Ahoy, maties. There has been much going on here, which has made it hard for us to update our beloved blog. I am here to give the update. Behold: a few weeks ago we went to see the Bodies Exhibit (www.bodiestheexhibition.com) and were completely impressed with the incredible nature of the human body. Dan insisted that I would learn something while we were there, and learn I did: the human eyeball remains the same size from birth until death, which is why babies have that doe-eyed look. It’s very difficult to describe this exhibit, so I recommend visiting the website listed above.
In other news, in his quest to force me to like opera, Dan insisted that I attend an opera with him, Mario and Elly at the Metropolitan Opera. We saw Rigoletto by Verdi. The opera was in Italian complete with subtitles on the seats in front of us, beautifully staged and three hours long. What do I remember the most about the evening, you might ask? David Blaine outside the opera house at Lincoln Center trying to beat the world record for living underwater in a bubble. See picture in our PICTURES section. Long live opera. Haha!
Dan also had a birthday recently, which we celebrated by visiting the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, a bird sanctuary 9,000 acres large. It was a really nice, sunny day and the birds were out en masse. We spotted many ducks, geese, gulls, swans, etc. one of which you can see me viewing (read: chasing) in our pictures. After this adventure we were off to procure Dan’s birthday gift of a baseball mitt and ball. We then had dinner at a really great Chinese seafood place in China Town. Age 28: success!
Speaking of adventures, we finally procured a bike for me, as I will be riding my bike to school for the next two years since it’s so close to our apartment. K-Mart was our destination, which was very fortunate considering the close proximity to our favorite wine store, Astor Wines. We rolled the new bike down to the wine store for a tasting before heading back to Brooklyn. My new bike, Wheeler, sullenly resides in our hallway.
More exciting was our Memorial Day weekend day trip on Sunday out to the North Fork of Long Island with Ben and Jara for even more wine tasting. We took off in the Ben&Jara Mobile at 9:30am and arrived at the first vineyard around 11am. There are many wineries out there, of which we hit 6, tasting over 30 wines throughout the day. We now understand the disgusting practice of spitting wine into a bucket when tasting…had we consumed that much wine during our 7 hours of wineries we would have been very sick. As it was, we took advantage of the sunny weather and visited many wineries, having the lunch we packed at one of the vineyards and taking a tour at another. We also ventured out to the Horton Point lighthouse (commissioned by George Washington in 1790, built in 1857) and took advantage of the grounds, including the beach where Dan and Ben had a rock-throwing contest (again, see pics). We ended the day with dinner at a great seafood place called Eon, which came highly recommended by the locals. In the end, we came home with a greater understanding of wine and a few more bottles to put in the wine rack.
As for me, tomorrow I live it up not only because it’s the last day before I start school and disappear from the face of the earth, but I also catch up with Dan; I will be 28. With that, I will sign off. I have to go buy some wrinkle cream.
Monday, May 29, 2006
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Rigoletto, Orchestral Performances, and Medical School
This week has been a fun, but busy one (and it's only Thursday!) Last Thursday Katie and I discovered a new fun thing to do in New York City. Our friends, Mario and Elly (the Italians whose wedding we attended in Italy last year), took us down to Chelsea (around 8th Ave. and 23rd street) to see art gallery openings. I didn’t realize it, but this area of Manhattan has well over 100 galleries. Any given Thursday between 6-8pm several galleries will be having openings for new artists. You can tell which ones are doing this because of the small crowds of people gathered around outside. Inside the gallery (sometimes a small as a small bedroom), the gallery owners are usually pouring FREE wine and people are milling about and pondering the art. All the art is modern, but often quite striking. It is also very expensive (like $20,000 per piece). It was a lot of fun, and there was wine!
Monday through Wednesday afternoons I played with a group called the Seniors' Orchestra. I was subbing for an acquaintance of mine, and was the youngest person in the orchestra by at least 20 years. It is a group for retired union musicians, many of whom played with the New York Philharmonic. The first-chair horn player was the principal horn player of the Philharmonic some time ago. It was a good horn section and we played some hard literature (Sibelius Violin Concerto among other things), but some crowd pleasers, too (a medley from the Lerner and Loewe musical “My Fair Lady.” On Monday and Wednesday nights, I played with the Graduate Center Contemporary Ensemble—performing all new music written by my colleagues at the Grad Center. Tonight I go up to the Bronx to play Mozart’s “Così fan tutte” with the Bronx Opera Company. So, it’s been a busy playing week for me as well.
