The New Adventures of Mrs. Chaim ben Mordecai

Making Holiday cookies

2010-12-11T19:10:00.002-05:00

Today was an all day bake-athon to get ready for next weekend's party.
Hiro-hanani was a big help as you can see. He really wanted to use the rolling pin that was Grandpa Mort's mother's to get the dough mushed down.

here he is trying it by himself.

Happy Hannukah

2010-12-01T20:37:00.002-05:00

A busy day.
First the Ballet
then Wending day,
then the lighting of the Hanukkah candles.

Ok take two

Hiro goes to the Dentist

2010-10-28T18:38:00.003-04:00

Not quite Dr. Desoto but Dr. Shawn was great!

The sunglasses were so the bright light wouldn't hurt his eyes.
We were in and out in about 20 minutes.
No crying and HIro left with a lot of Dental swag: new toothbrush, coloring book, tons of stickers, balloon and we even rejected the offer of getting something from the toy house full of stuff.

This fun trip to the Dentist cost us $245!!!! That works out to about $15.50 per tooth!

bedtime story

2010-10-05T06:49:00.002-04:00

Brown Bear Brown Bear, what do you see???

Hiro's 2nd Birthday

2010-09-11T21:29:00.002-04:00

H-I-R-O spells Hiro!

2010-06-26T20:44:00.004-04:00

We have been reading and pointing at books since Hiro-hanani was a few days old. We point at the animals and, we question what they are. The funniest books are the ones where none of us can figure out what animal the illustrator was trying to draw, and Hiro-hananni has learned to shrug, a very amusing gesture.

Chaim and I are both readers- in the morning one of us- usually Chaim- goes downstairs to get the newspaper. And every night, there are two or three books to be read before going to sleep. So it's no surprise that Hiro-hananni has learned about 90% of the English alphabet, and 50% of Japanese hiragana.

We have tried to teach Hiro the love of books partly for our own sanity; on the long car rides to Buffalo to visit Grandpa Mort, or something to do while we wait for our food at the restaurant. And getting out a book is a definite must for all the short and not so short subway rides. And he is always game for learning new words and trying to spell them.

Cinco De Mayo

2010-05-05T20:11:00.005-04:00

Here in our neighborhood, the celebrations are morphed and blended within the different immigrant populations... what's next??? hopefully a Korean Bastille Day!!! I could go for some kimchee croissants!

And on the other side of Roosevelt Avenue, our peach tree is beginning to look wonderful. Last year the tree took a break by only producing two peaches. It had rained the whole month of June and the storms flung all the blossoms and baby peaches to the ground. This year we are as hopeful for the late summer crop to be as abundant as it was the year we first moved into our house...lets hope we have over 300 like that time!!!

10 reasons why Kindle or iPad will never replace the BOOK

2010-04-09T19:51:00.005-04:00

1. Electronic books don't have flaps to open
2. Electronic books don't have pop ups
3. Electronic books don't have a bunny to pat, daddy's face to scratch, and won't squeak when you punch it.
4. Electronic books don't have a smell
5. Electronic books won't survive a toddler throwing it off his chair, repeatedly.
6. You can't build forts with electronic books.
7. You can't stack electronic books and use it as a booster chair.
8. You will never have 300 electronic books on your shelf with colorful spines greeting you as you walk past your own library.
9. You won't learn the craft of taping pictures back together with scotch tape on an electronic book.
10. When you are trapped on the subway and you run out of batteries on your electronic book, and your child is screaming from boredom, you can take out a BOOK and he will immediately be soothed.

Chaim and Hiro-hanani (4 months)

Chaim and Hiro-hanani (8 months)

Hiro-hanani- Elmo, Apple, Bert (almost 19 months)

Je ne comprends pas

2010-03-23T21:05:00.006-04:00

The big joke around our house several months ago was that Hiro-hanani was bi-lingual! Yes, he can say two words! Not mama or dada, but his first two words were hot!!!! and hai (yes in Japanese), so indeed he could not only say two words, but they just happened to be in two different languages.

He's been communicating for a while verbally, but only in terms of animal noises...As in:What does a sheep say? BAAA, so this didn't really count.

My mother spends 4 days a week with him and she only speaks to him in Japanese, and we only will let her read Japanese books, so it's natural that he is beginning to say things in two languages. My best friend Rob, gave us a lot of Dutch books that we used to read to Hiro. Chaim apparently sounded Swedish when he read them, and I sounded German, in either case, we were reading it all wrong. We decided to give up on Dutch, and wait for Rob to come babysit.

Hiro-hanani has a favorite sitting-on-the-toilet book- a lovely graphically illustrated nature book by Charley Harper. When ever he wants to go sit on the toilet, he calls for "Hapa! Hapa!" But he would sometimes say "Happa,Happa" when looking at his nature catalogue of leaves and rocks and Chaim was a bit confused. "Wow, Hiro is making a connection between Charlie Harper and all of nature! what an advanced thinker our son is!", he told me one day. Then I realized as I listened closely and watched Hiro point out leaves in the nature catalogue, that Happa is Japanese for leaf. And so, Chaim is learning Japanese through Hiro. I can speak pretty much up to a 6 year old level, so we are set for a while. But we have to really listen closely and play- "mama, dada, what language am I speaking now?"

For instance nan-na means banana and nen-ne means to sleep in Japanese. Not to be confused with nin-nin (ninjin- carrot in Japanese)

There is a lot of frustration and parental shrugging and pointing to things and each other in our house. Hiro gets exasperated when we don't understand what he is trying to tell us, and will run up to an inanimate object such as a chair or pillow and bite it when he can't contain his irritation with us. I can almost understand the frustration recalling when I was trying to buy fruit in a Paris supermarket. I got 3 or 4 plums and put it in a bag and walked to the line to pay for them. Everyone on the way to the line and in line pointed at the plums and was trying to tell me something...were they good? were they not good? don't buy them? too expensive?? I kept trying to ask them what? in my very limited French. Finally I got up to the cashier frustrated and she spoke calmly pointed to something across the store. I wanted to cry from dismay and embarrassment. Still not understanding what she wanted me to do, I just left the store without purchasing them. Later I was told that I was supposed to weigh them myself.

It's fascinating to witness someone learning language; not leaning a foreign language but just learning how to communicate. It's fun to watch the concentration wrinkles appear on the forehead as his brain works to make connections between things, objects and labels. A tur-tle is a turtle, but any shell can called a tur-tle as well. One of the earlier favorite books shows a gorilla kicking, so when we see a gorilla in a zoo, on t.v. anywhere, we all say KICK! and kick the air.

We slow down and understand our own speech impediments and afflictions with pronunciations. Hiro-hanani will often pick up the strongest syllable the first few tries, and will sometimes repeat that syllable to create a new word. Thus orange (the fruit) is O or mimi (mikan in Japanese) and a door is dodo. A melon is mei and so is eye glasses (megane- in Japanese). So just as in adult speech it all has to do with context.

But often when he says something, Chaim and I will have him repeat it several times, then look at each other and ask "what language do you think that was?" and secretly we hope he doesn't end up with a Queens accent.

The Breakfast of Champions

2010-03-04T15:53:00.008-05:00

Breakfast around here is a hurried affair. Once every few months or so we get the pleasure of going to dim sum for Wending day (our wedding anniversary monthly Chinese meal) but otherwise it is a quick moment between waking up and hurrying out of the house. When Hiro-hanani sometimes wakes up on the wrong side of the morning and is very grumpy, Chaim might cheer him up with a breakfast like this:
consisting of all the favorite things like blueberries (blu) apple, (op) cantalope (mol, mol), grapes, and wheat bread...plus water and a yogurt fruit shake.

but otherwise, this is the norm around here:

A handfull of cheerios, crackers, cheese, banana, and such a bland palate, but I suppose its better than poptarts.

The neighborhood Kid

2010-02-26T19:35:00.006-05:00

Today we had our second snow day from school this year, and the 16 plus inches of wet snow was a hard workout for Chaim this morning. As he was sweating away shoveling the quickly falling snow that covered up his clearings he thought to himself, "Wow I'm 50, and in 10 years or so we're going to have to hire some neighborhood kids to do this back breaking work". But then he realizes - "No wait a minute!!!... we HAVE a neighborhood kid upstairs tearing up the house, and in ten years, he'll be doing this work!!!!

And so we had a little fun outside today with the neighborhood kid, and walking home from grandma's we ran into Bix and Humphry on the sledding hill. They let us use their boogie board for one run down the slope at Doughboy Park.

Chaim's finally getting the hang of this

2010-02-20T19:46:00.003-05:00

This evening at dinner, a typical family scene around the dinner table. Hiro-hanani has a train wreck of food in front of him as we try to be civilized and eat with at least one piece of cutlery. Hiro-hanani is practicing one-handed drinking from a cup, gulping down the seltzer we call hurt water, due to how it feels going down. He's doing pretty well, but as soon as he gets toward the bottom of the cup, 2/3rds gets dumped over his face and down into his bib. (It's hard to gage distance, amount and gravity all at once). Chaim sees the lake forming in the pocket of the Dr. Seuss bib with nice fish noodles and spinach floating around.

Hiro-hanani decides he's done with dinner and begins to reach for the velcro of his bib on the back of his neck. Before I can say anything, Chaim has rushed around the table, and grabs the lake front bib from Hiro-hanani telling him, "oh are you done? let me help you with that!"

Good save big daddy!

Parallel play

2010-02-15T18:29:00.004-05:00

Who says children Hiro's age only engage in parallel play.
Today we kept Skylar company and while we were at it, had more of the "gang" over to hang out on this day off.

Here's Hiro showing Bix his favorite game/ hiding place while Skylar looks on.

Oh and one of these phones are for you!

Discoveries in the house

2010-02-02T08:02:00.005-05:00

We just remembered that all the corners in the house have metal strips to protect the drywall. Hiro discovered this the other day. We don't have many metal surfaces upstairs, and since he is gated off from the kitchen, all he had to put his magnetic items in his life was the stainless steel recycling trashcan. Now he has other options.

New Sweaters from Auntie lora

2009-12-21T09:39:00.004-05:00

Hiro got a package the other day from Auntie lordie...the master knitter. So instead of waiting until Christmas we opened the tissues to find three beautiful sweaters. Here's the first one, very dapper I think. Also notice his first fat lip- due to a fall which was entirely my fault for not putting him in pajamas with better non slip feet. Chaim was really freaked out when he saw blood, but then I reminded him that there will be many more, and probably worse injeries to come if our boy is ever to play ice hockey.

Also in the back ground is his new chair given to him by uncle Henry.

The second sweater is more of a lounging type garment. Actually it looks like he should have a pipe in his mouth when wearing this.

The thrid sweater is a bit too big, which is great for next year. Thank You Lora!!!!!

The big boy and his big cracker

2009-10-06T20:09:00.003-04:00

Ok that's enough, you can have some of it now...

Turning on the Furnace

2009-10-04T11:59:00.002-04:00

Yesterday Chaim turned on the furnace to test it, making sure it was in perfect working order before it really got cold. I built a radiator cover for Hiro Hanani's room so we wouldn't get burned when the heat kicked on. When we heard the hissing and the smell of heat, Hiro Hanani crawled over to the new radiator cover and began to sniff it.

The next winter time preparation is to get some warm pajamas since Hiro Hanani no longer will be able to sleep in a sleepsack.

Happy Wending Day and Grandma's Birthday

2009-10-01T19:08:00.005-04:00

Today was another Wending Day, and it just so happened to fall on Grandma Susy's Birthday. So the whole family decided to move the car and venture out to Flushing for some Dim Sum. We first tried our favorite spot, New Pacific, but sadly they were closed...hopefully not for good but who knows. So we ended up at Ocean Jewel instead, where we had a nice lunch. Afterwards, since we had the car, we decided to go to the Korean huge grocery store. Hiro Hanani got to ride in the shopping cart for the second time, and loved it. On the way out though, we spotted the other carts with the plastic cars for kids mounted on the front... oh well, maybe next time.

Happy Wending Day!

Happy 5770

2009-09-18T20:29:00.003-04:00

New Year and New tricks
Hiro Hanani doesn't seem to want to try walking unless he's pushing something, and since pushing the big metal stool didn't seem safe, we bought him a shopping cart.
It was too light, so we loaded it up with all his toys.
Then it was too top heavy so we put the Borzoli Book of Fiction on the bottom shelf and taped it down with all the Mexican stone chess pieces so it wouldn't flip over

National Guacamole Day

2009-09-16T20:43:00.014-04:00

Last year, right after Hiro Hananni was born, we discovered National Guacamole Day, but were too elated from having a new baby in our midst as well as just being too sleep deprived to celebrate it.

This year however, Chaim, decided it's been too long since we had Mexican food, and we decided to celebrate it in style, ie... we went out to a restaurant that serves cocktails.

Hiro loves avocados...as you can see from last night's meal...and can be fierce when eating it!

but tonight's meal at Ariba Ariba, we ordered Guacamole- very mild. Unfortunately it had a bit of spice in it and so Hiro Hananni had a little trouble, but kept eating it just the same.
He ended up drinking a lot of water with the meal, but did love the black beans and rice, which were perfect for him, since it came cold. Otherwise the meal was very good. I had the chille rellenos, and Chaim got the steak al la Mexicana, both very good, though Chaim had to add some of his own emergency chillie peppers kit that he still had in his bag from our trip to Japan. The margaritas were very good, though I really could have gone for a few more.

Here's Hiro Hananni demonstrating his drinking (water) skills.

He starts out with really great form.
looking good
but then the water comes rushing into his face
but he keeps going back for more before he will turn the cup upside down.

Happy National Guacamole Day!

One year ago from my last blog post and a lot has happened...

2009-09-15T20:22:00.005-04:00

It's been a long time since my last post...I've lost about 40 lbs and we have a new member of our family...
I'm back after about a year and a week to be exact...and I'm back to this blog, and I'm going to try hard to keep up with it, even if it's just pictures and no captions.

So on September 11, this year, our son Hiro Hanan Maddock Spiller turned one. Hiro Hanani is what Steve Teitelbaum likes to call him, by his Hebrew name, picked out with the help of the guys at B&H Photo.

September 11th fell on a Friday this year, I had to work until 5pm and Hiro Hananni's bedtime is 8pm, and Chaim and I were too tired, and couldn't get our act together to throw a party so instead, the birthday boy went to work at Franklin Furnace with Chaim since he hadn't been there since July.
I made 35 banana blueberry miniature muffins for his party.
Here he is showing the staff at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts and Creative Outlet how to do the wind the bobbin dance.

Of course a birthday is not complete without a cake, and so a week earlier in St. Louis, when we were attending Hiro Hanani's cousins Bar Mitzvah, Aunt Jill got him a nice big Angel Food cake covered with cream cheese icing.

Chaim performs his second fatherly duty

2008-09-07T20:55:00.007-04:00

Lots of assembly required...about two hours worth, to put together a pack and play for Baby H. A lot of cursing while looking at directions with pictures. "You'd think that since your life !#@$# depended on all this &#^@%# Velcro, the directions would be a bit more straight forward!"

After it was all set up we concluded that it was way too low for ergonomic diaper changing purposes, so I will end up retrofitting the pieces to the dresser in the bedroom by adding some more Velcro and snaps, etc... The mobile is also useless, in that it isn't mobile, even with our fan turned on to high. The three stuffed animals (with huge warning tags, bigger than the animals themselves) just hang there stiff.

Now we have a co-sleeper set up along with this new contraption. Our living room is beginning to look like a small petting zoo with all these small cages and habitats. Now we are just waiting for the little one to fill them.

