New York Days 2&3

Since it took me five weeks to finish the entry on our day in Brooklyn, I'm going to shorthand the summary of the rest of our Christmas trip.  Please forgive the brevity.

Per usual, we commenced our weekend in New York with a late-night snack.  Thanks to some quick Yelp searching, we found this place less than a block from our hotel:

Indian food wrapped in flatbread served in delicious snack-sized portions.  Yum!

Dad and Jenn, wrapped in knitwear and with awesome boots, ordering some chai tea.

Guess where we ate breakfast?  I bet Jason knows!

There was a Christmas market (not German-style, sadly) near our hotel.  We shopped well.

Jenn found a booth from Max Brenner.

We found a fabulous little Italian restaurant near the Bite store where Jenn and I spent part of the day on Sunday.  We ordered many things and shared them all.  May the pictures convey how delicious everything was:

The exterior of the restaurant:





And Dad found an Italian bakery with cookies to keep us company on our walk back to Time Square:




Sunday night Andy and Jenn went to see "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" while Mom, Dad, and I went to "You Can't Take It With You".  It's a charming romantic comedy from 1938 with the tried-and-true plot about a young woman introducing her wacky family to the man she hopes to marry.  The cast was fun (James Earl Jones, Mark Linn Baker, Annaleigh Ashford, and others) and the production strong, but it wasn't outstanding.




Monday we visited a dealer of antiquities that Mom has ordered Egyptian artifacts from in the past, poked through the Garment District, noted the Jewish competition for "Elf on the Shelf":




discovered a transplanted bit of Tokyo:




and sought out some delicious pork buns in Chinatown:






all before heading to MOMA.

MOMA was packed!  I've never seen it so busy:





The crowds of people coupled with the stress of the week actually caused me a bit of an anxiety attack.  That was a fun first.  I wound up locking myself in a bathroom for quite a bit of the time we all allotted ourselves to explore the museum.  Not my best experience there.  I did explore some of the temporary exhibits and tracked down some familiar favorites to take pictures with people in front of them for scale for my Humanities class:




We walked back towards Times Square.  New York really is fun during the holidays, and one of my favorite touches was these Oldenburg-esque sculptures:




We all went to see "It's Only a Play," which we picked largely because of the cast (Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, F. Murray Abraham, Stockard Channing, Megan Mullaly, and Rupert Grint).  It's a hilarious play about theater-types waiting for the first reviews to come from the opening of their new play.  Filled with celebrity jokes, pop culture references, and the wink-wink kind of humor that makes theater-goers especially smug with satisfaction; it was really very fun to see.




Mom and Dad branched off afterwards to see the Rockerfeller tree while Andy, Jenn, and I picked up some late-night snacks at Schnipper's Kitchen.  We met back at the hotel for our usual late-night post-show debriefing and closed out the end of a wonderful trip in New York.

Brooklyn

Hey, look what I'm finally publishing!  It only took me five weeks.  Sorry about that.  :)

My parents gave me a guidebook for Christmas in honor of our upcoming trip:

It turned out that the publishers took their "secret" and "unusual" claims quite seriously:

They bound the book on the wrong side!

It will live proudly on my bookshelf next to the second (correctly bound) copy my parents gave me.

The book was interesting the flip through, but there is something nice about knowing a place well enough that we can go there without outside guidance.

Since I talked Andy and Jenn into going to "Then She Fell" with me on this trip (it did not take much convincing), we decided to spend a day in Brooklyn.  I really enjoyed the quick trip Jason and I took there a year ago and was excited to revisit it with new people.

After a detour to secure tickets to various shows for the next few days, we headed to the Brooklyn Flea Market.

The market runs every weekend, and is located inside a large warehouse for the winter months.  The main part of the space is taken up with vintage stalls and the usual mix of things you'd expect at a hipster-filled event - handmade candles, mason jars, vinyl records, old keys, used parachute log books, things made from antlers, etc.

