It always feels weird working on September 11. I know stuff is going on, and the President probably had a moment of silence or something. But I dunno, shouldn't we have the day off or something? I guess we didn't get Pearl Harbor Day off, but I sometimes feel like there is a palpable push against making today into something 'special,' as though acknowledging what happened too much makes it look like we're actually still bothered by it. It's like Canada would lean down and say "Come on, you're still whining about that? Get over it."

Labels: Bad Stuff, Holidays

So for some reason our company did not give us the day off. I guess it's because 4th of July falls on Saturday this year, and Saturday is still not officially a 'day off' like Sunday is. This seems pretty stupid to me, it's like everyone silently agrees not to call Saturday a holiday even though most 9-to-5ers would blanch at the idea of working on a Saturday. So my company seizes on this opportunity to wuss out on a Friday off by giving us a 'floating holiday.' This means we're given the right to take a day off at some point this year ... just probably not today. I found out about this too late (apparently) to get Friday off, so now I'm trying to weasel out of here early. Then it's off to the Brooklyn Historical Society to determine what we can about the history of our house. I don't know what information might be available, but we're gonna check it out in any case. Worse case, we don't find anything useful but we still get to go to Sahadi's after for big tubs of the best hummus in town!

I think we're seeing the Fresh Kills at Union Pool on the 4th, aside from that I never get that excited about this as a holiday. I hate fireworks for some reason, so I rarely look forward to it. Meanwhile, the kids in the neighborhood LOVE fireworks, and express this by amassing explosive devices in the weeks leading up to the 4th, from those annoying little things you throw that pop, to elaborate sky blossoms that they shoot off in the street. Miraculously nobody has set their house on fire yet, though there was a fire truck out on our street for a while last night. I kind of hope it rains on Saturday. I'm such a wet blanket.

Labels: History, Holidays

This morning our neighbor cautioned us that tonight the Bloods gang will be conducting initiation rites, and are singling out women for attack. Her concern was nice, but immediately I started thinking, this sounds familiar ...

A quick Google later, and we find that this rumor has been around since at least 1993, and before that it was attributed to the Hell's Angels. The Web is alive with chatter, mostly school kids fanning the flames of paranoia, as post after post confirms the validity of the warning. Their claims are 'backed up' by mentions of girls already killed in Newark (with no further citation needed apparently). One girl mentioned that she has friends in the NYPD and they've confirmed the validity of female targeting by Bloods' pledges, although her claim seems a bit suspect when she mentions that each person must kill 31 women each. Hmmm.

This sucks, if only because it makes people worry needlessly. Worse, there is the outside possibility that some dickhead kid will see the rumor and take it upon himself to make his bones. But I guess there's no point in blaming the urban legend. We're all spooked by everything these days, and ready to believe the absolute worst. Think about it, I know gangs are scum, but what would it prove to anyone to specifically attack women? I know standards have dropped a lot over the years, but the whole thing smacks of fabrication designed to elicit the greatest hysterical reaction.

Meanwhile, parents will be searching their kids' candy for nonexistent razor blades, and cat adopters will be refraining from adopting out any black cats. Frankly people, if you were gonna adopt out "Midnight" to the kind of person who's going to crucify him, you probably shouldn't be adopting out anything to anybody; you're a lousy judge of character.

A friend of mine got mugged last night, but his attackers made no mention of gangs or initiations. They took his iPod and his phone, then returned his phone "because it was so shitty." Now that's something to worry about.

Labels: Bad Stuff, Holidays

The J train has turned out to be one of the better lines in the city, but don't tell anybody. I'd rather that stay our little secret. Let the people go on fulling up petition after petition to improve the G train in the hopes that the MTA will ever give a hoot. The fewer people riding the J train, the better. Trains run so on-time they often arrive a minute early, and when was the last time anybody talked about a train running on its intended schedule? The J cleaves close to its official schedules, at least around rush hour when I take it most often. Trains can be crowded in the mornings but it's rarely as packed as the poor 4/5 trains. Part of the reason we moved to Bushwick is from learning what a good train the J is. But recently the J train has besmirched its reputation.