Katie, who had been waitlisted at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, just found out she was accepted. YAY KATIE!! So, this program begins May 31 and she is scrambling to fill out her paperwork and buy books. She had also been accepted at Long Island University’s Medical School, but SUNY is a public university and LIU is private, so SUNY will be much less expensive for us. The programs are comparable in terms of rigor and prestige. So now begins the long, arduous road to becoming a Physican Assistant. She will go 2 years straight (no breaks for summer), taking 1 year for “bookwork,” what is called the didactic year, and one year for hands-on work, the clinical year. She starts off this month with Anatomy (where she will work on dissecting real human cadavers….eewwwww) and Microbiology. Look for her updates in the coming year.
Monday through Wednesday afternoons I played with a group called the Seniors' Orchestra. I was subbing for an acquaintance of mine, and was the youngest person in the orchestra by at least 20 years. It is a group for retired union musicians, many of whom played with the New York Philharmonic. The first-chair horn player was the principal horn player of the Philharmonic some time ago. It was a good horn section and we played some hard literature (Sibelius Violin Concerto among other things), but some crowd pleasers, too (a medley from the Lerner and Loewe musical “My Fair Lady.” On Monday and Wednesday nights, I played with the Graduate Center Contemporary Ensemble—performing all new music written by my colleagues at the Grad Center. Tonight I go up to the Bronx to play Mozart’s “Così fan tutte” with the Bronx Opera Company. So, it’s been a busy playing week for me as well.
Katie, who had been waitlisted at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, just found out she was accepted. YAY KATIE!! So, this program begins May 31 and she is scrambling to fill out her paperwork and buy books. She had also been accepted at Long Island University’s Medical School, but SUNY is a public university and LIU is private, so SUNY will be much less expensive for us. The programs are comparable in terms of rigor and prestige. So now begins the long, arduous road to becoming a Physican Assistant. She will go 2 years straight (no breaks for summer), taking 1 year for “bookwork,” what is called the didactic year, and one year for hands-on work, the clinical year. She starts off this month with Anatomy (where she will work on dissecting real human cadavers….eewwwww) and Microbiology. Look for her updates in the coming year.
Saturday, May 06, 2006
Adventures in Raganland. (part the last)
Hosting our first houseguest in our new, grandiose digs has proven a success. After Ragan departed (grudgingly) on Monday, Dan and I made the observation that our apartment wasn’t so different after he was gone than it was when he was here. As opposed to our old apartment where we rejoiced and did pirouettes through the living room once a houseguest had gone-to celebrate the reclamation of our space. Not to celebrate the absence of friend and/or family member. I swear. Except Mitch.
I believe the adventure left off with Dan at a gig and Ragan and I left to our own devices. We joked that while Ragan was here Dan had so many gigs that he was the one who woke us up at 5am and again at Midnight when he got home. Sans Dan, we had many adventures including, but not limited to: happy hour at Gin Mill, Costco excursion, wine run, Trader Joe’s on a Saturday (I don’t recommend this), French food, a subway incident in which I was punched, our neighbor’s housewarming party, and finally, our own 10 hour long housewarming party.
