the sun came out while i wasn't paying attention
(typed this up last night and then lj was having issues and wouldn't post. so pretend it's last night.)
yesterday was national doughnut day on the us, and i went out during lunch and got two from dunkin' donuts. and they were just what i wanted.
also happy late birthday to amberdreams, artist, fangirl, generally nifty person. my bigbang artist sent me some draft art and i love it, but i would've been tickled pink if you'd picked my summary again this year. :D here's to late cake!
dancing boys: *two-step*
commencement at the u where i work was last weekend - it included the class of 2020 and the class of 2021, since there wasn't in-person graduation either year - which means that thursday (and probably friday) (a week ago) there was a random lot of older men in bright red blazers wandering around. alums, i assumed. thursday was also the hooding ceremonies, when phds get their hoods, and i have to say, it was pretty neat seeing grads walking around in their regalia. my dad worked in teaching hospitals his entire career and when we lived in nashville he was on the faculty at vanderbilt, and he told me once he always loved graduation because you got to see all the professors with their various gowns and hoods. because you wear the colors of whichever school you got your phd/md/etc at, right? and not necessarily the colors of the school where you teach. he was always most impressed with the folks who'd gotten their degrees overseas. i guess foreign regalia is more interesting.
last friday i worked from home, it was pretty chill, and last saturday (while students were graduating) my sister and i drove down to new york for the long weekend. we got poured on when we got closer to the city, like biblical flooding-the-road kind of rain, and then it cleared up and the sun came out and it was beautiful all weekend. that night we went to a fabulous steak place for dinner (we started with a bacon appetizer that was thick cut slices of bacon on peanutbutter, with a kind of green apple and jalapeno jelly salsa, and it was DELICIOUS) (seriously - i wouldn't have though to put bacon and peanutbutter together altho i know bacon-peanutbutter sandwiches are a thing, and the addition of green apples chopped into tiny pieces with jalapeno pepper jelly pushed the whole thing into transcendence) and then saw funny girl with beanie feldstein, who i had no idea could sing. i mean, all i've seen her in was the few episodes of what we do in the shadows where she played nadja's first fledgling vampire. it was a really good show - funny girl, i mean, altho wwdits was good too - i had no idea jane lynch was in it, and i thoroughly enjoyed it. on sunday we went to junior's (of cheesecake fame) for breakfast and i did not have cheesecake altho i was tempted, and then we walked throught a little bit of central park and i commented that it always made me think of law & order because they're always finding dead bodies there (it's a huge park and a great place to hide a body, ok? my sister thought i was nuts), and after that was a walking tour of (now mostly demolished) gilded age sites. i'm a little disappointed that almost none of those massive houses remain, altho let's be honest, what would you do with them? one of the vanderbilt houses took up the entire block. we stopped in front of temple emanu-el, on the former site of caroline schermerhorn astor's house - she was quite the grande dame of new york high society - which the tour guide took great pleasure in telling us was some nice irony since caroline schermerhorn astor was a MASSIVE anti-semite.
it was a very interesting tour, even tho a lot of the houses are gone, with a lot of stories about very rich people behaving very badly. they were VERY petty. like, caroline astor's nephew on the astor side owned the house next to her brownstone downtown, and because he wanted his wife to be known as the mrs astor, but caroline wasn't into that - because she was the mrs astor - he tore down his house and built a hotel, the waldorf. caroline thought it was ugly and crass and called it a glorified tavern. she wanted to tear down her brownstone and build stables on the plot to bring down the value of the hotel. the city said no. so she tore down the brownstown anyway and built another hotel, the astoria, which was like five inches higher than the waldorf. a spite hotel. (their descendants combined the hotels and moved the resulting waldorf-astoria uptown. the empire state building is on the space where the old astoria used to be.)
we saw the outside of the frick museum, which used to be henry clay frick's house and is thus one of the few still standing, and learned he had a long feud and personal competition with andrew carnegie, leading him to buy a library, demolish it, build his house, and fill it with old european art as a way to one-up carnegie. i thought that was pretty ironic considering carnegie founded a metric ton of public libraries in his old age (i think as part of his "please god let me into heaven" philanthropic phase) and his name is therefore scattered all over the country, in way more places than henry frick's. also, he has a university and a famous concert hall named after him and frick doesn't.
