Crew Alumni Row

A little pre-row warmup on the boathouse ergs.

TU Crew alumni ladies.

TU Crew alumni men.

Max, the architect of the event, holds forth.

Group photo, post-row.

Here's the rest of the album:

crew alumni row

More Glaciares!

Lago de Los Tres, at sundown.


Poincenot on the left, Fitz Roy on the right shrouded in clouds.



Fitz Roy, reflected in a puddle.

Glaciares National Park, Argentina

This is a pocket-sized park that surrounds Monte Fitz Roy.



Our bus broke down on the way there, stranding us for three hours or so. I and a few others entertained ourselves by pegging rocks at a large stone from the berm that lined the road (three hits in about twenty minutes... not easy). Eric, who I hiked with later, cracked open a bottle of wine with his wife.



This is the glacier on the back (west) side of the Poincenot needle and Fitz Roy. The is a lake cupped by enormous piles of loose galcial scree, which was very difficult to hike around to get adjacent to the glacier. It was intensely windy on the way back, enough so to move you a foot or two sideways each time you took a step.



Close up of the seracs at the foot of the glacier.



Lago de los Tres, at the foot of Fitz Roy. It's about a hour's hike from the campsite. This photo was taken near sunset; another hiker loaned me a trekking pole to help me get out to this rock without taking a tumble into the lake.



This is the view on the way out of Los Piedras camp site. There are a lot of brooks of utterly clear glacier meltwater, with duckboards and small bridges over them.

Torres del Paine Trek

Me and Kate up towards the top of Valles Frances. The Cuernos are to our left.



Los Cuernos del Paine.


Kate is exhausted, and taking a nap on the afternoon of our third day of hiking. We're on the lawn at Lago Pehoe, on our way to Camp Italiano at the base of Valles Frances.

Above Glacier Grey, leaning into the wind as a passerby snaps our photo.

Kate above Glacier Grey on Day 2.


Leaning into the wind, at a lookup about two hours north of Lago Grey overlooking Glacier Grey. It must've been about a 70 mph wind or so.

Overlooking Glacier Grey. By the short shorts, you can see that we had really great weather for the first few days of our hike.

Kate is not amused by the prospect of the ladders which were lashed to the sides of the steeper hillsides on our hike from our campsite on the beach at Lago Grey up towards Campomento Los Pasos.
Glacier Grey. There were lots of fire-denuded hillsides, and a high hot sun that made me glad I'd packed shorts.

Kate above Lago Grey.

Torres del Paine on the right, above an unknown lake on the way towards the park entrance.

Guanacos grazing in sight of the Cuernos del Paine.

Cuernos on the right, Cumbre Principal and attendant peaks on the left. Shot from the catamaran that brought us from the park entrance to Lago Pehoe, where we started our hike.

Patagonia!

Patagonia

Penultimate Game at Yankee Stadium

The final day game at Yankee Stadium, with the team moving across the street for 2009. I went with Michael, on a whim, picking up tickets from StubHub about 50 minutes before game time.

Alaska!

Alaska

Hiking and Getting Lost

Breakneck Ridge Hike

Last Opening Day at The Stadium

The new Stadium going up across the street at River and 161st.

The field and mostly empty stadium 40 minutes before the game.

Chien-Ming Wang, starter and winner for the first game of the last season in the old park, walks to the bullpen to warm up.

The Blue Jays and Yankees lining up along the first and third baselines for introductions and colors.



Joba gets in his warmup tosses prior to starting the eighth inning.

Spring!

A nice arch of blooming trees on the northern end of Waverly Place.

Tree in the courtyard behind Waverly Inn on the coner of Bank and Waverly Place.

Magnolia tree in bloom in Sheridan Square park.

Snow at last!

First snowstorm of any size for the winter.

I like the smiley face that someone has scribed on the passenger-side window.

View from the roof of my office building at 1440 Broadway.

I like the look of this granite rail covered in snow, along 40th street heading east towards Fifth Avenue.

The New York Public Library looks great all the time, but even a bit better in a snowfall.

This is the right-hand lion, so I think it's Lenox. (Astor is the other one.)

MapMyRun.com

I love this site.

Homeward Bound

Puerto Jimenez in the early morning. We were on our way to catch our flight back to San Jose.

I made a friend with one of the many, many stray dogs in town. This pup actually followed us to the airfield and tried to clamber up the stairs to the plane to come with us.