Take the above screen as an example. This has been happening a lot lately: track work means the trains skip stations in one or both directions. It's just a few stations but it's especially cruel this weekend as we will be having people over. It's hard to enough to lure people unfamiliar with our neighborhood to get on the J train in the first place. We live a block and a half from the station and people get lost; how will we pitch this service advisory, which basically means people will have to go down to Broadway Junction and get on a Manhattan-bound J for two stops to get to our house?

It would almost be better if there were NO trains running, as they'd have to run shuttle buses then, which would more or less stop at every station (though they do this a block away on Bushwick Ave for some reason). I'm hoping that they end up dropping the whole thing and run things normally, they've totally done this before. But you won't know until you get to the Myrtle Ave station.

Perhaps this is the MTA's way of stemming the flood of gentrification of the area: just when the post-collegiate crowd was really taking an interest to the neighborhood, they start messing with the trains so that if people don't get off the trains before Myrtle, they end up in East New York! God forbid.

I guess I could also say there was some kind of antisemitic thing going on since it's Passover this weekend, but then I scheduled a party on this same night, so I (as a fallen Red Sea Pedestrian) don't have much room to complain. And yet, I suspect I'll continue to find a way.

Labels: Bushwick, Gentrification, Holidays, Mass Transit

I didn't notice it so much during the past week, but when the last of our visitors had successfully decamped, I realized how exhausted I was/am. The upside is that the whole Christmas visit thing went fairly effortlessly; the downside is that it left little time to really relax.

We picked up nephew Devon on Friday. Man, JFK really needs to get their story straight about picking up unaccompanied minors. We ended up running all over Terminal 8 trying to get him, being variously told to wait by baggage claim, the security check-in, or that we were supposed to have visitors' passes to meet him at the gate. No two people had the same answer. Even with everybody conferring on cell phones it took a long time to snare him.

Jeannie's mom came up the next day, and her sister (who lives here and we see all the time anyway). We did a lot of the touristy stuff; Little Italy, Chinatown, Panna II, Pearl River, (veggie) sushi, South St Seaport, The Bodies Exhibit, the J&R computer store, Thai food, World Trade Center, the Natural History Museum, an abortive trip to Rockefeller Center. The latter was like being in a Night of the Living Dead movie, except instead of rending human flesh the zombies assault you with their manfactured Christmas cheer.

Other notable moments: we thought we should see a movie to pause from the frantic running around. None of us had ever seen an IMAX movie so we got tickets to see I Am Legend on 68th St. We totally blew it, getting caught in the unforseen rains on Wednesday and not making it to the theater until it was too late to find a seat. In short, everything the movie was supposed to alleviate stress-wise ended up only compounding our aggravation. The one good thing to come out of the day was stopping at Economy Candy which never seems to be open when I'm there normally. We saw the movie the next day; it was okay, but that big huge screen scared the hell out of me!

Christmas Day was festive, though I learned the hard way that the grocery store actually does close that day. I made another vegan pot pie, even better than last time (I swear I just want to make this recipe and nothing else all year). Devon, however, was in dire straits as we didn't pick up much of the meaty variety (hey I thought the store was gonna be open!) We did have some hot dogs and frozen pizza at least, which everyone knows they had at The Last Supper.

Later in the week we did end up getting a game console, a Playstation 3 specifically. The games seem interesting, if very complex. For my money though, I am more excited that the console acts not only as a gaming device, but also as multi-function DVD player. It's got that Blu Ray technology, so now suddenly I hope to god that format wins out over HD-DVD. But it also plays video files in the Divx/Xvid formats, the primary format I get movies from on Usenet. Which reminds me, No Country for Old Men kicks ass, but the Joy Division movie, not so much (and I'm a fan from way back).

The week ended with us getting Devon's return flight time wrong. We thought it was Sunday afternoon when it had actually been at 7 in the morning. His mom was able to reschedule for the next day, meaning we'd have to leave for JFK by 4:30 AM. So we just stayed up all night.

