Everything's Dripping

I seem to always get sick in October. This year I made it all the way to the 27th. Of course, we had a weekend with not much planned, but a few small things I was really looking forward to (my cousins' housewarming party, a movie with the girls, a dinner with friends). Friday night I came home from work with a lingering sore throat only to get something from our basement and find we had a leak near the main water pipes. Half an hour later that leak turned into an inch of water on our basement floor. Our plumber was able to get here within an hour ($$ later...) but couldn't fix the problem himself. We had to call the emergency drain fix-it men, who showed up at 9 pm. I was already feeling the effects of post-nasal drip, and all I wanted was to get in my flannel jams and crawl into bed. But Friday night turned into a riveting spectacle. First the drain guy (picture a bald 300 lb guy with a goatee, dripping sweat all over my house) attempted to snake our main line and got his coil stuck in the city sewer pipes. To finish snaking this line and get his line untangled takes until 10:15pm. We're still leaking, so I tell him (inbetween nose blowings) to try something more local, the pipes near the laundry. Paul has to knock down walls because apparently this guy "isn't allowed to," according to company policy. At this point we don't care what he does, just as long as I can go to bed and eventually be able to flush my toilet. After another extended period of time he calls a backup guy, they eventually find the problem behind a wall in our basement, and clear the pipe. Meanwhile, my own pipes were dripping out of control. I spent the entire weekend on the couch nursing my cold/flu. Although it was pretty miserable--especially to have to cancel so many fun plans--I did get to catch up on all my DVR'd shows (mostly Martha episodes) and drink a lot of yummy Tealuxe tea (red groats, yum!).

Freakonomics

This morning on the T ride to work I finished reading a pretty entertaining book--Freakonomics, by two guys named Levitt and Dubner, one an economist and one a journalist. I've been telling everyone I meet about this book. Heena and Alexander got an earful last night. So have my coworkers, many of whom have already read the book. Paul doesn't even need to read it because I think I spoiled the whole thing for him. Has anyone else read it? I recommend it. So it's basically a book with no unifying theme, about interesting social and economic topics from drug dealing to parenting. Of course, an economist (or a journalist, for that matter) often finds in the data what he wants to find, to come to the conclusion he always intended to... so I don't take all (or any) of his findings as fact, but the stuff is truly interesting and entertaining, and makes you think about things you never did before. Among my favorite topics were why crack dealers still live with their mothers if they're so rich, what makes the perfect parent, and baby-naming patterns. A must-read!

New York, New York

This weekend Paul and I went to New York City to celebrate my birthday (note the new haircut!). In our many years together we had never visited The Big Apple together--although he goes all the time for work and I go about once a year to visit friends. So this was a special trip. I took the train down Friday morning and met him there (he had to go for business Thursday). We stayed at The Pierre--a shi shi hotel on Fifth Ave right on Central Park. It was so luxurious! The picture above was taken at Canyon Road, a mexican restaurant where we had my first birthday dinner with a bunch of good friends: Laura, Katharine (above left), Lauren (above right), Hale, Jess, Ryan, and Emily.

Here we are at One if by Land, Two if by Sea, my second of two birthday dinners! This was a really cool place in Greenwich Village that used to be George Washington's headquarters in the 1700s. The food and atmosphere here were so nice. We had a nine-course tasting menu, and had everything from lobster to lamb to chocolate souffle, and even saw a couple get engaged. We left very very full....