National Park: Day Three

A big ol' spider making her home in the Sirena ranger station.

A white-face coati.

I like this tree clinging to the cliff above the beach. The tide is way in, which made the hike back a bit sporty in some places.

A spider monkey.

This was about as close as we got to spider monkeys... maybe twenty feet, vertical.

This is behind a smallish waterfall on the hike back, where we stopped for a late lunch. There were a few deepish pools to swim in, and I took advantage.

Coconut milk.

Riding back to town in the collectivo.

The airstrip at dawn.

Stranglemonkey trees. I love the exposed root systems.

Tapir tracks in the sand.

Crocodile footprints!

Kate's smiling, but I'm not acting like I'm having a good time. I am! Really!

Lianas climbing the trees in the rain forest.

A macaw.

Crocodile sunning itself along the Rio Sirena.

Looking for sharks. They could be see as the tide comes in, filling the mouth of the river. You could see their fins poking out of the water when the wave troughs rolled past them.

A tapir, with a radio collar, sleeps in a mud wallow during the mid-day heat.

A medium sized skink.

A vaquero on the road to the national park.

Starting along the beach.

Many skulls of monkeys, tapir, and other creatures. There are some deadly snakes in formaldehyde, and pieces of a whale's spine.

Bananas! B-A-N-A-N-A-S!

We drank the water untreated. Yeah. We're that bold.

There was a waterfall and kettle pool about four hours into the hike that made for a nice swim.

The pool. At its deepest it was eight or ten feet.

Footprints in the sand. We're almost to the ranger station at Sirena.

The entire peninsula is ruled by crabs. These red ones were incredibly fast and difficult to catch with your hands.

A sloth.

Hi sloth!

He had a runny nose. You could see it drip from where we were standing. And, as would be expected, he moved quite slowly.

Walking along the airstrip to Sirena station. The beach is behind us, and the strip is maybe a kilometer long.

The porch of the ranger station.

This macaw hung out at the station quite a lot. A ranger said it was a she.

Making friends.

Coveting Kate's black beans and rice.

Still coveting Kate's dinner.

Another sunrise over Osa bay.

An infant, his mother, and Elliot play on the beach at dawn.

Elliot and the infant's mother make tracks in the damp sand. The tide is just going out.

Elliot shows off a small fry.

Elliot shows off what has been his home for the last seven months. It's been all over South America, and was shipped from Columbia to Panama. Apparently you cannot drive from South to North America, because FARC controls a part of the country that it is unwise to pass through.

Kate is using her skills to make nice with Eliot, the son of a British/Kenyan couple who were camping up the beach from us. That's their Range Rover with a tent on it in the background. We were sharing Oreos at this point, which is always good for making friends.

I got up and rode the second wave I ever tried!

Brother and sister are both excellent surfers. For real.

Kate takes a mid-day siesta, post-surfing.

A bat colonized the top floor of the cabana we rented for two nights, when we'd had our fill of sand and howler-monkey wakeup calls. The bat was discovered while Kate was napping.

Kate was not all that pleased he was there.

A very large toad.

Osa: Ants, Flowers, Older Women on ATVs

Sunrise as seen from within the tent.

A fishing charter picks up clients on playa Pan Dulce.

Leafcutter ants marching in formation

Some unidentified flower.

Low tide.

The owner of the Esperanza bar, with her Jack Russell and a few bouquets, on her ATV.

Osa: Sunrise, Puppies, Skinks of a Certain Size

Sunrise looking over the Osa bay. This is about six o'clock or so. We had quick sunsets (since the sun went down in the jungle behind us) but really great sunrises every single day. We were awake for all of them, since the howler monkeys crowed an hour before sun-up without fail.

The water was perfectly warm, and the beach about half and half between blonde sand and pebbles.

More colors as the sun rises over the mainland.

We're looking across the bay, eastward. The water is a pretty placid piece of the Pacific.

Pelicans would divebomb for fish every morning at dawn.


Kate stands in the surf.
More sunrise.

A very cute stray dog. The stray dog density was perhaps 0.25 x D, where D is the mathematical constant representing the maximum stray dog density as achieved in Darjeeling. 0.25 x D is a lot of dogs.

There were many large iguanas and medium-sized skinks.

Osa!

Repacking our framepacks, going from Puerto Jimenez to Osa. Making sure that everything's well distributed and whatnot.

Kate models her 35 pound pack. Some things didn't fit, so we had to lash them to the outside.

