Dear lurker,

8 12 2008

You’ve seen me. I know you have, the Web traffic results don’t lie. Yet you’ve never pressed that little comment button to say, “hello.” Please don’t be afraid to come out of the “I read your blog” closet.

After all, if you’re going to harass us about not updating lately, then what’s the big deal about the positive reinforcement when we do?

But don’t worry, Curtis. If you’re not into it, that’s ok. We’ll let you keep lurking around in the safety of anonomity.

:-)

… Oh, and in the spirit of a little NYC news, the boxes are all empty. We had our first out-of-town guest this weekend (yay Mike!) and are hoping to deck our first full-size, live Christmas tree this week. I’ve started stringing the mice food already (I mean the popcorn).

Dave .. you asked for pics, as soon as I can figure out how to embed a video, I’ll add, but in person visits are so much better!!


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Categories : city living, family, friends, home ownership, new york

The bells are singing!

13 11 2008

What *is* that sound? Radio wasn’t on. We don’t have cable. … So up to the window, he made a mad dash. Looked around and threw up the sash.

When what to our wondering ears did resound, but the tintinnabulation of bells making the most beautiful sounds.

It turns out that St Martin’s church, the church on our corner, has a carillon bell tower containing over 40 bells that can (and are) played by a carillonneur.

Thanks to blogger Sense and the City, we now know a little more about this piece of our new neighborhood.

Looking forward to learning more. If we can record the chorus of the bells and post it, we surely will!


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Categories : new york

Last but not least ..

13 11 2008

We owe you a much more detailed update of all that’s transpired – and photos of the journey – but as I wipe the sleep from my eyes this morning, I thought I would share the great news – at 12:15 am this Thursday morning (Wednesday night), Conrad and I unpacked our LAST box.

Movers coming back today to pick up the boxes (and giving us a $50 credit for getting them back, good work Conrad); Osmon ‘rents arrive closely thereafter for their first inspection of our new digs.

Progress. It’s slow-going and hard-earned, but feels to great seeing it around the bend.


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Categories : family, new york

Moving, part 2. AKA: packing

29 10 2008

Packing lasted late into the night / early morning. Around 2a.m. we hit box number 60 .. why stop there? The stress of the 8:30am arrival of our movers, not shakers was mounting … so we persevered till about 4am before clearing the boxes off the bed and crawling under the covers for a “nap.”

Conrad’s take 2 at the floors worked MUCH better. The first floor sander he tried was WEAK. Not good. So day 2 was spent with the gouge-the-floor-out barrel sander. And it went WELL. Apparently, now we have nice looking naked floors. Unfortunately, the super came a-knocking at 5:45 “reminding” Conrad that “work” ends at 5:30. So around he sat until 10 for the rental guys to pick up the sander, all while staring at the 6 inches of flooring around all the edges that the sander COULDN’T reach. And the realization that he’d have to rent yet another tool to get the edges sank in.

So we were up at 6am today so Conrad could be at Home Depot at 7 (note: he was actually there at 7:01am – I think we’ll call that on time) and be back before the movers arrived around 8:30. He did. They did. They packed. They helped break down some of our wall units & entertained us with the sound effects of shrink wrap … heck, they even shrink wrapped our mattress!

Now the apartment-on-a-truck is bound for the Brooklyn warehouse. Conrad’s up doing the edging. I’m about to present at a conference. Tonight we crash. Tomorrow we clean. Friday we return the keys for our apartment and begin to make Harlem our official home.

Will we make it? Are we doing the right thing? Are we happy? … As my magic 8 ball says, All signs point to Yes.


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Categories : family, house, new york

Moving.!?*()…

28 10 2008

I have no idea how to close that sentence .. it’s a flurry of emotions. Here’s a short recap:

Wednesday afternoon, Day 1

- pre-Closing: Visit bank, withdraw more money than we knew we could; depressed it isn’t more as we’re in the middle of a market collapse and the stocks we cashed in were at an all time low when we cashed them last week, but continue to drop lower .. does that make it a good loss then?

- Closing: Everyone in the same, warm room. Seller’s lawyer is a jerk. Wish we had him instead. Somewhere in the world, a forest is crying. Keep signing. Keep signing. Keep signing. Keys? Ok.

- Arrival: No furniture. No chaperones. Champagne. Dreams of tomorrow. Literally, tomorrow .. since we closed 3 weeks later than we hoped.

… also, my mom has major back surgery.

Thursday – Day 2: Planning the move. And the utilities. And the movers. And picking paint colors. And sending a plea out to NYC friends to help paint on Sat!! 8:55pm – get kicked out of Home Depot; in search of dinner; talk to mom, she’s wigggling toes! 10:30pm Try paint picks on the walls. 11:30pm – Uh oh, we don’t like 2 out of 3, that’s $40 of “test” paint down the drain (not literally of course).

