Sandy's Aftermath

Well, the storm is over here in New York City, but the arduous cleanup process has only just begun. We feel lucky up here on the East side of Manhattan since we are one of the only enclaves on the island that still has power.

Images from Yorkville:

This has been called a historic storm and between the Con Edison explosion on 14th Street, the storm surges that left most of lower Manhattan flooded, the unprecedented three day school closures, and the fact that our subway system is so crippled they are saying it will take 4-5 days to have things up and running again, I would agree with that assessment. 

Here are some photos from around Manhattan captured on The New York Times website: 

While the storm has been devastating here and along much of the East Coast, something that has been really lovely to see is that, with the subway at a standstill, people are pretty much stuck in their neighborhoods and, moreover, since the larger chain stores are mostly staffed with people who come from outside the neighborhood, it is only the small, local places that are open. There is something nice about seeing all of the Starbucks closed and only the most local of the local places operating. Neighbors are checking on elderly neighbors. People are helping police and emergency workers clear debris. Coffee shops are filled with neighborhood folk catching up on local gossip and recounting "Sandy stories." I guess that the wonderful sense of community is the silver lining in all of the damages, outages, and closings.

Here's hoping everyone is staying safe, warm, and dry...

Halloween Hurricane

Last year Halloween brought a freakish snowstorm that left much of my home state of Connecticut without power for a week. This year, Hurricane Sandy is scheduled to arrive with high winds, two days of school cancellations, a paralyzed subway, and mandated evacuations in "zone A" of New York City. Before the storm though, my friends and I had a fun Halloween bash on Saturday to commemorate my favorite holiday. Hopefully, the weather will be better in time for the village Halloween parade on Wednesday, but if it is not, I am happy that I got to celebrate before the storm.

I don't sew, but I do love making halloween costumes. My trusty glue gun always saves the day on Halloween! This year, after much debate about whether or not to go political, I decided to be an entirely apolitical peacock. I went to the craft store in between the end of parent/teacher conferences on Friday and our after work happy hour. I bought feathers, tulle, and glitter glue and wasn't exactly sure what I was going to do with these materials, but knew I would figure something out! On Saturday before my friends arrived, I went to H & M and bought a really inexpensive peacock blue dress.

Armed with these materials, I constructed my peacock costume just in time for my friend's arrival when they safety pinned the panels for my tail onto my dress and stuck tons of feathers into my hair. Oh how I love halloween!!

The Finished Product

My friend's boyfriend did go political. I think he regretted that 
after hearing the first 5,000 comments from M. and I

Hours after my friends left on Sunday, we heard that the subway would be shut down and school cancelled in anticipation of Hurricane Sandy. This morning, as the wind picked up outside, M. and I took a walk down to the East River since we will likely be stuck inside most of the rest of the day. The FDR is already flooded and the hurricane has not even hit yet, so that is a little disconcerting. New Yorkers being New Yorkers are of course still outside wandering around. The FDR was crawling with people walking across the closed down highway. As I type, someone is playing "Please Don't Take My Sunshine Away" on the saxophone--only in New York!

Stay safe, warm, and dry everyone and good luck weathering "Frankenstorm!"

Trick or Treat

My costume hunt is in full gear...

I have made it no secret that Halloween is one of my favorite holidays ever. When I was little, like most kids, I would spend the entire month leading up to Halloween thinking about what I would be. Unlike most kids, I would then try to convince my sisters to let me make their costumes as well. Luckily, I live in a city where a childlike spirit of Halloween never dies and many people go out for Halloween, no matter their age. M and I make a habit of going to the Village Halloween Parade, which is always immensely entertaining. One of my favorite groups who march in the parade is always the Michael Jackson "Thriller" dancers...

This year, like most years, my friends are coming in for a little Halloween shindig on Saturday and I am still in the process of figuring out what to be. Some of my best costumes in years past have been my rendition of the Arizona immigration law SB 1070 and my take on the 1980s Operation Man game. One of my crowning glories was actually a spider costume that I made twenty minutes before we went out using nothing but old tights! This year is an election year, so naturally a part of me wants to go political; however, I am sure that half of the population here is already planning their big bird and "binders full of women" costumes, so I think I am going to have to come up with something else...

Hmmm...we'll see what this year brings, but my oh my do I love Halloween!  

Friday Footnotes

It is absolutely gorgeous out and-even better-I have very little in the way of actual plans for this weekend. Since I have been going non-stop every weekend since the summer, it is really nice to have a relaxing weekend to look forward to...

Here is what I am loving on this perfect October Saturday...

Perfect running weather...

Dinner plans with M. tonight at a new French mussel place followed by some donuts and drinks at a local favorite...yummm

The nearing of my favorite holiday: Halloween!! It's time to figure out my costume...

Happy hour with my coworkers last night, which helped to ease the pain of a really bad day at work...

M's complaint call to Delta about our flight cancellation this summer that resulted in vouchers for both of us...we are already daydreaming about where we will go!

All Images Via Pinterest 

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!!

Binders Full of Women, Big Bird, and Other Memes

As we drank wine on Saturday evening, one of the many things that my friends and I talked about was how grateful we were that we did not grow up in an age when Facebook and other social media sites were quite as prevalent. We laughed imagining the immature comments that would surely grace our "walls," the "un-friending" that would likely occur (followed, of course, by re-friending weeks later), and the documented trail of years that are often volatile and filled with irrational pubescent behavior. A recent article in The New York Times pointed out that the college student of today often spends weekend mornings untagging him or herself from pictures and essentially doing social media damage control. I fear the amount of pictures of me sticking out my tongue that would be out there circulating for the whole wide world to see...