The main attraction for us was the food vendors.  We each bought whatever sounded delicious, then brought the items to the group to share and sample.  Lobster roll, grilled cheese sandwich made with three types of cheeses and apple slices, Thai-style green papaya salad, mac and cheese with bacon and wild mushrooms, blueberry soda, hibiscus doughnuts, miso rice balls, and more!




We then moved on to the second food hall (!) to sample the infamous Ramen burger:





I was not a fan.


Feeling quite full, we walked from the market to the Brooklyn Art Museum.




I was excited to revisit Emily Dickinson's vagina Judy Chicago's installation piece and check out some other parts of the museum that Jason and I didn't have a chance to see before.  Mom and Dad were excited to see their Egypt collection, which was strikingly displayed in what must have been a newer section of the museum:





I liked the ceiling mural and the bold choices for wall colors.  I also really enjoyed the quotes on the walls from non-Egyptologists, all expressing the same fervor for Egypt that infected my own parents after they went (seriously, Jason, we need to go).






This area was blocked off when I was here before.  You can see a tiny Andy, Jenn, and Mom at the far end:





Feeling artistically satiated, we decided to find an early dinner before dividing up for our shows.  We took the metro to the Flatbush area, a good spot for restaurants.  As we walked down the street, I noticed a familiar place.  "That's where Jason and I had brunch," I pointed out.

"Was it good?" the family asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Done," the family said.  We headed in for a delicious dinner.

After dinner, Mom and Dad headed back into the city to see a show.  Andy and Jenn and I had a couple extra minutes, so we decided to try the doughnut shop that was calling our names from across the street.




That little guy was the creme brulee doughnut.  It was fantastic.

From there we headed to "Then She Fell."  I very much enjoyed it the second time.  About 60-70% of what I saw was a repeat of my previous experience, but the new scenes were quite fun and the repeat scenes held different meaning with the larger context I had this time.  Like when Jason and I went, Andy and Jenn and I spent the entire journey home and part of the night discussing our different experiences.

Checking In

Hey, Strangers,

The beginning of the calendar year has held it's usual insanity.  New classes, new challenging students (in addition to many familiar faces) combined with a strong sense that as much as everything changes, everything also stays the same.

The speech season fully wrapped up last week.  State went really smoothly.  To my delight, the administrators of the event contacted me a few weeks prior to the meet to say that they wanted me to head up the Judge's Table.  The judge's table is at the center of the meet in many ways - it's where teams and visitors check in, where all ballots pass through and are checked for completion and comments, and it's the go-to place in times of crisis.  It's a busy place that involves managing dozens of people and tasks at once.  It's also my favorite job to do.  So when they asked me if I'd manage that position this year, "Because when you do it, things don't go wrong," (no pressure or anything), I was happy to do so.  I was even more glad that because I was there I caught a huge error in the tallying that would have kept the team that ultimately won one of the events out the finals round altogether.

It's gratifying, is what I'm saying.

My team did well.  We had two State Champions this year, and 17/19 kids who went won something.  Many of the kiddos who made finals were freshman too, which gives me hope in the face of saying goodbye to my seniors last year and this year both.

My speech seniors did a good job this year at making the requisite decisions for the banquet, so we held the banquet the Friday after State.  The parent turnout was decent, and the team and I were able to wrap up speech and turn our focus to the musical.

Have I mentioned we're doing "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat"?  We are.  It's actually going really well too.  After focusing on the music for the last month with the occasional dance day courtesy of Rachel while the students and I juggled speech and the show, this week we turned our attention full-time (after school that is) to the musical and started blocking the show.

We blocked all of Act 1 this week and, happily, not only had time to reorganize our backstage storage and put together our set for Act 1, but we also ran the entire dang thing during today's rehearsal.  As head-achey as doing a show with wall-to-wall music is, it does keep things moving at a quick pace when we run it.

