Saturday, April 20, 2013

Stupid first world problem(s)!

I face this weekend with some trepidation.  You see, we are trapped in our house!  Last night the garage door dropped with a bang. I ran out to find that; a) thank goodness my youngest was okay and b) the door was stuck with our vehicles inside.  This is a "man problem"  so of course I got up on the ladder to look at it.  After a while, G determined it was the torsion rod that broke.  It's the spring that pulls the weight of the door up and believe me, our door's packin' a few pounds!  Compounding the problem is that door companies won't come out unless the landlord calls.  Our landlord lives in California and like all landlords is cheaper than a t-shirt from Target.  So he's trying to find one of his Russian dissident buddies to fix it for us.  I only see horror!

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

It really is like it is in the movies...

Images, sounds, colours, smells are all running through my head.  So much so that I can't sleep!  New York's put me out of sorts.  It's not that I had a terrible time, I had an amazing time.  So much of NYC is the feeling of being there.  Of seeing the places you've seen on the screen or hearing the voices of the people.
Not surprisingly then, it's the small moments that have the greatest resonance.  Yeah, I saw MOMA but it was the guy outside who was selling his work that I really remember.  It was the cop who was drinking coffee(..sorry cawfee) out of one of those paper cups with the greek keys printed on it, just like Law & Order.  It was sitting in the Rose Main reading room at the NY public library sneaking a snack, just like I did in University.  It was the gorgeous fireman who smiled at me on my way to the 911 Memorial.  It was being able to find my way around the subway.  It was finding this obscure store way deep in Soho for my son without a map. It was being asked for directions because somebody thought you lived there. It was for walking on the High Line and feeling like you'd already been walking above the ground.  It was for getting swept along but not swept under.


Everything's bigger in NYC.
Brooklyn Bridge
Jasper Johns


"Dirty Water Dog"


Shoe Obsession, FIT
It really is the greatest city in the world.

Saturday, April 6, 2013

One more sleep...

Mishka Eyeball
Pretty excited.  This time tomorrow night I'll be getting ready to go to the airport to fly to NYC!  Woo hoo!  Life is good.  I'll be taking a red eye so I can maximize my 5 days there.  Got my guide book and my plans are made! Culture, shopping, eating, walking, absorbing...got it all planned!

It was back to school today.  It's spring session.  There's only a morning class and the instructor is a really interesting guy.  The class is about engaging communities and fundraising for museums.  He told us about his racial background (which is very diverse) and then asked us to tell him which community he belongs to.  It was a good wake up about who is coming to the museum and museum's assumption about who comes.  The demographics of the United States are changing and the emerging groups are not traditionally museum going types.  So how do you reach out and make these institutions relevant to them?    But what really touched me today was that 3 people came up to me before class and handed me something about New York museums and/or fashion curators.  They had been reading the articles and had thought of me!  Wah!  So sweet!

Our landlord has asked us to show the house.  I really don't want to do it as one of us has to be there while they tour the place but truth be told...I don't want to clean up. It's not like "Hoarders" or anything. I'm willing to live with a layer dust or as we, in the museum business call it...patina!


See ya in the Big Apple!