August 27, 2010 by kim.

Tomorrow is the day we say farewell to Jersey, and hello to New York!

Symbolically, we are opening the door to our new life in NYC, but this is actually the key to one of our interior doors. They wouldn’t have a key and lock like this to open our front door. We have a dead-bolt, like this:

That’s a lock!

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August 22, 2010 by kim.

I can’t believe that I’m telling you that I’m moving … AGAIN. How many times has it been now? Three times? Four? No. Let’s count EIGHT TIMES in the last FIVE YEARS. To begin with, we moved to New York City one week before 9/11 and stayed from 2001-2005 which was great! Then we went nuts:

1. New York to Chicago (2005) – 3 months – seriously?

2. Chicago to Las Vegas (2005-2006) – 6 months – not our style

3. Las Vegas to Chicago (2006-2007) – 10 months – better

4. Chicago to New York (2007) – 7 months – NYC is the place to be!

5. New York to Chicago (2007-2008) – 10 months – How many times do we need to be here?

6. Chicago to Chicago (different apartment 2008-2009) – 13 months – more than a year!

7. Chicago to New Jersey (2009-2010) – 11 months – getting closer to where we want to be

8. New Jersey to New York (2010-???) – September begins the third time living in NYC!!
(third time’s the charm, although we lived in Chicago three times before and it wasn’t …)

Now, the packing. Ugh. Here are the boxes waiting to be unpacked and used to pack all our stuff:

Here is a peek at the lobby of the place that we’re moving to, which is in a beautifully restored art deco building from 1939:

Sneak peek at portion of our apartment (dining room to living room):

And here is what I’ll look like when I move there and step back into time:

The picture above was actually taken back in 2004 for a photo shoot by Ann Brown, in the very building that we are moving to!

What a journey it has been!

Posted in Celebrate, Annoyance | No Comments »

August 9, 2010 by kim.

The San Rocco Festival took place this weekend (and a couple of days before) in Fort Lee, NJ, (as it has for the last 82 years here), and in many different cities around the country. It’s a festival celebrating Saint Rocco, the patron saint of pestilence, where he was said to have prayed for and cured many of a disease that had struck Italy.

There’s your history lesson for the day.

The festival consisted of food, music, and games in a 3 block area of the town. Yesterday was the day of the procession of Saint Rocco.

A statue is carried around the town, and money is pinned to it to raise funds for the Italian American Mutual Aid Society. Here are a couple of videos of the procession:

Pretty cool, no?

Other than that, it was a pretty small affair. We didn’t go on any rides (too expensive) or play any games (you know how fair those games are), but we walked around and did get plenty to eat:

Italian Sausage with onions and peppers

Deep Fried Oreo

Corn

Cannoli (we shared this)

Dippin’ Dots (ice cream that tasted like Nerds candy – we tried a little, but didn’t eat much of it)

Popcorn (we shared this)

Sno-kone (blue-raspberry flavor – shared it)

Cotton Candy (blue-whatever flavor – again, we shared it)

Surprisingly, we weren’t sick after eating all that junk food. We really did like the deep-fried Oreos, although we initially weren’t too sure about it. Deep-fried? Oreo? It’s not something I’d eat every day, but it was tasty.

Next month – Feast of San Gennaro in NYC!

Posted in Fun, Entertainment, Celebrate, Food, Happy | No Comments »

July 2, 2010 by kim.

How to Ruin Your Boyfriend’s Reputation

Simone Elkeles (the author of the aforementioned book), submitted Chris’s video for her book How to Ruin Your Boyfriend’s Reputation to the ForeWord Reviews Book Trailer Contest, and it WON!

Here is a blurb about it:

You can actually view the video if you click the link at the top of this post.

GREAT JOB CHRIS!

Posted in Video, Entertainment, Celebrate | No Comments »

June 30, 2010 by kim.

Can you believe it has been FOUR years since I started blogging?

How about some of the highlights (and low-lights)?

