Happy Halloween!!
Well I was right...Willie, Dustin, and the Mueschkes were a handful. I had a pretty short day at work yesterday so I could recover from the weekend. The only thing more stressful than preparing for guests is entertaining guests. I know they all said that whatever we did was fine and that they just wanted to hang out but of course you always want people to have a good time, you want them to eat at cool places, etc.. I had a great time though and I hope everyone else did too. Andy and I have made a lot of great friends here in NYC but it's not the same as hanging out with people who have known you forever.
I won't bore everyone with a play by play of the weekend, but the pictures are up..just click on the "Carolyn and Andy's Pictures" link. I've got thousands of emails (or one) asking for the pictures so there you go. These don't include the pictures Nick took because those require "post-processing" or something because the camera is so fancy. I guess there's a little man in there painting all of the pictures or something.
Today is Halloween...obviously...but I am in a decidedly un-Halloween mood. I have never liked dressing up. This is because I am always afraid that if for example I went to a costume party and put a lot of time and thought into my costume I would show up and I would be the only one wearing a costume and then I would be embarrassed. So I don't dress up and I don't like the candy because if there is candy I will eat it. I did have a treat for lunch today though, Taco Bell!!!
Labels: Halloween, visitors
Friday! Friday's Here!
Well, surprise, surprise, I did not make it through last night without having a hissy fit. As usual, Andy was understanding and let me have my fit. Then we woke up at 5:00 this morning to finish cleaning. For some reason Andy was wayyy perkier than he ever is in the morning. It's 5:45 and he's on his hands and knees scrubbing the base of the toilet but he's laughing and giggling, talking about the new Borat movie...I asked him why he was so cheery since usually just getting five words out of him before we leave the house is an accomplishment. He says "I've already had my coffee!" Well I wish I had known sooner that that was all it took....
As you may have guessed there will be no blogging this weekend....we'll be too busy with Willie, Dustin, and the Mueschkes. They are a handful.
Labels: visitors
Apartment Worries
Last night when I got into bed I fell asleep immediately...one of those times when you can't even remember your head hitting the pillow because you were probably asleep before then. I've been getting enough sleep but I think I wore myself out last night trying not to freak out about the fact that I'm going to have four guests in my apartment this weekend and it is not clean. Trying not to be bitchy is hard and tiring work. I did have two glasses of wine to help me along though. I am pretty neurotic about things being clean normally but when visitors are coming to my apartment it kicks into overdrive. Andy tried to tell me on Tuesday night that people are coming to see us not our apartment but despite this and the fact that I know, logically, that they don't really care if that narrow area between the bathroom sink and the wall where I keep my hairdryer has a dust bunny at the very back of it that i just can't seem to reach** I'm still nervous about it. All morning I've been making mental lists of things that still need to be done, things that need to be bought, sheets that need to be washed...AND The Office is coming on tonight. I didn't freak out once last night so we'll see if I can replicate that feat tonight.
Wish me luck...or maybe more importantly, wish Andy luck.
**I just realized that this can be taken care of with a dust cloth on the end of a coathanger...yeah!!
Labels: me, visitors
Cheers and Jeers
On a friend of a friend's blog the guy does a weekly "cheers and jeers" section so I decided I'm going to steal the idea...not that the guy invented "cheers and jeers" I mean, I remember that section from the TV Guide but I saw it on his blog and liked it. On a side note, when I was growing up we got TV Guide and I read it cover to cover every week when it came in.
Jeers:
--the macaroni and cheese I made last night which tasted like noodles baked in milk
--people who tell me my apartment looks like either a corporate headquarters or assorted fast food establishments
--the fact that there were two junkies in the middle of a break up yelling at each other at 10:00 this morning in front of my office. she yelled that he was "a loser" and "always strung out" If it had been warmer I would've stayed outside to watch
Cheers:
--The Vegeenas won again this week over a very good team even though I sat Kevin Jones who ended up having 19 points. Also victories for LSU and the Saints on a bye week...can't leave them out Kelley
--Willie, Dustin, and the Mueschke visit this weekend!!!!
--carving our pumpkin for Halloween tonight! actually Andy does all of the carving I just watch. mainly because I am the least artisticallly inclined person on this earth but also because he may not trust me with the little saws.
