Since there are tons of NYT Topic pages with RSS feeds on all sorts of subjects, this is pretty customizable. Plus, it's semi-open-to-the-public (in that I'm allowed to post this, and you're allowed to view the source and figure out how to add your own). A widget-building tool will be available to the public soon.

By then, a crowd of NYTers had moved to the 8th floor window, and the construction workers across the street were all gawking. A coworker said it was Alain Robert -- the "climbing guy" who has done other stunts on skyscrapers. Someone said he was wearing climbing shoes and had chalk, but there was no safety equipment. City Room has more.

As we watched (I had to look away a couple of times -- sympathetic vertigo), some police officers arrived on our floor and started putting on climbing harnesses. There was talk of "glass cutting equipment", but Robert started moving again and the police went upstairs (they didn't end up cutting any glass). I hear that people were watching from the cafeteria on 14, and I guess he must have moved pretty quickly because he made it to the top (52 stories) and was arrested by about 12:30.

I headed downstairs just after that and people outside the port authority were confused (did someone jump? he climbed up and he's gonna jump? Was there another crane collapse?). 41st was closed off and there were police and guards everywhere.

Here's a video from someone who works on my floor. No boring days here!

I imagine I'll see someone come to take down the sign eventually. Maybe I should start bringing my camera to work, huh?

Update: ANOTHER person is treating the NYT building like a giant jungle gym. This time, it's on the 8th Ave. side and since it's rush hour, there are throngs of people outside the port authority staring up. This climber's t-shirt says "Malaria". Architectural flaw, perhaps?

These two worlds have also been joined with the fabulous knitting social networking platform that is Ravelry. Right now, I'm making Fetching mitts with Malabrigo yarn, and I've just browsed through pages created by knitters making the same pattern with the same yarn to see whether they used the same needle size, etc. Hurrah for organized, community-improved, online knitting data (with pictures!)! Adding all of my completed projects has also helped me realize that I've made nine (9!) baby hats recently and not much else. Time to branch out...

Montclair is the next town over, and it's mecca for yuppie urbanites who decide they can't take the city and opt for a car and yard. In some ways, it's like a Vegas/Disney version of Park Slope. There's a better analogy out there, but basically, it has many city-worthy amenities while still being, at heart, very Jersey. There are walkable downtown areas. There are roving packs of hoodie'd teens. There are independent bookstores and coffee shops that remind us of the Tea Lounge. There are chic-looking clothing boutiques. There are TONS of restaurants. Some have names like "Soho (something)" or "Uptown" and are just flat out trying too hard. The decor in some is so ridiculous that we started laughing (think armchairs with floor-length slipcovers, mood lighting, elaborate arrangements of branches). Others look worth a try. There is far less pedestrian traffic than you'd see in the Slope, but the stores don't lack for visitors (people just arrive in cars).

Discoveries

1. A Jamaican/Guyanese restaurant on Bloomfield Ave. with great Roti (D's discovery). I think I've tried sorrel drinks before, but the one here was really good. The doubles we had before roti were amazing -- fresh, with a touch of something sweet (mango puree?).
2. THREE yarn stores. One was old-style (acrylic, pastel colors, closing soon), one was new, molded in the Yarn-Harlot tradition of the LYS (familiar with Knitty patterns, seller of snarky tee-shirts about knitting, with a web site and blog), and a third was somewhere in between.
3. A British food import store packed to the brim with things like Marmite and digestive biscuits and Cadbury chocolate. We made a wonderful discovery -- tubes of Rowntree blackcurrant fruit pastilles and ONLY blackcurrant fruit pastilles. Normally you have to suffer through green and yellow pieces before you get the occasional purple one. In Heathrow last year we found bags of just blackcurrant and strawberry fruit pastilles and thought we'd lucked out. This store also sells pies of the savory variety (shepard's, steak & ale).
4. A nice antique shop on Church St. that I prefer over Atlantic avenue versions, simply because of the reasonable prices and great collection of jewelry.
5. A blight of luxury condos (well, at least one). See The Siena. With your order of an overpriced condo, you get a side of Starbucks, a gym, and absurd name and marketing campaign. Not that I didn't have a little inkling of a desire to see what it would be like to live there...but still.
6. A great blog called Baristanet, which chronicles local happenings.

While it's fun to walk around the various downtown areas and shop and eat, my childhood as the kid at the bottom of the social order in the fancy private school there will always follow me around. I went to Montclair Kimberly Academy, where I wore all the wrong clothes and had a bird's nest for a hairdo. I participated in the same popularity contests that I imagine the well-to-do parents of my classmates did. I got a great education (including that exchange program in 7th grade), but a cockeyed lesson in social politics.

As much as I like the revitalized downtown areas on Montclair, I'm wary of people who are going to these silly restaurants to show off their cash -- there's something small-town about that behavior.