Moreover, and this is a testament again to the quality of this year's freshman as well as the type of kids we've retained over the years, this cast is the first one I've worked with who show up to every dang rehearsal.  14 years I've been teaching/directing, and I've always had flakey kids in the cast who force us to play "Who's not here today?"  Not this year.  Everyone shows up every day they should, and when someone has to miss, they tell me in advance.  It's crazy.  It's also crazy that such a thing would be crazy, but there it is.

The musical's a little more than a month away.  I moved up to Mountain Town this week, thus commencing the time when it feels like I do nothing but work.  Happily, though, with speech done I have my Saturdays back to feel a bit more human.  I spent last Saturday learning bookbinding (more to come on that), tomorrow I get to have brunch with friends, get my haircut (finally!), and shop for shackles and a stuffed goat and some other odds and ends, and next Saturday I'm running away to Portland for a quick weekend trip with Jason.

All in all, life is busy but good - my typical February.

Thank Goodness for my Pioneer Spirit

Early last month I came to the Mountain Town condo after a play performance at my school. I went through the usual routine – turn on the power, turn up the heat, open up the closet on the balcony, and turn on the water.  Water immediately began gushing from the pipes on the wall, so I shut off the water, turned on the heat, turn off the power, and drove back down the mountain for the night.

I asked around school and found a plumber, but between my schedule and his the first time that we could both coordinate an appointment at the condo was yesterday.  I packed up my bags planning to spend the night at the condo once the water was repaired. Alas, after the plumber fixed three separate broken pipes, he discovered that the water meter itself had also cracked during the ice storms of December.   We called the local water company who promised me a 4:30 appointment the next day. With that I thanked the plumber, repacked my car, and drove back down the mountain to a confused Natasha.

This morning I loaded up my car once again, and after school/speech practice headed back to the condo to meet the water guy.

I waited.  45 minutes after the appointment time, I called him to see what was up. Once I reminded him of our appointment, he told me that he was standing "in a muddy hole at the base of the hill." Apparently a major pipe was broken and at the moment the entire complex had no water.

He promised he would call me back in 30 minutes and let me know if it would be possible to get to my place today.

I waited. After an hour, I called him again. He said he still wasn't certain but when I pointed out that I made arrangements specifically to spend the night here for this job, he promised to call me in 10 minutes and let me know what was going on.

He didn't. I've been calling every 20 minutes to try to get him back on the line, to no avail. By 7:30 it was dark, snowing, and upon realizing that I was going to be there for the night without working pipes,  I had begun to gather snow in the biggest pots I could find to melt on the stove. 

Fortunately, I stored a crate of bottled water here after the last time our pipes froze.  Thanks my travels I have extensive experience with brushing my teeth with bottled water, and thanks to Google I figured out how much water I need to manually flush the toilet.

Really, between the fresh snow to melt; the working electricity, heat, and Internet; and the prospect of sleeping in an extra hour tomorrow morning since I'm already up here, I have everything I need for a pleasant evening.

Everything except a plumber who calls me back, that is.  I'm trying to stay empathetic - of course the lack of water to the entire complex is a bigger issue than my own broken meter.  I just wish he had the decency to keep me informed.

I don't know whether to shake my fist at the sky and curse men, monopolies, or the uncivilized habits of Mountain folk. 

Lipstick and Yogurt

When Jenn said she had an appointment to do something for about 30 minutes in SoHo, I wondered what it could be.

When she told me it was to visit the only storefront for Bite, I asked what it was for.

When she described how their "Lip Lab Artists" create custom-made lipstick for you, I asked if I could join the fun.

When she said she was hoping I would, I was thrilled.

They mix pigments from the various pots on a transparency over white paper using a small palette knife.

The scent station (clockwise from top left) - mint, mango, violet, cherry, citrus mango, and mixed berries

I wound up with two shades - a more natural day one (scented with citrus mango and mint)
and a darker night one (violet-scented)

And when we discovered a Chobani cafe a block away and agreed that we needed try both a sweet and a savory dish* right away before meeting up with the others to shop...



