: First anniversary of coming home :
It was a very busy, fun and productive weekend here. On Saturday we went to a fall festival held by the local magic shop. It wasn't a very big affair, and it was held in the parking lot next to the store, but we had fun nevertheless. One of my family was involved in a bellydancing exhibition (which must have been quite a challenge, since it was windy and cold by my Southern-bred standards) and another led two drum circles throughout the day. I played in the second one along with the rest of the family and a couple other people. I haven't played hand drums since high school, but I've been watching and picking up techniques and rhythms for a while now. It was a very nice experience for me.
In the evening we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to celebrate my first anniversary of meeting my family for the first time. It feels like just last month that I first came up here, and yet we've gotten so close in the past 12 months that it seems like it should be our fifth anniversary instead of our first. We started the evening by walking through the room where we first met and talking about what we were feeling at the time. Then we said hello to our old favorites in the American wing and the Great Hall before touring a new exhibit of impressionist paintings collected by Ambroise Vollard (the Van Gogh and Degas rooms were the favorites). We closed down the Met by attending a concert of African music, featuring the Royal Drummers of Burundi (play a sound clip) and finished the night at the same Jersey diner that we went to my first night in New Jersey last year.
Sunday I went into the city to meet a co-worker who is moving to South Carolina for a while and she was giving me another sofa, a family antique from the 1930s. I met her at her storage facility and together we loaded it into Yoshi (I had taken the rear seats out to make room) and I met my family at home to unload it in my apartment. I beat some of the dust out of the feather seatcushions and left those out on the porch to air out.
Then we went out to a pumpkin stand at a local orchard to pick some pumpkins and decorative squash (but not gourds) for display at home. We tried some pickles, freshly made donuts and hot cider and walked through a maze constructed of hay bales.
When I got home, I vacuumed the whole sofa and sprayed it with Febreze to get rid of any lingering odors, then vacuumed the whole apartment. I also went out to Bed Bath & Beyond to buy a slipcover for the sofa, in a paisley pattern that matched the original upholstry, but in a light sage green instead of powder blue. While the Febreze was drying I went over to my family's house to eat dinner and watch Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, completing the trilogy we had started last week. After getting home from that, I put my new sofa together and here's what it looks like in my bedroom:
With all the anniversaries and milestones this week, I haven't had a chance to post my photos from last weekend's chile pepper festival, held at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. There really wasn't much to see in terms of the festival, just a big tent where musicians performed and food was served, but the gardens the festival was held in were quite splendid. Here is an art display of different species of peppers frozen in large blocks of ice:
Here is a shot of an herb garden just inside the gates that I especially liked.
Alright, now I'm all caught up. Time to get to work.
In the evening we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to celebrate my first anniversary of meeting my family for the first time. It feels like just last month that I first came up here, and yet we've gotten so close in the past 12 months that it seems like it should be our fifth anniversary instead of our first. We started the evening by walking through the room where we first met and talking about what we were feeling at the time. Then we said hello to our old favorites in the American wing and the Great Hall before touring a new exhibit of impressionist paintings collected by Ambroise Vollard (the Van Gogh and Degas rooms were the favorites). We closed down the Met by attending a concert of African music, featuring the Royal Drummers of Burundi (play a sound clip) and finished the night at the same Jersey diner that we went to my first night in New Jersey last year.
Sunday I went into the city to meet a co-worker who is moving to South Carolina for a while and she was giving me another sofa, a family antique from the 1930s. I met her at her storage facility and together we loaded it into Yoshi (I had taken the rear seats out to make room) and I met my family at home to unload it in my apartment. I beat some of the dust out of the feather seatcushions and left those out on the porch to air out.
Then we went out to a pumpkin stand at a local orchard to pick some pumpkins and decorative squash (but not gourds) for display at home. We tried some pickles, freshly made donuts and hot cider and walked through a maze constructed of hay bales.
When I got home, I vacuumed the whole sofa and sprayed it with Febreze to get rid of any lingering odors, then vacuumed the whole apartment. I also went out to Bed Bath & Beyond to buy a slipcover for the sofa, in a paisley pattern that matched the original upholstry, but in a light sage green instead of powder blue. While the Febreze was drying I went over to my family's house to eat dinner and watch Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, completing the trilogy we had started last week. After getting home from that, I put my new sofa together and here's what it looks like in my bedroom:
With all the anniversaries and milestones this week, I haven't had a chance to post my photos from last weekend's chile pepper festival, held at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. There really wasn't much to see in terms of the festival, just a big tent where musicians performed and food was served, but the gardens the festival was held in were quite splendid. Here is an art display of different species of peppers frozen in large blocks of ice:
Here is a shot of an herb garden just inside the gates that I especially liked.
Alright, now I'm all caught up. Time to get to work.