We took a car to JFK and waited in a huge line for no good reason. Why can't everybody use the kiosk things? I know we had special circumstances but was this true for all the other people in line with us? Anyhow, we get up there and I fill out some form, at which time they tell me I have to go with him to his gate. Jeannie would have to wait outside the checkpoint. A little awkward, but whatever. I figured I would take him to his gate, where he would be met by an airline rep, who would chaperone him the rest of the way. Devon was asked to pony up $75 for this privilege.

So we go through security and to the gate, where we proceed to wait for an hour. We ask what he's supposed to do and they tell me to hang out and he'll go on after everybody else is on the plane. Then they tell me I have to stay until the friggin plane takes off. What?

So Devon finally gets to get on the plane, after asking "So what did I just pay $75 for?" and I stand around like a chump. I wait for a while, thinking that if I bail, someone will arrest me for child abandonment. But eventually I slip away, find Jeannie and hop on the Airtrain home. It doesn't take all that long to get home, we end up on the exact train that we normally pick up at Halsey Street every morning. We go home and pass out. Consequently, New Year's Eve was a decidedly low-key affair this year.

Here's some photos from the week. I kept forgetting my camera, as usual, so they are a little abrupt. Meanwhile I finally found time to build that cat shelter!

Labels: Holidays, The City, Vacation, Video Games

So much stuff is going on, and all I want to do i lie around on the couch. No such luck, however, as the Holidays are upon us.

I gotta remember to take a picture of our Xmas lights, it's so lame. Rite Aid has a sale on lights so I bought a couple strings and put them around the perimeter of the windows on the ground floor. They're white lights too so they don't even look all that festive; it looks like a dressing room mirror. Oh well, I'm a Jew, your traditions are 'strange' and 'frightening' to me.

Great upheaval includes the departure of our tenants. Yep, they moved up to Greenpoint yesterday, piano and all! Incredibly, we were able to sleep through most of the actual move, except when one of the movers loudly bet another that he'd pay him a hundred bucks to ride Buzz's bike down the stairs. Without going into it too much, they decided to move due to some safety issues, for which I totally don't fault them. We knew going into it that Bushwick is not exactly the safest place on earth, and I always felt a little bad that we sort of dragged them here in the first place. Still, they got a darned cheap rent for a duplex apartment! But money isn't everything and now they're in a neighborhood that's not only one of the safest in town, but is full of those amenities that everybody normally aspires to: grocery stores, restaurants, book/record stores, and an Irish pub right across the street. Damn, I could use one of those!

That's what sucks about home ownership; we're stuck here. Eventually this might turn into an advantage, say, if the neighborhood gets all fancy around us and we make a killing in real estate. Of course, the way things are going, this doesn't look too likely in the foreseeable future (for instance, all eyes were on the local corner property that was about to open, as a litmus test of the area; it opened as a wig store.) But I still like the house and, barring any personal violence I might endure, I'm okay with the neighborhood. But what are we gonna do with this house?

For the time being we are going to see if we can afford the whole joint without rental income. This comes mostly because the house, as it is set up, is unworkable for a rental to any but those we can wholeheartedly trust (and of course, my motto is: Trust No One). It's a legal 2-family, but there's no actual division between the units. To divide the house properly would take quite an undertaking at this point, and honestly wasn't something I was planning to do for a while. But if push comes to shove we'll have to jumpstart the renovations. Assuming we win the lottery, no problem!

Having the house to ourselves at this point has another big advantage: we have people coming for Christmas. Jeannie's mom and nephew are coming up for the Holidays, so they will be camping out on separate floors, on their respective futons (futons currently make up 50% of our furniture now, classy!) We certainly won't feel crowded. Now the problem is, what do we do with a 13 year old kid?

The nephew looks like he's in his 20's, he's 6 feet tall and otherwise precocious, so he's pretty flexible. But the law is not. So we can't just blithely take him to shows and bars as we would do with, say, Jeannie's mom. We're trying to figure out what a kid from St. Thomas would want to do in the city, but we're coming up short. Worse still, Todd P, purveyor of all ages shows, just announced he's cutting back on his bookings, meaning shows we could get a kid into will be in short supply. Argh.