It was a 50 minute flight in a Cessna Caravan... very small aircraft. They had to weigh both our baggage and ourselves before we got on, it was so small. The plane took us from the capital of San Jose to Puerto Jimenez, a small town on the Osa Peninsula.

Kate poses by the propeller of our tiny plane.

On the airstrip at Puerto Jimenez, another plane taxis for takeoff.



Hermit crabs! I'd crack open coconuts for them, and they'd go nuts.

See how close our tent was to the water line? At high tide the waves couldn't've been more the fifteen feet from where we slept.


Campfire on the beach. This was really the only night we bothered; cooking on the whisperlite was much easier, and when the sun went down we really just wanted to go to sleep.

Head of the Charles

Things started to get a little sporty around the Eliot Bridge.


Lizzie is not amused.

Baltimore Marathon Relay

Sunday Walk

This bridge flies over Staple Street.



I really like this cast iron storefront, the purplish bloom on the metal in particular.

Switzerland Photo Album

Switzerland

Viv and David's Wedding!

What says "We'll be together forever!" better than Journey?

Nicole and Josh's Wedding

Josh's Wedding Album

Birthday at Tia Pol

Comprehensive Trek Album

Singalila Ridge Trek

The hill station town of Darjeeling.

A man walking up a steep, steep incline with a trunk and a basket of live hens on his back.


Darjeeling women walking under the bridge that connects Glenary's Bakery to the mall.


There were many, many stray dogs in Darjeeling town.


In the bazaar were fruitmongers, cloth and clothing sellers, hair-cutters, and this man who was making jewelry with a small oil flame and hand tools.

The bright-colored stones, gateway, prayer flags, and hanging bells of the Buddhist shrine at the hilltop above Darjeeling town.

School children make their way home through the narrow bazaar at the top of Darjeeling. All the schools seemed to require British-style dress for class.

This woman was selling hot tea for three or four rupee on the street where Jeeps met travellers on their way to trailheads and nearby villages.

Starting up the trail.

These men are breaking cobbles to size with hammers and fitting them into the path.

Women laboriously carrying firewood from the uplands down to the valley villages.

Tibetan runes carved on boulders alongside the trail.

The trail passed many small villages of four or five buildings and maybe thirty people as it wound up into the foothills.

To the left the porters' shortcut winds up a steeper hillside than the main trail to the right. Whenever possible, we hiked the porters' route.

Buddhist prayer flags on pikes. There was a lot of fog almost every day, on account of a strong wind from Bengal. When the wind swung around and came from Tibet, as happened on later days in the mornings, it was crisp and clear.

Golconda

Golconda

Golconda fort and the tombs of the Nizan kings. Also, Chris eats a dosa the size of a small dog.

Everything looks so damn Indian

India (Hyderabad)

Some early photos from India.

West Side Highway Run

Just an archway that I like, off Bedford Street on the way north to Christopher. There's a small courtyard that's very nice, which I didn't take photos of because some tenants had their front doors open to the yard and were doing work on their interiors. When I hit Christopher, I turn west to get to the Hudson.






This is a pier at West 26th Street which is designed to allow loaded rail cars to roll directly off the decks of cargo ships. There's a lot of old iron gearing, probably to raise or lower the end of the pier to the proper deck height for whatever ship is in port.



Iron wheels for hand-powering the works.



The gearing seen through a pair of timbers.

These gears were in reasonably good shape considering how long they'd been in disuse.



A gargoyle in a garden on the West Side park that's been under development the past few years.



A ruined shipping pier. This one had caught fire in the 1970s, and the framework was twisted and warped from the heat.


Another shipping pier. I like the crows nest above the water-side end of the rails, which seems like it controls the raising and lowering of the pier to deck level.

A tunnel which takes the West Side Highway path under the road and up a hill, to where it flows into the promenade of Riverside Park. This is about a quarter mile north of the 79th Street boat basin.



A Civil War memorial off Riverside Drive, seen from the rocks at the top of the running path at 91st Street. This is where I usually turn around, if I'm doing a ten mile run.



Claremont Riding Academy, on 89th Street off Riverside Drive. The club is near the bridle paths of Central Park. From the sidewalk outside it smelled pleasantly of horse manure, hay, and animals.



A ramp and hay elevator in the club, for taking silage to all the levels of the stables.

Looking up the shaftway of the hay elevator. I assume that it's just for hay; I have no idea if it's sturdy enough to take horses up and down. I very much doubt it, considering the elevator lines are rope rather than steel cable.



