Things We Liked At the Philadelphia Flower Show, Part 2: Exhibits In Which You Wanted to Go On A Mini-Vacation

OK, the centerpiece of the show was definitely the 25-foot waterfall with the orchids growing up the side and the full-grown palm trees and the three-story thatched house next to it...what, I didn't show you the thatched house yet? Shame on me! Here's the half of that massive display that I hadn't shown yet:

That was BIG, and very lovely, but we also enjoyed the entries that were smaller-scale, but still very beautiful environments.

I think this one was actually my favorite, even though it was also the one that was probably the least in need of a "Do Not Enter The Exhibit" Sign, at least as far as I was concerned. People think "Hawaii" and they think lush and green, but for every place that catches the rain and grows wild with ferns and ginger and orchids, there's a place that's dry, with the red dirt showing. This exhibit was called Keahiakawelo, The Garden of the Gods", and it was inspired by the place of the same name on the island of Lanai. The place itself is actually famous for having an eerie desert beauty, with no vegetation at all; this Philadelphia Flower Show version is considerably softened by the grasses, but this way it reminds me of scenery that I think I remember from childhood visits to the Big Island (and that red cinder is the exact same stone as my parents used for a lot of the landscaping in front of the house - used to try to toughen up my "haole feet" by walking on it barefoot! :D).

I was happy to see a lot of very large silver trophies on display in this one.


Others were maybe a little more like resort brochures, but it was fun seeing what a nice job the creators had done of crafting these little illusions. They all made me want to go in, sit down, kick my shoes off and have a drink -

This one, oh, maybe a nice glass of wine...


Morning coffee here, please (I know, they forgot to do Hawaii, but isn't it pretty?)


Duuuude...margaritas, or mojitos, or maybe a nice cold Longboard Lager here, right?


There were other environments that were just as carefully crafted,


but less teasingly tempting to the footsore flower-viewer, as getting into them would be a bit of a squeeze.


We absolutely loved these little dioramas. One amazing part is that this being a flower show, any greenery that isn't painted on the backdrop is actual live plants!


There's Mandy again, for scale.


EEEK! Murder in the Bishop Museum!

All of these had judges' comments posted, and one of the things that the judges were real sticklers about was scale - any little plant or flower that wasn't on a believable scale to the scene got points off. I think this one got good marks for that, the main comment was "tilted display case is a distraction". I could never judge something like that - I'd be going "But there's actual Hawaiian plant lore on the posters!!!" I was actually glad to discover that the focus on this picture was good enough that when I zoomed in, I could read almost all of them -- there was quite a line to view these and I actually really WANTED to read those displays, but you just couldn't take all the time you wanted to to look at all the details without being annoying to the people behind you (a lady had done that to Mandy & me earlier, somehow didn't seem to understand that those of us in line behind her were actually interested in seeing the one she was monopolizing, told us we should just go ahead and go around her to the next one, argh - we never did get much of a look at that one). I suspected those were some well-researched placards, and I think I was right. Very, very cool.

Things We Liked At the Philadelphia Flower Show - Part 1: Orchids!

TA DAAAAA! Let The Flowers BEGIN!


And because this magnificent display was the first thing that caught OUR eyes when we first came in, I thought I'd start my proper flower show posts with orchids, too.

BTW, I would say that with flowers this pretty this is a post where you might want to take advantage of the Blogger slideshow. Click on the first picture & you'll get a much nicer view!

And the Totally Lame.

Winding up The Good, The Not-Bad, and the Totally Lame Philly food series tonight.

I'd already mentioned that the one total, utter, and complete failure in the execution of the Hawaiian theme at the Philadelphia Flower Show 2012 was in the food service area. Browsing through the event guide that we found in our hotel room, we were excited to see a mention of there being a special free-standing restaurant that would be serving Hawaiian (or at least "Hawaiian-inspired", that's the term used on the website) food.

Here's the lunch menu from the oh-so-disappointing "Kauai Kafe", just to prove that I wasn't exaggerating when I said that their food service folks apparently thought that all you have to do for your food to become "Hawaiian" is add a tropically-themed word to your deli meat sandwich.

I mean, dang, they didn't even bother with the canned pineapple slice that's the usual Mainland cheat for making plain ole ordinary Mainland food "Hawaiian". How freakin' lazy can you get?

"Bigeye tuna" look promising? Sorry, Charlie. That was tuna salad.

Oh, and nobody eats koala in Hawaii. That's a dirty lie.
**********

thus endeth the rant. And now, in case that was too cranky - it really was only the food that was a letdown, and honestly, although I did get excited about the mention of the restaurant, at the same time, it was still convention-center food we were talking about, so my expectations weren't all THAT high. I wouldn't have been surprised at pineapple rings. This was one tiny glitch in an otherwise lovely show.

Photo upload is being balky tonight, but tomorrow, I'll post some of the stuff we DID like!

Yes, that IS a 25-foot waterfall in the background...

My First Philly Cheese Steak - A Slideshow

All photos but the last one by my friend Mandy - thanks for the pix & for a fun weekend, Mandy!

Philly Cheese Steak Report TK

Swiped from Craig Russell's h2uh0.

Help Save the Mary A. Whalen and PortSide NewYork, the organization that calls her home!

Just a quick lunchtime email, week continues to be crazy, but I've been waiting for news of ways to help save the Mary A. Whalen, Carolina had sent an update earlier this week & I just saw that it's got a "share on Blogger" button, so here I go, sharing it on Blogger!

