I got to hang with the cool kids

Yes, I am a week late in posting this. To recap: last Friday, after trekking around NYC for two days for work-related meetings/site visits (10 event sites in 2 days -– it can be done, if you have the right footwear, and plan a path that bypasses the NY Fashion Week venues), I met up with some fabulous bloggers:

(l. to r.) Naomi of Design Manifest; moi; Leigh of Marvelous Kiddo with cutie-pie W; get-together instigator Raina of If The Lampshade Fits; and Alicia of Alicia B. Designs. Also in our party but traveling incognito was Alexis of The Studioist. This photo and numerous others patiently taken by the dapper and gracious Nick of Cupboards).

Now I’m the last person who will intentionally meet up with complete strangers for the night, but herein lies the difference: I felt like I already knew these ladies. I’ve been reading Raina and Alicia’s blogs for 3 and 2 years, respectively, and when the meet-up lineup was announced, I happily perused the archives of the other blogs so I could get a sense of the assembled company.

It was a great meet-up! I asked my contact at the Hudson Hotel to assist with making us a reservation in their Library Bar and we enjoyed prime seating in front of the fireplace on a cushy leather sofa and less-cushy ghost chairs.The music was a little too loud but we all managed to chat for a few hours about blogging, design, crazy commenters, our respective hometowns, Alicia’s recent move and engagement, Naomi’s new apartment in Philly, what makes a good dinner party menu, etc. etc. like a bunch of old pals.

 
Raina and I at the end of the night – a little giddy, a little exhausted (according to my camera this was taken at 2:38 am!), and apparently both fans of large necklaces. Another photo by Nick.

I have on past occasions waxed poetic about the value of all you readers, lurkers, commenters, followers and the online community we have built for ourselves, but there is something satisfying about actually meeting people you’ve “known” online and having it really click. When I tried to explain the nature of this meet-up to some friends and co-workers, their non-bloggy brains could not process it. “Wait, you’re meeting people you haven’t met yet? But you know them? But you haven’t met them?” I finally had to describe it as akin to meeting a bunch of pen pals.

Thanks again ladies (and Nick) for a great night and I hope we can do it again!

Uggs 0, Michael Kors 1

So, the UGGs were a bust. They arrived yesterday and they were as un-UGGly as the photo but not very comfortable. I returned them to the store, where these Michael Kors babies called my name:

Much better fit, and more my style. The best part? Between the sale price and a coupon, I got them for one-third the price of the UGGs. Sometimes it pays to go to the store vs shopping online…

So my toes will be toasty and well-dressed while I trek around NYC tomorrow and Friday. Whoo hoo!

Slip slidin’ away

Hartford has had the frozen heavens dump upon us about every five days since the day after Christmas. Yesterday’s special was 4 inches of snow just in time for morning rush hour, followed by an inch of icy glaze, just in time for evening rush hour. No need to rent skates since your snow boots will work just fine on the slip’n’slidewalks. Too bad the ice means the end of all the kids sledding on the big hill behind the capital building. And I use the term “kids” loosely *cough*.

GIF found via The Blogess.

Happy Boxing Day, grab a shovel

Happy Boxing Day! Here in Connecticut we are awaiting the storm that yesterday blanketed the Southeast with a White Christmas. The weather fear-mongers are calling for a blizzard of 12-18” and 40 mph winds, which of course had people panicked last night. “It’s Christmas! All the stores are closed! I can’t stock up on bread and milk and snowmelt and shovels (how do you live in New England and not have a snow shovel?) and we will be snowed in for months Icannevereverleavethehouseeveragain whatwillIdooooooo?” Fun times! Personally I’m annoyed that the storm will prevent me from meeting up with an out-of-town college friend I haven’t seen in years and from hitting the half-off sales for next year’s wrapping paper etc.

So I’ll be keeping cozy with The Lounging Party, some Christmas leftovers, my Google Reader and a stack of DVDs and books (including this (nerd alert) and this, received as gifts from my wonderful family yesterday). Although I live downtown, my building is on a side street that probably won’t get plowed ‘til Tuesday, so I may have to instigate an impromptu BYOB potluck in my building… I love a snow day!

Snowman Treeclip by CatandFiddlefolk on Etsy.

Ten little pumpkins, sitting on a stair...

 

The above jack-o-lantern peanut gallery is on the street behind me. They look even better at night all lit up, but of course every time I’ve seen them lit I didn’t have my camera on me.

I had a quiet Halloween, no costume parties this year, very low-key, but after a crazy month at work (including a week – while suffering a horrible cold – in my home-away-from-home Chicago), a night with bad movies and laundry folding is a welcome respite.

