Peripatetic Knile
My, my, what a week it's been.
Last Tuesday I was in New York, if you'll remember. I spent the morning puttering around K&L's apartment, then did indeed ventured out for a bagel at Ess-A-Bagel, their favorite local place. I hopped on a series of uptown trains hoping that jennyblues would get my messages & be available for hanging out. HopStop told me it'd be an 80 minute trip, and it was a bit under that, but not much. Good thing I had my iPod along so I could look less touristy and more knowledgeable denizen. HAH. I got a voice mail from her right as I exited onto the Fordham Rd platform, which was great timing. We walked around campus just a titch, then headed for beers at an awesome neighborhood bar that definitely had more clientele at 3:30 PM than I was expecting. It was the bartender's birthday. She's probably a little younger than my mom. Wow, just wow. From there, I met up with matt_rah for my annualish visit with him: we headed down towards CCNY where he had an evening class and just kinda ambled around and chatted about teaching, his classes, and my work. I crossed town for pizza with Jill, Jerry, and Kris, then Andy showed up! Hooray! He, Kris & I headed back towards Union Square to meet up with Leah, and get noshes & beers at some brewpub-chain place there. I got the largest sampler possible, bringing my total beers that day to a large number. Good work, team. Summary of the day: AWESOME to see Jenny, Matt, and Andy. Interesting to see the Bronx. Parts reminded me of Baltimore crossed with Calcutta. I can't quite explain that better, sorry.
Wednesday was fun because Kris didn't have to work at all, so he and I met up with Chris Said at Union Square, then wandered towards lunch. We stopped at an antiques store (the sort of place that doesn't have price tags) which was a hoot, then Crate & Barrel, then were finally able to meet up with Leah for a Chinese lunch that was perfectly cheap. About 20 early-teen girls were there for a birthday party, and it was the strangest thing. What alien creatures. Kris & I knew we were headed to MOMA to see the Dada exhibit I'd happened to read about on the train down that'd opened on Sunday, but Chris was undecided. So on the subway, he flipped a coin to get his answer: "I'm going!" It made me think more decisions should be based on a cointoss. The exhibit was neat, but a little too small. Safe to say we all learned something about Dada. Perhaps the most fun were the "phonetic poems" of Raoul Hausman: he had his printer randomly select letters & symbols from a box. These were placed in order drawn for printing. Hausman then recorded himself reading aloud the result. Rush-Rhees has a CD of this, and I badly wish to listen to more of them. Tomorrow, perhaps. I would like to go back to MOMA - lots I didn't get to explore, some I was too tired to appreciate. Can you believe I'd never been? Me neither.
After the museum, Chris went off to do his thing, and Kris & I headed towards Bierkraft. I've heard much of this "Brooklyn" place, in particular the "Park Slope" but had never seen it for myself. And he doesn't venture out there much. We didn't see much of the neighborhood because of time constraints, but Bierkraft was PERFECT. Their selection doesn't really hold a candle to Beers of the World but nearly all the beer was in cold cases, and most importantly, they had what I sought: Innis & Gunn. Upon entering, Kris asked me "So what are you here for exactly?" I answered, and the man unpacking bottles on the floor said "You're in luck: it's on special for 2.97 a bottle." "I travelled 8 hours for this." That is a way to shock an employee of a retail establishment if I've ever had one. He then informed me that they'd ship to me, saving me the travel time. Hot balls, kiddos! Count me in for that. Kris & I then spent a good 45 minutes there, tasting cheeses and sausages for that night's "tapas" dinner, ogling beers, and generally being food-snobs. It was exactly what we needed. We learned something about art & cheese all in one day. How pretentious! Leah's friend EK came over for dinner and we sat around chatting and eating and sampling the beer-finds. A very, very good end to the day.
