Pegasus, Pegasus, Lilac, Lilac, Lilac, And Various Schooners

Pegasus the original

Pegasus by Bowsprite. What an absolutely lovely evening on board the Lilac.

Original buoy tender Lilac

Lilac's bow by Bowsprite

One more of the Lilac, just because -

Good music on the buoy deck -

 a beautiful evening (as mentioned),

And (no surprise here), I ran into lots of old friends. Found out that the Old Salt has a book out (and it looks very salty indeed and I can't wait for the dead tree edition to come out), that Tugster and a friend of his did some work on a very interesting film that had been at something of a standstill when last I'd heard (more on that down the road someday, I hope, there's a lot to still be done first), and the 20th annual Great North River Tugboat Race And Contest is on Sunday, so I can go (yay, I thought it was Saturday & I'm volunteering all day at Sebago - I'm just tickled to find out I can do both)! Oh, yes, and the art was lovely of course! Somehow I managed to miss the auction completely...this may not have been such a bad thing...

Frank's paintings are even more spectacular in person -

Christina's schooner room held particular temptation in the form of a sketch of the schooner I used to work on, the Adirondack - ooh, there she goes now, wish I'd had my telephoto!

Oh, and speaking of my old employers (pardon the blatant commercial plug but I loved working for these folks, think they're one of the nicest ways to see the harbor) - here was something else I was glad to finally see! I knew they had the America 2.0, but somehow, I hadn't seen her yet - finally got my chance tonight, isn't she a nice-looking boat?

Art Reception on the Hudson - An Invitation From The Bowsprite, Tonight (Thursday, 8/30/2012)

So so sorry about the late notice, but if you're going to be anywhere in the vicinity of Greenwich Village this evening and you have a little time to spare, here's something that's bound to be a lot of fun. I'm really looking forward to it!

Please join us for a reception this thursday, 30 august, 6 to 10pm
maritime paintings of Frank Hanavan & illustrations of Christina Sun
Reception: Thursday, August 30, 6 to 10 PM.

Art auction at 8:30pm, portion of all sales go to benefit the Lilac

Music by the Jug Addicts!
Lighthouse tender Lilac is berthed at Pier 25, Hudson River Park

at West Street and N. Moore Street

Subway: Franklin St stop on the 1, Canal St stop on the A/C/E (exit at Walker St.)

The show closes on August 31.

Hope to see you there!

christina
--

http://bowsprite.com/
http://lilacpreservationproject.org/home.html
http://www.frankhanavan.com/

Sebago Makes Sailing World (and they used my picture)!

Well, what fun! If any of my sailor friends get Sailing World magazine, when you get your September issue, check out Page 10 for a really good article about the Sebago Cup, the annual open-class cruising race for dinghies run by the Sailing Committee of the Sebago Canoe Club! And they used this picture, taken by yours truly! Woohoo!

 Now I'm even more psyched that I'll actually be around and able to do it this year - seems like every other year since I started sailing dinghies, there's been some unavoidable conflict. This year, as long as the winds are within my range, I expect to be out there, probably getting my okole kicked, but having a good time anyways.

 And I'm on the race committee again for our annual District 8 Laser regatta on Sept. 8th (click here for Notice of Race, click here for Sailing Instructions).  I regret that that means I can't help with the CIBBOWS Triple Dip at Coney Island (if any area paddlers might be available, please follow that link - they're a really nice crew to volunteer for,  they always throw a really nice after-swim party, and this one, being post-Labor-Day, has a totally civilized start time), but I've been helping out as starter and recorder every year we've run this and I'm glad I'm around to help out again this year (I was going to be in Kentucky but that trip got moved back a bit).

 Looks like it's gonna be a sorta saily September. I'm looking forward to it.

dandelion wine

 

"The medicines of another time, the balm of sun and idle August afternoons, the faintly heard sounds of ice wagons passing on brick avenues, the rush of silver skyrockets and the fountaining of lawn mowers moving through ant countries, all these, all these in a glass." - Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

Thinking of the three pioneers of space (each in their own way) that we've lost this year -
Ray Bradbury
Sally Ride
Neil Armstrong

Mmmm Chowder - plus a visit with the folks.

Went a little crazy this morning at the Cortelyou Road Greenmarket!