Also, some of you may remember
this guy...he's the one that complimented Andy and I on "taking out our dress sweaters" when we ate at Saul for Andy's birthday. asshole.
Labels: Halloween, me, vegeenas, visitors
Eid
Last night Andy, Christina, Chuck and I went to some of their student's house for Eid, one of the major Muslim holidays. Eid celebrates the end of Ramadan when they fast from sunup to sundown. On Eid the kids stay home from school and play all day, there's a ton of food and family and friends stop during the day to eat and visit. They fed us a TON of food...I ate roti (AMAZING!), mixed vegetables, and a shrimp dish that was really spicy and very very good. It reminded me a lot of eating in Louisiana since when I finished they kept trying to feed me more food. After I thought I was done they heaped rice on my plate which I ate all of because I didn't want to be rude...Then when Andy finished they gave him a TON of rice...When he was about halfway done he tried to slide some on my plate and I pulled it away so he looked at me with this pleading look and said "come on, help me out" so pitiful...so I took some of his rice too.
The kid's dad, Halim, showed us the alphabet they use in Bangladesh, which is where they are from. I first met them about two years ago when we went for Eid, and I didn't go last year, but it was amazing how much better his English was from when we had first met. Learning about the alphabet was really neat and the kids told us the story of Eid. Andy spent part of the time playing FIFA street soccer with the boys, Mohammed, George, and Alfred, in the back room which was really funny because every couple of minutes I heard him go "ooohhh" or "urghhhhh". Mohammed's little sister, Hasnat, gave Christina and I henna tattoos which was really cool. She has a bit of a potty mouth so I really like her. I don't know if the parents don't know English curse words or if they just don't care but two years ago she said "shit" repeatedly and no one cared then apparently last year she dropped several f bombs and no one batted an eye. This year she just said piss a lot which isn't a curse word but we weren't allowed to say in my house.
Anyway, we had a great time...everyone was really really nice. It was about 7:45 when we said we needed to get going and the Dad was like, oh stay until 8, which I thought was very cute.
Labels: NYC sights, students
Formal Poll
OK..per Megan's request...excellent idea by the way...here's a formal poll about the wall...even if you left a comment please still vote and continue to leave comments with your ideas!!
Labels: apartment
Question for the Readers
OK....I used to ask the readers for advice a lot, most notably during the whole grilled cheese v. grilled cheese sandwich debate and now we need your help again. This is the dining room that we just painted. It is still not quite complete...that trim at the bottom will be off white and we haven't gotten shades for the windows yet. Anyway, the strip that's still white is where the wall juts out..so it's on a different plane from the walls that are orange. One of us wants to leave the strip white and one of us wants to paint it orange. I'm not allowed to say who wants what.
OK, so vote...leave it white or paint it orange. Please. Thanks.
Labels: apartment
painter's anonymous
On TV shows or in books I've heard a lot of people say that plastic surgery is addictive...you get one thing fixed which leads to another thing looking not quite right, and before you know it the whole thing snowballs and you look like that human Barbie lady. Anyway, that's how I feel about my home improvement efforts. We painted the bedroom and I thought that would be it for a while but then the dining room needed something because the new table was nice so we did the orange wall, which I LOVE, and all the trim upstairs. So we pulled the tape off last night and one of the first things Andy said was "It makes me want to paint the other walls" Yeah, me too...now the other walls look like crap...they're begging for a new coat of paint. Just like if I ever got the fat sucked out of my cheeks like I've always wanted then I'd definitely have to get my ears pinned back too....it's a viscious cycle.
Labels: apartment
Football Wrap-up
Well it was a very good week for all of my football teams:
LSU won easily over Kentucky. Apparently all of their games are either blow outs or losses...we don't do in between. I don't know if that's a good sign for the rest of the season.
The Saints won! Another surprise. Let me explain something about the Saints since Kelley chastized me for not congratulating them on their win last week. When we lived in LA I was a Saints fan..I watched most of their games and it was upsetting when they lost, which was often. They were terrible most seasons. Plus, I am a very superstitious fan so I couldn't help but feeling like I was part of the "Saints jinx" I remember when they won their first and only play off game against the Rams, watching the game on the tiny TV in my parent's kitchen...the Saints had a huge lead and then it started slipping away after my Dad came in and started watching. We were yelling at him to go back outside otherwise the Saints were going to lose. Also, there are no Saints games on TV up here. I think this is a good thing b/c I'm pretty sure that if I started watching they would start losing.