(carnegie's house is now the cooper hewitt museum. so that's also still standing. it's farther north than the tour went so we didn't go see it.)
we also learned that jay gould (who i swear i read was the model for jay gatsby altho i don't think gatsby had quite the same kind of fortune, and i don't remember when or where i read it) sent the us into a recession for two years partly because he was trying to one-up cornelius vanderbilt in the railroad game. (gould was a crook. vanderbilt might have been one too, but it wasn't his financial fuckery that brought on a recession.)
there was another super wealthy woman whose name i don't remember because it wasn't familiar, who squandered her family's fortune on a huge mansion - which is now the ralph lauren men's flagship store - but never got to live in it, and apparently she'd stand on the sidewalk across the street and just stare at the house she built and lost, until i guess someone came to get her and she went back to her sister's house where she lived. she was, according to the guide, not mentally well. i just felt bad for her.
we saw the first (or one of the earliest) upper east side apartment buildings meant for people of means, namely social climbers who wanted to look - and be - one of the superrich. it's a historically registered building now which means there are a bunch of things you can't do to it, like, say, add central air. so you walk by it and there are all these a/c units sticking out of the windows. it was going to be demolished at one point in its life but jackie kennedy onassis, of all people, managed to save it.
the tour started at the union club, which was founded in 1836 for the wealthy and connected, and is still hyper exclusive - you have to be invited to join and they don't take women. they briefly let women in the building during ww1, because all the boys who worked there went overseas to fight and they needed employees. but once the war was over and the boys came back, the girls got the boot. i think wives are allowed in with their husbands, but that's it. it's across the street from hunter college which was founded to make higher education accessible to the lower and middle classes, and the guide was pleased to tell us this with a "so there, wealthy snobs" kind of attitude. which i can get behind.
also the 7th regiment armory, which was used to intimidate the hoi polloi (since immigrants and working class folks were moving uptown) and put down strikes and riots. it's a VERY SOLID fortressy building. the regiment was folded into i think the national guard around ww1, and the building is now a very large arts center.
after that we went back to the hotel so my sister could take a nap and i could walk through a tiny bit of central park, and then we met some cousins' kids for dinner. (a, daughter of cousin j, and m, daughter of cousin s.) we had thai. it was delicious. also it's always nice to see the cousins' kids. m talks a lot but she's a good kid.
monday we had yummy brunch (are you seeing a food trend? :D ) and went to the museum of the city of new york on the way home, because we wanted to see the electric light dress from alva vanderbilt's 1883 ball. and it was NOT ON DISPLAY. MEDIOCRE. we walked through the history galleries and a special exhibit of 80s music (hip-hop, new wave, no wave - new york music) which was very, very nostalgic. and then we drove home. we stopped in connecticut for bialys because you can't get them in greater boston and i had a need.
this week was fairly chill at work, except for tuesday when one of my pi's got a chair delivered and no one told me (he was on vacation so i was supposed to take delivery of it, but someone random let the delivery guy into the office) and wednesday which was professional development day for the admins in my department. it was more fun than i was expecting! we had a workshop on managing up, which i guess is learning how to manage your manager, and after lunch we had a mindfulness exercise that almost put me to sleep - it was very relaxing - and we schmoozed and ranted about our pi's a little and we were not on campus and it was overall a pleasant experience. we even got swag bags and really nice water bottles. the water bottles have stickers on them with "professional development day 2022", but whatever.
today i'm getting my hair cut. :D
my bigbang artist has sent me some draft art and it's so perfect, folks. i may or may not have responded in all caps.
dolphins have names among themselves. kind of. also, apparently, regional dialects. also kind of.
all things butter - a tiktok series of compound butters and tasty looking ways to use them. (that's the introductory episode. go to the guy's page for the rest of his buttery goodness.)
lost cities of the amazon discovered from the air - scientists are using lidar (laser imaging) to basically see through the tree canopy so they can look at otherwise inaccessible archaeological sites and learn more about the people who used to live in them. man, i love science.
if you need a quick cry, the girl scouts posthumously honored one of the little girls killed in uvalde with the bronze cross, for saving or attempting to save life at the risk of her own. she called 911 from the classroom, while kids were being shot.