I might get a few more clams to add tomorrow as some of these were kind of small, but this was definitely one of my best attempts at this soup since I realized, rather ridiculously recently, that you can actually make chowder at home. Duh. I love chowder.

 It's certainly not Bigelow's, but I don't think it's half bad for a chowder newbie. Fresh sweet corn instead of frozen niblets was a massive improvement, of course.

 It's been a good couple of days of good food here at my "(lily)pad" - with Mom and Dad arriving last Thursday and a refrigerator that was pathetically empty after a couple of crazy weeks, I threw fiscal caution to the winds and hit the Union Square Greenmarket on my lunch hour last Wednesday, waving fistfuls of cash and screaming "Scrapple! Who's got the scrapple???" Of course I then also had to get Jersey tomatoes and peaches, and corn, and although I could easily have gotten stew fixin's for a quarter of the price at my local c-town, I went for the high-end just to get the grocery shopping done so that I could dash straight home from work & get the stew stewing while I did the final cleaning (including the vacuuming that I won't do after 9 pm out of consideration for the neighbors).  Finished off the grocery shopping on Thursday with a quick swing by Joe's for fresh & smoked mozzarella. I served caprese salad as an appetizer on Thursday (with people barely having room for the good but very unseasonal stew that was the main course) - we had the leftover tomatoes & cheese for breakfast and then again for lunch (this time disguised as sandwiches) since my tomatoes have gone into screaming high gear. I apologized to my folks for the threepeat. They said they would try to forgive me. At least I think they did, it's so hard to understand people when they talk with their mouths full.

I think the main feature of breakfast this morning had to win the locavore prize, though. I made scrambled eggs. I used:
Some onion, left over from the stew fixings from the Union Square Greenmarket, which means it was grown somewhere near the city. That was the thing from the farthest away.
The last of the smoked mozzarella. Made in SoHo.
Tomatoes - picked the day before in my garden in Canarsie. Wish I'd thought to get onions, then everything would've been NYC grown or made.
And the closest? Eggs and kale from the Ditmas Park backyard of an old kayaking friend who occasionally invites me to chickensit.
He and his family went out of town this weekend and I told him I'd be very happy to take care of their little backyard flock if it was OK for my parents to meet the chickens. He said that was fine.

Seriously - who would ever expect to come to Brooklyn and be introduced to the chickens who laid the eggs you then have for breakfast? My folks loved it.

My folks are on their way again, but we squeezed in an awful lot in 2 days and it was a good visit. We didn't make it to the bioluminescent animals exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History we'd started out thinking was going to be Friday's main course (I'll have to find a day to go see that on my own, sounds pretty neat), but we went to the South Street Seaport Museum - this was my first time since they reopened, I was tickled when my dad suggested it although he was a bit disappointed as the focus is less maritime than he expected. I was crushed to find out that the Peking is closed for good and on her way out, but I was still glad to finally see the place. That evening, we had dinner with a college roommate of my mom's - she's a longtime Chelsea resident and very active in the neighborhood, and when I mentioned my interest in the continuing saga of the Chelsea Hotel, she took us up to her building's roof to see the Chelsea's lovely roof - fascinating.

Also a nice view of the Empire State Building. She said that sunsets from here are spectacular, but we were all ready for dinner at this point and so rather than wait, we headed off for a delicious dinner at Le Zie, one of her favorite local Italian places.

They claim to have the best spaghetti and meatballs in Manhattan I do think I'd agree that they were the best spaghetti and meatballs I ever had in Manhattan. OK, I haven't had that many outside of the company cafeteria (theirs aren't half bad), but these were very yummy. 

Saturday, we went to the club for the Open Paddle, which was a really good one - sometimes these public paddles can be a bit slow but even though we had one first-time paddler along this time, she did great and we got in a very nice trip. I got to introduce my folks to a lot of the people they've read about here (Holly & Jim the Sailing Co-Chairs, Steve the Paddling Chef, Prof. M, and lots of others - it was a busy day at the club & I was glad we went when so many friends were around), my dad helped me clean up my garden a bit (it had been left to fend for itself for the last 3 weeks and although only the most self-sufficient plants made it through July's heat waves, it was looking mighty shaggy - we weeded and tied up the tomato sprawl that that happened since my last actual bit of gardening). I picked the ripest tomatoes & some fresh basil for caprese part 3, plus some mint for the tea, then we headed back to my place for showers.

