Early happy holidays to all, i'm feeling festive

So it's been a very busy week playing host, site seeing and eating eating eating. Oh and if you all didn't remember, i'm now down to 9 turkey legs, yeah for brothers who eat lots oh meat!

Anyhoo, i'm not about to attempt at informing you of the past few days and the great times i've had with my visitors, but here are a few thoughts.

1) Who remembers "Parenthood" with Steve Martin, 1989 movie, yes you all remember it...you're sliding into first when you feel a sudden burst, ____. This is probably one of my favorite movies, so funny, so real, sooooo bad and not to mention some classic actors. Now who remembers Martha Plimpton...yes who is she...she played the daughter who dates Keanu Reeves, shaves her head in the classic undercut, oh and her mom is the one with the vibe. Well i've had my most recent celebrity sighting, if you can call her a celebrity. It was one of these i looked at her, looked away because man, she isn't aging well and then was like, saweet, just saw Julie Buckman. Sorry, so not exciting, but still what do you think it means, i'm a huge celebrislut and this is who i see...yeah, i hope it's not a reflection of me.


2)Northface-the city is finally getting cold and now people are pulling out their heavy duty jackets. I'm the type of person who really doesn't like joining trends, but every so often it makes sense (ie: northface long down jackets which will undoubtedly keep my constant freezing a$$ warm all the time). I may be retiring my northface jacket it's too much to bare. Evan pointed it out to me the other night...did i notice how much northface gear was worn in the city? Maybe it's one of these things that since it was pointed out and it's one of these things that really bug me i've now started to notice it everywhere. Ie: you buy a new car, dog, pair of shoes and then bam, you realize so many people have the EXACT same item as you. Anyways, New York is a HUGE advertisement for Northface winter gear of all kinds, hats, vests, jackets, fleece...the items are everywhere!!! I may need to buy Patagonia. Ps: has anyone (minus those from Denison or C.L.C) ever heard of Patagucci?

3) The day after Thanksgiving is the biggest shopping day of the year. It is also the first day people start playing christmas carols and also pull out their xmas trees. I have to admit i love the holidays (please refer to my halloween posting asking what point is too early to decorate, oh and once for halloween i dressed up as xmas...i looove the holidays). Righteo, i have yet to hang lights or put up a tree, but my wreath will be hung December 1st and i will be playing Mariah Carey's holiday album while i do it. Back to the point while surrounding myself this weekend with the shopping mayhem and waiting patiently for subway cars i let my mind relax, in the background of all the chaos and over heated stores i heard Christmas carols and inside i had a little smile. Maybe i'm being sentimental, nostalgic or overly in the spirit, but i feel like spreading the holiday cheer a bit early.

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

So many of you may have heard of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. It's a big freakin' deal here as it has HUGE balloons, floats, broadway show performances, marching bands (name it, it's probably there). If you've watched the movie Miracle on 34th St. you know of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Right, so it takes place on Thanksgiving and wraps up just in time for a big family feast.
The night before the parade all the balloons are blown up and put on display for people to see. As we weren't about to go and watch the parade (it's a bit insane) we went to see the balloons. It may have been comparably crazy because after walking one direction due to crowds, and then the cops say go another direction(due to crowds), and treking through the park (due to crowds)and then crossing the street with cops saying don't do it (due to traffic/crowds) we finally cut a line and saw the balloons with hundreds and hundreds of people. Not really sure how else to describe it other than, HUGE...absolutely massive, the balloons and crowds. I wouldn't be surprised if the people who walk with the balloons have to be a certain weight to ensure they don't blow away...big A$$ balloons! Oh and did i mention the crowds!
Here are some of the 20 balloons we saw

Shrek (first appearance)...he weighs 600 lbs!


Ronald McDonald (Creepy huh!)

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Ah Thanksgiving the holiday to gorge yourself on delicious things like mashed potatoes, pie and turkey legs...yup 3 are cooked and enjoyed. There were no surprises like Evan saying he's a vegetarian this month, more like he's a carnivore and wants me to send him home with more cooked turkey (we are researching the possibility of taking meat on the plane...i just may be down a few more legs after his departure!). I hope you all enjoyed your turkey day, or veggie day as my friend Erin likes to call it.
I just wanted to let you know how thankful i am having you as family, friends and readers. Take care and i look forward to seeing you all soon. XO

Fall

So my friend E and I were walking yesterday in the park when we came to a pond that had at least 10 people standing on the other side taking pictures. We assumed there was something/someone doing something amazing. Movie stars and strange animals/animal behaviors have this effect on people, turns out nature does it to (i'm glad). Isn't fall beautiful!

