Bird. Bird. BIRDS!

Merry Christmas! As many of you know, Dan and I have friends. Ben and Jara are our friends, and they have birds. Since they are lucky enough to be spending the holidays with family, we were enlisted to watch two of their birds: Cleo and Alfie. And thus the adventure begins. Picture this: a bird on the boxes, the incessantly screeching, pooping, flailing, food-flinging, Dan-biting heathen by the name of Cleo. Cleo does not like Dan and Dan has sworn off Cleo for life. Alfie is a much calmer, and larger, poop machine. He is positioned on the desk and he likes to shred paper, eat broccoli and sit for long periods of time on my knee. It should be known that Alfie does like Dan, so the theory that Dan emits an odorless bird repellent does not fly, so to speak. I take turns holding the birds and keeping them away from Dan, but they really hate it when I leave the room. There is an ear-splitting cacaphony that follows my exit which consists of screeches, whistles, clicks, hoots, flaps. Dan contributes to this by swearing and cursing the noisy beasts. So things are very lively at our place.
In other news, we have been busy with visitors (see previous blog), holiday happenings and work. Our other friends Kyle and Nancy have an annual holiday party we would be crazy to miss. We get to catch up with people we rarely see and meet new people we won't see until the next holiday party! And the food! Nancy is serious about her party fare, and we look forward to her yummies every year.
I have been working at the hospital a lot lately, mostly filling in for those lucky enough to have vacation time. The 3pm-11pm in the lab is actually a lot of fun because the people who work that shift are great and there aren't any supervisors around that late so we get to screw off a lot and wear tennis shoes! I hope none of them read this...
On Christmas Eve I worked 3-11 and Dan met me after work so we could go to the Midnight mass at St. Saviour's which is right behind the hospital. We walked home and fell asleep around 2am.
We got lots of cool stuff for Christmas, most notably (for me) a bunch of kitchen accessories like the Pampered Chef chopper and the Williams Sonoma aprons! Dan got some CDs, a new man-purse made by Victorinox, Pictionary and some stuff we have yet to open. Which is why I will sign off, because I need to get home and open more presents!

Sorry for the delay...

Hello again. Sorry for the delay, we'll try to stay more current with the blog. It's been a couple of crazy weeks. Katie has been working at the hospital quite a bit and I have been studying hard for my comprehensive exams for my PhD. This 3-day test starts Jan. 17. Hofstra won't start again until the end of January so I am looking forward to 3 weeks of basically non-stop cramming. Woo hoo. :(

One of the highlights of the last few weeks has been my parents visit the week before Christmas. They came overnight and arrived Friday morning on jetBlue to JFK and then took a cab out to Hofstra where I was hearing sight-screaming...I mean, sight-singing exams for my sophomore ear training classes. I took them on a tour of the campus and we took the Long Island Railroad (LIRR) back to Manhattan. Fortunately, the subway workers had postponed their strike until the following Tuesday.

We did so much fun stuff with my folks including, but not limited to, getting a architectural-themed walking tour of Park Slope (a very nice Brooklyn neighborhood) from a former Mannes extension student of mine who happens to be a well-known architect, eating some good food, going to Ellis Island, eating pizza at Grimaldi's in Booklyn (the best pizza in NYC according to the Zagat survey), buying quality chocolate at Jacques Torres, seeing the NYC Transit Museum, eating some good food, sight-seeing at Rockefeller Center, looking at the holiday window displays, eating lots of good food, seeing the Rockettes at the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, seeing some wonderful illuminated manuscripts from the 1200-1600s at the New York Publick Libraries magnificent building on 42nd Street, and did I mention eating good food? It seemed like they were here longer than the 4 days since we packed so much fun stuff in.

They didn't escape the transit strike though, since they left on Tuesday (when the strike started). Fortunately, I was able to take the LIRR into Penn Station (from Hofstra where I was administering more torture, I mean finals) and we spent a few more hours sight-seeing, and then endured a 2-hour cab ride to JFK, ouch. I was able to take the AirTrain to the LIRR going back to Brooklyn, but there was still a 30-minute walk for me to get home. We are glad the strike only lasted 3 days!

So check out the new pictures at flickr.com, you can click on the pictures at the bottom of the page or over to the right-hand side of the screen. Katie is writing the Christmas report that you have probably already read since it was published later than this post. And we'll try to report back on our New Year's doings and not have a month-long reporting lapse again!

Thanksgiving report

Well, it is Sunday afternoon, the holiday is almost over. In fact, I have gotten quite a bit of work done on one of my incomplete papers. It will be ready to turn in on Tuesday I believe. Nevertheless, it has been a long weekend full of good food and plenty of relaxing.

