On Pigs and People

This is a picture of a teacup pig, which those flakes and nuts in California are importing as the newest pet craze. My sister wants one. However, since it would be smaller than her cats, they would probably succeed in eating it.

Houston has the same humid, heavy air that has made places like New Orleans and Florida famous for ghosts. On a hot, humid summer night the air distorts light and sometimes you just can't be sure what you are seeing.

This past summer, I was walking Lady Bird around the neighborhood and from across the street, inside a gated yard, I saw a pig the size of an America bulldog. I was all like, "Whoa! Those people are keeping a pig as a pet." I quickly reported this freakishness to everyone I know. Met with their skepticism and my own inability to remember where I'd seen the pig, I began to think maybe I had not really seen a pig at all.

A few weeks later I was walking by a house and noticed that the yard was full of pig themed stuff, including a large statue of a pig. I realized that I had mistaken a statue for a live animal and was a complete idiot. I kept this to myself.

Later that week, Frank and I were sitting on the front porch and someone walked by across the street. She was walking an animal the size of an American Bulldog.
"Frank! Look! That is the pig I saw."
"Are you sure that is a pig and not a dog."
"Yes, well maybe not. It looks like a pig, right."
"I don't know."
"Hey, is that a pig?"

To this the lady replied: "I don't know. Maybe it's part pig. I'm just the dog walker."

So at this point I really did feel like a total idiot. There was no pig and I am crazy. (But maybe not as crazy as the walker of a part dog part pig.)

But then, last week, I was so excited to see that there was, in fact, a real pig around the block from me. I was walking Lady Bird, but this time we were on the same side of the street as the pig house. There is was, a large pig, just standing in the front yard, enclosed by the fence. The pig did not move at all as we walked by. This gave me a little relief. The pig was statueske. To my surprise, Lady Bird had no reaction to the pig. She did not go and sniff its nose as if it were a dog and she did not chase it like it was a cat.

Ta Da. A pig lives around the block from me and whoever is keeping that pig is as much of a nut as I am.

Wedding Photos

Our wedding photos are up!

http://dasophoto.zenfolio.com/f719540946

http://dasophoto.zenfolio.com/f663414146

Northern Exposure

My father has bought himself a vacation home on the Bay where he spend his childhood summers. All of his friends had vacation homes then, and they all do now, and, finally, so does he. To be clear: the Bay is Green Bay, off of Lake Michigan, and the house is half an hour north of the city of Green Bay. It is way far north of Houston, where we all live.

To help my father settle in to the house, change the locks, buy some sheets, and generally make sure things were OK, Frank and I accompanied him up there this past weekend.

We flew into Chicago, spent the night with friends and then drove the three and a half hours North. We got out to the house without issue. Thankfully, the road and driveway had been blowed and the below zero Fahrenheit temperatures had warmed to the twenties.

Lunch time arrived and my dad and I drove down fifteen minutes down the road to a place he said had great burgers. It was closed. The sign said it should have been open on Fridays for lunch, but no one was there. We went back to the house, which, of course, didn't have any food in it because we had just moved in. So, Frank and I drove about ten minutes down the road in the other direction looking for food. The first place we tried was also closed with no sign of explanation. We arrived at a bar that had pizza and I was very hungry. While the bartender made the pizza I ate a mediocre salad from a neglected salad bar and drank a great root beer.

This brought to mind the first episode of the television series Northern Exposure. Joel got to Sicily, Alaska from New York and was shown his cabin in the woods. As his landlady is leaving he asked about good delivery around there. She laughs, because there is only one bar with food and no delivery. That is how I felt at the cottage on the Bay. I just don't really understand how to get myself fed outside of an urban area.


Part of settling in to the house was making sure there were enough beds and sheets and towels for people to come and visit in the summer, when people would want to come and visit. My great aunt recently passed away and my dad's cousin had moved some of her stuff to a basement, holding it for us. To get the bed, lamps, and dishes, my father had arranged to borrow his brother's van. As we drove over there my dad explained that it was an old van that was used mostly for moving around band equitment. Then, he asked who wanted to drive it. I don't really need to drive on snow and ice, and I certainly was not going to volunteer to drive a cargo van. My dad was greatful when Frank volunteered.

We get to my uncle's house and as we are walking out to the garage my uncle asks Frank if he knows anything about cars.
"No."
"Do you know what a manual choke is?"
"No."
"The van has an automatic transmission and a manual choke."

I got pretty confused as he was explaining what that meant. I was pretty glad I hadn't volunteered to drive the van.

To paint a clearer picture of this interaction, imagine that instead of whoever you were picturing as my uncle, picture Cheech from That 70's Show talking about a manual anything. My uncle is a musian in Wisconsin and he acts a whole lot like Cheech. The van had a peace symbol hanging from the rear view mirror and an aged hula girl on the dash.

As Frank was getting into the van, I thought about how if my life were a sit-com the next scene would be a funeral. A funeral for a pet. For a pet's tail. As he backed out my uncle said, "Don't worry, if you hit anything you'll destroy it but nothing will hurt you. It's a lead sled. ha."

We stopped at a gas station to fuel up beacause "the van eats a lot of gas and there isn't any in it, man." Frank bought a Wall Street Journal. Walking up to the van in his New York coat and scarf (i.e. not the Wisconsin rigour bright orange hunting wear), carrying a paper, Frank looked way out of place.

Luckily, we moved the furniture and returned the van without incident. On the way home, we were lucky to get on an earlier flight because the snow was falling so hard all flights out of O'Hare were delayed. The snow falling in Chicago was the biggest flakes I've ever seen.

Last night, happy to be in my own bed, warm with my puppy, I had dreams of snowflakes as big as oven mits falling from the sky. Then I woke up put on a pair of running shorts and a T-shirt and took Lady Bird for a jog in Houston's 70 degree weather. It's nice to go places, but it's even nicer to come home.

On Christmas Shopping

This is my favorite memory of Christmas shopping.

Several years ago, before Frank realized that he could skip Christmas by skipping town, Frank and I found ourselves at a Super Target on Christmas Eve morning. For those of you who have never seen a Super Target, its a really big Target, that sells groceries. This Super Target is across the street from the AstroDome and the two parking lots are similar in size and stature. The Super Target does share it's parking lot with a Sonic Drive In, though.

Not surprisingly, the Super Target contains a full service Starbucks. Frank and I were waiting for our holiday, syrupy lattes when a man walked up with a five year old in his shopping cart. The little boy was wearing a helment. This was not some sort of therapeutic helment and it didn't appear that the man had deemed the dangers of riding a shopping cart to require a helment. In fact, it did not appear that the man had given any thought to the risk posed by letting a child ride in the basket part of a shopping cart: you know, not the part for kids, the part where your stuff goes. It seemed like maybe this child just always wore a helment the way some kids wear capes.

So the man walks up to the counter and asks for 3 shots of expresso with some ice. The little boy is using his fingers to shoot imaginary bullets at other shoppers. The barista asks if the man wants his expresso iced. He replies, "Just put a few ice cubes in there. I just need it cool enough to drink. My partner and I (he points to the little boy) have some Christmas shopping to do."

The most disgusting thing I've ever seen live

After reading this you are all going to be thinking, "she doesn't blog in months and then she posts THIS! Disgusting."

This morning I was reminded of my friend Shirley's thoughts on parents: spending time with babies and dirty diapers makes parents act like children and make poop jokes that only they think are funny. I was reminded of this when my dog licked my cheek after eating her own poop and inadvertently smeared poop across my face. Then she went and smeared poop across my bed while I was scouring my face.

Some of you already knew that I have a dog that loves to eat poop, but that story was to get the rest of you up to date. That wasn't the most disgusting thing ever.

I was sitting in my back room writing thank you cards and Lady Bird walked in an puked a quart of the contents of her stomach all over the floor. Because she had been eating poop, her puke smelled like poop. While cleaning it up I almost puked. It was the most disgusting thing ever.

