Saturday Night and It's All Done

I'm going to pretty much just post my pictures and video links from today's "work".  My first photo has a time stamp of 5:59 a.m. and the last photo taken was at 7:00 p.m.  I had been out running a couple of errands and when I got home, it was looking like they were pretty much finished up.  So I got myself upstairs, grabbed my camera, and watched while they got their trucks all positioned, moved the last of the road closed signs, and took off down Fifth Avenue.

So without further ado, here are a batch of photos:

First pic of the morning - very few people about as yet and they're getting the cage ready to hoist up.

The little green crane that could is already working away - this is looking down from my bedroom window to the canopy that extends out from our lobby door.

I didn't realize it til I got up on the roof, but there was also a marathon early this morning - this is the last of the runners coming in...

Then they gathered at Pullman Square.

Back at work, they're struggling to get this long side piece off and up.  Part of it is behind a metal ladder that runs from the lower roof to the upper - think it would have been easier if they had sliced the trim piece in two.

I thought I heard a dove cooing...

All the red trim is off now so they can start on the sign.  It takes quite a while!

They used an acetylene torch to cut through whatever was holding all this stuff on. 

Here are the trim pieces and the first sign (there are three of them) on the ground.

I don't know when they took their lunch break, but I took mine and while I was outside, I got this picture from the ground up.

For the second and third signs, they had to do the cutting work from the cage - no convenient roof space to walk around on.

And here's that third sign going down to the trash.

Getting later in the day and they're now in the clean-up stage.  I guess all that black on the pavement must be from using the torch to cut the metal pieces into smaller pieces.

 And as long as I was up there, I figured I might as well take a couple shots of that beautiful river:

I should probably have taken more still shots and fewer videos cause the videos didn't turn out real great - I used the zoom a fair amount and didn't realize how blurry that would make the pictures.  But here are the links to the ones I kept.  Somewhat repetitive and basically boring, but it was exciting while it was all going on. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7zFTESeFtQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWqb_0ewTd8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFmEikVloEs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IF0MpqRD8Aw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lscO85hHxWA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Njl0QReRNk

Not very fancy, but I've worn myself out with all this hi-tech stuff! 

BIG Doings at My Condo Building!

Friday started out as just a normal day - fiddled on the computer for quite a while in the morning doing some searching of places in Italy - both to visit and for lodgings.  Nothing definite - just looking...  I decided since it actually wasn't beastly hot, I'd walk over to Subway for lunch so I did that and when I got back to my apartment building, I ran into three of my neighbor ladies in the lobby who were on their way to Starbucks and asked me to come along.  I decided what the heck and joined them.  We had a nice long visit, lots of talk about travel (we're all retired and enjoying it), then walking back we stopped in at the Mug and Pia shop to browse for a bit.  Started the walk back to our building, turned the corner onto 10th Avenue, and I, for one, about dropped my teeth.  You could see from where we were that the entire block in front of our building was blocked with all kinds of trucks and they were putting up barricades and such - not that any traffic could have used that stretch of road anyway!  It looked like some huge catastrophe or something.

So we walked on to our building and I stayed outside to see if I could figure out what was going on.  It wasn't long before someone told me that they were all there to take down all the signage that is on our building for the bank that's been located there since before I moved in.  I knew they were moving to a new location and in fact yesterday, they had all sorts of people there moving things out.  So, I counted, and there were four flatbed trucks carry cranes - at least that's what I thought at first.  Turned out actually three of them were carrying cranes and one of them was carrying big extensions to add to two of the cranes. And then there was a smaller green crane already unloaded and getting set up to work, plus various and sundry other trucks.  I got all excited and took some pictures from upstairs out my window:

 

 Cranes to the left of me...the little green guy and one of the "extra parts" flatbeds

Cranes to the right of me...unloading what turned out to be leveling platforms for the cranes' leveling feet to sit on.

And cranes right in the middle.

I decided I would go up the roof and be ready to take pictures when the action started up there.  That's where the big sign is - actually I think probably two.  While waiting I tried to get a picture of what they'll be removing, but I wasn't positioned very good for that:

I'm on the roof deck facing that open door so all you can see basically is the side of the sign - the grey, flat looking thing with (if you could see it) a big 5/3 in red on it.

So, I waited and waited, getting pretty warm up there in the sun and finally thought I should probably go see if my neighbor on the 12th floor knew for sure that this was in fact what was happening.  Turns out it was happening but not until tomorrow morning.  This afternoon they were just getting everything set up and the little green crane was taking down the red and black illuminated trim that runs around the building's street sides.  So I took some videos (I'll only post two of the ones I took cause they drive me crazy trying to get them set up right) and just had all sorts of fun keeping track of what they were doing from my bird's eye view.

The first video shows the trim removal although they were so close to the building it was hard to get a good picture of what was happening.  To see it just click HERE.