Friday – Day 3: Noon – Open house in our current apartment – kicked out to Starbucks. Find a paint store with pre-mixed mini’s of Benjamin Moore. 6pm – Paint take 2. Love it. Yes!! Now we need paint. And supplies. Drive to Home Depot. By car. To the Bronx. Traffic. Store closes at 10. Lots to buy. Their color matcher is out of order. Stress mounts. Head to another HD. Success! Push OVERFLOWING trolley and arm loads of stuff to register 10 minutes after store closing. Check-out clerk hates us, nicely. Proudly present 10% off coupon. $80 off. Sweet! Find a diner. Conrad eats possibly the worst fish & chips ever cooked. Awesome. Drive home. Because that’s what it is now: our home. <Euphoric moment> Shoot. It’s late. Tired. Unload mini. Impress neighbors with just how much you can cram into a mini. Survey our new palace. And all the goods. Dred mounts. Need sleep.

Day 4 (Saturday): Head to Harlem. Wash walls in prep for painting. Turns out there are a lot of walls. Lay out drop cloths & supplies. Find Jimbo’s – get great breakfast sammiches and coffee. Hope they’ll learn to know us there – odds are good. Tape off molding & ceilings. One ladder. Shoot, sharing makes job go slow. 2 helpers arrive – Joe & Marty. Rock on. First coat of paint takes a long time. Pizza helps. Marty puts in overtime. Conrad and B finish 2 coats, remove masking. LOVE the colors. Even the veuve-inspired orange bathroom. Tired. LONG day. Tomorrow: pack.

Day 5 (Sunday): Plan to head to Camp Osmon to visit mom. Pack overnight & off-to-MA stuff. Start to pack. Shoot… no packing paper. C goes in hunt. Takes a LONG time. Frustrating. Comes home like a sherpa with about 50 pounds of paper strapped to his back. Pictures will follow. ‘Rents call & ask we come later. Frustrated: if I was a boy, driving alone would be a non-issue, but not worth stressing them out – so agree. Argggg. Stubborn. Head up to Harlem for delivery of floor sander. Mask shoe-molding. Drape kitchen in plastic to protect from mountains of sawdust. Remove doors to rooms. Shoot – tired again! :-)

Day 6 (Monday): SANDING day — yay! And packing day — boo. C takes Monday off from work & sands floors. B works from home. Really works. No time for packing. Movers coming on Wednesday and so far only 6 boxes packed. Stressed. C calls – floor sanding worked, sorta. B goes to condo to check out the work. Darn. Sander gets up finish but not evenly. Much of the stain is still down. Much deliberating. Choices: Pay professionals; Attempt a dark stain & hope it doesn’t look awful; Rent a more aggressive drum sander; call it rustic, put down clear coat – live with it and get lots of area rugs. Decide to rent the crazy-intense drum sander and try again tomorrow. Return home. Pack. A lot. On a roll now. Sorta. 25 boxes and only most of living room done. Need to be up by 6 to get to HD by 7 to rent sander — call it a night ~ midnight. Stress mounts .. clock ticks.

Day 7 – Tuesday: Early. Rain. Move car. Find out alternate side parking was suspended. C goes to HD for new rental. Delivery arrives in Harlem around 10:30, by noon-thirty, at least one room is down to raw wood floors. YAY! Now we’re on a roll with the floors. Hopefully we don’t screw them up too badly. 2pm. Kitchen almost packed .. boxes piling up around us.

… So that’s where we are now. Hope we make the 8:30am deadline on Wednesday, as that’s when the movers arrive!


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Categories : family, new york

Haarlem living

22 10 2008

Congratulations to our friend Kyra who just bought a condo in Haarlem, of the Netherlands.

… We just bought a condo in Harlem, of Manhattan!

We are now proud owners of 1,165 square feet … our own tiny piece of the rock. More soon – but we have the keys and the title to prove it!


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Categories : home ownership, new york

Economic advice in tough times

21 10 2008

I recently received the following e-mail forward from a friend. I haven’t checked the math, but the concept made me shaky… enough to share.

If you purchased $1,000.00 of Delta Air Lines stock one year ago you would have $49.00 left.

With Enron, you would have had $16.00 left of the original $1,000.00.

With WorldCom, you would have less than $5.00 left.

But, if you had purchased $1,000.00 worth of beer one year ago, drank all of the beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling REFUND … Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : general knowledge, new york

Livin’ like a local – Autumn in NYC

6 10 2008

Andy: I have to stay in Canada for another week!

Reyes: Why don’t you spend the weekend in NYC then – silly to go all the way back to London?

Andy: Ok!

And he did. Our friend Andy flew in for a random weekend that turned in to a culinary adventure around NYC. Memorable … and tastey!

Friday night – Taste of Korea in k-town (32nd street) … where restaurants put on a sample menu for a fixed price. I’ve never had Korean bar-b-que and I didn’t know it was sweet — but now I have and it is! :-) The boys stopped for a “cask ale” on the way home. I didn’t know what that is either — and that’s one thing from the evening I wouldn’t recommend, unless warm beer is your thing. Ugh.