Afternoon featured low-key touristing in Red Hook - we stopped by the PortSide New York pop-up (PortSide New York is in their last few days there and I was interested both in introducing my folks to Carolina and taking another quick look at the items they had for sale there - there's some really neat stuff there, check it out here if you're curious. We finished there with enough time to pay a visit to the Waterfront Museum, and then of course I had to drag them to Steve's Key Lime Pie. Once again I think they forgave me, although once again it's hard to understand people when they're talking with their mouths full. Seriously, though - my mom's a very good cook (taught me everything I know, I just do it with fancier ingredients), and so I was very happy when she liked this pie that I'd been giving such a big buildup. Of course even if she hadn't been as impressed, we were still eating it at a breezy cool picnic table, looking out over NY Harbor, so it would've at least gotten atmosphere points. Sorry I forgot to bring my camera - the pie still looks like this, though:
mmmm.

Our last attempted Red Hook stop was at the Sixpoint Brewery - I'd picked up some Bengali Tiger for dinner on Thursday & my dad liked it enough that he wanted to take some to their next host. I saw the Sixpoint logo on the side of a building but as I'd heard, there wasn't any sort of store front or anything. Fortunately, you can get Sixpoint in my neighborhood so that was OK, we went & got that and some wine before dinner at The Farm On Adderley. End of a perfect day. I'd say we slept like logs except that somewhere in the middle of the night the shaping baffles in the barely-used (but old) Aerobed that my folks were sleeping on broke and they were rudely awakened by nearly being pitched off onto the floor! I heard the commotion & came out and although at first they didn't want to take my room, eventually they did, I curled up on the Evil Futon of Nap (saving the day again...perhaps I should rethink the "evil" part) and in the end we all got a good night's sleep.

They had breakfast this morning and then hit the road. I cleaned up the breakfast dishes & then decided to wander over to the Cortelyou Road Greenmarket, where I decided I needed to make chowder. Came home, spent a positively luxusious and blissfully lazy afternoon alternately reading & dozing on the Not-So-Evil Futon of Nap, then fixed myself chowder for dinner.

It was a busy, busy weekend - but I felt like my folks had a really good visit.

And now I'm looking forward to Labor Day weekend. I'm helping out with the last Open Paddle of the year at the club Saturday morning, and if the weather's nice I'll try to instigate a falling-in-the-water session in the afternoon - but the next two days? NO plans. Can't WAIT.

PS - Note to Baydog, re shoo-fly pie: Mom is actually not crazy about it, but my dad likes it. His family used to always get their scrapple from a man who would drive a van in from somewhere out in the country once a week or so, and sometimes they'd get shoo-fly pie from him too, he sold a variety of homemade Amish foods. The gentleman never specified wet or dry but my dad says that he remembers it being very cake-like and would guess dry bottom.

Peking, Duck.

South Street Flyers

Ended up going to the South Street Seaport Museum today. First time since reopening. I was crushed to find out that the Peking is closed forever - we'd finished the galleries by 2:30; we thought about running to catch the 3:00 Pioneer sail but then I mentioned that the real showpiece of the museum's collection was this great old massive four-masted cargo ship and my folks thought that was really more interesting.

Nice to see all the work on the lightship Ambrose but dang - the South Street Seaport without the Peking? This makes me sad.

Well, here were some people at Trapeze School NY. Mom went into the mall to windowshop, TQ & my dad & I decided to grab a table and have a drink until it was time to head uptown.

Sheep in Myth, Fish on Friday, and chickens under a tree

One silly cartoon & 2 more little tiny watercolors I found while getting ready for my folks to visit (oddly enough this one ended up being more thorough than usual because I knew I wasn't going to have much time immediately before they arrived). Sheep In Myth. I don't know what brought this one on, but I like it. In fact I was glad to find it this week, with all the other old arts and crafts and doodles I've been pulling out of the backs of closets I was actually thinking "I wonder where I lost Sheep In Myth, I may have to redo them". Well, here they are, wagging their assorted wooly, scaly, finny, or polka-dot-boxer-shorts-clad tails behind them. Click for detail

And here's a tiny watercolor of some chickens under an apple tree -

and another of a Navy dolphin. Go Navy! And of course this is your fish on friday! OK, I'm posting it late Thursday, but it'll be Friday soon. :D