The running path around the reservoir in Central Park. The circumference is about one and a half miles.



This is Alberto Arroyo, the Mayor of Central Park. He played a large part in establishing the running culture in the Park, and in particular the establishment of the path around the reservoir.

West Side Highway Run

Here is an album with the rest of the photos, about 80 in all.

Leah's Birthday

Daniela gets down in Alphabet City.

 

Downhill.

 

More at Eldora.

 

Jeremy, Todd, and Joren at Eldora ski resort in Colorado.

Josh's Bachelor Weekend

(rest of the photos)

The 40 Mulberry Street Debacle

Firstly, it must be stated baldly and without recourse to either modesty or obliqueness that it was Gwen's décolletage that got our song played seconds after the slip was given to the DJ.

She didn't believe it would work. I did. I made her believe. And I was right.



I, apparently, close my eyes when singing Journey.



... and Air Supply.



A little dance to go with our song....

40 Mulberry Karaoke

New Year's Eve

Ringing in the New Year at Rich's apartment, with Champagne. Lots of Champagne. I believe this was our fourth bottle.




Watching the fireworks over Central Park.



Getting a photo taken with (and by) on of New York's Finest.



A Lady and the Tramp moment with the cheese fondue. We had some trouble keeping the fondue at the proper temperature... just about any Sterno at all had them boiling pretty hard.



"That sounds like armchair etymology, Viv. Can you site any primary sources?"

New Year's Eve, the full album

Alternative uses for shorn sweaterfuzz....

A quick transplant up top.

Shaving Jono's sweater.

Rich's 25th Birthday

At Landmarc and Bubble Lounge in Tribeca.

Rich's Birthday album

Bandoooooooo!!!

Bandu! It's down to three (Rich, me, and Greg) and about to get quite precarious.

The kiss piece wasn't too bad.

I lost, but was quite proud of balancing the cup piece, which no one really thought was possible.

Somewhere in Chelsea, mid-autumn (or "Why is life so cruel to the little ones?")

Puppy under glass.

He looks like an adorable, forlorn, furry slug.

Upright, though still mournful.

Some autumn photos

Fall in New York

David's Birthday

David was kidnapped from his apartment, and taken forcibly to a hockey game at Madison Square Garden.



Viv and David, obviously intoxicated on love, hockey, and $7.75 beers.

Mugging for the camera.

National anthem, Sabres at Rangers.

David, overcome with joy, clearly.

Entering the stadium, just before the big reveal.

A pint-sized Rangers fan poses for us with David.

In MSG.

Tickets are held before the blind man.

We arrive at MSG.

The unblindfolded are amused, because I dove onto the floor in Penn Station to get this shot.

David is hopelessly disoriented, while we celebrate our successful ruse.

Viv steering David.

Tanzanian hip-hop was pumped into David's ears at high volume, to maintain the mystery as the conductor announced the train stops.

The blindfold knot was in the front, which was fun for the whole family.

Leading him down stairs was an adventure. It helped to count them off, so he knew when they were ending.

More subway. Our fellow travelers were alternately perplexed and amused.

Through the subway system to Penn Station.

Leading David out of the apartment building, blindfolded.

I think this is Princeton getting pimped by Cambridge University, around Magazine Beach.

There's an old wooden Hudson single hung in the upstairs entry.

I like the windows.

The reception.

Boathouse, as yet unnamed.

Docks and launches.

Looking downriver, towards the Mystic.

Nice cleat.

Boathouse as seen from the dock.

Docks.

Docks and steps.

More photos from the dedication for the Malden boathouse.

The docks at the new boathouse on the Malden.

View through the balustrades of the Weeks footbridge, looking upriver towards the finish line.

The corner where my sister's apartment is. Aptly named.

Manhattan Bridge with the cityscape in the background, seen from the Amtrak en route to Boston.

Bridge piers, wires forming a catenary curve, and a Volkswagen Jetta.

Yet. More. Karaoke.

I think we're singing harmony here, but there's really no way to be sure.

Emmy's bangs: very punk rock.

Gwen leans on Rich, while he rests his arm on a thoroughly imaginary microphone stand.

We even had go-go girls at one point in the night!

Kristin is shimmying, while Aviva prefers to be shaken (not stirred).

So now I turrrrrrrrnnn to yoooooooooooouu........

... with ooooooooo-pen aaaaarmmmmmmmmmsssssss!