Katie and I cooked a full meal for ourselves and one other friend, Alex (Katie's old partner on the ambulance when they both worked at Transcare). Some of the people we had invited and had tentatively thought they would be able to come, at the last minute decided not to come after all. So, we cooked an 18.8lb turkey for 3 people! We have frozen some of it, sent more of it home with Alex, and have since eaten most of it. There will be some leftovers for lunches this week. I also used what was leftover after fully carving the turkey to make soup stock. For lunch today we had a great, rich turkey soup. Yum! I was in charge of cooking the turkey and the stuffing (which I also made from scratch) while Katie took care of the side dishes: the yams, the garlic mashed potatoes, her famous green bean casserole, the cranberries, crescent rolls, and such. We drank some really yummy wine (Beaujolais Nouveau) with dinner.

Katie had to work Friday, but has had the weekend off. On Saturday we went to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to check out the autumnal splendor. It was really chilly, the ponds had frozen over and you could see the carp swimming sluggishly below the icy surface. No sign of the ducks...they must have already flown south for the winter. We spent some time in the greenhouse biomes looking at flowers that were still blooming in the hothouse environments (like the Christmas cacti!) and staying warm. It was a nice break from the gray, cold weather we have been having. It is supposed to warm up a bit this week (getting into the low 60s!) before getting chilly again next week.

We are also looking forward to my parents' visit in mid-December. Until they get here, though, it is back to the grind until the Christmas break.

Before I forget, we have also uploaded some more pictures. Some of Thanksgiving and the Botanic Garden excursion, and others of Katie's Key West adventures. Click the "Pictures" link over to the right, or the flickr badge at the bottom of the page.

Family had a floating house and it went out to sea.

I am back from the Florida Keys, having survived helping Hurricane Wilma survivors. I consider myself a survivor, as well...I survived the Red Cross craziness. Maybe I should start out with what seems to be everyone's first question: how was the experience? Unfortunately I cannot answer that easily. There were many facets of the deployment, both good and bad. Initially it was a chaotic, unwelcoming mess which evolved into different chaos, but with a purpose!
My job there was to do family casework which, in this case, was outreach involving going door to door at every house (or boat) and in every neighborhood in the Florida Keys. In the blazing sun and hair-frizzing humidity. We did damage assessments to homes and people and, based on emergency need, distributed Client Assistance Cards (debit cards) with money on them. I have never seen such devastation before; there were literal mountains of debris (furniture, landscaping, appliances, boats) along Hwy. 1 (the one and only highway through the keys). In some neighborhoods, we couldn't drive to the end of the block, instead we had to carefully make our way around the debris in order to get to some homes. Alternately, the scenery in the keys is amazing. Surrounded by water and palm trees, sail boats and parasailers and wildlife (enormous iguanas, peacocks, huge water birds...and roosters? Roosters love the Florida Keys).
After having a few days to decompress, I'd say it was a good experience. There were families who were desperately in need of our help, so it felt good to be able to provide that help. But it's good to be home, on dry land. What am I thankful for this Thanksgiving? That I don't live on a boat!

Turandot with my friend Ted

Last night I went to see Puccini's last opera, Turandot, which was written between 1921-24. Since Katie is still gone (although she gets back on Friday! Woo woo!) I went with my friend Ted Southern. He was one of the first people I met at UPS when I was on my "Passages" hike. He was also a French horn player (although he doesn't play any more) and a Music Business major. So we shared many classes and ensemble playing experiences. He came to New York about 4 years ago and got work in a prop studio. He has since gone back to school and is working on a Masters of Art at the Pratt Schoot in Brooklyn. I tell you all this because my friend Ted has designed some cool things for the prop studio that have been used in movies, on Broadway, in TV shows, and various other things. Lately, he designed and built the wings that the Victoria's Secret models wear...if you watch the televised fashion show in December, you'll see his handiwork, the most celebrated (risque?) of which was Heidi Klum's electric underwear and illuminated wings, it was in all the papers back here.

Anyway, that was one of the many conversation topics for us last evening, another major one being the opera we had just seen. City Opera is not the Met, but it is a darn good opera company and the production was lavish and the orchestra played the romantic score beautifully! A major drawback was the choreography, which was insipid and silly. Nevertheless, I had never seen the entire opera live (although I myself have played parts of it) and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

I am looking forward to Katie's arrival back to New York tomorrow afternoon. We may travel back to Hofstra to listen to the choir concert, or we may just relax and crack open a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau which hits the shelves today! For those of you who are of legal drinking age and have never tried this wine, it is a harvest wine, rapdily fermented and released the first Thursday of Novemeber. It is grapey and young and very tasty. It is like a cross between grape juice and wine; it has a lower alcohol content and does not age well. It is meant for drinking...now. We think it is a great Thanksgiving wine. Yum.

