flash back to the back flash

yeah. I don't know what that means either.

As I was uploading pictures from pottstown, I stumbled across this photo from California. It was taken at the new (now I guess not so new) Getty Center in LA. The lovely young lady on the right is Jackie (Hi Jackie!!). The Getty Center was designed by Richard Meier, and is a really amazing piece of architecture.


The modern photo exhibit was fantastic, although the German paintings one was slightly disappointing, as far as I can remember. There are also some great pictures of the sunset over the hills, but I didn't actually take any of them.

Pomer-Awesome*

This weekend was spent with mr. and mrs. Pomerantz in Pottstown, Pennsylvania (how do you like THEM alliterations? eh??). As you can imagine, much fun was had by all. We ate several amazing meals, saw Pan's Labyrinth, and slept, which is never a bad thing.

Here is Seth with his dad who was cold on our walk to the mall so he borrowed my scarf and seth's face mask.

This is Bear. You can't tell from this picture, but Bear happens to be the biggest dog I've ever seen. He's like the size of a small horse. His head comes up to my belly button. He's also awesome, although not the brightest bulb in the hallway. Sorry, Bear.

*post title came directly from deirdre.

heeeeeeeeere's johnny!

So I saw the weird facial hair dude again this morning. Sadly, it seems that his facial hair was not a temporary joke, but a way of life instead.

productive morning

As promised, here are the winners in a leprochaun picture. Instead of having them pose WITH the leprochaun, I've had them pose AS the leprochaun. Can you spot the secret special guest??

ps. sorry, will, I didn't have a picture of you on my computer. We'll just have to use our imagination. You are the leprochaun of my heart anyway. Do they have leprochauns in New Zealand?

fancy is as fancy does.

This past weekend Seth and I went to see the New York Philharmonic perform. We saw a fantastic version of the Elgar Cello Concerto (performed by an amazing 24-year-old Alisa Weilerstein who got a bunch of ovations when she was finished). It was lovely, and was followed by a less wonderful Bruckner Symphony (I'm just not a fan of the Wagnerian pounding orchestral pieces, although the third movement was very nice).

Here is a picture of us: after dinner, after the concert, after watching the Eagles lose in a bar downtown.
You can see the pain in our faces. In my case, the pain was coming from my feet, which were trapped in stilleto heels (prompting a few guys at the bar downtown to ask me if I was a schoolteacher. Actually, i'm pretty sure it was the glasses (not pictured) as opposed to the fancy dress and heels). In Seth's case, it was the close loss. Sorry, Eagles. Next year in Jerusalem, eh?

starting to feel at all like christmas?

So it finally snowed (and stuck) and this is the sight that greeted me this morning as I walked to the subway. Not a bad way to start the day. Not bad at all.

how to separate the wheat from the chaff

If you laugh: wheat.
If you say, "I don't get it" and I have to explain it to you (and you don't have an excuse, like English being a second language or you can't read or you're blind), chaff. Definitely chaff.

These are a few of my favorite things...

So, I like living in New York. Most of the time. Not this morning, when it took me an hour and a half to get to work, again. But most of the time. And I'm reminded of how much I like to live here when I read the ridiculous headlines that pop up every few months.

Regard:

A Rotten Smell Raises Alarms and Questions -- yesterday, about a rotten egg/gas smell permeating most of Manhattan and parts of Jersey

Good Smell Perplexes New Yorkers -- late October of 2005, a sugary smell wafted over lower Manhattan

Sweet Smell Overtakes Manhattan, "Maple Syrup. Same As Last Time." -- last December (2005), same sugary maple syrup smell.

I love that the smell is news - I understand the gas smell being news because that's just scary. As "the nose", I am able to pick out the odor of gas pretty much everywhere - I've saved a few buildings by noticing pilot lights were out - but the maple syrup smell? That's just classic Manhattan craziness.


postscript - apparently the gas smell is now thought to be caused by a leak of the chemical mercaptan from a New Jersey power plant. Mercaptan, for all of your curious folk, is the rotten egg smell they add to natural gas to make it easily detected. Because gas doesn't actually smell. Awesome, huh?

UPDATE: I was misinformed. Turns out the smell was caused by a "temperature inversion" yesterday... ummmmm what? Here's the full text from the NYTimes:

"Yesterday’s lingering odor was attributed in part to a temperature inversion settling over the New York region. Of course, that wasn’t the first time this has happened. Before the Clean Air Act, such inversions were linked to hundreds of deaths, as they trapped the deadly toxins from the city’s factories and other agents of pollution.

Time Magazine’s archive has an interesting story about a 1966 inversion here.

It leads to a question some have raised following yesterday’s incident: have we become more senstitive to such odors in our atmosphere?"

subtract balm. plus stable.

So I returned to work today after a vacation of about a week and a half (which was fantastic and I want to go back right now), and I guess the sewage backed up in the bathroom? So our leprochaun friend is apparently living in a stable with horses (I haven't named him yet, but you can name the horse. Winner has a new leprochaun picture drawn with them in it.) in a stable filled with horse shit.

he still smells bad, but now he has bad smelling company.