Air guitar on "Johnny B. Goode." I'd say that Chuck Berry is turning over in his grave, but I'm not 100% sure he's deceased.

Sometimes you've just got to put your whole body into it.
Melissa knows this. Knows it in her very marrow.

Karaoke. Not for the meek.

Greg and Melissa doing a duet.

(Nothing says "punk rock" like argyle sweaters.)

Strike a pose.

The September 11 tribute lights.

Fire!

There was a fire on Carmine and Bedford. I liked this shot of the hydrant spraying everywhere.

Firefighters entering via ladder as the smoke pours out on Carmine.

More smoke.

West Village Architecture I Like

Another favorite, these twinned houses with mansard roofs and a shared courtyard, on the corner of Commerce and Barrow.

One of my very favorite buildings in New York. A courtyard apartment on Commerce Street in the West Village. My life ambition is to move about 400 yards west.

Big white Newfie on a doorstep on fashionable West 4th Street.

It's Under A Toy Factory

At Back Room, on Norfolk Street, hard by the river next to the Manhattan mooring of the Williamsburgh Bridge down on the LES.

Matt shows off the 'hawk while trying to settle his stomach; earlier in the day, he ate the majority of last weekend's wounded cake. I was impressed with his gumption and stick-to-it'iveness.

R.I.P. Vanilla Cake w/ Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

Cake post-mortem this morning. There's a lot of finger tracks there.

Tinga Tinga!

Tinga Tinga karaoke on Madison Avenue in Koreatown.

Much fun was had. John Denver made an appearance, as did Journey and Madonna (natch). An intimate party of six crooners were joined by a beer or thirty, a big ol' bottle of vodka and tonic, plus a cake.

The cake didn't really get eaten. The frosting did.




Gwen can't figure out what's wrong with this microphone, but compensates the best way she knows how: volume.

David takes it down a notch or two, with open arms.

Yeah... getting towards the end of the night here, if you can't tell.

Gwen's riding the midnight train to Georgia, which was about 20 minutes early.

David goes wicked old school rock, while Rich looks on in horror/fascination.

Tinga Tinga, and a good spread. (Including cake!)

Karaoke... sometimes it gets a little out of hand.

Yankees over Indians 1-0: Wang and Robbie Represent

Enter Sandman.

Robbie Cano rounds the bases after his homer to the short porch in right. It would prove to be the only run of the game.

Chien-Ming Wang servin' up another grounder to second.

The Big House in the Bronx.

Getting off the train at 161st and River.

Kate's new home on Magazine Street... or at least it will be come September first.

Alana enjoys a late-night Italian sausage on her birthday.

NoLita and the Old 'Hood

Old advertisement from pre-area code days.

I really like the eaves on this building at the corner of Lafayette and Spring, though they had to do some violence to them when they installed the fire escapes.

This place was shuttered when I used to live in the neighborhood. I'll have to try it sometime late night.

Street fair, seen looking south on Mulberry from its intersection with Spring.

The nichest of niche foodshops.

Synagogues and Demolition in the Lower East Side

Another synagogue on Rivington, though this one looks operational. The Ten Commandments, again, above the gates. I really like the circular window.

Close up. I assume that this is the Decalogue, as I see five consecutive "Lo" ("No") in there. One of the few Hebrew words I can remember.

It looks as though the entryway is all that remains of the Roumanian Congregation synagogue.

Demolition, also on Rivington.

In Freeman's Alley, off Rivington near Bowery.

I've been questing after a dresser. For a damn long time. I spent an entire Saturday walking around the West 20s, poking my head in all the furniture shops. I combed flea markets. I looked at brand new stuff. I looked at old stuff. I looked in catalogs, I tried Froogle, and I scoured Craiglist.

When I was walking down Greenwich between Seventh and Sixth, on my way back from a haircut after work, I passed two furniture stores. One of them, Old Good Things, had the dresser I'd been looking for.

Tiger oak, quarter-cut, with locks and scrolled top drawers. Perfect.

And it was a few hundred yards from my house all this time.




Closer up on the grain of the tiger oak.

The scrolled top drawer of the tiger oak dresser.

The backs are in pretty good shape.

Both have dovetailed joins on the drawers.

Flat-cut oak. Original metal pulls.

Tiger oak. Scrolled top drawers. Wooden pulls.

I had come straight from work. Hence, the pink button down.

In the bleachers at a Yankees game.

Springtime on Leroy Street.

