Holding on to summer

(photo taken by me, at Misquamicut State Beach, Rhode Island)

Dear, dear summer, why must you go? I am not ready! I need another trip to the beach, more melty ice cream cones, a long bike ride in the dappled shade, garden tomatoes, damp bathing suits drying in the sun, new sandals and a fresh pedicure…

More summer lovin’ here and here. And here.

Note to self: find more friends with cottages

Earlier this summer I was lucky enough to get away with some girlfriends to another friend’s lovely cottage tucked away behind two other cottages on a tiny side street in a little neighborhood in Newport, RI.

 

At two blocks in from the harbor we were just a block from the main road’s restaurants, shops and boutiques, but once we turned onto the alley and were ensconced in our little patio we were worlds away from the noise of the street and tourists.

The cottage was beautiful but comfortable, with cozy rooms tucked under eaves and stairs, a huge sunroom, and original art on every wall.

  

We lazed on the beach and walked the Cliff Walk and lounged in Adirondack chairs. Ate fish and chips on the edge of the harbor. Bought and sold extravagant yachts and stately mansions and charming cottages with our imaginary riches. 

 

We drank a lot of wine and dark ‘n’ stormies. We slept in and ate late breakfasts and lingered long over coffee.

We did a lot of window shopping, and bought delicious fudge. We found the most amazing little natural food store.

 

There was a lot of walking, and talking, and not talking. Ridiculous laughing. A little crying. More wine.

 

We decided we all need more friends with cottages to loan.

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.

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'm sorry sir, your baby is ugly

We are fortunate to have in Our Fair City of Hartford the country's oldest public art museum, a treasure chest of masterworks by everyone from Caravaggio to Mondrian to the most recent (as in "last week") acquisition, Slightly Open Clam Shell by Georgia O'Keefe. The museum's castle-like facade, complete with battlements and leaded glass, is often festooned with enormous banners advertising the latest exhibition, usually with a close-up of one of the artworks, to entice one to come in. Or, in the case of Folkert de Jong in Watou, to totally creep one out. To wit:

{Folkert de Jong in Watou, from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art.}

Creepy, right? Good morning Mr. MeltyFace. You know what is even creepier? The sculptures are life size or larger. Enormous. 8 -10 feet tall. They are made of Styrofoam and polyurethane, materials chosen specifically for their manipulative qualities as for their significance as elements of war, impermeability and toxicity. The figures depict a David and Goliath-like representation of Spain vs The Netherlands during the Eighty Years War that began in the 16th century. I understand the use of the grotesque in art. Compelling, historical stuff, a la Picasso's Guernica. But I could not stop thinking:

Here is another one, with a great dental plan.

{kunstwerk van Folkert de Jong in Watou, (say that three times fast) originally uploaded by mjiwill}

Zombie letterpress sign from Yeehaw, found via Good Mouse, Bad Mouse

And we take requests

My British agent, Sas of Sas' Magical Mystery Tour, has demanded that my band stop procrastinating and get our butts in the studio to finish our album (that's like a CD, for you young 'uns).



You, too can be a Jane Austen-quoting, Toddlers and Tiaras*-influenced Eastern European electronic klezmer rock star:

1. Go to Wikipedia. Hit 'random'. The first Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2. Go to Quotations Page and select 'random quotations'. The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your first album.
3. Go to Flickr and click on 'explore the last seven days'. Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover. I used the third picture down, since the third picture across was a cute little ladybug, flittering across a daisy, and my band is Eastern European electronic klezmer rock, not The Carpenters.
4. Use Picnik (or photoshop or whatever) to put it all together; I used my new favorite toy, Picasa. Then tell us about your album.
5. Comment with the link to your album

*seriously, why else is this child wearing this outfit?

For the record (ha ha, no pun intended, and for you kiddos, a "record" is also like a CD):

• Albota is a commune in Arges County, in southern central Romania.
• "Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way." is from Emma, by my girl Jane Austen.
• The photo is by NoSha.

When your band makes its album cover, don't forget to put your link in the comments!

The Year of the Ox

{Lucky Red at Night, originally uploaded by sachman75.}

Happy New Year! Today marks the beginning of the Chinese Lunar Year 4706.

I am intrigued by Asian culture, a fascination fueled in recent years by a peek behind the red curtain via films such as Ang Lee's Eat Drink Man Woman and the gorgeous Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and books like Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Martin Booth's Golden Boy. On Sunday I watched the almost-too-beautiful Curse of the Golden Flower, about a 10th century emperor and some pretty dangerous family dynamics inside an impossibly gorgeous (and well-staffed) palace. Plot aside, the budget for costumes, sets and extras probably rivaled that of the 2008 Olympics opening ceremonies. If you enjoyed Memoirs of a Geisha (the book) I recommend all of the above.

