12 posts tagged “new york”

As I mentioned in a previous post, we had friends staying with us last week. Man it was awesome to see them - it had been a year and a half or so, and the last time we saw them was when we were in New Zealand for their wedding. I lived with H. and O for a year in grad school, although I'd been friends with H. for several years before we flatted together. So I've known her for oh, about 13 years now, and O since she brought him back from Canada to settle in New Zealand in 1998.

Anyway, we had a few days to hang out, and do touristy and non-touristy stuff. The final day of their time here was just gorgeous - warm but not too hot, and most importantly for NYC, not humid. So we hit Central Park for a picnic and it was all quite lovely. This is, I think, an absolutely typical New York photo. I took it from Belvedere Castle, looking over Turtle Pond and the Great Lawn. This is what I think of when I think of summer in the city.

Central Park - Turtle Pond and Great Lawn

It's kind of depressing now, I guess, that whenever anything like this happens in the city, I (and a whole host of others) immediately think "terrorism". Even just for a split second, until rational thought kicks back in. It was like when Cory Lidle crashed his plane into the side of a building; when you're at work and all you hear is "there's been a plane crash into a building" it's a license for your imagination to go crazy. (Particularly when the crash is a couple of blocks from mr. gaspode's workplace). I don't like it. I don't like that my mind is now programmed to go straight there.

Yesterday, mr. g and I went to Coney Island with our friends F. (who will only chew Wrigley's gum until the Cubs win the world series again) and D., who as far as I know isn't nearly as weird as her husband :)

Everything about Coney Island pretty much rocks (I can wax lyrical about the Nathan's hot dogs, the rides, the crowds, the boardwalk and the baseball team for starters), but the best part of Coney Island is the Cyclone. Built in 1927, it's a wooden roller coaster, that goes up 85 feet and gets to just under 100 km/h. Frankly, even though it doesn't do any loops or even go sideways, I find it terrifying. And, of course, awesome.

Under the Cyclone is the Coney Island History Project exhibition, which has some fantastic old photos, and lots of information about Coney Island over the past century or so. They are making an oral history archive of interviews with people and their Coney Island stories.

...belly...distended...send....help...

Last night, I went for dinner with two lovely women, J. and K., to celebrate J.'s birthday. We ate at Babbo. We ate a lot of food. A lot of food at Babbo. Actually, I ate a lot of food, because I am an idiot and forgot that I could just eat half of every course and get the rest packed up. Well, I didn't forget, my mouth was just enjoying itself too much (dirty!) and didn't let my brain register.

Here is the menu. And off it we ate -
Antipasti. J. - Lamb tongue, K. - tripe, me - octopus.
Primi. J. - Mint love letters, K. - goat cheese tortelloni, me - stricchetti with lamb
Secondi. J. - salmon special, K. - skirt steak, me - braised beef
Dolci. J. - a...blueberry tart I think? K. - formaggi (sensible lady) me - ricotta cheesecake

Yes, that was a lot of food. And cocktails to start, and champagne throughout. We ladies can eat. (Well, K. was clever and had half her stuff packed up.) And today my belly is taking one for the team.

So I'm trying hard not to get into political reading yet, as I'm sure I'll be wasting a lot of time next year with the upcoming election. That said, it's sometimes kind of difficult to avoid it. Especially with Rudy Giuliani a frontrunner.

Anyways, there is one thing that I keep reading that has me baffled. I'm not trying to be snarky here (I'd fail) but I am genuinely confused, so if someone could explain this to me I'd be grateful.

It seems like the accepted wisdom is that Giuliani is a strong candidate, albeit causing reservations in the Republican base because of his stance on gay rights and abortion (he seemed a little vacillating about that one recently, but apparently he's about to publicly embrace abortion rights, like, today or something according to google) and his personal life.

But this is the bit that confuses me. Often when I read about him, I read a statement that says something like "but he has impeccable tough on crime, tough on terrorism credentials".

Tough on crime I can see. Tough on terrorism? Didn't 9/11 happen on his watch? I mean, yeah, good on him, he hightailed it down to Ground Zero when others were taking off to their secure locations, and he was visible and did a good job with the aftermath. But how does that equate to being tough on terrorism? Preaching fighting words after the fact isn't "tough on terrorism". Cleaning up nicely isn't "tough on terrorism".

