Best Saturday Ever.

A true New York Saturday is a truly amazing thing.  If I haven't said it before, one of my all-time favorite things about Jamie is his incredible knowledge of the city.  No one can take you on a walk-about quite like This Guy.

Our journey begins with a Manhattan tradition:  Dim Sum brunch in Chinatown...

This was my first time having dim sum and let me tell you, it is something to experience if you never have.  Jing Fong restaurant on Elizabeth Street was the spot and it was seriously The Place to Be.

Seriously, look at the size of this place!  There are no waiters, instead there are lots of tiny little ladies with push carts full of all kinds of unknowable items.  You point, they plate and stamp your card that keeps track of what you've gotten.  So simple, so genius.

Just one example of the Carts of Wonderment.  No idea what's on this one but I'm sure I tried all of it.

Seriously awesome spring rolls!  You definitely need a sense of adventure to enjoy an experience like this, you never know what you're going to get...

Is this the happiest face in New York or what?  You'd better believe it!

After a crazy awesome brunch we begin our wanderings around Chinatown.  The thing I really love about NYC's Chinatown is that it's so much more than just cheap souvenirs and tourist stops, (though there are certainly plenty of those as well), it's a real neighborhood and cultural hub of the city.  And it is JAMMED on a Saturday afternoon!

You never know what you'll find in a Chinese super market....

No, really, you have no idea what you might find in a Chinese supermarket.  Live, hopping toads were just one of the surprises.  Mmmm, tasty!

And now, on to SoHo.....

This little guy was tethered outside a French restaurant.  I have decided to call him Gus, the world's most adorable French Bulldog, from the French restaurant.

Oh man, did I want to steal this guy and take him home to be my best friend!

And finally, a stop at The Cub Room for a beer and a sit down before heading home.  Ahhh, what a day!  Come visit and see for yourself!  I should be getting paid by the city for these posts.

First Concert with MCE! ...And Another Zoo!

Well, my first performance with the Manhattan Choral Ensemble was a total smash hit!  It was so great to be onstage with a choir again, performing amazing music with such talented people.  Even better, I was lucky enough to have two of my best friends, my incredible boyfriend and his incredible kids there to cheer me on.  And fortunately we had a sound technician there to record the performance, which I will soon have a copy of, incase anyone would like to hear the deliciousness of the Brahams Ziegeunerlieder and the three world-premiered pieces commissioned for our choir by three contemporary NY composers.  Bitchin!

And away we go!  Hmm, still look just like I did in college singing with the UI Concert Choir, if slightly more...seasoned...

Two of the classiest kids in NYC, my BGF Caitlin and her man Rob the Norlander.  They ate all the cookies and drank all the wine at the reception before this picture was taken.  I believe they're having some kind of tandem seizure in this photo.

Introducing my NYC family unit:  my one and only Jamie with his awesome twin boys, Oliver (left) and Henry (right).  These 10-year-olds sat through the entire concert for over an hour, German, atonality and all.  Hence the reason it looks like their eyeballs are about to fall out of their heads.

Am I glowing or what?  Check out the gorgeous roses my boys got for me!  And now, off to the after-party at Toast!

And what better way to spend the day after such a monumentally awesome event than to have some first time New York experiences?  Being that it was over 60 degrees outside, the Central Park Zoo was obviously in order:

HeeHee!  Sea lions are quickly becoming some of my new favorite animals.  We got to the zoo just as feeding time was about to start, timing is everything!

As much as I've always loved the penguin house, I couldn't stop thinking about the part of the movie Happy Feet when he gets put in the penguin house at the zoo and he's totally freaking out.  And it made me a little sad.  So we moved on.

The two polar bears at the Central Park Zoo would totally win in a fight against their Bronx Zoo counterparts.  They were ridiculously entertaining.  Never have I wanted so badly to hug something that could tear me to shreds with a smile on its face.

And finally, we hiked downtown to SoHo and had dinner at Lombardi's, the first pizzaria in America.  Totally delicious.

Because of the way the restaurant has been expanded over the years, the two dining areas are separated by the kitchen, which you get to walk through if you get seated in the original restaurant (which we did).  Behind me is the original coal oven that is still used to make every single pizza.  Note the date written in tile:  1905

A Day at the Bronx Zoo!

Aw heck, I wanna blog about something fun for a change.

As you can see, Jamie's new camera is really spectacular.  Most of these were taken through glass and from some distance away.  I take absolutely no credit for these fantastic shots.  

Apparently the Bronx Zoo has some kind of speaker system set up in the tigers' den.  We kept hearing these ominous growling sounds and finally realized they were coming from this guy yawning up a storm.  

Terrifying and so cute at the same time.  He got all clean and cozy before finally settling down for a nap.  Awwwww, kitty!

These are some kind of sparrow I think.  They were almost impossible to see within the branches as they're even smaller than your standard sparrow you'd find in the suburbs.  Jamie's camera, however, has visual powers that we mere humans know not.

After almost three years in New York City, I thought pigeons could get no fatter.  At least this one had some shiny blue feathers to his credit.

This giant toucan was huge.  HUGE.  I should have put my hand in the picture to give it some scale.  The shape of that sort of beak-hat and the white iris of his eyes distinguish him as a male.  There was a female in there, too; she had a more curvy shaped beak-hat thing (that's a technical term) and a red iris.  Pretty flippin' sweet.