The view from the Brooklyn F train into Manhattan, overlooking Kentile floors.

Blooms outside the library at Sixth and Greenwich.

Boston Marathon

At the finish line with Mom and Kate.

Daniela ran me in the last six miles, which was crucial. I wouldn't've finished otherwise.

Crossing the finish line.

Coming up on the line.

Making "the turn" in the homestretch into Boston proper.

You can see I'm significantly less pumped about Mile 19, as compared to Mile 9.

More Jumbo marathon watchers.

Tufts marathon spectators.

Crossing mile nine in the Boston Marathon... rockin' the Tufts baby blues and feeling good.

These are some photos I got off a CD that the photographers sold me. I'll go through and write some better captions later... the girl who's flogging my sorry ass through the last six miles is Daniela, without whom I probably wouldn't've finished.

Mile nine.

Kate and Loi's Beautiful House

The main staircase in the Bellevue house.

View east towards Boston.

Kate's room. I really like the mint green wall color.

My sister's lovely house on Bellevue in Newton, Massachusetts.

The beginnings of spring on Leroy Street.

The Charles Schwab building on Sixth Avenue at Twenty-third Street. The trees in Madison Square Park are just starting to bud.

Alissa and Paul's Wedding

Paul and Alissa and their first child. (They work quick.)

Alissa and Paul got married this Saturday, at the Hall of Springs in Saratoga.

The wedding was beautiful and practically perfect in every way, and everyone had a pretty darn good time, too. There were some Tufts people (Megan Wu, Loveseat, et.al.) and lots of Nisky people, of course. Maybe 120 people altogether, just as an off-the-cuff estimate.

Jono Needs Longer Socks.

Around the fireplace: Leah, Jeff, Jono.

A group of us retired here for a bit, after dinner and before a little dancing.

Littluns

I believe (but am not certain) that all of these dark-eyed children are Paul's kin... though there were two kids from the Murray clan scampering around the premises. They were tres adorable, and I think they knew it, because they took advantage and ran amok.

Prepping for the bouquet throw

Alissa has limbered up with a little long-toss in the outfield before toeing the rubber. She's got some late movement, and a deceptive delivery. She won't light up the radar gun, but she's sneaky fast according to all my scouting reports.

It's a bit dark, but you can see Matt back there on the right. There were specific (and vociferous) calls for Cheeseburger Bunski to be in the scrum, but she negged that idea with a vengeance.

These girls couldn't catch a cold, much less a pop fly

... Matt caught it.

And Alissa's giving him the Evil Eye.

The bride and father.

Butter Henge.

Gotta be the pink tie.

I'm not going to lie... I took some photos.

Technically, this is a manwich.

Jono with half-lidded eyes, and some lapcandy.

I really want to juxtapose this photo with an equivalent one from ten or twelve years ago... I'm sure I can do this, but it'll take some digging through the archives. Maybe Empire State Games?

Lapsitting... it's a damn epidemic.

Yet more lapsitting, of the lady-lady variety. Sue Rella gets a little sumpin'-sumpin' from Miss Leah.

Snowbound

Number 7 on my street, one of my favorite houses in the neighborhood and the city.

Leroy Street, digging out mid-storm.

Ain't nobody been out this door since the snow started falling.

On my way to a job interview

Ignore the spectacular mess behind me, and focus on how sharp I look with the roomie's hot Pink tie! (That's not a miscapitalization... it's not just a pink tie, it's made by Thomas Pink.)

Happy Birthday Leah!

We went out and celebrated Leah's twenty-fifth birthday last night. We had a little dinner at Kuma Inn (though our table was almost an hour late) with some Japanese tapas. Then we headed over to the champagne room at Happy Ending over on Broome Street in the Lower East Side.




Leah likes wandering into traffic.

Wet Leah.

Anna makes no mistake about it.

This photo is fun, mainly because you can see Anna Mack "throwing down" in the background over Leah's shoulder.

Kate and Leah.

For shoecleaning in a horse-infested yesteryear

I really love to look for anachronistic little things around my city. (I adore Forgotten New York for this reason.)

One thing I keep my eye out for is boot scrapers. These are little flat pieces of metal either imbedded in the steps of old houses or welded between the banisters of the railings that run up the stairs. These are relics of when transport was by horse and carriage, so there was quite a lot of manure on the streets that you wanted to scrape off your boots before you walked into someone's house.

Two of the houses on my block have bootscrapers still.

Bootscraper on Leroy Street.