Can't believe how fast April is coming up.

http://myemail.constantcontact.com/News---easy-ways-to-help-PortSide-during-our-crisis.html?soid=1102382229120&aid=P8ROZAYdW3E

Poor Lewis!

Sorry to interrupt my cheesesteak story - I will get back to The Good, The Not-Bad, and The Totally Lame tomorrow, if not tonight. I'm still at work right now, just taking a short break. March is like that.
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Oh, poor Lewis Colam. He's the young Brit who's rowing the Intracoastal Waterway to raise funds for Alzheimer's research right now. I'm in a crazy time at work right now, so I've been enjoying following along, having a little vicarious adventure watching the SPOT track progress & listening to his daily updates. I've been pretty impressed by his sticktoitiveness - he's here on a 90 day visa so he hasn't got unlimited time, and that meant that when Florida welcomed him with a week of 30kt winds from the wrong direction, he didn't have the luxury of holing up until things calmed down - nope, he sat out the one worst day when winds were up to 35kts, but other than that, I think he managed to claw out at least a few miles every day. The business about going out to sea to avoid the gators never happened, he's stayed entirely within the ICW, he's made a couple of decent judgement calls, he's met a lot of nice folks, and his average mileage per day has been hovering right around where it needs to be if he's going to make it to NYC (although he hasn't got much of a margin for weather, health issues, etc. right now, needs to pick up some mileage to get that back).

I say "poor Lewis", though, because the day before yesterday, he got a hard lesson in which Florida critter it is that you REALLY need to watch out for when you're boating.

T'ain't gators, nope.
*******************
Thursday morning update - Well, I listened to yesterday's update just before I went home and he sounded much more cheerful. He's trying so hard to be optimistic, it's fun listening to him - the critter incident really got him down, but then yesterday he told a story about a gentleman coming running out to him from an island and giving him a sandwich and a "packet of crisps" and an iced tea (his reaction to the tea was funny, he mentioned that being British, he thinks of tea as purely a hot drink, but he found he liked it, and just being handed a nice cold drink in the middle of the day was such a wonderful & unexpected luxury) and then some extra ice which he used on a sore knee - made his day & it actually sounds like it made up for the furry-bandit trauma.

He does a very nice job with these little updates.

I do hope he does get moving a little better - I recalculated his average after he finished last night & right now he's a tiny bit behind a pace that will get him to NY. He's dipped below and managed to bring it back up before, though.

http://www.iamfine.com/index.php/site/challenge

Philly Dining - The Good, The Not-Bad, and the Totally Lame

In order of preference, not chronology:

1. The Good:


Matyson.

Oh, was it ever good. Sometimes I do love this interweb device, what a marvelous meal we had there - and it's not something we ever would've stumbled across on our own. No, M. and I were sent to Matyson through the combined recommendation of a couple of gentlemen who I've never actually met in person, but who both know a thing or twenty about Philadelphia. Funny thing is, I think it started as a joke - somewhere, maybe on Facebook, a couple of days before M. and I were heading to Philadelphia, O-Docker was waxing nostalgic over the Horn and Hardarts of yore, specifically the one his mother used to take him to when he was a kid. I decided to play dumb and ask if that would be a good place to have dinner during the flower show; he came back & suggested that if I really wanted a good recommendation I should ask Baydog. Brilliant idea, I wasted no time & within 10 minutes of leaving the original comment, I was online making dinner reservation (was happy to get 5:30, Baydog had mentioned that it's a smallish place & warned that I might be too late to get a dinner seating).

We LOVED it.

For appetizers, we got the Wild Rice Stuffed Quail with foie gras, charred escarole, rosemary-pine nut vinaigrette, and a special short-rib ravioli with prunes and fresh ricotta. M. and I love quail, we always get it when we go to our favorite Indian restaurant, which does a not-bad job, but nothing like this - somehow they'd mostly deboned it except for the little drumsticks, and the whole bird was moist and tender, where at the Indian place, the legs tend to get a bit dried out. The ravioli was great - our server said "filled with braised short rib" and she had me; prunes may sound odd but it was a perfect balance to the slightly salty beef. Yummy!

We both had the Five Spice Duck Breast with quince, honeycap mushrooms, pak choi, and apple dashi for an entree - again, absolutely delicious, I'm a sucker for duck.

We had enough room for dessert & shared the apple cider doughnuts and the banana turnover. The banana turnovers were good but the doughnuts? Jeeze. Unbelievable. Perfectly done, toothsomely crispy exterior, stuffed with cooked apples (more like a fritter than the usual cake doughnut) and a praline sauce that made me want to lick the plate (I refrained because that would be gross but I did scrape up as much as I could with the edge of my spoon). We were in heaven.

At the end of the meal, we decided to walk back to the hotel; mentioning to our server that we were from out of town, we asked if the area was safe & not only did she confirm that, but she looked at our SEPTA map and showed us where the nicest walk would be. Baydog had mentioned that we'd be likely to be sitting next to locals, and sure enough, the ladies who were sitting at the table next to ours heard us mention that we were from out of town, welcomed us to Philadelphia, had a nice little chat about what we were up to, and then M. and I had a very pleasant stroll back to the hotel - I took this shot of City Hall on the way.


Aside from everything being delicious, another thing we were very impressed with was what a perfect amount of food we'd been served - the walk was nice, but with an appetizer, main course and dessert, we were just pleasantly full, not overstuffed.