... we had a perfectly lovely afternoon in SoHo.



*The sweet was pistachios, dark chocolate flakes, sliced orange, fresh mint, clover honey on plain yogurt.  The savory was mango, avocado, jalapeños, extra virgin olive oil, sea salt,
fresh cilantro, lime juice, on plain yogurt served with blue corn tortilla chips.  They were both outstanding and are not pictured here because we were distracted by the deliciousness.

Marking Time

New Year's has never been much of a holiday to me, especially since my true "new year" occurs each August; however, January does hold two anniversaries of sorts.  I tallied it up this week and discovered, to my surprise, that it's been ten years (!) since I started this blog and fourteen years (!!) since I started my teaching career.

Just wanted to point that out.

Making Stuff

As usual, the weeks leading up to Christmas were craft-packed.  

I boiled two dozen cans of sweetened condensed milk to make dulce de leche for my colleagues as a twist on the "apple for teacher" cliche:

I made two trips to Snappy Quilts, a fun fabric store, to get supplies for some more gifts.  

In an effort to get more into the Christmas spirit, I signed up for the Reddit Secret Santa gift exchange.  I volunteered for an international match, and was paired up with a girl (woman?) in the Netherlands who, according to her profile, loves elephants, the colors purple and yellow, and had links to several fabric bags on her wish lists.  So I made her this:

And shipped it off to the Netherlands about a week before Christmas:

I received word that my Secret Santa (who is not the girl in the Netherlands - they don't do direct pairings) shipped my gift right before Christmas.  No sign of it yet, but if it's coming from somewhere abroad, I assume it may take a while.

The bag-making went well enough that I decided to whip some up for Rachel, Mom, and myself.  I didn't photograph theirs, but here's a shot of mine:

I liked the fabric on the bottom so much that I bought some extra to make myself a skirt:

I made up my own pattern for it, this time going for more of a pencil skirt shape.  I worked from a pattern, though, to make myself a dress over the break with some fabric from Fancy Tiger:

The fit didn't turn out as well as I'd like.  In that photo I'm actually holding back a couple of inches at the waist.  When I don't, it looks like this:

I've put it away for now since the fabric is more summer-weight, but I may try layering it with leggings and a sweater this season, or pulling it out again in a few months to tackle taking it in.

I did scale back a bit and buy Jack's gift this year instead of making things for both boys.  Sam, as the newer nephew, got a handmade item: a family pop-up book:

He seems to like it, and I certainly enjoyed figuring out the puzzle of how to make a pop-up book from scratch.  I taught myself a bit of Japanese bookbinding as a part of it, which made me want to play around more with bookmaking techniques.

I'm not sure the book is the most durable gift for a one-year-old, but hopefully it holds up long enough for him to "read" it a few times through.

Happily, I was also the recipient of a few handmade gifts.  Jenn put her new makeup-making skills to use and gave me a lipgloss and eyeshadow set that has been a lot of fun to play with, and Rachel made me a terrific blue scarf:

It was a fun season of crafting, and I really enjoyed being able to put those skills to use for non-play production purposes.

Random bonus unabomber-ish photo of me and Mom at a rest stop somewhere on I-70 mid-snowstorm on Christmas Day:

Fun with Friends

Happily, this holiday season allowed for a bit of time to see friends.  Our annual December bookclub met at Chris' house - she's a remarkable hostess.  In addition to serving us all dinner, she also commissioned cakes of some of our reads from the past year:

We always do an ornament exchange, and I made the mistake of handmaking an ornament the first year I joined the club.  It naturally became a thing, so this year I learned how to make Swedish advent stars and made one out of the opening pages of "A Christmas Carol".  (As you will see with the upcoming crafting post, I have been absolutely terrible about photographing my products this season.)

Lisa invited me to join her ballet group for a viewing of The Nutcracker when one of their regulars couldn't attend.  We had dinner first at The Corner Office (decent food, slow service).  The ballet was good, and they had changed up quite a few parts since the last time I saw it there.