Yesterday's Stats:

Fasting Glucose Level 79
After Breakfast Level 87
After Lunch Level- 150 oops
After Dinner Level 104
Ketones: Negative
night time insulin 25 units

didn't ride the train yesterday.

Food consumed:
Breakfast:
eggs with onions, peppers and cheese
coffee with half & half

AM Snack:
PBJ on cracker

Lunch:
pasta with pesto
tasted peach preserves I was making.....
too much raw sugar!

PM Snack:
peanuts

Dinner:
Greek @ Uncle George
Greek salad, fried calamari, grilled porgy, escarole

PM Snack:
chocolate/vanilla ice cream

No more Swimming?

2008-09-06T12:35:00.002-04:00

Yesterday morning I went swimming as usual, then began to worry a little bit.
At my non-stress test, I asked one of the nurses her opinion about if I could still continue swimming? I remember Peggy from the Lamaze class telling us that she swam up to two days before delivering. But the nurse told me I'd probably better not swim anymore.

So now we are counting down, to a number, we are not sure exactly what, since Dr. Sylvestre definitely thinks that I will not make it till the 21st. This is agonizing..... It doesn't seem as I'm even having fake contractions and this process is not happening fast enough, and today's weather is just miserable... hot and very muggy and now that I'm not going swimming, totally unbearable. I was going to spend the weekend making peach pies, preserves and jam, but it is just too hot to do that.

Yesterday's Stats:

Fasting Glucose Level 89
After Breakfast Level 107
After Lunch Level- 100-two hours later since I was doing errands and didn't have my monitor.
After Dinner Level 125
Ketones: Negative
night time insulin 20 units

6 Train: A miracle!!! on a crowded train, a young well dressed black man gave me his seat

Food consumed:
Breakfast:
eggs with onions, peppers and cheese
tea with milk

AM Snack:
Kashi TLC bar

Lunch:
Italian Sausage with onions and peppers on pita from a cart guy on the street.

PM Snack:
peanuts, 1/8th of quiche

Dinner:
Thai at PaOun
chicken Laab, grilled squid, mussels and a little sticky rice.
salad

PM Snack:
none

Weekley Doctors Visit

2008-09-04T08:27:00.002-04:00

Yesterday's visit was very exciting. We found out that I am now 2 centimeters dilated and 100% effaced. He definately thinks that I won't make it to my due date. Before we left Dr. Sylvestre's office he says to me. "See you next week, if you are still pregnant!"

Very scary. I've been waiting for all this to be over, but now that the end is near, I'm having some fears about the pain that's to come. I'm still not clear about what a contraction feels like; could it feel similar to food poisoning? or PMS cramps? or having to take a big shit? or all of them rolled into one.......

And by the way, 10 centimeters is 4 inches. That's about the size of an opening of a mayonnaise bottle. Can a little head fit through that opening? very scary.

Yesterday's Stats:

Fasting Glucose Level 84
After Breakfast Level 111
After Lunch Level- forgot to take since I was picking peaches with Lalena
After Dinner Level 98
Ketones: Negative
night time insulin 25 units

7 train: Young white woman offers her seat to me
(still everyone on the 6 train ignores the pregnant woman)

Food consumed:
Breakfast:
cracker with swiss cheese
coffee with half-and-half

AM Snack:
Kashi TLC bar

Lunch:
grilled cheese with avocado

PM Snack:
yogert with berries

Dinner:
whole wheat spaghetti with meat sauce
broccoli

PM Snack:
homemade vanilla peach ice cream

Baby Care

2008-08-18T08:19:00.006-04:00

At our baby care class, we learned how to hold the baby like a football, give baths, diaper and heard about a lot of products we should and should not use.

For two weeks I've been on night time insulin, slowly upping the dosage from 6 units to 25 and counting. At first I was scared of the whole idea of shooting up every evening, with visions of druggies hypodermic needles, and that rubber band that you have to use to tourniquet your arm. After going to see the insulin counselor, she made me feel more at ease with the whole process, when she showed me the sharpie-like pen I would be using every night. It also doesn't hurt at all, except when I sometimes put it in my thigh at the wrong angle. The first few weeks, there was not much difference in the morning fasting glucose levels, so slowly Dr. Sinha upped the dosage. This morning, finally I awoke and took a BG level of 77. Yippee.

This week Chaim and I get the house ready for our House warming, baby shower.

Yesterday's Stats:

Fasting Glucose Level 73
After Breakfast Level 89
After Lunch Level 113
After Dinner Level 130
Ketones: Negative

7 train: Young Hispanic woman offers her seat to me
(so far everyone on the 6 train ignores the pregnant woman)

Food consumed:
Breakfast:
tofu/egg scramble with bacon, cheese, peppers & onions
glass of milk
coffee with half-and-half

AM Snack:
Kashi TLC bar

Lunch:
Korean: JapJae, brown rice, spicy tofu soup, green salad

PM Snack:
plumb
ww bread w/ cream cheese and Ajvar

Dinner:
beef stew with carrots, parsnips, yams
green salad

PM Snack:
Edy's vanilla fudge swirl ice cream

Shower Cap Aerobics

2008-07-24T11:04:00.006-04:00

Having gained about 25lbs so far, my calves are in great shape, due to the extra weight I'm toting around. Otherwise, it's pretty miserable, it's like I'm carrying a book-bag filled with my computer and a gallon of water everywhere I go. Climbing up the 3 flights of stairs to the 7 train is the worst. My only saving grace is going to the Y every day for a swim, where I can be weightless and cool.

Every day at 10am, half of the pool turns into an Aqua Aerobics class for Seniors. Since I came late for my swim, the lifeguard suggested I join them, for a change of pace. So there I was, all big-bellied, wading around with about twenty 70 year old women wearing shower caps. It is the Y's rule to have a swim cap on at all times while in the pool, and since these ladies were not going to go under, they figured a shower cap would be the same as a swim cap.

The instructor came in and immediately spotted the pregnant interloper and asked how many weeks I was, not wanting to be responsible if I were to go into early labor I suppose. Then she told me of the exercises I could not do, the stomach straining moves, which were about half of them. After all the explanations, she lifted her gaze and looked around the pool worried and asked the rest of the class: "is anyone else here pregnant?" This got a round of laughter, and we all began the one hour class.

Usually a person of advanced age, such as this class, has not participated in many aerobics classes in their 70 plus life, so they had a hard time following directions and would end up in a logjam at one end of the pool or another. Most of the class was spent trying to spread out the flower capped masses along the Olympic size pool, while I dodged them left and right.

Needless to say, this was my first and last time participating in Shower Cap Aerobics class, as I realized I'd get more exercise just doing laps.

Yesterday's Stats:

Fasting Glucose Level 97
After Breakfast Level 116
After Lunch Level 94
After Dinner Level 101
Ketones: Negative

7 train: Young white guy offers his seat to me

Food consumed:
Breakfast:
veggie (left over from last weekend's bbq) fritatta w/ cheese
glass of milk
coffee with half-and-half

AM Snack:
PB &J on WW bread

Lunch:
Greek Salad with chicken and avocados
shot of OJ with Iron supplament.

PM Snack:
TLC Kashi granola bar

Dinner:
Veggie Lasagna with WW pasta noodles
green salad

PM Snack:
PB and chocolate ice cream

Lamaze Class

2008-07-22T08:07:00.003-04:00

Last Night Chaim and I attended the first of our five week Lamaze Class, which was really like a group couple's therapy session; about 15 or so couples sitting in an over chilled room discussing our fears and body parts. The instructor, who Chaim has already named "Nurse Ratchet", I thought was great. She really stressed that the coach does a lot of the work and that pain can be managed.

Three weeks ago, I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes, and since then, I've been measuring and weighing out every bit of food that goes into my mouth. I'm a walking science project. My blood sugar level is all over the place. It fluctuates over 20 points throughout the day. I prick my finger to get a blood sample four times a day, to get a reading and chart the course. Eating fatty ice cream at night sometimes helps the morning numbers but it's not consistent. We spent last weekend at Art Luekers on Shelter Island and chowed on a lot of sea food. Clams, steamers, lobster, which were all delicious, and according to the carb charts should not be so bad, but again the numbers were high. It looks like I'll be going on insulin soon.

Back from a 7 month hiatus

2008-07-17T07:43:00.009-04:00

Unemployed and sweaty, I now have some time to update the goings on here in Woodside Queens. Barefoot and pregnant, we are selling stuff on E-bay, living a white trash existence these days.

I've gained about 25 lbs, and there's a dance party that occurs every afternoon and night in my belly.

My ObGyn is French Canadian, which means that Chaim gets to discuss the finer points of Pine Soda and Poutine at our monthly visits.

We tend to do the big things in life around the start of the year so it's easy to count and keep track... Just as we got hitched on New Years eve, Baby H was conceived around New Years....and his due date is on the Fall Equinox, September 21st.

The first trimester was hell...for many reasons. We couldn't tell anyone about why I was so tired and throwing up twice a day. We would get invited to Sushi restaurant openings, Film Premiers parties and other fun get togethers with premium food and liquor and I would have to make excuses for why I couldn't drink the champagne or eat the raw fish/oysters. After a while, I just stopped going out.

The second trimester was great, as all the books and friends tell you. I was energized enough to resume some building in the shop, and the last thing I constructed before I got banned from the table saw was this shed.
This green (left over paint) parallelogram shaped shed sits on the back corner of the garden and is now aptly titled Hillbilly Hills. The back sliver of the yard definitely has that certain shack-livin' atmosphere, especially when we drag out the BBQ grill that Chaim's father gave us. Its a family heirloom from Buffalo, with a steer painted on it. Here's our first July 4th BBQ in Hillbilly Hills.

Kourabiedes

2007-12-16T18:35:00.000-05:00

At this time of year, you can often find me kneeling by the printer, but this year I've been spending time around our new Thermador PRG 304 Professional hearth where it is warm and cozy. We have no tree, no twinkling lights and the only Christmas music is heard by me or Chaim singing "Happy Birthday Micky Jesus".

So I Baked Cookies:  Kourabiedes (Greek sugar cookies)  in fact.  Unfortunately, I haven't moved all my books from the studio and thus, the recipe is still tucked into the piano music in a box, so I had to look it up.  I remember it to be  a pretty easy recipe, consisting of only flour, sugar and butter.  The three or four recipes I looked up had completely different measurements for the proportions for the three ingredients, some of them off by 1/2 cup, so I'm just winging it this year.  They turned out pretty good though, and the house smells fabulous!

Ingredients (for this batch):

about 4 cups of flour plus a few handfuls more. 
about 1-1/2 lbs of butter 
2 cups of powder sugar plus a few more cups for dusting 
3 tbsp ground cloves 
1tbsp Madagascar vanilla
1 tsp baking powder
3 egg yolks 
1/4 cup Johnnie Walker Gold Label 18 year old Scotch (I couldn't find any brandy) 
1-1/2 cup chopped almonds

Beat, mix, fold, all ingredients until the hand mixer starts to stall, and begins to smell like the motor is about to burn out.  Then take over by hand, and knead to finish mixing. Roll into small balls the size of a grape, then smaller about the size of a frozen green pea, for the second batch when you realize they expand and will not fit into the small tins. Bake in a 350 degrees oven for 15 minutes. Let cool and dust with remaining powder sugar.


Excerpts from  the following story was included in a Holiday card a few years ago.  Here it is in it's entirety explaining why I love these cookies so much.


Bach Inventions with Sassa

Sassa Maniotis was my piano teacher when I was six. She went to Juilliard a long, long time ago. Her husband was an important geneticist who taught at Washington University, and they were the most interesting Greek couple who lived in a very large 3-story Tudor house behind the school. In the front room where most people had plushy upholstered couches and end tables, she had two Steinway Grand pianos. This is where I used to go for lessons once, then later twice a week. She always had a Pall Mall unfiltered cigarette hanging out of the corner of her mouth. She would keep time to my Bach by clapping loudly over my left shoulder. After each few measures, she would spit the stray tobacco from her mouth and shout “AGAIN!” When I got older and started wearing jewelry, big 1980’s bracelets and plastic rings, she would make me remove them at the door, so it would not hinder my practice. I once asked her what she thought of Liberace and she just grunted. Grand pianos were made to be a shiny jet black not a blinding white after all. She would inspect my overgrown nails before stepping up to the bench. If she found them to be more than an eighth of an inch in length, she would make me bite them down to the quick. She disliked the clicking of nails more than Liberace’s white pianos. I describe her as though she could be frightening and militaristic, but once you got past the fear, and became accustomed to her chain-smoking habits, she was a good woman, and a wonderful teacher.

I once sprained my right wrist playing softball and she composed a short piece, a left-handed invention for me to practice on during the two weeks my right hand was out of commission.
During the holiday season, when I arrived for my lessons, I could count on the haze of smoke mingling with the welcoming scent of cloves and cinnamon, and on the front foyer table, a tin of Kourabiedes, delicious traditional Greek cookies coated with ample powdered sugar that she had just baked. It was hard to sneak a handful of the treats. It’s as if the cookies were designed with so much powdered sugar that when I tried to take more than my share, I would be left with the incriminating dusting of white on my hands and clothes.

One year, the Thursday before Christmas, Sassa asked me to come early for my lesson. Not having practiced as much as I should have, I was sure I’d be lectured before we began the warm up scales. Instead she invited me into her kitchen and we kneaded dough, and mixed together a sprinkle of this and a dash of that. That lesson was one of the most memorable: as I played the repetitive exercises of Czerny for my teacher/baker, and as my fingers became more limber with the warm-up, the house too became warm with the aroma of the Kourabiedes. Later that evening I went home with a copy of the recipe tucked between the Adagio and Allegretto of Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 31, No22.

This thick volume, where the flour-dusted recipe still holds place to this day, was given to me on my 15th birthday. Inside the first page of the cover, Sassa wrote this inscription: To Micki On her 15th B’day Use Beethoven Well Love Sassa Maniotis. Sassa presented this book to me after the kitchen lesson and we started right away working through the first Sonata. It was composed and dedicated to Joseph Hayden. I love the piece for just that fact alone.
Three months after that lesson, I was playing that piece without a metronome, keeping speed and time in my brain. 4 months after that, skipping 16 works, Sassa had me playing the last piece: Sonata Op. 31, No2. And 8 weeks after that I quit piano lessons for good. I had become a bratty uncontrollable teenager, and piano was the last thing I wanted to be doing. By jumping to the last work, she almost knew that it would be the last piece I would play with her, and she probably wanted the both of us to feel that we had gotten through this daunting 341-page book together. On the pages of that last sonata, Sassa wrote a lot of demanding things with exclamation marks. Practice! Bring the metronome! There was a scolding tone in the pencil marks.

Recently, we visited Buffalo for one of Chaim's many cousins' Bat Mitzvah. His 9 year old nephew was there as well, a very good piano player. At our wedding he got right up with the band and played some keyboard. He is a fearless player. In Buffalo, he put on a concert for the family, making up programs and raffles, and even had a sing-along karaoke while he played back-up to our off key singing. He hit the notes, and was playing well, but I listened to him, remembering my practicing habits a year before I gave up the piano. I could hear that his heart was no longer in it; he played, just as I had, in quick ramming strokes, getting through the piece so that he could go on to the next song. When he missed notes, he didn't care, and kept going. I told Chaim that he will have retired his Suzuki books and quit by this time next year. Last time Chaim spoke to his sister, he found out that his nephew received a drum set for Chanukah, and we were sending him some wire drumming brushes wrapped with a bow.

Unlike the Suzuki method of teaching piano, Sassa did not rely on any one text, and would tailor a composer to each individual student, depending on many factors; their talent, their finger reach, basically what the student could handle. I have small hands, and could only reach one or two keys beyond an octave, but I loved Chopin. So probably against her discretion, Sassa changed the fingering as written and let me play Chopin. I was a mechanical player -- I could play anything when you put music in front of me, and I could sight read like nobody’s business. But…I could never play anything unless there was sheet music in front of me or I had the piece memorized.