The trip back on Thursday was about the same as the way down: train not that crowded. I watched Prison-A-Go-Go (good thing there were no little kids nearby) and Coupling. I was worried that Coupling wouldn't be funny this go 'round, but it indeed was. The Girl With Two Breasts may be one of my all-time favorite TV episodes. Once back, Meghan, ithinksobrain, lizzybeth529, and I went to see An Inconvenient Truth. I was surprised at how it was structured -- it's just a big PowerPoint (Well, Keynote) presentation. Gore packaged information really well, and a few things surprised me, but it's not really going to change my behavior that much. I'm already interested in keeping my fossil fuel use low, insulating my home, etc.
An interesting contrasting event was Friday's entertainment Cars at the Drive-In, which inspired me to drive on interstates less. More on that in next paragraph: I hope you're excited for it! Saturday, Meghan and I took her mostly-fuel-efficient car down to Ithaca, taking scenic routes instead of the Thruway. We kind of hoped to meet up with my parents there but I was a bad son and organized it poorly, so that failed. Mostly we walked around the Commons. Oh, and we visited Contemporary Trends (warning: site has music), which is the site of many content Saturday afternoon childhood memories. It's a furniture store. Let it be said I had a strange childhood. On the Commons, I bought hemp seed nuts -- they're THC-free -- for baking purposes (no pun intended) and a sticker that says "Fight terror: Ride a bike". It's on my bike now. I'd tried to purchase a reusable hemp coffee filter, but they didn't have any basket-shaped ones, only cones. Well, I successfully purchased one, but the wrong shape. So I had to exchange it for the nuts & sticker. We picked up dinner at the natural grocery store, kind of by accident, because the deli in the Dewitt Mall is closed on weekends. WTF? We ate dinner on the Cornell Plantations, which was... wait for it... gorges! On the trip back up, we stopped at a mini-golf/ice cream/roadfood stand for ice cream. I grabbed a flier for it, but it's not handy now. Upon our return, we went out to the Toad with dzou and tabsq and their friends Ed, Ari, and Glen. Did anything happen Sunday? *furrow brow* Not that I can recall.
Part of the reason I grabbed the flier is my new obsession: RoadFood.Com. I'd read about it a few months ago but failed to really investigate it until recently. Such fun stuff there, particularly the Where Should I Eat? forum. This is why I want to drive off the beaten path: more interesting food, local pride, etc. I've decided my drive to Avalon this week will be along Rts 15 & 322 to allow for maximum roadfood. First stop: Fry Bros' Turkey Ranch. It's been a while since I've been there. There's a chance I'll be in Corning for Wednesday night, basically just to sleep & break up the drive a bit, but it depends on how much I get done tomorrow. I suppose the weather's a factor too.. I'll be in Avalon with Kris & Steve for basically a week. Wow, time's flying. I've started packing for The Move. The Move is "2.1 miles" according to GMaps. Speaking of which, I nearly forgot to mention my recent obsession with Google Earth. I spend more time looking at it than I do XXX websites. *cough* Actually, that's true. If I could merge GEarth with RoadFood, that'd be awesome. The mapping of the route to Avalon, despite the obsession, was mostly done with a good old-fashioned road atlas. GEarth only helped a little.
Tonight was the first Eastman Summer Sings event. We did Mozart's Great Mass in C Minor, which I thought contained "Ave Verum Corpus" (as in the Choristers' rep piece), because of this Amazon entry. When we neared the end of the libretto, I was quite disappointed. At first I thought maybe AVC's in the "new version" (finished by a Robert Levin) but I don't think that's the case. This original version showed me that the inclusion of AVC was just filler on the previous CD, and the Levin version lacks a tracklist. Internet, you fail me. Even Wikipedia fails. Shame.
Getting up in 6 hours to make an airport run, thumbs down. Garlic cheddar cheese, thumbs up. Goodwill with jisalynn and hubcap_annie, non-jinxing thumbs up. But maybe I should be productive and do work and pack at some point too.
I spent way too much writing this entry. Me, me, me. Monsieur Knile, c'est moi.
