Me = Big Wuss

As you may have read, I had two near-fainting spells this weekend (no, AB, I'm not pregnant). Saturday, I had some cereal and a banana for breakfast, but no coffee. Before brunch, we went hunting around some antique stores for nothing in particular. The first was the flea market located in the parking garage, which is always interesting, if not for the people watching, then for looking for the booth that is all paintings of naked men (which, alas, was not there this weekend, or they have switched out their stock of art). I had seriously misjudged how sticky it would be in the parking lot, so we wound up walking over to the big antique center, where they have the crazy furniture and chandeliers, usually in great condition. There, we saw a pair of rocking horse-sized sheep with chrome faces and real hides - for only $25,000 - we're nt sure if that was each or for the pair.

We still had time to kill, so we went to a smaller antique store that was the mecca for individual salt cellars. This is a big deal, as maybe 15 years ago, my mom started collecting individual sets of salt and pepper shakers. She started with ones she found at antique stores, but once people found out, it started to go downhill from there. One year, I painted a small set, but the people started getting her sets that were, shall we say, a bit larger than individual size. This past year, I was looking for a unique set for my mom, and couldn't find them anywhere. Lo and behold, we saw at least 20 different individual salt cellars at this store. Amazing!

Anyway, about this time, I started to feel a little light-headed, but soldiered on to walk through another store on our way to lunch. After a few minutes, it was too much, I felt hot and light-headed, so we headed to brunch a few minutes earlier, where I started drinking water and some tomato juice to try to combat either dehydration or lack of food. After brunch and an excellent viewing of American Idiot, I felt much better.

Until the next day, when my mom and my sister ventured out with me to explore Central Park, where swinging on the swings set off my next fainting spell. A few sips of water and a rest on a bench and I was good as new.

I have a theory - most of the time at work, I drink a coffee in the morning, then refill the cup at least 5 times throughout the day. This is when I'm not doing anything aside from sitting in the air-conditioning. Doing something on less water must have set the whole fainting situation off.

So Tired

Apparently, I have at least one more post with this title, but I am so tired. This time, it is because my parents, brother and one of my sisters and her husband is in town. I think that I have literally been in perpetual hydration since they got in on Friday, which means I had near-fainting spells both yesterday and today.

Friday afternoon, my mom and sister, who came in at lunch-time, spent the afternoon walking around near my office, until I was able to get out of work. Until my boss told us that we should try to work all afternoon - so I had my mom and sister come visit and spring me from work :) - convenient, eh?

We walked up to the Highline Park (which is a park that was built on top of the old elevated railroad line) and followed it up to Chelsea Market, where we bought ingredients to make dinner for the three of us, Mr. D, and my brother, who was coming in that evening. We used the garlic from our farm share box to make a delicious shrimp scampi, and used the lettuce as the base of a salad - yumm. Then, we finished it off with some Fat Witch brownies.

Farm Shares

Last year one of my coworkers had a farm share. Usually, the way a farm share (or CSA - community supported agriculture) works is that the customer pays the farm a set amount of money at the beginning of the year (usually before spring), which the farmer uses to buy seeds, pay expenses, and all those good things. Once the veggies start cropping up (no pun intended ;) ), the customers go to a pick-up point once a week and receive a bag or two or a box of vegetables (and fruit and eggs in some cases). Some CSA's require that the members take turns working at the pick-up point during the year.

We decided to buy a farm share this year, so we reserved our spot in March. For a few weeks we forgot about it, but the we started asking each other when it would start - not until June (specifically two weeks ago). The great part about the farm we joined is that we don't have to volunteer AND they deliver a box of veggies to our door. I love this part of New York - almost everywhere delivers. Now that we've started the growing season, we'll receive a box every week all the way through November.

Right now, our box has had a lot of swiss chard and spring garlic, but we've also had some lovely bok choi, fresh radishes, early carrots and GARLIC SCAPES - which I love. They are skinny, curly pieces of garlic, but a lighter version - soooo good. Anyway, we've had to get a little creative with cooking, since it would be a shame to have sauteed swiss chard every night. Tonight I made some orecchiette pasta, and once it was drained, put it back in the pot with some swiss chard, some chunks of goat cheese and some sun-dried tomatoes. I cooked up a few of the chicken sausages we made the other night, sliced them up, and added those to the pasta, too. Yumm!

Favorite New Discovery

I love my new favoritest thing: dry shampoo. I read about some actress using it, and it's perfect. When we were kids, our mom would tell us to just use baby powder, but that never really worked, since I would undoubtedly put too much baby powder on my head.

For a few months, I would wash all my hair every day and then just wash the front part, where it looked bed-head and a little less-than-fresh the days in between. Now, I can spray this on the front part, brush it through, and I'm all set. The one I've been using is Psssst, but Bumble and Bumble makes one too (with dyed powder to match your hair). As long as you brush through your hair after spraying it on, the white powder works fine, and is about $5 instead of $30.