I played everything by rote. I so envied the players who could improvise, just sit down and start playing random notes, jazz players especially. The first guy in art school that I had a crush on, in fact, had this talent. He was not very attractive, a cross between a camel and Harry Connick Jr. But he could play piano like Harry Connick, and in smoky dive bars no less, making it that much more appealing. We'd sneak into the school auditorium, or the church down the street and he’d teach me to do the base line, the simple repetitive 3 or 4 chords, so we could play together. He could go on for hours and riff.

I must have had talent though. Especially compared to another of Sassa’s students, Joshua Cohen. Poor Joshua, he really tried hard but somehow just couldn't get it. He was the older brother of my classmate Anna, and had been taking lessons 2 years longer, but it took him 3 times more time to get the fingering down, or to remember that the piece was in A major not B#. I used to come for my lessons following him, so on the days when my mother dropped me off early, I’d have to sit on the runner carpet in the foyer and listen to him struggling. We would pass each other in the hall each time; me with a look of compassion, and he with a look of defeat. Poor Joshua.

When you type in the words Piano and Prodigy in the Google search engine, 80 percent of your hits will refer you to a cute Asian girl or boy sitting at the piano or holding a tiny violin. This percentage was higher in the early eighties I imagine, and growing up in a part of the country where there were few Asians, somehow in the back of Sassa’s mind, I think perhaps this is what she wanted me to become. After all, I was already living the stereotypical child prodigy life; being two grades ahead in math skills, going to Saturday Japanese language schools, and taking piano lessons.

One year, to get me further prepped for a life of competitions, Sassa signed me up for theory classes at the music conservatory, five blocks from the Maniotis house and one block from the public library. This meant that on top of my lesson with Sassa, I would be going to the conservatory one day a week to learn about note reading, intervals and scales, pitch values, triad inversions among other theories I was already playing but not really understanding.

I had been playing piano for about 7 years by then, so they first had to test me to see what level of theory I should be taking. The testing process was brutal. I was blindfolded and led into a room and seated in the far corner of what I assumed, by the echoes, of a large room. I heard feet shuffling, lots of sniffles, and whispering giggles of kindergartners. After what seemed like 30 minutes, an adult male voice cleared his throat, and spoke.

“Miss Watanabe, I will first play a note, then from it, a chord. First I will play it, and then will play it as an arpeggio. Please tell me what note on the keyboard, then tell me the chord, and what key the chord is in”

You must be joking… Every time I got the answer wrong, I would hear giggles, and shuffling. I sat in the corner blindfolded giving incorrect response after another, for what felt like an eternity, and when the blinds were removed, I saw that it was worse than I thought. In a large recital room, I had been sitting about 20 feet from a Steinway, and in another corner, about 25 3-4 year-olds were sitting classroom style facing me, giggling and shifting, swinging their legs. I ran out crying…

My theory teacher turned out to be a man in his mid-forties, with really, really, really bad b.o. I couldn't bear to concentrate when he leaned over to point out something on the sheet music. Music Theory Classes lasted about a month. By then, I think that Sassa realized I would not begin competing and I believe I quit piano cold turkey.

Looking back at the sheet music, I get glimpses of those days with nostalgia and sadness. My mother was right after all, I should have practiced more. Looking over Sassa’s handwriting, and the endearing notes she wrote in the margins, I long to have a place to keep a grand piano (even a baby grand) if not to play, but in memory of my beloved piano teacher.

Now in our new house, in a few weeks we will have everything the two of us owns in one single place. This seems unbelievable. Currently my electronic weighted keyboard upright sits to the right of my computer desk unplugged. It is now temporarily being used as place to pile all the papers and school books.

My new year resolution is this:

Once all the books are unpacked, I will open up the Bach Inventions, practice the scales and begin where I left off ,over twenty years ago and begin again with Beethoven.

Last Day of Chanukah

2007-12-11T19:46:00.000-05:00

We missed a few nights of candle lighting due to Chaim getting a rare eye condition called Iritis, but now things are slowly going back to normal. We had our customary non kosher dinner this evening. Chaim cooked an international meal of: Belize conch with Korean sauce, a white rice casserole made with sausage from Schaller and Webber, Feta and Parmesan cheese, and a bit of red sauce. We aren't trying to be anti-Jewish, in fact we realized that we always eat this way and just noticed it during Chanukah.

We exchanged gifts, even though we said we wouldn't buy into the commercial hype. I got an electric toothbrush, a gift that may at first seem very unromantic, but in the end, it's about taking care of one's health, so it turns into a loving gesture. And I got Chaim a sample kit of popcorn; 8 different kinds of popcorn with some coconut oil (which is like 98% saturated fat) and movie spices. It's called the Amish country popcorn kit, and we wondered what coconut oil has anything to do with the Amish.

On the Third Day of Chanukah My True Love Gave to Me...

2007-12-06T20:50:00.000-05:00

Chaim went to Manhattan Chinatown for lunch, and brought back my favorite Vietnamese Sandwiches, and just like our past two nights of non kosher eating, we feasted on Shrimp with special sauce over rice, and the crumbled pork between delicious French bread.

Today's appropriate Times story is titled "A Holiday Medley, Off Key", where they discuss multi-religious and interfaith couples. The article lists examples of many Jewish families that have Christmas Trees, and most families try to balance out their separate religions and try to have an equal amount of decorations strung up around the house.
This year we don't have a tree. First we don't have space for it amongst the boxes and mess, and secondly, we don't know where any of the boxes of ornaments are. Just the other day I did unearth a cooler full of Christmas Tree lights, but decided it was too much to deal with. Chaim set up a holiday display on my Aluminium CD rack (replacing an Aluminium tree). On the top shelf is a Nutcracker doll, then some random tree ornaments he found on the street, the most humorous of them being the Family Guy, then under that is another Menorah Chaim found somewhere in an Upper East Side thrift shop, displaying some Day of the Dead figurines.
So far, celebrating Chanukah, has been a good replacement, a contained ornamented holiday with lots of time in the kitchen which is a double bonus because it warms up the house.

Oh and by the way, a Babka update. The dough finally rose after about 8 hours, and this morning I kneaded and twisted it into a nice sticky mess, and placed it into the oven to bake for 45 minutes just like the recipe called for. And much to my surprise, it is actually good. Chaim says "wow this is the real deal!, it tastes like it was made by a women who wears a wig". It doesn't look as good as the picture in the times, and I think it tastes like coffee cake.

Chaim works for the NYC Ballet, teaching dance appreciation to the schools, and so he seems to be in a lot more of a Christmas mood out of the two of us. The project he brings to schools is the Nutcracker Suite and so you can often hear him humming "Dance of the Sugar Plumb Fairies".
Since my birthday is on Christmas, even with out a tree, wreaths, mistletoe, and lights, we will always have something to celebrate. So when ever we hear a Christmas Carol being played on T.V. or radio, Chaim immediately starts to sing along, but makes it into a Birthday song for me:
so instead of

"We wish you a merry Christmas,
We wish you a merry Christmas,
We wish you a merry Christmas,
and a Happy New Year!",

Chaim will sing
"I wish you a Happy Birthday,
I wish you a Happy Birthday,
I wish you a Happy Birthday,
to-oo Mick-i Jesus!

Also today we got phone service, through Verizon. The technician was due anytime between 8am-12pm, and he actually came at 8:15 and was done in two hours!!!! That's what I call a great Chanukah present!

On the Second Day of Chanukah my true love gave to me...

2007-12-05T19:05:00.001-05:00

Well actually no presents were exchanged but I won my first game of Dreidel. I won a whole $3.00. It was a short game in that on the second spin, when it was my turn to call the ante, I went all in, because my wrist hurt, and won the pot when Chaim landed on the shin letter, and he couldn't put one in.

For today's gastronomic experiment, I saw that the Wednesday food section had a write up on Babka, so I decided to give it a try. Chaim's friend Darra Goldstein, (who curated his plastic spoon collection into the Feeding Desires Show at the Cooper Hewitt) was quoted in the article defining: "Babka comes from baba, a very tall, delicate yet rich yeast-risen cake eaten in Western Russia and Eastern Poland." Unfortunately, it involves yeast as Darra says, and definitely not my forte. I am now waiting, ( have been for about an hour now) for the dough to rise, and I don't think the mound has moved in the vertical direction one inch.

We lit our candles tonight, this time three, and because last nights candle burned the right side of tonight's candle, the third candle burned much shorter than it should have. I hope the dough rises before the candles burn out.

Are we supposed to eat Latkes for 8 days???

2007-12-04T21:13:00.000-05:00

Happy Chanukah!....
Some spell it Hanukkah, but now that I am married to Chaim, anything with a "hu'gh" sound with forever be spelled with a CH.

Trying to get with the spirit of my new borrowed holiday, I took out our new menorah, given to us by Pat and Mia. (We had put two of them on our gift registry thinking that we could use them all year round as candelabras, but since Mia works at the Skirball Center in LA, they probably were on to us, and only got us one from the Jewish Museum gift shop).

It's great to be able to begin using our wedding gifts for our home. The only candles I could unearth were the two packs of Manischewitz Shabbat candles I had bought years ago for the 9-11 emergency kit. Since the cans of Dinty Moore beef stew had been consumed, the candles were the only things left in the kit, so I figured this would be a good time to use them up as well. Only, I learned that Shabbat candles and Chanukah candles are different sizes and burn different lengths. Chanukah candles are much smaller so I had to shave off the bottom inch of the Shabbat candles to fit them into our new menorah. I stated shaving and filled all 9 candle holders, only to be told that you are only supposed to place only the candle you are burning into the menorah. Stubbornly I left them all in and so the first candle began to melt the second night's light, so tomorrow will be a little shorter festival of light.

I came home tonight with three potatoes and 4 beets thinking to make some Latkes for Chaim, in honor of the holiday. For some reason, I had in my mind that beets had something to do with this holiday..... I didn't have any chicken shmaltz, so I used a mixture of olive and vegetable oil. In addition, I added some of the fresh sage from Jill and Aaron's garden. The last batch, I shredded some beets and we put a little bit of wasabi on them (we didn't have any horseradish) for an interesting twist. Chaim and I both wanted apple sauce on the latkes instead of sour cream, so I sent him out to the Dynasty to get some. On his way out started chanting "pork chops and apple" sauce to myself, something from an old Brady Bunch episode, and 15 minutes later, Chaim returned with the apple sauce and some pork chops, telling me that this is not really kosher.

So this is what I learned today:
Beside the fact that you are only supposed to put the candles you are lighting in the menorah, the 9th candle is called the shamas, and this one lights all the other candles. And unlike the punk sparkler you use to light fireworks, this candle stays lit the whole time the other candles are lit, so just like taking antibiotics, on the first night you take two and light both. I also learned that since Chanukah candles are smaller, you are not supposed to use them for the Sabbath, since the burn time is much shorter. Therefore, our Menorah candles are actually on for way too long according to the family Jew. But I say we are just having a deluxe first Chanukah in our new Woodside home.

My only question is, are we supposed to eat latkes for the next seven nights???????

Recyling after Thanksgiving

2007-12-04T21:07:00.001-05:00

Recycling pick up on our block happens on Mondays and Thursdays, and often lands on a National holiday; Memorial day, etc...

Since we spent the whole weekend unpacking instead of gorging ourselves with turkey and comatose on the couch watching football, we ended up with more than 300 empty boxes to put out on the curb...only this pile ended up becoming a fire hazard blocking our entryway until the next time the Recycling truck came rolling by.

Library of Congress vs. Dewey

2007-11-25T22:02:00.000-05:00

Thanksgiving weekend was spent mostly unpacking. I spent approximately 8-10 hours a day cataloguing about 350 books. Yes, I know, I'm a freak.... I pretty much know what books I have, but decided to put call numbers on them when I realized Chaim and I would be combining all of our books together, to make it easier for us to find them. There are a lot of art and design books, so most of the shelves up to this point are filled with N books. I'm much more comfortable with the Library of Congress than the Dewey Decimal call number system of dividing up the books, but the ones that I didn't agree with, I put my own numbers and catalogued them to make sense of it.

I have a few oddball volumes; from Rob, from one of his trips home to Holland, an operetta by Robert Wilson in Dutch; and a found hardback architectural sketchbook with a forged inscription by an ex-boyfriend. These get catalogued in their own special places.

In the new glass fronted shelves that was given to us by Mordecai ben Chaim, we have started an autographed book section. My copy of The Corrections from Jonathan Franzen sits surrounded by Chaim's numerous books from famous authors and artists.
There are about 20 more boxes in the studio that will be unpacked soon, and we haven't even begun with the fiction. oy vay!

Joining our Stuff.

2007-11-13T12:45:00.000-05:00

We are finally at the stage of moving boxes and beginning to unpack. This is the first time that Chaim and I will have all of our belongings together under one room. When I say all of our belongings, this means my studio (with large power tools), old art in crates from the countless sculpture exhibits where nothing was sold, my library, both of our art works and report cards from elementary school, his 10,000+ menu collection, his collection of hockey sticks, plastic spoons, chewing gum, graffiti stickers, 30 lbs of keys, and the list goes on for may pages.

My mother came with a car load of belongings I didn't even want or have room for.

Two weekends ago, Chaim and I took a one way flight to Buffalo and drove a 12 foot truck filled with more stuff, like the aforementioned hockey stick collection back to New York. Thank goodness we got a few pieces of furniture to store some of this stuff in. Currently we are living in a cramped house, resembling more of an antique or thrift shop. We have very little furniture, so the boxes and crates act as night stands, and side tables.

Since Chaim and I have been living the luxurious lifestyle (NOT!) of having two apartments plus a 500 sqft studio, we have doubles, and sometimes triples of some items. In the Kitchen, these multiple items are most prevalent. We have just unpacked only one quarter of our boxes marked KITCHEN, and already we have a few boxes of repetitive gadgets and flatware, items that will soon be packed away to be given away the next kid we know that goes off to college, or sold for very cheaply in our first ever yard sale in the spring. We also finally got to unpack and open our wedding presents and are glad to say we still like what we picked from the Williams and Sonoma registry.

Though we are no longer collecting rainwater, our whole kitchen cabinetry is constructed out of used furniture. The first set I constructed out of our old crappy MDF entertainment center. There will be cabinet doors made from a collection of fruit crate wood, among other scrap wood I have from the studio.

We Are So Brown.

2007-11-06T07:57:00.000-05:00

It's not easy being green, as I've stated months back when I re-tiled the bathroom in Chaim's apartment on the Upper East side. Now after months of trying to live an Eco-conscious lifestyle, we are now throwing in our non-biodegradable towel and giving up. I got a package in the mail from HSBC bank, with a "go green kit". It contained a very dim fluorescent bulb, this note pad, (that's really just a waste of paper since there is hardly space to make a list due to all the ads), a reusable bag that's too small to use in my current lifestyle, and a whole lot of papers and pamphlets talking about being green. It seems that this green living promoted by huge corporations is a sham.

Let me explain though, that we did try very hard to be green:

1. Recycling Rain Water:
After we discovered how much rain water comes out of our rooftop gutter every time it pours, we began collecting bottles and bottles of it in the 2 litre Schweppes Seltzer bottles. The last time we had a downpour, Chaim was outside on the parapet getting soaking wet collecting rain water for about 20 minutes. He proudly dragged in 32 bottles and we brought them down to our side garden, being so proud of ourselves that we could water our garden guilt free the next time a drought hit Queens.