I think we would've enjoyed lunch just as much, but one good thing about getting the dinner reservation was that it allowed us to take up O-Docker on a related challenge - which brings us to --

2. The Not-Bad.

O-Docker may be living far, far away, on the shores of that magnificent natural ampitheater on the West Coast, but he grew up in Philadelphia & it sounds like one of the constants of a youth spent there is participating in spirited debates about the purveyor of the best Philly Cheese Steak Sandwich.

Apparently the one thing that everyone agrees on is that a Philly Cheese Steak Sandwich is a wonderful culinary creation - it's just a matter of where you should go to savor the finest rendition.

Well, O-Docker, being an inquisitive sort, thought that it would be interesting to hear an unbiased review by an outlander, sampling the delicacy for the first time.

Now, I have to say that I'm not entirely unbiased - in fact, I'm a little bit scared of these things. The Philly Cheese Steak is one of the few things that they serve in our cafeteria that I won't even try - mostly the cafeteria serves good food, but that sight of steam table tray full of cooked-to-death shredded beef, swimming in grease, with the tub of fluorescent orange goo next to it, waiting for the ladle, sends me out hunting for the Tribeca Taco Truck every time.

But I figured that couldn't be a proper representation.

Baydog told me the right and good places to go - Pat's, Geno's, Jim's, or Tony Luke's.

Unfortunately, those were all in South Philly, not convenient to a couple of people on a limited schedule - so O-Docker suggested the Reading Terminal Market instead, and that, we walked past right after we got off the SEPTA train.

We went to the hotel, dropped off our bags, and went back. It was neat, although insanely crowded. Within 10 minutes or so, I'd homed in on the beacon of a red neon "Cheesesteaks" sign, and...



TO BE CONTINUED!

Tao Berman Breaks Another Record, Comes Out With Spinal Column Still In One Piece, Announces Retirement.

I think all of my paddling friends know who Tao Berman is. For the non-paddlers, you've probably seen pictures of the him. You know - THAT guy?

Why is it that I doubt the guy is going to be trading in his paddle for a croquet mallet?

Article here.

Seriously, though...

Was just kidding with yesterday's post about the Philadelphia Flower Show, of course. The flowers were plentiful and exquisite and the respect and affection that were lavished on the Hawaiian theme was actually quite lovely. I do have a bone to pick concerning statements that were made about a special restaurant that was supposedly going to be serving "Hawaiian food" (food service professionals: please note that simply adding the name of a Hawaiian island to "ham and cheese sandwich" does not magically turn it into local-kine grindz, ok?), but that was the only actual disappointment. Aside from that, everything was spectacular!

The Philadelphia Flower Show!

Um...I guess it's nice in a sort of minimalist/unhappy hipsters/concrete chic sort of way, but we were expecting maybe a few more flowers...

Hey NYC-area Beatles Fans!

HEY BEATLES FANS! The New York International Children's Film Festival is having the first NY screening of Yellow Submarine in 10 years! Saturday, March 10th and Saturday March 17th! OH - and they've got Hard Day's Night, 17th only! Click here & scroll scroll scroll, they are both a ways down the list.

I'm so bummed, I can't make either one! Actually never seen either one and it would be fun to see 'em on a big screen - but I've already got plans.

Someday...

Someday I will get in a boat again.

Outside. And then I'll do a trip report. And show you pictures.

Honest!

(There will be flowers first, though. And maybe a Philly groundhog steak. Er, cheese steak.)

Popularity is Sweet!

I'm not sure I've talking much here on the blog about how much fun me and my colleagues here at the Really Big Childrens' Publishing House been having watching Hollywood have fun with our books. I think my giddy fangirl moments (where I squeal things like, OMG! WE GOT TO SEE THE TRAILER!!!!) have mostly been contained over on Facebook - but there've been plenty over there. We have actually had a great run of movies over the last few months. First, of course, was the last Harry Potter movie, and it was a good one; then we had HUGO (yeah! woohoo!) and next we have (yowza!) the Hunger Games.

This morning we had a mimosa toast for Brian Selznick, author of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, and his editor presented him with his own Oscar (only us being in children's publishing, it was an Oscar the Grouch), and he told us hysterical stories about he and his boyfriend's first visit to the red carpet, and meeting (and getting hugged by!) Meryl Streep, and Renee Zellweiger passing on the red-carpet behavior advice originally given to her by Ellen Barkin ("Head up, shoulders back, chest out, stomach in...and walk slooooowly"), and then he signed all of the books we'd brought (which took forever because he actually wants to talk to everybody while he's signing, which is so cool that you don't care how long it takes) and we all got Oscar cookies (Oscar the little gold guy, not Oscar the furry green puppet).

I posted Facebook status updates about this earlier today. I'd found the exact Oscar the Grouch that was presented to him and I posted that, and then I wanted to post a picture of the Oscar cookie (it's not shiny but the baker did at least manage sparkle!) so I googled Eleni's Bakery (source of the cookies) and...

And that's where this turns into a blog post. I don't know...I knew that The Hunger Games is all the rage right now. I know the books have been on the NY Times bestsellers lists for ages. I know Tina Fay has referenced it on 30 Rock. We've gotten sneak previews of the trailers, which was tons of fun, and we get a sneak preview of the movie (I'm sooooo excited - for the longest time we didn't think that was going to happen so when the announcement came out that it was, it was extra-awesome!), and, well, it's just been tons of fun watching the build-up, and I knew there was a lot of excitement and all, but somehow, this amused me more than the rest of the buzz put together.

