'Tis the Season?!

I understand the lure of sales during the holidays: Black Friday and all the sales leading up to Christmas provide the perfect opportunity to procure the perfect holiday gift at a perfectly discounted price. Of course, huge numbers of other people are also aware of the sales and can be counted on to make your shopping experience one that will have you cursing the very holiday spirit that brought this plague upon you in the first place. Those upbeat, fun-loving Christmas carols will become a soundtrack to the terror; the jostling for position on the sidewalks, in the stores and finally on the subway home with your arms full of Christmas booty will beat the last remnants of good cheer right out of you. Personally, I make every attempt to avoid the holiday rush, as I value my sanity and want to continue to enjoy the John Denver and the Muppets Christmas album without flashbacks to the carnage at Macy’s. In light of this, I have to say that one advertisement has changed my perspective on holiday shopping forever. Nothing says “Merry Christmas!” like a whole goat! Or better yet, burnt goat head and feet! You know how you shop and shop for the perfect gift and when you turn around it’s staring you right in the face…literally? You can bet I was at the store waiting in line hours before it opened, elbowing my way to the goat isle hoping to get my hands on as many whole goats as I could possibly carry.


Ah, the joys of living in Carribean Brooklyn. Seriously though, if I buy a whole goat will it still be alive, struggling in the meat section under cellophane? What if I opt for the burnt head and feet only, what will happen to the rest of the Christmas goat? And lastly, what the hell do I do with these goats and goat parts?! These are important and thought-provoking questions that I will leave you with during these few weeks leading up to Christmas. When you receive a package in the mail from us this year, remember the trouble we went through to acquire the goat and subsequently wrestle it into the mailbox with postage perched precariously on its burnt head and/or feet.

Merry Christmas, everyone…goat heads and feet for all, and for all a good night!

Thanksgiving Blog

Here's the belated Thanksgiving blog. We got so busy after Turkey Day I didn't have time until now to blog about it.

My mom and dad came out to visit; and they stayed with us for the first time ever! We had lived in a one bedroom until last year, so they always stayed in a hotel before. So, of course, we had to pull out all the stops. Katie made an excellent cranberry bruschetta (using cranberries instead of tomatoes), and we had a very yummy cheese and veggie tray. We cooked a great dinner for them, including Dan's now-famous cheese-cloth basted turkey, gravy, and stuffing from scratch (I cooked it in the bird for the first time this year) and Katie's famous green-bean casserole, candied yams, garlic-cheesy mashed potatoes, and homemade cranberry sauce (from scratch). We also had copious amounts of tasty wine. We took walks in Prospect Park (and the neighboring historical neighborhood of Park Slope) and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. For our "only-in-New York" fix, we took a 90-minute backstage tour of the Met Opera followed by a great jazz brunch at the Blue Note, one of the flagship jazz clubs in NYC. Between the two activities we took a nice long walk through Central Park, which is where the above picture was taken. We played tons of games like Quiddler, Taboo, cribbage, hearts, UNO, Phase 10, Five Crowns, and probably some others, some of which spurred the formation of several inside jokes...like: PUD-ding?!

All in all, a good time was had by all. And the time really flew. Then it was back to the grind and the push to the end of the semester, which is only now finally wrapping up. Katie just finished school today, and I have a few more days to go, but I have basically given all my finals so I can mentally cruise to the end of the semester. We'll try to put up some more posts during the holidays since we can't be with our family in the Pacific Northwest. Look for a repeat of the Christmas letter and also check out other recently added pictures!

Bruckner Blog

Last Saturday Katie and I got to take a trip out of New York by virtue of my association with the Mannes Orchestra. You see, I am playing as a "ringer," someone brought in from the outside, for this concert--Mannes has 6 horn students this semester, but the Bruckner symphony they are playing requires 8. The concert is this Thursday at Carnegie Hall, but for a quasi-dress rehearsal, they performed Saturday up at Bard College, a rural campus about 2.5 hours north of New York City.

I was asked to drive the equipment van since I am not a student and therefore not subject to the same sorts of legal liabilities. I said I would if I could bring a navigator, and that's how Katie got involved. She was also deputized to take pictures for the school and given the school's digital camera. The "van" ended up being a 25-foot-long truck (shown above)! Navigating the narrow lanes on the NYC streets was quite an adventure. But after getting out of the city into the less trafficked regions of the Hudson Valley, we were able to enjoy the autumnal beauty of the multi-hued fall foliage. Bard has a beautiful campus, and a brand new concert hall designed by Frank Gehry, all glass and polished steel curvilinear surfaces.