Kimmi’s Blog (very first post – 06/30/06)

Possum (August 2006)

Kim breaks a wrist (October 2006)

Beautiful Danger (July 2007)

The show is a HIT! (September 2008)

R.I.P. Farrah, Michael, and Suzi Suzuki (June 2009)

The Beast (February 2010)

How about some stats? Let’s see how well I’m doing. Here are the page views for each year (the number of times each page was clicked on):

2006: 9799 (started 6/30/06)
2007: 42706
2008: 98443
2009: 96651
2010: 73211 (as of 6/30/10)

Now, this doesn’t mean that thousands of people are actually looking at my blog, necessarily. 75% could be spam hits, 15% could be me checking each page umpteen times to make sure everything is spelled correctly, and 10% (I hope) of the hits could be coming from loyal blog readers, like you (yes, I’m talking to YOU!). Either way, I like those numbers.

Now, if I just had a dollar for every view …

Posted in Celebrate, Happy | No Comments »

June 20, 2010 by kim.

Today is our seventh wedding anniversary AND Father’s Day!

Happy Anniversary to us!

Kim & Chris

Happy Father’s Day, dads!

Kim’s Dad Dana

Chris’s Stepdad Wally

Chris’s Dad Mario who passed away 12/31/1998

Moms – sorry I missed creating a special post for you this year, but I’ll catch you next year on Mother’s Day!

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March 28, 2010 by kim.

I am a big fan of percentages. Whenever I talk about my health and how I feel, it is always in percentages. Today, I feel that I am at about 97% of my normal, healthy, happy self! Hooray!

The 3% of my body that is holding out has some mild tingling/numbness, spasticity, and double vision. Nothing that I can’t handle, and if I stop thinking about it, those issues will go away soon enough.

Because I was feeling so good, we decided to take a little day trip and visit our old neighborhood of Fort Washington to wander around in Fort Tryon Park.

We looked at the flowers in bloom,

went to the Cloisters,

saw the Easter Bunny,

and happened upon the severed head of Spider-man.

Then we went to lunch at a new Mexican restaurant,

and headed back home where I had Chris take a picture of me and where I’m at now:

Looking pretty good, if I do say so myself!

Next weekend I plan to take the final step on my road to healing and travel into the city on the subway. The dirty, grimy, smelly, beautiful, full of character, can’t get enough of it … subway.

I can’t wait!!

Posted in Celebrate, Happy | No Comments »

November 18, 2009 by kim.

I’ve been a bit busy lately, turning 35 and starting a new temp job. Wow. Two things. Really? Really. How hard is that? I am such a master of excuses …

Anyway, when I get home after seven hours of staring at a computer and two hours (one each way) commuting to and from work, I have a hard time focusing on important things like searching for a full-time job and working on my blog.

Still, I want to keep up on this, so here are a few pics to hold you until I write something more interesting …

The cake I made for myself:

Cute picture of a duck in Central Park diving for food:

Chris and Matilda before the claws dig in …

… and after:

Posted in Celebrate, Fun, Nature, Animals, Happy, Food, Observation | No Comments »

June 30, 2009 by kim.

Today, June 30th, is my 3rd Blog-i-versary! Hooray! For three years now I’ve been entertaining you (and me) with this little blog of mine! What do you think?

Here are my June 30th posts over the years:

Pretty full of myself, aren’t I?

I should go out and get a cake!

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June 27, 2009 by kim.

Last Saturday, June 20th, Chris and I celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary! Yay us!! We celebrated by bumming around town a bit. We took an architectural boat tour, watched the movie UP, and went bowling … all before 2:00pm! We’re early risers.

Here are some shots of the city (taken by Chris) from the boat which sailed on the Chicago River and Lake Michigan:

Chicago as seen from the boat on the river

Chicago with the John Hancock Center in the center as seen from the lake

Chicago with the Trump Tower in the center as seen from the lake

The Tribune Tower as seen from Ogden Slip

The Trump Tower and The Tribune Tower as seen our walk on the way to the movie theater

Here is a ticket stub to prove that we did indeed see the movie UP:

And here are a couple of pictures of us bowling at Lucky Strike:

We didn’t have much luck at the Lucky Strike bowling alley, which is why I’m not posting our scores. Chris didn’t do too bad, but I’ve never bowled so terribly! We were next to a wall, and the darkness plus the crazy flashing lights affected our (my) game …

Seriously. It did.

All in all, we had a wonderful anniversary day and we look forward to many, many more!

Posted in Celebrate | 1 Comment »