yesterday was national doughnut day on the us, and i went out during lunch and got two from dunkin' donuts. and they were just what i wanted.
also happy late birthday to amberdreams, artist, fangirl, generally nifty person. my bigbang artist sent me some draft art and i love it, but i would've been tickled pink if you'd picked my summary again this year. :D here's to late cake!
dancing boys: *two-step*
commencement at the u where i work was last weekend - it included the class of 2020 and the class of 2021, since there wasn't in-person graduation either year - which means that thursday (and probably friday) (a week ago) there was a random lot of older men in bright red blazers wandering around. alums, i assumed. thursday was also the hooding ceremonies, when phds get their hoods, and i have to say, it was pretty neat seeing grads walking around in their regalia. my dad worked in teaching hospitals his entire career and when we lived in nashville he was on the faculty at vanderbilt, and he told me once he always loved graduation because you got to see all the professors with their various gowns and hoods. because you wear the colors of whichever school you got your phd/md/etc at, right? and not necessarily the colors of the school where you teach. he was always most impressed with the folks who'd gotten their degrees overseas. i guess foreign regalia is more interesting.
last friday i worked from home, it was pretty chill, and last saturday (while students were graduating) my sister and i drove down to new york for the long weekend. we got poured on when we got closer to the city, like biblical flooding-the-road kind of rain, and then it cleared up and the sun came out and it was beautiful all weekend. that night we went to a fabulous steak place for dinner (we started with a bacon appetizer that was thick cut slices of bacon on peanutbutter, with a kind of green apple and jalapeno jelly salsa, and it was DELICIOUS) (seriously - i wouldn't have though to put bacon and peanutbutter together altho i know bacon-peanutbutter sandwiches are a thing, and the addition of green apples chopped into tiny pieces with jalapeno pepper jelly pushed the whole thing into transcendence) and then saw funny girl with beanie feldstein, who i had no idea could sing. i mean, all i've seen her in was the few episodes of what we do in the shadows where she played nadja's first fledgling vampire. it was a really good show - funny girl, i mean, altho wwdits was good too - i had no idea jane lynch was in it, and i thoroughly enjoyed it. on sunday we went to junior's (of cheesecake fame) for breakfast and i did not have cheesecake altho i was tempted, and then we walked throught a little bit of central park and i commented that it always made me think of law & order because they're always finding dead bodies there (it's a huge park and a great place to hide a body, ok? my sister thought i was nuts), and after that was a walking tour of (now mostly demolished) gilded age sites. i'm a little disappointed that almost none of those massive houses remain, altho let's be honest, what would you do with them? one of the vanderbilt houses took up the entire block. we stopped in front of temple emanu-el, on the former site of caroline schermerhorn astor's house - she was quite the grande dame of new york high society - which the tour guide took great pleasure in telling us was some nice irony since caroline schermerhorn astor was a MASSIVE anti-semite.
it was a very interesting tour, even tho a lot of the houses are gone, with a lot of stories about very rich people behaving very badly. they were VERY petty. like, caroline astor's nephew on the astor side owned the house next to her brownstone downtown, and because he wanted his wife to be known as the mrs astor, but caroline wasn't into that - because she was the mrs astor - he tore down his house and built a hotel, the waldorf. caroline thought it was ugly and crass and called it a glorified tavern. she wanted to tear down her brownstone and build stables on the plot to bring down the value of the hotel. the city said no. so she tore down the brownstown anyway and built another hotel, the astoria, which was like five inches higher than the waldorf. a spite hotel. (their descendants combined the hotels and moved the resulting waldorf-astoria uptown. the empire state building is on the space where the old astoria used to be.)
we saw the outside of the frick museum, which used to be henry clay frick's house and is thus one of the few still standing, and learned he had a long feud and personal competition with andrew carnegie, leading him to buy a library, demolish it, build his house, and fill it with old european art as a way to one-up carnegie. i thought that was pretty ironic considering carnegie founded a metric ton of public libraries in his old age (i think as part of his "please god let me into heaven" philanthropic phase) and his name is therefore scattered all over the country, in way more places than henry frick's. also, he has a university and a famous concert hall named after him and frick doesn't.