Lewis Colam - rowing for Alzheimer's

Just wanted to toss up a quick link this morning - how's this for an ambitious first expedition?

Lots of cranky comments over there (jealous gits who wish they were a 24-year-old British cutie setting out on a Real Live Adventure, I suspect), but my bet is that if he makes it through the first week or so (which I suspect will feature aches & pains like he never dreamed existed) and also figures out that the Atlantic is probably a lot more dangerous than any wildlife he might encounter on the intracoastal waterway, we'll be sorting out a nice human-powered welcome flotilla here in NYC. Best wishes to the young man!

Thanks to Bowsprite for the heads-up!

ps - before anyone starts coming down on why I'm posting about somebody who sounds to be as ill-prepared as he sounds -
1. Although the HuffingtonPost is too busy giggling over alligators & sleeping in a rowboat to talk about his preparations, it does sound like he has had some level of instruction & mentoring from the experienced rower who provided him with the custom-built boat, see article here, more on "Little River Marine Rowboats here - it may still be sketchy (like the Old Salt found a story that mentions he hasn't got a compass, which does make me go hmmm...)but it's not quite like he did his expedition outfitting at WalMart...
2. It also sounds like he will have other boaters joining him for much of the trip, so that should help cover the lack of local knowledge (like hopefully the Southeastern boaters will explain that he should be much more scared of the Atlantic than of alligators & that it might be wiser to stay in the Intracoastal Waterway),

and,
3. My judgement is currently impaired by too much work, not enough boat. Show me a story about a kid who runs away to join the circus for a little while and I'm gonna stand up and cheer for a minute before I reapply my nose to the grindstone.

Will be interesting to see how this goes. Will he make it up the learning curve in one piece, or will it be a disaster? Hard to say...hoping it's the former.

have a purrfect weekend!

PortSide NewYork meeting report - in Facebook statuses

Carolina Salguera, founder of PortSide NewYork, wrapping up the first part of Monday night's meeting

I have been wanting to give an update about how the PortSide NewYork meeting went, but my home computer is still at the shop (it's all fixed now but I won't have a chance to retrieve it for a few more day), and I've got tons of work to do here at work, so I'm going to cheat & just copy a Facebook exchange that give a good picture here.

I will start with a cut to the chase - Carolina's response to that exchange. Carolina was the last poster in the thread but I'm putting hers first, 'cause it was of course the best summary:

"A crisis getting good response! but not over yet. More offers of help came in last night, and we have more things people can do to help. Updates coming on our website soon, will get posted here, tho best way to get info is on our website, PortSideNewYork.org."

My initial quick report, slightly edited for reposting here:

And speaking of spunky, straight-talking, bighearted Brooklyn folks...it was a pleasure being in the company of a whole BUNCH of them (and some friendly outlanders like myself) last night. Encouraging talk of the future at the Long Island Community Hospital, wonderful tales of the past later on at Montero's (hope to see Bowprite's illustrated versions someday!).

Talking story at Montero's

That being pretty vague, a friend asked "‎'Encouraging' as in 'crisis is over' or 'crisis could be over soon'?"

I responded:

"Closer to the latter. There's no solution yet, but there's a ton of support, there are potential solutions, and a number of ways that people can actually help maybe make one of those possibilities turn into an actuality. Also, more basically, there was a good turnout. I've been involved in a lot of meetings about various waterfront access topics. The most disheartening thing is to walk into a meeting about a topic you care about and see a mostly-empty room."

That was absolutely not the case on Monday night. The Mary A Whalen has some wonderful friends.

Saying goodnight after Montero's. The cow picture was taken a few minutes later, a few blocks south.

moo.

Brooklyn Bovine. 10:30 PM, Atlantic Avenue

Update, 2/29/2012: O-Docker has left a fascinating suggestion about where the cow may have come from in the comments - click on the comments to see. Now that we've settled where the cow came from, the next thing want to know how on earth he knew that. I mean, everybody knows about the alligators in the sewers, but how on earth does a person happen to know about subterranean cows?

Bad News from PortSide NewYork (Meeting Monday, 2/27 in Brooklyn)

Originally posted Tuesday, 2/21 - reposting due to time-sensitive nature of topic, and also after seeing an excellent post on the topic over at the Old Salt Blog that was passed on by the Working Harbor Committee. It was also in this week's edition of WaterWire. Glad to see the news going around & I wanted to join in by bringing this back up to the top this morning.
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I had 2 changes of plans this weekend. One is going to keep this post short and sweet - after more or less recovering from a period of startup hiccups last Fall, my home computer died this weekend, so I just dropped off the box at a Staples halfway out to Coney Island & figure I'll head on out there now instead of going into the city to visit the South Street Seaport Museum.

The other changed plan was yesterday, when after receiving some jarring news from Carolina, the founder of PortSide NewYork, one of my "Favorite Local Not-For-Profits" (see sidebar for that list), I ended up spending the afternoon posting flyers in the South Slope. It's a rough situation & if I was working on my own computer, I'd try to take the time to describe it for you - but since I'm not, I'll just ask you to head on over to PortSideNewYork.org to read it for yourself. PortSide NewYork runs some wonderful programs and events on board the retired tanker Mary A. Whalen and other waterfront locations (local kayakers, for example, enjoy the organization's Kayak Valet days, where you can paddle to Valentino Pier and go explore the neighborhood and grab a lobster roll, a key lime pie, or a sit-down lunch in one of Red Hook's nice restaurants, while volunteers make sure nobody takes your boat out for a test paddle or worse). The photo above is one of a set that I took during her 70th birthday party in December 2008. I hope everything works out that her 75th (December 2013) will be in a long term home!