I painted both of these at the same time as the literary griffin. I think I had less money and more time when I was painting these little medallion thingies (and they are little, the griffin is 3.5" high, the navy dolphin is 2 and three-quarters inches and the chickens under the tree one is about 2 and a quarter) and I thought I was going to make notecards for gifts for friends or something. Never actually did any or anything but they were still fun to find in my cleaning. The sheep in myth was going to be part of the Silly Livestock Day I'd promised to get back to my normal frivolity - but then I had the horrible cooking accident to write about late late late last night, and I thought that was frivolity a-plenty. BTW, if the blogger version is too small to see the details, there's one up at flickr where you should be able to see larger versions. I gotta find some time to play with paint again one of these days. It's been such a busy summer!

A Terrible Cooking Accident.

So, my parents get into town tomorrow, and as I mentioned on the post with the griffin reading a book under a tree, I've been re-cleaning. I mostly finished that yesterday - today what was left was vacuuming, some last bits of tidying up, making sure that the Aerobed would actually inflate (on their last visit, the pump broke - fortunately the Evil Futon of Nap is actually a futon and it totally saved the day, but it is a little bit of a hassle to use it as a bed instead of an evil nap-inducing chaise lounge), and most of all, doing something about the lack of food. I decided to make a big pot of stew for dinner tomorrow - I have to work tomorrow so what I wanted was something that could cook while I cleaned tonight and heat up again tomorrow.

I had a little accident while I was making the stew. Well, two really. It's basically Mom's "recipe" (although it's not written down anywhere, her mom told her how to make it and she told me) and the secret is that you throw in a bottle or can of beer right after you add the last veggies and put the lid on to simmer for a couple of hours. Well, it was just terrible, I don't know how it happened but only half the bottle went into the stew, the other half somehow missed the pot entirely and ended up - horrors! - all over the inside of a glass that happened to be standing near by. I didn't know WHAT to do. So I'm drinking it.

The other accident may have caused the pouring problems. The beer is supposed to be Budweiser and somehow I accidentally got Brooklyn Lager on the way home instead of Budweiser. Oops. I suspect that a controlled experiment comparing the ease of pouring a bottle of Bud into a pot of stew and pouring a bottle of Brooklyn Lager into a pot of stew would prove that Brooklyn Lager is a much more slippery pour and ends up with half of it landing all over the insides of nearby glasses on a much more regular basis.



 I hope Mom doesn't notice that I messed up her stew. :(

We Interrupt Our Usual Prattle For A Political Rant.

Stupid, stupid politicians.
I hate this crap. I stopped giving to the USO because their privacy policy at the time was "We'll only share your info with organizations we think you might be interested in", which was of course the Republican Party and various other conservative groups; stuff like what the DCCC has chosen to do with their petition makes me want to never sign a political petition again.

That being said, I hope I DID sign the petition. Akin can apologize 'til the cows come home and he's blue in the face - what he said was just horrifying.

What kicked this off was spam from Angela at the DCCC, who is suffering under the misapprehension that I am her friend, when I'm actually really irritated at the petition-to-donation-form thing. Bait and switch routines annoy me. I realize that the dccc email is probably a one-way mass email thing, but if it was actually Angela's email, here's what I would have said to her.
**********************
-----Original Message-----
From: bonnie k. frogma
Sent: Aug 22, 2012 12:45 PM
To: dccc@dccc.org
Subject: Re: did your friends sign too?

Dear Angela - I signed, but was unwilling to pass the link along because of the way that the form ends up attempting to coerce a donation. I was confused by the second screen, I would willingly put my real name and address to this petition and thought that was the purpose of the second screen - then I realized that this was actually a donation form. I closed out of that page unsure of whether I had actually signed off on the petition or not. I'm very scared of people like Akin being given control but that doesn't mean that I'm entirely thrilled with the Democratic Party either. Sliding in a sneaky and misleading hit-up for a donation to a petition that so many people would be eager to sign doesn't earn you any trust.

***********************
From: Angela Guzman

Sent: Aug 22, 2012 12:17 PM
To: bonnie k. frogma
Subject: did your friends sign too?
Friend --

We're 34,211 short of an amazing 300,000 people telling Speaker Boehner to remove Todd Akin from the House Science Committee. Will you help us keep up the pressure?
Please forward this email to 3 of your friends right now...