Sex in the City, Quiet in the Country

No, we're not talking about me here (I'll never kiss & tell), but Sex & The City author Candace Bushnell, a Glastonbury, CT native whose country home in tony Roxbury, CT is featured in the Home section of today's Hartford Courant. One of my non-Resolution resolutions is to purge everything from my home office and start over with a nice clean slate, kind of like her desk here:

{photo by Cloe Poisson, click here for more photos of CB's surprisingly country colonial.}

Below is a pic from her NYC apartment, which was featured in Elle Decor a few years ago, one of the few issues I kept because I really like her style and use of color, but with white walls in most of the apartment.

{"Candace Bushnell, Elle Decor", originally uploaded by Jessica Condatore}

I really like the color of my living and dining rooms, but since my apartment faces north, every winter I get the urge to lighten and brighten with some paint. Luckily for the BF, who has volunteered to help me paint, my Gemini nature has issues with choosing a color, so we'll stick with Behr's Caribbean Coral for now.

PS - thank you for all the well wishes with my lousy sinuses over the holidays. I'm all better now!

She spends in a week what you make in a year

{Marie Douglas-David, soon-to-be-ex-hubby George David, and actress Julie Delpy at The 10th Anniversary of Green Cross International and Global Green Founded by Mikhail Gorbachev. MGDavidJDelpy_101104, originally uploaded by Global Green USA.}

Currently duking it out in Hartford Superior Court and on the front pages of the Hartford Courant are the Davids, one of America's uber-rich couples, he the former CEO of United Technologies, she a countess and former Wall Street type who apparently spends more in a week than what some people make in a year.

Click here to see what she spends it on. No really. Click.

I have a hard time wrapping my head around those types of numbers as weekly discretionary expenses. I know that there are people out there who are far more wealthy than 99.9% of the rest of us, and I know that in a divorce there is a little fudging of numbers going on, I just wonder if I was ever that rich would my lifestyle escalate to one where I spent that kind of money on clothes, hair, facials, flowers etc., every week. Every. Week. Oh, sure, in the beginning there would definitely be a shopping spree and lots of travel, but I don't think I could keep it up. There've been too many instances in my life (as a newlywed, as a new divorcee, etc.) where I had to be super-frugal, and even get a second job, just to make ends meet. I'm not saying I would maintain my current lifestyle 100%. I just don't think I could spend four grand a month on my hair.

What about you? Would you be all Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous?

In stitches

{needle and thread, originally uploaded by Thru Jenn's Eyes.}

I am a girl who wears skirts. And dresses. Mumsie always said "Dress for the position to which you aspire," and I'm sticking with that rule, even though I am always "overdressed" compared to some of my co-workers. I like getting dressed up for work every day and I curse whoever invented "casual" dress code. I have a thing for heels and handbags. And accessories. I'm a girly girl, and not ashamed to say it.

I tore the hem of my skirt today during a run-in with an unruly file cabinet. I mended it at my desk (while wearing it) and it wasn't until I was threading the needle that I really took a good look at the sewing kit. It's a little plastic box with 7 spools of colored thread (there were 8 but I lost one). Of course the black thread is almost gone, followed closely by the navy. There's a plastic thimble, safety pins, a threader and a couple of needles. And then I realized: I have had this sewing kit in every desk I've ever sat at, at every job I've ever had, since graduating college. That's almost twenty years.

I'm sure the gals at Basket of Kisses would agree that "Joan" would be proud.

{Christina Hendricks as "Joan Holloway" in AMC's "MadMen"}

Joan Holloway dresses like the hot ticket she is, and keeps aspirin, a sweater, safety pins and a fifth of something in her desk. For emergencies.

What do you wear to work? Does anyone like getting dressed up anymore?

Sorry for the long absence. Thanksgiving melted right into a non-stop 10 days of work and travel that I only recently surfaced from. Just in time for Christmas shopping!

Shall we dance?

{RFC_5025, originally uploaded by robcuni.com.}

When I first saw this picture on the Flickr homepage (under "Everyone's Uploads") I thought it was a dance studio or a very fancy karate or exercise studio. Then I realized that the contraptions in front of the "paneled" wall were not pilates torture devices but garage door tracks. It's a garage. With chandeliers. And a tin ceiling. And checkered floor that would make Fifi Flowers swoon.

Don't you just love Flickr?