And the second one shows two of the huge cranes working to get the extension put on one of them.  To see it, just click HERE.

Obviously a lot more fun to watch "in the real" than on a video, but might as well share them anyway. :)

So they worked and worked until 7:00 p.m. and managed to have everything set and ready to get started tomorrow morning.  I've got to remember when I wake up early - like I always do - not to lollygag around in bed but get dressed and up on the roof to see all the action.

As for tonight - this is now the view right outside my bedroom windows:

And around 9:00, after struggling with trying to get more videos uploaded, I opted to come to Starbucks and publish what I already had and took this picture to show where they're taking off that trim I mentioned.  I think in my video I said it was at the third or fourth floor level and obviously it isn't - it's right over the first floor.

They got a fair amount removed already.  Tomorrow, they'll have to block off the street in front of the building (this is the side) in order to remove the trim there.

Hopefully, I'll get some good pictures tomorrow up on the roof...speaking of good pictures, one thing I've decided for my next trip (if it includes Florence, which I imagine it will...) is that I'm going to get up one morning at the crack of dawn and get myself to the Duomo before the hordes of people are there and see what I can get in the way of some pictures.  Always good to have a goal, right?

June 19 - Sunday Afternoon

A kind of grey, rainy day today which is all right with me.  Had my nice Sunday morning at Starbucks with my yogurt, tea and newspaper.  And had a nice long chat with a young man who asked if he could borrow the classified section of my paper.  Turned out he wasn't looking for a job, but for somewhere to live for a month.  He's a med student from University of Virginia and was sent here for one of his rotations.  He apparently had just rolled into town this morning.  We ended up visiting for half an hour or so.  I told him about some of the neat places in Huntington, found out he has family in Massachusetts near where my sister and her husband live and we both agreed it's a great place to live, and anything else that popped into our heads...a very personable young man.

I'm kind of put out with my crazy old self right now, because as I mentioned in an earlier post, I had made some notes on what I did differently this last time I made my vodka sauce and when I got home and settled back down, I went to get them and add them to the recipe in My Recipe Collection and I cannot find them anywhere.  I had a whole little stack of handwritten notes on various recipes I've tried and not typed up yet and that's where it should be and it's not.  And, apparently, since I wrote it all down, my brain did not retain anything about what I changed except that I made half a recipe instead of a quarter recipe.  Dumb old brain...

But the last two nights I've made myself dinner and enjoyed them both.  I bought some organic lean beef mainly because it was a little less than a pound package, looked like nice meat, and I've been meat hungry lately.  I divided it up into five 3-oz. servings, froze four of them and cooked the fifth one just in a real hot skillet after coating it with garlic infused olive oil.  It was quite tasty but I cooked it longer than I should have cause it was well done all the way through which meant it was a little rubbery.  Also, I cooked up some reconstituted dried shiitake mushrooms in some olive oil, added a little red wine to them and served that along with the meat.  I'll do that again only with fresh mushrooms - they would work much better, I think.  My starch with that was a couple slices of some delicious Moroccan olive bread from River and Rail Bakery.  I used to buy that from Kroger's bakery and it was good, but I like this one better because it's a lighter bread which is nicer with a meal.

Then yesterday, Jamie and I went over to Charleston so I could return something I had bought at a Home Good Store while I was in Virginia.  Then we browsed through Home Goods, Cato's (I'd never been in one before) and Marshall's, stopping for a delicious strawberry and chocolate crepe at a place called La Creperie in the same strip mall as the stores.  A kind of strange place cause with that name, you'd think crepes and, of course, they have them, but it's very much a Greek-slanted restaurant with gyro sandwiches, Greek salads, and various other menu items.

Anyway, in Home Goods I found some tomato-basil linguine noodles that I had to buy (I'm going to have to buy a separate cupboard for all the pasta I seem to feel compelled to buy!) and also bought a little can of white tuna in olive oil, imported from Spain.  I'd read some time ago, that tuna in olive oil is so much better than tuna in water or other oil and had found some at Kroger and used it several times in tuna/pasta salad and such.  But it wasn't white tuna and plus which, what I got yesterday was a 3.25 oz. can instead of 6.50 oz. can so it was obvious I had to buy that also.  Last night I cooked up a batch of the linguine and heated half the can of tuna, along with some of its oil, in  a small skillet.  I also threw in some frozen peas cause I wanted something green but not salad. When it had heated up enough, I added a little of the pasta water and let that cook down a little. When the pasta was done, I drained it, put it back in the pan on the heat, scraped in all the tuna, peas and oil and tossed that around for a bit til it was sizzling nicely, and then sprinkled in a goodly amount of parmesan cheese and tossed it around until it was melted.  I really enjoyed it and it went very well with my glass of red wine.