*******************
OK, got it off my chest. Thanks. Check in tomorrow (or maybe even later today, depending on how the work goes) when Happy Bonnie will be back...

with Funny Livestock Day. No, I'm NOT kidding. But I will be. Muahahahaaaa!

Literary Griffin

Still sorting out my thoughts about my Level 2 class. It was neither the best nor the worst class I've ever taught - I really had some terrible stage-fright problems in the lead-up, worse than normal, don't quite know why, and then there were things I'd change and things that went well...might write more about that later, but first I have to do some re-cleaning.

Folks arrive for a visit on Thursday; they have much higher housekeeping standards than I do so the week before Orient Point (weekend before last), I "pre-cleaned" so I was at least starting from a reasonable baseline. Of course there's now a lot of debris from the camping weekend and the Level 2 weekend but that shouldn't be too bad...still gonna take some work! In the meantime, I thought I'd share this funny little watercolor. Ran across this little griffin with his beak stuck in a book during the pre-cleaning - can't remember when exactly I painted him but fun to find him again. Quite appropriate for cubicle decor here at the Really Big Children's Publishing House, too.

note the next day: stats indicate that there are dozens of people looking at this. That might not sound all that exciting but for this blog, "dozens" constitutes a major statistic event, and such events are usually triggered by me actually coughing up something worth reading. I'm absolutely baffled at why this little placeholder excuse for a post is suddenly so popular.  Can anyone tell me where you are all coming from?

Boy, these interwebs be an inexplicable place sometimes.

there she goes again!!!

Go Diana Go!

http://www.diananyad.com/

Trip Planning & Info Links

More prep for the ACA Level 2: Essentials of Kayak Touring class I'm teaching this weekend.
Good trip-planning and general-info websites:

www.noaa.gov – weather. Pick a zip code or city for basic forecast - click on water section of map for marine forecast (for Jamaica Bay, just outside the inlet - inside the bay gives land info).

www.iwindsurf.com  – great for winds. JFK station is available for unregistered users and is probably the closest & most accurate info for Jamaica Bay specifically. Out there on a windy day and  want to see what you were dealing with? This is the place!

http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/tide_predictions.shtml?  – Tides and currents.

www.saltwatertides.com  – another good one for tides  - also has sunrise and sunset info

http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/beach/beach.shtml  Water quality info – check here if it’s been raining a lot  and you want to know whether you should maybe not practice rescues.

www.iboatnyharbor.com  – all sorts of good information for recreational boaters in NY Harbor

www.thesafeharbor.us  – more good info for NY Harbor

www.uscgboating.org/  - Rules, regs, and recommendations from the Coast Guard. Certainly not kayak specific, but it’s a good place to learn about what the other boats out there should be doing so you can share the water responsibly.

www.nycwatertrail.org - the website of the New York City Watertrail Association. News section frequently covers channel closures, water quality issues, and other special notices.

http://www.nycgovparks.org/facilities/kayak  - New York City Watertrail Map – check here for launches throughout the NYC area.

www.hrwa.org  - the website of the Hudson River Watertrail Association. Includes instructions for joining the nyckayaker email list that the HRWA sponsors, ordering info for the Hudson River Watertrail Guide (info about campsites and launches from Albany to NYC), an events calendar, and more.

http://www.atlantickayaktours.com  – AKT’s “Expert Center” is one of the best general kayak info sites on the web. Strokes, gear, safety, everything ‘s there.

http://hudson.dl.stevens-tech.edu/maritimeforecast/  - New York Harbor Observations and Predictions – a really interesting site maintained by the Stevens Institute of Technology. Best practical application (or at least the one I use it for the most) is water temperatures but there are all sorts of interesting parameters to play with.

The Envelope, Please...

Still working on prep for Level 2 - here are the elements of a trip planning exercise I've come up with as part of the classroom session. Don't want to give the whole thing away, of course, but you can probably guess how it's going to work. I'll report on it after we've played, but I think it will be kind of fun. I'm actually looking forward to giving it a try. And aside from copying some handouts and laminating the lesson plans for myself and my assistants, I think I'm pretty much ready - and I didn't even have to pull an all-nighter! Woohoo!

GUTS.

This lady has them (click here to read article).

