Crazy Storm

So tonight on the way home the 7 train wasn't running.  So I took the 4 uptown to the bus.  On the way I heard rumors that other trains weren't running either.  I got on the bus, the Q32 never fails me.  I was lucky, some people at the stop had been waiting for an hour.  Then the bus stopped taking new passengers because it was full.  People on the street were not happy.

At Queensboro Plaza it was crazy with people taking over the street pounding on the side of the bus.  It felt kind of like a riot.  It also reminded me of the tornado of August 2007.  That day it took me hours to get to the preschool where we were researching.  I was lucky that day because the 7 was running but nothing else.  Luckily I didn't get stuck because the rest of the researchers managed to get a cab by telling some kid that he was going share and got in the cab with him.

Tonight I come to find out it may have been another tornado. Nuts!

Check out the story in the New York Times.

Flea Market Fun

Saturday Rob and I talked our friends Bill and Jessica (who have a van) into driving up to the Stormville Flea Market with us.  We are lucky to have friends who enjoy flea markets and antiques as much as we do.  It is a pretty awesome place.  Miles of antiques and items that fall into the "what do people need with all this crap" category.  At first we were in the "street fair" section, meaning t-shirts, dresses, candles, all the stuff that you find at any street fair in the city.  Here we scored a couple of DVDs that we have been wanting to watch but not actually pay for, Space Balls ($8) and X-Men 3 ($2).  Jess picked up a kitchen strainer.  But we knew there was something better out there.  But first we had to eat.  The food was pretty good.  Standard fair food, although I think they could have done with some more fried dough and less around the world (noodles, greek, etc...) but that is just my opinion.  Then we found the fun stuff.

Everything you never knew you needed.  Lot's of jewelery and furniture and old kids toys.  I am still looking for the perfect small dresser or cabinet to store towels and sheets.  Someday.  Rob and Bill spent way to much time looking at action figures and old video games systems and games.  It was decided that you could totally start a sword collection here.  Why?  I think it's a guy thing.  I have the question, vintage kids toys: fun or deathtrap?  I mean have you seen the old metal cars, wagons, and tricycles?  (Here is when I am really wishing I had taken more pictures of the day).  Four hours and several miles later, Jess scored a pyrex casserole dish for $1 and I got some napkin rings, which I was on the lookout for.

Ever since I read this post on SouleMama's blog (read part 1 here)  I knew I needed some nice napkin rings for our table.  Rob and I do use cloth napkins always, and most days actually do eat at a table either indoors or out.  I thought that if we have unique napkin rings, we can keep track of whose napkin belong to whom. who's napkins belongs to who. (writing that sentence it seems so wrong, but saying it aloud it comes out ok) (*updated: it's great to have a former English teacher as a Mom.)  I found a set of 4 for $6 early in the day.  I bought them and kept my eyes open, because really 8 would be perfect.  I found one that was cheap looking and I just didn't like it.  The only other napkin rings were from the 50's made of some kind of resin all in the shape of animals.  They were actually very cool and there was a variety of colors and animals, but at $45 a piece, I easily passed.

The flea market was awesome,  I for sure want to go back next year.  Who knows what will be on my list then, but I will try and take pictures.  I was proud of myself for showing restraint in not buying the cute vintage table cloth that was overpriced (if it is more than I am willing to pay it is over priced, even though it was a fair price) and the one that wasn't but didn't match any of the decor I already own.  There is always next year.

And now for my napkin rings.  That will be in use until I find something I like better.

Won't they make the table look nice.

Art Collection, part deux

Last week the artwork we bought back in just arrive.  Two big brown boxes.  We opened them to make sure they were the right pieces and that the glass wasn't broken.  They were and it wasn't and the boxes were placed against the wall.

As we really don't want to be those people who place art/frames against the wall and never hang them, today we did some redecorating.  The chosen wall is the one behind the couch. it's the last picture in this post and Robs desk is now happily residing in the office, which you will likely never see on this blog as it doubles as a storage room.  I"m slowly working on that.

First we had to take down the animation cells that were the previous decoration.  And patch and paint the holes.  I also use this opportunity to touch up a few other places around the apartment.  Such a nice blank wall.  We measured and hammered and got ready to hang our new art.

The two paintings are by Slava Brodinsky, a Russian painter who moved to Isreal and much of his work is inspired by the Medeteranean, like the South of France where we visited.  I think that is one reason we liked these so much was that they reminded us of France.  The paintings are serigraphs on wood with hand painted embellishments (really if I didn't know there is enough texture that they could be originals, which I guess they kind of are because of the hand painting) and are each from a series of 180.

and you thought I'd show them off so easily.

After the hanging was done we though the wall looked pretty good.  Especially if you only look at the part of the wall over the couch.  But there is more wall that extends to the hall, where we had hanging a wedding photo (see before post linked above).  But it looked all wrong.  It was too small and the frame was all wrong.

So we swapped out the too small photo with one from our bedroom, which is actually the same size but the frame is bigger because of the matting.  The new frame is gold, so it looks kind of perfect.

All that is left to do is decide if that monitor is going to stay there or go back to school from which I borrowed it for my online summer math class.  Rob said that the quality of our art investments is going up.  It is, but now we have to figure out what to do with the cells that used to hang here.  Maybe we will be those people with frames against the wall after all...

Ashley's Getaway, Brodinsky, 2007

Bayside Villas, Brodinsky, 2007

Anniversary Dinner 2010

For our second anniversary we decided to keep it a little low-key.  No weekend getaway this year.
Rob sent me flowers in the morning.

Then we went out for a really nice dinner.  Once or twice a year we like to hit up some of the finer dining in NYC, and an anniversary is the perfect excuse.  This year the meal was at Jean Georges, located in Trump Tower at Central Park.  We went with the prix fix meal and it was pretty delicious.  But as we both really love desert, we got an extra one of those to share.  All of the deserts are the tasting variety, so you pick a theme and get four small deserts.  We got chocolate, garden, and strawberry.  I didn't get a picture of us dressed up, but I did take a few of desert.

 all of our deserts

chocolate

strawberry

garden, with happy anniversary candles

Second Year

**Updated:  I passed The Test.  I will get feedback next week, but it doesn't matter, because I PASSED!

Well, I am officially a second year PhD student.  I didn't take a first day of school picture this year.  But maybe I'll take a first day of teaching picture on Monday.  We'll see.

My first classes were Thursday.  Stats, all day.  I like stats, but four hours in a darkened room is A LOT.  The lights are turned down so we can better see the projector, but it makes me a little dizzy, then staring at a bright screen in front of me.  I also had my first writing class, it's a workshop/seminar that I think is going to be really helpful.  I enjoyed talking about some different issues in academic writing and also defining what we mean by academic writing.  Really boring stuff right?

I already have homework, and I get the feeling that while the first year was heavy on reading (insane amounts) the second year is going to be heavy on writing.  I'm just hoping for less stressful than last year.   I also start teaching on Monday.  I should probably finish my syllabus.  I just can't quite seem to get in the mood to do it.  A friend taught her first class on Friday and enjoyed it.  So I'm hoping it will be a little fun.  It's so strange to be back in school already again.  We've had such a great summer.  But the weather felt like fall for a couple of days last week.  It will be sweater and cider weather soon.

I'm still waiting to find out how I did on THE TEST.  Results come in on Tuesday.