In related Halloween news, one of my neighbors is again secretly leaving candy in a bowl by the elevator on my floor. Yum!

Hope you all had a Happy Halloween, with only good goblins and lots of candy from the upper hierarchy.

A mouse for my house

I am in love with this mouse print, by Berkley Illustration and available on Etsy:

I imagine their names are Beatrice and Bertram. The artist says they live “in a yellow cottage full of cozy nooks and secret passages. You may find it a bit peculiar, but their best friend is a grey cat from France.” I totally believe her.

Found via MA Belle. More fun prints from Berkley Illustration here. Reacquaint yourself with Beatrix Potter’s mischievous Hunca Munca and posh Johnny Town Mouse here.

Now that my computer is back up and running I will be posting more and stopping by more of your blogs. I have some great pics from a recent NYC weekend for The BFs birthday. Eating and shopping and celebrity-sighting, oh my!

Top o' the Pfingstmontag to you!

{Pfingstmontag, Originally uploaded by Lichtwechsel}

According to my calendar (which is French), today is "Pfingst-Montag" (which is German), or Whit-Monday, 'a great festival day of the year with the Germans of the Old World and the New. They celebrate it if they are "city pent," by excursions into the country; if they dwell in the country, they still have their festive out door recreations".'

So basically it is a day off from work, to celebrate being outside.

I'm telling you, those Europeans are so much smarter than us when it comes to time off.....

Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling.
~ Walt Whitman

I'll have the filet, medium, hold the Creedence

{NYC Felix, originally uploaded by tbone_bill. See note below**}

There is nothing like a nice dinner out. In Downtown Hartford, and the surrounding towns, there are a lot of great places to eat. I am fortunate in that The BF also appreciates good restaurants, and most Saturday nights find us enjoying a cold martini followed by a lovely meal and some great wine. We like the whole experience that a good restaurant offers: a little chit-chat with the bartender while he shakes up the vodka or gin and tries to remember which of us ordered the olives (me) or the lemon twist (The BF). Debating staying at the bar so we can sit cozily side-by-side vs moving to a table. Sharing an appetizer, weighing the merits of various entrees, picking a wine, having a three-hour conversation about everything and nothing. We appreciate the whole experience that has been created for us - the food, the service, the decor, the ambiance. But not necessarily the music. The music befuddles. When I think marble bar/white tablecloth/martini/wine/etc, I think jazz, standards, accoustic, maybe somethig electronic, but all in the name of background music. Aural wallpaper to complement the Scalamandre grasscloth and alabaster chandeliers, to sparkle behind the patrons' dialogue, to bookend the beginnings and ends of conversations. I don't think Creedence. Or Jimi Hendrix. Or Cat Stevens.

I was in three different fine dining establishments this past weekend: two with The BF on Saturday night (one for a drink and a different one for dinner) and one with my family for Easter. In all three instances, the artfully-designed decor, first-class service* and excellent food was curiously set against an backdrop of '70s rock: CCR, Led Zep, Fleetwood Mac, Queen. Great stuff, in a grammar-school-flashback kind of way. Or a beer-and-burgers-on-the-beach kind of way. Or a hanging-out-at-home kind of way. I don't get it. Why would a restauranteur spend a million dollars on opening a restaurant, creating a menu, designing a space, praying for a good review and a crowd that keeps coming despite the ups and downs of the economy, and then leave the Muzak station on Seventies Rock? You've taken a wonderful little experience and tainted it. It's not ironic, or charming, or clever, it's kind of obnoxious, in an ambiance-be-damned-this-is-what-I/the-staff-likes kind of way. And if that is who you are catering to, I am afraid for your business.

*Okay, the service at the place we went to on Easter was more grandmotherly than first-class, but still...

**The BF took this picture, on a hot summer Saturday night in NYC, at Restaurant Felix. The food is amazing, and the music is a mix of French jazz/electonic lounge/music hall (think Pink Martini). A delicious end to a wonderful day. If you go, be sure to sit in the window so you can watch the street theater that is West Broadway. We watched one couple on a blind date, another couple breaking up, and a Vespa-riding cross-dresser wearing a fur coat and a wig (in August). Oh, and did I mention the food was fantastic?

I want my own mouse circus

Saturday night the boyfriend and I went to see a little piece of stop-motion genius, Henry Selick's Coraline. If you've seen James and The Giant Peach or The Nightmare Before Christmas, you are familiar with Selick's work. Coraline was three years in the making, employing dozens of artisans, artists and crafters (like Althea Crome, who knitted Coraline's tiny sweaters and gloves on needles smaller than toothpicks) to create the wondrous world of a curious girl and her mysterious neighbors.


