I found this sideboard on eBay a few weeks ago and I’ve decided it’s pretty much the most gorgeous piece of furniture ever. $2550 is a bit steep, but in reality, for the condition and quality of the furniture it’s probably quite appropriate. Cheers to that bidder… I’m filing it in my “remember this” section.
Got this new FORLIFE brew-in-mug teaware last week in Austin and I’ve been using it every night with some herbal tea. Loose tea is sexier than bagged tea. Even when all you do is cut open the bag…
Cut Copy – So Haunted (Knightlife End Edit)
What happens when you take the best minute and twenty seconds of music ever created and remix it? Probably the best 4 minutes ever. Even better when it’s loud and you’re hearing it live with your best 3000 or so friends. The crowd went bananas for this little remixed tidbit last night. It wasn’t quite the sweat-fest that Girl Talk was, but it lived up to my own hype.
I’ve been gone for a while. Back with more soon.
“I’m not the dancing kind,” I said. “You’ve always known that.”
“You danced at our wedding,” she answered immediately. “You were fine. You did that little shuffle thing with your feet.”
“She looked stricken; and I suppose, since I am now fully aware, thanks to our figuratively speaking marriage counselor, that the steamboat of marriage must be fed incessantly with the coals of communication, that I should have explained to my wife that I came from Holland, where I rarely saw dancing, and indeed that I’d been a little amazed to see how young Englishmen threw themselves around to music, dancing even with other men, and that this abandon was alien to me and that, perhaps, she might for this reason wish to bear with me. But I said nothing, thinking the matter inconsequential. It would certainly have astonished me to learn that years later I would look back on this episode and ask myself if it represented a so-called fork in the road – which in turn led me to drunkenly wonder if the course of a relationship of love was truly explicable in terms of right turns and wrong turns, and if so whether it was possible to backtrack to that split where it all went wrong, or if in fact it was the case that we are all doomed to walk in a forest in which all paths lead one equally astray, there being no end to the forest, an inquiry whose very uselessness led to another spasm of wayward contemplation…”
- an excerpt from “Netherland” by Joseph O’Neill
While normally I’m pretty good about finishing projects that I start, my knitting projects seem to suffer the most from lack of sustaining enthusiasm. This sweater took me 8 months or so to complete, but I would argue that no one can be expected to knit wool sweaters in the summer so those months don’t really count.
At any rate, Rufus’ mom is a Princeton grad and her birthday was just before Halloween so I finished this up for a well-timed and coordinated gift. Apparently it’s getting rave reviews at the office.
My standard fall back playlist on my ipod/itunes is the Top 100 Most Played smart playlist that comes standard with iTunes. It’s music I enjoy, obviously, and it has enough of a mix of moods and genres that I can always find something I like. The problem is though, that the more I listen to that playlist, the farther and farther away those tracks become (in play count) from the rest of my library. Which then renders the list pretty static (read: boring).
New solution… the “after top 100″ playlist.
Basically it’s the same structure as the Top 100 (playcount > 0 and selected by most often played), but you add the exclusion of the Top 100 playlist. I increased the item number to 250 to give it more variety. Over time, listening to this list will eventually shift the songs up into the Top 100, bringing some of those songs down. Alternating the two lists should keep the groups near each other play count-wise. Might need a third tier playlist also, with exclusions of the two previous playlists eventually.
I ordered a bunch of FLOR samples to help me decide about the rug for the living room. The final rug choice turned out pretty well (I think) and today I put those samples to good use… Cat litter mat and a door mat!
Remember how I was bored with my light-colored wood veneer shelving units? Well, my family talked me out of my crazy idea to paint them and a few hours of Apartment Therapy browsing gave me the idea to cover the shelves with wood-grain contact paper.
Before:
After:
The contact paper is the “Maron Dark” color and available at DesignYourWall. It’s a bit more user-friendly than regular contact paper because it isn’t super sticky. It sticks well to the furniture once you’ve got it where you want it, but if it accidentally gets positioned wrong or folds back on itself you don’t have to start over again. I chose not to do the inner supports because I was hoping to eventually find either a contrasting color or an interesting pattern to cover those elements. Covering the shelves was relatively tedious and required a modest amount of patience, attention to detail, and x-acto knife skill. At $65 for a 49 foot roll it’s eminently more affordable than buying new shelves.
The financial collapse here in New York has finally affected me… My landlord is selling the apartment. So for the third time in 28 months, I’ll be moving. With any luck I’ll find a no-fee apartment, but not without a fair amount of frustration I expect. The Manhattan rental market is a beast like no other it seems.
1. It is fair game to completely misrepresent an apartment in the listings. For example, a 2 bedroom listing is probably a 1 bedroom that they expect someone to live in the common room. The brokers like to call these “flex 2″ or “convertible 2″ apartments. Today a broker told me that the apartment had a “roomy” living space after the “flex” wall went up. I pressed him further… 9ft x 9ft. Ha!
2. A certain percentage of the listings are fake and just designed to get you to call the broker.
3. When you do go view an apartment the broker will tell you that you must make a split-second decision and that it will go THAT DAY! They will throw in phrases like, “you are never going to find this much space at this low price”.
4. You can expect to pay first, last, security, and some type of fee. So for your average overpriced 1 bedroom for $2500/month that would be $12,000 up front if you have a broker and $7,500 if you don’t.
5. All right enough bitching. I’ll find somewhere to live somehow. As a parting feature I would like you to examine the floorplan below. This is an apartment that is for sale (not rent) for $350,000 with a monthly maintenance fee of $780. It appears that the shower is in the kitchen. Hahahahahaa….. Love it.
