Happy New Year!

Ok. In case you didn’t notice, I sort of fell off the grid at the end of 2012. Things got busy and I fell behind. It turned out to be a blessing.

Mama needed a break!

And I didn’t exactly sit on my tush and twiddle my thumbs. I did some home improvement, sharpened my cooking skills, did some knitting, read some books and took up chess.

Ok…I’m trying to take up chess.

I got this book from the library. The authors are a chess master and a chess journalist who, together, wrote this encyclopedic anthology about mastering chess and the book is a supposed to be a consolidated version of that. According to them, I should be able to play a match after one lesson.

Who are they kidding?

I decided I wasn’t going to let that thwart me and I bought a travel chess set. It’s magnetic and has numbers and letters on the corresponding files and ranks; perfect for a beginner like me. It arrived this week. I was so excited! And then I looked at the box and found the following phrase:

I checked the box. It’s made in Poland. Hm…makes me wonder why they have to make that sort of distinction. Anyway, it’s not the nicest set and the magnetic part isn’t terribly strong. I’m going to have to check my receipt and remind myself how much I paid for it. It may be going back.

Maybe they should have employed children after all. JUST kidding.

SIDEBAR: I’ve decided to reduce my writing commitment to once per week minimum. I’ve wanted to start a food blog for quite some time now and, in case you’re keeping score, I did do that last year!

As it turned out, I couldn’t keep up with the demands of a full-time, daily blog and a part-time weekly blog. I also became a vegan so that forced me to rethink my focus, which was never really clear in the first place. Therefore, with a renewed sense of tabula rasa, I’m starting over from scratch.

I love doing things from scratch. Stay tuned.

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Support My Friend!!!

Anyone live in Sioux Falls, South Dakota? Anyone? Anyone?

Ok well you may have heard of a nifty little gathering called Wine & Canvas. In case you haven’t, it’s kind of like a Tupperware party only better. Why? Because everyone pays the same amount of money and everyone takes away an original piece of artwork.

And there’s booze.

My pal Sarah is starting a Wine & Canvas franchise in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. For those of my readers who are Hoosiers, there are locations in four major Indiana cities. If you look on the Indy franchise calendar, you’ll actually be able to see what paintings are available on which nights and at what locations. Personally, I like this one…

…it reminds me of this tiny street in Manhattan called Minetta. I stumbled upon it during my first weeks living in New York. Unfortunately, there is not a franchise here in NYC. Maybe I have to start a Brooklyn franchise too! Maybe.

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What’s The Policy…

…on spanking other people’s kids?

I’m not a parent so I don’t usually weigh in on this kind of thing. But I saw a woman today spank her child in public. And then I realized who she was. She’s a woman I often see with another woman and they are usually accompanying six children. Either they work for a daycare center or a preschool (which are essentially the same thing) or they work together privately. I really don’t know. What I do know is that the child she spanked was likely not hers.

Now I can’t confirm that the boy she spanked isn’t hers but most people I know find it unethical to teach their own children in a school setting. And while we’re on the subject of ethics, since when is it ethical for a teacher to physically punish a child?

I’m quite certain it’s against the law.

And while some may brush it off as a minor infraction, I would ask then where the line is drawn. If you allow spanking, what’s next? Why not just hand out paddles to teachers and make students write lines with quills that use their own blood as ink.

Wait…that’s only in Harry Potter. You get my point.

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This…Is A Thing

I thought this was a joke. Like Colon Blow or Chewable Pampers. It’s not.

 

THIS…is a joke.

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Beverage Bandit Update!

Remember when I posted about the 16oz.-beverage ban? Well I was headed to the movies last weekend and saw this posted on the front door of the theater.

Looks like things have progressed.

Things I’ve learned from the New Yorkers For Beverage Choices website:

• The restriction will not apply to free refills. (Oh no! An obesity loophole!)
• As a New Yorker, I will not have a say this matter. (Daddy Bloomberg says NO!)
• Sugary drinks are not the cause of obesity. (You don’t say!)

After seeing this video, I’m more than convinced that this is the most ridiculous piece of legislation I’ve ever heard. It just sounds ludicrous that a larger soda may be illegal in a few months. Let’s see…what other substances are illegal? Drugs. Plutonium. Soda.

I’m really glad we’ve gotten the scourges of the earth under control.

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Tiny Doors!

This is the second tiny door I’ve seen this week. This one is at Rivington and Norfolk. This guy found one too.

I haven’t been able to get a clear shot of that tiny QR code, from my photo or his. And a Google search has not been helpful. Except for the fact that there is some guy in San Francisco doing the same thing as an art installation.

Anyone know anything about the tiny doors? Somebody? Anybody?

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Counterfeit, You Say…

So I’ve only had my Mophie for a couple weeks now and it’s been working pretty well. A couple days ago, I plugged it in to charge and there were no blinking lights. I fiddled with the connector and it would only charge when with added pressure. Well I couldn’t just sit there for hours, manually charging it so I rigged it with a rubber band.

That kind of worked.

In the meantime, I contacted Mophie to both register my product and discuss what may be happening with my device. After providing Mophie customer support the necessary information, I was given the bad news:

Looks like it’s going back to Amazon. I’ll wait until after I have my refund to mention it was a fake.

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Say What Now?

I saw an ad in the subway for JetBlue’s new Election Protection campaign. The tag line reads, “If Your Candidate Doesn’t Win, Don’t Worry. Here’s Your Chance To Get Out Of The Country With A Free Flight.”

I don’t know about you, but if Romney gets elected, the last thing we need is for truckloads of Democrats to vacate the premises. I wonder if there’s any kind of trend in international travel during the months following an election. Perhaps there is and JetBlue is the only airline taking advntage!

Or maybe it was just a neat idea.

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Felting?

So I had a light workday today due to the “holiday.” And the libraries were closed today. Again…“holiday.” So I brought along my knitting so I could get going on the mate to the fingerless mitt I made yesterday.

I wasn’t crazy about how the first mitt looked. Too stitchy*. And the multi-colored yarn I used while still in the skein, looked surprisingly different once knitting. I was hoping for more rows of one color before a color change but NO!

So instead of getting going on the second mitt, I spend a good hour watching YouTube videos on felting. Felting, in short, is creating fuzz. This fuzz covers one’s project and allows for the gaps in stitching to close, creating a more opaque piece. Here’s the one I used (this lady is smart):

Yeah…mama don’t have a washing machine. I also don’t have before and after pics yet since I’m still waiting for it to dry. Also, the other one doesn’t exist yet. More later.

Yay knitting! Gosh I’m a nerd.

*made-up word

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Ah…Sundays

In addition to getting up waaaay too early on a Sunday to walk a dog, here’s what I did today.

Crock Pot Bread!

Yes…it looks like a blob. That’s because turning over a half-baked loaf ain’t so easy. It has yet to gain any kind of structural integrity and therefore will stick to one’s hand and fall apart. The trick: Use two surfaces, flipping it onto the first, then the second and then back into the pot. And do it quickly! Otherwise you’ll have a blob…like me.

Palm Reader(s)!

I only got one done but I got it right on the first try! I also finally learned to knit in the round and use double-pointed needles. Success! Too bad I’m not as crazy about the color now that it’s not in a skein. Hmph.

Oh yeah! My dear friend Keila recently had a natural birth at home. She was kind enough to let me watch the video. Yup…I watched a person come out of her body. She’s my hero.

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