We had a two-hour dress rehearsal and then were given a complimentary dinner at the Bard cafeteria, which had remarkably good food! The concert went well, although it seemed that there were few Bard students in the crowd, so maybe they could have done a better job advertising. The piece was Bruckner's unfinished Ninth Symphony (he died while composing the last movement), a massive, slowly-unfolding late-Romantic work (1896) whose 3 completed movements still clock in at about 60 minutes. It has great brass parts and is a lot of fun to play.

Next post will probably be Thanksgiving when my parents come to visit! We posted some more pictures of the Bard trip on our flickr account (click the "pictures" link at the right or click here).

Staten Island

Hello Friends.

This is a friendly reminder that a person should not take a gig on Staten Island, even on a weekend, without having first procured a car (or at least a ride in one). Staten Island is very suburban, and thus, many areas are quite poorly served by public transportation. For example, if a person were to take a weekend gig there and attempt to use public transport, it is entirely possible the process of commuting could take over 2.5 hours. It is also possible that a certain bus schedule was incorrect on the Internet and that it had stopped running by the time the person got to the bus stop, at which point the said person would have had to hire a cab. This only costs $5, which is very reasonable in another context, but could definitely feel like the proverbial back-breaking straw (especially if one is feeling already somewhat camel-like because he or she has been toting around a rather heavy musical instrument--such as a French horn--on his or her back). Adding yet another insult to injury would be finding out that after taking the pleasant 30-minute ferry ride at sunset, a cab to the same place would have cost a mere $7, but would have only taken 10 minutes (bringing the musician to the rehearsal space in the waning daylight), rather than the 70 minutes the abortive attempt at public transportation had taken (in close to pitch-darkness).

Yes, friends, a person would almost be at his or her wit's end by the end of the evening, especially when finding out that the orchestra which had hired this person was not efficiently rehearsed, and had several members with little right to be holding an instrument in the first place, unless the purpose of their playing was one of misanthropic, nay--diabolical!--intent.

Thus I caution you, lest you feel the slightest temptation to augment your salary by accepting a job on Staten Island, to make sure you know someone with a car or are prepared to take a taxi. Better yet: take the night off, pour yourself some wine (a good Bordeaux is recommended), and listen to a Beethoven String Quartet or a Mozart symphony on your stereo played capably by the major professional ensemble or orchestra of your choice. You'll certainly save yourself heartache and frustration, and, who knows, you may feel fully rested by the end of the weekend!

With best wishes,

A concerned and caring friend.

Oops, I did it again!

You have all heard the rumors. Yes, it’s true…I have chopped my hair off once again. Now many of you may be thinking “but remember last time?!” and to you I say, of course I remember last time! The tears; the bitter, bitter disappointment; the Aunt Jemima handkerchiefs wrapped lovingly (and tightly) around my mutilated locks. Alas, your concern is touching but unfounded as I was much, much more cautious this time. As you will see by the accompanying picture, the luxurious strands are quite a bit longer than they were on that fateful day in summer 2003. They will be no tears shed in mourning this time, no hours spent in front of the mirror trying desperately to slick down those cursed cowlicks.
In other news, I have started my clinical year of PA school. I am currently three weeks and 180 hours into my general surgery rotation. We are a team of five managing about 40 patients in the ICU and on the telemetry and medical floors. I have had the opportunity to do a bunch of cool procedures including arterial blood gasses and a central line. Of course, this may mean nothing to many of you, but I assure you it’s cool. And now, I must mentally prepare myself to wake up at 5am again tomorrow. And for the next four days. Sigh.

Dan’s aside: Some of you know I took the Oregon Symphony audition for 4th horn. There were 80 people there, all good, to audition also. The committee only advanced about 8-9 people to the next round and, sadly, I was not one of them, but I did really enjoy my parents’ hospitality. I also got to see some family and friends, which was very nice. Now, back to work! (And yes, I do miss Katie during those 60 hour workweeks of hers.)

Icewine

Did I mention that when we came back from Toronto (but before the crappy 2-hour delay at the border) we stopped off in Niagara-on-the-Lake, a small, picturesque town at the center of one of Canada's most important viticultural regions? We visited two wineries, the first of which was great. If you ever get a chance to visit Konzelmann vineyards, I highly recommend them. They have an extremely friendly staff, and all tastings are free, including the extraordinarily wonderful icewines (some are very expensive too: 200ml for $60). They also have a beautiful sloping vineyard overlooking Lake Ontario. Needless to say, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves on that little side jaunt. And of course, brought home some bottles!

We went on Vacation....Together!!