Really the only two things that need to be expounded upon are the subway incident and the housewarming party, so hear this: it has come to our attention that when we have people staying with us we are more susceptible to the miscreants and other dangers lurking on the subways of NYC. For example, when Mitch was visiting he was approached on a subway platform by a perfectly normal looking guy who proceeded to scrutinize Mitch’s shoes for hidden cameras and demand to know if said Mitch was an American. Enter Ragan. After a very nice dinner (without Dan, of course) we wondered back to the subway a few stops from our apartment. Everything was going as planned (one never plans to be accosted on the subway-at least I don’t) when our attention was turned to a woman in the far corned doing her best to yodel. Loudly. Ragan and I proceeded to go about our business of looking straight ahead so as not to attract her attention, and trying desperately not to laugh out loud. But this was not to be. The woman decided to get up and perform her rendition of pole dancing, dirty dancing and lap dancing with the patrons of the subway. Notice I say “with.” Woman or man, it did not matter to this woman. She was literally grinding up against and straddling anyone in her way. When she finally got to us, we were doing the best we could to avoid contact. But Ragan, as this crack head so eloquently put it, was too much of a “Pretty Boy” to leave alone. And here comes the leg! As she tried to straddle Ragan, she inadvertently straddled me because we were sitting right next to each other. So I pushed her leg off of me to which she replied, “don’t touch me!” HELLO?! DON’T STRADDLE ME! Then I made what everyone claims was an inflammatory comment, “great, Ragan, now we have to wash your clothes.” To which Crack Head Woman responded with “what did you say?” Thus the punching began. She reached across Ragan and punched me in the upper right arm. This caught us both off guard and Ragan put his arms up to ward her off. We both got up, with Ragan protecting me as CHW is throwing punches OVER Ragan to try to get at me. Now, there were other words being hurled at us, but I fear they may be too descriptive for the children or the faint of heart reading this. So please, censor this: CHW was so enraged that she conjured up the most rancid, horrible phrase she could to shout at me. Doo Doo Mouth. That’s right, this woman who was obviously high on something was only able to come up with the insult of Doo Doo Mouth. Ragan and I got off the subway at the last stop laughing all the way up the stairs, grateful to get away from this foul woman. My arm is healing well, the bruise a mere triangle of knuckles at this point, thanks for asking.
As for the housewarming party, it was also a success, but what is there to say about a successful party? We had about 18 people all together throughout the afternoon and evening. I will let the pictures tell the rest of the story.
I believe the adventure left off with Dan at a gig and Ragan and I left to our own devices. We joked that while Ragan was here Dan had so many gigs that he was the one who woke us up at 5am and again at Midnight when he got home. Sans Dan, we had many adventures including, but not limited to: happy hour at Gin Mill, Costco excursion, wine run, Trader Joe’s on a Saturday (I don’t recommend this), French food, a subway incident in which I was punched, our neighbor’s housewarming party, and finally, our own 10 hour long housewarming party.
Really the only two things that need to be expounded upon are the subway incident and the housewarming party, so hear this: it has come to our attention that when we have people staying with us we are more susceptible to the miscreants and other dangers lurking on the subways of NYC. For example, when Mitch was visiting he was approached on a subway platform by a perfectly normal looking guy who proceeded to scrutinize Mitch’s shoes for hidden cameras and demand to know if said Mitch was an American. Enter Ragan. After a very nice dinner (without Dan, of course) we wondered back to the subway a few stops from our apartment. Everything was going as planned (one never plans to be accosted on the subway-at least I don’t) when our attention was turned to a woman in the far corned doing her best to yodel. Loudly. Ragan and I proceeded to go about our business of looking straight ahead so as not to attract her attention, and trying desperately not to laugh out loud. But this was not to be. The woman decided to get up and perform her rendition of pole dancing, dirty dancing and lap dancing with the patrons of the subway. Notice I say “with.” Woman or man, it did not matter to this woman. She was literally grinding up against and straddling anyone in her way. When she finally got to us, we were doing the best we could to avoid contact. But Ragan, as this crack head so eloquently put it, was too much of a “Pretty Boy” to leave alone. And here comes the leg! As she tried to straddle Ragan, she inadvertently straddled me because we were sitting right next to each other. So I pushed her leg off of me to which she replied, “don’t touch me!” HELLO?! DON’T STRADDLE ME! Then I made what everyone claims was an inflammatory comment, “great, Ragan, now we have to wash your clothes.” To which Crack Head Woman responded with “what did you say?” Thus the punching began. She reached across Ragan and punched me in the upper right arm. This caught us both off guard and Ragan put his arms up to ward her off. We both got up, with Ragan protecting me as CHW is throwing punches OVER Ragan to try to get at me. Now, there were other words being hurled at us, but I fear they may be too descriptive for the children or the faint of heart reading this. So please, censor this: CHW was so enraged that she conjured up the most rancid, horrible phrase she could to shout at me. Doo Doo Mouth. That’s right, this woman who was obviously high on something was only able to come up with the insult of Doo Doo Mouth. Ragan and I got off the subway at the last stop laughing all the way up the stairs, grateful to get away from this foul woman. My arm is healing well, the bruise a mere triangle of knuckles at this point, thanks for asking.
As for the housewarming party, it was also a success, but what is there to say about a successful party? We had about 18 people all together throughout the afternoon and evening. I will let the pictures tell the rest of the story.
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