I'm confused. 'Splainy?

True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation. - George Washington

I wonder if anyone wants to do a sociological study on urban thirtysomethings and how they make new friends. I think, if my experience is anything to go by, the findings could be distilled down to a single point: They don't.

This phenomenon is something people talk about all the time, right? How hard it is to make friends after a certain age? I feel like even when I was in my 20s, new friends were just shooting up around me. Now, not so much. Of course, a big hindrance for me is that I haven't really made any work friends. I work in the Bronx and live in Manhattan, so when there is after-work drinks or other social activities, I just don't go along. I don't want to, because the whole time I'd be thinking about getting home and how I was still an hour away from my apartment.

I guess the times I really notice it though is at parties. Invariably, when I go to a party there is someone, or a couple of people with whom I (or we) really hit it off. Often I get email addresses or phone numbers, and elicit a promise to "hang out sometime". Even while we're doing it, I feel like there's an unspoken acknowledgment that yeah, it isn't really gonna happen.

Anyway, so we were at our friend's party on Saturday night, and started talking to a couple who I really liked. Did all the "hey, so we should hang out" crap, and this time, THIS TIME, I told them that I was well aware of all the times people did this and didn't follow through, so I promised to email them the next day. And I did. And invited them to OUR party in two weeks time.

They were super-fun, so we'll see if this goes anywhere (lordy, this is more stressful than going out with boys!) What do you reckon the odds are?

Except that being on a horse would be a lot nicer than what I actually did last night, which was start running again.

So it's been a while. There was some winter, and then there was some surgery and then I would have started again a couple of weeks ago (like, 4 weeks after surgery) but then there was Barbados and beer and visitors, all of which are ahead of my own fitness schedule in terms of importance.

I actually really enjoy running. Of all of the solitary exercises I could do, it wins hands down. I'd rather play netball or touch rugby, but they are in short supply in Manhattan (doable, but not ubiquitous like at home, of course). I never actually thought I would like to run, but after several false starts I got into a good zone last year - I never broke 15 miles in a week (actually, let's call that 24 km just to sound more impressive) but I did approximately that pretty consistently for several months. So by the end of last summer I felt quite good about myself.

In New York, the worst bit isn't the running, rather it's getting yourself out there knowing that you're going to be the fattest person running. In short shorts. Now let me put in a note here: I'm not that fat - I'm right on the cusp of being overweight according to BMI (it varies from 24.8 to 25 depending on my beer intake!) but in NYC someone of my size, particularly someone in decent running gear who actually looks like she can and does run a reasonable amount, is gonna get some second glances. But whatever, I get over it.

Anyway! One thing I do tend to do is overdo things. So I was very careful to break up my jog (let's not get overboard and call it a run) yesterday into manageable bits. In fact I did way less than I thought I could, because I'd rather build up slowly and not get injured. So yesterday was 2 miles of actual running, but broken up into 1/4 mile bits, with 1/20 mile fast walks in between. (Easy to do this in Manhattan because of the grid system and the fact that 20 blocks = 1 mile). As usual, I felt like crap for the first mile and then kind of settled in. By the time I stopped I was feeling great, and wanted to keep going, but I know from bitter experience that it's that phenomenon that gets me injured. So I stopped and stretched and spent the rest of the night on the couch.

I really hate public declarations of goals, because it stresses me out too much to keep them, but I'd really like to be back to running 10 km (6 miles) every weekend by the end of summer. We'll see how that goes.

For our last wedding anniversary, in October, mr. gaspode gave me tickets to the Westminster Kennel Club dog show. It was on Monday and yesterday and it was awesome. We have been before, 2 years ago (when the German shorthaired pointer won, and I totally called it), so we knew that it would be kick-ass. It was at Madison Square Garden, and on the second day, the day that Best in Show is judged, the stadium was nearly packed.

The best part about the WKC dog show is that the dogs are required to be benched and accesible to the public during the day. So even though the group judging starts at 8pm, I got there around 6 each day to go "backstage" and play with the dogs. The owners are always really nice and talk to you and let you play and pet the dogs. It's so much fun!

The photos I took are on flickr, but here's a selection.