this one is aweomse it has a lion hunt.

new books from the bookman!

oni and lank make with the good weekend

my brother lank was in town this weekend.  we always have a nice time but this weekend was exceptionally loverly.  yesterday was hiking on hook mountain, a late mexican dinner and sleep.  today found us making an awesome breakfast and then seeing the artists at union square, then heading over to greenpoint/williamsburg to visit Brooklyn Brewery, and closing that outing with dinner at Peter's Since 1969.

We left on the five train from Pelham Parkway around 12:00pm and I managed to get in 900 words during the trip into the city.  We went to the bank then took a lookie loo at the art in Union Square.  the best thing i saw at the artist's at union square was some photographs in gold leaf and one photograph that was pigmented, a picture of some graff at 5 Points (see above for a different picture of the same graffiti.)  i might buy that picture for a friend next Sunday.  also i enjoyed a beautiful picture of a cat in whose eye i saw the reflection of a harbor, by an artist named Stavros something something, whose last name I forget, but who was very gracious and friendly.  That picture inspire me to take the mask picture featured later in this post.  That mask was awesome, I want one.

Then Lank and I took the L train (where a curly haired girl played mandolin and sang softly to an older black man who was carrying a guitar, and everyone smiled to each other and clapped at the end) to the Bedford stop, played a quick game of "look at the hipsters" then went over to the brewery.  they had a nice little bar there and a wonderful cat, Monster,  a ten-year old male neuter who is in charge of all mousing operations over there at the brewery.

Lank and I split twenty dollars worth of tokens, giving us three each.  We then exchanged the a token each for a cup of Brooklyn Brewery's Brown Ale and Weisse Ale respectively.  The Weisse was amazing.  We enjoyed those and I snapped some photos with his camera because it is awesome and mine is
a. not
b. currently misplaced and
c. has a scratched lens.

Then we had the tour which was amazingly brief and very entertaining due to the tour guide and his love anecdotes about Williamsburg in the 1990's.  I highly recommend the tour but have a beer or two first as otherwise you will disappointed by its brevity.

Then we took to the long beer-hall style tables in the bar and settled in to make some new friends.  We met a Derrick and a Carston who work for ZocDoc, a online company which allows you to book appointments with doctors who take your insurance, and which my dear friend Dann reviewed quiet favorably last week.  They were lovely ready-made drinking bodies and we discussed topics as diverse as the distribution of the world's Jewry, life in Brooklyn, small vs. large dogs, fiction writing, life being good, and a voice acting. here's to them.

 Then we decided we needed to eat.  we walked back to bedford and found a comfort-food joint called Peter's Since 1969.  I had chicken and mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes because i was tipsy and that means carbs don't count.  lank had more chicken and mashed potatoes with gravy and some string beans.  Everything was fantastic and not too expensive (round $10-$12 per meal).  I highly recommend them.

Then with very full tummies we bored the train and rode our way home to the Bronx.  I'm reading The Ask by Sam Lipsyte and Lank was dipping into the Idiot by Dostoevsky.  I'm enjoying The Ask, but found it to be more intelligible and enjoyable when I was tipsy, so take that for whatever it is worth.  I read the Idiot a few years ago and found it brilliant, albeit massively depressing.  Sometimes I need massively depressing literature to check my perspective :)  life is good.

I would go on to tell you all about the hike we did in Nyack yesterday but I am a bit weary and still have plans for this evening  Suffice to say mother nature shone exceptionally bright in yesterday's beautiful weather.  The trial was just difficult enough to be a bit challenge but not kill me, and we did about 8 miles over the day.  The view from the top was astonishing in its beauty and the birdwatchers we met at the summit were very interesting and quite willing to share their knowledge with us.  The best part of the trip, for me, was showing the 8 year old triplets that accompanied us some things in nature which I knew some things about.  I love an open mind and young people can be absolute sponges for knowledge, once you get your foot in the door past their too-cool exteriors.

 

photo by: Joe Svantner

my fridge died today

long live my fridge.  well when i go get one in the morning.  i filled the mostly-dead fridge with ice to save my foods.  maybe it will work.  who knows?

today my little charges started school.  kindergarten for the 5 y.o. and third grade for the 8 y.o.  they did alright.  chloe likes her teacher and has a friend in her class.  soph's nervous about geometry, even though she has nothing to worry about.  she knows about rhombuses and nonagons and such.  glad we watched out TMBG Here Comes the Science videos this summer :)


i'm a really, really good nanny.  last night i watched a new charge named carmella.  she's two and pretty awesome.  she is pretty decent at using the potty which impressed me, and knows her shapes fairly well.  gonna have to do more work with colors because she guesses everything is lellow or pink.  i like lellow.  her mom was very impressed with how i integrate learning activities into fun and active play, which made me happy.  of course i learned this over time.  it is boring to just play with kids, it is better to play with them and teach them stuff.  and if you just teach them stuff they get bored and frustrated, so it is much better to mix it up into a game, and to break those games up with physical activities.

um what else.  i'm getting a new kid.  her name's ava and she lives in the same building with sophie and chloe and she goes to the same school.  three days a week i'm picking her up and hanging out.  bonus for me on the financial side and also in the job-not-being-boring department.

today i saw my friend andrushka and his mom at the library.  he is pretty cool.  he's in first grade now and he likes rockets and space and stuff and he is trilingual which is just amazing and i'm wishing i was even bilingual!  he speaks English and Georgian and Russian.  he also had bright red hair which i like because it reminds me of my niece Annika who is like the light of my life.

henry came to visit me lots this week because he was home from iraq to go to a wedding.  i like him lots.  he is coming back for a long while in about a month so we shall see what's what.

i decided what i am going to school for, specifically. i want to do a master's of science in early childhood education but that job market is the pits right now.   and i am so tired of being desperately poor.  so instead i am going to do a master's in TESOL.
probably at CUNY hunter.

ok time to go to sleep i have to get up early to go to the used appliance store.  and i have to have my wits about me because they don't speak English over there just Spanglish and i don't want to get anything mixed up, especially not features or prices.  i should probably ask the guy to write stuff down in spanish, that's what i did last time and it worked because translating writing is much easier for me than fast speech.

in closing i want to wish everyone a happy rosh hashanah!