A Poetry Break

Outside
the sun strains to slip through the cracks in the clouds
Inside
Victor has turned the lamp so the bulb casts its spell over me
I can close my eyes and pretend
We are back in Jamaica
My face in the sun, protected by the thinnest layer of SPF
I am drawing careless circles in the sand with my fingers
He is stroking my hair, his fingers turning pink in the sun.
He lies in the shade, still slathered with sun block.
He warns, my nose is pink. New freckles are sprinkled along my Irish cheeks.
But I just smile.
My mind is far away. My body feels light.
Like the clouds. I count them. One, two, three.
And then they are gone.

Through Good Times and Bad

My best friend and I were swapping stories today about silly arguments we've had with our spouses lately. And I thought about how easily and how often we fight with those we live with and love--sometimes, just because they're there. All day long (and sometimes all night), we show our best face to the world, suppressing our frustrations or fears. So when we get home after a long day at work and all the feelings we've been suppressing all day come to the surface, we risk spilling them all over our unsuspecting spouse. Poor guy.
I'd always thought that marriage meant sharing everything. But I no longer think that sharing every thought and feeling we have with each other is necessary to have a strong, successful relationship--in fact, it may have the opposite effect. Sometimes I think back to when my husband and I started dating, how much care I took to look my best and to be in the best frame of mind when I saw him (which wasn't hard, just seeing him lifted my spirits--still does, most days). When you're married, it's a relief to be able to be yourself and not to have to worry about being at your best all the time. But I think it's important to remind ourselves of what attracted us to each other in the first place. Sometimes it's better to vent your frustrations and feelings to a journal or a therapist (this is NYC after all). And save your saner self for your spouse. Course that's easy to say today. I'm on vacation, it's sunny and springlike outside, and I'm feeling fabulous. The true test comes when the rain clouds return.

Animal Crackers

They may weigh a helluva lot more than lemmings do, but apparently elephants tend to behave pretty much the same way--as evidenced by the recent escapades of a herd in Seoul, South Korea. The six elephants were being paraded outside their enclosure at the Seoul Children's Grand Park when one was startled and bolted, according to a zoo official. Five more followed "because they have the tendency to do that," the official told MSNBC. The pachyderm posse roamed the streets of the South Korean capital freely (unlike their counterparts in the north) for hours--even visiting a local restaurant--but were apprehended before reaching cliff's edge. Five were herded back to their enclosure, while one was "briefly detained at a police station." (I can only assume that was the ringleader). No word if they got a confession out of him.
And while we're on the topic of strange animal stories: here's a tip for you pet owners out there. When you enter a contest, don't use your pet's name. That's what Vancouver carpenter Kevin Strybos did, and he paid $500 for his frivolousness. That's how much he would have won had he been able to cash the winning check in the drawing at a local gas station. But since it was made out to his dog, "Mr. Jengels," his bank refused to cash it. And the gas station owner refused to write another in his name. (In Strybos's albeit meager defense, he claims he'd used the name of his miniature dachsund-pinscher cross in the drawing to avoid telemarketers. So, hey, on the bright side, at least he won't have to worry about being bothered by telemarketers--just reporters).
More on my life later.. Suffice it to say, no elephants have wandered into my neighborhood (though there was a parade of pachyderms up the streets of Manhattan one night in late March, en route to Madison Square Garden for the annual Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus show). And I don't have any pets, or winning raffle tickets (unfortunately).

Flu (or something) Times Two

The weather in New York was beautiful this weekend. Sunshine, summer-like temps in the 70s. And my husband and I spent the entire weekend in bed... sleeping. I went to bed Friday morning and didn't get up until Friday night. My husband came down with the flu Friday night. We had different symptoms, but the same result: we were both feverish and too exhausted to do much but get up to take our temperature, pull back the shades, cringe at the sunshine and curse our bad timing. All weekend, we took turns taking care of each other and taking our frustrations out on each other--both of us wanting to be able to do more and angry that we could not.
I'm feeling a lot better today. And Victor is feeling, well, just good enough to drag himself to work (the bar is a bit lower for him, since--as he explains on his blog--he's on contract, not full-time, so a 'sick day' means no pay).
I'm actually off this week and next, so I can still enjoy the weather. Though I'm spending much of this week at home working on a book proposal (the project I mentioned earlier) and finishing up a story for work that's due next week, when I'll be in Arizona, where the weather is not much better than it is here. But that's a good thing.
Now that I'm free from fever and work restrictions, I'll try to update the blog more regularly.