Then when I ran her outside to get the garbage can she ran onto my neighbor's lawn and had some pretty major diarrhea. This is a neighbor we don't get along with anyway, a neighbor who spends ten hours a day watering her lawn. I think that my dog has food poisoning.

I just made her a bowl of gatorade.

They're playin' my song/I know I'm gonna be OK

Some of you know that I am currently teaching yoga to youngin's at Poe Kids College. Its an experience that I am really enjoying and Poe is such a wonderful community that I understand why at least 2 of my friends have parents that intentionally moved into the neighborhood zoned to Poe.

During spring break in high school, I was staying at a friend's house in Manhattan and we found a little cut out of a Houston map. Her dad told us that that it was the Poe school zone and that he had been told that they had to move into it (from NY) in time for my friend to start school.

Although the classes I'm teaching are not formally Kundalini, I still play "Longtime Sun" at the end of every class. At the end of class today, one of the girls said that it was a really pretty song and then another said that it was so sad.

I guess a children's yoga class just attracts precocious children.

In related news, everyone I know loves the new Miley Cirus song Party in the USA.

I got my hands up,
They’re playin my song
I know im gonna be ok

Although it is Miley, it is just such an inspiring pop song. I love that she gives a shoutout to Britney. 

The Hundred Pushup Challenge

The One Hundred pushup challenge is the hottest new trend sweeping the nation (or at least my limited circle of friends and acquaintances).

Today I did the second set of week 3, and had two questions:

1) If I started in the second column and now my max isn't high enough to stay in the second column, do I have to repeat the week or can I just drop down and do the sets in the first (lower) column? Furthermore, if I am doing the sets in first column and week 6 has only a max of 50, how am I supposed to get to 100 two days later?

2) Why is doing 100 pushups at once even something I am working towards?

A Pixar movie in the making

In one of the frontyards in my neighborhood sit a Great Dane and a Miniature Dachsaund, no leashes, no tethers. The yard isn't on my regular commute, and the few times I have driven by, I've thought, "Those dogs shouldn't be free like that."

Then, the other day I made the mistake of walking Lady Bird on the sidewalk right in front of this house. Now, poor Lady Bird had a really bad day months ago when she into some dog's backyard and we attacked. So, when I realized that I was walking her by this Great Dane, I panicked a little.

The Great Dane took no notice of us at all, but the Dachsaund ran straight toward Lady Bird, yapping the whole way. When it got about a foot from her a beeping noise started. On the dog's collar a red light started flashing. That dog turned around and ran the other way immediately.

These dogs are clearly living behind an "invisible fence" system, and I guess it is working for them. I'm sure that their owners are enjoying the protection that comes from having a Great Dane in your front yard. Maybe the dogs don't have a backyard to live in like most Houstonian dogs do. Maybe they just really love watching the cars go by.

Whatever reason motivated their owners to put up an electric shock system it seems that they overlooked a Houston phenomena: constant blackouts.

I can see it now. This really, really big dog who is a little shy and a little mellow and this small, angry, aggressive, elongated dog always knew it would happen one day and then the power goes out they are free at last. I can hear their little ethnic sounding voices now.

If it is a little power outage from a rainstorm then the story might be about avoiding being re-caught. But this is Houston, and we have hurricanes when the power is out for weeks and all sorts of things go crazy. Civilized, business friendly Houston starts to look like free wheeling New Orleans. I mean a pre-Katrina New Orleans, when everyone still had sense of humor enough to call a drink you put in a foot long plastic cup you wear on a lanyard around your neck a "hurricane."

Now, only in my dreams do I purport to be a screenwriter, but I think we may have something here. A big dog and a little dog go on an adventure in a hurricane. There's lots to find. They could help squirrels whose trees feel down and find cats who are running a criminal underworld.

After the wedding planning is over, I might just pursuit this.

If you like Gutterballer you'll love NRWLobster.com

Gutterballer fans, I apologize for being aloof these past few months. First, it was the MCAT, and now it is trying to get a collection of jobs big enough to support myself until med school. That, and executing a wedding and training a puppy.

Mostly, however, I have been spending my blogging time working on the wedding website NRWLobster. It has all the crap you have to put on a wedding site like location and travel arrangement. But, because Frank and I are storytellers there is a lot about us and about Houston. So if you have been missing this raconteur you can find a little taste over there.

But don't worry, come December I'm sure I will be full up of things that I need to tell. Already there are some posts in the pipeline that I just haven't had the discipline to finish.

On Crocs

Remember a few years ago when everyone was wearing Crocs all the time? Then there was the backlash, then there was the backlash to the backlash. People who wore them said that they were oh so comfortable and people who didn't wear them said that they were ugly, ugly, ugly.

After all that blew over, it looked like the only people left wearing them were in the health care industry: nurses and veterinary technicians. Well, I guess that seeing as how I am pre-med, it was just a matter of time 'till I got some.

And I just did. And they really are super comfortable. I got the ballet flats because I thought that they were less ugly and would slip on real fast. I leave a pair of shoes by the back door and slip them on when I run outside to stop the puppy from eating her own poo. Then, I've been staying out there and gardening. Well, maybe I shouldn't call it gardening: I've been raking the massive leaf pile and putting in into a massive compost pile in the corner of the yard. All that dirt has taken its toll on my cute Keds and it seemed that a pair of shoes that can be hosed off was the answer.

But these Crocs are better than Keds in so many other ways. I have a foot injury that has been slow to heal. My physical therapist had me put inserts into all my shoes. Well, after putting on a pair of Crocs, I realized that the inserts must have worn out. These ugly Crocs really are supportive. I liked them so much that I wore them to my volunteer job walking people across the street. They were better than my old running shoes, support-wise. Then I wore them over to Frank's Mom's house.

I think I may have just crossed the line: the line that divides people who think that it doesn't matter how you look as long as you're comfortable and the people who care how they look. Some of you may be saying to yourselves, "Katie, you always loved to wear ugly clothes." True. True. True. But that was on principal. Now I'm just wearing ugly shoes. They are ugly without it obviously being a design choice. But they do feel good and I love them.

Oh, the irony!

I am so in love with my puppy. She is just the cutest, smartest, wiliest puppy ever and she may have ruined us for all future puppies.

Lady Bird is a digger. She loves to dig. When we met her I asked her foster mom if I should worry about her digging. Her foster mom told me that it was a bad habit she got from watching the other dogs and that alone she was fine, that she didn't dig. She answered as if I was worried about my grass. I'm not. I was just worried that the dog was an escape artist. She was attacked when she got out through a hole one of the dogs had dug.

Well, she digs. She digs all over the backyard. When she finds something she likes in the house she takes it out back and buries it, just like dogs on TV. In the disaster area that is the backyard, she is always digging up new treasures. So far, her favorite treasure is a shovel she dug up.

I came outside to find her digging with her front paws while holding the shovel in her mouth. It was so freakin' cute. It's like she wants to be a person but hasn't quite figured it out. Then, she buried the shovel, and oh I loved that!

Here is a picture of her running away so I don't get her shovel.

My life has changed so much

The house I moved into has a huge, huge Oak tree in the backyard. It is really wonderful, but because the former tenets were deadbeats there is about three years worth of leaves piled up all over the yard. And the major hurricane Ike hit in one of those years. So that is a serious amount of leaves, and sticks, and garbage. It reminds me of the joke: you know that you are a redneck if you have ever moved the lawn and found a car. There is random debris hidden amount the leaves, things like Styrofoam packing material, cardboard, soccer balls, basketballs, metal hangers, and my personal favorite, old garbage bags partially full of leaves. It is as if someone, a long, long time ago started to clean up but either gave up or forgot and ended up contributing to the mess.

Look at the photo of this tree. It is a very impressive tree. What is that metal thing blocking the view? That is a broken space heater left by the deadbeats.


I've been spending a lot of time getting big bags (like fifty pound bags) of coffee grounds from Sbucks and layering them with the leaves in a big pile in the corner of the yard as an attempt at composting. The guys at Starbucks know me and always want to tell me about what I should plant and when I should bring them some on the tomatoes that they think I should be growing. I dig through the piles of leaves and sort out the sticks and the garbage. My puppy, Lady Bird, hangs out and just digs, and my parents' dog, Luigi, just hangs out.