The Vegeenas also won yesterday...it was a big relief b/c I was playing the team that last week offered to trade me Carson Palmer for Kevin Jones and I turned the trade down. Good thing b/c Kevin Jones had 22 points! Going in to last night I was ahead by 30 points and I had the Bears defense and my opponent had Rex Grossman so I was pretty safe but then I looked at the score this morning....The Bears defense scored 3 touchdowns and ended up with 33 points and Rex Grossman had -3 so I ended up winning by 60+ points!!! GO VEGEENAS!!! Also, Da Skillz, the only other team under female management defeated the only unbeaten team in our league...nice!
....and we're still painting.
Labels: apartment, football, vegeenas
More paint
Who wants to hear more stories about painting?
Well good because that's what I did for most of the weekend. After getting up at 6:45 on Saturday morning (after only 5 hours of sleep) to watch Manchester United (who won!) and Liverpool (who tied)..Andy and I headed over to the Home Depot to pick up paint for the dining room. If you remember from a post last year, or if you've been perusing the archives, I wanted to paint the living room orange. Well, the living room is now the dining room and I scaled the idea back from the entire room to just one wall..or two depending on how you look at it. Anyway, we picked out a color..Pumpkin Patch and just went with it.
I have to say that I love going to the paint counter at Home Depot. Everyone is nervously waiting for their paint and looking over everyone else's shoulders looking at what colors they've picked. Everyone asks everyone else for advice about colors even though the person next to you obviously doesn't know crap either. One woman next to me was asking me to help pick out a color to match her orange wall (pumpkin pie) but I'm sure that when she saw the color I had picked out come out she deeply discounted my advice. The paint was ORANGE...not just a little orange or bright orange..IN YOUR FACE
ORANGE. Way more orange than that. When we put the first coat on the wall Andy said we were going to have to become Tennessee or Clemson fans b/c that's the only way we could justify this wall.
The color darkened a lot after two coats and it needs probably two more so I think it will be toned down a lot but the color in the can is frightening.
In addition to the dining room it was also my bright idea to paint one of the walls in the entryway, the wall you see when you walk in. A couple of hours later, on the train on the way to Mike and Ting's apartment, Andy had a realization that it was a terrible idea. I threw my traditional hissy fit but then agreed that he was right. This was reinforced when we woke up in the morning and the entryway had taken on a hellish orange glow b/c the color was reflecting off of the other wall. It's already been painted over...it was terrible.
Pictures will be forthcoming if we ever get enough coats on the wall.
Labels: apartment
Snakes in a Classroom
Last week Andy took his kids to the pet store near their school to get some animals for the class. They got a couple of snakes, fish, and two hamsters. This past weekend there was a long weekend because of Columbus Day so on Sunday I asked Andy if he had left enough food for the animals. Of course he was like, oh yeah yeah they're fine. So when he got back to school on Tuesday both of the hamsters were dead. (There is some suspicion that this was due to to poisonous shavings, not starvation) Andy told me this on Tuesday night, but what he did not tell me was that there was only one snake left in the cage. So, they thought that one of the snakes had eaten the other snake because they were out of food. Plus, he said it looked a little puffy, like it had just eaten something big.
The snake that was still in the cage had been purchased by one of the students so he kept teasing Andy about how his snake ate Andy's snake. So, yesterday a group of ninth grade girls came into Andy's classroom during one of his free periods to see the animals. They looked at the snake for a while and as they were leaving one of them said "that thing up on the bookshelf looks like a snake too. is that a fake snake?" and the rest of them were like, yeah that does look like a snake...So Andy walks over...and it was the other snake. It had somehow gotten out of the cage and had just been hanging around in the classroom for two days.
I think he got pretty lucky that a group of kids found it and not the principal.
bedroom
OK, I talked enough about how my weekend and days were consumed with painting the bedroom and the bookshelves so I thought everyone deserved some follow up pictures. The boring white walls are obviously the before. Also, we had two bookshelves, one white and one black so I sanded those and repainted them off-white. We also repainted the dusty rose colored trim the same off-white as the bookshelves. The room isn't finished...we are going to add shades over the windows and we need something over the bed...any suggestions are welcome..PLEASE! Something that would give the illusion of a headboard maybe? We were thinking about just hanging four pictures above the bed...that looks like the most likely solution. Anyway...let me know what you think.
