Refrigerator = Lemon

So, Megan went to make some french toast for our friend on Saturday and when pouring the milk into the egg mixture the milk said, "glug glug glug." Our brand new fridge decided to stop working and thus all our fresh organic produce from our favorite co-op is a wilty pile of mildew. The good news is that the beer didn't go bad. We now get to wait around for 9 hours for the refer fixer guy to show up. What kind of appointment window is 9 hours!? "So what you're telling me is that you can't narrow down the time you're going to be here to something less than 9 hours?"

I hope it's raining that day.

Arrivals

So, our biggest news over the past week is WE GOT OUR STUFF!!! It arrived a week ago Friday as a small part of gigantic truck and there were four Hungarian guys who unloaded it all into our place. Of course they were not speaking English and I’m sure they were making fun of all our crap the whole time… and that’s okay. There were minor casualties including:

-A bent dresser knob
-Milk Foamer
-Small tumbler
-Drying rack missing a screw
-Broken cabinet handle
-Various dings/scratches/dents on our dresser/side tables

Not only was it a bit weird having these large Hungarian guys muscle everything we own up to our apartment, but the fact that a funeral was happening at the same time with a large crowd of people hanging out by the moving truck put it over the edge of our everyday scene. Across the street and a few buildings down is the House of Hills Funeral home. There are always a lot of nicely dressed sobbing folks hanging around.

We’ve been unpacking over the course of the past week and now we only need to buy a couple large furniture pieces and we’ll be set! It sure is nice not wearing the same thing over and over and over anymore.

In other news, Megan and I joined the Park Slope Co-op. It’s the largest work co-op in the U.S. and we’ll be putting in 2.75 hours every 4 weeks to maintain our member status. Megan will be making soup for a soup kitchen down the street, using some of the produce that is on the tail end of its’ shelf-life and I’ll be a cashier, taking peoples money, counting it, and occasionally slipping some of it in my pocket (just kidding mom). Being a member allows us to shop at the co-op and enjoy not only their insanely low prices (due to minimal overhead) but also get some of the best organic foods we’ve ever had. We’re also excited to be in an environment that will allow us to meet a bunch of cool hippies. We loaded up on groceries and had a fun and challenging trek home from the store. I think my biceps have grown already from carrying our grandma cart up stairs.

I had two interviews this last week, meeting 10 people over the course of 7 hours at two different companies. It’s been a pleasant experience and I’ve learned a lot about myself and others. One of the companies was directly across the street from ground zero and that was the first time I was able to see it first hand. It’s nothing spectacular to see, just a big hole in the ground, but it still holds a lot of weight in the memory of what has happened and how much that has changed the world. It’s been almost 5 years… crazy.

We’ve had our first two house-guests already, Maureen and Jeremy Bennett whom we stayed with our first two nights here on the East Coast. They came down from New Haven, CT to visit for a few days. We also got the pleasure of having one of Megan’s best friend’s Meghan up from Baltimore where she just moved in the past few weeks. They even coordinated outfits for the reunion!

Now we’ve done it.

Firstly, I’d like to correct myself for a few previous misunderstandings
1.We don’t live in a brownstone, but a brick building. Actual brownstone buildings surround our building and are called brownstone because the entire front of the building is comprised of brown rock called Triassic Sandstone.
2.We do not in fact live in an African-American neighborhood, but are indeed surrounded by islanders from the Caribbean. Bob Marley is as god here and there are a lot of Caribbean food places nearby.

Other new notable items:

• In restaurants the translation for “For here or to go” is “To stay or to go”.
• People drink everything besides wine, beer, and hot coffee with a straw and out of a paper bag.
• Megan and I were belched at tonight for the first times in our lives by a complete stranger.
• Dunkin Donuts is to New York as Starbucks is to Seattle.
• You get to check out a lot of people’s butts when walking out of the stairs on the subway.
• A regular coffee comes with cream and sugar.
  