I was out today shopping and registering for Texas shaped cookie cutters when I smelled my hands: dirt and dog. It made me really happy. It is nice to be back to my hippie roots. Even with the unworldly heat, it is nice to be back in Houston where I have the luxuries of time and space to do things like composting and puppy training.
Q: How do you hide something from a hippie? A: Put it under the soap.

Congratulation, Me!

I finished the MCAT, I got a puppy, and I'm getting married in November.
Woo hoo.

Houston, where it's too hot to swim

Yesterday I woke up early and went swimming at Memorial Pool. It's a nice big lap pool with a water slide, and, for the bargain basement price of one dollar, you can lap swim from 6-10 in the morning. I was pretty excited. It is the hottest summer every in Houston and I've been dreaming of a nice, cool swim.

So I put on my googles and braced myself for cool water. I anticipated the nice, chilled out feeling of getting out of a cold pool and into a hot car. But as my body hit the water, my brain was filled with memories of a childhood spent swimming in Houston. In the summer in Houston the pools are only cool in the most relative of senses. The water was very, very warm. Last week my father told me that the water in his backyard pool was up to 90 degrees. That was when the air was 105.

Local news stations are telling people to keep the AC in their houses set to 15 degrees below the temperature outside. Seriously, no matter how environmentalista I try to be, I just can't live in a house that is above 85. I am undeinably a Houstonian and there are things that you cannot convince a Texas girl to do, even if you threaten rolling blackouts.

But, apparently, I will swim in a pool that it that warm. It was like doing a Bikram yoga class. The heat was more of a challenge than the workout. It took me about twice as long to swim my laps and I just gave up after half a mile. Yes, some of that can be contributed to my own out-of-shape laziness, but it was undeniably hot.

Also, the awesome water slide kept pushing me to the end of my lane. It was like swimming in a river, y'all. Then I saw a woman just go up and run in place at the foot of the slide, like it was a water arobics prop or something. That made me feel like maybe my swim wasn't that pathetic, cause I was working in two directions, forward and to the right.

Anyways, I just can't wait until I take the MCAT and I can get out of town. "Where will I go?" you ask. Barton Springs, Austin, TX. Or, even better, San Solomon Springs, way out I-10, TX.

Back in H-town and living the life

This afternoon I went and got a mani/pedi with my sister. We went to a "salon" in a strip center because I cannot afford the fancy place, and she cannot afford to pay double at the fancy place.

Afterward we got dumplings, which were totally great and exactly the right thing at that moment. I wore the disposable pedicure flip flops to the restaurant. Apparently, you can wear whatever you want to anywhere here in Houston. Last night at dinner at a nicer restaurant I saw a girl wearing short running shorts. It was definitely cool that I didn't have to dent my do by putting shoes back on but I felt a little bit like I was cheating.

Then I wore those flip flops for the rest of the night. As I was about to get into bed I realized that my feet were probably kinda dirty, so I rinsed them off in the sink. It seemed ironic that after paying a woman to scrub my feet, I had to wash them off in the sink. Maybe this is a lesson to me about wearing those flip flops home after a nice pedi.

Houston is HOT!

I opened my google homepage today and saw the weather report for the three places I track, LA, Brooklyn, and Houston. It looked like signs of the apocolypse (or global warming):

1) Rain is forecasted for the rest of the week
2) Houston will break 100 degrees F for the rest of the week
3) Current conditions in LA are Haze.

A little over a month ago it started raining in the middle of the night in Brooklyn and hasn't stopped. (Forty days of rain and counting). So I was looking forward to a hot Texas summer. Since arriving I've heard everyone complain about the heat. I just kept telling them that it was summer in Texas, but no one could remember a summer this hot.

Turns out they are right, this week we have broken the heat records set in 1980. It is the hottest June of my life. It is too hot to go to the dogpark in the morning, even before ten am. That is hot.

I went running today in Memorial Park, something I have been looking forward to since January. About a mile in, I stopped and used the restroom. Pulling up my running shorts was as difficult and unpleasant as putting on a wet swimsuit. A one mile run before 9 am had left me completely soaked. It was like I had gone swimming in a pond in shorts and a T-shirt. It is going to be a long, hot summer. This kind of heat is a bad harbinger for hurricane season.

all summer in a day

It started raining in the middle of the night about a month ago and seemingly has not stopped. For the last ten hours is has been pouring. I feel like the little girl in the Ray Bradbury story "All Summer in a Day." We had to read it in elementary school. It was about a girl who lived in a colony on Venus, and she was the only one of the children who had ever been on Earth. She was miserable and it rained every day. It was sort of like when my sister lived in Holland.
The little girl writes a poem: The sun is like a flower/ that blooms for just one hour. The other children are so jealous of her that they locked her in a closet for the one hour in the whole year the sun was out. It was such a miserable story to force children to read. They wonder why kids aren't engaged in school, maybe its because they make us read depressing stories like that.

I'm conflicted about the rain. New York is never better than on a rainy day. All the matching black umbrellas, the sound of tires on a wet road, and the way people huddle together at doorways getting their umbrellas ready and there coats buttoned are some of the things that remind us we are all here together sharing very similar experiences. We are all living in the city. There isn't much better than coming home to a warm apartment, peeling off the wet layers on the way to a hot shower, then ordering takeout and hunkering down. But maybe there is too much of a good thing.

I can't help but feel that maybe Brooklyn is crying because she is so upset that I am leaving. I finally got a sublettor and a ticket home, and while I am so excited about returning to Texas, I do love New York and I'm kinda sad. Maybe its good that I'm getting a few years worth of rainy New York days to store up in case I need on in my Texas future.

Yesterday, I went to Bronx and got shot

Yesterday, I went to the Bronx zoo to celebrate a friend's bday. It was a fun trip despite the pouring rain. There was consensus that the polar bear was the biggest hit. I guess the weather just jazzed him up and he actively played with a big pool toy in his little lagoon.

As we were walking to the zoo from the train stop, we were waiting for a crosswalk light and I felt something sharp hit me. My first though was that one of the boys behind us had thrown something at me, hard. After seeing that they were too far back, I thought perhaps a squirrel had thrown a nut down. But there weren't trees nearby. Then I thought of Forrest Gump describe something jumping up and biting him in Vietnam. I looked at my back and my shirt. There was no bullet hole or blood, but there was a raised welt forming. I thought of Kenneth the Page, "Man, that smarts."

Today, I have a red welt about a centimeter in diameter on my back above my hip. There is a bruise the size of my fist forming around it. I think that I must have been shot with a pellet gun. WTF, people!

Usually, when weird things happen to me I think that it is just because I spend a lot of time out among the people, not following a strict daily routine like people who work 9-5 jobs. So I see different things and meet different people. However, this does not fit into that category. Some kid in an apartment building shot me with a BB gun from his window. No one else got shot, just me.

Ultimately, I think that this bruise is totally worth it. For the rest of my life when people at parties reference The Bronx I will be able to say that I was shot in The Bronx. That is a hard story to top.

The only reality we know is our own

When I lived in LA, I commuted from near downtown to The Valley. I arrived to school early to get all my prep done and tried to leave before 4:25 to beat the traffic. My commute on the 101 took 20 minutes in the morning, driving 90, and closer to 45 minutes driving home with my left leg on the clutch the whole time. If it was a busy day and I didn't leave until 5, that homeward bound time could easily double. However, Fridays were another story. Just as earthquakes are not like hurricanes and you cannot outrun them, Friday night rush hour in The Valley starts before noon. It cannot be beaten.

