Feb 27th 2009 11:48:13 am

reading: I just finished A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I picked it up in the Tenement Museum gift shop because I thought it would be good to get to know the new place where we will be living. Plus, it is a classic that I never read in high school. It was lovely, sad, and hopeful all at the same time – a coming of age story and a multi-generational American immigrant story. It reminded me of my mom. So many of the lessons in the book were things that she taught me, and the real hero of the story is the mother.

watching: hmmm… I already mentioned Spain… on the Road Again. We actually haven’t been watching as much tv as usual. Instead we are tethered to our computers – Travis works something like 10-12 hours a day. However, we have been keeping up with Lost. Is Widmore the bad guy or is Ben the bad guy?!! It is all too mysterious!

listening to: Prince’s Purple Rain. It was just re-released on vinyl and Travis got the record for me for Valentine’s Day. Little FYI: I used to take a major amount of dance classes when I was younger. In the jazz classes, if we were especially good, our teacher would let us dance to Prince. It was the most contemporary music they had at the studio, so we all thought it was incredibly cool.

eating: Less simple carbohydrates like bread and sugar. I have been having some really bad mood swings and they always seem to be connected with some sort of dessert product (like cinnamon rolls). So, I am attempting to eat super-healthy for a while just to see how it affects how I feel… but any weight loss side effects would be welcomed. I am also trying to drink more tea and not add sugar to my coffee.

doing: Working really hard planning and preparing for the Swap-bot Member Appreciation Event which is on Sunday. We are expecting about forty attendees and I am making cupcakes!

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Feb 24th 2009 02:58:18 pm

I just spent too much of my work day arranging and drawing the layout of our new apartment. I think the floor plan is pretty much to scale and most of our furniture seems to fit. I have drawn these rough layouts for our past three homes: KC plaza apartment, Oregon Apartment, our house. They have usually ended up being fairly accurate in the past, but we’ll see how things play out in New York!

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Feb 23rd 2009 11:42:07 pm

For Valentine’s Day I got Travis the Spain… on the Road Again DVD set. The series is basically a travel show following Gwyneth Paltrow, Mario Batali, Mark Bittman, and Claudia Bassols on a “gastronomic” road trip across Spain. They visit famous restaurants, vineyards, hotels, and museums all the while talking up the beauty and wonder of Spain (the Spanish tourism bureau is one of the program’s main sponsors). We had seen a few episodes on public television and it seemed interesting. Turns out the majority of the four hosts of the show (including my beloved Gwyneth) are extremely pretentious and elitist and snobby – always talking about their Bentleys or Christian Louboutin shoes or how they exclusively eat locally grown, organic food – but the scenery and photography is amazing. Plus, all of the delicious food and beautiful locations are fun to dream about. We are enjoying the series, but I am not sure I would recommend it.

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Feb 21st 2009 12:42:40 pm

Travis and I are back in Eugene with Crusher happily by our side. The NYC trip was smooth and successful. On top of finding a new home, I got to spend a lot of time exploring the city.

One of the major highlights of my trip was visiting the Tenement Museum in the Lower East Side. I have wanted to visit the museum since learning about it in my museum studies master’s program. It exceeded my expectations. The museum tells the story of urban immigrant life in the 100 years surrounding the turn of the (20th) century. The museum is essentially a complete tenement building that was used for housing from the time it was built in 1863 to the time it was boarded up in 1935. There are reconstructed apartments in the museum, as well as apartments left exactly as they were found when the museum was discovered and founded in 1988. There are fixtures and architectural elements that are original to the building’s construction, later gas light fixtures, and even later electric fixtures and indoor plumbing. The museum is taking their time on the building’s restoration in order to do it right and preserve all stages of its evolution. It was fascinating to see all of the many layers of plaster, paint and wallpaper exposed… but that might just be me. I am maybe a little too passionate about historic preservation.

I went on two of the museum tours (Getting By and Piecing It Together), but I also became a member so that I can go back and do the three additional tours. The interpretation by the tour guides was perfectly in line with all of the latest “museum theory” – it was interactive, accurate, unbiased, thought-provoking, and fun. We got to explore the building and “meet” actual families who had lived there in the past. I don’t want to go on and on, but truly, I can’t praise the Tenement Museum enough. My visit simultaneously educated me about the past and excited me about living in New York City. I left feeling like, in time, I could fall in love with the city.

Museums became something of a chore to visit after studying museum theory and scholarly literature for two years, but the Tenement Museum has really re-energized my enthusiasm and love for museums. I can’t wait to visit many more NYC museums!

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Feb 17th 2009 09:33:01 pm

Big news: we were approved for our apartment! woohoo! throw confetti!