Katie and I just got back from a great vacation up north. We flew to Buffalo where we visited our friends Autumn and Eric for one night. The next day, we borrowed their Mini Cooper and drove to Niagara Falls. What an amazing place. We extensively explored both US and Canadian sides of the falls by walking over the Rainbow Bridge spanning the Niagara River. The Maid of the Mist boat cruise was one of the coolest parts, which we reserved until the end of the visit since we knew we would get soaked (in spite of the blue ponchos they give you to wear). The boat takes you into the midst of Horseshoe Falls, and if you look straight ahead, all you can see is falling water all around you (even in your peripheral vision). The roar of the falls is extremely loud, and the mist it kicks up can feel like a torrential rainstorm. Did you know that the Niagara river is not really a river at all, but a strait linking Lake Erie with Lake Ontario? Neither did we. You have to love state parks and all those information signs posted everywhere!

After spending all afternoon at Niagara Falls, we drove on further into Canada up to Toronto. We stayed four days at a pretty nice hotel right on the waterfront on the western edge of the city. High Park, essentially the Central Park of Toronto, was a short walk from our hotel and we had easy access to the subway (which is quite paltry compared to New York’s) and to a streetcar that could both take us downtown. We slept late every day and then I practiced my horn (while watching baseball highlights on TV) while Katie worked out in the gym facility. One night we used the hot tub and met a nice couple from Montreal (originally from Cuba) and their daughter. They didn’t speak a lot of English, so we got to practice our French and Spanish. We didn’t do a ton of touristy stuff. We have great museums in New York, and we aren’t hockey fans, so we didn’t feel inclined to visit the art museums or the hockey hall of fame. We did take a ferry out to the Toronto Islands, which are car free. They have bike rentals and an amusement park and some great beaches, plus amazing views of the downtown skyline. We also walked the PATH, which is an underground maze of tunnels (totaling 16 miles) connecting department stores, malls, commercial skyscrapers, the symphony hall, metro stations, restaurants, parking facilities, and other buildings. There were so many shops and food courts, it was quite a sight. I would imagine that Torontonians really enjoy all the enclosed shopping when it is wintertime. Plus, you could get from one block of the city to another without walking outside or paying for the subway (which is $2.75 per ride, or $21 for 10 rides, a discount we took advantage of).

One of the highlights of our trip was the CN tower. This is tallest freestanding tower in the world (1,815 ft). The main observation deck was the one we visited, along with the revolving restaurant, 360 (at 1,150 ft.). They added a glass floor to part of the tower in the 1990s, so you can look between your feet and stare straight down to the ground over 1,000 feet below. It was pretty funny to see skittish people who refused to even set foot on the glass. Even our level-headed Katie eventually decided she’d had enough of the dizzying, vertiginous view. Since we had dinner reservations, we didn’t have to wait in line for tickets, and got up to the observation deck just in time for sunset. So we saw the city in both daylight and at night. During dinner, the restaurant actually revolves 360 degrees every 72 minutes and the view is spectacular. We got especially lucky since the moon was almost full, and in the clear night, we could see its reflection splayed out across the expanse of Lake Ontario. The food was superb and we got a yummy, non-oaked Ontario Chardonnay with dinner. (I think only British Columbia and Ontario have noted Canadian wineries.)

I’ll let Katie tell you more about dinner. She writes: "my leg got stuck to the bottom of the table by gum which was probably a remnant from some bratty kid. The restaurant manager was extremely apologetic and gave us free dessert and after-dinner drinks. He will also be paying for my dry cleaning. That is all."

Finally, we drove back to Buffalo, interrupted by an exceptionally crappy 2-hour delay at the border crossing. We spent a few more days with Autumn and Eric and their two little girls. Those kids were adorable. Naia is 2 and talks a blue streak and Chloe just turned 1 and has a very sweet temperament. One of the great things about the vacation was that we were able to get away from New York together. We’d both traveled a little earlier this summer, but separately. Now we had some time to get reacquainted, since Katie has been working so hard on her degree and we don’t really see each other during the week when she’s in school. Next week I start teaching again and Bird starts her clinical rotation in surgery at the nearby Interfaith Medical Center…sounds exciting, and possibly messy.