Hope to see lots of local boaters & fans of the waterfront at the meeting next Monday

Mon 2/27, 6:30-8:30pm
Long Island College Hospital (LICH)
Conference Rooms A & B
339 Hicks Street, Brooklyn NY 11201
Corner of Atlantic Avenue & Hicks Street
Enter on Hicks Street at some raised steps
Parking garage across Hicks Street
Can't make the meeting? Join us afterwards at
Montero's Bar until 10:30pm across Atlantic Avenue from LICH just south of Hicks.

Newtown Creek Meeting TONIGHT (2/23/2012)

Oh shoot, nearly past the point of there being any point in posting this now, but just in case - there's a meeting tonight about Newtown Creek that should be interesting for local boaters & waterfront fans (especially those in the neighborhoods of Bushwick, Williamsburg and Greenpoint in Brooklyn; and Maspeth, Ridgewood, Sunnyside and Long Island City in Queens). Full details here.

I learned about while I wasa passing out flyers for next monday's PortSide NewYork meeting - stopped to talk to the gentleman who was working at the Riverkeeper table at the farmer's market near the Gowanus Old Stone House Park & he told me about it. The NYCKayaker list has been discussing it all week - I can't make it myself but I'd meant to at least post it here - with no home computer, I spaced until now. Better late than never, but sooner would've been better. :(

JK Rowling News (I mean as long as I'm being all literaryish and ish)

Just out today on the company email.

Press Release: Deals Done
Little, Brown To Publish J.K. Rowling's First Novel For Adults

Posted at 2:36PM Thursday 23 Feb 2012

Little, Brown Book Group and Little, Brown and Company are delighted to announce that they will publish J.K. Rowling's first novel for adults worldwide in the English language, both in print and ebooks.

David Shelley, Publisher, Little, Brown Book Group, will be J.K. Rowling's editor and will be responsible for publication in the United Kingdom with Michael Pietsch, Executive Vice President of Little, Brown and Company, responsible for publication in the United States. The book will be published by Hachette in Australia and in New Zealand and by Hachette's companies and normal appointed agents for the English language in other markets.

The title, the date for the worldwide publication and further details about the novel will be announced later in the year.

J.K. Rowling said:

"Although I've enjoyed writing it every bit as much, my next book will be very different to the Harry Potter series, which has been published so brilliantly by Bloomsbury and my other publishers around the world. The freedom to explore new territory is a gift that Harry's success has brought me, and with that new territory it seemed a logical progression to have a new publisher. I am delighted to have a second publishing home in Little, Brown, and a publishing team that will be a great partner in this new phase of my writing life."

David Shelley said:

"Tim Hely Hutchinson, Ursula Mackenzie and I, and the whole team at Little, Brown in the UK, along with our colleagues David Young and Michael Pietsch at Little, Brown in the USA, are thrilled, honoured and proud to be publishing J.K. Rowling's new book.

"For me, quite simply, it is a personal and professional dream come true to be working with J.K. Rowling. She is one of the best storytellers in the world, and I am looking forward enormously to helping bring her new novel for adults to her fans and admirers, and to introducing her writing to new readers the world over."

J.K. Rowling was represented by Neil Blair of The Blair Partnership.
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Note/disclosure thingy: I work for the US publisher of the Harry Potter series, which is why I have this before it's even a hot topic on Yahoo (woohoo!). We're still her publisher for children's books, she's just ready to try something different. I'm actually really looking forward to seeing what she comes up with - I'd honestly never picked up a Harry before I came to work here, despite the fact that Books 1-4 had all been out for some time & it was already an acknowledged phenomenon. I mentioned this to a co-worker, who promptly informed me that that just wouldn't do and loaned me Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone. I was instantly hooked, of course!

2nd note, a little later - Wow. Yahoo is kind of slow on the uptake, aren't they? At least relatively. Story on the company intranet says "The announcement caused immediate excitement in the social media world — within mere minutes, 'JK Rowling' was trending on Twitter, as thousands of fans showed their support.". As of somewhere around 11:30, Yahoo still wasn't on it. Oh, and in case you were wondering (I know I was), the story also says, "While everyone's clamoring for details, there's little to share: the title, the date for the worldwide publication and further details about the novel will be announced later in the year."

3rd note, later still: Aha! 12:22 pm and Yahoo FINALLY has this as a top story. Took them long enough!

A Really Cranky Book Review

Lifted more or less straight from this morning's Facebook status:

Moment at which I realized I should have just dropped the stupid Dan Brown knockoff back in the early chapters when we went back from modern-day Barcelona to a battle between the Knights Templar* and the oh-so-mystical Seven Knights of Moriah --

Chapters and chapters later, back in the present, when our hero makes the following discovery after he and our heroine drive up to a mountain to watch the submarine races, while a satanic cult continues to knock off their friends back in town:

"It's Ursa Major, María. On your back. The freckles are shaped just like Ursa Major...on your skin. It's you, María. You're the key."

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NOOOOO!!!!

And there's a David Sedaris waiting at home for me in bed. Sheeesh.

*Wait, wait, was it the Knights Templar that the 7K's of M were fighting, or was it Catalunyan separatists? Oh, whatevahs. Same diff.

Cold Water Workshop at the SBS, Saturday, 2/18/2012

Last

year's

fun!
photos by Ric Klinger of the Small Boat Shop.