Jeff loves the pretty hat I brought him

Don't let him tell you otherwise: he loves that hat.

He'd wear it to work if they'd let him.

Care and Feeding of Your Cast-Iron Skillet

Shhh! Baby's sleeping!

So I got a Lodge cast-iron skillet out of a restaurant supply store on lower Bowery, in my old 'hood. Right now I'm in the middle of "seasoning" it, which apparently involves rubbing it lovingly in oil and tucking it in to a hot oven for a nice three hour nap in the afternoon. I am also advised to cook bacon in it a few times to speed the seasoning process. You're also supposed to eschew soap when washing it, just using a wire brush and hot water.

Why did I get a cast-iron skillet, you ask? Two words: Pot. Roast.

Cleanup!

See, there are many, many ways to procrastinate.

You can read a book, watch television, suft the 'Net.... All of those do, however, feel like goofing off, and eventually will make you feel guilty.

There's a better way: chores.

See, if your time-wasting avoidance-oriented task is both somewhat unpleasant as well as at least marginally useful... well, that's a horse of a different color, now id'n'it?

So, seeing as I had something that I very much wanted to avoid doing the other day, I thought to myself, "Isn't it about time that I completely clean and reorganize my room and the apartment altogether?"

Yes, yes it was.

So the floors got swept and mopped, all the clothes got taken out and down and reorganized. The summer stuff was packed away into boxes and placed way up high, the huge clump of unfolded clean laundry was folded and put in the dresser, and the books were reorganized. And it only took four hours! Lovely!

Cleanup!

World's cutest French bulldog puppy outside Gray's Papaya on Sixth and Carmine. He has just emigrated to New York from Hungary.

The Prodigal Son Returns

Jay to the en-oh does the Robot while fleeing the scene. He's fresh back from Argentina, and in hiding in Niskayuna after a brief sojourn in New York City.

Besty!

One of my very best friends... and Leah's in the picture, too.

Night swimming on Cape Fear

Swimming in Wilmington on New Year's Day.

My glasses are quite tight on my face, so I didn't worry too much about going in wearing them. However, a high wave knocked them off my face into the ocean.

Immediately, I dove and laid prone on the seafloor, to try to get as much skin in contact with the bottom to try to feel for them. After a minute, I came up for breath, then dove down.

I actually found them on the second dive.

I found my glasses, in the Atlantic Ocean, at night.

I'm a putz, but a very lucky one.

Matt and Mike, each trying hard to be as much of an effete snob as I am. (Mike has borrowed my glasses to assist in the effort.)

Carrie and Jen, getting wet on the swings.

Christmas Party on Water Street

Viv and David, posing very cute.

Rich, Gwen, and Adrienne.

I think there was some kind of minor wardrobe malfunction going on here. Adrienne is getting some help from Gwen.

Another aerial shot.

Matt holds forth; he's giving his Christmas toast.

More Matt.

Viv and David.

An aerial view, from halfway up the steps to Kristin's garret.

Getting ready for the party. Matt ties a full Windsor after making a switch in his attire, while Adrienne chit-chats with David and his new fawn-colored jacket.

West Lounge

Can you feel the love?

The first snow of the season, on Varick Street in New York.

The Bleecker Street station for the Lexington line.

Grand Central Station

Philly Marathon

Official Results

Event: Philadelphia Marathon
Year: 2005
Bib: 4472
Last name: Lindy
First name: Jeffrey
City: New York
State: NY
Overall: 159
Chip number:

Finish time: 02:59:02
(this is the time from the firing of the gun)

Chip time: 02:58:55
(this takes into account when I actually crossed the starting line, which was seven seconds back on account of the thousand or so people in front of me)

pace: 6:49.439 per mile

splits

• mile 1: 5:55 (this is approximate... the sign said 6:02 as I passed the mile mark, and I was seven seconds back of the gun)

• mile 10: 1:06:25 (6:38.5/mile pace for these ten miles)

• halfway: 1:27:48 (6:52.6/mile pace for the 3.1 miles after the 10mi mark)

• mile 14: 1:33:47

• mile 20: 2:14:50 (6:49.5/mile pace for the 6.9 miles after the 10mi mark)

• finish: 2:58:55 (6:57.0/mile pace for the second half of the marathon, 7:05/mile pace for the last 6.2 miles)

You can see I faded pretty bad in the second half, though apparently I picked it up a touch from halfway to the 20mi turnaround point. After the turnaround point, it was pure "survival mode" running, where I calculated every time I passed a mile marker exactly how fast I had to run from that point on to still break three hours.



