This Passover has been going pretty smoothly. I went to my parents house for the seders, I saw my friend from home and her new baby, and my other friend from home and her baby, and my grandmother and uncles and our family friends. It was nice. We got ourselves invited to a wedding that's sure to be fun and I also learned a juicy family secret. We had 80 degree weather and slept with the windows open and ate LOTS of matzoh ball soup and green mold (the good kind).
Back in NYC, its snowing and I don't have any soup. I do, however, have quinoa, which I recently discovered is sort of kosher for passover. Kinda. Kosher enough for me at any rate, and I think it just might save me from becoming the monster I usually turn into around this point in the holiday.
So far, we've eaten two seders which included gefilte fish, hard boiled eggs, matzoh ball soup, turkey, brisket, potatoes, vegetable kugel (quite possibly the best food on earth), asparagus, chopped liver, broccoli, matzoh, charoset, and horseradish. And flourless chocolate cake, almond macaroons, apple cake, mondel bread, and kfp brownies (blech). Then we ate chicken salad, potato chips, olives, and fruit and then a meal of baked sweet potatoes and raw broccoli. And then we ate broiled chicken on baby spinach, quinoa salad, and more broccoli. And I had salad and matzoh ball soup for lunch. And also lots of matzoh with butter and cream cheese and jam.
I'm about out of ideas! I don't know what to make for dinner tonight. We'll make matzoh ball soup and more kugel for dinner Saturday night, and we're having a kosher for passover vegetarian Easter meal Sunday night (Ashkenazic too, which means my friend gets TONS of credit, this is her third year in a row doing this for us and she is amazing) and then we have Monday night to get through.
I'm not sure I can handle more meat, and egg salad, while tasty, will put my egg consumption way off the charts for this week, considering there were 5 in the kugel, 8 in the cake, 6 in the macaroons, god knows how many in the matzoh balls, and of course all those hard boiled eggs. You may argue that since these eggs were divided among a whole kugel and a whole cake and many macaroons, that I didn't really eat as many as it seems like. That would be a good argument only if I didn't eat nearly the entire kugel by myself, and most of the macaroons, and a large portion of the cake. Nice try though.
Anyway, if you have any dinner ideas I will be happy to consider them. Probably I'll reject them though, cause I'm mean like that when its the 4th day and its snowing and I don't have any readily accessible boursin cheese.
Dinner last night. I want to work on taking better pictures, especially of food. For some reason, most food porn photos don't turn out right, even though I'm using the appropriate type of lens and shutter speed, etc. I think the dark colors of my plates and counters play a role--combined with the dark blue kitchen walls, it's just too dark a lot of the time to make for a good photo. I've bought a new white plate, we'll see if that helps. In the meantime, you can enjoy looking at this wonderful plate of chicken, Israeli couscous, asparagus and bread. Not pictured is the cranberry-grape relish for the chicken and couscous.
Today my co-worker "Dena" and I went to get lunch and noticed a whole lot of police on our street--like 8 officers just on our little block. The sidewalk was also cordoned off, lined with those metal police barriers they use for parades. I figured it had to do with St. Patrick's Day, but I forced Dena to ask some cops and they said it was for a health care workers rally.
Back in the office after lunch, I headed to the ladies room, which I've written aboutbefore. Now there's an open ceiling panel in there, which means we can hear everything the construction workers renovating the floor above us are saying. I assume this also means they can hear everything we do in the ladies room. I try not to think about this too often. The open panel also means that the ladies room is much colder than the rest of the floor, and alternately smells like cigarette smoke or electrical fire. Today someone put a sign up on the mirror directing "someone" to stop leaving the toilet seat covers on the toilet, as the bathroom "belongs to everyone." This is in addition to the signs on the back of every stall door directing us ladies to clean up the toilet seat area after we are done. Sometimes the faucets turn on spontaneously, and won't turn off. And I've spotted cockroaches multiple times. But I suppose it could always be worse.
Anyway, out in the hall in front of the ladies room I encountered a female police officer. As I unlocked the bathroom door she said to me, "Oh, my partner's in there." I said "Okay." And continued to open the door. (Also I was hoping that she didn't arrest me and that if I went into the locked bathroom she wouldn't be able to follow me and put on the handcuffs. Seriously.) She said "Yeah, my partner went in there because the other bathroom was locked," referring to the bathroom for disabled people located next to the ladies room. Again, I said "Okay." The police officer said, "Well, the other one was locked..." and I said, "That's really okay, this is a multiple stall bathroom so it doesn't matter." And then I opened the door and came face to face with Raoul, a male police officer. "Oh, Raoul, there you are," the female officer said. And I said "Ooooh, I see," as I ran at top speed into the bathroom. Really there was nothing else I could do. It took me a couple minutes to recover enough to be able to pee.
Dena was not surprised when I got back to my desk and told her this story. Probably you weren't either. I guess this makes me pretty clueless. But I like to think it makes me progressive--not only did I automatically assume that the woman's partner was also female, I also refrained from running out of the bathroom screaming.
Last night he dreamed that he was being chased by lions!
I occasionally have dreams where I'm really, really mad at Javert, so angry that I try to hit him, but in dreams (and probably in real life too) my punches won't work and I can't ever hurt him. Then I wake up and have to remind myself that I'm not actually mad at him, that it was all just a dream and that I should be nice to him when he wakes up. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. Unfortunately I have been known to start the day angry at poor Javert for something that he didn't even do.