Update: If you're not seeing a new image and a black, white, and gray design instead of a green one, hit Shift+Refresh.

The other day, I thought of a practical -- and food-related! -- application. Every few weeks or so, D and I (and occasionally some unlucky friend) decide that we're hungry and want to go out in Manhattan, but can't think of a place to go. We're usually at work, and the indecision can sometimes drag on for over an hour while we browse Chowhound or get sidetracked by food-related videos or whatever. I KNOW there are restaurants we should try -- places I've read about and tried to remember, but for some reason they never come to mind late on a Friday, when this frustrating phenomenon usually occurs. If they do, I can't remember where they are or what they're called. Sometimes we leave work and meet at some neutral place to kick-start the process, but still can't think of anything, and so wander around aimlessly. It's pathetic.

Enter Google maps. If we had all of the restaurants stored in a list and mapped, we could use D's Blackberry to visit it and pick something from the list. This probably exists on a restaurant site somewhere, but it's fun to create your own. At the moment, I've implemented a pretty hack-y version. The places aren't in a database or even in XML (though I have a version of this that does pull from XML, but which is not ready for prime-time yet). Also, the places are all expensive, so when last Friday rolled around and we couldn't think of anything, it didn't help AT ALL. Still, we'll get there. If the novelty doesn't wear off, I'll add a little "Add a restaurant" section which will update my XML or DB or whatever.

Take a look and let me know what you think.

As expected, I've reverted to spending my Sunday entirely in the kitchen, and the blog, as of this post, will revert to the subject of food. It's cold outside, and I'm not ready for the cold, so baking and cooking seem like the best coping strategy. We also have some swank new kitchen things, which are making cooking a little more fun.

I recently saw quince for sale both at the greenmarket and the co-op, and Elise of Simply Recipes happened to post an article about making membrillo (quince paste) at nearly the same time, so I thought I'd have a go at it.

It took over four hours to finish, but came out beautifully. I thought about taking pictures, but Elise has some nice ones, so go there for a look. The fruit smelled wonderful while it was simmering in water, so when the recipe called for draining the fruit, I saved the water it was cooking in and made that into a syrup. It has a lovely flavor and I made it less sweet than the membrillo. It's tempting to drink the stuff straight out of a mug. I'm not exactly sure what to use it for, but it went great with futsu squash we had for dinner.

I also made muffins, which will probably become a weekly event until I gain my winter weight and go back to yogurt in the morning. I wanted to make banana muffins, and thought about using our usual banana bread recipe, but settled on adding some oats and chocolate and trying this recipe with chocolate chips, butter instead of oil, and yogurt instead of milk.

I LOVE how recipes on the Internet include both a rating and comments about substitutions. Yesterday, I had a craving for oatmeal cookie batter dough. I had seen a recipe on Chocolate and Zucchini, so I forged ahead with that. The batter wasn't good, though -- wheat flour doesn't make for the kind of cookie dough that you can snack on very well, and I might have done something wrong with the recipe. I decided to alter the batter myself by adding an egg and some all purpose flour, knowing all along that this was not a good idea, and the results were disastrous (I hadn't had my coffee yet).

Today, I read a bunch of the comments on the muffin recipe before attempting anything to make sure that the recipe was tried and true and to understand acceptable substitutions. Having 210 comments is somewhat like having an entire squadron of church ladies helping you understand a recipe. The resulting muffins are wonderful. I've also been able to share my quince syrup brainstorm with people through comments on Simply Recipes. Web 2.0 is doing wonders for my culinary education.

Since it's fall and D's always reminding me to cook more than one thing in the oven if I'm going to go to the trouble to heat the thing up, I usually throw in whatever colorful and interesting squash I find at the co-op (halved, brushed with olive oil, and upside down on a cookie sheet). I should have taken a picture of the futsu squash we made today -- it reminded me of the New Yorker cartoonist with the very wrinkled characters. Lately, I've been saving the seeds of each squash and toasting those in the oven at the same time -- it makes a great snack.

We had a great time at my half-brother Will's wedding in Chicago last weekend. A power outage in the middle of the reception made for some nice photo ops.

While leaving JFK on Friday night, we caught some unusual (for us) views of the city. It took us a while to figure out what was what -- the vantage point was a new one for me. In the dark, the skyline isn't as visible, and the stretches of land and water aren't as familiar when seen full-size. The bridges become your point of reference. Here's the only photo that came out:

(Thanks, Francis, for the photo! I know some more of you have photos, too -- since we're heading to Croatia without my laptop, maybe leave a link in the comments?)

Also, since many people use Google instead of their browser address bar, I'm going to make a textual reference to our wedding website URL here (click this if you're looking for the site): jjdayfamily.com/wedding.