Despite my gratitude that I did not grow up in an age when social media was quite as overwhelming, I do love many social media platforms. Pinterest is endlessly entertaining. Instagram is oh-so-fun. And Facebook, while certainly losing its luster, has its moments. Last night, for example, when Mitt Romney made his now infamous "binders full of women" comment--within seconds I was invited to a group "Binders full of women" and my friend Carl had soon gone viral with mentions in The Wall Street Journal blog and fingers sore from adding people to his group. So, while I feel badly for my thirteen-year-old students who will one day look back on some all of their status updates and cringe, social media can be downright entertaining sometimes if I do say so myself.

Wishing for More Hours in the Day

I don't know about all of you, but I could really benefit from a few more hours in a day. For sleep. For yoga. For staring into space. Sigh.

In the meantime, coffee is my best friend.

Love this image from Pinterest...

If You Loved The Hunger Games...

...then you absolutely must check out Ally Condie's Matched trilogy! This addictive series shares many commonalities with The Hunger Games series ranging from a dystopian future society to a love triangle to a rebellion in the works. In November, the final book of the series is slated to come out, so it is perfect timing to read the first two books in the series. I tore through both books in a couple of hours (they are technically adolescent fiction, after all) and found both to be page turners. Definitely check them out!

The Best Holiday

The weekend always goes too quickly, no? It has been a busy weekend, but a fun one. My favorite part of this weekend was, of course, our annual fall festivities. The weather was gorgeous and made for the perfect day for all of our fall activities. After my friends picked me up at the train station and we hit Starbucks, we made the long drive up to the northern part of the state where we got pumpkins, wandered through the corn maze, and visited the country store at Lyman Orchards. The corn maze was hilarious with my friend's kids leading the way. The projected half hour maze time took us double that when following a two and four year old through the corn paths! After selecting our pumpkins we headed further north to our friend's house so the kids could nap and we could carve, catch up, and eat. The day was absolutely perfect--it really has become a sacred annual tradition to all of us.

We ended the night in the southern part of the state watching the Yankees, drinking wine, and continuing the conversation before I jumped the last train home with my huge pumpkin, an appetite fulfilled with roasted pumpkin seeds, and still warmed from a wonderful day with some of my favorite people!

Fall Festivities

I am just one more workday away from one of my most favorite "holidays" of the year! What started as an "annual tradition" that I don't think any of us really thought would be annual has turned into a steadfast yearly event that has grown and changed with us over the years. The first years ended in wine, horror movies, and trips out to the bar. As time passed, we invited a stroller along on the corn maze run, and now there are a couple of little ones who can run the maze themselves.

This year, I am looking forward to all of the usual pumpkin picking, corn maze wandering, carving contests, and candy corn consumption, but I also can't wait for whatever new traditions get folded into the old. There is something so sacred about that intersecting place where old memories are resurrected and new traditions are created.

Driving the Coast of New England

After attending a friend's wedding on Saturday, M and I headed up to Portland, Maine with stops in Boston, Portsmouth, Kittery, and Wells.  It was great to see my cousin along the way and enjoy some delicious Indian food in her neighborhood.

Portsmouth was adorable. We stopped for brunch at Michelle's on Market Square and had some eggs and delicious French toast. Then we wandered around the cute little town. I really loved the paper store Gus and Ruby Letterpress!

From here, after a quick shopping detour, we drove up to Laudholm Farm--one of our favorite Maine hikes. This beautiful woodside walk meanders through the fall foliage, with apple trees, farms, and barns along the way, until it ultimately reaches a breathtaking beach vista. 

As we made our way to Portland, we were lured by many quintessential New England fall sites. There is nothing like a field checkered with pumpkins and mums to draw in the fall spectator. 

Finally we arrived at our destination where we enjoyed a meal at Duckfat. My cousin recommended that we have churros with caramel sauce for dessert and it was a sweet ending to a perfect weekend...

This sweater weather is divine.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Friday Footnotes

Here is what I am loving on this brisk October morning...

The UNICEF networking event that I attended Thursday night: It was so inspiring to see all of the human rights education programs that are out there doing amazing things with youth. They also screened the documentary Not My Life, which, despite some problems emerging out of oversimplification, will be cool to screen with high school students.

Weddings! I always love a good wedding and this weekend it will be fun to see one of M's closest friends tie the knot...

Fall Foliage: Excited to see the leaves performance in their dynamic yearly show...

Happy Weekend!

That's "Fire"

I took my ninth grade students to the library today so they could type up their short stories. Every year, when I work with students to type up their writing, I am shocked by how deficient their computer skills are. Today, I ran around for an hour fielding questions like, "How do I double space a paper?" The double spacing solutions were creative and fascinating. One student put two spaces between each word. Another student manually hit return between each line of her paper. When I showed students how to hit "select all" and right click in order to double space their papers, I heard genuine awe and respect in their responses: "Damn. That's fire." This is one of the highest expressions of respect. Amazing. I can slave over a lesson for hours, but what gains me the most praise is knowing how to use the right click feature on the mouse...

Winding Down

Domestic issues up for debate. A three hour class on neoliberal economic policies. A full day of teaching literature to high school students. Yup, my brain is fried. The answer? A little pre-bedtime reading that is anything but intellectual. 

Stacey Ballis' novel Good Enough to Eat totally fits the bill. If you are looking for a little post-debate reading, check it out!