Saturday, we are going out with a group of friends to see the new Harry Potter movie. That should be fun. Stay tuned for the review!

Nothing exciting

There is not much of anything exciting to report. A friend of mine is leaving Monday for boot camp because he joined the army band stationed in Heidelberg, Germany, so I went to his going away party. I taught all day Saturday and went home to the empty, empty apartment. Good new is: Katie comes back on Friday. Woo!

Katie has a day off tomorrow and will finally get to explore the more touristy part of Key West. She and her other Red Cross folks have been going around to different places in the Keys trying to get help to the people who need it most by interviewing them door-to-door. I guess she has been through some pretty needy areas. Anyway, she is going to go snorkeling and after that, she is going to a bar called Captain Tony's (mentioned in a Jimmy Buffett song) and then to Jimmy Buffett's own Margaritaville.

If any former Mountain View HS people ever read this blog, our 10-year reunion is coming up next August. Kevin Ball set up a home-page which can be found at http://www.mvhs96.com/policy.asp?rname=kevandcan. Hope to see you there!

Katie in the Keys

So, now Katie has gone from Miami down to the Florida Keys. She is working in Key West and helping do evaluations of people's homes (as far as damage is concerned--how much sea water and mold is in the house, is is structurally sound? etc.) by going door to door in some of the hard-hit neighborhoods. Apparently, many homes were flooded with several feet of sea water during the Hurrican Wilma storm surge and are now growing a particularly nasty kind of black mold. Many houses are condemned, but people are still living in them because they have nowhere to go yet. I didn't know much about the Keys; if you don't either, here is a link to a interactive map: Florida Keys Map! Katie is staying in the Marathon section of the keys, on an island called Duck's Key, which is near mile 65 on US 1.

She is staying about an hour away in a resort hotel called Hawk's Cay (visit www.hawkscay.com if you want to see more about it) that has opened a certain number of rooms to Red Cross volunteers. It sounds very nice, having 5 pools, hot tubs, a dolphin habitat and access to beaches and a lagoon. Katie's dad, Mike, says that she has been pretty clever in getting the Red Cross to underwrite her trip to the tropics; but she is just trying to help those affected by the hurricane and is happy to stay anywhere. This is one "anywhere" that she is not complaining about, however! She was certainly not expecting these kinds of accomadations when she bought her sleeping bag for this trip.

I guess Katie is seeing the best and worst of the Keys and having quite an experience. She is meeting new people and working hard to help those whose lives were seriously affected by the hurricane. Hopefully, she'll get access to a computer so that people can read about her experiences in her own words.

Until then, you'll just have to rely on my second-hand accounts. As for myself, I made banana bread last night, and a pork and mushroom stew in the slow-cooker the day before so I have not yet resorted to squirting Cheez-whiz directly into my mouth quite yet! I am teaching lots and working on my incomplete term papers from last semester. I am also playing in the Graduate Center Contemporary Ensemble, which is premiering some works by fellow grad students here tonight. Next week, I will be going to see Turandot at the NY City Opera since I got 2 free tickets through my connections here at CUNY. The question now is, who will go with me now that Katie is in Florida...?

Bye Bye Birdie!

Katie has left the building.

That's right, she was called up by the Red Cross and is on her way to Miami....that's right, Florida. She'll be gone for 2 weeks. I will be living larely on Mac and Cheese, cookies, various forms of cereal, Hamburger Helper, take-out, hunks of cheese, Subway sandwiches, instant oatmeal, reconstituted gravy, and beer. Then I'll get desperate and do things like eat raw powdered jello, Bisquick from the box, stale bread crumbs, and semi-thawed meat from the freezer. If I'm lucky, she'll be back before I begin gnawing on the metal radiators and/or my own fingers for my daily nutrition.

Of course, I'm just kidding. I like to cook and I'll be fine. After taking care of when and what I eat, I will take the opportunity to stay late at Hofstra or CUNY and work on some lengthy academic papers that need to get finished before Christmas so that I can take my comprehensive exams in January.

We'll be posting news of her adventures here, and any pictures she may be able to take (she didn't bring the camera with her, but may buy a disposable one).

Shostakovich concert!

On Sunday, after Katie got done working at the blood drive, we joined our friends Ben and Jara (who were at our party the night before) for a concert at Lincoln Center. Jara is the manager of education for the Chamber Music Society, and was able to bring us into Alice Tully Hall as her guests. We saw an all-Shostakovich program (his centennial starts in 2006, since he was born in 1906), which was really very good. The Chamber Music society played his Cello sonata; the wonderful Trio for piano, violin and cello; the string octet; and his Concerto No. 1 for Piano, Trumpet and Strings.