6 down 12 to go

So last night was the Child Life thanksgiving dinner. It was amazing! Everyone brought delicious food, we had some beverages (some of us a bit too much...seriously i wasn't that funny E.) and we had a grand time laughing and chatting.


As you know i made some turkey, 6 of the 18 i purchased the other day(you may have noticed the total number decreased...i finally got up the guts to count my total, still a lot, but that's one less week of turkey to eat! I'm an optimist, can't you tell) . Right. So I had no idea how much would feed us so i figured make 6 (since it would go bad in my fridge anyways, remember no room in the freezer these days) and i'd have leftovers. Well it turns out that 7 meat eaters only managed to consume 3.5 of the turkey legs cooked, YEAH! What the heck is wrong with my friends, damn women!

Anyhoo now i've got 12 frozen drumsticks in the freezer and 2.5 shredded turkey legs in my fridge. I will of course document everything i do with these 12 remaining legs, how else do you think i spend my time...not writing papers, that's for sure!

I'm either a turkey, or will become a turkey after this

I don't even know where to begin because i'm clearly a huge idiot, and i'm sharing this because i'm either a bigger idiot for opening myself up like this or i think everyone could get a good laugh and learn a lesson read read READ!

Part One:
I guess i should start at the beginning. Child Life "club" has Thursday night dinners each week and we decided that since we all go our separate ways for Thanksgiving we should have our "family" dinner a week early. I volunteered my apartment and therefore took the main course (turkey). I had decided to make everyone two turkey drumsticks each (9x2=18) because i'm at work all day and drumsticks don't take too long to cook=good plan.

I get most of my groceries at the store down the street, but there are some things i just can't swallow when it comes to shopping there, one being the price (Store a) and the lack of option/variety (Store b). Freshdirect is the best thing for those of us who live next to a bad grocery store and a very expensive grocery store, have no muscles to carry mass amounts of food home and are attracted to the idea of online shopping for food and having it delivered by sometimes cute boys (seriously not the biggest selling point for me because i do love going to the store, but it's all for fun right!).

Part Two:
So this morning at 7:30am my freshdirect order arrived (i planned for this early arrival...perfect for work). The guy came out of the elevator with 5 boxes (huh, didn't think i ordered that much, oh well they are safe packers and i have veggies and eggs, maybe? (sound of apprehension))
He gives me a look, i think it's "WOW this girl looks really tired or she's pretty cute in her pj's or wish i was still sleeping too (probably this one)"

He leaves, i crack into box one and right away i realize i have screwed up big time. I step away and realize he was NOT thinking i was cute he was thinking "WOW, what is this girl going to do with all of this meat". Some of you may have seen this coming once i said 19 TURKEY drumsticks, but here i am thinking while placing the order 19 a bit bigger than chicken, turkey drumsticks. Pictures are the only way to describe the situation i'm in....













YEAH i know, what the hell am i going to do (ps: there are 6 more drumsticks defrosting in the fridge...because i ran out of room!)



Sooooo as i'm cursing myself while i unpack my food, thinking where am i going to store all this meat, i start thinking who can i pawn all this meat onto. Thinking it could be thanksgiving leftovers, that they cook themselves!? Thinking what food banks would take frozen meat like this and then i think, HOW AM I GOING TO COOK THIS!!! MY OVEN IS TINY!!

After rearranging the freezer and fridge i go back to bed to laugh and cry at myself, what am i going to do...start thinking of recipes because i'll be eating turkey for the rest of my life, or at least on average the next 15 weeks (1 drumstick per week, yeah that's about right!)

After mellowing out i started to think, how did i not realize i was getting 32.42 lb of meat! How did i miss this? The cost was only $30 so that wasn't a give away and really this comes down to reading or my lack there of...right on my order form it did say 32.42 lb. I will blame this on how busy i am, too busy to read the small print, but realistically i deserve to turn into a turkey for this.


Things i've learned:
Who knew $30 worth of turkey drumsticks was so much food
How many poor turkeys sacrificed their lives for my stupidity (9)
Some local farmer/freshdirect is benefiting from my stupidity
WOW New York has big turkeys


All i can say is thank goddess all this meat came with my bag of clementines, they fix everything!

Playing with Kids in the Big Apple

So there is always this buzz about the pros and cons about raising a kid in NYC. The biggest problem is where do they play as houses/apartment are very small and where do they play when it's cold, wet or too hot outside for the playgrounds. Which leads me to Appleseeds, an indoor play area for kids. The theory is amazing, places to play, classes and they really do their best to keep it clean. Really they do because i do work for a very germaphobic person (there isn't anything wrong with this within reason) and she wouldn't be okay with her E and N playing in germies.
So today E and i went to appleseeds as it's getting chilly and dark at 4:30 and the scene was insane. They claim there is 2500 square feet of playground space, but i doubt that...feels like 1000 at most and today 600 (really i don't even know square footage, but i try)! Anyhoo today in this 600 square footage there were probably 50 +kids and their caregivers...very tight. I constantly felt like i was about to walk on a child or bumping into a person. Lots of slobber, stinky diapers and screaming. Someone remind me why i've decided to devote my future to working with kids. yeah
check it out for some pictures of this place...oh and did i mention it's not free (of course not!)
http://www.appleseedsnyc.com/gallery.html

clementines!

