July 14, 2008 | Filed under: country mouse

Square dancing is seriously bigtime Saturday night fun, ’round these parts.

And it was seriously fun, even though our square was a hot mess. Now that we know our ‘allemande’ from our ‘do sa do‘ we’ll be ready to move on to more advanced moves.

July 8, 2008 | Filed under: get meta with me!, la famiglia, misadventures

I’ve been sitting on this footage long enough.

When we were on vacation in Istanbul last Winter the majority of our evenings were spent in our cute little hotel room shooting the breeze and enjoying a light (second) dinner of cheese, wine and halvah. Me, my Mom and her BFF Sally together on a grand international adventure (a good deal of which was spent in our cute hotel room enjoying wine, cheese etc).

I’ve shot and posted family fun before, but sometime between then and now my Mom decided she didn’t want to be featured on the blog any more. She never really explained why no matter how many times I asked. I guess it’s just too strange to her– too personal.

For me, it’s different. The more personal the better. We didn’t take family movies when I was young, so to me capturing these moments is like a special gift. I get to keep them forever, living them again and again as I choose. Granted, I don’t re-watch 85% of the videos that I post.

But this one? This one falls into that remaining 15%. I’ve watched it ten times in the last hour already. It’s special to me, and it’s mine.

Sorry, Mom. I had to do it. I couldn’t help it. I think it’s just too dear to keep to myself.

June 10, 2008 | Filed under: country mouse, misadventures

The only thing less interesting than watching grass grow is watching it get cut, unless you grew up in the city and never mowed a lawn in your life. THEN it’s pretty damn exciting!

Brian is in charge of lawncare (and by “lawncare” I mean just mowing because it’s not like we’re fertilizing or watering or anything), but I’m home more often so I needed to learn how to use the mower. The front gets really scraggly after a couple of days, and luckily it’s flat and I can manage it. This is the side yard, there’s a little more to mow in front of the house, too. I’m thinking of planting a bunch or stuff there so there’s less to mow. The back yard is simply too hilly for me to even think about mowing. Brian can do it, but I’m too scared that the mower will slip back and slice off all my toes.

I have no grace with the lawnmower, no rhythm and basically no skills.

I can barely start the damn thing.

June 8, 2008 | Filed under: 20 seconds and under, good eatin', misadventures

The day started off great! Birthday party, face-painting, pizza and good friends. Then it took an ugly turn.

The party was on Long Island and we were driving home upstate from there. We knew we had the Belmont Stakes, a Yankees game and just plain ‘Saturday’ to contend with traffic-wise, and because of that and the fact that we had my entire record collection and a whole mess of baby tomato plants in the bed of the truck on a 90F day, we knew we had to hit the road early.

But something went wrong. We zigged when we should have zagged and after a spell I looked out the window and saw water. We were deep South instead of Way North. We got off the highway but couldn’t get back on and ended up driving through the whole of Brooklyn– all of it, no really ALL OF IT from Canarsie through Kings Plaza, Midwood, Prospect Park, Park slope, Fort Green and Williamsburg– via Flatbush Ave. On a Saturday afternoon.

You may have to be a New Yorker to appreciate how awful that really is. If you’re not, here’s a visual:

The drivers were complete maniacs, we got cut off from the right at literally every block. The traffic getting past the GWB and Yankee Stadium was insane. We left the party at 2:30 and didn’t get out of the damn city ’till about 5:30.

We didn’t get home ’till 8:30.

We were broken.

So we broke out the champagne we’d been saving for a rainy day.

(it was also raining)

May 28, 2008 | Filed under: Uncategorized

Behold the wonderous Philly Cheesesteak Pizza from Hogan’s Almost Famous Pizza! Layer for layer: crust, mozz, that delightful paper-thin Steak-Umm stuff that Brian calls “scrambled meat”, golden sauteed onions, yello cheez. Insane. The thing weighs like ten pounds.

Polished this puppy off this morning. A slice for lunch yesterday, two for dinner. Breakfast.

Not sure when I can allow such delicious nonsense to happen again. I just bought two new pairs of jeans and I don’t plan on buying any more this year!