By the light of the golden arches

No matter where you go in America, you are never more than 5 minutes from an artery-clogging Big Mac. Unless you are in the Dakotas. Then it might be a couple of hours.

Found here. More info at the source.

Have an incredible, amazing, awesome, easy, superlative weekend

Music Appreciation (or, how I am amusing myself at your expense)

So today I am working Day 2 of my friends' wine festival, and it is a drop-dead gorgeous day, sunny, blue skies, in the low 70s and the leaves have just started changing. So that means 700-800 festival guests per day, many from NYC, wealthy, snobby and each one amazed and annoyed that 799 other people had the same idea as them to come here. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy working the festival, I love the winery owners, I always manage to have a good time here and as usual in any customer service/retail/hospitality job, 10% of the people are beyond wonderful, 80% are normal and 10% should just... go away.



I'm stationed at the back register in the retail store, and to give the place a little ambiance there is always something classical or folk or acoustic on the CD player. I have been playing the above album on repeat (I am so busy I mostly block it out). Some of the pieces sound new age/electronic but some are decidedly classical interpretations. I am loving how many people recognize those as classical style but cannot identify that it is Pink Floyd. They hum along, they wonder what composer it is, why they recognize the piece but just can't place it. If they ask I tell them it's the London Philharmonic. If they press I tell them the composer is Wright, or Gilmour, or Waters. They smugly nod "Ah yes, that's who I thought it was..."

Recipe for a Perfect Summer Weekend in NYC

{The Flatiron Building, Askew. It was the only way I could frame the whole thing with my little camera}

Pre-heat the calendar to the last weekend before school starts. Take one hard-working marketing director (me) and one high school music teacher (The BF) with a pending birthday, and add:

 

A cheap bus from Hartford to Midtown, a camera shop that is the mecca of photographers and technophiles everywhere, a French bistro that serves late lunches of moules frites and wine with Lillet. ABC Carpet & Home on Lower Broadway, an ice cream truck that you heard about on NPR, a shady bench in Union Square Park.

{The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck parked at Union Square}

A wonderful hotel in Murray Hill, a subway map, an iPhone app for Zagat that tells you where the locals go for Italian in Greenwich Village. Pasta made in a cellar, wine made in Piedmont, panna cotta made in heaven.

 

 

{Porca Miseria Chandelier by Ingo Maurer}

Picasso, Magritte and Ingo Maurer's "Porca Miseria! Chandelier" at MoMA, a street fair on Sixth Avenue, fantastic sandwiches crafted by a Top Chef, a wedding in St. Patrick's Cathedral. Used books at The Strand, an unbelievable birthday dinner at the Union Square Cafe, sitting next to a movie star, hoping to flag down the Cash Cab, drinks at a swanky nightclub.

{The Round Table, at the Algonquin Hotel, Where Mrs. Parker and The Vicious Circle dined and dished}

Another street fair on the Ave where the Men are Mad, finding Dorothy Parker's seat at the Algonquin Round Table, breakfast (and another wedding!) in Bryant Park, trying to figure out where they used to put the Fashion Week tents, dashing through Midtown to catch the bus back from Penn Station. Home.

 

All photos by me. More on my Flickr page.

Today I'm also participating in Hooked on Houses "Hooked on Fridays" link party, so scoot on over there and see what everyone else is hooked on.

Summer, don’t go! Is it something I said?

{Misquamicut Seagull No. 4, originally uploaded by robinsegg0523}

Oh Summer, why must you be over? You came so late this year, and went by too quickly. I feel I had only a few weeks to enjoy your sunny skies, your pleasant breezes, your sweltering days that make me appreciate your cool nights all the more…

This Saturday The BF and I enjoyed what is likely the last* “beach day” of the summer. Under blue skies and with a soundtrack of crashing waves, we sunned ourselves, read magazines, swam in the ocean, sat under an umbrella and enjoyed lunch and cold beers with an old friend of mine. I grew up on Long Island Sound, but there is nothing like a real ocean beach, with big waves and soft sand, a thousand colorful umbrellas scattered like Easter eggs on the shore. Yes, I have a bathing suit full of sand and seaweed, I got stung by a jellyfish and there is a line at the bathhouse, but I like to walk to the water’s edge and look out at the sea and appreciate that I am standing on the edge of a continent.

For more on what I love about summer click here.

*the last for us that is, ‘cause we don’t play no hooky once school starts.