Katie and I got to go backstage for the reception, and I was able to talk to the trumpeter, Phil Smith, who is also the principal trumpet of the New York Philharmonic. What a thrill! And the wine and petit-fours weren't bad either! It was quite an eventful weekend, and now we are back to the grind this week. But we can't complain. Life is good. Until the next adventure....

Halloween Hijinx!

Here we are! This is Katie as the witch, Dan as the creepy doc, Nancy as a bee, and Kyle as her bee keeper. Click on the picture for a bigger version. You can see more pictures of our spooky Halloween adventure by clicking the Pictures! link to the right or by clicking any of the pictures in the flickr badge at the bottom of the page.

Halloween!

As many of you know, I have many obsessions. I like to be clean, and I love Halloween! (It was not my intention to rhyme that, sorry.) Dan and I put together the first annual Monster Bash, which seems to have been a great success! We were honored with six guests (any more than that would have violated fire codes, I am sure, as our apartment is absurdly small) and closed the doors around midnight, since many of us had to work the next day.
We created a scary atmosphere by using colored light bulbs, lots of orange and purple Halloween lights and candles. But I know the question everyone is dying (haha) to have answered is "what did you make to eat?" Don't you people think of anything else?! Here it is:

MONSTER MENU

Creepy Chili
Boo Cups (pudding, cool whip and crushed oreos)
Candy Corn Cups (grape and orange Jell-o, cool whip, candy corn)
Graveyard Crunch
Devilled Eyeballs
Firey Pumpkin Seeds
Green Goblin's Guts Punch
Kitty Litter Cake
Pumpkin Spice Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting (courtesy of Jara)
Bee Larvae AKA white chocolate truffles (courtesy of Kyle and Nancy)
Pumpkin Fluff with Cinnamon Grahams (also courtesy of Kyle and Nancy)
Plasma (white wine)
Whole Blood (red wine)

Everyone who attended reported to have had a great time! Either they are too nice to say anything else, had too much to drink and don't remember or really did have fun! We are inclined to think fun was had for all, we definitely had a good time.
I was particularly grateful for the extra hour the next morning, as I had to go to a blood drive (dressed in my costume, of course) very early on Sunday.
As for a general update, we are doing well and enjoying the much anticipated Fall weather! We will write again soon when (if) something interesting happens!

The Engagement Party

Last weekend was Alan and Lyndsey's engagement party in Lyndsey's hometown of Atlanta, GA. Again we found ourselves on a plane (courtesy of Lyndsey's Dad, Rob) and reunited with Dan's parents and siblings. The Goodman's are the epitome of Southern hospitality. They made us feel very welcome and won us over with an immediate offer of alcohol! We were given a brief driving tour of the neighborhood in which the houses all have closets bigger than our apartment. Literally! We helped prepare for the cocktail party on the 8th, mostly by hanging out with the Goodmans and the Partridges and drinking more wine! That's the best kind of help. The party was a success, with speeches given by Dan, Gayle, Alan, Lyndsey, Rob and Sharon (Lyndsey's mom). Much laughing, eating, music playing and general good times. We flew back to NY on Sunday, dreading getting back into the real world of work. There won't be many trips that do not involve the subway for us in the near future, but we will keep you all informed, even if it is boring!

Katie came along to write a photo-essay on "Mike's Junior Golf School." See a few more summer pictures at flikr.com by clicking here, or on the "pictures!" link in the sidebar at the right. We miss our families!

Memories

This entry will attempt to pick up where we left off with the Europe blog. As you may recall, it wasn't pretty: we were sick, dirty, jet-lagged and desperate for a shower. New York welcomed us with blazing hot temperatures and horrible humidity. The only logical thing to do was to get right back on a plane and fly another six hours. And away we were whisked to the NW, where the shower pressure is constant, the humidity is low and the drinks are on Dad (thanks, Dad!).
Our time was spent doing the following, which I will illuminate in typical Bird fashion (a list, of course!):
-Swimming in Mitch's pool with Kayley and Brandon
-Chronicling Mike's Junior Golf School exploits
-Visiting potential PA schools for Bird
-Shopping at Fred Meyer. Oh, how I miss thee..
-And finally, enjoying a BBQ thrown for us by Dan's parents with family and many friends we haven't seen since our wedding!
We had an amazing time which, unfortunately, had to end. And so must this edition of Brooklyn Blogger.

Our New Blog

Hello friends and relations!

Welcome to our new Blog! Katie and I have decided to continue blogging, since we liked it so much when we were on our overseas adventure (which you can still access by clicking this link here overseas-adventure or in the "links" sidebar over to the right of your screen).

This new blog will allow us to occasionally post news and (maybe even more importantly) pictures from our Brooklyn-based lives. We hope you check in on us from time to time, and, hopefully, there will be new and exciting things to read and see here when you do!