Oh shoot! I usually like to give a LOT more notice than this, because the Small Boat Shop runs one of my favorite cold-water workshops anywhere, but with TQ and I not helping out this year (first time in a long time), it totally snuck up on me.

Are you a seasonal boater who's ever listened to your frostbiter friends talking about their winter adventures & thought that it sounds like tons of fun? Maybe just want to extend your boating season to later in the fall and earlier in the spring? This workshop is a great chance to learn the things you need to know to do so safely. People who already are year round boaters can get something out of it, too - could be fun to bring your winter-curious friends, and personally, I just think an occasional review is a good idea even if you've been going out in the winter for ages.

Saturday morning, 2/18/2012, various boating safety experts will be at the Small Boat Shop in South Norwalk, CT. to teach you what you need to know, and at the end, anyone who wants to can put on some cold-water gear and put it to the test right there in Norwalk Harbor! Probably won't be ice like we had last year (that was FUN), but that water will still be good and cold & you'll see just what a good job the gear does of protecting you and extending the time you can function in the water. You can try the shop's gear, or bring your own - this is an excellent chance to test things out with supervision right there & a warm shop, hot drinks, and hot showers yards away.

The dry-land session begins at 10:30 am; there's usually a quick lunch break around noon, followed by the gearing-up (a lesson in and of itself!) and then, come on in, the water's COLD!

For full details, visit thesmallboatshop.com

Sheepish

Right.

So the very day that I was grumbling about Valentine's Day, my significant other turned up at the romantic Italian restaurant to which I had (rather unimaginatively, being dull that way) invited him for dinner toting the absolute sweetest Valentine's Day present I've ever received.

OK. It was chocolate.

But it was no boring Whitman's in a circulatory-organ-shaped box. Oh, no, no, no. My honey has not got much of a sweet tooth but if there's one exception to that rule, it's really good, rich chocolate, so when he set out to get me chocolates, he came up with a fantastic combo.

There were 3 different kinds:

1. Mast Brothers chocolate. Brooklyn's FINEST. Five BARS of Brooklyn's finest, each one a different flavor. This stuff is so artisanal it's got batch numbers. Hmmm, I wonder if it would be possible to figure out whether this is schooner chocolate?

2. 2 packets (4 discs) of Taza Mexican chocolate - with chipotle chiles! Because I have been on this mad chipotle chile kick with my cooking since sometime late in the summer. I had gotten a large bag of these smoke-dried jalapenos at a butcher shop on Cortelyou Road that carries a nice selection of Mexican spices. I don't remember what I got them for & they sat in the back of the cupboard for ages, but one day I was cooking something totally random that I would never usually add chiles to (may have been chicken soup, actually), and I threw in a couple just for kicks & because they'd been sitting around for a long time and holy cow, it was delicious! So since then, I think every soup or stew I've made has had a couple of chipotles in it. So TQ got me chipotle chile chocolate. I broke into one of those tonight & the other thing I notice is that the chile is the perfect foil for the one thing we didn't like about the plain Taza, the time we got one for dessert at Bierkraft - the ingredients couldn't be simpler, cacao beans and cane sugar, and the chocolate flavor was fantastic but we both found it to be a bit sweeter than we like. Add that smoky spicy chipotle and oh my. I have GOT to restrain myself & save the other packet to share with TQ, he's going to love this stuff.

Come to think of it, I better share the Mast Brothers too, or the poor guy is gonna find his girlfriend's getting curvier than might be considered optimal (plus there's a drysuit I need to keep being able to put on if we're going to have any more paddling dates this winter)!

So. Mast Brothers. Taza chipotle. So far so good, right?

Oh yes, but I've been saving the best for last.

What really knocked the gift right out of the park, as far as I was concerned, was the third riff on the chocolate theme:

3.



Is this brilliant, or what?

These are too big for me to try until I can share one with TQ (we thought about splitting one after dinner last night but we'd both had a couple of glasses of wine with dinner & were feeling pretty full & drowsy & further libations just didn't seem necessary...yep, that's my story & this is a G-rated blog so I'm sticking to it) so I don't know how it is yet. I bet it's going to be delicious but no matter how it tastes, I already love it as a fantastic bit of thinking outside the (candy) box.

That's my guy!

Next year, I may not grumble about Valentine's Day as much! :D

Paddling Long Island - new guidebook, coming soon!

Woohoo! I got some fun news in the email this week.

Sometime last winter, after things had thawed out enough to get out, I and a few of my Sebago clubmates had the pleasure of taking author Kevin Stiegelmaier out for an afternoon. Kevin is the author of the soon-to-be-published sea kayaking guidebook "Paddling Long Island". He was doing research for the book at the time & had contacted me about getting out on Jamaica Bay. It took a while to schedule something because last winter's weather was so bad, but we finally got a decent day & had an excellent paddle to the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge and Broad Channel. The book is going to print soon, and Kevin had just gotten his first look at the final product in PDF form - and look, we're in it!

What I love about this picture (and indeed, about paddling in Broad Channel) - if nobody told you that this was taken in New York City, would you ever have guessed?

You can read more about the book (and pre-order, if you like the looks of it) at Barnes & Noble.com. I think this looks like a very useful resource for us tri-state paddlers!

One More V-Day Post...

Oh, my goodness. One more Valentine's Day update. The Peconic Puffin's traditional Valentine's Day Top 10 post is always amusing - but the bonus Reasons To Date A Sailor? O...M...G...! I'm dyin' over here. Dirty Australian!