Scotch and Cigars

Okay, so I know I said that the scotch-cigar combo is best left to the boys. But I couldn't pass up the invitation last week to attend the launch party for Glenlivet's newly released 15-year-old French Oak Reserve, which was hosted by the Club Macanudo, a restaurant and cigar lounge on the Upper East Side. I did pass up the Macanudo Vintage Cabinet Selection 1997 cigar (actually, I passed it off--to my husband). But I'll admit the scotch was pretty smooth, especially watered down a bit and sipped slowly (served straight up, or "neat," it was too strong for my sensitive feminine tastebuds to be smooth).
Note: Scotch connaisseurs (and master distillers like Jim Cryle from Glenlivet, who attended the launch) stress that there is no substitute for water--not even ice--if you want to maintain the quality of the whiskey. Apparently, adding ice in lieu of lukewarm water "kills" the flavor. There are several other rules too, I'm sure, about the type of glass and the temperature of the bottle, and so on. Fortunately, the Glenlivet folks took care of all that.
In addition to the box of hand-rolled cigars, Macanudo served up a three-course dinner. Victor and I were seated between a gossip columnist for the Daily News, writers for Golf Digest and Cigar Afficionado, and a "senior brand manager" from Glenlivet, who'd driven down from Connecticut. It was an interesting mix, like the meal, which consisted of Caesar salad, champagne salmon, and warm chocolate truffles infused with--what else?--single malt scotch. The servers called it "chocolate ecstasy," and it was.
But at that point, between the scotch and the wine and the cigar smoke, I was starting to feel a little overindulgent. So I stopped at two. And we gathered ourselves and our personalized party bags and stumbled to the subway.
Thanks to the generous gifts, we can host our own cigar-scotch pairing party now. Or, at least, we could have. Each gift bag contained a large bottle of the 15-year-old scotch and a small box of cigars--most of which, my husband and his friends finished off during their weekend trip.

No Excuses

I can't believe it's been more than a week. I started to write a few times at work last week, but then realized I was in such a state of frustration that I risked writing something I might later regret (it's easy to forget sometimes that I'm writing on a public website that's accessible to anyone with Internet access).
But the sun is out today, the temperatures have stayed above freezing for a week, and I've got a vacation coming up. So I'm in much better spirits now.
My husband went upstate last weekend with some of his buddies, so I spent Saturday with my girl friends. This is not a bad exercise for couples, I think. There are just some activities that are more easily enjoyed with members of the same sex. Shopping, for instance, is much better with girls. Same with brunch. But cigar smoking and scotch? Or being doused (albeit in wetsuits) by buckets of 29-degree water? I'll leave that to the men, thank you.
So while my husband and three of his friends rafted down the Indian River rapids on Saturday, I walked through the temporary "Nomadic Museum" on Pier 54 with three girl friends, checking out Gregory Colbert's haunting exhibit. "Ashes and Snow," is comprised of several photographs of Asian and African adolescents posing in prayer or provocative positions with leopards, elephants, and whales--none of the images, as we later discovered to our astonishment, the result of digital manipulation or montage.
After successfully negotiating their way through the Hudson River Gorge, my husband and his friends returned triumphantly (if a little wet) to the Bear Trap Inn to indulge in some Scotch and cigars on their porch (well, on their porch chairs in the parking lot). Meanwhile, I was soaking up the sun with my friends over mimosas and egg-white omelettes at a sidewalk table at Florent in the Meatpacking District in Manhattan. That night, as my husband and his friends knocked back beers at the Adirondack Mountain Grill, I was sipping my way through four course's worth of wine--along with a three-cheese plate with toast and fig jam, roasted chicken with stuffing and asparagus, a dried fruit platter, and chocolate souffle with Earl Grey ice cream--at my friend Laura's "wine pairing" dinner party.
Needless to say, both my husband and I woke up hung over the next morning. I finally dragged myself to the gym, then sat on the porch in the sun for awhile while I chatted away on the cordless with my friend in San Francisco and then my sister in Chicago. Meanwhile, he and his friends hiked their way up and down a trail in the Adirondacks then piled into the jeep for the four-hour ride back to the city.
By the time Victor got home, we were both sun-burnt and sleepy, but we were still eager to swap stories of our weekend adventures (if not to trade places).