Saturday we ventured down to a little tiny spot in the West Village called Daddy-O‘s that my cousin introduced us to. Better than their infamous, spicy bloody marys are their tator tots and BLTs. From there, we walked around as the mid-day sunlight filtered through the air the way only it can when autumn is in the air. The walk brought us east and north to 14th Street / Union Square where a hundred or so vendors pile the sidewalks on Saturdays and tempt tourists and citygoers alike with locally grown colorful everything … from flowers to pig to heirloom tomatoes of every color and bulbous variety. We had some apple cider and a donut while I picked up the makings for a Sunday batch of butternut squash soup.

Andy wants to see our new apartment. We’ve been reticent to mention it on the blog as the deal is not yet done. But .. we are planning to buy a little piece of the rock up in Harlem. So we wandered home to drop off my gigantic $2 bundle of kale (what AM I going to do with it all!!?) and then took the bus on a scenic ride from the jewish bialy stop of 86th street up to the hairbraiding mecca of w 122nd street. We couldn’t go inside, but we showed him the facade of our soon-to-be-new-home as well as the neighboring park. We found respite and much needed caffeine and fuel for the day in Settepani, a near-by coffee shop. I just happened to throw a game in my purse while we were at home, so coffee and a game brought us new friends and conversation over java. Then it was back down to the homebase while we made dinner plans. In lieu of lodging, Andy’s company will take us to dinner. We will not abuse nor squandor this opportunity … so steak house it was. But we were pretty tired from a long day of exploring, so we stayed local and made our way to Roth’s Steakhouse.

Turns out, on Saturday night, Roth’s has a live jazz band. Turns out, the singer was this old guy I wish I could have photographed. His smile invited you to ask him about the million and one stories that seemed to be lying in wait behind is playful eyes. He had to be about 80, and he ambled up to the stool to join the stage with guys in their 30s .. maybe 40s .. and he outdressed them all in his three-piece black velvet suit, complete with purple baseball cap (no logo). As I was digging into my petit fillet and side of sauteed-in-just-the-right-amount-of-butter onions and mushrooms, he was diging into a little number he co-wrote, a piece he thought, we might, just maybe recognize. And then little Jimmy Norman showed those white kids on stage just how to sing jazz as he crooned “Time is on my side.” After we got up off the floor, Conrad promptly bought the man’s CD … and I escorted the boys out of the restaurant before they could interrogate poor Jimmy about the days gone by …. as surely this lyricist legend had a few storeis to share … but we let the idea marinade in our memories like the butter and fat from the tasty steaks lingered on our tongues.

Sunday was a bit more low paced with a casual breakfast around the corner at Le Pain Quotidien where opening a soft boiled egg in an egg cup is still something will we strive towards perfecting. After breakfast we headed to the local UWS sunday green market in hopes of finding an Obama t-shirt for Andy to take to London, alas, the only one who bought a t-shirt was me … along with a fat purple heirloom carrot and some fresh flowers. Andy departed just after noon for London, and Conrad and I promptly collapsed on the couch with the Sunday Times and smells of our butternut squash dinner bubbling on the stove.

Great weekend. We love when friends come to down and give us an excuse to eat our way through Manhattan :-)


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Categories : food, friends, new york

Tennis with a short net

22 09 2008

It was the last Friday of the summer. The sun was low on the horizon. And Joe went to Dick’s Sporting Goods the day before.

Missing the connection?

Why, badminton in Central Park of course. Duh. And here’s what I learned:

  1. You can play net games in Central Park
  2. The dirt is hard. Makes it difficult to put in poles for said net-games
  3. People with dogs will want to play with you. That is fun, but beware of the dogs stealing your game things.
  4. Dogs also poop. In the grass. Where you are playing. Look out.
  5. Badminton … not badmitton or other such spelling without the middle “n”
  6. Conrad and I are better at this strange sport than we thought (given a midget net and another couple equally as savvy in the game)

Can you say redo this Friday!? :-)


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Categories : friends, new york

Closing parentation gaps – conference attending

18 09 2008

My parents went to an educators conference every year. When I was of a certain age, I was invited to join them. I still remember what it was called: ASCD .. and it lives on. They considered it a valuable way to learn outside of their usual social / geographical circles of influence.

Point being, we don’t usually share a lot of work experiences in common. My line of work is drastically different – from anything that was productive employment in their generation. This week though, I’m attending a conference: the Web 2.0 Expo.

Part of me thinks of this through that lense, part of me is observing how the world of conferences has changed (especially this one – who’s topic is about new webby stuff, so it better be using the stuff), and also what has NOT changed. (Someone here said, “Offline is the new online” — and I thought, “hmm, not really new, but welcome back.”)

So yeah, it’s a pretty good experience so far. Oh, and people at work helped me get a free ticket – including a fancy lunch discussion soiree, got to love that.

Next week: sharing 10 things I learned with the team who couldn’t come … need to let it percolate a bit to see what we can actually do differently based on all the different things we’re hearing here. Mostly lots of people talking about a lot of different stuff – but no 1 plan has emerged as a blueprint we can copy & reapply directly to our world.

I am twittering now, so that’s new.

Sidenote: Watch for Tim Washer’s new hilarious TV show pitch for a mockumentary on trade shows – man is there material all around us!


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Categories : family, new york, work scenes

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