The bottles sat in our garden for about one day, looking as though we were about to throw a party or we ransacked the Schweppes bottle plant. The next morning, we awoke to 3 bottles sitting in our garden, with our front sidewalk littered with white caps. Apparently, the Hispanic recycling ladies came by and emptied all our bottles so they could get the nickel for the bottles. They had the nerve to dump out all our hard work and pollute our front sidewalk with non recyclable plastic caps.

2. The compost heap.
Early in the summer, I built a nice compost bin out of the lathe that came out of our house. It is compact, well fairly compact (3x4x3 foot box) with a swinging front gate. We have been throwing in all kinds or organic matter into it daily. The amount of organic waste we create, along with the leaves and vines we pulled off the tree proved too much for my little box. Now mind you, we have not had a kitchen for 3 months, so there is not that much food waste being produced out of our house. Just last week, Chaim cleaned out the table saw (though demolition is over, he is still in charge of garbage and food), and dumped five drywall buckets of sawdust into the compost heap. Since the heap is situated in the back of the yard, we thought that the flies and gnats that it attracted would help in deterring our next door neighbors (i.e. the Ecuadorian night club kitchen workers) from opening the Fire exit door to our garden.

It is now November and we still have gnats flying about, sometimes in our downstairs bathroom. Last week I found a slug that had meandered into the house dragging a hair of corncob husk from a summer barbecue, no doubt from the compost pile. There's so much stuff in there, that it is hard to turn the pile, which you are supposed to do every few weeks. And most people tell us that it will take a long time before we can use it for the garden. In the mean time, we need the space outside so that I can build a small shed for the new barbecue grill (given to us by mom and pop Mordecai) along with other gardening odds and ends, since there is no longer room in the garage for such things.

3. Fluorescent light bulbs.
I like the idea of having these low energy saving bulbs in every socket in the house. I've been collecting them, sending away for them, from places like HSBC every time they have a give away program. There are two problems with these bulbs, not including the fact that they are not bright enough to work under.

1. They are a weird shape and thus, do not fit under the glass fixtures in the ceiling lights. The two I screwed in the bathroom fixture immediately broke under the compression of the glass dome covering. The ones installed in the kitchen were too big also, thus, I had to remount the glass cover upside-down, and it looks ridiculous. The second problem is that the new dimmer switches we installed to operate the fans in the remainder of the rooms are not compatible with florescent lights. In fact we learned that no dimmer switches work with these bulbs. So now we have a lot of bulbs sitting in the laundry closet awaiting a new system.

The plumbers have not returned yet, so we are saving fuel, since we are only heating 1/3rd of the house. That's about all we are doing to stay green, or shall we say blue.....

The Missing Plumber

2007-10-30T08:12:00.000-04:00

Currently it is 50 degrees outside, and inside it is 65. We have no heat on the first floor of the house. Chaim thinks that Rakeesh the plumber is a sadist. He was suppose to return to finish the job three weeks ago, before my mother came to visit. She has come and gone and still we have pipes dangling out of the walls dripping water into takeout containers, not connected to anything. Rakeesh teases our GC and tells him he will be over at 3pm, and never shows up; never calls and never shows up. He has pulled this stunt at least 3 times. At first we were sympathetic, "oh he must be very busy, " now I think," he better have a good excuse, like gotten into an accident for him to blow us off!"

I think he damaged his testicles, and that's why he has not returned.

Moving

2007-10-14T08:44:00.000-04:00

Exactly three months and one day after we closed on our house, Chaim and I finally moved upstairs to our new bedroom. Actually we moved only our mattress (placed back on the floor) and hung up our ketubah on the wall. From our spot on the floor, the ceilings seemed cathedral-like and we yelled to hear our voices echo off the bare walls.

It is now October and the weather has been unusual. One day it is 85 degrees and the next day torrential rain storms with a hurricane warning, and later still the evening dips down in the low 40's. Chaim had a brilliant goofy idea of installing a spigot onto our gutter downspout so that it would be easy to collect rain water. Instead he sits outside in the downpour, with a funnel filling our many seltzer bottles. Rakeesh and his guys have yet to come back and reinstall our radiators, thus we have no heat. We also don't know if our furnace works since the shiny blue machine in the garage has not been hooked up to anything. We hope that he will come back before we can see our breaths inside.

Today, Frankie and his guys are supposed to come back to finish up the electrical work. The list is long, and we are still waiting for the ceiling fan dimmer switches to arrive by Fed-Ex. He will definitely be coming back at another date.

Since the last post we have had Kevin and Fabio (Fernando) come to Stucco the parapet. I was joking about putting in some Doric columns outside, covering the brick, and when I came back upstairs to see how they were doing, he had carved out two pilasters out of 3 inch styrofoam. The process was done in a few steps. On top of the plywood walls, a pink plastic was nailed on. Then on top of that, one inch white styrofoam, made of the same material as coffee cups, gets screwed on with big plastic washers. Then they apply a white fiberglass mesh, similar to what you use to tape drywall joints. Then the first coat of stucco goes on. This step took about 10 hours to do. The next day a different group of guys came back and applied the top coat of stucco on to finish it off. Kevin came back a few days later by himself to caulk the joints.
Smith also came over one day to help paint the final coat of primer on the kitchen area where Diego finally finished mudding.
One of the days I was teaching, the roofer came and cut two holes in our roof and installed some mushroom vents. He also applied a layer of the silver coating to improve the surface of the roof.
The days I was not at school, I hung our closet doors and finished off the bedroom with baseboard molding. I used clear pine and didn't route any edges, so all the simple 90 degrees angles makes our bedroom looking a bit like a Shaker room.

Floors

2007-09-29T10:10:00.001-04:00

On Thursday, Rico's guys showed up early in the AM and began sanding. The first thing they did was to take the electric panel off the main circuit box and wired their big Gallaxy 2000 sander to the breaker. They were not going to take any chances with the electricity in the upstairs rooms. They replaced the warped floor boards in the bedroom and patched holes and cracks with putty. It was a day with different accented English spoken by the crew of Jamaican dudes.
I spent most of the day downstairs under the banging working on the computer. At around 7pm, they had put the second coat of polyurethane on the floor and said they would return on Saturday morning to do the final coat.
We avoided the upstairs for two days, wanting it to dry without disturbances and waiting for the smell to dissipate.

It is now 10:30am on Saturday morning and we are sitting here waiting for them to show up. We just went up to peak at the work and was a bit disappointed. The floors are way too glossy, and polyurethane really turned them yellow. Plus the new boards they laid down do not match the old color, and the putty did not turn yellow to match the rest of the wood. I hope they come soon, so we can have them fix it.

A Peach for a Peach

2007-09-27T10:01:00.000-04:00

Last night's meal at EGB was a little different. On top of BYOB, we also BYOPP: we brought our own peach pie. The last of the peaches on our tree were picked by an artist named Meg Duguid, who does performance art with pies. She and her boyfriend came over about a month and a half ago and took the remaining peaches of the season. We were a little bummed that the peaches were no more, but when she told us that she would bake two pies, and one would be shipped to Chicago, and the other to us, we got excited.
Two nights ago, we ended up having dinner later than usual. It ended up kinda late since le porte-fenetre had to be installed. Slappy and Taco came to install it after their normal work day was over, so we wrapped up around 10:30pm. We rushed over to EGB before they closed and as usual, had the place all to ourselves. We noticed it was more quiet than usual, due to the fact the daughter wasn't there to wait on us. The mother told us that she was at the emergency room all day, for a sinus infection. She had gone to school earlier that day to take a test, and couldn't focus, so she left school with t high fever. We also found out that the family calls her Peach, because she is cute and sweet. So when the pie arrived in the mail, we thought it would only be appropriate to bring Peach a piece of pie as a get well gesture. The four of us returned last night, (this time PV instead of Slappy) with the crate in tow, weighing $60 worth of shipping and handling. After dinner, Paul, the owner-dad, heated the pie up for us in the oven and brought it back up. We had ordered a new appetizer called Golden Bag- a deep fried wanton skin filled with shrimp, water chestnut, and mushroom, served with a delicious sweet lime sauce that tasted like key lime pie. So we requested for more of that sauce and put a big dollop onto the peach pie. The crust was a bit undercooked, but the peaches had been soaked in ginger for a week, and were delicious! We ate half the pie and left the remaining half with the restaurant for Peach. I had noticed that the restaurant had a Junior's cheesecake sitting on the counter, when we walked in. Apparently we could have some of that tonight for dessert when we go back.

Our order: Golden Bag- excellent.
Golden Corn- ground chicken, corn, cilantro, red curry and Thai sauce- very good.
Fresh Roll aka Por pia (Chinese sausage, shrimp, eggs, bean sprout, tofu and cucumber with tamarined sauce)- good but kinda ho hum.
Everything Pad Thai- good but a bit too sweet.
PV got the Mustang burger-Louisiana spices and jack cheese- excellent according to him.
Taco got the Thai Burger-Thai curry and peanut sauce- excellent according to him.
total bill was $38.00 plus tip. WOW.

We can almost see the light at the end of the Tunnel

2007-09-25T13:23:00.000-04:00

Early on Saturday, Chaim began the demolition for the upstairs patio, aka, bump-out, parapet, smoking section.
I dug up my old cold chisel and sledge hammer, a tool I hadn't used since trying a hand at stone carving my Junior year at KCAI.
Apparently, that was the right tool, because Chaim finished the job in less than 3 hours.

After all the exterior rubble and stucco was cleared away, it was unbelievably simple for the rotted away wood wall to come down. Almost too simple!!!

Right after the guys took the 3 walls down, it began to pour. The weatherman had obviously lied about his forecast for the weekend. I went to the bank and when I returned I found this Rube Goldberg-esque set up, diverting the roof rain water from coming into the house.

The guys set the new French doors in the spot where we think it should go.
One evening last week, a woman from Paris came over to interview me for her Ph.D dissertation. After the interview, I brought her upstairs to show her the reason my studio is still in storage.
We asked her "what are French doors called in France?", expecting an answer similar to-"Chinese food in China is called food". But instead she told us that French doors in France are called porte fenêtre or door with windows. So now we have both, a porte fenetre and a porte sans fenetre!
Slappy takes a break from the work to have a quick hamburger from our favorite spot across the street: EGB. He and PV ended up eating 4 meals in a row from there that weekend. Lunch, then a buffalo wing snack, then dinner with the rest of the crew, then another full day of eating on Sunday.

A view of the demolition bits and pieces from the upstairs parapet piled in front of the house after we threw it out the upstairs window. It sure beat having to walk up and down the stairs with it all!

Ralphie, a man of many hats.
Frankie, Ralphie and Joe, (aka Spencer, Giseppe, etc..)
return for the umpteenth time to install some more wiring.
Hopefully the next visit will be their last.

The 2x4 and plywood wall goes back up in the parapet, awaiting the final installation of our porte fenetre. But before the doors can go in, the roofer must come and put a new membrane on the area.
This Thursday Rico, the floor guy comes to sand and polyurethane the floors!!!! But before then, David and Flocko, the Argentinians have to come back and sheet rock the ceiling of the kitchen and the walls for the new parapet. We don't have time for the mud guy or painting before Thursday, so I suppose all that will get done after............

A Blast From The Past.

2007-09-22T10:22:00.000-04:00

In this week's Sunday Real Estate Section, there is an article about my old apartment: 30 Clinton Street, and how the board turned down my first prospective buyer. The story clears up some unanswered questions I had of the woman who almost bought 6G; what she did, what her circumstances were, etc... I look back to my first apartment building fondly, and I miss especially Kemel, our super and all around great fix-it man, but don't miss the months of being on the market. Thank goodness that phase of my life is over.

Food Review #4: The Free Pizza and others

2007-09-18T12:40:00.000-04:00

We haven't had a good Chaim-cooked meal at home for some time, since the stove is not hooked up and a thick layer of plaster dust covers the kitchen. The other night, we decided to order in and get pizza. We had already tried a so-so pepperoni pizza from Pizza Boy II on Roosevelt Ave., and decided to try a different place.

So we looked in our menu folder and came across this place. (50-22 39th Ave)

The menu is one of those quintessential Italian 7 page documents, with every type of pasta, pizza and salads, with catering, just like Carmine's in Manhattan. They have a fresh Mozzarella Margarita pizza, so we decided this place was worth ordering from. The large is priced at $19.95, five dollars more than the rest of the pizzas. We thought it must be a tremendous pie! We called at 7pm, and they said it would take 30-45 minutes. An hour later, no pizza, so we called to see what was taking so long. Oh it's on it's way they said. Forty minutes later, still no pizza, and we are starving. The phone rings at this point, and Donato's is calling us apologizing profusely saying someone took our pizza. I said to forget it, we don't want the damn pizza, and the manager said, "It's on us, we will give it to you for free". Five minutes later a huge mediocre pizza arrived at our door. The crust was undercooked. (what can you expect with them rushing) and the mozzarella cheese was cut into 1 inch chunks. If we had paid $20 we would have been very upset.

It's hard to get a pizza as good as Grimaldi's in Queens.

There are however many other things we can get here that I couldn't get to eat in Brooklyn Heights. Like corn slathered with mayo, sprinkled with Mexican queso blanco and dusted with red chili peppers. Mmmmmmmm. When I was little, in St. Louis, I used to put mayo on my corn when everyone else was melting sticks of butter on theirs. They would look at me appalled, to see the mayo/corn combo hit my mouth. I was so excited when Chaim took me to Spanish Harlem years ago, and saw that corn on a stick with mayo was normal.

A little man was passing by our house with his shopping cart, with a cooler filled with steaming corn, and some large tupperware containers. He had about 50 layers of aluminum foil folded together as his hot mitt, so that he could hold onto the steaming corn as he put layers of mayo and cheese on it. It was delicious, and all for $2.

Our third visit to EGB or "Eat Great Burger: Thai and American" Restaurant.

Last night, we went back to our new favorite eating place across the street. Since our last visit, they had replaced the hand written sign saying "we have Thai desserts for sale" to a more professional looking ink jet printed sign taped to the front window. They had hooked up the television and had a bowl of silk flowers sitting on the bar. There was even one other table occupied, by a Thai family. It turned out that it was one of the chef and her family. We were greeted warmly like always, and sat at the window table for the first time.

We had brought an open bottle of wine from home so the daughter brought us some glasses right away. After filling our glasses, she says, "five minutes, I come back"

Three minutes later, she came back and seeing that we didn't have enough to drink (it was only a half bottle) she asks us,
"do you like beer?"
skeptically we answer back, "what kind of beer?"
"we have a beer in the refrigerator."
knowing they still don't have a liquor license, we ask again, "what kind of beer?"
"it's a small beer. it was left."
"can we see the beer?"
"ok." and she comes back with a bottle of non-alcoholic Coors lite.
"you don't like?"
Then we have to explain that it is not really beer, that it's basically beer flavored water.

We decided to order new things, and no repeats from other visits. The second visit, when we came with PV, we got the Buffalo chicken wings (excellent), fried calamari (very good), a repeat of the green papaya salad, a Pad Thai (excellent) and a Cesar salad. PV was amused at the site of the Cesar salad and papaya salad coming off of the same menu.

This time we ordered the Naked Shrimp salad (excellent), tabbouleh (which they didn't have yet), beef stewey noodle soup with a hint of cinnammon and anise (excellent but almost too rich) and a ground chicken salad that I can't remember the name of (very good). We also ordered some sticky rice, and got a mound of it wrapped in a banana leaf. This is the first time in all the hundreds of times I've been to Thai restaurants that I didn't get microwaved sticky rice wrapped in saran wrap inside a wood basket.