Don't forget to check out all our new pictures (click here)

Dan's True Colors Revealed

It won’t surprise any of you to know that Dan is a criminal. And it’s finally been confirmed by one of the largest enterprises is the United States: the NY Yankees. It all began innocently enough; my Dad was visiting on business and wanted to see a game at Yankee Stadium during his trip. Fine. After quite a lot of other adventures (Coney Island, a Mets game, my white coat ceremony) we found ourselves in the swarm of people converging on Yankee Stadium that fateful night. We scaled our way to the pinnacle where our seats were located and settled in for an exciting NY experience. I, of course, was plowing through the first of many non-medical texts since the end of the summer semester as Dan and Dad happily spouted forth facts from their reserve of seemingly infinite baseball knowledge. Before long a brood of frat boys set up shop right in front of us, obviously intoxicated and pretty vocal about their disgust for the opposing team. And then it happened…the literal spark that will forever be ingrained in our memories; the most inebriated of said frat boys lit a cigarette. A wave of protest went up all around us and at least four people asked the guy to put it out, as the smoke was billowing toward us all. When I finally asked him to put it out because it was aggravating my asthma, he made some flippant remark and blew smoke in Dan’s face. Suffice it to say, that didn’t go over well. The details remain a bit blurry, but a hat was aggressively ripped from the guy’s head in protest of the smoke, followed shortly by the entire row of frat boys holding their buddy back as he attempted to attack Dan. Words were exchanged. Security was called. Dan was kicked out. Okay, he did go willingly at the hearty request of the frat boy’s friends (frat boy was screaming at security that they would have to drag him out). As we watched Dan descend the stairs flanked by two security guards, I said to my Dad “that’s the son you never had.” I don’t think he’s ever been so proud. In the end we joined Dan on the outside because we’d already missed the most exciting part of the actual baseball game while Dan was in the midst of “Frat Boy Battle.” So ends the saga of Dan being ejected from Yankee Stadium, a mere confirmation of what we already suspected about Dan: he is trouble with a short fuse and should be dealt with cautiously.

Running

So, here's a quick note: Katie is making me run. Miles of running. Her school shut down the gym for 2 weeks for maintenance and so she is making me go to Prospect Park to run with her. I haven't run distance of any measurable length since college, so, obviously, I am dying. Today, our friend Jara was visiting (she runs marathons and has her own blog about running, to which I've put up a link over on the right) and totally kicked our butts, mine especially. But we are out there running about 2 miles at a time. We took this picture when we returned after running for 40 minutes; notice, if you will, how fresh and fit Katie and Jara look while I am standing off to the side, a somewhat pleasant grimace on my shiny face, indicating that I am totally drenched with sweat. (Click on the picture above for the full size if you dare.) Not that I am complaining, I'm in better shape now. Also, check out the new pictures we took with Jara's computer! It has a photo-editing program that makes regular photos into fun-house style photos, and other types of effects (pencil sketch, comic book, etc.).

Now it's off to the Botanic Garden (it's free Saturday mornings) where we will feed the fish, ducks, and, if we're lucky, the turtles (they are so slow, the ducks and fish mostly beat them to the food). Jara leaves this afternoon, and Katie's Dad comes this evening. We'll update you on his visit in the next post.

Summer Update

Okay, okay...

I know it's been awhile since we put up anything remotely resembling a significant blog post. So, you'll get the works...long narratives, pictures, and--well, I guess that's about all I can offer in this online medium. In any case, I (Dan) am back from my "sans Katie" travels and adventures. The first of which, some of you know was to the exotic locale of Canada--Halifax, Nova Scotia to be exact--for a two-week music festival at the beginning of June.

My woodwind quintet, whose picture you can find (here and maybe here, this link is for the quintet's Myspace page), was invited to be one of the ensembles-in-residence. They flew us up and quartered us in the tiny, but clean, Dalhousie University dorms. We played several concerts, including a live-to-air CBC broadcast from which I received a nice one-time royalty check. Below I include a description of the lobster dinner to which we were treated by the festival.

On Saturday afternoon, all 60 something people piled onto two old yellow school buses and drove about 45 minutes south and east to the coast of Nova Scotia. There, we unloaded at the seaside home (on about a 10-foot bluff overlooking a small cove) of the former contrabassoonist of the N.S. symphony. They had an outdoor fire pit in which they had a vast cauldron full of boiling water and lobsters. Since they had been preparing for our arrival, they already had a big blue laundry tub full of cooked lobsters and we all grabbed one (pictures to follow!) and, crossing over to another part of the lawn, went to a narrow, 30-foot long table, really just two long boards perched on wooden barrels. Daniel, our bassoonist who has attended this festival before, ran a "lobster-eating masterclass," and walked us through the eventual dismemberment and consumption of the red critters. There was also free beer. I ate two whole lobsters, a very yummy charred hot dog, several cookies, cheese and crackers, and probably some other stuff. Did I mention there was free beer? Daniel ate three lobsters and many other people ate at least two. So you can imagine the scene of carnage with all the torn-apart carapaces of the lobsters littering the table and the surrounding grass. It was wonderful. Lobster is very tasty (I sometimes dipped it in liquified butter) and I imagine I will now have to go find some in New York (probably Chinatown) and indoctrinate Katie into the lofty world of lobsterfeasts. After all this, we went for a walk down to the tide pools and crashing surf. All in all, it was very fun.