(photo swiped from the article I linked to)

To copy my own comment on Facebook - referring to a very low-key, no-big-deal, just-for-fun week-long solo trip that I have always had in the back of my mind as something that I would really like to do, at least partly to prove to myself that I could (although mostly to do a low-speed exploration of an area I've travelled at medium and high speeds a number of times):

"For a multi-day solo trip, honestly of course the thing that I'd be the most scared of would be getting attacked - anywhere from just harassed to what happened to Jenn. I think it's so amazing that she kept going. In some way, though, it seems like the best possible way to reclaim your mojo after someone tries to take it that way. That's the worst thing I can imagine happening to a woman on a solo trip. Well, say it happens - is it better to pack in your dream and go home, or keep going? It happened. Going home isn't going to change that. Rape is about control. Going on with what you were doing says that the attacker's control ENDED after the attack. Going home says he kept controlling you even after it was over."

And staying home because something might happen? That's giving the horribles of the world control without them even having to lift a finger against you.

Getting Ready for Level 2

Fun fun fun! I am collecting and inspecting all my "stuffs" tonight, in preparation for the ACA Level 2: Essentials of Kayak Touring class that I'm teaching this weekend. The way I've been looking at it, you could kind of say that Level 1 is the class where you learn to paddle, and Level 2 is the class where you learn to be a paddler - meaning a person who doesn't just know how to move the boat from point A to point B and back, but is starting to pick their own Point A's and B's, and know what they need to have in the boat and what sort of preparations need to happen to make the journey safe, fun, and legal.

Tonight I'm pulling together (or is it pulling apart?) my own kit in preparation for that. It's an interesting exercise in that I'm planning to talk about both hot & cold weather preparation, so I'm pulling out a lot of stuff that would usually be sitting in drawers this time of year. It's actually a good exercise for myself, especially since I somehow managed to miss my Vessel Safety Check this year (first time in several years!) - good chance to figure out what's missing or mislaid (like, I wonder where I left my 2012 Eldridge? and why was that strobe in the winter gear drawer instead of in the lights & radio bag where it's supposed to be?), and what just needs attention (e.g. - somehow my first aid kit got wet and a lot of the stuff in there is either flat-out ruined or looks so terrible that a person would lose all confidence in me when they saw it).

Adding the off season to the current season definitely adds some stuff - but I still think I'm going to be able to fit it all in the big black duffle bag. Lack of wheels does tend to steer a person towards the minimalist end of the kit spectrum!

Orient Point with the Sebago Canoe Club, August 10 - 12 2012

Click on the thumbnail to go to the gallery. This one's short! Note in March 2013 - this has become one of the top posts for the month. So random, I'm wondering why - did somebody link to this somewhere or something? Or is it just Sebago paddlers getting themselves psyched for summer as wintery weather hangs in here a week into Spring? Love it if someone would leave a comment explaining! Thanks!

Note slightly later in March 2013 - if any readers could please leave a comment as to how they found this post, I'd really appreciate it! It's getting tons of hits and I can't figure out why. I'm worried that it's got something to do with an unpleasant spam comment that had gotten through here that I finally saw and deleted.  I'm hoping it's just a link from somebody talking about the Sebago 2013 Return to Orient Point or something!

Just Another Mantis Monday

Watchmantis on duty at Sebago Canoe Club.

She was hanging out on the fence pretty much the whole time we were unloading boats. I took a lot of pictures of her but I could not quite hold the camera held steady enough for the long exposure! If it hadn't been so late I might have tried stacking furniture or something, but it WAS so late, so I didn't. This was the best of them!

Mary Ann tried too!

From

Back to O.P.!

Michigonians have their U.P. - maybe we at Sebago can start calling Orient Point "O.P."! Although "Upper Peninsula" does beat out "Orient Point" in the syllable count. Sorry, I'm babbling, stayed up way too late playing that blasted slalom canoe Google Doodle game - should've been in bed hours ago! Weather's not looking so hot but still hoping to get some good real-life paddling in this weekend. Off to O.P with T.Q. in the A.M.!

Gotta Go To JOE'S!

Joe's Dairy -- suddenly one of my favorite places this summer!