The daughter told us she is studying to better her English to get her MBA. She wants to become an accountant. I asked the High School son how school is going? and he said he had swimming that day. I thought he was on the swim team, but he told us that he was learning to swim, and it's a good thing that he can float. We didn't see the father but I guess he was in the basement cooking away.All in all, our third meal at EGB was excellent.

A Very Busy Week

2007-09-10T22:16:00.000-04:00

There's so much going on I can't keep track...

Windows and French doors delivered, and stored in the garage until the boom truck can lift them up through the window opening, since they don't fit through the staircase.

more lathe that got taken away, wrapped up and bundled with festive red and green Christmas ribbon.7am, foam being pumped into the empty oil tank in our side garden. Finally we can put that job to rest.

We put up the 1 inch foam insulation on the ceiling, making it look a bit like a disco when the lights flashed on.

I painted a brighter yellow stripe in front of our garage.

The taxi strike went on for 3 days, and this cab was parked right outside our door for the whole duration. We finally saw the cab driver and he gladly moved the cab just so the boom truck could park in the necessary spot under our front window.

the boom truck lifts up the stack of sheet rock through the window opening.

After the sheet rock and windows get boomed up, Slappy and Taco install the front windows.

Putting in the first layer of insulation into the closet.

Chaim cleans up after we put up the second layer of wall insulation.

The young Argentinian guys put up the first piece of ceiling sheet rock.

Food Review #3

2007-09-10T21:03:00.001-04:00

We have been patiently anticipating the opening of a new restaurant on Roosevelt Avenue. When we first moved into the neighborhood, the already closed down restaurant was called Arca Noa Noa, another Latin Restaurant. We got a little excited when we saw that the workmen doing construction inside the new place was Chinese. This definitely signified that there would be a new Asian Restaurant opening soon. Yesterday we saw a guy in the doorway, and so we introduced ourselves and asked what type of food he would have. He said Thai. My next question was, "Are you from Thailand?" and when he said yes, we got really really excited.
Tonight Chaim and I went for our first meal at EGB Thai & American Restaurant. We learned that EGB stands for Eat Great Burgers. The two different owners couldn't decide on what type of food to serve, Thai food, or burgers, so that's the reason for the weird name.
The menu is a bit bizarre but the food...(drum roll) was very good. We ordered a little of everything so we could get the feel for the place. Half the menu is your Thai standards, and the other half of the menu is burgers with a strange combination of toppings with interesting names. There is a mixture of Louisiana Cajun, Italian and burger joint fare.

We ordered:
curry puffs- $3.75 two puffy deep fried puffs with an interesting orange juice base sauce.
Chaim ordered the Tom Yung Koong soup $2.95, spicy and good with shrimp.
U-don salad (som tom-or papaya salad) $6.00 very spicy and good.
Pad Se iew (flat broad noodle) $6.00 with beef and egg. very good.
that was the first course.
Then we finished off the dinner with:
green chicken curry- $6.00 very good.
and a U-don burger- $6.95 which was topped with sauteed garlic, onion basil and cherry peppers. very good...but couldn't eat it all so we took the rest home.

The whole family seemed to be working tonight. The father, Paul came and sat at our table and we talked food, baseball and Queens stuff. The mother would stop by the table and make sure we liked the food. The daughter was our waitress. But the classic move by the son made it really feel like a mom and pop restaurant. We asked for some hot chillies, and he brought over a ceramic spice set filled with different sauces and spices. He began to say "My mom said to be careful...." and we thought he would finish off the sentence with "...the spices can be very hot", but instead he said "my mom said be careful because these containers break very easily." I think when his mother told him that, she met for him to be careful, not to tell the customers that we could break them. When was the last time you've been told that in a restaurant??? Then he came back a few minutes later and said "my dad wants to know how you want the burger cooked." It was just like being a guest at their home.

We will definitely be going back.

53-21 Roosevelt Ave.
718-205-6063
no liquor license yet.
grand opening still far into the future.

Labor Day Weekend

2007-09-02T15:58:00.001-04:00

Labor Day Weekend signals the end of summer and the beginning of school. It also means that I will soon be retiring from my job as construction worker, giving up hammering nails and switching over to instructing students on how to use a hammer. I get to stay fairly clean all day long. I get to go into an air conditioned classroom, and better yet, work in an air conditioned shop. With the last push before my retirement, Chaim and I worked through the weekend, getting up as many 2x4's onto the ceiling so that the insulation can be attached to them next. That was the hardest job thus far. The demolition was bad, because it was so dusty and itchy. But putting up wood on the ceiling was strenuous, working above my head on a ladder, screwing in deck screws onto 80 year old very hard roof joists. I didn't realize I could get any more sore, but somehow, I did. My muscle memory brought back aches very similar to when I used to go rock climbing. Instead of a harness with carabiners hanging off if it, I had a tool belt strung around my waist, and realized that compressing rock face with my arms is very similar to holding up a heavy 8 foot 2x4 with one hand, as I balanced the drill with the screw in the other.

Joe Taco also hired our friend "Slappy", to help frame out the parapet wall and front windows. It was great to have a crew upstairs banging out a job in three days what it would probably take me 2 weeks. And their job would be done much more level and square than what I could have done.
The topic of permits is still a cloudy area. Some say that you don't need a permit if the work doesn't involve structural stuff, ie... tearing down a load bearing wall, or building a new floor. Other say that you need a permit for anything you do, and one person said that if you don't hire anyone, you don't need a permit. So far we haven't gotten any permits for much of the work, and are trying to work covertly. We have realized that things are less strict outside of Manhattan, and people are less eager to call the authorities and rat you out, if you live in an enclave of immigrants. We have also been giving out peaches off of our tree to passerby to keep a friendly rapport with the neighbors.
The plan is to take out the window, frame out the wall that the new windows will attach to, then put back the old windows so that we wouldn't have a gaping hole, or an opening covered with plywood until we could put in the new windows.

The new windows have been sitting in the garage for 2 weeks, but they are 3 inches too big to bring them up the staircase. So the plan is to have a boom truck lift the windows up through the window opening the same day that we get the sheet rock delivery. But we can't get the sheet rock delivery until the insulation goes up on the ceilings. But the ceilings can't be covered until Joe Taco runs more cable and wires up there. Its a never-ending domino effect of stuff.Here is Chaim in the open hole where the new windows will someday go.

"Slappy", is the cousin of Paul, and I had met him before, when Chaim and I went to a wine store in the East Village, where he had designed the interior woodwork. He also used to teach at Parsons, in the furniture department with my friend Kimberly, so I had a fairly good idea of what type of worker he would be: talented, efficient, artistic, and listened to NPR while working. All these things happily turned out to be true, and he had some humorous building trade knowledge as well like:
-the horizontal short pieces of wood that go between the studs are called "cats", because they keep the mice from climbing up your walls.
-we should get dog shit and strategically place it outside our house. Since we don't have permits, and can't block the sidewalk with caution tape, this is supposed to keep the pedestrians from walking right under our front window where debris and dust could be a problem for passerby.
He had funny problem solving tricks, like reusing the chain from the window weights by screwing it to a scrap piece of wood to prop up the window so it wouldn't fall out. Very decorative indeed.

At the end of the day, the old windows were put back in, so that if a building inspector drove by, it wouldn't look like we were doing any construction. Our neighbors probably think we are crazy, spending all day making all kinds of noise and dust, and in the end nothing had changed. Actually it got a little bit more white trashy looking, with the scrap pieces of wood holding the broken windows open.
So far we are still within our budget. Supposedly, we have saved about $10,000 by doing a lot of the work ourselves. Our General Contractor is working for beers, (this weeks special: Dinkel-Acker), and knows a lot of connections enabling us to get lumber and sheet rock for a lot less than cost.
I just can't wait for the sheet rock delivery. That is when I know the job will start to go down hill and the end is near.

Chaim and Paul looking out the old window and new frame job.

Busy Day: Furnace, Insulation and Peaches

2007-08-29T08:48:00.000-04:00

Last week of August, two months before the weather starts to turn, we got our shiny new gas furnace installed, replacing the old sooty oil furnace. Rakeesh (the plumber), a type-A maniac from Guyana with four cell phones strapped to his belt like magazine cartridges, and his crew of three men, drove up at 11:30 am, just after the street cleaning vacuum truck passed by. It took 4 guys to unload the Burnham Furnace out of the van. They disconnected the old pipes and reinstalled bigger pipes to code.

The van that the boiler was delivered in. Notice how all the guy's homeland is represented on the graphics.

We disconnected the rest of the radiators on the second floor and moved the stove, so that I could demo the parapet wall and Joe Taco could look at the framing job that had to be done in that section of the house.

The parapet is the money pit of the job. It's where all the water from the roof drains onto and has been a problem area for a while, judging from the leaks on the floor below. We decided that the whole section needs to be redone; re-framed, re-insulated, re-plastered and concreted. But since we are technically starting from scratch, we get to redesign the area, which means we will be putting in French doors in the place of the windows, making the little parapet a lovely outdoor cafe on the second floor, as well as becoming the smoking section for our guests, when we have parties.

Last weekend, Harley and I also began putting up the first layer of insulation.

before

and after insulation.

At the end of the day we gave the plumbers some peaches picked from our second harvest. We also realized that to keep the peaches from getting out of control, we need to pick a bowl full everyday.

Our First Harvest

2007-08-19T11:14:00.000-04:00

Now that the oil tank had been vacuumed out, I thought it was a good time to work on the outside garden. Also there was wood piling up in the garage from the demolition, that we couldn't easily throw away, I decided to make use of it and build a compost container. Queens Botanical Garden had sent us a pamphlet on how to get started, and what not to put into the compost.
I spent a few hours trimming the peach tree and thinning out the grape vine. At the end of the day, we had about 6 bags of yard waste, and with the construction garbage piling up in the garage, we didn't want to put the new bags on the curb.
The compost bin is built with old 2x4 and the wood lathe from the upstairs walls. Chaim thought it looked like a pig pen. With so much wood lathe left over, we probably could raise some pigs in the side yard. I wonder if you need a permit for that....

Our first grape harvest! We believe they are concord grapes.

The first peach to become pink.
In a few weeks hopefully we can make some peach cobbler.

A few weeks ago we began collecting rain water, trying to be more Eco-conscious. Here is our small collection system. It began to storm and we were bummed to see that our plastic system had only collected about one inch of water.

We later went upstairs to see the gutter from the roof was emptying gallons and gallons of water onto our first floor roof parapet. We realized that the next time it rains, we need to funnel the rain water from the roof, and forget about our Poland Springs bottle system.

Let There Be Lite

2007-08-16T19:31:00.000-04:00

After a month of construction, we finally have electricity on the second floor and garage, no walls but power!

After the insulation and drywall is put up, then we can install the ceiling fans and switch plates.

Panel with added switches. Now we are waiting for an all house surge protector, a little box that will connect to this box essentially turning our whole house into a power strip. Hopefully we can get one from the brother-in-law. No more extension cords!

Eureka! Eureka! Oil Tank Mystery Solved

2007-08-16T16:53:00.000-04:00

Chaim posing with the oil vacuum truck

When we bought the house, we knew that we would have to decommission the buried oil tank in the side yard. The problem was that everyone we got estimates from (Oil company that used to deliver the fuel, to 3 different contractors) could tell us what size the tank was. The best guess was that it was either a 550 gallon or 1100 gallon tank. If it was a 1100 gal tank, that would mean a space the size of a small studio apartment was buried in the side yard.

The oil tank was the scariest unknown of our whole construction job. We had read and heard nightmares of people going bankrupt because of oil spills. Chaim told me that his brother-in-law's company had moved to Iowa because of a 250 million dollar law suit for contaminated soil in North Carolina. When we told one of Chaim's High School buddies named Captain Video, about the fear of oil in the ground, he came back with - "where did all the damn oil come from in the first place?"
hmmmmmmm, something to think about as we called the final company for an estimate.

Today two guys from Pro-Test, Andres and Tommy, the company we had hired for the soil test, came to cut and clean out the tank. Whew!

After they cut the top of the fill pipe in the front of the yard, the guys took a brand new tape measure and used it to see how far back the tank was buried in the yard. They stuck it into the hole just like putting a dipstick into a car to check the oil level. After pulling out an oily tape measure, they told me the tank was buried 26 feet back.

Next they dug up a 4x4 foot perfect square down to the top of the tank. Andres used a gasoline powered saw to cut this hole into the tank. Here is the cut hole with smoke coming out of it.

Then another company drove up, double parked in front and vacuumed the oil out of the hole.

Here is a view of the empty tank with the sludge at the bottom.

Yuck!

While the guys were occupied in their quadrant of the yard, Chaim took the opportunity to use their shovels to dig up the ivy roots.
At first we liked the look of ivy on the brick, giving it a nice collegiate feel. But later with our new home owner eyes, realized that the vines were not so good for the mortar on the brick and it was filled with bugs.
So a week ago we had cut the vines and they had all died, still clinging to the side of the building, and with every breeze, bringing a bit of fall early to 54th street, as brown leaves swirled about on the street. In one week, the hardy tough roots had began to sprout new ivy. So Chaim was determined not to have to keep battling with them. He was going to get to the root of the problem.
Tommy told Chaim at one point to go to their truck and get a tool called a mattock (similar to a pickaxe), to really do the job right. Here is a picture of Chaim with their array of orange painted tools battling it out with the tough roots.
After the tank was vacuumed out, Andres donned a Yellow suit and jumped into the hole to clean out the sludge. He told me that the tank was 4 feet in diameter but could not tell me how big it was until he was inside. As he was sludging out, I yelled down- "Well, how big is it?????"

In a resparator muffled voice he answered back-
"2000 gallons"

Holly crap!
Chaim and I looked at each other as dollar signs added up in our brains.

After about 10 minutes, Andres climbed out of the hole and said, "Just kidding, it's only a 550 gallon tank"

Ha Ha.

Now we have a 55 gallon drum of oil sludge sitting in the yard, to be picked up before next week. The guys filled in the hole and put a temporary PVC pipe from the tank so that in a week or so, another crew can come to fill the empty space with foam and sand. Then we can all exhale a sound of relief from this ordeal.

The Multi Ethnic Mart

2007-08-15T20:04:00.001-04:00

On 58th Street where Roosevelt and Woodside Avenue intersect sits a small grocer called Big Boy's Farm. We assumed that it is Latin owned since it is packed with Mexican products, and an array of Goya products I've never seen. The first time we went in to inspect the produce, we were very impressed with all the fresh herbs

yerba buena

papalo

and greens we hadn't seen before. What was even better was that they are all labeled with hand written signs in English.

As with most immigrant run businesses, there are one or two humorous spelling errors in the store. We now call the store the Bong Juice Seller.

The other night, we stopped in to get some watercress and watermelon. As we stood on line, I noticed that the Asian man and customer were conducting the exchange speaking Japanese.

When I got up to the counter, I asked him
"anata wa nihonjin desu ka?".
(are you Japanese?)

And he answered back in Japanese that he is Kankoku jin (Korean.)
He asked me: "Furusato wa dokodesuka?" (where is your hometown?)
Then told me that he had lived in Kobe for a time.

As we were leaving, Chaim told the Korean man, who spoke Japanese, behind the counter at the Mexican Grocery store:
"Muchos Kamsahamnida", and I said "Oyasuminasai!"

A Four Dollar Movie

2007-08-14T22:34:00.001-04:00

We discovered our local movie theater this week. On Tuesdays, all day, you can see a movie for $4.00!!!!!! That means that 3 people can see a film for almost the same price of one ticket in Manhattan. They also have matinee prices: any show before 5pm is $5.00.

The films are your usual mega-plex fare, but for $4, I'd sit through almost anything on a hot summer day or night. This evening we saw "The Bourne Ultimatum". It was not as bad as we expected, and we actually thought it was pretty good. But it was a $4 good. We probably would have been more critical if we had paid $10.50.