I'm betraying my new york fruit, but certain things really make me feel in the spirit and that would be clementines. After a major melt down from E. the other day i thought i deserved a treat, clementines. They are perfect! If a time machine exists, it's in a delicious piece of fruit. In one segment I was instantly teleported to xmas. mmmm. Happiness in a tiny bite

art in the city

Not really sure what to say about this, but it's in the middle of a busy part of the city. People just building an ice block structure a reinvention of someone else's ice sculpture (Allan Kaprow). Interesting stuff...especially because the real art is in it melting "fluids"...i don't think I'm artsy enough to understand this, although i wish i was

My radiator and how it functions

So i constantly have mice/rat on the brain. When you see them enough you start to worry if they are in your apartment and in your stuff.

Story:
The heat is on in my apartment building, although i'm not sure we really need it yet. I have one radiator in my living room and a VERY hot pipe in my bathroom (gives off enough heat it's a sauna in my bathroom) Anyhoo, all rads make their own noises, mine sounds like someone is bang with a hammer and messing around with a wrench in the metal mechanics of the thing. Thankfully it's not happening all the time because i'd probably rip out my hair (it's really loud!), but it's still scary enough that when it came on for the first time i thought there was a mouse/rat trapped in the inside of it trying to get out. You know, the heat turns on the thing starts cooking, it tries to get out.

Envision this, i'm standing on a chair the farthest point of my living room throwing water bottles, text books and thing with girth and killing power, trying to scare out this mouse/rat. Nothing happens, no silencing of it by me scaring it, so with all the experience i have with small rodents (sadly i have had enough to last a lifetime) i creep over to the rad (climb onto another chair) and bang back. At this point i realize that there is probably nothing trapped in there and this is what my rad will sound like. Ah yes...isn't this going to be a long and pleasant winter.

Now while lying in bed instead of thinking i have a mouse/rat in my apartment i'm thinking of other options
a) my neighbour busting through the wall and is hammering on the rad
b) someone (spiderman is the most plausible) has shimmied up the brick exterior of my building to my tenth floor apartment window and is banging on my rad
c)a clan of rodents has found rodent sized hammers and wrenches and are banging on my rad.
My vote is c because really my neighbour has better things to do than bang on my rad and Spidey is off protecting the city, or at least i hope so.

Daylight savings New York style and random thoughts

So i'm aware New York is no different than anywhere else in the world that participates in daylight savings, but i'm so thrilled that it happened later than it normally does. I hate it being dark so early, so push it back as long as possible. Not only does it now start getting dark around here at 4 and not 5, it's so freakin' dark when i get up in the morning! The past couple of days i've gotten up at 8 (work, marathon, warehouse sale...yes it requires you to get up early, haven't you heard the early bird gets the best choice of discount jeans!). Now i'm not saying 8 is early, but it is still kinda dark out...makes me feel like it's going to rain or snow soon. Oh, on that note i heard Wisconsin is getting snow today...brrrrrr.
So walking E. home from the indoor playground/play area (yeah, welcome to new york) in the dark i started thinking about how xmas is so soon...7 weeks?! When is it appropriate to put up my xmas lights and decorations? Is November 5 too soon? There's no doubt i could find a place that sells that stuff now, i could just go to the pharmacy we all know how soon they started decorating. I'll keep you posted as to when Christmas hits my house.

ING New York City Marathon

38th year
26.3 miles
39,000 runners
over 2 million people cheering
350 million viewers all over the world
This is the ING New York City Marathon




Time: 1:36--women came by E86th and 1st (mile 17ish)--Paula Radcliff, Gete Wami- First and second place finishers

It's always very cool to leave your house watching the marathon take place on tv , seeing these women moving very very fast and then to get to a completely different part of the city to see the two lead female runners run by you in reality.

Time:1:27---men came by E86th and 1st--Martin Lel and Abderrahim Goumri are in this mass of men. They were the first and second place finishers

Lance Armstrong did make a brief appearance, running a very speedy 2:50 to the finish line. I also heard that Katie Holmes ran in the marathon, but there were no sightings by me.

It's really neat seeing all these people running together, masses of them, gives you shivers!