Rhythm

So, today I had one of those embarrassing incidents where you're walking along purposefully, happen upon live music and, try as you might, you can't help but walk to the beat of the music. It's an organic process. Walking through a l-o-n-g corridor to the F train (okay, yes, I know) and a gentleman with a weatherbeaten violin case open for tips is playing the saxophone. And he's playing the theme to the Pink Panther (dadant dadant ... dadant ... dadant dadant dadant dadant dadaaaannnnnt ... diddle-y-boop-ah - DA da da da da da dadadada biddly bum ba) and though I was in a cranky mood and had to be somewhere and was wearing little heels, I found myself traipsing along in time to his playing. I sped up, he did. I slowed ... you get the picture. Perhaps I'm in the midst of a wacky caper.

Rabbit Ears

Happy Easter, bunnies!

In lieu (Lou) of a proper bunny photo, I offer you:

The Easter Shiba

Oh, and...

I'm looking for a great book to take on my trip -- character-based narrative fiction, nothing too disjointed. Any recommendations? Books I've read and liked recently: Half of a Yellow Sun, I Know This Much is True, The Emperor's Children.

If there's a fabulous and readable nonfiction I might like, let me know!

the great outdoors

These are your options when you take Louie outside: turn right out the back door and walk past the car wash and its ever present pool of dirty, soapy water and God knows what else; you can avoid this, of course, by crossing the street and cutting through the gas station. Turn left and you'll stroll along what is essentially the West Side Highway. Opt instead for the front door, and you'll find yourself in a land of construction, scaffolding, detours and impressive piles of dirt and debris. Looking forward to rat season.

New York, New York, one hell of a town.

Nastrovya

Because I made Neil pose during the process while I attempted to figure out my I'm-in-over-my-head-it's-complicated camera, I'm posting photos of blini night:

The chef in his domain:

The batter:

The caviar and its garnishes:
Application of melted butter to blini:
The artist at work:

The finished product pre-roll ... the ones at Russian Samovar -- and Neil's -- are much more elegantly presented. But I had to do it myself.


Odd man out:

Baba ganoush

Too many days have passed since I last wrote. As this is not unusual, I announce that I will officially stop apologizing for not writing more frequently. It's not productive. It's like those acquaintances, in my experience usually women, who spend your every moment together talking about how you two need to get together and whining -- in my experience usually drunkenly -- about how you never call them. And it's hard in this distractingly modern world to brush someone off ... how many times will someone believe that you don't have their number anymore because you've lost yet another cellphone? I've used this line twice already on B's friend ... we'll call her Ivanka ... who pulls that shite every time I see her -- nags me and complains that we never get together. I'm running out of excuses. I feel like the duck on the right.

-End of tangent-

Sherry came over for a bite and a drink last night, which was lovely. Neil made pizza -- he's been working a lot with pizza lately -- as an appetizer, I made salad and dressing, and then he and I dined on tilapia fillets, which I requested with a panko crust, as well as a rice dish. Tonight, he just informed me, we'll be having his homemade buckwheat blinis with some sort of (really inexpensive and surprisingly good) caviar, and the usual accoutrements thereof. Is thereof a word? And if so, did I use it correctly?

Here is a photo of Neil in his cooking attire:


I know it's a strange angle, but I feel I should let him sign off on any real pictures I post. He alternates between the black apron and the Union Jack one that Berun brought us from London.


Here are some of the dishes Neil has made for me and friends. Everything he has ever prepared for me has been incredible:

• Gumbo -- last Friday night for 9 of us, as a matter of fact
• Duck a l'orange
• Japanese-style barbecue
• Etouffee
• Boeuf Bourguignon -- we had my parents over for dinner Monday night, and this was my mom's birthday meal
• Coq au vin
• Buckwheat crepes with wild boar sausage and ligonberry jam
• Paella
• Baba ganoush, for which I just had to look up the spelling, hummus, tabouleh
• Coquille St. Jacques

I could go on and on, but it would get ridiculous. I am a well-fed girl.

Wonderland

This has been an extraordinarily strange winter in New York, the lion-and-lamb effect of March having lasted the whole season, sometimes alternating from moment to moment within the same day. These photos were taken in one afternoon:

See what I mean?

Mark Twain once said, The coldest winter I've ever spent was summer in San Francisco. Having lived in San Fran, I know what he means. However, the coldest winter I've ever spent was winter in New York City. Ugh -- one in particular stands out when the bone-dampening chill matched my mood and lasted about as long. That was a very welcome spring.

Mark Twain also delivered one of my favorites, about one of my favorite cities:
New Orleans is a beautiful woman with dirty fingernails.

This was, of course, before 2005, before our fine government turned a blind eye to that beloved city, a place that is very close to my heart. About a year and a half after Katrina, I visited again, and my dear friend Keith took me for a drive around the lower 9th Ward. It was as if the storm had hit a month prior. It was incredible. We drove these once over-populated streets for 40 minutes before we saw a live human. I have some fairly disturbing photos from that trip -- not sure if this is the right forum for posting them. If you're curious, let me know, and I will post a few. Houses turned on their sides, crumpled on top of one another, plots of land where other houses once stood, still littered with Katrina's detritus, Water marks permanently etched onto buildings, abandoned businesses, graffiti offering salvation and, most disturbingly, the spray-painted notations from the searchers indicating how many bodies they expected to find, how many they did, how many dead, how many alive, etcetera.

As the song goes, Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?

I shall return.