Speaking of Nutcracker, Rachel found a terrific new version by the Mariinsky on youtube in her annual holiday ballet bingeing.  It's worth a look, if only to enjoy the bobble-snow costumes and the synchronization of the Spanish boys at 51 minutes in.

Tammy and I also (miraculously) found a jointly free evening, so we headed downtown to try The D Bar.  You can tell it was a good meal when my travel instincts kick in and I start photographing the food:

Fried chicken and waffles with sweet potato fries and Tammy's burger in the background.
Not pictured: the bacon-wrapped dates that made for a delicious appetizer!

Dessert: Churros with ice cream and Tammy's apples and waffles in the background

We drove around a bit checking out some outrageous Christmas light displays, including this music-synced one:

Tammy lent me her copy of The Holiday for the weekend, and Rachel and I enjoyed it at the Masons one night after the kids were in bed.  It's pretty mindless.

Rachel, Ben, and I joined a couple from my ward, Kristen and Kevin, to see the final installment of The Hobbit at the Alamo.  In a Pavlovian twist, when the Shire theme played over the end credits, it suddenly felt like Christmas to me for the first time this season.

Rachel and I also went to see Into the Woods at the Alamo on New Year's Eve.  I don't think it will convert anyone who's not already a fan, but I liked quite a lot of it.  The staging of "Agony" was so over-the-top and outstanding that it almost makes up for the stupidity of the wolf's costume design.

Portrait of a Drama Teacher by a Freshman Boy

 (Kid's still getting a 21% on his final.  Cold hearted teacher that I am, last minute suck-up attempts have no effect on me!)

Hell Week* Indeed

My "normal" job
+ musical rehearsals
+ speech practices
+ the Advanced Drama play performances (x3)
+ one of my lead actors being out sick for three days
+ a 4-day bout of some nasty virus (the flu?) for me
+ an irate and irrational woman who yelled at me for five minutes in front of students and other parents three minutes before curtain Friday
+ a 12-hour speech meet
+ a 4-hour drive to/from the meet
+ a burst pipe at the Bailey condo
+ an RS lesson I had to teach today on a subject I really don't like
= A week I'm glad is over.

I am thrilled, however, that for once there was not even the whisper of snow during our performances and speech trip.  That was really very nice.


(*Definition)

Musical Theater FTW

Sunday School today.  The topic: "The Gathering of the House of Israel".

Teacher:  Okay, let's list the sons of Israel.  Can anyone name any of them?  Without pausing for an answer, he turns his back to us and begins writing numbered blanks on the board.  I know we might not know all of them-

Me: Reuben.

Teacher:  What?

Me:  Reuben.

Teacher:  What?

Me:  Reuben.  He's the oldest son of Israel.  Reuben.

Teacher:  Oh.  Okay, good.  Any othe-

Me:  Continuing Simeon, Levi, Naphta-

Teacher: Cuts me off  Levi?

Me:  Yes.

Teacher:  No, Levi's not one of them.

Me:  Yes, he is.

Teacher:  No, he's not.

Me:  I promise you he is.

Teacher: Pauses. Hard look at me.

Me: Looks back at him, unwavering.

Teacher:  Acquiescing.  Okay, Levi.  Any others?

Other student:  Benjamin.

Another student:  Judah.

A pause.  I wait in case someone else wants to go, then:

Me: Naphtali, Isaacar, Asher, Dan, Zebulun-

Other student:  Are you looking these up?

Me:  No.  I hold up my iPad screen as proof.  We're doing "Joseph" for our musical.

The other students chuckle knowingly.  The teacher looks confused.  I'm pretty sure he has no idea what I meant by that.

Teacher:  Okay.  He writes those names on the board.  Who is missing?

Me: Gad and Joseph.

Lisa: Under her breath.  Go, go, go Joe!

Stupid Speech Meets