I have to say, this photo is just stunning.  Toucan Sam, as we named him, was sitting in a thicket of branches at a very weird angle in relation to where we were standing and somehow Jamie managed to turn him into the prize photo of the day.  Well done, sir!

We were looking for a place to sit and have our packed lunch of prosciutto and mozzarella sandwiches with sea salt and vinegar chips, (oh the joys of dating a recreational chef!), when we realized the pond/river next to us was full of swans and mallards!  What a cool zoo.

Believe it or not, this awesome dude was easily 40 feet away from us.  No feces were harmed/thrown in the taking of this photograph.

Having been addicted to "Lost" for the last five years, I have not looked at polar bears in the same way.  This guy, however, was pretty entertaining.  He started out on a little island of snow in the middle of his pool, jumped over to this narrow edge, walked all the way from one side to the other with very nimble paws, stopped, posed, then turned and trotted back to the starting point.  

The Unending Malaise of the Job Hunt

Few things are more emotionally and mentally draining than true financial stress and unemployment.  As a (relatively) young working adult in America, words like "economic distress" and "recession" have only ever had meaning to me in an abstract way, even though I have lived during such periods before now.  This is the first time in my life that I have been directly affected, both personally and by the situations of people I love, by the failing economy in the nation, and it is scary.  Truly scary.  Like, this is the most frightened I have ever been in my life.  

But as my mother and grandmother taught me, the show must go on.  We are, I am, going to get through this.  We will make it, because, well, look at the alternative.  

My thoughts and love and what clinging hope I have are with all of you.  Always remember that we have each other.

Some slap & tickle for your senses

The humble beginnings of the carnage of SuperBowl XLIII at Andy's place last Sunday...

Aside from my candlestick antlers, a pretty sweet pic of me and Jamie...

Ice skating in Central Park last weekend.  I did a spin!  And didn't fall down!  Yay!

It may be overstating my verbal abilities, but I do like to use the phrase "slap & tickle" at least twice a week.  Quota:  filled.

Inspired by my cousin's recent relocation to Spain and her incomprehensible ability to maintain a weekly blog of her study abroad adventures in a foreign land, I've decided that I have no excuse not to do the same with my not-so-recent relocation to New York City and my slightly less entertaining adventures in what I still consider a different world.  My logic here is that if I have to report on my goings-on then maybe I'll start doing some stuff worth talking about.  Eh?

To that end, I'm proud to say that the last few weeks have played host to a few New York Firsts for me:  Ice skating in Central Park, true New York style pizza at Arturo's, (an institution when it comes to pizza in this city), and perhaps most exciting, I am now a member of the New York Road Runners!  Finishing the Disney Half Marathon really got our brains locked into running and Jamie and I managed to join NYRR in time to be eligible for guaranteed entry in the 2010 NYC Marathon.  It is most definitely on the calendar in pen.

And now I'm going to be REALLY ambitious and attempt to post some photos of our recent adventures around the city.  Our new camera, (by which I mean the super cool fancy camera that Jamie purchased and that I use freely and without permission), is amazing and we can't stop taking it everywhere we go.  

Until next time, cheers!

Excerpt of the year

"Do you remember what I said about money and about the men who seek to reverse the law of cause and effect? The men who try to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind? Well, the man who despises himself tries to gain self-esteem from sexual adventures—which can’t be done, because sex is not the cause, but an effect and an expression of a man’s sense of his own value.

“Did it ever occur to you that it’s the same issue? The men who think that wealth comes from material resources and has no intellectual root or meaning, are the men who think—for the same reason—that sex is a physical capacity which functions independently of one’s mind, choice or code of values. They think that your body creates a desire and makes a choice for you—just about in some such way as if iron ore transformed itself into railroad rails of its own volition. Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a man’s sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself. No matter what corruption he’s taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exaltation, only in the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces him to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and to accept his real ego as his standard of value. He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience—or to fake—a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer—because only the possession of a heroine will give the sense of an achievement, not the possession of a brainless slut. He does not seek to gain his value, he seeks to express it. There is no conflict between the standards of his mind and the desires of his body. But the man who is convinced of his own worthlessness will be drawn to a woman he despises—because she will reflect his own secret self, she will release him from the objective reality in which he is a fraud, she will give him a momentary illusion of his own value and a momentary escape from the moral code that damns him.

“Observe the ugly mess which most men make of their sex lives—and observe the mess of contradictions which they hold as their moral philosophy. One proceeds from the other. Love is our response to our highest values—and can be nothing else.let a man corrupt his values and his view of existence, let him profess that love is not self-enjoyment but self-denial, that virtue consists, not of pride, but of pity or pain or weakness or sacrifice, that the noblest love is born, not of admiration, but of charity, not in response to values, but in response to flaws—and he will have to cut himself in two. His body will not obey him, it will not respond, it will make him impotent toward the woman he professes to love and draw him to the lowest type of whore he can find. His body will always follow the ultimate logic of his deepest convictions; is he believes that flaws are values, he has damned himself and he will feel that depravity is all he is worthy of enjoying. He has equated virtue with pain and he will feel that vice is the only realm of pleasure. Then he will scream that his body has vicious desires of its own which his mind cannot conquer, that sex is sin, that true love is a pure emotion of the spirit. And then he will wonder why love brings him nothing but boredom, and sex—nothing but shame.”

Farewell, Chicago winters, hello.....NYC winters...still gross.

I've never been in so genuine a state of utter shock. I'm officially moving to Manhattan in less than 6 months to go to The New York School for Film and Television. This is insanity. More details when I get off this cloud.