Why we hate Bed Bath & Beyond

We just hate it today.  Our trashcan broke last week, so now the flip up lid doesn't flip anymore when you step on the lever, so you have to reach over and pull the lid up.  Not a huge problem, but it's not made to be flipped by hand, so it doesn't have a handle.

Luckily I had been saving up some BB&B gift cards, so we headed out after some sausage making, more on that later, to go get the new trashcan.  We stopped on the way to take Sasha to the dog park, so she tagged along to the store, and they have a new policy that dogs can't walk in the store, they have to be carried or sit in a cart.  A special "canine cart" shown here.  Honestly, that store is really busy, and we probably shouldn't have attempted to take the dog in, but it's so much easier than making two trips that are right there.   Anyway, she wasn't causing the problem, but I did think she looked silly in her dog cart.

We found the trashcan, got in line at checkout, which was MOBBED.  People all over the place, and one woman in particular who decided she really needed to move past our cart, between us and the woman pushing her husband in a wheelchair, to see if the line past us was shorter - so she snottily told Mr. D that he was in the way (we were one cart in line just outside the register).  He started off about how she was crazy and that he wasn't in the way, so she went past.  Then she decided that she needed to go past us AGAIN to get to the lines that were shorter that she had just walked past.  AGAIN she told us we were in the way - though it's not like we can get much smaller with the giant trashcan box that we were buying, so Mr. D told her she was crazy again, and to get a life, blah, blah.  I'm trying to tell him to get over it, it's not a big deal, and finally a manager comes over and pulls us to a line that just opened up, and tell us that this woman comes and buys one thing every weekend and pulls the same crap EVERY time.  We finally get checked out, grab a cab home, since we're all now a bit cranky and don't see that walking home would be good.  We open the box, and the stupid garbage can has a giant dent on the lid!

Given the direction of the day, we give in and decide to take care of it on Sunday.  While I make Alton Brown's meat sauce for spaghetti, Mr. D volunteers to go back to the store, where he encounters another nutty old person, doing the same sort of thing at check out.  Normally, I would think Mr. D might be exaggerating, just a touch, but the same manager was there, recognized Mr. D and said, "you're just not having any luck with old people this weekend are you?"

No we were not.

Cardigans

I am trying to blog more often, if nothing else, just to make myself adhere to something. As a result, you may get some truly random posts, such as today's.

I was riding up the elevator after getting home last night and realized my sweater had a teeny tiny rent on it - in the middle of the left chestular area. What concerns me is this JUST happened to another sweater, on the right side. What is up with my bras - are there tiny scissors implanted in them? I don't think it is my washer, since it has only happened twice.

Dear Co-Worker

I meant to send this yesterday, but since I'm still feeling it:

Dear Person :

I know you aren't feeling well, and just had a fight on the phone in front of us all, and dislike your job, but please stop being a "b." It is not my fault that your day sucks, and I was just trying to help you out earlier, so please cut the attitude.

Thank you,
Me

Barbecue!

So hopefully it is a myth that eating too much smoked meat can cause cancer, since we managed to indulge a lot, not as much as we could have, this weekend at the Big Apple BBQ. Mr. D first went to this festival 3 years ago, when he was working up here for his summer internship at the firm he works for now. That year, he was excited because Dinosaur BBQ had come into the city for it.

Last year, we missed the festival for a wedding down in Dallas (which was one of the best receptions ever - featuring Pappasito's catering), so this was the first year we were able to go. Mr. D started talking about it last month. When we checked out the tickets, it was too late to buy the "fast pass," but luckily no tickets are needed to just show up. Mr. D sent out an email to all those who had come up from UT to see if they wanted to meet up with us.

One of them reported smelling the smoke in the elevators of his building before he left work on Friday afternoon. We anxiously checked the website the night before, only to find out that one of the guys manning the pit crew from the Salt Lick was injured, so they couldn't make it. :( Big amounts of sad faces here.

We got to the park right at 11:00 am, and people were already lined up at the tents, but the people we were meeting weren't there yet, so we wandered around to get the lay of the land. We found the spot to get wristbands was open near the beer tent, so we checked that off the list. Tagging along with us was the Sasha, so Mr. D stopped with her in the dog run, while I went to the assigned spot. Typically, I managed to miss the people we were supposed to meet, as they were on the other side of the corner, so Mr. D saw them as he walked up. :)

We split up so as to get the most out of our line-waiting time. Mr. D grabbed some brisket and baked beans and I snagged some babyback ribs. My line was moving really fast, so I was able to scout out a picnic table, with enough spots for four of us, and by two more people from Mr. D's work joined us, we were able to all squeeze in. Mr. D took the opportunity to head off and grab a basket of sausage w/ pimento cheese, and by the time we finished that, the rabble around us was ready for us to give up our seats. We headed over to the beer tent and had a beer (it was by the music stage, but you weren't allowed to take the beer out of the beer area to wait in line - poor planning). Before we headed out, we stopped at the dessert tent and had blueberry crisp/brownie's a la mode. Yum!