Link: Valentine's Day Top Ten Reasons to Date a Windsurfer (with bonus "date a sailor" stuff!)

Single-Minded!

And for those of you who haven't got a hunny-bunny to take out for dinsy-winsy, I wish you a very very Happy Singles Awareness Day!


Stop The Cupidity!

(graphic found via the insanely fabulous George Takei! I didn't have a favorite Star Trek actor until I found his Facebook page. Now - TEAM SULU! WOO!)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Well, even after five years of being in a relationship, I'm still not a big fan of Valentine's Day. Just hate all the marketing pressure, y'know. Still, I'm giving in enough to take TQ out for dinner. We're going to a local favorite, Mamma Lucia's - not as fancy as some of the Cortelyou Road places. I love those, but I'm not such a food snob that I can't relax and enjoy some good pasta at an unpretentious, old-fashioned northern Italian* red-sauce joint that's been around for a long long time. I'd asked to take him there for a welcome-to-Midwood dinner the weekend he moved to the neighborhood back in January (he's a ten-minute walk away now and I'm loving that) but he was so wiped out from the move that he had to cancel. He's taking that rain check tonight & that'll be nice.

And this Celtic heart knot is nice, too. Thanks to the Old Salt for sharing!

*Note - Hm. From the learn-something-new-every-day category - not surprisingly, a link on the Ditmas Park Blog led to a couple of mean comments from food snobs who not only can't relax & enjoy a red sauce joint, but can't handle it when somebody else can. One of 'em did have a point - I think they were being needlessly overbearing about it (love 'em or hate 'em, everybody in New York knows from "red-sauce joints", that's hardly some new coinage of mine), but at some point when I first moved to New York, I was acquainted with somebody who called them "Northern Italian red sauce joints" and so that's what I always thought the phrase was. Turns out that red sauce is more a southern thing (makes sense, of course, more southerly = warmer = more tomatoes, tomatoes like it warm, I grow tomatoes, so I know that!) while the northern Italians are bit more haute-y in their cuisine. #liveandlearn

As far as that other guy, I'm gonna borrow a phrase from a Hawai'ian friend:

Eh, Ainokea!!!! :D

I Know, I Know, These Are Terribly Dicey Conditions In Which To Go Paddling...

But, you know, sometimes a person just has to answer the call of the bay, no matter how fiercely that wind is gusting.

Nah nah nah nah nah, just kidding!

This is totally a joke based on the fact that up until fairly late on Friday night, it was looking like a weekend where the winter windsurfers were gonna shred but the rest of us should stay on dry land - the forecast was calling for Saturday's temperatures to be a totally reasonable (by Northeast winter standards, at least) mid to high 30's, but the winds were supposed to be gusting to the mid-20-knots - not quite a gale but definitely small craft advisory & more than I would've thought about tackling in the wintertime & especially for the first paddle since New Year's Day, when I'd gone overboard (ha ha) with the rolling & ended up hurting a shoulder.

I was really pretty disappointed when I'd checked the weekend weather on Thursday. There'd actually been a seal-watching paddle at Jones Beach planned, which I'd been really looking forward to - that's usually a nice moderately-paced paddle (especially if the seals are feeling curious and start watching us watching them - at that point everybody of both species stops paddling or swimming and we all just bob around gawking at each other) and I'd thought that would be a perfect test paddle to see how the shoulder was going to behave after a few weeks of first being coddled, then given light exercise as the soreness and snap-crackle-poppiness settled down. Of course, I wanted to make sure that the seal paddle would involve proper nutrition, so Thursday afternoon, I dropped a blatant hint about a post-paddle Bigelow's visit (hint taking the form of a photo of a paper plate heaped with fried Ipswich belly clams and a Harpoon IPA, captioned "Hint, hint!") on the organizer's Facebook wall.
Hint, hint!

It then occured to me that I hadn't checked the forecast; went over to NOAA.gov and two minutes later I was back at Walter's wall saying,

Oh. Never mind. Stupid NOAA. Jones Beach marine forecast:

Saturday: NNW wind 6 to 11 kt increasing to 12 to 17 kt. Winds could gust as high as 25 kt. Snow likely, mainly before 9am. Seas 1 ft or less.

Sunday: NW wind 17 to 20 kt increasing to 21 to 24 kt in the morning. Winds could gust as high as 34 kt. A slight chance of snow showers after noon. Seas 1 ft or less.

Things were still looking about the same on Friday evening.

Saturday morning, TQ & I were talking about heading into the city for clubmate Joe Glickman's reading from Fearless, his book about Freya Hoffmeister's unsupported circumnavigation of Australia, at the relatively-new REI in SoHo, but then then I pulled up the forecast and read "Winds NW, 8-11 kts."

Wow!

Apparently the massive cold front that was on the way had gotten held up in traffic somewhere. It was still very much on the way, it just wasn't going to hit our area until Saturday night, re-opening a window of fine paddling weather on Saturday afternoon.