The Sunnyside Cinema definitely has character. The interior hasn't been updated since probably the 1970's, the films are scratchy and there is soda splashed on the screen. But I can't believe it's only 4 bucks!!!!!!!!!

Ode to Julius Schmidt

2007-08-13T10:35:00.000-04:00

While tearing out the plaster and lathe walls, the guys unhooked the main radiators so we could get behind them to frame out the window wall. These old behemoths are very heavy (about 300 lbs each) but beautiful at the same time. We plan to get rid of them and install baseboard heat, similar to what is used in Europe.

These old radiators and the heat brings me back to another day from my past.
My sophomore year at the Kansas City Art Institute, our professor Dale Eldred brought in his friend, Julius Schmidt, a master caster. He had been teaching at the University of Iowa, but rumor had it that his way of casting was not up to the safety standards so OSHA periodically shut down his foundry. In the casting world, he was a legend. He is responsible for introducing iron casting to the academic art departments first at Cranbrook Academy, by designing his own furnace system and was so dedicated to his craft that he had a cult-like following.

I remember the casting process being very strenuous and built muscles in my arm I never knew I had. The first week with Julius, he drove a group of us to the local dump to look for old cast iron radiators. We hauled the heavy pile of scrap back to the sculpture studio and then took turns crushing the radiators into 3" pieces with a heavy sledgehammer. That took about a week, hammering every day. We looked and felt like ex-cons working on a chain gang.

Julius taught us the process of melting iron in a cupola of his own design. He used a method discovered during the Industrial Revolution, of alternating coke (derived from coal) with the iron to to be used as fuel. The handful of us donned heavy leather gloves, jackets and boots in the late September heat and spent hours shoveling the mixture into the furnace.

When Chaim and I first came to our house to an open house and met the owner, Rachel White, I noticed a cast iron sculpture of a nude figure in the side garden. Rachel told us she had graduated from Alfred in the sculpture department and had studied with Julius Schmidt. She had bought the building hoping to turn it into a sculpture studio and make art. Unfortunately the grind of this city chewed her up and spit her out, landing her in Coral Gables Florida.

I hope this does not become my fate.
Julius Schmidt, is still alive and casting. I think he is probably in his eighties and is still a professor emeritus at University of Iowa.

The Crew of Joes

2007-08-05T22:09:00.001-04:00

At 8:35 on a Sunday morning, Frankie and his crew of four people came to begin the electric job on the house; Ralphie, Joe, Johnny and Ralphie's brother, who we thought was named Spencer, but later found out his name is also Joe.

We got lucky with the weather, and it wasn't as brutal as it had been. Very efficiently they snaked cables, drilled holes, knocked out patches of plaster and re-filled the holes. They also convinced me that I can frame out the whole house and save $1000. So tomorrow I order about 50 2x4s to begin the framing job, and hope to have it finished before we order the sheet rock. The guys left around 6pm after a few Heineken's. All in all, it was a very pleasant and an unsweaty day for me.

Trash Pickup: Second Round

2007-08-04T10:11:00.001-04:00

Joe Taco told Chaim that Joe the Malaysian from High Pearl Seafood Restaurant (one of Chaim's favorites) is in the garbage business. So for our next 2 tons (and hopefully our last) of garbage awaits in the garage for the second dumpster to arrive.

Chaim and Dumpster guy taking a quick break before our final garbage is driven away.

Mondays and Thursdays are garbage pickup days. So last Wednesday, Chaim stocked our fridge with beer and seltzer and went to the bank to get some cash for "Operation Sanitation Bribe". The plan was to run outside when we saw the city garbage men and palm a $20, give them some refreshment, in the hope to get them to take some of our bags. Unfortunately they were gone by the time we woke up.

At around 12pm, we heard the noise of garbage trucks, so Chaim ran outside to try again. Ray, the developer from down the street was already outside shaking his head. Apparently, the truck had gone by but the Sanitation Police was trailing behind, so "Operation Bribe" was abandoned for the whole block once again.

Rebirth Of A Salesman

2007-08-03T22:43:00.000-04:00

Unlike Arther Miller's play, the salesmen in the year 2007 are still alive and kicking. They no longer go door to door, but they still carry their travel cases and sample kits and drive over to make house calls.

This was the week of window estimates. I've seen a lot of windows and been fed so much technical information about vinyl welding, double pane, triple pane, Argon gasses, Krypton gasses, and what the standards for UV coating, bla bla bla bla bla..... And since these gases are clear and odorless, who would know that these so called energy efficient windows have Krypton in them, unless Superman was trying to break in.

All of the schpeal is actually quite boring and my eyes begin to glaze over after the first 10 minutes. We just want some windows, and anything is going to better than the 1930s single pane, cracked and rotting away framed windows we have, so we are easy customers.

We got three very different quotes, each $1000 different from each other, but the quality seem the same. The first salesperson who came to the house was actually a woman. The first woman I've dealt with in over a month, which was very refreshing. She looked like the typical lesbian gym teacher (short hair, golf shirt with company logo and buff) but was very efficient, knew her stuff and did not try to sell us anything we didn't need. We liked her the best out of the lot.

I Haul, U Haul, We All Haul .....

2007-07-30T11:40:00.000-04:00

We all know that renting a $19.95 per day U-Haul van, never adds up to $19.95. But it is still much cheaper than hiring a big company and getting a bunch of Mexican guys working for slave labor wages. The last load of Chaim's belongings from the U.E.S. would be carried off in a U-Haul, which we rented on the hottest day of the week....of course.

We decided that since we were now Queens residents, the Brooklyn U-Haul branch we were using, being served by disgruntled workers, was no longer needed. So we reserved a van at the nearest Queens branch, which was located on the BQE....could that be possible??? It turned out that they were on a service road off the BQE and we had to walk a maze-like path to get there.

Upon signing the papers, and xeroxing Chaim's driver's license, the U-Haul manager told us that we had to leave one form of ID with them to rent a truck. A green card (which we didn't have), a car registration (also don't have since we don't own a car), military ID (don't have), or a passport (which we were NOT going to leave with them). After arguing back and fourth, telling that manager that we have rented countless times from U-Haul, and have never been asked this request, he finally gave in and said that he would call a friend to verify that someone knows us....
HUH?????????

So I gave them Christine's name and number, who they promptly called at 8:05 am.

U-Haul: "Hello, is this Christine Barney?"
CB: "Yes"
U-Haul: "Do you know a Micki?"
CB: "Yes"
U-Haul: "Thank you, good bye."

That was the inane phone conversation, no last names were used, no explanation, and we have no idea what that could possibly prove.

Later I read the rules and regulations of U-Haul which states that:
"(U-Haul) may hold a passport, green card, auto registration, long distance phone bill, military ID, or some other meaningful assurance you work out with our rental manager."

Could this rule have been applied to the Queens branches since they are assuming that such international clientele do not have valid driver's licenses??????
VERY BIZARRE!

My First Dumpster

2007-07-30T11:06:00.001-04:00

After realizing that the Sanitation Dept. was not going to pick up our garbage, we decided to call for professional help. How much garbage could we possibly have accumulated anyway? Chaim single-handedly carried it all down from the second floor to store in the garage.

I called about 15 companies and each one gave me totally different quotes; anywhere from $300 plus $150 per hour for 3 guys to load the garbage into a dump truck, to $2000 plus tax to get a 10 yard dumpster. I found out that a yard could differ depending on who I spoke to: one guy told me that one yard of garbage was 3 construction bags worth, another told me it was 8.

I chose to go with the company that I could understand, and the secretary was nice to talk to. A Polish woman named Helen who worked for a company called Carty (or maybe I liked them because they sounded like a character in an episode of of PeeWee's Playhouse.) Half of the companies I spoke to were rude, or I literally couldn't understand their English.

3 tons of garbage getting ready to be hauled away

The parking situation proved to be the most stressful. Helen told me that we had to have at least 30 feet of space so that the dumpster could be dropped off and picked up. I felt a bit guilty hogging 4 car spaces in front of the house when we didn't even own a car. The dumpster got dropped off right after the street cleaning crew swept through our side of the street, in a rainy downpour. Christine came over for some physical and moral support, and being a home owner and previous dumper of illegal construction rubble, she told me that we had to begin filling it IMMEDIATELY!!! or others would come by and start throwing in their garbage.

So Christine and I spent most of the day dragging the dusty bags from the garage into the dumpster. Thank goodness it was a rainy day or the dust would have been unbearable!!!!

In the end the scale at the dump-site read 3.29 tons!!!!! We made another 8 bags of garbage since the dumpster went away, which we drove over to Dumbo, and left in my studio building garbage room. Believe it or not, we still have two more walls to deconstruct.

Construction- Day 2

2007-07-21T22:31:00.000-04:00

Another hot and sweaty day, especially since I donned on the demo-getup: my uncle Mitzi's car mechanic coveralls on top of another layer of clothing, with a mask and constantly fogging up goggles. But even with all these layers, somehow the particles of fiber-glass from the ceiling managed to get inside my clothes.
Chaim has been helping to take down the bags and bags of rubble and bundles of lathe, to store into our garage until we can figure out what we can do with it.

As I trudged on during the hot afternoon, I had flashbacks of the days back in the Midwest, when a bunch of us recently having graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute, spent a year trying to renovate a derelict warehouse. Back then, the grueling job was a team effort choreographed to a repetitive soundtrack of Guns and Roses, with a high learning curve and lots of breaks for beers and open fires for barbecues. Almost 15 years later, there is no soundtrack, I work in silence except for the hammering and my own breath (since I cut all power for fear of electrocution), my body is not used to the work, because I have not swung a hammer over my head for more than one or two poundings to get a nail into the wall to hang a picture.

We wake up very, very, very, very, very, very, extremely sore.

On the third day, we take a break and go to a barbecue pool party in New Jersey, where I proceed to float and wash away the last two days.

Food Dynasty

2007-07-19T23:14:00.001-04:00

We went to our neighborhood grocery store this evening. I was a bit skeptical about it since the outside is littered with not only garbage, but sketchy old men trying to recycle cans. It looks like any Key Food you'd find near any housing projects, but when we went inside, we were greeted by a nice surprise.

The store was VERY CLEAN, cleaner than the Gristedes in Brooklyn Heights. Every aisle was organized and everything on the shelves was straight and lined up neatly. The meat section was impressive, and they had items we would never see in Brooklyn Heights or the UES; such as a whole refrigerator case of packaged pupusas, bricks of Mexican cheese, turkey legs cross-cut into 1 inch chunks, halfway decent beers, and passing the bakery section, Chaim excitedly exclaims, "Look Challah! There must be Jews who come here!"

But the best part of our new grocery store is the service. The cute Asian check-out girl actually acknowledged us with a friendly hello, and after handing over the correct change, sorted the handles of the plastic bags together and gave them to us.

Food Review #2

2007-07-19T22:54:00.000-04:00

Korean BBQ
I can't remember what the name of the restaurant is called, (and no mention of it in English on the business card) but it's three blocks from our house!!!!! They were both excellent.

We were famished, so I didn't think to take pictures of our food, but it was delicious! We sat down and were immediately served half a dozen or so small plates of panchan, (also called banchan). We were exhausted and had no interest in cooking our own food so we stuck to the standards. I had the dolsot bibimbap, and Chaim had OJingO BokUm (Squid and onions sautéed in spicy sauce). There were a few other tables of Korean business men drinking shochu, and they had dishes we had never seen before, that we will definitely try the next time.

Construction in Woodside Heights

2007-07-19T22:29:00.000-04:00

We've begun the demolition at full force. We would like to take down the patchy ceiling and end up with exposed beams. It will increase the height of our rooms plus it will remind me of the first loft I lived in, about 10 years ago, in Williamsburg. Taking the plaster and lathe down is the easy part, kinda like picking nail polish off, or scratching at scabs. It's the garbage created from the demo that's proving to be a bit more challenging.

We are also in the process of getting estimates:
Plumbers, roofers, electricians, oil tank fillers, etc..............

We put out our trash onto the curb last night. Some recycling and some heavy bags of concrete dust. In the morning, the recycling was gone, but all the other bags remained. We learned from Joe Taco, that we are supposed to slip a $20 or so to the garbage men. Apparently New York's Strongest needs a little bribe to stay strong.

Rose Bushes For The Birthday Boy.

2007-07-19T22:13:00.000-04:00

Last Monday I dug out the three rose bushes from our new garden. Chaim is deathly allergic to bees, and roses attract them. Roses are fabulous to have when you get a few dozen in a box wrapped with a nicely tied bow delivered to your door from a secret admirer, but to grow them is a different story. They are the poodles of the plant world; fussy, finicky and a pain in the butt.

good bye roses.

On Tuesday Chaim and I rented a U-Haul van to move a bed and other necessities to our new house. And so it was perfect that we had a vehicle to bring the uprooted roses into Manhattan to meet Jim and Isy for Jim's Birthday dinner.

Jim hoisting the roses into their car.

Our Threshold in Woodside Heights

2007-07-14T08:44:00.000-04:00

After 7 months of marriage, my new husband finally carries me over our new threshold!

(photo credit: Rob van Erve)

We closed in a record 1-1/2 hours on Thursday. Our lawyer, Bob Dubno, blew the other lawyer away. He was extremely together and kept things on track, when the other lawyer was fumbling with his paperwork.

Yesterday Rob and I took down my work from Proteus Gowanus, and drove it over to the new house. When we drove up to the house, Ray the Realtor, came over and gave us a nice housewarming bamboo plant, welcoming us. Chaim ran across the street to our new corner store to get some beer to toast with. He returned elated, with a six pack of Modelo Especial, exclaiming that "it was only $7.00!!!"

Rachel, the seller was so great. She had cleaned every inch of the house, and even left 4 rolls of toilet paper, extra slate tiles for the kitchen, and miscellaneous house fixing and cleaning supplies. Today we will go and take measurements and discuss how life in our new house will be like.

Final Woodside Walkthru

2007-07-12T10:56:00.000-04:00

Rachel and Harley in front of the house.

Our final walk-thru went without a hitch. Rachel, the owner was there and told us about the house, she even left literature on how to treat the peach tree outside if it got infected with tree diseases. Soon the In Contract sign will be taken down and SOLD will mark it's place.
Our closing is today at 3:00pm!!!!!

Woodside Heights: The countdown.

2007-07-10T09:30:00.000-04:00

Two more days until closing...............Many people, the owners and the Realtor, of the house in Woodside have told us that it used to be an old firehouse. I went to the NYPL and did a little digging around. I dug up old Bromley maps on microfiche from the 1800's and early 1900's before and after the house was built. Looking at the maps, there is no sign that our soon to be abode was ever a firehouse. Maybe a carriage house, or an auto body shop, but it doesn't make sense that in 1930, a building as small as 1000 sqft would be a firehouse. The current owners also told us that it was built for a horse drawn vehicle, which also doesn't compute. I now have my old neighbor Konstantine, a current NYFD firefighter, on the case, picking the brain of the resident firehouse historian to see what he can find.

However, I did discover, that Woodside used to be called Woodside Heights according to the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, (1914-May 1951) , a name we will definitely coin as our own. In Volume 9 of the 24 volume map series, Woodside Heights is listed along with Elmhurst Heights, Woodside, Lawrenceville, Winfield, Nassau Heights, Maspeth, and Winfield Heights. Jackson Heights is included in volume 10 with North Woodside, Corona, and East Elmhurst.