I dunno, if I was a kid raised in the Caribbean, NYC in the winter sounds like Siberia. Hell, now that I've visited the Caribbean, NYC feels like a gulag to me too. Don't get me wrong, I love it here, but I just don't wanna have to leave the house. Aside from the requisite tours, museums, restaurants, what do kids do here? Should we give him some spray paint or what?

Labels: Holidays, House, Real Estate, Relatives, Renovation, Renting, The City, Vacation, Weather

I cooked a lot for Thanksgiving. I sort of wish I had just heated up some tater tots and left it at that. I think of all that time I spent putting stuff together when I could have been lounging on the couch or sleeping just a little bit later. Jen and Michael had the right idea to go out for the holiday!

Of course, I say this now on Monday morning, when those previously-endless hours of paid time off seemed to stretch on forever, and I simply can't believe I spent all that time cooking when I could have been lazily dangling a string over the cat's head while I watched Judge Mathis.

The thing I like about cooking is also sort of its downfall to me: You can spend days cooking stuff, trying your darnedest to make something good, but either way it's all pretty much over with in a matter of minutes. Food is served, you eat it, and suddenly it's no longer an issue of cuisine, but an issue of who's gonna wash all these damn dishes? Evanescence, thy name is dinner.

Still, I must say that I got a chance to work on some recipes more complex than I usually can attempt during the week. In place of Tofurky (which Jeannine has deemed "the most disgusting thing ever"; I plan on attempting a vegan haggis next year!) I made pot-pies filled with vegetables and seitan. They came out really well, though, truth be told, a little pot-pie goes a long way. I didn't have ramekins or whatever and wasn't about to purchase any in case this turned out to be a one-time recipe. But all the shops on Broadway were selling foil pans of varying sizes, so I picked up a few smallish round tins. They were probably 8 inches across and probably about 2x the size they should have been. Considering that other elements of the meal included something we call "stuffing," the watchword should have leaned towards light fare. Instead we foolishly tried to consume the aforementioned stuffing with potatoes, bread with roasted garlic, the aforementioned pot pies, a couple of dessert pies, not to mention all the stuff our housemates made. Conclusion: pot pies, good; lack of portion-control, bad.

The upside of course has been the perpetuation of leftovers, which will follow us well into this week. Of course my tolerance for potatoes is waning, but I'm coping. Additional revelations of the cooking ordeal include making seitan. I never thought about making it before, but it's super easy (like kneading dough but easier and harder to screw up). As a meat replacer it's generally better than tofu, although I don't know if I would risk the seitan "turkey" described in this recipe.

The above link however did provide some good vegan dessert pie recipes. I made the pumpkin and pecan pies, both of which were quite passable. The pumpkin pie in particular could probably pass muster with a little tweaking. Unlike most vegan recipes, this one didn't call for tofu, which I think is what made it good. Really it doesn't have much in it besides pumpkin and some cornstarch; I feel that too often tofu gets thrown into these recipes when it's not really needed. Tofu is an amazing product, but I sure would like to use less of it.

The pecan pie was also tolerable, but I think I can do it better now that I've done it once. I should point out that none of this stuff can qualify as really vegan since I used ready-made crusts from the store, which has whey in it for some reason. I find it difficult to practice moral absolutism when it comes to stuff that requires a rolling pin.

Most of the other recipes I used were from my new cookbook, Veganomicon. The authors of the book are from Brooklyn, so there is a nice narrative bent that NYC residents will enjoy. I'm only a few recipes into it so far, but it's very handy to have a cookbook of basic stuff that I don't have to transpose into vegetarian terms (like I must in my oft-thumbed copy of Joy of Cooking). I still need to find a vegan cookbook for really lazy people who really want to just lie on the couch and dangle string for the cats.

P.S. I really wanted to try Abby's Crispy Kale recipe, so I picked up a couple bunches and started feeding them into the oven. However, a slight miscalculation: I got mustard greens by mistake! The result, while edible, wasn't quite ready for prime time, so we've got it stashed in the kitchen. I feel like such a dork for not getting the right stuff, I can only blame myself and the fact that the market had their bushels of greens out on the sidewalk, and it was already dark by the time I got there. I know what kale looks like! I'm sure I do! I do like mustard greens but they don't really require the extra effort of kale, which is probably why they came out looking like somebody beat rent money out of them.