Of course, you need not only imagine this in your mind's eye, you can visit our pictures page to see the carnage first hand.

The second big trip I took these last two weeks before returning yesterday was to Oregon and Washington where I had 1) a week-long family reunion and 2) a week's visit to Seattle environs and then to Portland environs. The reunion is on Mom's side and a (mostly) triennial event for which about 20 relatives show up (see above picture) from all over the USA, more specifically: NY, TN, WA, OR, SC, TX, and CO. The reunion was actually capped by an even larger reunion in Tacoma of Mom's extended family (over 200 people were there) to celebrate my great uncle's 50-year anniversary as a Jesuit priest. Some relatives came who hadn't seen each other since 1937! Needless to say, I didn't know many of the relatives there so the great ice-breaker was "So, how are we related?" After this big party, it was off to Seattle to see my Dad's parents and visit with my college friends from the University of Puget Sound. I played many hours of video games, caught a Mariners game at Safeco field (they won! yes!) and visited with my grandparents again.

My father-in-law just happened to be visiting the Seattle area also, so I caught a ride back to Portland with him. Time was spent during my stint there mostly with my parents and in-laws, but also with a few select friends from high school with whom I am still close. During the entire two weeks I played a ton of cards (pinochle mostly), outdoor sports, board games, and, yes, video games. I ate a ton of great food and drank copious amounts of wine and beer. I visited extensively with most of my family and many of my friends. (Of course, during all this, I missed Katie terribly and am very happy to be back in Brooklyn, if only to be with her.) Finally, I was able to parry the spate of questions about my dissertation with polite deftness and a calm, serene demeanor. Now that I am refreshed and relaxed, I must get back to work on the cussed beast, by which I mean the dissertation.

So check out some of the new pictures (click here) I posted and we'll try to be better about blogging more frequently. Katie has only 20 days left of her coursework and is survival mode. She is studying like crazy. Once her coursework ends, she goes through a "white coat ceremony" where she is given, strangely and counterintuitively, a white coat of all things, but also the go-ahead to practice medicine. Then then one-year clinical portion of her degree begins. In her white coat ceremony and the commencement of her first clinical, we are going to visit our friends in Buffalo and, from there, take a little trip to Niagara Falls and then on up to Toronto. It should be fun. We'll try to blog it when we return.

Quick Update

This is a brief post to bring your attention to some pictures of Dan while he enjoys his time away from me in the NW. I will continue to slave away here in the humidity of NY, ever careful to avoid the putrid stench of raw fish, human urine and tuberculosis emanating from the parched sidewalks. Love to you all!

Dragons!

After a long hiatus, Bird is back blogging belligerently about the life and times out here in NYC.

First on the agenda today I would like to speak a little bit about food. Wait! Come back! I promise this will not be done in the style of our beloved Dan; rather, I need to extend a serious warning regarding eating free Chinese food without first ingesting a special drink I like to call ‘alcohol.’ A short preface: the hospital I work for (NY Methodist) had purchased a table at a fundraising event for the Brooklyn Chinese Association’s somethingth anniversary. I was invited to join in the festivities because I am awesome (or really, really hated… this has yet to be determined). Upon arrival at the Chinatown restaurant (in Manhattan… the theory is that the BCA was kicked out of Brooklyn) we were promised free (!) drinks and some good food. Instead, what we were given was:

1. the option of $2 beer (who pays for beer?!)
2. room temperature Coke and Sprite and
3. a hassle when we asked for some ice water

Not the best of beginnings, I would say. Fine. We endured the off-key warbling of many Chinese songs, both by children and by the very elderly. We were wowed by the dance of the dragons, even as they trampled our coats on their way by. We sat through all of the announcements and congratulatory toasts (to which we raised our luke-warm soda, as the ice water was MIA)…all in English and then in the Chinese translation. But we were stoic, determined to get some free food out of this if it killed us. Or we killed that dragon, which was a distinct possibility at this point of the evening.

