Recently in Observations Category

I wish we had photos of getting our Christmas Tree and bringing it back home. We chose one of the coldest windiest of nights to "go pick one up", which is a lot easier said than done when you have you, your wife, your two legs and arms and hands and the New York City subway system.

Don't get me wrong, it was fun, but it was a lot more challenging than I thought it would be about three hours earlier after we'd finished straitening out our apartment to prepare it for a tree. We had talked about maybe getting a tree this year, but at some point I decided, yea, if we can do a full-blown Thanksgiving dinner for our family, than hell yea we're ready to put up our first Christmas Tree. Despite being highly allergic, I was a big pusher for it.

I was thinking back to all the fond years of sitting around the tree that one day a year, after we'd all put in something to decorating it, and filling up the area around it with beautifully wrapped gifts and it was came back to that sharing, that sharing spirit. Everyone in the house contributes something to the tree, and everyone receives something from it, and even if we can't afford it, or to put anything under it, its worth it because it gives you something. It lends an exciting emotional atmosphere to a household. It makes things feel vibrant and alive, if only for a few weeks. That's something we all need this year.

So, we bought our tree last night. We found it on the corner of Court St. and Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn. we sort of picked out the tree we wanted, and headed off to go eat first.
This part of Atlantic Ave. is renowned for its Middle Eastern restaurants, butchers, and groceries. We picked the Yemen Cafe. Yay! Salta! I chose the Lamb Salta, and Man 'o Man, that was the most perfect meal for a cold winter's night. Stone baked bread, slow roasted lamb, lamb soup and a nice crisp iceberg salad dressed with a salsa like dressing. Everything had a little spicy edge to eat and everything was perfect. We loved it and its my lunch today. The bill was forty eight bucks and there was enough food for 4.

So, the meal there got our bellies ready for the journey ahead. We set out to get lights and a few ornaments first. We walked past a the new Urban Outfitters and saw some cool glass ornaments and picked up a few boxes of those, just to get our tree some ornaments to start, then we dropped off at CVS and bought a box of lights and some hooks.

Next, we tromped back to the tree sales area we liked best and picked out a nice 6 + foot tree and then headed back to Jay street to head home. Longest walk ever. Or at least that is what it felt lugging a tree back to the subway, but we made it there and then made it back home.

Tracie popped out for some more milk and with the helpful and welcome aid of hot cocoa we put up the tree and hung the lights and the first ornaments.  We think it looks pretty cool.

But we want more, we want to add our own handmade ornaments and hopefully start a lifetime of fun. Today, I searched the web and found a few helpful links, one of my favorites at mademagazine.com, led me to my first ornament that I just completed a little bit ago. Woohoo! DIY ornaments are cool.

The first finished ornament:

It's been so hot and humid of late that I feel my mind has emptied out all of it's good ideas. They've dumped right out, into the sky or onto the pavement.

Maybe it's just time to get out of the city for awhile. A short trip would be nice.

When the days are so hot and heavy that you hear an air advisory warning, I suspect I'm not alone in those yearning to retreat to somewhere cooler and more remote from one another.

Right now, it's so humid, I don't want to take a cold shower for fear of never drying off. But I dare say I will venture off and out of the house for a shake shack treat and school.

While the interface and functionality leaves a lot to be desired, Google is heading in an interesting and more appealling direction with their http://maps.google.com/ than yahoo was in their early days, but oh yea, yahoo already kind of kicks ass at maps already, http://maps.yahoo.com/, but they have visual ads. That my friend is why I use Google more often than Yahoo. Although here in New York, Yahoo Local smokes Google Local in a blind taste test.

Either way, maps at Google, all I can say is ahhhh. About damn time.

So, I'm standing over my toilet looking into the grey porcelain bowl, and before I even do anything, I notice that the water is swaying and swishing around.

Just overhead, I feel a cool breeze through the bathroom vent. It seems, the wind was so strong it was swaying the building, not the water.

Then, as I was procrastinating things by sitting in the the chair in our living room, I looked out the window and watched the television antenna and direct tv satellite dish sway to the wind on the roof across the street.

Then I watched the clouds zooming past, reminding me most things are out of my control and I am just a spot on this speck of rock hurtling through the universe.