Last Tuesday I was in New York, if you'll remember. I spent the morning puttering around K&L's apartment, then did indeed ventured out for a bagel at Ess-A-Bagel, their favorite local place. I hopped on a series of uptown trains hoping that jennyblues would get my messages & be available for hanging out. HopStop told me it'd be an 80 minute trip, and it was a bit under that, but not much. Good thing I had my iPod along so I could look less touristy and more knowledgeable denizen. HAH. I got a voice mail from her right as I exited onto the Fordham Rd platform, which was great timing. We walked around campus just a titch, then headed for beers at an awesome neighborhood bar that definitely had more clientele at 3:30 PM than I was expecting. It was the bartender's birthday. She's probably a little younger than my mom. Wow, just wow. From there, I met up with matt_rah for my annualish visit with him: we headed down towards CCNY where he had an evening class and just kinda ambled around and chatted about teaching, his classes, and my work. I crossed town for pizza with Jill, Jerry, and Kris, then Andy showed up! Hooray! He, Kris & I headed back towards Union Square to meet up with Leah, and get noshes & beers at some brewpub-chain place there. I got the largest sampler possible, bringing my total beers that day to a large number. Good work, team. Summary of the day: AWESOME to see Jenny, Matt, and Andy. Interesting to see the Bronx. Parts reminded me of Baltimore crossed with Calcutta. I can't quite explain that better, sorry.
Wednesday was fun because Kris didn't have to work at all, so he and I met up with Chris Said at Union Square, then wandered towards lunch. We stopped at an antiques store (the sort of place that doesn't have price tags) which was a hoot, then Crate & Barrel, then were finally able to meet up with Leah for a Chinese lunch that was perfectly cheap. About 20 early-teen girls were there for a birthday party, and it was the strangest thing. What alien creatures. Kris & I knew we were headed to MOMA to see the Dada exhibit I'd happened to read about on the train down that'd opened on Sunday, but Chris was undecided. So on the subway, he flipped a coin to get his answer: "I'm going!" It made me think more decisions should be based on a cointoss. The exhibit was neat, but a little too small. Safe to say we all learned something about Dada. Perhaps the most fun were the "phonetic poems" of Raoul Hausman: he had his printer randomly select letters & symbols from a box. These were placed in order drawn for printing. Hausman then recorded himself reading aloud the result. Rush-Rhees has a CD of this, and I badly wish to listen to more of them. Tomorrow, perhaps. I would like to go back to MOMA - lots I didn't get to explore, some I was too tired to appreciate. Can you believe I'd never been? Me neither.
After the museum, Chris went off to do his thing, and Kris & I headed towards Bierkraft. I've heard much of this "Brooklyn" place, in particular the "Park Slope" but had never seen it for myself. And he doesn't venture out there much. We didn't see much of the neighborhood because of time constraints, but Bierkraft was PERFECT. Their selection doesn't really hold a candle to Beers of the World but nearly all the beer was in cold cases, and most importantly, they had what I sought: Innis & Gunn. Upon entering, Kris asked me "So what are you here for exactly?" I answered, and the man unpacking bottles on the floor said "You're in luck: it's on special for 2.97 a bottle." "I travelled 8 hours for this." That is a way to shock an employee of a retail establishment if I've ever had one. He then informed me that they'd ship to me, saving me the travel time. Hot balls, kiddos! Count me in for that. Kris & I then spent a good 45 minutes there, tasting cheeses and sausages for that night's "tapas" dinner, ogling beers, and generally being food-snobs. It was exactly what we needed. We learned something about art & cheese all in one day. How pretentious! Leah's friend EK came over for dinner and we sat around chatting and eating and sampling the beer-finds. A very, very good end to the day.
