July 27, 2007 by kim.

Long title, but that’s exactly what I was doing on the train ride home tonight. I had gone to the Food Emporium and bought some perishable items, so I thought I’d take the “L” train (going west) to the “A” train (going north) which gets me to my neighborhood. You know - to get home faster and cooler than walking in the heat to the “A” train. Not today. The “L” train was not working, so I ended up walking a mile to the “A” train anyway. When I finally got there, I couldn’t wait for the train to come so I could sit in the cool air conditioning and keep my perishables from, um, perishing.

The train platform itself is hot enough in the summer. I was none too happy when I got on the train and it wasn’t air conditioned. It was H-O-T. So hot that I kept fanning myself with my bookmark and it did absolutely nothing to cut through the heat. So hot that I could feel the skin on my face start to tighten. So hot that my ears turned red. I thought I was going to pass out on the dirty train floor. Luckily, I made it home and thank goodness - the air conditioning was on!

You’d think being underground that it would be somewhat cool, like a big long cave, but no. It doesn’t work that way. Instead, the heat just gets trapped down there causing thousands of bodies to put out more heat and sweat until you have one stinking, suffocating, dripping mess.

No wonder people would rather drive.

Posted in Observation, Annoyance | No Comments »

July 23, 2007 by kim.

My hometown of Fond du Lac, WI (okay - I really lived in N. Fond du Lac) hit CNN! Seems a WWII era plane had to make an emergency landing on Highway 41 last night due to engine trouble. The plane was on its way to the EAA Airshow in Oshkosh which is about 20 miles north of FDL. No one was injured and the plane only suffered minor damage to the wing.

The Fond du Lac Reporter has more info (www.fdlreporter.com), in case you are just dying to read about it.

My hometown hit the big time news! Woo hoo!

Posted in Happy, Observation | No Comments »

July 22, 2007 by kim.

I’ve been thinking about these for about three weeks now. I saw them in the Bravo supermarket not far from our apartment one afternoon when we were obsessing over some Tombstone pizzas that they used to carry. I could have picked them up that day, but I thought, “Hey - do you really need this? I mean, you already have the Whatchamacallits and Twix Peanut Butter Bars and the Hostess Cupcakes. Do you need more snacks?”

Apparently so.

On our walk today, I dragged Chris with me to the Bravo and bought two boxes right off the bat because you never know when a craving may strike. One needs to be prepared.

By the way, this is no plain old candy bar obsession. This is a nostalgic obsession as well. My grandparents used to have these at their house and my brother and I would eat them when we would visit (they lived next door so we really could visit whenever we felt like it, but we didn’t eat them all the time). Maybe that’s how we both got started on the chocolate / peanut butter cravings that we both have…hmmm…

Now I can relax -until the next obsessive craving hits…

Posted in Food, Happy | No Comments »

July 22, 2007 by kim.

Yes - Chris turned 40 on July 19th. To help him usher in this new decade, I put together a tribute book for him:

Okay - that’s not the whole book - it’s just the title page. This book contained many stories and anecdotes from Chris’s family and friends, and he was VERY surprised!

I gave it to him the night before his birthday so that he could enjoy it. It took two months to put together, but I had to work on it when he wasn’t in the room. This was a bit difficult as his computer is only about five feet from mine and we both spend a lot of time on the computer. Finally, I just had to kick him out of the office and told him I was working on something for his birthday.

The next day (his birthday) he opened his other presents and had some cake:

I baked this chocolate cake from scratch. Scratch - meaning, cocoa powder, buttermilk, flour, vanilla, etc. etc. The frosting - also from scratch. Melting the chocolate, adding powdered sugar, etc. It was very good and VERY rich. We could only eat two little slivers of it!

On Saturday, we went bowling at Chelsea Piers with some friends to continue the birthday celebration:

Kelley

Britton and Sarah

Chris then finished up at the bowling alley with the “Dance Dance Revolution Extreme” game which totally wiped him out:

Finally, we completed the afternoon at the Trailer Park Lounge on 23rd street near 8th avenue:

Very kitschy!

All in all, a fun birthday celebration!

Posted in Food, Happy | 1 Comment »

July 19, 2007 by kim.

That’s right!  Today marks Chris’s 40th Birthday!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHRIS!

More pictures to follow - for now, we will have cake!

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July 16, 2007 by kim.

This past Saturday, we decided not to risk our lives going for a secluded nature walk, but instead we went to see the new Harry Potter movie (we liked it!) and took a walk in Central Park. On the way to Central Park from the movie theater, we happened upon this building at 135 70th street between Columbus and Broadway:

(These two pictures are a la Chris)

The building is called the Pythian. I’m not entirely sure what it was for, although I think the Knights of Pythias would gather there. I’ve given you a link above, but it’s kind of all over the place with descriptions and I haven’t found much else about it.

When we got to the park, we decided to stop for some lunch. We didn’t want the usual park fare of hot dogs and pretzels, so we thought we’d sit down at the Baseball Cafe for a bite to eat. I don’t recommend going there when they are hosting a children’s party as they were that day. There were a few tables available, but no chairs. The waitstaff was too preoccupied with the children’s party to notice a minor detail like no chairs and a line of customers waiting to sit down.

Chris and I found a table, grabbed some stray chairs and waited for a waiter. All told, we were there for an hour and we only ordered some burgers and chips - nothing fancy. We got some squished buns with our burgers and Chris thought they tasted like they just came out of the freezer. Maybe we’d go back, but only if it were overcast, chilly and maybe had only one or two customers to allow for some decent service.