Now I still have the other half can of tuna and it's entirely possible I may do the same thing tonight!  I could also cook up some shell pasta and use the tuna in a salad with some capers, tomatoes, olive oil and Feta cheese... (LATER:  I used the rest of the tuna in a very nummy salad - I'll post what I did in the recipe collection although it's one that you just do whatever you want.)

The only other thing to report is that the travel bug has been hovering around lately.  I got a new book "Europe Through the Back Door" by Rick Steves and have been perusing that.  Lots and lots of very useful information on travel even before you get to the chapters on the various countries.  Wish I had known some of it on my second trip especially when I was constantly traveling from place to place.  And with all his information on train travel, I might be able to convince myself to fly into Spain or France, visit there for a week or so and then train into Italy.  I'm kind of embarassed to admit that I can't imagine being in Europe and not being in Italy at some point.  I've begun to think maybe I should look at a trip in the spring sometime around my birthday.  Have been looking on line and found several really nice looking places to stay for reasonable prices...

A Postscript to "Oh What a Beautiful Evening"

I took those sky pictures right around 6:00 p.m. out the dining room window.  After dinner, I took off for Starbucks, forgetting that they're now back to doing the Thursday night free and loud concerts down there.  But I went in and enjoyed a nice iced tea and my new issue of Food and Wine and watched as the sky clouded over and there was a brief spurt of rain.

I left around 8:45 and this is what the sky looked like by then - still pretty but more rain coming for sure.  In fact I just barely got back in before it started.  Sure did look pretty for a brief spell, though...

 Kind of like the horse and carriage in front of Five Guys. :)

Oh, What a Beautiful Evening!!!

I'm back home now and as I was getting ready to fix dinner, I finally got around to rolling up my dining room window blinds and oh, how gorgeous the sky was!   I figured I'd better take a couple of pictures to share.

And I'm kicking myself because I didn't take one single picture of January and Maggie's little house that they just moved into.  It's like a little dollhouse and I'm just so happy thinking of them being in it.  January, if you want to send me a picture or two, I'd be happy to post them. :)

Had a real nice visit with them - a good dinner at one of their favorite restaurants, Franklin's, in Hyattsville.  Good food but I'm pretty sure their air wasn't working that night and oh my gosh, it was hot!!  January and I got to spend Friday morning together cause she didn't have to be to work until 1:00 p.m. so we had a short but sweet visit.

And then I spent Friday through Wednesday morning at Chris's and that's always nice too.  He's getting ready for a big party so I helped him out a little by dusting a bunch of his shelves of glass and polishing a few silver cocktail shakers that he's collected.

I had stayed through Wednesday morning to get a report on Heather's doctor visit Tuesday afternoon.  It went well and he has said she can start coming in every two weeks now instead of every week.  But she's got a long road ahead of her getting that arm back to normal.

And, that's pretty much it.  Got home yesterday around 3:00 p.m. and would have been earlier if they hadn't had "road work ahead" signs every five miles!  I needed to go grocery shopping and such, but what I REALLY needed was to get my hair cut and thank heavens I did.  I was getting close to just shaving my head.

So now my pictures...

You can see little bits of the river here and there...

and a bigger snick of river.  Isn't that just a gorgeous sky?

Oh, and last thought - I picked up my new eyeglasses today - my first pair of rimless specs.  I think with the new prescription I can sing "I can see clearly now, the haze is gone", but I'm having trouble being bothered by the little nose-piece and ear-piece ends that hook on to the lenses.  Do any of my readers have these and were you troubled and then finally didn't notice them anymore?  I'm hoping that's what will happen.  I'm also hoping that if I'm really seeing better (and I'm pretty sure I am), maybe my eyes won't always feel so tired.

And that's all, except to wish everyone a happy weekend. :)

Am I Delinquent?

I guess so...my son informs me it has been a while and even one of his friends mentioned to him that it was a long time.  Doesn't seem all that long to me, but I'll see what I can think to record.  It was nice to hear that someone I don't even know is enjoying and following the blog and it would be even nicer to get comments, shared stories, reader's own recipe ideas, etc., from people other than my poor long-suffering family.  So if you read my posts and something reminds you of a funny or interesting story, feel free to share it.  If you experiment with one of my recipes and are pleased with the result, I'd love to hear about that.  And if you have a favorite recipe or two you'd like to share, that would be great too.