Rather than suffer all that time in a car without a radio (a story for later) and risk having a left gluteus maximus that was significantly more toned than my right, I choose to wait it out. The Valley is actually a nice place to spend your Friday night. Ventura Blvd. is a great shopping location; they have a Pinkberry and a Trader Joes and a book store made out of an old movie theater (sound familiar?). The Valley is culturally a lot like Houston, and in this scenario, Ventura Blvd. would be the Rice Village. Yes, Ventura Blvd. can boast that it was part of The Camino Real, but nobody's comparing The Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean, either. (Oh, man, the way this is going, I might not get such a warn welcome upon my return to Texas.) I worked hard all week and I liked to treat myself to a Pinkberry on Friday. They are a little overpriced, but its good fro-yo and it comes with a lot of fruit, so you feel pretty good afterward, not that bloated ice cream feeling, ugg.

I would be standing there feeling gross and dirty in my work clothes and waiting behind, like, a dozen private school kids. It was nice that they were not the public school kids that I taught all day, so I didn't know any of them. But still, how much does one have to spend on a dessert before the teenagers are priced out? In The Valley, on a public school teachers salary, I would have been tapped out first. That knowledge kind of made me resent these children. But I didn't resent them too much, because I still remembered being a teenager living in my parents' income bracket and not my own. I remember one of my art teachers complaining about the cars my peers drove and how much nicer they were than her car. Ultimately, watching these teenagers, who I could relate to so much more than my students, I enjoyed my frozen treat and my memories of high school.

Earlier this year, Barack Obama was on The Tonight Show and he told a story about being flown in a military helicopter over the Lincoln Memorial on his was somewhere. He was enjoying the view and the experience and his daughter looked over, not out the window, but at the candy dish in front of her and asked, "Are these Starburst? Can I have one of these?" My mother laughed, but said that you can't expect kids to appreciate more than they know. Then she said it was just like when she told us about something specific in her childhood. Her childhood qualms were quite bigger than the price differential of ice cream, and apparently, my sister and I didn't relate. My mother's childhood is to my childhood as Barack's childhood is to his daughters? Not quite, my childhood is the only one that could be considered normal there, but that was the point my mother was implying. That, and if you are the adult you shouldn't get too upset when your children don't appreciate the things that they take for granted. At least, I think that was her point.

I love going out to breakfast. There are a few places near me that I especially like: Perch, where they serve really good egg sandwiches and Salmon Benedict, and Dizzies, where they put really good mini muffins and fruit butter on your table before you order. Both places are very kid friendly, and I always look around and wonder, "Who are these spoiled kids?" Last time I was at Dizzy's the table next to us had two adults and four children. The children were bad, and I later told Frank that people with that many bad children should just stay at home and feed them mac and cheese, with the money they save on the food they could afford to hire a sitter. Maybe I just don't understand how hard it is to get a sitter in the Slope. Once I heard an eight year old at Dizzy's use the phrase "pallet cleanser." Perch is a full on bar at night, but on weekdays they have a story time and puppet shows. Both are also places that I can justify paying a little more to eat breakfast once a week because I bought disposable dixie to-go cups and make coffee at home every day.

Last night I read the first half of Tori Spelling's book. (I'll see your summer movie and raise you a beach read). Half way through, her thesis seems to be that while her parents did give her a snow day in LA and a room of Madame Alexander dolls, they did not give her the more important things in life, like the skill set needed to leave bad boyfriends. I thought of this this morning when I was eating my smoked salmon at Perch and a man rolled his two year old daughter in in a stroller that retails for more than my last car. The girl was unhappy, to say the least. She was throwing her head back and screaming, "I want to go to Dizzy's." The waitresses were looking over and the dad kept saying, "Shush!" So, yeah, I was a little bit jealous of this little girl who gets pushed around to breakfast at finer diners, but then I thought that to her, she might as well be trying to pick between Cheerios and Shredded Wheat.

On Brooklyn after days and days of rain

Early this week it started to rain in the middle of the night and it just didn't stop.

This morning I woke up and reacquainted myself with the sun. It was a joyful reunion, but there are signs of its absence all over BK.

First of all, I need to comment on an earlier posting about donuts. I've received many comments about those donuts and that picture. Yeah, they do look good. After taking Frank to the source, I was told that maybe that posting oversold those donuts a bit. Well, after today's damp morning and very dense donut, I have come to the conclusion that the awesomeness of apple cider donuts varies inversely with humidity. Yeah, that's right, I'm a math teacher studying for the MCAT, I pulled out an algebra term.

After enjoying my donut I parked myself and my study material at the park (ha!). Being the good Houston girl that I am, I chose a spot right above a big puddle. What Houstonian could forget the joys of standing water for a small child! To clarify, this puddle was bigger than my apartment and covered one of the primary walkways.

When I sat down there were several eight year olds playing in it. After a mom pointed out that one of the girls had a cut on her leg and that she was swimming in bacteria the resisted but quickly vacated.

This freed the pond up for the funniest thing I have seen all summer. A very small child riding a very small bike rode straight into the pond. I saw him at the top of the path and I thought, "Is he really going to do this?" Well, he did. This bike was about a foot and a half tall and the child was probably about three feet tall. He pedaled fast straight into the water. Instead of flying forward upon contact which seemed like a likely possibility, the kid rode right through until the bike was completely under water and half the kid was. But that didn't stop him. He kept riding until the water was up to his chest. Then he must have hit a rock because he was jerked forward and fell into the water sideways.

All this time a man had been walking down the path coming from the opposite direction. He had been looking at the screen of a digital camera and I thought that it was the kid's dad and he was filming. Well this dude just kept walking as the kid emerged from the water screaming and crying. The dude walked up to the kid, picked up the submerged bike and placed it on a rock and kept walking. I guess he wasn't the dad, which makes me feel a little better about parents today. Seriously, can you image just filming as your kid did something so dumb!

After a few minutes some other adult male showed up and took the kid's shirt off and tried to comfort him. I hope that was the dad. I guess you never know. The kid cried for some time. I laughed to myself. Whatever, that's how you learn that if you ride through a puddle that is taller than you you will get wet. We all learned it. I just never saw someone learn it in such a tangible way. You see people on tv drive their cars into to puddles and you think WTF. Hopefully, that kid learned his lesson and will stay off the weather channel.

Ah, the dichotomy of yoga

For those of you who are not familiar with yoga, this is the sun salutation sequence, or at least this is a variation of a practice with many variations. If this little boy was actually moving he would Inhale while to move from figure no.1 to figure no. 2 and Exhale to move to figure 3, then Inhale to move to figure 4, ect. The breath should be an integral part of the practice.

Also integral to a strong yoga practice is non judgment. Usually, this means that you shouldn't judge yourself poorly when you fall over or aren't the best in the class. When you have an awesome back bend like mine, though (perhaps due to the gift of an extra vertebra?), non judgment means that I shouldn't be too pleased with myself.

Yoga should be a refuge from the serious world, but the practice should also teach us not to take the rest of the world so seriously.

Why did I just get so yoga preachy? Because I'm naturally a pedantic person? Yes, but also, because I have just had a funny yoga class. To start with, let me say it was a great class with a great teacher. Then let me say that the teacher was not a native speaker of English. He had a cute Frenchy Italiany accent, and when he said "exhale" it sounded like he was saying "excel". As in, "Inhale, fold forward, Excel, chaturanga."

I tend to space out at yoga and just follow the sun salutations with muscle memory. So I would hear him say "excel" and for a beat I would think, "wow, this guy is really pushing excellence", then I would realize what he was really saying. I thought that was funny. So I wanted to share my experience at an excellent yoga class in which I excelled.

thingsiveboughtthatilove: Blister treatment

It is Memorial Day and summer is officially here. It is a gorgeous warm day and the parks are full, full of women in summer dresses and sandals. What does that mean: blisters.

I've put on a dress several days in the past few weeks and given myself no choice but to brave dainty summer shoes. The first thing to go was the skin on the top of my feet where the strap rubbed me the wrong way. New plan: no more strappy sandals, just conservative ballet flats. Well, they rubbed the skin off the backs of my feet.