I turned out not to need that ambulance, but it was comforting to know it was there. The finish is just around this last bend.

Me, chugging into the last few hundred yards on fumes.

I'm rockin' the Tufts baby blue shorts and Tufts rowing toque. (You gotta'.) I almost certainly overdressed for the temps, which started out around 38 degrees but got to mid-40's with zero wind by the time I finished just before eleven o'clock. There were very few people who had tights on, and these are semi-serious long-johns from Hind.

I started out with a pair of $2 white gloves that I'd bought at the Expo the day before, but I ditched those about three or four miles in. I considered ditching the hat, too, but that would've probably done more harm than good since my noggin was completely soaked in sweat. The chill would've been worse than the heat.

I attempted to just even-split the whole race, and aside from a predictable fade and going out way too damn fast in the first mile, I think I did a pretty good job. The longest run of my life had been an 18 mile race in mid-September (1:56 for a 6:28 average pace per mile), but I'd developed a bit of a gimpy knee in early October which necessitated me cutting my training way down. I definitely noticed the lack of proper long runs after the 16 mile point; my quads pretty much went into Operation Shutdown. From that point on I just tried to keep up a fast turnover, take a lot of steps per minute, and keep my footfalls directly underneath me and not overstride.

Alissa and Paul have decorated well. I really liked their interior: very cozy.
They were nice enough to put me up Friday and Saturday night, which was perfect because I hadn't seen Alissa in quite a while, and they were an easy walk to the start and finish line (in front of the Museum).

Jonah, the Boston Terrier, is out of place in Philadelphia. I think he is probably the only Boston Terrier in the universe who knows the word "Schenectady."

Jonah, who's two and a half, is quite excitable. He does a lot of jumping from Ottoman to chair to love seat, making snorting noises all the while. It's as if he's a demonically possessed, evil little piglet.

Alissa agrees with me that he would surely make a succulent roast. So plump.

Alissa and Paul's cute little house on Judson Street, in the Museum district of Philly.

Bedford Street on a rainy night.

(I got a little bit wet lying down on the street to take this photo.)

Poker Night: Omaha

Adrienne and Rich are playing as a team, which I'm not quite sure is fair.
David is as dismayed as I am, and shows it.

There's a straight out there, but I didn't make mine.

In fact, I played abysmally bad the entire night, even by my very relaxed standards. I got one boat (Queens full of Tens, I think), and otherwise didn't do better than trips, which apparently sucks for Omaha.

Rich teaching (or attempting to teach) Adrienne how to play Omaha.

New Camera, Old Neighborhood

I took a walk south and brought the new camera along, walking through SoHo and Tribeca.



Perry Street at the intersection with Greenwich, looking towards the Hudson at cobblestone level.

Jersey Street, one of the shortest named streets in Manhattan. This is behind the Puck Building.

The defunct bakery across the street from my old apartment on Elizabeth Street. Someone is building a very luxe home inside.

Two very cute Bassets, the little one is a year old, and the bigger one is two. This is on Macdougal, I believe.

Very old American Express stables and garage, being refurbished

"One of the rare TriBeCa warehouses remaining in near-original condition, the 3-storey building was built by American Express in 1860 to house horses and carriages for telegram deliveries. Evoking the history of SoHo and TriBeCa as neighborhoods originally settled by artists who converted abandoned neighborhood warehouses into their studios and residences in the 1960s, the third floor of this landmarked building was 'colonized' for the duration of the exhibition before it underwent subdivision and transformation into condominiums in late Spring 2004."

A closer view at the American Express sigil, which looked very much like a dog to me.
Before getting into money orders and other financial services, American Express actually did truck things to and fro, running an express service. This building dates only ten years after the company's founding in 1850.

Old Saint Patrick's Cathedral

This is the old Saint Patrick's Cathedral, on the corner of Prince and Mulberry two blocks or so from my old apartment on Elizabeth Street. It was built early in the 19th century, and was superseded as the seat of the bishopric by the newer St. Pat's on Fifth Avenue in the mid-1800s.




Corner of the wall around the Old Saint Patrick's graveyard. This is at the northwest corner of Prince and Mott.



You can see that there's a pronounced curve to the wall along Prince.



Here the bulwarks on the interior side of the Prince Street wall, preventing the wall from collapsing further inward.