I found one other evidence of this previous name in old publications:

1898 July. Daily Star: Queens area news-

{Joseph COTTRELL of Woodside Heights had the third finger of his right
hand smashed on Saturday.  He is an engineer in the power house of the
Metropolitan Traction Company in New York.  He slipped on the oily floor
and caught his right hand in the belting.  Besides the injury to the third
finger his hand was injured, but not seriously.  He was taken to Bellevue
Hospital and after the injuries had been dressed he was able to come to his
home on Woodside Heights.}

Yesterday while reading the Metro section of the Times, I saw a community bulletin for interesting things to do in the five boroughs, and Woodside was the first one listed.
Does anyone know if there is a large Hawaiian contingent in Woodside, or anywhere in Queens?

Food Review 1

2007-07-08T17:08:00.000-04:00

Last night my friend CT, Chaim and I went to a restaurant called Piola.
We went because Chaim had seen a flyer for an art show displaying photographs of mangled money by an artist named Anthony Savini that he wanted to see. So we decided to go have a quick drink and snacks there. The photos were ok.

As we entered, we were greeted by mobs of children running around and the restaurant had the atmosphere of Two Boots Pizza, with it's brightly colored Romper Room decor, but with a bit more of a suburban feel.

I started off with a KIWI CAIPIROSKA, which sounded refreshing but ended up so sweet with chunks of muddled kiwi, that it would have been better as a Popsicle instead of a drink.
My friend ordered a SGROPPINO AL LIMONE which was described on the menu as ice cream and vodka... interesting??? but in the end it tasted like a melted cheesecake. Chaim stayed on the safe side and ordered a beer.

It took us a while to order the pizza because they had too many combinations, and finally in the end, we got the MARGHERITA described on the menu as: Tomato sauce, mozzarella and basil. We thought the best way to see how good a pizza joint is, is by trying their basic staple. Just as Grimaldi's cheese pie needs nothing on top to make it amazing. Sadly, when our Piola pie was set down on our table, it paled in comparison to the Brooklyn pie, and had one sad little piece of basil in the center, acting as a fig leaf covering the center junction of the slices.

This would be a good place to take your tween age children for a birthday party. If you want great pizza, I'd go elsewhere...

A Weekend Project: its not easy being green

2007-07-02T15:28:00.001-04:00

I was reading the Styles section of the paper today and came across the article about everyone jumping on the green wagon and living with a false sense of greenness just because it’s trendy and fashionable. Instead of buying the new designer biodegradable pants, wear the jeans you bought last year. And just because you shop at Whole Foods, doesn’t mean you are contributing to the environment if you are buying raspberries in the winter, since they are being flown in from Chile.

So I’ve begun thinking more about the 3 R’s as spelled out on the EPA’s web site.

Reduce, reuse, recycle.
And we decided to add another R:
Refuse-refuse buying all that crap that litters your life, if at all possible.

Bottled water consumption is another hot topic of the moment. Apparently there is an estimated 38 billion bottles that are thrown away and end up in landfills every year (even with those who recycle). “In a world where there are more than a billion people with no reliable source of drinking water, this seems very wasteful:, especially if we can drink water out of our taps.

So last month I moved in with my husband, into his tenement style apartment with a bathtub in the kitchen. Ever since we met, and I had the pleasure of touring his museum apartment, I’ve wanted to update the corner between the kitchen sink and the front window where this bathtub sits, swathed with yards and yards of shower curtain liner. There is so much fabric, yet the floor around the tub still seems to get wet when ever I take a shower. And I am too short to reach the hook that holds up the hand held shower head, so I have to precariously jamb this hand-held device between the shampoo holder and the washrag hook in order to free up my hands to wash my hair.

Thus the bathtub in the kitchen improvement job began this weekend. Actually this project began about a year ago, when Chaim and I began looking for tile, being thrown out on the street or being sold in thrift stores, and stoop sales.

AFTER the tiling.

Since I am not working this summer, and because I decided to follow the 4 R's of living, I had Chaim go out and scour the neighborhood for some more tile. Since moving to the luxurious Upper East Side, I've found that this Manhattan neighborhood is a difficult place to live. For example, hardware stores here do not sell hardware, just a lot of plastic containers and lightbulbs, or operate on some type of extortion system with their pricing, or in the case of Home Depot, (across the street from Bloomingdales) they don't stock anything in their one square block store, but rather everything is stored in Jersey and we would have to wait a week to get anything. Oh how I miss Brooklyn and Sids Hardware!

Therefore, Chaim, following in his great grandfather's footsteps, who was in the "merchandise redistribution business", set out for a day of dumpster diving. He spent a good portion of the last Saturday in June, looking for tiles on the U.E.S. It proved to be a good day to troll for trash as people were moving this weekend, and throwing things out. Along with a pile of old plates and marble floor tiles, he returned with a few more items of interest. True to the weekend recycling theme, they were all green in color.

a much needed dustpan found on 76th street.

a green jacket found on 1st Ave.
notice the recycled K-SHE 95 patch Chaim sewed on,
which covers the Nautica logo.

Hallway gallery with art found in a 10 block radius of our apartment.

Japan

2007-06-18T07:49:00.000-04:00

Imagine a country where 1/2 the population of the United States inhabits an area no larger than California. Now imagine that only 20 percent of the land in California is populated by the same number of people. This is Japan...

view looking out of our hotel in Asakusa, looking away from the downtown area.

We spent a month traversing Japan, using our Rail Pass, as only non-Japanese can. Chaim often tried to compare parts of Japan to New York City. And I remind him that this place is incomparable.

"Yes Chaim, it would be just like Times Square during rush hour...
only imagine Time Square being 10x bigger and there are 10x

more people there."

A typical Saturday morning during the beginning of summer break at Kyoto Station.
These students are on their way to a historic shrine for a field trip.

Theodore Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss wrote Horton Hears a Who, and dedicated this book to "My Great Friend, Mitsugi Nakamura of Kyoto, Japan." There is little doubt Dr. Seuss had Japan in mind when he wrote this book, about Horton, an elephant who finds a whole world living on a speck of dust.

Dr. Seuss-ish trees in Kyoto

Chinese food in China is just called "food" and contrary to popular western belief, Japanese food consists of more than sushi. Every restaurant in Japan serves a specific type of Japanese food: sushi and sashimi (of course) but also, curry (derived from India, but much sweeter and less hot), tonkatsu (breaded pork cutlets), shabu shabu, tempura, okonomyaki, and izakaya, to name just a few. The system is very structured and so you would never find curry in a sushi restaurant. Even with all this variety, there is surprising very few fresh vegetables and one gets tired of eating there.

Chaim searches out the Chinese restaurants and finds that unlike in NYC Chinatown, Chinese food is very expensive, but we go there anyway just so we can get a plate of sauteed green vegetables. On the other hand, we find a lot of Korean BBQ places, that prove to be much cheaper than in New York. The only problem is, this Korean food is laced with MSG. emergency hot pepper travel set

Most all Japanese cuisine is fish based and thus my vegan uncle has a hell of a time trying to find places to eat. Knowing of the sweetness of Japanese food, I bought Chaim an emergency hot pepper travel set for his birthday. It came in handy quite often. After a month of Japanese food, (mostly seasoned with soy and sugar) I was ready to get back to New York and have some real Thai.

a few days of eating Nippon style

The Firehouse in Woodside

2007-05-08T10:38:00.000-04:00

I've always wanted to live in a firehouse! (or an airplane hanger- but firehouses are easier to come by in urban areas)

This house is right under the 7 train and next to a Mexican restaurant. I'm not going to jinx it by saying that we LOvE it, because there may be some issues....such as the oil tank buried in the yard outside.Living room looking toward the two bedrooms

Kitchen, with a stove that has a grill on it and a great exhaust system.

Side yard. The stairs in the back leads to a restaurant that uses it as their emergency exit.
The oil tank is buried under the bricks.

one of the bedrooms currently being used as an office

garage with very tall ceilings

Elmhurst update

2007-05-08T10:01:00.000-04:00

After making an offer, we went back and fourth with the seller, or rather the seller's agent, who is not really a realtor but rather a Chinese immigration lawyer. There was another party interested in this property, but we had the higher offer, and we were more qualified with the bank.

You would think this would make the seller accept our offer........
but in the world of real estate, it apparently doesn't work this way.
The other (lower) offer came from her neighbor, and so we believe she took that one, even though we haven't heard anything back from the realtor for two weeks.

So we are moving on and forgetting about this one for a while.

Elmhurst

2007-04-20T17:41:00.000-04:00

We went to look at this house yesterday. It is not in our targeted Landmarked Jackson Heights area but it's pretty close to the trains, and in the midst of a Chinatown in Elmhurst. It is less than half a mile from the express train Subway hub.

These are not the best pictures, but you can get the idea. It is registered as a two family that was converted from a one family. The street level has another family living in cramped quarters, and will definitely need a lot of work done to it. The owners duplex is immaculate.Here is the front of the building.

A view of the back with a nice concrete backyard ideal for a roller blade hockey game and 5 gallon bucket garden.

Bedroom

Front room with a faux fireplace.

Last name limbo continues....

2007-04-11T08:07:00.000-04:00

In about 4 weeks I will be moving out of my apartment. The deed to the apartment is under the name Watanabe, but that's OK.
I will need to begin forwarding my mail to the new address, which is Chaim's cozy (real estate lingo for tiny) abode on the Upper East Side. Less than a week after I officially move, I will have to stop my mail for a month, when we go to Japan (using my old passport).

I have already begun changing my addresses for my bank statement and other bills, though the name is still Watanabe. The Post office will forward mail for Watanabe, but 50% of the mail will be for Spiller.

And on top of it all... The Upper East Side is changing their Zip Code and dividing it up into three different numbers!!!

Easter in Sunset Park

2007-03-29T08:34:00.000-04:00

452 55th Street, Brooklyn NY

Back in Brooklyn the next day, we began our tour with dim sum in Sunset Park. We first went to this house and encountered a realtor with the phone headset in his ear standing next to the requisite balloons signaling the open house. It seemed like an OK property, nice and big, with no immigrants illegally living in the nooks and crannies. However, when we went to the first floor/sub basement duplex, and spoke to the tenants, they told us that it was freezing in the winter, and they never get enough heat. They also told us that in November they moved in and signed a 2 year lease. We asked Tomas, the Realtor about this and he claimed that the owner said there is no lease on any of the tenants. It felt like the owner wanted out of this property so he just ripped up the leases, therefore he "doesn't have the leases" is what it sounded like. Also when we went into the sub basement, I noticed that a major supporting I-beam had been cut out (about 6 feet) to make room for the staircase they had added to create a basement living space. Due to this, the upper floors were not level in some areas, creating the sea sick effect found in many parts of Windsor Terrace.

Here is the non-heat providing dinosaur of a furnace that we found in the basement.

So we moved on and things began looking up. We even found great spring time blocks to cheer us up a bit. Did the Easter Bunny explode?

The next house was a winner.
421 42nd Street, Sunset Park

Last week, I called about this house and the Realtor named Leif gave me the lowdown BUT told me that he had to go out of town suddenly since they are adopting a baby from Russia, and so he would be out of town for 2 weeks. However, I could call the owner and set up an appointment with her. He called me on Saturday and again on Sunday from Russia to make sure all was as planed and if I had any questions to call him. This is a dedicated worker, which I liked very much.A view of the back "yard" it is mostly concrete so there is no lawn to be mowed. There are rose bushes and some type of Japanese bushes planted in the perimeter. Also a grape vine arbor for shade, and a little plot of dirt for the herb garden.

Two views of the kitchen. It is on the ground level/ subterranean, but huge. Maybe too huge but it has all the appliances and most of the time at parties, people congregate in the kitchen anyway. The only thing Chaim didn't like was that the stove did not vent outside.

The owner's bedroom

The main staircase to the upstairs rental apartment

Living room

This is the front of the house. It is stretched out in this photo, so it's not this wide but you can get the idea.

We are going back to it this coming weekend with a friend to look at it again.

the Snakehead Dorm

2007-03-29T08:04:00.000-04:00

43-02 56th Street, Woodside Queens

From the outside, this 2 family brick semi-attached house looked ok. We had walked passed it a few weeks ago and wondered about it. We went to an open house last weekend and found out that it has been chopped up in to tiny rooms, so that in the basement there must have been at least 10-15 people living there. When you stepped into the dimly lit drab, filthy atmosphere of the basement, it was as though we had stepped into a third world country. A Chinese man sat in the midst of this filth smoking a cigarette and reading a newspaper. On the first floor, the owner's daughter was wearing pajama's (it was 3:30pm) eating cereal. That apartment was in a little better condition in that it had not been rented out to 10 people, but not by much.
Now mind you, this was an open house. YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO FIX UP, OR AT LEAST CLEAN YOUR HOUSE FOR AN OPEN HOUSE!!!!!!!! The house had not seen a drop of cleaning fluid in years. The realtor showing the property was from Mongolia with a Japanese name: Arashi Ayushin.
As he toured us around the place, he said- "The Indians split up this floor into 3 apartments and rent it for a lot of money." We told him: "Do we look Indian to you? and anyway we don't want to be slumlords!"
After we left the house, I started to cry. It was the most depressing thing I'd seen during the months of house hunting. I've read about the status of Chinese immigrants, but never had I come so close to the reality of their situation.

identity crisis- the new name plan

2007-03-21T12:13:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine asked me today if I had officially changed my last name.

As of today I still have two identities:

The DMV never took my old license back when I applied for the new one.
The Social Security people now have my new name, so all of my paychecks made out to M. Watanabe are now collecting my pension under the name Spiller.
My passport and credit cards, school ID all still have my old name.
It is very difficult to change names in the middle of the school year, so my new name plan is to begin totally anew at the beginning of September.
Plus the deed to my apartment is still under Watanabe, and I don't want to add more paperwork to that whole process anymore than there needs to be.

I sold my first book art/ sculpture piece today. When I dropped it off at the collectors house this morning, one of his assistants introduced herself to me and said that she knows me from my name.

"really? Micki Spiller? or Micki Watanabe?, because I just changed my name."

"Spiller is the name think I know. I used to work at Granary Book Press and didn't you do a project with them?"

"no but I would love to do an edition with them...Before I decided to change my name, we Googled 'Micki Spiller' and it came up clean, so there can't be another Micki Spiller!"

She looks at the card on the table, a Franklin Furnace Benefit invitation that I've just brought over.

"Hey isn't there a Hillary Spiller who does the fund raising at the Furnace?"

"No, but there is a Harley Spiller, who I'm married to who works there."

"Does he write books on Matisse?"

"no I believe that's Hilary Spurling..."

Now, I'm more than ever confused, and no matter what name one has, a person will forever be confused with another who is known for doing something totally different from what they do. It doesn't matter whether its' Spiller or Watanabe, I shall be confused with another person at some time or another.

Hymie House update

2007-03-21T11:55:00.000-04:00

Chaim found this add in the AM NY paper yesterday. Apparently Hector, the owner/seller for the house on 83rd street in Jackson Heights has already raised the price of his house $5500 since last week when he rejected our offer.

And after much thought and discussion, we decided that we don't want it anyway!

Our New Offer

2007-03-15T19:52:00.000-04:00

We went back to the house on 83rd Street today with Joe Taco, to get an inspection, to make sure that there was no asbestos or mold or termites or water leaks or gas leaks or other leaks and clogs. He gave it a pretty good bill of health. Of course with a house that's 80 years old, there are always things to be done. New garage door, making a door from the house to the garage, installing the exhaust fan back into the kitchen, moving the dryer and the gas line...

Here's Chaim in front of the house with the realtor Jaime. (Hymie)

We spent an hour or so there and afterward went to Unidentified Flying Chicken for lunch to discuss our next move. It began to rain, and the place was BYOB, so we sat at the lone window table, looking out onto Roosevelt Avenue eating the most delicious Korean fried chicken and drinking our Negra Modelos as we hashed out the numbers.