This happens every New York summer. I find myself walking around Manhattan, far from home, on the way to meeting someone or attending something important and attacking my feet are at least two blisters threatening to turn into bloody messes. So I duck into Duane Reade and enjoy the free air conditioning and adult contemporary jams on my way to the Band-aid isle. Yes, Kelly Clarkson, you know my pain. The most obvious solution (other than just putting on socks, which is neither pretty nor summery and an admission of defeat) is to put on a few standard Bandaids. Well, this is neither pretty nor that effective seeing as how they always get rubbed off. In past years I've been seduced by Band-aid friction block, a Vaseline based product that claims to eliminate the bother of tight shoes. I don't want to be too negative becaues I've heard good things about this product from a trusted source, but I cannot recommend this product for enflamed skin.

This year, like years past, I found myself in the first aid isle with sore feet. My first instinct was to grab a handful of Sponge Bob Bandaids and just go wild. I'd just finished reading the Atlantic article about the incessant optimism of the yellow guy. He's been around for ten years so maybe I could celebrate with a little playfulness on my feet. But that didn't seem appropriate for the fancy dinner on the ticket for that night. Next, I was almost seduced by the Dr. Scholl's competitor to the Blister Blocker. But just as a jubilee of bells rang out following K.C., I looked to the left on the shelf and saw Blister Treatment surrounded by a halo of light. I went for it.

These little guys are amazing. Each one is a little cushion covered in a larger, clear sticker. I put one on each of my heels last week Thursday, and have showered and worked out every day since. Just now, five days later, did I have to scrape them off my feet, uncovering completely healed skin.

In the winter, I get cuts and pealing skin on my finger tips. My mamma worries about me and she sends me these great little expensive advanced finger and toe Bandaids. They work great on fingertips; they stay on and they keep my cuticles happy. I've usually just reached into my stash and used these finger tip Bandaids on my feet come spring and summer. They work pretty well when it comes to healing. However, they just aren't made for feet and they don't stay on long. I always feel guilty because they are so expensive, too expensive to use everyday on my feet. Well, the cushion in the Blister Treatment turns into a healing goo, just like these advanced Bandaids. They are like the perfect ailment for angry summer feet. I'm so excited that I've found them in time for summer. So strappy sandals and warm weather, here I come!

P.S. Why is that Dr. Scholl's rub releif "for her"? So men are just going to have to keep on powering through uncomfortable shoes?

Thanks for keepin' it classy, Columbia

I am proud and happy to say that I have now completed the Columbia Postbaccalaureate Premedical Program. I am also happy that I will no longer have to say that phrase and then explain what it means when meeting people at parties. Yes, I am an adult. Yes, I am taking undergad classes. Yes, it is a lot of work and a huge commitment of the next ten years of my life.

It was a two year undertaking that has left me exhausted and demoralized, but also filled with the sense that I now know a whole lotta science, which is really cool (see that posting with the glowing rats, yeah!).

Because it is not a degree program there was no graduation, but there was a certificate ceremony. As it is my nature to obscure pomp and ceremony, and because I was feeling some serious school fatigue from finals, a formalized closing held little draw for me. However, there was an email saying that as a goodbye present we would all receive a pair of scrub pants and to please give pant size when RSVPing. Well, after the hefty price tag of a Columbia education I figured I wasn't going to pass up free pants my fees had paid for.

But I am glad that I went to the ceremony. It was just delightful. A student spoke with humor about changing careers and the trials of the premed program. The Chair of the Committee of Admissions for Albert Einstein Medical School in the Bronx, Dr. Robert Marion, gave advice to applicants and medical students.

Then, there was a champagne toast and canapes, really good canapes. There were little bits of beef that I didn't try, and lovely salmon treats. A piece of brown bread cut the size of a quarter with a little cylinder of salmon wrapped around cream cheese stacked on it with a bit of caviar on top. Just lovely with a slightly fruity bubbly beverage.

Dr. Marion's advice was a list of do's aimed at maintaining sanity, health, and humility through the schooling of a medical student. Included in this list was to keep a blog for ourselves and our memories, but also to share the experiences. I believe that his phrase was something like: "as medical students you will have experiences that mere mortals never will." Well, done and done. I have always believed that I am having fantastic experiences that others are denied (see apple cider donuts, yum). So I hope that you, as a reader, are enjoying the living them vicariously as much as I enjoy writing about them.

Studying for finals makes me crazy

"Uhh.. this is life (this is life)
This is what I know (this what I know)
So to me (so to me) this is life (this is life)

One more road to cross
One more risk to take
Gotta live my life
like there's one more move to make"

Yesterday I got an email from a yoga studio about a three day fruit fast. It seemed like a really good idea at the time. I forwarded it to Peggy with the suggestion that we do it "together" when I finish finals.

She was totally in. This makes me think: is this really a good idea or is Peggy as in the zone as I am?

Given the response from that utube of puppies I sent her, I deeply suspect that it is the later.

Or maybe its not finals that getting me but the relentless migraines that have preceded them.

Apple Cider Donuts at the green market

Every Saturday morning there is a green market at Grand Army Plaza. Every Saturday morning the first stand is occupied by vendors that sell apples and apple baked goods. So every Saturday when I go to buy my onions and kale I have to walk through a whole mess of small Park Slope children yelling, "I want an apple cider donut now!" Ugg. Park Slope children. Ugg. Park Slope parents.

I related this to my mother who said, "I guess they use the cider as leveling, like beer donuts."

Well, I had never heard of beer donuts. I'd never had a green market donut, either, because I'd never braved the line of demanding children.

This Saturday was rainy and the market, while starting to fill back up with the fruits and veggies of Spring was deficient of the stroller crowd. I decided to take the opportunity and get a donut.

Oh. My.-wait for it-God!

Yum. Yum.

The donut was so delicious. It tasted like there were bits of apple baked in, but there weren't. There were just pockets of yummy air surrounded by wonderful cake. And sugar coated. Who can beat a sugar dusting. No one. That's who.

The fact that Krispy Kreme and Dunkin' Donuts even call the what they produce by the same name as this celestial morsel is an abomination. It's sad. That is the reason that American children are exhibiting symptoms of both malnutrition and obesity. They took all the wonderful fresh fruit and time consuming lightness out of the donut and replaced it with white flour and artificial flavoring. You could eat a million commercial donuts and not fell the satisfaction of one of these most delicious apple cider donuts.

I finished it and I felt happy and satisfied and not at all weighted down with that muffiny too full ness that usually accompanies baked goods.

Full disclosure: I did get a second donut. But it was several hours later and I had to walk back the ten blocks to the market. Also, they were selling for two for a dollar, implying that two donuts is a serving size. No, I don't think so. Next week I'll get two, but maybe I'll bring a friend to share with. I bet that will make the deliciousness even better.

The dog days are coming

I have three dog stories from today

1. I was walking to yoga and I saw a middle-aged man walking his dog and carrying a hand full of dry-cleaning on the hanger. At the crosswalk, the dog just sort of crouched a little bit and let out just a golfball sized amount of poo. The light changed and the man started to walk. I was walking towards them, and I believe that it really isn't cool to leave dog poop on the sidewalk, especially not the sidewalk on my commute.

So when we met halfway across the street I said, "Your dog just shit on the sidewalk back there."
It was a little bold of my. I considered just letting it go. He was all clean with clean laundry and no free hand and I thought thats why he didn't pick it up. But, really, are those excuses? No.

He said, "Not my dog."
I said, "I just saw her squat down."
Then he looked back and said, "Oh."
Then he went back and picked up the poo. That was cool of him.

The dog had done a little sneaky poo job. In retrospect, I sort of wonder if that man had trained his dog to sneak poo so he could legitimately pretend he didn't know. But he was so cool about picking it up that I suspect this is not the case.

2. I was at the park and I saw a man on a bicycle carrying a bag on his back and in that bag was a dog. He stopped, got off the bike, took off the bag, and the dog just got out and ran around. It looked a little stiff.

3. I saw a man walking a cat that looked just like Pook, on a harness. What!

Because no mater how much you hurt me I will always take you back

Thingsiboughtthatilove.com is back open to the univited public. I'm excited, really excited.