Unfortunately. we decided to grab a coffee and some pastries this morning on our way to the dog park. I say unfortunately, because we wound up dilly-dallying in the park until it was almost time for the tents to open back up. The pizza dough rising in the kitchen was turned into dinner, and we decided to lunch at the festival with two different kinds of babyback ribs. (insert drooling noise here) :)

Owie

So, a few of my roommates from college came into town this weekend to visit. I think a fun time was had by all, until they had all gotten on the bus/plane. I sat down and put my feet up for a little rest. Then I put them down, walked to the kitchen and realized my toes needed some attention - I had ingrown toenails on both feet on my big toe. :( Yes, gross, but it's genetic, so not my fault.

I set about fixing them, and thought I had, until I finished walking Sasha to daycare, hopped on the subway and sat down at my desk. Owie. After I elevated my right foot for most of the morning, things were feeling better, but not before I decided that my going to the gym tonight would just make things worse - how's that for logic.

Reflecting on my rationalization, I remembered a time in elementary school when I had an ingrown toenail, and my dad (the surgeon) fixed it. Not that he was necessarily more willing to inflict pain on my toe than I was, but he wasn't attached to it. :) The next day at school was "lap" day in P.E., where we went outside and walked/jogged/ran around the black-topped parking lot in the heat of the day, in Texas, in the summer (anything between April and October should just count as summer in Houston). After each lap, you collected a popsicle stick from the kids who got to sit out, in order to keep track of how many laps you had done. Mrs. Tilton asked the class if anyone had an injury and couldn't run. Of course I raised my hand, I hated lap day. Unfortunately, this led to me explaining to Mrs. Tilton in front of the entire class that my excuse was that I had an ingrown toenail. Right. Hilarity ensued - for everyone else. I think Mrs. Tilton felt bad for me, not bad enough to let me hand out popsicle sticks, but she did admit that it was probably very painful.

Ahh, memories.

Star Sighting

YY and I were leaving work today, when another co-worker texted us that Michael Imperioli was standing outside the deli on the corner. Luckily he was still there when we walked by!

Venice, Day 2, Part 2

We walked back out, then went to go find lunch. As the guidebook recommended we were prepared to get lost, but guidebooks that don't label all the streets are kind of setting you up to get lost. Lunch was across at least 5 bridges, but we finally found it. I ordered a "Fantasy Salad," which was delicious - radicchio, garbanzo beans, cheese, peppers, and a million different other bits of deliciousness. Mr. D had ordered a salad and then a pasta for us to share, which NEVER came. We sat waiting, thinking it was going to show up, but after 20 minutes, cut our losses and asked for the check. When it finally came, the pasta was still there, so we pointed out that it never came. This made our waitress extremely upset - with us, for some reason. She stormed off to ask the other waitresses why they hadn't brought the past, but figured out that we hadn't received it. Mr. D pulled out the credit card, at which point she shook her finger at him, "No, no, no." Venice was, by far, the city where we spent the most cash; the only place we went that took credit cards was the train station, thank goodness.

After lunch, we went to the museum across the square from the cathedral, and then back to St. Mark's for the tour (again with a podcast - we were the doofiest looking tourists ever, maybe).

That night, we had one of our most entertaining dinners, which was a pub crawl of different cichetterias, which are tapas-style restaurants. Order a drink for a few euro, then order a mini-panini w/ fresh salami or prosciutto with cheese for 1.60 euro. Or maybe you want a drink and an arancini (fried risotto ball) or a polpetti (meatball). Very delicious, and entertaining at the same time.

Venice, Day 2, Part 1 (Or, if I don't post something I'll never finish)

We woke up the next day and went downstairs for breakfast, which would be representative of our breakfasts, up until we arrived in Rome. First, someone came by and asked what we would like to drink - un cafe (Mr D) e un cappuccino, per favore. Then we went over to the table with the spread: a bowl of mixed fruit, croissants, plain rolls, sliced salami, sliced cheese, granola and yogurt. Yes, I did proceed to eat salami and cheese for breakfast for the next 8 days. It was Delicious!

After breakfast we wandered to St. Mark's square to go to the basilica, but the line had wrapped all the way around to the edge of the Doge's Palace. It was a bit cloudy, and we didn't want to wait in the potential rain, so we went to the top of the campanile, or bell tower. We spent at least half an hour up there, just looking out over Venice. There are some pictures in the roll, which I took from the tower, and then one of Mr D taking my picture with the background, and then one where you just see us in front of a grill because the Asian tourist offered to take our picture, but forgot to include the view behind us.