All other plans for the day were instantly dropped & we went for a thoroughly pleasant 8-mile paddle out to a little way past the Marine Park Bridge and back. Our turnaround point was at a beach that's always covered with all sorts of old bottles, I always end up finding a treasure or two & I was actually looking to replace a small brown one that I'd broken recently, trying to take a fan out of the kitchen window without moving all the bottles I have lined up there first (I'd managed to put the fan in without disturbing them when I cooked bacon one weekend, but that turned out to be the easy part - next time I won't be such a lazy-butt, I'll move the bottles first, I'm just glad the one that broke wasn't one of the small number of harder-to-find ones that I do have). TQ was ready for a leg-stretch at that point anyways and it was warm enough that we took a pretty good beachcombing break. I found a suitably-sized brown bottle to put in the spot where the one I'd broken had been plus a couple of other nice additions to the collection before we started feeling like we were getting chilly enough that we wanted to get going; at that point the wind had picked up from "barely there" (as shown in the photo above) to exactly the forecasted 8 - 11 kts NW, so we did have a bit a headwind going home, but my shoulder held up fine & although I may not plan a Manhattan circumnavigation for anytime in February, I do think I can safely get back out there now. Good to be back on the water!

The cold front did finally come blasting in on Saturday night, as rescheduled. I had a nice lazy day in the neighborhood today, hit the farmers' market for beef stew fixins', met some friends for brunch at Purple Yam and then came home, prepared the stew & then curled up on the Evil Futon of Nap and finished the latest book (Terry Pratchett's Thud) while the stew simmered away for hours. Perfect weekend, and I think the activities were definitely on the right days.

Say, did I ever mention that some of my friends are way, way tougher than I am?

(kids, those are trained cold-water swimmers - don't try that at home, OK?)

What I Had For Dinner Last Night!

This one's for you,Baydog! Should've known better than to mention that friends and I indulged in a restaurant week meal at a seafood restaurant of good repute without bothering to say what we ate, right?

We all ordered off of the special prix-fixe menu - in fact I'm copying the descriptions 'cause I can't remember all the little touches.

Starter - seared fluke roll (sushi) with marinated kohlrabi, shiso, ruby red grapefruit. I wasn't sure how they were going to work in the grapefruit but it was just a little bit sprinkled over the top, nice bit of tart sweetness against the saltier flavors.

Entree - Tough call, they had thyme roasted artic char, a crispy brook trout (one of us had that, looked like a cornmeal crust), and a grilled shrimp and braised pork belly dish. I liked the look of the accompaniments for the char (sweet shrimp & tuscan kale risotto, black mission fig, port wine -- I LOVE risotto!) better than the ones with the trout, and although usually I just stop dead when I hit the word "braised" on a menu, I thought since I was at the Blue Water Grill, I should focus on the fish (plus that way I save the pork-belly indulgences for my local fave Purple Yam). It was fantastic.

Dessert, I went for the chocolate espresso thingy - fantastic, sort of a flourless chocolate base with a thin layer of mousse on top. I owed the waiter for that one, I love all kinds of custard and they had a panna cotta and I couldn't decide so I asked the waiter which one he liked better & he didn't have to think about it for a second.

Restaurant Week was such a good invention - M had actually thought of setting up last night's dinner gathering because she and I had just been in Union Square a few weeks ago, walked past the restaurant, and got to reminiscing about this wonderful meal we'd had there a few years ago, when I'd gotten a gift card as a holiday gift at work. Blue Water Grill is a bit beyond our normal means these days, but the Restaurant Week menu was a very reasonable $35.00 (and in fact I didn't see anything on the normal menu that looked better than what I had). Of course, the two of us who indulge in alcohol did make it a little splurgier by splitting a bottle of the suggested red, a very nice Pinot Noir from New Zealand winery Stoneleigh - sometimes not having to drive home really is a good thing!

Can't afford to dine like that too often, but boy, is it ever nice to indulge every now & then.

And, oh boy. It just hit me that next indulgence might just be Bigelow's - there were rumours of another seal paddle this coming weekend! note later - oops. Not happening. Stupid NOAA.

Jones Beach marine forecast:

Saturday: NNW wind 6 to 11 kt increasing to 12 to 17 kt. Winds could gust as high as 25 kt. Snow likely, mainly before 9am. Seas 1 ft or less.

Sunday: NW wind 17 to 20 kt increasing to 21 to 24 kt in the morning. Winds could gust as high as 34 kt. A slight chance of snow showers after noon. Seas 1 ft or less.

Analoguema: Update

Wow. Apparently this "film" is even more of a museum piece than I realized. It's Restaurant Week, and a friend had made reservations for a small group to dine at the Blue Water Grill in Union Square at 7:30. I left work a bit early to go to a large photography store in the area, thinking that they could take my negatives & save the images on a CD. Went to the counter where I thought they could handle that, pulled out my film, said "I'd like to get these saved on a CD". The clerk looked at them & said "Sorry, we actually don't do that here anymore".

At least dinner was good!

Sailing School and Town Dock Operator Wanted, Pier 25, Hudson River Park

In my inbox last night, thought I'd pass it along.
*************************************************
Hudson River Park Trust Seeks Proposals for a Sailing School and Town Dock Operator on the Hudson River in Lower Manhattan: Up to forty mooring spots and a town dock provide an opportunity to develop a thriving and active waterfront business on Pier 25

Hudson River Park Trust, a public benefit corporation in the State of New York and consisting of a partnership between the State and City of New York, announces the release of a request for proposal for a sailing school, town dock, and private vessel mooring concession at Pier 25 in the Tribeca section of Hudson River Park. The Trust is looking for an experienced operator to run a sailing school and town dock; additional opportunity exists to offer transient and seasonal mooring berths. An optional information session will take place on February 17 and responses are due on March 5.

To download the RFP and for more information, go to
http://www.hudsonriverpark.org/organization/bids.asp