We had sooooo much fun at the McCarren Park Pool show.
Not only is the price right (free) but the venue is spectacular. They outfitted an old and decrepit Olympic sized swimming which had been closed for 20 years and added a sound system, stage, dodge ball court, inflatable slip and slide, and beer garden. We saw some great bands, watched some amazing dodge ball, and then went to my new favorite beer spot Mug’s Ale House. I’m REALLY excited to see The Walkmen play there later this month.

On Monday we went to Bryant Park for their summer outdoor movies which is completely crazy and cool (and also free). They play classic films in this football field sized park with a huge projector and thousands of your closest friends. We watched a classic, Charade (1963) with Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant. Good flick and good times.

We’re supposed to get our box on Friday… until then we’ve been doing what we can with what little we have. It’s hard not to eat out when you don’t have utensils, cups, plates, etc. We’ve been enjoying it although we are spending a lot of money (not a good idea when we’re both unemployed).

Since my last posting, we’ve been in the process of accumulating other peoples’ unwanted junk via craigslist. This is easier said than done, especially with no car. For example we got a great deal on a little coffee table ($10) but to get it back home we needed to flag down a taxi-van ($20). It’s a real pain in the butt trucking (shlepping in New York language) stuff around on the subway. Megan had a fun time taking a vanity mirror on the subway because everyone was checking themselves out. We got these really messed up but really comfortable chairs (of which I’m sitting in one now) and had a heck of a time trying to find a way to get them home. We eventually called a car service and some random guy in an unmarked SUV showed up. It was very strange, especially not knowing how much he was going to charge.

We’ve met a lot of cool people just buying their stuff… Olga, Liz, Katie. I think it’s our new way of making friends.

Back to the Starbucks lady discussion:

I’m definitely not dreaming here and you’ll see why:




The picture I took is the one on the left and their generic logo is the one on the right. Notice the curvature of the upper lip on the picture I took.



So we still haven’t received our Door-to-door storage box, but it should arrive in New York City on Monday and we’ll probably get it shortly thereafter. In the meantime we’ve decided to paint over the piss-yellow in the hallway and the kitchen. It was a lot of work, but it really made a huge difference.

We got to see Jeremy Enigk last night. He’s my favorite musician. The show was at the historic Bowery Ballroom and one thing I noticed at the show was that everybody was white. In such a hugely diverse place as New York, the entire crowd was white. I guess I like white music and that’s what Jeremy Enigk plays. I also like Jurassic 5.

Tomorrow we get to see Deerhoof in McCarren Park Pool, an old empty pool that’s been turned into a venue for free! I’m excited.

1-year

Yesterday at Central Park in front of this glorious fountain Megan and I saw a proposal (and acceptance) which was fun to see on the eve of our own one-year anniversary. We got to spend the day relaxing with each other and new friends. I not only rode in my first passenger tricycle, but actually ended up peddling most of the time. Adrienne the tricycle owner convinced Megan and I to take a ride with him for free because neither of us had rode in a tricycle before and I asked if I could drive because I felt lazy sitting in the back.

We saw Thoth perform a strange blend of tribal, opera, violin, and dance in one of Central Parks many tunnels. We got to eat at the Rock Cafe right in front of the foutain and golden statue of Prometheus.

We got to go to the American Girl store on 5th Ave which was very, very strange. For those of you who aren't familiar with American Girl, it's a doll that is able to be customized to look like the little girl who owns the doll. You can accessorize and purchase even musical instruments and matching clothes. So the store had tons of little girls running around pointing at the dolls and accessories they wanted. There was a doll theatre, a restaurant (to have tea with your doll), barber (where they cut your dolls hair), and doctor (complete with stethoscope). What a bizarre scene... what a strange world we all live in.

So today we celebrated our 1-year anniversary. We wanted to do more touristy New York stuff before we actually got sick of the city so we decided to go to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. To our dismay, once we got to the 1-hour line to take the boat over to Liberty and Ellis Islands, we discovered that we could no longer be part of any sort of group that could go inside the statue because we weren't there early enough in the day... so instead of waiting in several more lines and pay $23 we decided to take the Staten Island ferry for free which gave great views of Manhattan, Ellis Island, and the Statue of Liberty.