And while we are on the topic, The Office episode Heavy Competition was super pleasurable.


The writers of The Office seem to love The Wire, and I do, too. After several false starts (I watched the first six episodes like three times each before committing. Hey, sometimes its hard to commit, what can I say. But when I fall, I fall hard.) I have just finished Season Two, and I am hooked. Even for those not that into cop dramas, I recommend this show. There are a crazy number of characters and they are all pretty well filled in, and some are habit forming. Like most great modern television shows, the setting has become a character and this Baltimore is fun to watch. In fact, the fun factor is increased by how little you would actually want to be in this city. Last week's Modern Love was about The Wire, and that was great. However, I believe that there are better odes to the show, Baltimore, and the complex characters residing there. Maybe later this summer, after the MCAT, I'll put some serious time into writing one. I'm so glad I have three seasons left to watch. Please, no spoilers.

The reason this The Office was so good was that it was a pastiche of The Wire. Watching the fierce Idris Elba (aka Stringer Bell) play the boss that pitted Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute against each other in underhanded dealings was awesome. If you are a writer for The Office and the main story line has come to resolution what do you do? Apparently, you think of the best show you know and just copy that. It is a sweet little feat given the total disjuncture in material. I just felt all my University of Texas RTF vocabulary come flooding back. Some graduate student could have a ball with this. Which brought me to the conclusion, wouldn't my life be better if all those graduate students just spent their time and energy making great tv instead of writing about it?

Well, its been a good week nonetheless: a fun website back up (to me) and some great television viewing, so I'll take my winnings and walk away.

Rainy days and Mondays Part duex

It is raining buckets here. Real sheets of rain, Houston style. Whoa!

Also, it is a nice Spring rain, the smell of dirt is in the air. I am so ready for summer I might burst.

Rainy days and Mondays

Today is a very rainy Monday and the day of my last Orgo lab, the last lab of my pre-medical career.

I arrived on time, but just barely. I took out my pencil, pen and lab book and put on my lab coat before locking the rest of my belongings into my assigned lab locker.

Then I realized that instead of my lab book what I had was my lab manual. I went back to the locker and stared at my lock with a vague idea of what the combination was, very vague. Because it was written down in my lab book, I hadn't bothered to give up any valuable real estate in the memorizing crap part of my brain, things are pretty tight in there this year.

The combination included a 15 and a zero, and either 30 or 35. I tried several permutations of those three or four numbers, but success alluded me. There are at least 12 possibilities and it is possible that in my cold sweat I repeatedly tried the same three.

Lab is stressful enough: time constraint, grading for mixing chemicals, ugg, and without the book I would not be able to do the lab or turn in a lab report. It was bad news. I chose not to panic, but it was a hard choice. Panic was looking good. So were tears.

I walked into class and told the lady who runs it what happened. First, she thought I had lost my book and tried to give me an orphan edition. Then she pointed to the lock cutter, and said that they had it for a reason. She is a petite woman and the other lab tech is a tall water polo player. She told me that she had never used the bolt cutter before because he always did. But he wasn't around. It took a few attempts, and after the second, she told me that the cutter was heavier than she thought. Imagine a small woman holding a bolt cutter over her head. The lock kept slipping, but the cutter prevailed.

She was pretty happy with herself for cutting a lock. I was pretty happy to get my lab book.

Word from the Slope

Yesterday was the absolute prettiest day of the 2009 so far. It reached 77 degrees fahrenheit in Brooklyn and the sun was out until almost eight pm.

I spent the better part of the afternoon in the park (yeaaay), studying (boo).
While sitting on my awesome portable bamboo mat, I observed a teenage boy hit a baseball, and that baseball fly straight into the face of a five-year-old who happened to be cutting across the meadow with his mother. The kid got hit dead on.

My first thought was that the child might drop dead (think Owen Meany, people). Instead, he started to cry, hard. Perhaps there was a quick apology from the hitter. But the mother started screaming at the hitter. As soon as she did, a middle aged man who was playing with the teenagers, maybe the pitcher, started screaming back.

Mom yelled a lot. Dad told her that it was all her fault for cutting across the field instead of taking the path around. Mom told him to look around, that the whole park was crowded and people were sitting all around his game (it was super crowded). Mom told Dad that he didn't own the park. Dad told Mom that she didn't own the park. Dad said he was only yelling because Mom had started yelling. Mom asked why they didn't even apologize for hitting her kid. At first, I was definitely on the mom's side. People should be apologetic when they accidentally hit little kids in the face.

As the mom was yelling the little kid ran away crying. Well, crying and cursing the baseball players. He just kept calling them A-holes. It was sort of funny see a little kid with such a filthy mouth.

The hitter walked off and got an icy from the helado cart.

About the point it looked like the parents might start throwing punches, a police SUV drove by on its regular patrol of the park. The lady realized she had lost her kid and made a half hearted attempt to call him back. But instead of actually finding her kid she ran over to the cops. I couldn't hear what she said.

Once the Mom lost her kid, she also lost my sympathy. Keep your priorities straight, lady!

So the cop drives into the meadow and tells the dad that the game is over. This dad doesn't just move on like a rational person, he argues with the cop. He asks why the kids on the next meadow can play soccer. It was crazy, I thought he might get himself arrested. Finally, the kid with the icecream comes over and tells his dad to chill, repeatedly.

It was an exciting day in the Slope.

Epilogue

The mom left and I assume she found her bruised child. The baseball players walked by me on the way out the park. One of the other players kept yelling, "He did it. He did it." and pointing to the hitter. When he said it to me, I said, "I know. I saw." Then the dad jumped in to tell me how unfair it was that they had to quit their game. The dad started talking about all the other kids playing sports in the park, and I regretted saying anything. He blamed that woman for being so mad and crazy. I said, "I think she was mad because her kid got hit in the face."

The dad pointed out that they were playing with a wiffle ball and that the kid was just stunned. That was the piece I needed to put the puzzle together. Had it been a real baseball that kid would not have been running around cursing, he would not have been moving. If they had been playing with a real ball, as it had appeared, in a park that crowded, they would have been on their way to committing manslaughter.

The dad just kept repeating that the kid was only stunned. I'm not sure that made it all OK, but it made him seem less unreasonable. Also, it made that mom look like a worse mom.

Then the hitter told his dad that that was just how white people had to act about things. One of the other teenagers looked at me and pointed back to the hitter and said, "He's the one who said that."

After that last comment you might be wondering, and because this is Brooklyn, if I didn't tell you you would have no way of guessing:
Dad: grumpy old jewish guy
Mom: white affluent Park Slope stroller mom
Both the hitter and the kid who got hit in the face: that A-Rod/Jeter hard to guess look
All the other baseball players: black teenagers

It was a great day of people behaving badly in the park.

a foreign land of big steaks and bold Tex-Mex, and Texas ladies

Frank Bruni visited Houston and wrote up Feast as one of the bold new restaurants making the US a great place to eat. In the review, he refers to Houston as "a foreign land of big steaks and bold Tex-Mex". Maybe foreign was written in regard to the Britons running the restaurant but foreign might as well refer to the New Yorker's take on Texas, a whole 'nother country. What I thought was funny and notable was that these restauranteurs had landed in Houston because of the "American" (let's be honest, Texan) women they loved. It is known that people come to Houston for the energy and medical industries, but Texas ladies are an underrepresented asset as well. Yes, we leave, but then we come back, and apparently not alone.

It is f-in' snowing in Brooklyn right now, on April 8th

I was just at a coffee shop and it sort of looked like it was snowing outside. I though, "No, this is April. Those must be little white flowers falling."

Then, the lady next to me asked the waitress if it was snowing. The waitress said that it was just little white buds from that tree, and she pointed. The lady looked very relieved.

But, guess what! I just got home and those white things that I can see falling outside my window that overlooks an alley are definitly snowflakes. Nothing is sticking but there are no trees with white buds around.