Labels: Cooking, Holidays, Vegan

Just what you've all been waiting for! More updates on the soundproofing of the basement band room! This was much harder than I thought it would be, but then pretty much every single thing I've done on this house has been harder than I thought it would be, with the exception of getting free furniture from collegiate chum SeanM.

Beyond the sheer weight of the panels, we had lots of pipes of varying importance to contend with. There are two big pipes for the radiator running through the room, as well as some gas lines and electrical conduits. But the real drag for me was just getting the screws to go into the metal hat channel.

Drywall is super easy to drill through, too easy in many cases, but the hat channel we were attaching it to was difficult to get started. Of course, once the screw has pierced the metal, it zipped into it, often too quickly to keep from ramming the screw all the way through the drywall, negating its effectiveness completely. I started predrilling holes to aid in this regard, and I ended up breaking two of them in the ceiling. I've gotta remember to get some higher-quality
drill bits.

Eventually, the screws went in and seem to be holding. There was a major foul-up on my part, as my painstaking calculations were rent asunder because for some reason I kept thinking the drywall panels were 4.5' instead of only 4'. Ugh, I kick myself every time I think of this. I don't know where I went astray but I screwed it up. We had to move one of the tracks in closer, leaving a significant gap on one side of the room. But I think we'll be able to work around this when we put up the walls. In soundproofing, you can't have the ceiling and wall touch, you're supposed to leave 1/4" and fill the gap with acoustical caulk. I am counting on my ability to make that work when we get to the point. But first we have to put another layer of sheetrock on the ceiling.

Yesterday I put joint compound and tape on all the seams. I didn't try to be neat since this layer will be completely covered by another layer of 5/8" drywall. I need to decide how to cut the sheetrock for this layer, I am thinking I should cut it into smaller pieces to make it easier to work with. I wish office drones got spring break like the college kids do, I could use some serious time off to work on this project. And of course, there aren't even any holidays between now and Memorial Day. That sucks!

Labels: Holidays, Renovation, Soundproofing

I just realized I'm hitting the stride of the longest holiday drought for the whole year. After a run of holidays that gives me a day off at least once a month for 6 months, the next holiday I get is Memorial Day. That's like 2 months away! And it's at the END of the month too! Of course, some people don't get all these days off (even I feel politically unsure of Columbus Day, but I'll take the day off, sure). These are my holidays:

UNITED STATES 2007 Holidays Date	Holiday
01/01/2007	New Year's Day
01/15/2007	Martin Luther King's Birthday
02/19/2007	Presidents Day
05/28/2007	Memorial Day
07/04/2007	Independence Day
09/03/2007	Labor Day
10/08/2007	Columbus Day
11/12/2007	Veterans Day
11/22/2007	Thanksgiving Day
12/25/2007	Christmas Day

The way I see it, this dearth of holidays reminds me that we have several months for which we should be nominating for new holidays. Here's my suggestions for the months I'm not currently getting long weekends:

• March 21: Jimmy Legs Memorial Day. To commemorate those few days last March when the nation held its breath and I wasn't allowed to leave the hospital until they ran me through every expensive piece of machinery in the place (including the machine that goes "Pinnng!")
• April 14: Birthday/Unbirthday Day. It's a real birthday for Buzz, Abby, and Janice, and probably some other people. So let's all pretend it's our birthday too (this will also mean 50 Cent will always be able to find work in the future).
• June 15: June Appreciation Day. I always looked forward to June, but it seems to go by too quickly. Before I know it, it's the 4th of July, it's hot and humid, and I have the sneaking suspicion I've just wasted a whole month. This won't stop that, but at least I won't waste this day redesigning the background image for a PowerPoint presentation.
• August 7: Throw Bottles in Your Neighbor's Yard Day. This holiday, celebrated weekly by my neighbors, gets the solemn, national attention it deserves.

Labels: Funny to Me, Holidays, Office