Thomas

Thomas
Originally uploaded by wck

Isn't he just the cutest little boy ever? He's finally waking up a little and peeping around instead of sleeping nonstop.

a snowy treat

I almost burned to a crisp walking through the West Village today (easily 90F) so here's a nice, cool, snowy treat- Declan in a rare Seattle snowstorm!

Lullaby of London

I haven't posted about music in a long time, and certainly not the long essays I used to write. One part of that is that I've been too busy to track down new music much these days, and I'm now cut off from Amazon's great music editors.

One piece of music that I've recently fallen for, though, is "Lullaby of London" by the Pogues. It's probably about as old as I am these days but it's a beautiful song. When I first moved to NYC, I was working in Times Square, but moved down to Chelsea at the end of last summer. Midtown and Times Square are quite literally the canyons of NYC while Chelsea and the West Village area are not so tall. One bitterly cold day this winter, I set out up 7th Ave to walk to Penn Station, with the Pogues playing on my ipod. As I walked up 7th, wrapped and bundled in a coat and scarf to my eyes and still shivering, I sort of fell into this song. As I kept walking, the huge towers of Midtown started looming over me, making the wind sharper and colder and darker. It all fit together, the appearance of the gray bleakness near Penn Station, the cold, this incredibly beautiful song. Whenever I have to walk up 7th Ave, even now in the warm spring, I try to play it at least once, as it's so tied to this one area for me.

Lilacs and Rhubarb

I left work early today, and my grandpa met me at the train station so that we could pick rhubarb. While we drove over to his farm, which is very close to the train, we talked about the Mets game I'd seen yesterday (I'm a lifelong Yankees fan, but I will happily admit that was a truly inspiring 9th inning yesterday!), and baseball games he went to when he grew up in Quincy, Mass. Then we went out to the field and picked tons and tons of rhubarb. As always, he tried to get me to take a bite of one of the stalks, which I didn't fall for. Rhubarb with strawberries and lots of sugar in a pie is wonderful. Raw rhubarb is...bitter.

Their lilacs are all blooming, so I also picked some of those, and a bit of arugula. What inspired this blogpost is that I just yawning and rubbing my forehead and I smelled the rhubarb and lilac on my fingers still. That's what spring always smells like to me, a sharp mixture of both tangled together.

Kate on the Train

Kate on the Train
Originally uploaded by wck.

and to go with my other train post, here is Kate riding the train into NYC

sunrise

Sometimes I wonder at the ability of my brain to drive down to the train station and get on the right train on basically autopilot every morning. My brain is not particularly functional before I've had 2 cups of coffee, and I only have one before I leave home. This morning was a nice example of how useless I am uncaffinated; last night I'd sat on the right side of the train heading out from NYC and had horrible sunglare in my eyes the whole way. This morning in picking a seat my logic was:
1. the right side of the train had glare going West
2. we are now going East this morning
3. so that means that the right side of the train is on the other side in this direction
4. I'm sitting on the right side
Of course, you see the flaw there, right? Yes... the sun comes up on one side and goes down on the other. So I'm riding along... with the sun right in my face again. Oh well!