Right now, I'm at my older daughter's home (Heather) in Maryland.  She broke her arm last Saturday falling off a horse and her husband and my granddaughter Sophia were already booked on a flight to Ireland for a christening of his brand new nephew, so I said I would come over and stay with her while they're gone.  I had already been thinking about coming over cause I hardly ever get to have my daughter all to myself and I'm selfish enough to think that would be real nice.  So, here I am and even though it's not quite as planned, it is nice being with her and my grandson Johnny.  Heather broke her humerus bone and the normal treatment for that, apparently, is to put a stiff something under the lower arm and a stiff something under the upper arm, and then wrap the whole thing in an Ace bandage and put it in a sling.  It sort of horrifies me cause, of course, any time it gets nudged or jiggled or anything it gives her a lot of pain.  She will see the doctor again on Tuesday and we're hopeful he'll move her on to "step 2" which is an upper arm brace type thing that, at least in the pictures, looks like it would be much better than what she has right now.  So that's pretty much where I am now.  She and her family are also moving into a new house in three weeks, so I told her I would try and get her breakables packed for her and have been working on that.

I'll be here probably until Thursday and then will go to my daughter January's new "place of residence".  They found a little rental house that sounds so nice for them - nothing at all fancy but not an apartment!!! Over a very unpleasant lady!!!  :)

On the homefront (Huntington), we have yet another new business that just opened - The Bottle and Wedge which is a delightful beer, wine and cheese store, along with having all sorts of special bottled sauces, jams and jellies, dips, marinades, all kinds of goodies.  I don't know much about beer but these are not the standard "grocery store beers".  And the cheeses he has so far are very enticing.  The shop is located in Pullman Square (same place as "my" bakery) and Pullman Square is really beginning to come back to life.  The bakery has open mike every Saturday and that really draws in a lot of people.  And, of course, so does what the bakery sells! :)  I took a picture of the outside and inside of the new shop, but only the outside photo is worth posting.  The second photo is just two really pretty demi-baguettes I bought at the bakery shortly before I came over here and they just looked so nice I took a picture of them.  Tasted good too!

 

Also, before I came over here, I was in kind of a cooking mood and tried that vodka pasta sauce recipe again.  It was better this time and as I worked on it, I wrote down what I was doing, but, of course, I left my little notes at home so can't update the recipe yet.  But I will and it really is quite tasty.  In fact one of my neighbors was in Starbucks one evening and sat down for a visit (a young med student) and told me how much he enjoyed the smells coming from my apartment sometimes and mentioned the night before which just happened to be when I had made the vodka sauce.  Here's a picture of dinner that night:..

and making half a recipe instead of a quarter, I had enough to eat it twice and then freeze the remainder for probably another one or two servings.  Maybe I should take my neighbor a helping.  

And I also got into a needleworking mood although the trip over here has kind of deep-sixed that for now.  But the woman who commissioned the quilt block cross stitches from me has a real life sampler she sent me a picture of and asked if I could replicate it in miniature.  Worked a long time getting a pattern for that and started stitching it, but discovered I was stitching on 28 count rather than 32 count so have put that one aside to ponder for a bit.  Even on 32 count, I think it would be a little large, but then I always remind myself her dollhouse is really big.  But starting on that got me digging once again through all my old patterns and I found several things I want to start working on and pulled out a rug I started a looonnnnggg time ago (probably at least 6 or 7 years ago and after the first burst of activity never worked on again.  It's on 40 count silk gauze and I've started working on it again.  Here's what was finished when I pulled it out:

In some ways, it's a much simpler pattern than the rug I stitched for January's roombox and the Aubusson I've been working on off and on for a while (not nearly as many colors for one thing), but it's just so striking and Oriental that I really like it.  I brought it with me but haven't worked on it here - just too much going on.  But I'll get back to it.

Oh, and one other neat thing - after Jamie Oliver filmed his first American food revolution TV show here in Huntington, what? two years ago? Jamie's Kitchen became Huntington's Kitchen, still using his program to teach cooking and nutrition and such and has been doing quite well I think.  Anyway, they've reopened their fresh market on Fridays and I heard they had local eggs so went down a couple of Fridays ago and bought half a dozen of those plus a basil plant and an oregano plant, both of which are still alive and well.  I went back a week or so later and this time a woman was there with two little goats in a cage and had some goat cheese samples which were delicious.  I asked her about buying some and she said that they don't sell the cheese direct - they sell shares in the goats!!  You buy a share or half a share and then you get a certain amount of cheese each month delivered to Huntington's Kitchen for pickup.  I'm still pondering that - I loved the cheeses I tasted but don't know that I could use up even half a share a month.  Might think about seeing if a neighbor would like to go in on it with me...

And that pretty much brings me up to date - just finished a marathon session of Craz y Eights with Johnny and Heather.  The last round went on so long that we finally had to set a time limit and agree that if the hand wasn't over by then, we'd continue tomorrow night.  And, amazingly enough, it wasn't finished, so we made sure we'd remember where to pick up again and are all eager to get back to it. :)   

After spending this coming Thursday evening with January and Maggie, I'll go on to Chris's Friday afternoon, spend the weekend there and then go back home Monday unless something should happen with Heather's arm.  Sure am anxious to see what Tuesday's appointment with the doc brings...