We made the best of it, chatting and laughing about the craziness of the circumstances and continually eyeing the menu, which promised some tasty sounding dishes, accompanied by the Chinese translation, of course. And then it happened: the first course! According to the menu we were about to embark on the culinary adventure known as “cold-cut platter.” To our relief, it was served on a platter. Unfortunately, what was occupying the platter was significantly less appealing than the platter itself:

1. Duck tongue
2. Tripe
3. whole, creepy, glowing-eyed squid (one of which I promptly dropped into my neighbor’s Coke)

Now, had we been able to read the Chinese translation of the contents of this course, we would have been spared the subsequent groaning, looks of disgust and stomach churning. It is speculated that the actual translation was something to the effect of “Eat at your own risk! Food not suitable for human consumption! But you can’t read this so HA-HA!”

The next fifty courses (or so it seemed) were pretty much inedible, as well. We were able to stave off our hunger by pillaging the vegetables from each new dish and by making food art. Although my friend Lorelei was really creeped out by the head of the whole fried chicken, so I had to contain the beast within one of those really nice, red Chinese money envelopes. You’ve stared your last stare, chicken.

So this sounds pretty bad, but there was one redeeming factor: cake. It was delicious, but not worth the wait. Or the post-traumatic stress. OH! How could I forget? We were also given “goodie” bags complete with a bag of frozen dumplings, a Chinese newspaper and a coupon for $10 off our next visit to Dr. Wong, Ophthalmologist. Sweet.

This ends our epic journey through the world of food; I can almost guarantee Dan will write the next food blog, because it’s really his baby and I have interfered enough. Cheers!

More visitors!

Our friend Ragan is here right now. He came out for a business trip for his company, Cingular wireless; that was close by, in New Jersey, and then took a train to our place for an extended stay. Katie and I have been pretty busy, but we've managed to see him for dinner, or for a quick lunch during the day, and he's been out doing his own thing for much of his visit. This weekend, the Brooklyn Museum is hosting its First Saturday event (free admission, dancing, movies, activities, curator talks) and we'll check that out and Sunday we go to see the Mariners take on the Yankees at the "House that Ruth built." I'm not sure how vocal we'll be in our support of the Mariners since Yankees fans are known to be rabid. Seriously, they foam at the mouth when their team is losing! I think another friend from college, Richard, is coming this weekend, too. He is planning on going to the Yankee game with us also.

Katie has her last final next Tuesday and then she'll be going back to the Northwest to visit, so for those of you who live there, brace yourselves! I finish up in the next 2 weeks also. At some point, she and I may actually SEE each other. That will be great.

We've really been enjoying the weather the last week. The past few years, NYC hasn't really had a Spring. It goes from being very chilly to hot and uncomfortably humid in about 3 days. This year, and for the past week, it's been sunny and in the high 60s or low 70s every day. Wonderful! Ragan and I have been to Central Park 3 times in as many days. We are also about a month behind the Northwest in terms of plant blooming, so trees buds are only now starting to turn into leaves, all the cherry trees and magnolias are in full bloom still and tulips and daffodils are all over the place. So places like the Botanic garden and the major city parks are glorious.

That is all for now... Go Mariners!

Teaching, Gigs, Food and Baseball

Katie ended her blog with "....but I will leave you all now to allow him to expound upon his teaching, gigs, food choices and baseball obsession." So you should scroll down and read hers first before reading mine.

....

Back already? Good. Now, as far as teaching, I am on a quasi-spring break. While I am still teaching at Mannes, I do not have to teach at Hunter and Hofstra. Katie, too, is on break. Which is how she found the time to write a blog post. Because the three places I teach never lined up for spring break, I joke that I don't really get so much a "break" as a "bend." But it was a nice bend, and Alan DID get to see me teach at Mannes during his trip here. My classes were all very interested in meeting him and tried to get him to dish gossip on their teacher. Classes at all three places wrap up within the next month, so I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Gig-wise, I just wrapped up a busy Easter weekend (Alan hadn't heard me play for over 10 years) and am now busy playing a run of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Yeoman of the Guard." I will play a run of Carmen in May with an opera company up in the Bronx, and have several other small concerts and things coming up as well. The best news is that my woodwind quintet is being flown up to Halifax, Nova Scotia for a two-week music festival at the beginning of June. (A woodwind quintet is composed of a flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn...the horn is technically a brass instrument, but it blends so well with the other winds, it is traditionally included in the quintet.) We'll play some concerts, coach some high-school chamber music groups, and play young composers' new pieces. It should be fun. I'll blog more on this later.

I don't think I have time or space to write about food now. As many of you know, I have become more and more interested in food lately; I can actually have long talks about it, without realizing I my interlocutor is bored to tears. So, for now, I'll spare you all.