For What It's Worth

I'm sorry I've been remiss in my updates. It's been a very busy week at work (RIP Pope John Paul II), and I've got a couple extracurriculur projects that have been taking up a lot more of my "free" time than I'd expected (more on those soon).
A week ago, I wrote about my dinner at Plate NYC, whose name embodies one of the city's current culinary trends (serving up various sized "plates" in lieu of "appetizers" or "entrees"). On Monday, three friends and I took advantage of an even stranger trend that's popped up in the last couple of months: restaurants that let the diner decide what he/she pays for the meal.
First came Babu, a candlelit restaurant that serves Calcutta-inspired cuisine, which intentionally left the prices off its extensive and eclectic (fish, for example, comes fried with "chips" or steamed with mustard and green chilis and wrapped in a banana leaf) menu during its first few weeks. Some diners, as Rebecca Mead reported in the New Yorker, responded by paying nothing--others were overly generous (one couple paid $200, over the owner's protestations). Eventually, the prices were written onto the menu: a three-course meal with wine now comes to about $50 a head.
That's a little less than a three-course meal without wine will cost you at Wildflower--unless you dined there on a recent Monday night, when the West Village bistro let the customer decide what dinner was worth. Though not without full knowledge of what the meal would normally cost: the server printed out the prices of each item you ordered on a faux receipt, then asked you to mark down--or up--the price accordingly in the space beside it, along with reasons for the change. Wine was not included. The server also added on a 20% gratuity for herself, and tax based on regular menu prices.
In the end, each of us paid about $37 for a total of three appetizers, two entrees, and two bottles of a $32 Australian shiraz (one of which was initially omitted from our bill, then added on five minutes later by our apologetic server). Though we paid about $8 less apiece than we would have had we adhered to the prices listed, we still felt we'd overpaid a bit. The half-portion of Mac & Cheese sauteed with mushrooms and lobster meat in black truffle oil sounded fabulous, but the mushrooms were so shriveled they were barely visible, and I couldn't taste the lobster at all. The arugula salad, served with dried figs, beets, and goat cheese was good. But the Dixie Duck Quesadilla--made with swiss cheese, cumin, onion, corn, peppers, and "sassy" salsa--was a little soggy (perhaps because it was drowning in a layer of dijon mustard). My foodie friend and blogger, a.k.a. Vittles Vamp, split a steak and prosciutto-bundled asparagus with our friend, Pam. Neither were impressed. Joy and I split an ostrich entree, which tasted pretty good to me; but, as Joy pointed out, we had nothing to compare it to as neither of us had ever had ostrich before. Still, we agreed it was probably not worth the $26 price tag. At the end of the meal, we wrote as much on the comment card, then declined a free round of dessert wines (we'd already had 2 bottles of wine, after all, and were feeling a bit bad about taking free booze after our critical review of the meal). VV vowed not to come back--at least, until the chef lowered his prices. Part of the problem was that she and I had dined at a nearby spot a week earlier that was twice as good and almost half the price. Ironically, we all agreed that the best parts of the meal were those that weren't on the menu: the bread (which was warm, fluffy and glazed with butter and herbs), the wine, and the service.