Thursday, February 27, 2014

Summer vs. Winter - Song on Repeat

There's a song called "See You in the Spring" by the Courtyard Hounds (Martie Maguire and Emily Robison of the Dixie Chicks).  It's a duet with Jakob Dylan about two people who are in love but kind of living different lives in different places.  It's also a debate about which is worse - winter in Chicago or summer in Texas.  Right now I'm firmly on the side of winter is worse ("that wind/it just ain't right"), but the argument that summer in Texas can be brutal is a valid one ("that heat/feels like I'm on fire").  

Whichever side you come down on we can all agree that spring is the best!


(P.S. I miss the Dixie Chicks.)

Celebrity Sighting

This is my biggest celebrity sighting to date... and it's a double combo.

Beyoncé and Jay-Z sitting courtside at a Brooklyn Nets game.

Here are my pictures from my phone...



And a better, "real" picture...


Wow, she is gorgeous.  God gave with both hands to that woman.

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Winter Blahs


Blah.  That's really all I have to say right now.  I am in winter survival mode.  I dream about sunlight.  I actually had a dream that I was sitting in the sun and just soaking it in.  I feel like a vampire missing the sun.

Actually, I feel like the little girl in "All Summer in a Day", a short story by Ray Bradbury (one of my favorite authors).  The short version of the story is about a school of children on another planet, Venus, where there are constant rainstorms.  They never see the sun, except for one hour every seven years.  None of the children remember what the sun was like, except one little girl named Margot who moved to Venus from Earth just five years earlier.  Margot tries to describe the sun to the other school children, but they don't believe her and they bully her and lock her in a closet.  While she is in the closet, wouldn't you know, is the one hour that the sun appears after seven years of rain.  The teacher rushes the students out to enjoy the sunshine, not knowing about Margot locked in the dark closet.  It's not until the rain starts again an hour later that the students remember her, and let her out of the closet.  She missed the sun completely.

Isn't that a happy story?

I feel like I'm in the middle of seven years of rain, only instead of just rain it's snow and wind and below freezing temperatures.  And of course very little sunshine.

Blah.

Here are some pictures I've captured over the winter… even if they are pretty you should always keep in mind that I am FREEZING while taking them (yes, I will complain through this entire blog).

If you don't live in a walking city where it snows in the winter, you are more likely to think snow is pretty (like I used to!).  And it is pretty while it's falling.  But in big cities like New York with all of the commuting and pollution, the snow quickly turns into slushy sludge.  Imagine a mudslide, only colder.  It's like that.

Puddles are always deeper than they look:


A woman trying to push a stroller through a slushy intersection:


It has been so cold that Hudson River has frozen over more than once.



Little G exploring in his snow day outfit:


Snow coming down overnight on Greenwich St. in Tribeca:


Bicycle snow sculpture:


Sidewalk down Greenwich St. alongside Washington Market Park:


Washington Market Park:


Rockefeller Park next to the Hudson, another snow storm rolling in at dusk:


Grady and I climbing snow piles on an afternoon walk:


These pictures are from the same afternoon that we climbed the snow piles.  Stephen was out walking with us and on our way home we stopped at a coffee shop.  Stephen had gone in and I was waiting outside with Grady when I looked down and could see true snowflakes landing on my clothes.  I took these pictures just with my iPhone, they were huge!  And so beautiful! 




Ok, so winter does have something cool going on with those beautiful, magical snow flakes.  But then they turn into piles of frozen sludge.  

Lounge chairs surrounded by snow, not sand… my neighborhood is in the background:


This past weekend we had FABULOUS weather.  It hit 50ºF and was sunny and it felt like spring!  It was our one hour of sunshine in seven years of winter!


Walking down Bowery:


But I'm back in my dark closet now, it snowed today, there is more snow and temps in the teens in the forecast, and when I ask Siri about the weather she actually says, "It doesn't look good…".  Yeah, thanks Siri.  Very helpful.  I hate you.