Labels: apartment
The Departed- go see it
Last night Andy and I ended a long drought of movie going and saw The Departed which is the best movie I have seen in a long, long time. I really like Martin Scorsese....Casino is among my favorite movies and of course the recent Bob Dylan movie but the last movie I saw of his, Gangs of New York..I couldn't stand. Anyway, go see The Departed. I won't give away any of the plot but seriously, go see this movie. Be prepared for a lot of racial slurs, cursing, homophobia, and violence though...LOTS of violence...in unexpected places. Also, Leonardo DiCaprio was amazing in this movie and that's coming from someone who can't stand him. Ever since I had to sit through that horrible horrible film Titanic I can barely watch a movie that he's in. I mean at the end of that movie why couldn't Kate Winslet just move her big ass over and then they could've floated on that piece of wood together. The whole movie was just idiotic...compounded by the fact that I needed to pee the entire time with the water rushing everywhere on screen but my friend wouldn't let me because I would miss three minutes of what was supposed to be one of the best movies ever. Anyway...he is really great in this movie.
Before the movie a preview for the new Rocky movie came on...people in the audience clapped for the preview. Apparently New Yorkers are pretty pumped about the new Rocky. I was disappointed b/c there was not one Milo Ventimiglia clip. New York audiences are really funny..they like to clap and ooh and ahh and even shout things out during movies. At one crucial scene someone was about to get shot and a man screamed "say good-bye to Hollywood" it sort of broke the tension but still amusing.
Labels: movies
cat hair
Even though Andy mentions it a lot I like to think that the cat hair situation at our house is under control. Now that we have a vaccuum cleaner and we've been brushing Miss Kitty more I thought things had gotten better. So this morning I was on the Subway standing at one end of the car and I see this woman in the middle of the car about 10 feet away waving her hand apparently trying to get my attention. We make eye contact and she mouths "you have something on your pants" so I look down and there's a big ball of cat hair on the front of my black pants. I looked back at her and mouthed "thank you" so the cat hair situation...not really under control. This was also probably a result of Andy having the day off again because usually he catches things like that. It was really nice of the random woman to let me know though.
So another disappointing loss for LSU this weekend...Andy and I have isolated the problem though...we have no offense. It's hard to win games with no offense. I think the coaching is a big part of it too. They just never look ready to play. I'll still watch the games but I'm not going to plan my Saturday around them anymore. The Vegeenas lost again too...tough weekend for my sports teams.
Labels: football, me, vegeenas
you know you're married to a science dork when.....
last night Andy and I were getting in bed..he was already laying down and I got in bed and moved my pillow over so that it was slightly overlapping his...he pushed my pillow back over and said "oh no no no, we are not going to cross-pillinate."
Labels: andy
free show
As I mentioned in my post yesterday, I had to lug the twenty pound deep fat fryer home last night since my scam at macy's failed. It wasn't really that heavy, but it is big and sort of awkward especially when you're only five feet tall. The easiest way for me to carry it was to balance it on my hip and hold it with one arm but since the street outside my office is so congested I couldn't move on the street like that because it was taking up too much room so I had to carry it out in front of me with both arms. Also, people were looking at me like I was crazy...they were turning their heads as I walked by and whispering. I mean, I've seen a guy walk down the street in assless chaps and no one even blinked but apparently a small woman with a deep fat fryer...now there's an oddity.
So I get to the Subway and if you've ever gone down into the subway, maybe you've noticed that there's a pretty strong breeze that blows up out of the Subway...so if you're wearing a skirt, it's pretty important to hold it down when you're walking down the stairs. So I start to descend and my skirt blows up a little...so I try to shift the deep fat fryer over to my hip to free up a hand but there's a large group of people coming up the stairs and I can't shift it over so I just have to keep walking as my skirt comes up higher and higher since I'm carrying the damn fryer with both arms. So, there I was, on the subway stairs, powerless to hold my skirt down. I thought for a second that maybe it wasn't as high as I thought, it just felt that way but then I heard the guy walking behind me go "Wheeeeewwwwww" as we walked down. So...guy behind me...I just want to say you're welcome..hoped you enjoyed the show...and screw you macys and your damn deep fat fryer.
Labels: me