The other night he had a dream where he was angry at me! I can't remember why, but it was nice to be on the other end for once. Because Javert gets upset when I tell him that I wanted to kill him in my dreams, and now I had the right to be upset. I have to admit that it did feel a little weird to know he had been angry, even if it wasn't real.* *This reminds me of my imaginary conversations with people sitting next to me on the subway, and how I get into fights with them (in my mind) and then glare at them until my stop. Sometimes I talk to them (in my mind) but my body doesn't realize that the conversation isn't real, and my hands move as if I'm speaking. People must think I'm crazy.
What is with these people on the subway who stand up waaaaaay before their stop? I was on the train this morning, already angry after being shoved in by some woman behind me. I was the first person standing in the seating area, near the corner pole where the doors are (I have to be near one of the long poles because sadly I am too short to reach the top pole. SO MOVE OVER, STUPID TALL MAN.) Javert stood next to me, holding on to the high pole. As the train got to 59th street, a full two stations away from the next stop, the woman sitting on the bench right in front of me stood up abruptly. This meant we were face to face, about 6 inches apart. Surprisingly I was slightly taller than she was, so we weren't in danger of kissing on the lips by accident if the train jerked, but it was still mighty uncomfortable. I was blocking her exit towards the door area of the train, and if I had let go of the pole she could have squeezed past me. But I have a rule: I will not let go of the pole if the train is moving.
The woman stood there for a few seconds as the train slowed down to pass through the station (the express trains have been doing this lately and are barely faster than the locals). I am SURE that at this point she realized we were still two stations away and that she stood up too soon. But she was too stubborn to admit that, and I was too stubborn to let her through, so we stood face to face for the next five minutes. I think Javert, who was standing next to me, was getting jealous. Sure I could have let this woman though, but every other time I've let go of the pole so other people can move the train jerks and I end up falling on top of someone else, usually a dirty person or a small child or some weirdo carrying a giant plastic bag full of other plastic bags. Plus I enjoyed making this woman uncomfortable. And I didn't want her getting to the train door before me. That's part of the trade-in for getting a seat--the people who have to stand get to leave the train first. You cannot have both a seat and easy door access at the same time.
I'm happy to report that I exited the train before this woman. Success!
Next up: Passive-Aggressive techniques to use against business-people in livery cars!
On Friday night I went out for dinner and drinks to celebrate a friend's birthday. Dinner was fine, then we went to a bar in the Meatpacking District called APT (or Apartment). We knew we were headed to a good place when the guy walking down the street in front of us stopped and asked a bouncer at a nearby club where "Apartment" was. After getting an answer, the guy then shouted to his 'buddies' across the street to "keep going dudes, its down there." Oh I knew this would be fun.
APT is the sort of place that believes its so cool that it doesn't even need a sign to let people know its there. I suppose that makes sense, since if you keep walking down the street past it you'll fall into the Hudson. Or maybe not, maybe there are a ton of even cooler places in the two buildings to the west and I'm just too boring to know about them. Only a little stone above the nondescript door said APT and the building number on it. Had I not been with cool people who knew about this place, I would probably have given up on finding it and gone home.
We walked in and had to go through a couple more doors before it was clear we were in a bar. It's called APT for a reason--it looks just like a real apartment. There's wallpaper and a long hallway with some doors on it, and then an open room with a bar, a bed, some sofas and tables and another little room I didn't venture into.
We settled into a sofa and coffee table arrangement and looked at the menus. The first page had a list of some pretty normal fancy drinks on it. The second page had food made up of foie gras or caviar or a combination of the two. The last page was a list of bottles of liquor. You could get a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka for $300. Or perhaps you'd rather have a bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin for $350. I ordered one of the cheapest drinks on the menu, which was $11. I can't remember what was in it, but it didn't taste all that good.
Lets discuss how creepy the bed in this place must be. When we got there it was empty, but when we left (just as it was getting busy, at 11pm--yes, we are HUGE losers) there was someone either sleeping or passed out on it.
Second, I couldn't locate the bathroom and was not about to ask the scary looking waitress if she could help me out. So I asked one girl in our group, and she pointed me to two unmarked doors down the long wallpapered hallway. I tried the second door but it was locked, so I went into the first one. And saw the blood. Little juicy drops of it, on the toilet seat and even more disgustingly on the floor around the toilet, like a woman had had a little 'accident' and had to hobble around the room till she found her 'supplies.' I can deal with nasty toilet seats (what woman living here cannot? You MUST master the hover!) but things get much more complicated when you also have to watch where you're putting your feet. Of course when I left the bathroom some man was waiting to go in and now he probably thinks I'm the one who did it.
When I got back from the bathroom, I saw that in the corner towards the back of the room a man and a woman were sitting together and the woman was sobbing into the man's shoulder. This made me feel uncomfortable.
APT's website describes the bar's decor as suggesting "an almost naughty sense of voyeuristic intrusion." APT "cross-references high style with homey comfort." If this means that people feel at home enough to bleed all over the bathroom (perhaps thinking they'll clean it up later?) and cry uncontrollably while other people watch, then I guess the place lives up to its description.
Here's the main thing: If I wanted to sit around drinking a bottle of Stoly in a dirty apartment, I would go to the liquor store and pay $25 and then go home to MY apartment and drink it.
