that I missed the subway stop on the way there and almost ended up in Manhattan). Since I was the only one who signed up it ended up being a private lesson with Mary. This was key for two reasons: 1) I'm a space cadet so I needed the "special attention" anyway, and 2) I got to make a super-deluxe version of the project-of-the-day. The object of the class was to make a knitting needle and crochet hook roll-up case -- mine has 5 needle pockets, 2 DPN pockets, 5 circular needle pockets, and a pocket with a velcro flap for cable needles and stitch holders (!). I know this won't seem thrilling to non-knitters, but this is a killer case, okay?

I signed up mainly because I desperately wanted to learn how to create something using a sewing machine. I love looking at fabric in stores and I tend to want to make skirts and bags with everything I see -- beads, upholstery, ribbon, you name it. Since I only know how to hand-sew and am terminally lazy, things never really progress. I did successfully buy some maroon velour and black fabric and make a shoulder bag once which I was immensely proud of, but since it was all hand-sewn, the thing developed holes at the corners and started to show its age. It also didn't have any pockets or cell phone holders so it wasn't highly practical. The knitting accessory holder I made with Mary yesterday, on the other hand, is FULL of reinforced pockets and properly sewn corners.

Now I'm on a mission to find a good used sewing machine and set up shop on the kitchen table. A set of square red silk couch pillows are next on the list. Then Christmas stockings, and eventually a quilt of some sort ... it's amazing how much this stuff appeals to me. It seems like tedious work -- and not too long ago I criticized someone else for becoming a queen of domesticity and all things Home and Garden -- but my art-class tendencies are making a comeback. Maybe Martha Stewart put something in the water?

Posted by csageday at 01:00 AM | Comments (2)