The snow just lasted a few minutes. But, really, what is that all about! It is April, people.

Spring is here

It was a beautiful day here in Park Slope and I spent the afternoon (studying) in the park.

I was sitting on a wonderful bamboo mat, just one of many spectacular purchases from H&M, when a girl ran by with a man who was carrying a costume unicorn head. Someone yelled at them to slow down and wait, and I, too, waited to see what that was all about. A few more nondescript adults followed.

A while later, a man in a furry white suit came up to them and asked what the plan was. They replied, "We've just been standing here waiting for you."

I thought it was funny. Because if you are at the park with a unicorn head, who else could you be waiting for?

You've got to admit its getting better

Spring is coming (I hope). And things are looking up.

As some of you know, I wrote my education master's thesis on Alice Waters' program The Edible Schoolyard. It is a lovely example of how we can all live better and raise our children to be healthier, happier and more responsible citizens of planet Earth, mainly by growing and eating veggies.

Quickly following the November victory Alice Waters wrote an Open Letter to the Obamas imploring them, among other things, to plant a Victory garden. Well, this week Michelle put on some of her more rugged J. Crew dudds and picked up a shovel.

For whatever reason, I am having the same cathartic reaction to this that I had in November.

So I leave you with the words of the late, great 2Pac (we still miss you Pac):

We gotta make a change...
It's time for us as a people to start makin' some changes.
Let's change the way we eat, let's change the way we live
and let's change the way we treat each other.
You see the old way wasn't working so it's on us to do
what we gotta do, to survive.

(changes)

I'm so sleeppy

Man, Spring Forward comes along every year when I do not want to lose on hour most. It's like its been sitting there for five months waiting to sucker punch me. Why oh why can't you be more like Fall Back and make my life better and not worse for once, Spring Forward? It was nice and warm here yesterday, like maybe this time things would be different, maybe this time Spring Forward would be an extra hour of light when I could use it best, playing frisbee in the park, spending time on reopened decks late into prime time. But I see that it is going to rain for the next four days. Did it really look like I needed this?

It might still be winter, but I have found some Sun

I first encountered Sunbutter in an United Airlines snack box along with dried fruit and crackers, and it made me wonder why airline food is usually so horrible. We just need to go ahead and accept that a mile off the ground is not the time to share a hot meal with a few hundred other passengers. There are plenty of great camping snacks more suitable to the circumstances, so lets embrace the ruggedness of commercial air and enjoy the best trail mix possible. JetBlue has embraces this philosophy with great snacks and no meals. If you want a burger (and you are lucky(?) enough to be flying out of LAX) get yourself an In-n-Out for the road. (Oh man, I could go for a grilled cheese about now. I could also go for some warm California sun, I guess I have the end of winter blues.)

Sunbutter is great. Yes, like most processed peanut butters, it has some added sugar and an emulsifier. But it is totally craveable, and there are no unprocessed options, so I choose to overlook that. Try it on an apple for dessert or a salty cracker for lunch. Yum, yum Sunbutter. And from the sunflower seed, who knew!

As a foil to A-rod, sunflower seeds are a pretty lame part of Baseball that turn out to have to have secret appeal. They usually come salted and in the shell. They are a huge pain to eat, but you do consume your fiber for the week. Or, you can spit out the shell and leave a huge mess. I find this is overwhelmingly the technique of the guy sitting next to me at Mets games. Its pretty gross to then step over a huge pile of shells covered in someone else's spit. Eww.

But it turns out that sunflower seeds clean up real nice after the game. My new favorite food is choclate covered sunflower seeds. They are like mini, oblong M&Ms, but even better. They taste like a slightly upscale peanut butter M&M. You are thinking, well that can't be improved upon. Well it can, its called a Sunny Seed Drop and it is delicious.

Rage against the Dining Section

Yes, I spent my morning darning a mitten while sitting next to a girl doing needlepoint, at the laundry mat. Somehow the most bourgeois of activities have become hip(ster). Well, we are brooklyn and that's how we roll.

But, really, do we roll this pretentious? In my heart I know we do. But, nonetheless, lets look at what is totally obnoxious about these people.

“Ten years ago all of these people hadn’t moved to Brooklyn yet,” she added, comparing Brooklyn today to Berkeley in the 1970s. "

Ahh, to be a pioneer.

From what I've gathered from Ruth Reichl, Berkeley in the 70's was about making recipes from Diet for a Small Planet edible and eating garbage to reduce human impact on the earth as much as it was about eating locally.

So what is the difference? One is using your trust fund to buy a warehouse and not working for a year while you reverse engineer a trade that people across the river are learning the traditional ways in French kitchens, one of the more self important behaviors of this city and the other is about the future of humans on this planet.

If you want to act like Martha Stewart, don't pretend that you are Harvey Milk. That's really all I'm asking.

Thanks, Regis

Who's the winner? I am! That's who!

There is the strangest phenomena a few blocks from me: a drive-thru bank in Park Slope. A parking lot is a big investment among high rent, low square-footage, fancy boutiques on a block of multi-million dollar brown stones. But nevertheless Commerce Bank, in their quest to be the most convenient, went for in car banking. Risky, but a parking lot in Brooklyn certainly gets your attention. I hear from a little policeanado birdie that Commerce Bank also takes big risks with their floor plans. Against all recommendations of the NYPD, the entryways are big and open and the windows are floor to ceiling.

In this banking climate it does not pay to take risks, and Commerce Bank has suddenly become TD bank. Those of you that live in international communities will know that stands for Toronto-Dominion Bank. Yes, it is happening, we are being invaded by Canada.

However, other than the name, it appears nothing has changed. They are still open on Sundays and they still have dog treats at the counter along with the lollipops. But, most importantly, they still have the Penny Arcade, the change counter. Some of you may remember the ads several years ago, before Julia Lewis Dreyfus broke the Seinfeld curse with "Old Christine", of her walking down the street with a purse full o' silver and cashing in at Commerce bank.

Well, Penny is awesome. She is a cartoon character that guides the packrat spendthrift through the process of putting coins in the machine while sorting out the garbage and valuables that may have been stored with the coins. Before the real fun begins, she prompts the depositor to guess how much coinage they have brought in to turn into real money. If your guess is within $1.99 of the combined total, you win a prize.

Well guess what? I won. I took in all the coins on my nightstand as well as the remnants of a pre-washingmachinecard roll of quarters. I guessed $32.45. Penny doesn't give the final count until all the change has been counted so I missed out on the suspense of see the numbers match up. But still, nothing uplifts a rainy day like winning something. The final count was $32.53. Woo Woo!

At the counter I exchanged my receipt for money.

Teller: How would you like this?
Me: In bills?

She gave me a twenty a ten and a few ones and coins and smiled. Then I asked for my prize.

Me: Look, I'm a winner
Teller: Would you like one of those plastic things you put money in?
Me: What?

She held up a plastic child's bank with the TD logo on it. I looked at that piece of landfill and said, no I did not want it. She gave me a look of silent agreement and shoved several packets of after-dinner mints and a magnet (shown above) at me.

Sometimes winning is its own reward.

Oh, and FYI, Regis and Kelly are all over the ads for TD bank.

It's never too early to start

This is just one of the many stories I live everyday where I help people and spread my love of coffee.


Overheard in the ladies' room

Woman in restroom: You OK in there, Melinda?
Voice in stall: Yeah, I just need a minute.
W: Well you think you could hurry it up. I didn't bring you all this way to New York so that you could sit in a restroom stall. You could have done that at home.
V: You know how it is. You know how I am.
W: You need to eat more fiber. There's not much fiber in chocolate covered pretzels.
V: Yeah, but they're good.
(At this point I am washing my reuseable coffee cup in the sink so that I can go and get my third cup of the day)
Me: (to the woman) you can always drink more coffee.
W: That works, but she's only ten.
Me: It's never too early to start.
W: (to me) She does like it. We try to keep it away from her. Well that's an idea.
(to the girl): You want to get one of those frappuccino things?
V: I want one.
W: Well you have to come out of the restroom.
V: Just a little more time.
W: We can always come back. Let's go get drinks, then we can come back later.