Coraline is gorgeously made, and meets my main criteria for any film: a good story, well told. I think it is being marketed as a kid's film, and while there certainly were a lot of kids at the showing we went to, there were plenty of adults, and everyone was equally mesmerized by the spectacle Selick and his team have created. But the thing that made me squeal like a little girl was Mr. Bobinsky's Mouse Circus. See, when I was a child I had this thing about mice, this secret belief that behind the walls they lived a Borrower's life, wearing tiny clothes, sleeping in little beds made from matchboxes, dining at spool tables, tooling around in toy cars, Stuart Little-style. As an adult, I may or may not have let that belief...um... go (and this despite having once owned an old house that had many a mouse trap to catch the little buggers before they could do too much damage). Mr. Bobinsky's mice wear cute little red band uniforms, play tiny musical instruments, and put on a circus performance with military precision. There's a secret behind their showmanship that I won't give away here (go see the movie), but they are just adorable and must be forgiven for their role in any deceit. Plus if you ask them nicely they will spell your name with their tails (click the pic below to make your own).

Screenshots from the Coraline website.

Hang on little tomato

Silly little tomato doesn't realize it's October. It's the size of a golf ball and hard as a rock, and with 48-degree days and another frost predicted for this weekend, the tomato and the last vestiges of parsley and basil on my little balcony garden are doomed.

Go listen to the song that inspired the title of this post. It's a Pink Martini kind of afternoon.

Chicago is my kind of town

Wrigley Building and Michigan Ave at Dusk, originally uploaded by robinsegg0523.

This was the view from my hotel room (28th floor) every night. Too bad I was too busy with work to enjoy much of it. Maybe when I go back in December for our next conference....

Que syrah shiraz

{flights of wine and cheese at Bin36 in Chicago}

I'm in Chicago this week for one of my company's conferences and last night took the fab assistant Kelly and our VP of sales to one of my favorite restaurants, Bin 36. They have a great wine selection and offer it by the flight, glass or bottle, as well as in their retail shop (unlike CT, where our blue laws prohibit retail sales and consumption sales under the same roof). They also have an amazing cheese bar that makes me so glad I'm not lactose intolerant. The wine flights all have clever, pun-y names and the restaurant's Wine 101 & 102 classes have converted hundreds of wine neophytes into oenophiles. The decor is very urban loft contemporary and the menu is eclectic and planned with wine pairings in mind. If you are ever in Chicago I urge you to make time to visit.

On a related note, the owner of my favorite wine shop in CT doesn't know my name and always refers to me by the name of a wine I asked him about when I first visited his shop last year. "Hi Carmenere!". I guess there are worse things than being mistaken for a delicious Chilean red.

Lights on, no one home

{IMG_0714, originally uploaded by mohitontherocks}

For a week now, I've been getting up before the crack of dawn and going for a brisk nearly-one-hour walk with my neighbor, the lovely Meghan of Ladies In Waiting. Her sweet teddy of a goldendoodle, Boddington (aka The Bods) accompanies us and, ahem, "protects" us from any unsavory characters. I should preface this by saying that Meghan is a morning person of the highest caliber. The Bods and I are not (Meghan's partner Mo is not either. She's the smart one, home in bed, sleeping). But once we get to walkin' and talkin' (and boy, can we talk!), I'm fully awake and before you know it we have circumnavigated Downtown Hartford and are home-again, home-again.

It's mighty dark at 6:00 am, and will be until daylight savings starts/ends (I can never remember which it is) in two weeks. In between our incessant talking we've noticed that the city has quite a life of its own at that hour. As the sky (very) slowly lightens, a steady stream of traffic starts coming over the bridges from suburbia, and we've remarked on how ungodly early some people head in to their office jobs. It took only three days for us to become "regulars" on our route, greeted amiably by dog-walkers at the new apartments on Temple St., the corporate cafeteria cooks out for a smoke behind one of the insurance companies, and the construction workers headed for the soon-to-be-finished science museum.

One thing about these walks that really, really bothers us is that in some of the office towers, all the lights are on. All the lights. On. All night. I can see it from my apartment before I go to bed, if I get up in the middle of the night, and when I wake up at 5:45. No matter the hour, every light in these buildings is a-blazing. Yeah, yeah, they're fluorescents and CFLs, so what. Why are they on? No one is there. Even the cleaning people are long gone. How much money are they spending on electricity? Sure, it looks pretty, in a "the city never sleeps" kind of way, but in this day and age, is this really the best use of their money and our resources? Make that our money -- Hartford is an insurance and finance town, and some of these companies were recently bailed out by Our Tax Dollars, so technically that's my money and your money that they are wasting.

I'm tempted to call them up and tell them to turn the lights off. How do you think that would go over?