The trip back on Thursday was about the same as the way down: train not that crowded. I watched Prison-A-Go-Go (good thing there were no little kids nearby) and Coupling. I was worried that Coupling wouldn't be funny this go 'round, but it indeed was. The Girl With Two Breasts may be one of my all-time favorite TV episodes. Once back, Meghan, ithinksobrain, lizzybeth529, and I went to see An Inconvenient Truth. I was surprised at how it was structured -- it's just a big PowerPoint (Well, Keynote) presentation. Gore packaged information really well, and a few things surprised me, but it's not really going to change my behavior that much. I'm already interested in keeping my fossil fuel use low, insulating my home, etc.
An interesting contrasting event was Friday's entertainment Cars at the Drive-In, which inspired me to drive on interstates less. More on that in next paragraph: I hope you're excited for it! Saturday, Meghan and I took her mostly-fuel-efficient car down to Ithaca, taking scenic routes instead of the Thruway. We kind of hoped to meet up with my parents there but I was a bad son and organized it poorly, so that failed. Mostly we walked around the Commons. Oh, and we visited Contemporary Trends (warning: site has music), which is the site of many content Saturday afternoon childhood memories. It's a furniture store. Let it be said I had a strange childhood. On the Commons, I bought hemp seed nuts -- they're THC-free -- for baking purposes (no pun intended) and a sticker that says "Fight terror: Ride a bike". It's on my bike now. I'd tried to purchase a reusable hemp coffee filter, but they didn't have any basket-shaped ones, only cones. Well, I successfully purchased one, but the wrong shape. So I had to exchange it for the nuts & sticker. We picked up dinner at the natural grocery store, kind of by accident, because the deli in the Dewitt Mall is closed on weekends. WTF? We ate dinner on the Cornell Plantations, which was... wait for it... gorges! On the trip back up, we stopped at a mini-golf/ice cream/roadfood stand for ice cream. I grabbed a flier for it, but it's not handy now. Upon our return, we went out to the Toad with dzou and tabsq and their friends Ed, Ari, and Glen. Did anything happen Sunday? *furrow brow* Not that I can recall.
Part of the reason I grabbed the flier is my new obsession: RoadFood.Com. I'd read about it a few months ago but failed to really investigate it until recently. Such fun stuff there, particularly the Where Should I Eat? forum. This is why I want to drive off the beaten path: more interesting food, local pride, etc. I've decided my drive to Avalon this week will be along Rts 15 & 322 to allow for maximum roadfood. First stop: Fry Bros' Turkey Ranch. It's been a while since I've been there. There's a chance I'll be in Corning for Wednesday night, basically just to sleep & break up the drive a bit, but it depends on how much I get done tomorrow. I suppose the weather's a factor too.. I'll be in Avalon with Kris & Steve for basically a week. Wow, time's flying. I've started packing for The Move. The Move is "2.1 miles" according to GMaps. Speaking of which, I nearly forgot to mention my recent obsession with Google Earth. I spend more time looking at it than I do XXX websites. *cough* Actually, that's true. If I could merge GEarth with RoadFood, that'd be awesome. The mapping of the route to Avalon, despite the obsession, was mostly done with a good old-fashioned road atlas. GEarth only helped a little.
Tonight was the first Eastman Summer Sings event. We did Mozart's Great Mass in C Minor, which I thought contained "Ave Verum Corpus" (as in the Choristers' rep piece), because of this Amazon entry. When we neared the end of the libretto, I was quite disappointed. At first I thought maybe AVC's in the "new version" (finished by a Robert Levin) but I don't think that's the case. This original version showed me that the inclusion of AVC was just filler on the previous CD, and the Levin version lacks a tracklist. Internet, you fail me. Even Wikipedia fails. Shame.
Getting up in 6 hours to make an airport run, thumbs down. Garlic cheddar cheese, thumbs up. Goodwill with jisalynn and hubcap_annie, non-jinxing thumbs up. But maybe I should be productive and do work and pack at some point too.
I spent way too much writing this entry. Me, me, me. Monsieur Knile, c'est moi.