(carnegie's house is now the cooper hewitt museum. so that's also still standing. it's farther north than the tour went so we didn't go see it.)
we also learned that jay gould (who i swear i read was the model for jay gatsby altho i don't think gatsby had quite the same kind of fortune, and i don't remember when or where i read it) sent the us into a recession for two years partly because he was trying to one-up cornelius vanderbilt in the railroad game. (gould was a crook. vanderbilt might have been one too, but it wasn't his financial fuckery that brought on a recession.)
there was another super wealthy woman whose name i don't remember because it wasn't familiar, who squandered her family's fortune on a huge mansion - which is now the ralph lauren men's flagship store - but never got to live in it, and apparently she'd stand on the sidewalk across the street and just stare at the house she built and lost, until i guess someone came to get her and she went back to her sister's house where she lived. she was, according to the guide, not mentally well. i just felt bad for her.
we saw the first (or one of the earliest) upper east side apartment buildings meant for people of means, namely social climbers who wanted to look - and be - one of the superrich. it's a historically registered building now which means there are a bunch of things you can't do to it, like, say, add central air. so you walk by it and there are all these a/c units sticking out of the windows. it was going to be demolished at one point in its life but jackie kennedy onassis, of all people, managed to save it.
the tour started at the union club, which was founded in 1836 for the wealthy and connected, and is still hyper exclusive - you have to be invited to join and they don't take women. they briefly let women in the building during ww1, because all the boys who worked there went overseas to fight and they needed employees. but once the war was over and the boys came back, the girls got the boot. i think wives are allowed in with their husbands, but that's it. it's across the street from hunter college which was founded to make higher education accessible to the lower and middle classes, and the guide was pleased to tell us this with a "so there, wealthy snobs" kind of attitude. which i can get behind.
also the 7th regiment armory, which was used to intimidate the hoi polloi (since immigrants and working class folks were moving uptown) and put down strikes and riots. it's a VERY SOLID fortressy building. the regiment was folded into i think the national guard around ww1, and the building is now a very large arts center.
after that we went back to the hotel so my sister could take a nap and i could walk through a tiny bit of central park, and then we met some cousins' kids for dinner. (a, daughter of cousin j, and m, daughter of cousin s.) we had thai. it was delicious. also it's always nice to see the cousins' kids. m talks a lot but she's a good kid.
monday we had yummy brunch (are you seeing a food trend? :D ) and went to the museum of the city of new york on the way home, because we wanted to see the electric light dress from alva vanderbilt's 1883 ball. and it was NOT ON DISPLAY. MEDIOCRE. we walked through the history galleries and a special exhibit of 80s music (hip-hop, new wave, no wave - new york music) which was very, very nostalgic. and then we drove home. we stopped in connecticut for bialys because you can't get them in greater boston and i had a need.
this week was fairly chill at work, except for tuesday when one of my pi's got a chair delivered and no one told me (he was on vacation so i was supposed to take delivery of it, but someone random let the delivery guy into the office) and wednesday which was professional development day for the admins in my department. it was more fun than i was expecting! we had a workshop on managing up, which i guess is learning how to manage your manager, and after lunch we had a mindfulness exercise that almost put me to sleep - it was very relaxing - and we schmoozed and ranted about our pi's a little and we were not on campus and it was overall a pleasant experience. we even got swag bags and really nice water bottles. the water bottles have stickers on them with "professional development day 2022", but whatever.
today i'm getting my hair cut. :D
my bigbang artist has sent me some draft art and it's so perfect, folks. i may or may not have responded in all caps.
dolphins have names among themselves. kind of. also, apparently, regional dialects. also kind of.
all things butter - a tiktok series of compound butters and tasty looking ways to use them. (that's the introductory episode. go to the guy's page for the rest of his buttery goodness.)
lost cities of the amazon discovered from the air - scientists are using lidar (laser imaging) to basically see through the tree canopy so they can look at otherwise inaccessible archaeological sites and learn more about the people who used to live in them. man, i love science.
if you need a quick cry, the girl scouts posthumously honored one of the little girls killed in uvalde with the bronze cross, for saving or attempting to save life at the risk of her own. she called 911 from the classroom, while kids were being shot.