Cucumber season is over - that's this year's Last Cuke of Summer, there, and a sort of small and stunted one it is, too. The vines were dying when I did the tzatziki, and by the time I returned to the club last weekend, they were done - they left me this one last one, and that's the end. However, the tomatoes are doing GREAT, as is the basil (OK, the rosemary's also very happy and the peppers I threw in late in the spot where the chard failed to grow for the first time in several years are starting to pop out some petite peppers, but this post is not about those).

Joe's Dairy was a serendipitous find one day this Spring. I was headed over to New York Kayak to buy a new spray skirt. Joe's is on Sullivan just a little bit south of Houston Street and I have to have walked past it before, I'm a pretty regular customer at Randy's shop and this is about midway between - but I must have had mozzarella on the brain (or just been hungry) this time 'cause that "Home Made Mozzarella Fresh Daily" just leaped out at me.  I liked the look of it too - so much of SoHo is the shop on the right.

Joe's Dairy has clearly been around a lot longer. I went ahead & ran my errand and stopped by on the way back. Got a mozzarella di bufala from the nicest sales clerk I've ever bought anything from in SoHo, took it home, started eating it and...wow. I don't claim to have the most discriminating palate on the planet but...wow. Good stuff.

I didn't go back again until my tomatoes started in. When the first couple got ripe, and there was plenty of basil, I decided I wanted to make a caprese salad for TQ. For that, I thought "I need to find that cheese place again". I couldn't remember the name but I googled "SoHo mozzarella" and there it was, #1 hit was the Yelp review and whaddaya know, I was right, this really is some superlative mozzarella (OK, I know I should trust my own opinion, but I guess I don't really until I've seen what people are saying online).

That evening I started by grabbing 2 mozzarellas (mozzarelli?) di bufala out of the refrigerated case, then turned to see a tub of the most gorgeous smoked ones sitting on the counter - ok, one fresh one smoked!

May have been the best caprese salad I ever made. TQ loved it.

Went back today for just one for me - there was a tourist family that came in and after I made a total doofus of myself by trying to convince them to buy some mozzarella when they wanted some tidier cheese that they could eat while they walked around (this is what I do when I have a new favorite - I get all "oh my gosh you haven't tried this you gotta try this!!!") , I asked if I could take a picture - the sales lady said of course and I wish I'd taken this a minute earlier 'cause she had her arms out and a big smile on! Ah well.

Funny thing about this picture is - wow, look how much they sell besides mozzarella. I honestly hadn't really noticed. So far, I've been there three times, each time on a mozzarella mission.

but hey -- can you blame me? 

Assuming and hoping the tomatoes keep going as well as they have been, knock wood, I think I should have another couple of juicy ripe excuses to pay another visit soon - next time, maybe I'll look past the mozzarella case!

Here's a good article about the shop from the Villager. Another find from the "SoHo Mozzarella" Google search. The article is 5 years old, but I don't think much has changed!

One Last Olympic Post Post-Script - GAWKER'S GOT IT! Go! Watch! Quick!

Gawker found a mirror of that feckin' awesome Laser Radial commentary. If you missed it before, go watch it, quick!

One Last Olympic Post: Best Sailboat Race Commentary EVER

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2nd Update: Gawker's got it, at least for the moment! Check it out quick, before it goes away.

UPDATE: WOW. Sorry folks, that WAS incredibly funny - but it's gone now:

"Vimeo has removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by International Olympic Committee claiming that this material is infringing: Boats."

JEEZE. IOC, please check in at the lost and found - maybe someone turned in your sense of humor.

Back when it was still there (and hysterical), I had gotten it via Holly the Sailing Committee Co-Chair AND the Malden Yacht Club's own Ol' Philosophizer. Thanks to both - I'm so glad I got to see it while it lasted.

Oh - PS - Holly always gets referred to here as "Holly the Sailing Committee Co-Chair", but she's also Holly the Amazing Artist. Check out this article about her latest work - it looks wonderful. I'm almost tempted to go on a field trip to see it.

Chandelier

April 2012, Winter Garden, World Financial Center

This is a good one for the slideshow view - click on the first picture for that.

When I first saw it, I thought that the Winter Garden had actually gotten a huge new chandelier made of sea glass. It had that look about it at first glance, from a distance. I'd taken these day I went to watch the space shuttle fly-by - I liked it, I meant to post sometime but just didn't get around to it until today, when I was reminded of it by a post about a very beautiful-looking piece on Windtraveler. Looks lovely - wish I could make it to Portland, Oregon to see it!