Side note:

We also had our first Starbucks experience (which was not a good experience) and I noticed something very strange about the Starbucks siren lady. She had a creepy joker-like smile on her. I don't remember her ever being this happy and it was very very odd.
We then celebrated our love with a romantic dinner at Bottino, a wonderful Italian restaurant before standing in line for an hour to go up to the observation deck of the Empire State Building. It was of course breath-taking (both Megan and the views). We had a great time except for Megan's uncomfortable heels which warranted our first, second, and third taxi cab rides of New York City. Blisters... piggy back rides, etc. We're glad we've got one another.

Yesterday we got a nice tour of the New York Public Library which is pretty incredible, we went to the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station, and we hung out at Bryant Park (a wi-fi hotspot as well as a beautiful park).

Megan and I have been watching our posture, walking many miles each day. Megan has resorted to furniture shopping on craigslist even though we have no way to pick any of it up. Today we're going to check out Central Park, Rockefeller Center, and Times Square.

The last week of our lives.

Our friend Brandie took us to the airport at the crack of dawn and we caught and 8:30 am flight to JFK. So we arrived 5 hours later on Tuesday, July 25th at about 4:30pm , with 1 suitcase, 1 backpack, 1 aerobed, 1 dufflebag, and 1 laptop. I will never forget because we carried these items for several hours on the New York Airtrain, the NYC subways, and onto a train to New Haven, Connecticut. So we spent another 4+ hours on the trains to get to New Haven.

Sidenote: Running with large bags to a full train is never a good idea, especially if there's another empty train 15 minutes later. I think I really freaked out a couple people when I was stowing our large baggage items directly over them in a very unbalanced fashion. By this point, we were both VERY tired (from our 3 hours sleep the previous night)

It all worked out in the end, we arrived safely with our good friends Maureen and Jeremy Bennett. We slept 12+ hours that night and the next day we got to check out some of Yale’s campus and see the small town of New Haven. Unfortunately, New Haven, CT is almost a two-hour train ride which costs about $13-18 pp one-way. This was not the ideal situation for finding a place to live, but a miracle happened in that my cousins, Liesl & Todd were out of town in Michigan and had an empty apartment which they offered us to stay which was located in the East Village of Manhattan (much closer to Brooklyn).

After apartment hunting via subway for 4 days, we finally found a great place Prospect Leffert Gardens area. We’re definitely the only white folks on the block as it is a very African American neighborhood and we’re on the second floor in a bi-level brownstone apartment (kinda like the Cosby Show). It’s a two bedroom apartment with the second bedroom more the size of an office but overall the apartment is a good size at 1000 sq ft. It is very close to Prospect Park which was designed by Frank Law Olmsted who in addition to designing Central Park has also done many of the Seattle area parks (Volunteer, Arboretum, Green Lake, etc.) We’re also one block away from a Wendy’s which was designed by Dave Thomas also known as “America’s Favorite Hamburger Cook”. We’re one block away from the 2/5 subway and 3 blocks away from the Q/N subway.

Megan’s school Brooklyn College is approximately 2.3 miles south of where we live and I will probably be working about 6.7 miles northwest of where we live.

So now we’re in this weird place of it being insanely hot (over 100ºF) me not having a job, Megan not being in school, and us not having anything but one-week’s worth of clothes (Our Door-to-door storage container won’t arrive until August 14^th). We’ve been staying at Liesl and Todd’s even though we have an apartment only because they have a wonderful cat Parker, furniture, and air-conditioning (although there have been threats of blackout and suggestions to turn-off extraneous appliances and fill your bathtubs with water).

We’ve seen about a dozen rats and I decided to start calling them Roger and Rita (the Rat). The funniest moment of my week was when Megan and I were walking in the Upper East side to look at getting some furniture and we walked by this rat which was checking out a pile of garbage on the side of the road. Well, when Megan walked by, it freaked out the rat and it ran the same direction we were walking and Megan almost stepped on it’s head but instead did a little skip-shuffle jump to avoid it. I think you had to be there.

Long story short, we’re waiting to get our junk and get settled. We have a place to live. We need some furniture and a bed. We’re liking the exploring.