GFP's are wack

Last year a professor at Columbia won the Nobel Prize for adapting the Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) naturally found in jellyfish for use as a genetic marker. It's pretty exciting, but maybe it wouldn't need to be mentioned every single week in my bio and orgo classes if he wasn't at Columbia.

But I just saw this photo and am blase no more. GFP's are wack! This is messed up. Look at those rats. Someone spliced their genes so that when their bodies make certain proteins they also make glow protein attached to the end. I look at these glowing rat babies and more and more life feels like a sci-fi. All I'm asking is: When are Jack and Chloe gonna show up?

Overheard in Brooklyn

No. 1) In Gorilla Coffee

Dude: I'd like a large, regular coffee.
Barista: You want one large and one regular coffee?
Dude: No, just one large coffee: regular.
Barista: And by regular you mean with milk and sugar?
Dude: Oh well I guess that is regular here, but I didn't think in here. I just meant I want a coffee, not a cappuccino or whatever.

No. 2) On a brownstone lined street

Lady with two five year old boys: There is a lot of frozen dog poop around here and now that it is warming up the dog poop isn't frozen anymore, and that means it will squish and if it squishes on anyone's shoe that will be a forty cent penalty and that penalty can be raised if I see fit.

Never quit smorking

When visiting Japan several years back, I bought a shirt with text that three times said, "Never quit smorking". Its funny because Japanese people spell about as well as I do. Also, unlike in America, smoking is socially accepted in Japan.



Just in case you didn't know, Houston has a vibrant culture. There is a rich mixture of street art and gang territorial tagging. After a boy was stabbed to death in the park on her street, my mother decided that she no longer enjoying the spray can murals and wanted all graffiti gone. Well, somebody needs to get Rudy Gulliani on the phone cause it hasn't gone anywhere.

At the underpass of Shepard at Highway 59 someone, I supposed used a stencil to paint an image of a razor and the words Give and Up. Its sort of a crappy message; its sort of a clean image. But whoever went to the trouble of vandalizing TexDOT property should keep in mind that if you put up something positive, people are less likely to gun for you arrest.



The good news is that a resourceful vigilante came along with a sense of humor and spray painted a stenciled image of a smoking rabbit on top of the razor blade. They're sort of famous, the smokers, you might have seen them around. And the unknown individual most deftly mimicked the font to add the word "Never". So in the place of a razor blade and a suicidal command is an adult cartoon and a command that, to Americans, at least, is only slightly less suicidal.

Which brings me to the cover of The L Magazine this month: Smoke More Eat Less .

We Americans come down so hard on smoking and smokers while we eat ourselves to death.

A few weeks ago the team that was kicked off "The Biggest Looser" included a smoker. They showed multiple shots of this man sitting down and smoking to convey what a lazy fatass he was and how he wasn't committed to loosing weight. It just seems to me that if you are asking people who weight over 300 lbs. to eat less, maybe you should let them smoke. No one is telling heroin addicts to put away the ciggs. My roommate said something about smoking and lung capacity, which might be valid for a show capitalizes on rapid weight loss. But as the Food section mentioned last week, those contestants' real problem was food.

Oh I can't stay mad at you, BC

Yes, a while back I was a bit critical of Bill Cunningham for his take on the recession, but you've got to know how much I love him. This week's audio slide show if from Inauguration and it is wonderful. This man spends most of his time wandering around the UES or, for a few week a year, Paris. But look at him here, without a ticket, wandering the streets of D.C. with the people. What really did it for me is when his voice cracks and perhaps he starts to cry.

Soon it will be back to business but right now we just can't stop crying.

There's only one thing that gauche about Obama, and I LOVE It.

Yes, at this point commenting on Barack Obama's hottness is like asking: "Is it cold enough for ya?" It can fill the empty air between two people who have nothing to say to one another.

But that wasn't the case about a year ago. When my roommate (who at the time was not an Obamaphile) came home all breathless over this photo, I was still unconvinced. She asked me if I had seen the photo with him in the Stetson, "he was smokin' hot!" True, this photo shoot may have been the tipping point in the campaign. It is quite universally appealing, or maybe just universally appealing to the Texans.

But, when this photo was printed last February I was unconvinced. He kind of reminded me of Toofer from 30 Rock, kinda skinny, kinda Harvard educated. I just wasn't sure.

Well, those days are long over! Most Democrats, and around now most Americans, can agree that they love all the writing Obama has been doing lately. Closing secret prisons and detention camps. Yeah, you sign away. We love it! Reverse key Bush secrecy policies. Yeah, that's why you got elected! Whose gonna get that pen? I call dibs! Freezing top salaries. Wow, you really are committed! (Maybe his staff wasn't quite so excited about that one)

But, really I just love to watch him write. I love it. love. it. His hand sort of curls around the pen making the round arm that so many lefties use. The way he leans into the pen. How he pushes his arm across the page like he's digging a mini-ditch or doing needle point. I just can't get enough.

About ten percent of the population is left handed, but according to Wikipedia "As of 2009, three or four (counting Reagan) out of the last five presidents have been left-handed. Counting as far back as Truman, the number is five (or six) out of twelve". When I saw Barack scrawling notes during the debates with Hillary I knew that he would be president.

Look at him smiling. She is talking and he is thinking: "I don't even have to say anything, I can just keep on pushing this pen backwards to let everyone see just how left handed I am." He spent much of the time she was speaking writing. She spent much of the time he was speaking making ugly faces. So you see, it was what is known as a tactic. And you know who it worked on: me.

(FYI: He is also the tallest of the candidates and has the most lineage connecting him to the American Revolution and the founding fathers. Both of these trivia bits correlate with being elected Presidents.)

Look at that Southpaw (yeah, that's what lefties are called in baseball) sign that ball. Look at his hand. He doesn't even hold that marker right.

The bumper sticker says "Lefties do it better" which is unverified as of yet, but lefties definitely do it different. I don't know what goes on in those crazy switched up brains of theirs, but I think that all that adapting may give them some special practice at the twists in life. As well as becoming president disproportionately, lefties who go to college are richer and more successful than their right handed counterparts. Even more important, the are disproportionally my best friends.

So all you lefties reading, I guess you now know why we make such a great team. It seems I'm a righty with a lefty's soul, or maybe I'm just a leftyphile. Oh, yeah. Look at that man, I know I'm a leftyphile. Look at that! Go find some video and watch him sign away. You won't be disappointed. Not at all.

A Perfect New York Day

Over night a fluffy blanket of snow covered my window sill and the yard beyond. As I ate a warm bowl of PB and J oatmeal (Yes, do it. Do it now. It is the most delish dish you have never tasted) the squirrels in the backyard scampered, disturbing the snow and sending sheets of white flying through the air and off the branches and telephone wires.

The B63 took me to Trader Joes where I purchased great quantities of fruit for now and snacks for later. Totally Yum.

In the afternoon it started to snow again, big heavy wet flakes. The Upper East Side looked just Madeline majestic when I met friends at the Met. Even though several parts of the museum were closed, we enjoyed wandering and viewing The American Wing, Modern Art, the Armory with all the armor for small people (I guess there were less hormones in the milk back then), and several exhibits along the way. A little boy totally Bogarted the water fountain until his mother informed him that there was a line (me). Also, a woman with more than three accessories of leopard print and a stretched face and too much lipstick sat next to and ignored a fat man with a comb over. He sure had a lot to say to her.

Then, the best part of all, Central Park in the snow. We walked to a hill covered in children and sleds. Although we did not proposition any small children for a sled rental, the youthful enthusiasm was contagious and we had a snow ball fight. So much fun! I love Central Park and I love snow. It was the best snow I have every seen in New York. And then, Erin walked on water. Well, maybe just the thin layer of ice left in the drained pond. But impressive none the less.

A veggie burger in a cafe on Lex and a stop at Bloomingdales to frequent the ladies room crowned one fabulous day.