And yes, my baseball obsession is back. I've been waiting for the season to begin for some time. It's not only the national pastime, but also the harbinger of the balmy spring months and the lazy days of summer (or, at least for me, the less busy days...not so much teaching). Alan and I went to a Yankees game on Good Friday, and they lost to Baltimore 6-4. It was still pretty exciting, and we were among the first 18,000 fans (out of some 50,000 that came that night) so we got a free Yankees baseball cap. I am also watching the Mariners' box scores and can sometimes follow them in real-time on the Internet. They may have a good season (they started off well) and I am looking forward to seeing some games when I visit the Pacific Northwest in July.

I Like White People!

Life continues to throw us around like rag dolls out here in NYC. We have been busy with school and work and a continuous stream of visitors, beginning with my sister’s surprise visit about a month ago. Her second visit to NY since our move, she seemed to be a bit more relaxed about the neighborhood and we had a lot of fun and many mango margaritas (minus the one Dan sloshed across the dinner table and then attempted to hoover clean with his mouth).

About a week after my sister was here, Dan's Uncle Rob came to Long Island for a quick business trip. It was snowing/sleeting/freezing raining all day, but the trains were working, so we were able to get out there and meet him for a Friday night dinner. We spent quite a while in pleasant conversation, mediated by good wine and lots of seafood. By the time we were finished, there were about 5 inches of snow. Yikes! But the roads were plowed okay and he gave us a ride to the train station. From this nice reprieve we went back to Brooklyn, with its work and school obligations.

School for me is a lot like prison: we are in the same, windowless room for 8 hours of lecture a day, trying with all our might not to let the other 30 people in the room get on our nerves while attempting to commit an entire textbook of medicine to memory. I have one more semester of academics to conquer this summer, after which we start our clinical rotations. Hopefully this will lend itself to a more regular, somewhat enjoyable kind of existence. It's not all so serious: some of my friends from school and I did take one night early this week to do some extracurricular activities at a certain bar in NYC; this was a much needed reprieve and we were only slightly hazy the next morning.

Quick subway story: riding home the other day there was a little black girl, maybe six years old who I was playing hide-and-seek with…very cute. As she was getting off she waved to me, I waved back and she proclaimed very loudly to her mother: “Mommy, I like white people!” Score one for the white people!

In other news, we are considering the installation of a revolving door to accommodate the visitor traffic we are experiencing. Rachel was here again for one night. We went out to a new place in the city that only serves mac n’ cheese. Also making an appearance were our bird friends Ben and Jara. They were here this week while I was on spring break and Dan’s brother, Alan, has finally made an appearance after many close calls in the past. They all overlapped for one night making the overnight total in our apartment five…we set a record! Next week we expect Tom and Ellen, followed by Ragan and finally Dan’s sister Gayle. At this point we will put up the “No Vacancy” sign and I leave mid-May to flip the tables and become a houseguest myself in Portland for about 10 days. Dan has a lot of stuff going on, too, but I will leave you all now to allow him to expound upon his teaching, gigs, food choices and baseball obsession.

In the bleak midwinter

Katie and I are going to co-write this Blog entry. I will write and Katie will dictate from time to time.

Dan says: It is very very cold here. Or at least it has been, today it's supposed to finally get above freezing. The cold has got to me, as I caught a bad cold after about 2 years of healthiness. It got me last weekend and I even had to cancel some classes at Hofstra on Wednesday for the first time ever. Some of my students were very worried, one went so far as to take a picture of the class cancellation notice since he knows he'll never see one like it again in his tenure at the school. Other students just rejoiced at the unexpected gift of a freed-up hour. I just needed to stay in bed one day. Now I feel fine again.

Katie says: Penicillin and cephalosporins are bacteriacidal, they inhibit transpeptidation which in turn inhibit cell-wall prostaglandin synthesis.

Dan says: Our friend Rachel came to stay over the other night since she was up on business from Washington, DC. Fun times, and we ordered out for sushi for the first time here in Brooklyn. You might expect to be a bit nervous about raw fish home delivery in one of the outer boroughs, but it was very good and very fresh. Yum. She went home the next morning.

Katie says: I'm reading my Pharm review! Protein pump inhibitors reduce and/or block histamine, acytocholine or gastrin mediated h-plus extrusion by parietal cells.

Dan says: Yesterday at Hofstra I heard about 6 prospective horn players audition. All would be welcome additions to Hofstra, although some of them are applying to quite a few places and my choose to attend elsewhere. They were all nervous, and I did my best to make them feel less uncomfortable. Then I took the train home and Katie and I kicked back in front of the TV and watched part of my Christmas present, a 7-DVD long documentary about the history of NYC. Very neat.

Katie says: Stop bugging me, Dan, I'm trying to study pharmacology! [but she goes on to say] Sulfonamides and trimethoprim potentiate pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic parameters of each other.