After number crunching, going back and fourth between the different percentages, and a little bit of numerology, we came up with a number we both agreed on, and called Jaime. He said that the offer should be in writing, so we went back to his office on Northern Blvd. After another hour in his office signing papers, Jaime offered to drive us to the subway. On the way there we passed pio pio Michelle Beaudoin's favorite place, and Jaime couldn't stop saying how great the food is there. We decided that from now on, the good realtors love pio pio chicken.

So now we have an offer on the table. Let the games begin!

some more pictures of the house:

90% of the job is just showing up on time.

2007-03-12T20:11:00.000-04:00

Real Estate Road Kill
We had an appointment to see a house on Ithaca Street in Elmhurst/Jackson Heights on Sunday. We were supposed to meet Ariel aka RERD (AndrewII) from Foxtons at 1pm in front of the house.
We walked up to the house, stepping over a dead cat in the road.
We were 10 minuted early. There was another realtor parked in front waiting for a client.
We called Ariel aka RERD to tell him we were there waiting for him.
He didn't pick up either numbers, we left two messages.
At 10 past 1:00pm he calls to say "what's up?"
"well, Ariel, we are waiting for you to show us the house, how long until you can get here?"
"oh, I can be there in 20 or so minutes."
"Well Ariel, there's another realtor here that can show us the house, so don't bother."
needless to say, if this were a first date, Ariel would not have a chance at a second.
We had the other realtor show us the house instead.

There is a parallel between real estate and romance. One looks for a prospective house just as one would scrutinize a prospective mate; we make lists of our wants, needs, likes and dislikes. Lessons learned in love should and most likely will apply to real estate. If you are going on your first date, you want' to make a good impression. You shower, shave, dress for the part, and you show up on time. If you are really serious about someone, you show up early to case the meeting place, and then casually stroll up to your date exactly at the minute you are expected. YOU DO NOT SHOW UP LATE!!!!! This should be the first thing realtors should learn. How hard is it to schedule your appointments so that you are not running late?????

But for some reason, 50% of the realtors have been late by at least 5 minutes. And they have cars. How long have they been doing this????? Shame on them, they should know better.

Real Estate: Secondary Cast of Characters

2007-03-07T11:06:00.000-05:00

Realtors who have no business being in the business:

Schamo- from United Homes. Apparently this is a cult that has a home base in Hillside Queens. They prey on first time home buyers by getting them to go way to the butt-fuck queens and serve you a cup of grape kool-aid. They say they have properties all over the city, but when you get on their web site, the only thing they have listed is in ghetto areas, with pictures that are drawings rather than real properties. They apparently don't know how to update their websites, because you have to go out to their offices to see new listing.

Russian Stripper Mail-order bride's madam:
A short, bad wig-wearing Brazillian woman with a Greek name, showing or rather hardly showing slumy buildings in Astoria. We went to see a property and she only was able to show us 1/4th of the property, which was a redone apartment inhabited by the chain-smoking Russian stripper, mail order bride named Georgina, who was recently married to a "zhlub" named George. When asked to see the other apartment in the building, all she was able to tell us was that there is an old lady living there, and is never seen.

Real Estate: The Cast of Characters

2007-02-19T20:08:00.000-05:00

Jackson Heights:

Realtor #1
Madam Beaudoin- She is fabulous. We've been seeing her since early last summer when we thought we were in contract on my place. She showed us the first house we LOVED, and nothing has compared to it ever since. She doesn't show us yucky property, like the urine house, or the overly crowded Chinese immigrant hideouts, or the house that's falling over and sloping to one side. She went to Pratt and also has an interior design business on the side. The first time we were in her office, her partner Daniel Karatzas, gave us a book he published on the garden district of Jackson Heights, with a forward by Robert Sterns.

Realtor #2
Scarfania. His name is actually Carfagnia, but we dislike him so of course we don't call him by his actual name. He showed us a house we actually liked enough to put a bid on, early on in the search when we didn't know any better. That house which we retracted the bid on is now called the Baby Jonah and the Asbestos Whale. He is a slimy character, and you could just tell that he was lying when his mouth was open. Also he's from Boston, which gave a bad taste in Harley's mouth from the get go.

Realtor #3
Peggi-incum: The Chinese realtor, she tries, and will show anything. She showed us the house that had so many people living in it, and thus we couldn't see the house for all the mattresses stacked up and leaning on the walls. Most of her property has high water and electricity bills due to much laundry being done on the premises at all times. But when something undesirable appears around the corner in any of the rooms, she just chants the mantra: In-cum, you can get in-cum (income).

Realtor #4
Toupee Joe: He showed us a ranch house in the heat of the summer when most of Astoria and Woodside lost power for over a week. The poor guy had been living in motels and out of his car. When we walked up the the door of the house, I saw a bald guy standing in the doorway, and so I waved. He quickly ducked inside, and came back out wearing a toupee as though we hadn't seen him. Needless to say, the house was very interesting.

Realtor #5
Belal the Indian: The guy who talks and talks and knows everything and still can't get the information right. He is still trying to sell us stuff in Forest Hills. He shows us other people's listings. "His people" have the corner market on Jackson Heights, and it will be easy to rent out anything that we buy.

Realtor #6
sFartacus aka-Farter the Greek: So Harley and I go to see a house that is co-brokered in Jackson Heights, which this woman can't stop saying how wonderful, and mint, mint, mint condition it's in. It is south of Roosevelt Ave., which is a location we have yet to discover. We have been holding off since most of the homes south of Roosevelt are frame and not brick. But what the hell, it's worth looking. So we trek out there, it's freezing outside, and when we get there, the woman is in the small foyer struggling with the keys to get in. We all three try for a good 20 minutes, jiggling the keys. Harley and I go to the back, where I jump the fence to see if the keys work on the back door, but no luck. We go back out front, and in the meanwhile, realtor #6 has made the foyer very stinky. We will probably try to see the house again... she was very very very sorry and gave us some Japanese Mochi, which she thought were Korean, since she bought them in a Korean store.

Realtor #7
Andrew Foxtons: Young cocky guy with slick back hair, always on the go with his blackberry, wheeler/dealer type who likes to party. Drives around in the Foxtons Mini.

Co-Habitation - Step One: The Real Estate Hunt

2007-02-19T10:36:00.000-05:00

After almost 2 months of marriage, we are still commuting back and fourth on the Lexington Ave. line. One Hour door to door, calendering where we will both sleep every 3 or 4 days. And every weekend we are on the hunt. This weekend, we ventured out to Brooklyn, and Windsor Terrace, Kensington.....what some call the South Slope.

Harley suggests we should be doing a photo essay of all the dinosaurs that inhabit the basements of these prospective living quarters:

Here is an oil tank we found in the basement of a humongous house in Windsor Terrace, well actually Kensington. The hugeness of the house it got me so excited that I didn't stop to think about the yard... who's going to mow it??? And the lovely tree I first saw, became a nightmare, as we realized we would be responsible, as we pictured it falling down on the house next door. Plus, we are not staying in New York so we can live in a suburb-like setting.

Backing up a few weeks on the earlier days of house hunting...
This lovely two family in a picturesque Jackson Heights neighborhood: Of course I fell in love with it instantly.

But then I did a bit of research and found out that it is in a landmarked neighborhood. This may sound great at first, but then looking through pages and pages of all the violations this house and it's attached neighbors have due to not having work done to landmark status, and that the neighbor on the other side is an architect, who practices out of his home, (translation: a landmark snitch) and after Harley's friends Joe Taco and Paul came to check out the place, and found that all the windows need to be replaced, (which meant windows that are normally $200 would now run us in the tune of about $600 each since we would have to restore it back to 1910,) and with 27 windows... well we gave up doing the math.
As my excited and eager face fell, so did the mood of our real estate agent #1.

Happy Valentines Day!

2007-02-19T10:35:00.000-05:00

On Valentines Day I got a delicious bag of dim sum from Harley's secret place in Chinatown.
And our official Marriage Certificate

The strange thing is that it came addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Migiwa Watanabe...
Next stop: DMV and social security.

Last Name Limbo

2007-01-23T13:22:00.000-05:00

WATANABE: A name riddled with so many vowels, telephone solicitors often ask if I am Native American.

Now I know why women had no problem changing their names in the 1950's. Beaver Cleaver's mother didn't work out side of the home. She probably never applied for a social security card. There was no reason to. I, on the other hand am realizing what a pain it is to be traditional, and take my new husband's name. This is just 1/4th of the ID's that I will have to change-

My mother’s maiden name, Watanabe, is the 5th most common surname in Japan. I grew up in St. Louis in a time when there were very few Japanese families and yet there were four other Watanabes in the 2-inch thick Southwestern Bell White Pages; a dentist, a violinist, a conductor and one other that I never met. Watanabe is considered the “Smith” of Japan, and so common that my mother’s oldest sister married an unrelated man also named Watanabe. Everyone knows at least one Watanabe and thorough out my life, I have been asked if I have a brother, father, uncle, aunt, etc who is an actor (Ken- Last Samuri or Gedde- Long Duk Dong in Sixteen Candles) a fashion designer (Junya), a musician (Sadao- soprano saxophone), a Yakuza “Godfather” (Yoshinori), a Peruvian Poet (Jose), an artist (Mikio- who does mezzotints or Hiroshi- photographer of kabuki), a feminist activist (Mina- works with Amnesty International) or an architect (Jin, Hiroshi, or Makoto).

In most eastern cultures, the surname always proceeds the given name, placing more importance on the clan than on the individual, so when I moved to the US my identity as an individual became more pronounced the further I moved away from my roots, culture and the Watanabe family.

Migiwa, my given name, is a phrase lifted from Psalm 23, literally meaning “beside the sill waters”. In Japanese, it is written in hiragana, because the uncommon name was too complex for the government officials and clerks who worked at the town office in the small island farm community where I was born, and they could not figure out how to write it in the usual kanji, or Chinese characters. Apparently they first refused to register it as an official name. My mother’s explanations of the Song of David from the Bible fell on deaf ears in the room full of Buddhist and Shinto clerks. So they compromised and spelled it with the easier, and more poetic Japanese writing system.

The origin of my family name is related to a profession as are most, and means ‘one who crosses the ocean to carry people and products by boat.’ My mother’s mother’s maiden name- Murakami comes from a pirate that collected tax from ships which crossed the Seto Inland Sea. I will be visiting that same Seto Sea this year with a different surname.

I am anticipating this change, and run home every day to open up an empty mailbox, and every day I am dissapointed when the official envelope containing the documents which will enable me to be the next Mrs. Spiller doesn't appear.

When I send out e-mails from my new Mrs. Spiller address, I automatically go into my friends spam box. I tell my students I am currently between last names.

Fifteen years ago (or so) I changed my identity from this:

to this:

and now i'm waiting for the next incarnation...

Formal Portraits

2007-01-18T11:44:00.000-05:00

We decided to take our formal portraits before the wedding.
This way we could begin celebrating and drinking straight after the ceremony.
Our friend Marty, the photographer, http://www.martyheitnerphotography.com/
made Harley turn around as I came into the photo shoot,
so that there could be a sense of surprise.
These pictures show the moment just before and after Harley sees me for the first time....
He couldn't believe the transformation -- beyond anything he had anticipated.

With Family

Me and the Kimono Ladies.
(L-R Hatsume, Mikako, Me, Okaasan (mother), & Toshiko.

With Parents.

The Spillers and Underwoods.

My personal bests.

Harley and his best men.

Our best men, women and friends

The whole wedding group

My new husband and his proud father- Mortimer aka "Mordecai".

Thank you to our fabulous friend Marty Heitner for our lovely photos!

Photos by our NY Times photographer: lora Spiller

2007-01-05T10:07:00.000-05:00

Mort and Phillip toasting the couple.

The smiling kimono ladies:

(L-R) my proud mother, Toshiko-obachan, Hatsumi-obachan and Mikako-obachan, who flew on an airplane for the first time in her life to attend the celebration.

My best man getting a lesson:

tying a bow tie is harder than it looks.

lora Spiller and master Phillip Underwood, the best boy.

Japanese Translation of the Ceremony

2007-01-03T16:27:00.000-05:00

本日このよき日に　ここに集まっていただきました皆様の立会いの下で、新郎Harley と新婦みぎわは、永遠の誓いをたて、結婚をいたします.

結婚とはお互いを愛し、信じ、末永くパートナーとして受け入れることです。
このことを皆様にお約束します。

人を愛する事は　人生この上ない喜びであり、私たちの人生に深みを与えてくれます。その時、夫婦愛は最高の喜びに変わり、思いやり、助け合いながらお互いを高めあうことになります。また、日々の生活を共にし、それぞれの出来事を報告し合う喜びは愛し合う夫婦にとってとても重要になります。

また、結婚とは価値観を共有し、喜びも悲しみもともに分かち合うことです。
それにより、結婚生活が充実しお互いへの理解が高まるとともに、夫婦それぞれも成長していかなければなりません。

人を深く知るということは短期間ではなされず、長い年月を経て築き上げられるものです。そしてその相手への理解は思いやりと変わり、相手を真から解ってあげようと努力するようになります。

そのことによって喜びや成功だけではなく、時には悲しみや失敗などの重みを荷なうこともあります。

相手の問題や心配事を理解し和らげられるという事は何事にも代えられぬすばらしいことです。

結婚とは相手を尊重し、また一方でお互いを認め合うことでなくてはいけません。
お互いに愛を与えていかなければなりませんが、それと同時にそれぞれの個性を失ってしまってはお互いの個性に引かれ合って一緒になった意味がありません。

バランスのとれた良い関係とは、一方的な自己主張をして相手を黙らせ、わがままを言い合うものであってはなりません。

自立した自分自身と、夫婦としの自分との交互の役割のなかで、強くかつデリケートな愛を育くんで行かねばなりません。
本日皆様に集まっていだだいたのは、みぎわとHarleyの永遠の誓いを承認し祝福していただくためです。この結婚という絆により、今二人は一緒に成ろうとしております。

みぎわとHarleyは全くちがった環境で育ち、それぞれに洗練されたプライドを持っております。２人のその違いが個性的で楽しい結婚生活を作り出すことと信じております。お互い独自の個性を生かし初めて強い絆が生まれると固く信じております。

そしてお互いよりいっそう努力し、よりよい家庭を築いて参ります。

これから皆様と一緒に新郎新婦の誓いの言葉を交わすのをお聞きして頂きます。

Bill of Fare

2007-01-03T15:24:00.000-05:00

This is the cover of our "menu" for the evening

Ketuba

2007-01-03T15:11:00.000-05:00

The traditional Jewish marriage certificate is called a ketuba. Arising out of 5th C b.c.e. Egyptian marriage deeds, ketubot (pl.) specify the obligations of a husband to his wife. The ketuba is a legal document originally formulated to protect a Jewish bride from financial hardship in troubled times. At 2000 years old, ketubot are among the first documents conferring legal status and financial rights to women.

In my art studio in Brooklyn’s “Dumbo” neighborhood (an acronym for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), I recently began a series of contemporary illuminated manuscripts. I made our ketuba by hand, incorporating ancient features that illustrate the different characteristics of the bride and groom (such as Ionic and Doric columns) and added modern touches like a bowl of popcorn, the our favorite snack. There are also hometown flags, and an illustrated map of places we’ve visited or dream of seeing together. The ketuba will be signed by the me, Harley, Rose Teitelbaum (my adopted Jewish Grandmother, and Mort Spiller (Harley's Father).

Wedding Fog

2007-01-03T09:04:00.000-05:00

check out erik's video!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftqjKaxs5KY