The apartment I showed in the previous post is not the exact one we have ended up with. I chose instead a place in the same building, but on the fourth floor instead of the second. It is a walk-up. That means going up and down three flights of stairs multiple times a day, but… the upper apartment has a WASHER & DRYER in the unit. That is crazy awesome! Plus, it has all new appliances, including a DISHWASHER!! They will definitely be the nicest appliances Travis and I have ever had, and the first dishwasher we have had in about five years. The apartment is about 800 square feet — which is about 20% less than our house — but I think it is going to be just fine. Almost all of our furniture should fit… if the moving men can get it up to our place. I am actually getting pretty excited about living there. The neighborhood has so much nice stuff, like coffee shops and restaurants. I am worried about not having a car and living on the fourth floor, but all of the walking and stairs will be good exercise. That will mean I can eat at more restaurants! I am feeling optimistic.

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Feb 17th 2009 10:02:59 am

I spent all of yesterday going around Brooklyn looking for an apartment to rent. I think I looked at nine total places and I found one that I think would be quite nice. I put in an application, so we’ll see if we get accepted. It is located on one of the main roads in Park Slope with lots of restaurants and shops close by. There is a “Natural Market” right across the street! The apartment has two bedrooms (although one is very tiny), a full living room, and a really large (comparatively) kitchen/dining room area. I hope we get it!

I feel strange moving back into a tiny, dumpy apartment after working so hard on our house in Eugene. I am not sad, just maybe slightly disappointed. We don’t mind living in small, old spaces, but it just seems like we are moving backwards. Oh, well. I am still feeling optimistic about living in New York.

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Feb 15th 2009 07:52:30 pm

I am too tired to write everything down, but Travis and I made it to New York late last night. Today we spent the day scouting out a few areas where we may end up living. We walked about a million miles, including over the Brooklyn Bridge. I got too much sun and I think some wind burn, but we saw a lot of the city. I think we are aiming to end up with an apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn. I am looking at some places tomorrow, so we’ll see what happens!

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Feb 11th 2009 09:31:39 am

I had a fun, laid-back birthday yesterday. Work-time was pretty much the same as usual – except for all the kind birthday messages coming my way. In the evening, I opened lovely, generous presents (thanks Mom, Dad, June & Brad!!), had a super-huge Tandori mixed grill dinner at our favorite Indian restaurant, then came home and read Watchmen and watched Fringe. Watchmen is really interesting so far (Travis got it for me to prepare me for living in NYC with all those crazy super heroes. Ha!), and even though I am supposed to save it to read on the plane to NYC on Saturday, I don’t know if I will be able to. Fringe is also getting really good – more and more X-File-ish with each episode. I love the cross-dimensional, alternate universe, scientific warfare plot that is emerging! Too bad we have to wait until April for more new episodes. Anyhoo, after all the reading and tv entertainment, we ended the night with some cake. Yum!

Thank you to everyone who wished me happy birthday and sent cards and messages. It really made my day!

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Feb 10th 2009 02:18:20 pm

All of a sudden it is my birthday again. I am 28 today. I do not know if I am happy, or sad, or just neutral about this birthday. I seem to have other big things to be thinking about. However, today promises to be a good day. I made myself a large pot of birthday coffee and have been working away on Swap-bot just like any other day, so far. Travis gave me some of these and this, so birthday treats are covered. I also have some presents from my and Travis’ parents to open this evening. And, I get to pick a fancy restaurant to to for dinner. Lovely.

Thank you for all of the birthday wishes! Everyone is so kind.

p.s. The mug above was given to me by Chelsea on my birthday a few years ago. It is my absolute favorite mug!

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Feb 8th 2009 05:37:05 pm

For the last three weekends (at least) Travis and I have been getting the house ready to go on the market. We have been spending most of the time in the backyard. Luckily, we have a very small yard because it has been a huge job!! When we bought the house the backyard consisted of raised flower beds, a very rotten deck, and a brick patio. (You can see photos of the yard when we moved in here and here.) At first the area was fine and somewhat cute, but over the last 2.5 years the plants all became extremely overgrown and the wood flower beds and deck completely deteriorated. We simply could not leave it as it was to sell the house. It looked horrible. I wish I had taken a more recent “before” photo so that you could see how bad it was.

Most of our free time lately has been spent tackling the huge job of taking out the flower beds, all of the dirt, all of the plants (including an apple tree) and the deck. The only thing we left in place is the brick patio area.

Travis has been awesome! He is so much stronger than me. I never could have done even a portion of the work on my own! He put in the sod yesterday, which I think looks great. We are also having a portion of the fence replaced (and will be power-washing the rest of it). Today, we put down pavers and gravel where the deck was. It is still a work in progress, but we hope to finish it this week. I will take better photos of the final result. It is looking so large, and open, and clean out there now – it is a shame that we are leaving!

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