Dan says: So there you have it, life flows on, some fun stuff, some not fun stuff, and pharmacology (which has elements of both, but mostly the latter). I hope your weather is warmer than ours.

End of January = Beginning of Donkey Season

This strange heading may take some of you surprise, but I assure I did not mis-type. Katie is already experiencing the back-breaking loads of classtime and school work that raise her into the rarified atmosphere of feeling like an academic pack-mule or work-donkey...and it's only week 3 of her 3rd (of 6) semester.

I have been holding down the fort here (doing laundry, errands, cooking, etc.), and working 3 days a week at Mannes; but next week I go back to work at Hofstra and Hunter both. Therefore, my rocketship is about to blast off to a 6-days-per-week work-donkey orbit. So, the blog may be woefully neglected in the coming months. Fear not, as we will try our best to periodically update and post new pictures. It may just be that you have to wait 2-3 weeks between posts. And they might be tantalizingly brief.

The saving grace of the blog might be friends' visits. Such as the wonderful visit we had this weekend from our good friend Jara (who is now in Madison, WI with her husband, Ben, both working on MBAs). She was here as part of a delegation from her school; there were giving a presentation at a conference. She is a huge Chicago Bears fan and Sunday was spent parked in front of the TV with some snacks and drinks. Fun times, especially since the Bears wiped the floor with New Orleans! Jara is also an excellent baker and the tidy supply of extremely scrumptulescent cupcakes she baked are in danger of becoming extinct tonight.

Other visitors in the next few months include Ragan and my sister (both of "Dan and Bird's Eurotrip 2005" fame), and maybe Ben and Jara (again) ... and who knows else may pop up? So stay tuned...never a dull moment!

New Year's Stories

On New Year’s Eve I played a “Concert for Peace” at the massive Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Katie came along to listen and afterward we went to visit with our newly married friends Rachel and Sean. Rachel’s dad had rented a brownstone in Harlem for their family and a circle of their friends, one of whom was a piano teacher. We were roped into playing a horn and piano rendition of “Auld Lang Syne” after we watched the ball drop on TV.

Coincidentally, we visited Sean and Rachel at their Washington, DC home just a day later on Jan. 2 and enjoyed their wonderful hospitality for 3 more days. Since they had to work, we were on our own to see the sights during the day. Katie had never been to DC and I hadn’t been since I was about 15, so it was a journey of discovery, education, and wonderment…and really, really sore feet by the third day. It was a lot like the Disney World trip of a few years ago, which we dubbed a “Bootcamp for Fun” except this was a “Bootcamp for Education.” To get to DC, we took the “Chinatown Bus” (a very cheap roundtrip ticket) that goes, not surprisingly, from Chinatown NY to Chinatown DC. This was no luxury liner, but it wasn’t too bad, except for some confusion about where the pick-up spot in NYC was. We had actually anticipated a much more harrowing experience and considered ourselves lucky after only being screamed at in Chinese a few times. After NYC and our Europe trip last year, Katie and I are becoming transportation gurus, or “professional tourists” as Bird says. We became fairly adept at taking the Metro (subway) and some of the buses around DC.

We saw the Declaration of Independence (really faded now, sadly, almost to the point of invisibility. The ink, not the actual document. It would be very confusing to look into a glass case and see nothing, like abstract art but with a democratic tinge.) the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (in better shape) at the National Archives. We went to about a million Smithsonian museums, and the National Gallery of Art. Of course we also went up the Washington Monument, gazed lovingly upon the statues of Lincoln and Jefferson in their respective memorials, reflected on the sacrifices of many Americans at the Vietnam and WWII memorials, and took a tour of the Capitol. We also took a tour of the Library of Congress which was one of the most amazingly beautiful American buildings we have ever seen. In the evenings we spent some time with Rachel and Sean for dinner, which was a lot of fun and mostly uneventful, save for one unfortunate guacamole incident which lead to another Chinese tongue-lashing by our waitress. We also visited one night with our other friends from college, Clare and Ross (and their new baby Jackson). Right before leaving we had coffee with my friend Steve, a conductor in the DC area and fellow Mannes College of Music alum.

It was a whirlwind trip and we had to get back to NYC because we were both back at work by Saturday. Katie starts school again tomorrow, so I won’t see her for another 3 months. Boo. Even though I am back to work at Mannes, I don’t start at Hunter or Hofstra again till the end of the month, so at least I get a little time to work on my dissertation (I hope!). If you have the time, take a look at some of our pictures (click here)! And given our prior record, I guess you’ll have to wait about another month until the next blog update!