Then we went through the park to my favorite part - The Pond. It’s my favorite because that’s where all the ducks hang out!

Also an occasional sparrow and pigeon:

Don’t you just love ‘em?!  Me too!

I am so easily entertained…

Posted in Nature, Animals, Food, Happy, Annoyance | No Comments »

July 8, 2007 by kim.

On occasion, Chris and I will do something really stupid (moving 4 times in 18 months cross-country, perhaps…). Yesterday was one of those days. Generally, we are really careful living in the city. Always aware of our surroundings, eyes in the back of our heads…not putting ourselves in dangerous situations…

Yesterday was a huge misstep on our part. We started off the day nice and easy, just taking a leisurly walk in our neighborhood, walking through Fort Tryon park, wandered into Inwood and stopped to relax at a pier by the Hudson river:

Then, we continued to walk. See where the George Washington Bridge (GWB) is in the background? Chris had seen a path not far from where I’m standing that he thought would take us to that bridge. A path that we thought would connect with a bike trail.

This was the beginning of that path:

If you only look at the left side of the picture, it looks pretty nice, doesn’t it? The right side looks a little junky / creepy. In fact, as we walked along this deserted path, I said, “It’s so pretty - too bad it’s so creepy”. Did that stop us like it should have? No. We kept walking.

Pretty and scary at the same time. We only saw a few lone people walk by us. Not your typical, touristy, “here we are walking a beautiful trail” kind of people. No. More like, “here’s where I come to kidnap and kill people” looking people. This was not sitting well. Not only that, but there was really no way to turn off of this path. The Hudson River was on the right and the left was fenced in because of train tracks. Did we turn back? Of course not. Why? I have no idea. The next few pictures were taken at a fast walk:

I wasn’t even stopping to take the pictures, I was just putting the camera up, taking a shot and walking. Chris was pulling ahead of me and I slowed him down. He saw an ominous guy walk into the bushes and disappear, and after we picked up some rocks to defend ourselves, we continued on at a brisk pace. I smelled beer as we passed his location. After a brief discussion about what the hell we were doing out there in our own Stephen King novel, we decided to run.

We ran for about five minutes until we got to a point where the path completely ended. We’re about a mile and a half in at this point and we were still far away from a footbridge that would lead to the bike path near the GWB. Where the hell do we go now? Through the deserted woods with no path, or to our left where the train tracks are? Stephen King already wrote this story. You may have heard of it - it’s called “Stand By Me”. Only we weren’t going to look at a dead body. If we didn’t get to the bridge before a train came, we would BE the dead bodies on the train tracks.

I know better. My Dad worked for the Rail Road and we’ve had discussions about how dumb it is to walk along train tracks. However, it was better to be in plain sight than wandering through even more secluded woods. We walked over the busted down fence (someone had already done this before, it seems) and started walking along the tracks. We walked at a brisk pace, looking behind us, still holding on to the rocks. Finally, we approached an opening (another busted down fence) and went back into the woods where we hooked up with the bike trail and people! Civilization! We made it!

Chris took the above picture from the footbridge.
Here’s a closeup of where we went back into the woods through that black fence:

Here’s a cockeyed view of the footbridge:

Man! Such a stupid move! Chris then used the Google Earth program to find out where we walked. Here it is from a bird’s eye view. The yellow line indicates where we were safely walking. The red - DANGER:

Needless to say, we definitely learned our lesson:

DON’T WALK ON SCARY SECLUDED PATHS IN NEW YORK CITY!

Posted in Nature, Observation | 3 Comments »

July 5, 2007 by kim.

Some random observations that just boggle my mind:

Couples walking next to each other with their cell phones up to their ears talking to someone obviously more interesting than their significant other

Guys wearing their elastic shorts below their butts showing off their boxer briefs

Credit cards enclosing an extra full-sized piece of paper along with my bill encouraging me to save paper by signing up for online statements

Websites that make it super easy to log in, and almost impossible to log out

…just some stuff to think about as you go about your day!

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July 1, 2007 by kim.

Chris and I saw a very interesting thing this morning outside our kitchen window. Seems this pigeon had an egg stuck to its feathers:

I watched it fly up to that window ledge and called Chris over to take some pictures. It kept walking back and forth on the ledge, pecking at the egg. Maybe it had cracked and the albumen had dried to its feathers, I don’t know, but when it flew off again to go to a window higher up, the egg fell. Within a few seconds we heard it crunch on the pavement below.

Poor little pigeon!

Posted in Nature, Animals | No Comments »

July 1, 2007 by kim.

That’s how many steps we took yesterday when we went on our big walk (approximately - you know how accurate these things are).

We had decided to go to the bottom of Manhattan and walk up as far as we could go. It took 1400 steps and 4 trains to get to the Brooklyn Bridge (damn track work) and then we had to walk another 2969 steps just to get to Battery Park which is at the bottom of the island. We saw some interesting buildings on the way there:

Of course, I don’t know what these buildings are, but I know they were downtown.

We started near here:

(American Merchant Mariner’s Memorial with Statue of Liberty in background)

Walked along here:

Passed by these geese:

Walked by this:

Ended up here for a snack of fries and milkshakes at 44th street and 8th avenue:

Then, walked through here to get to a train to take our tired bodies home:

Where we promptly collapsed and fell asleep. All told, if 2000 steps equals a mile, we did about 9 miles yesterday. I can’t say that’s really accurate, so I’ll go with at least 7-8 miles.

Exhausting!

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