hey mom ... look

it’s finally snowing

and pretty good too!

Husband home. A fire in the wood stove. Snow falling heavily outside. Life is good even if we didn’t get to carry out our plans to see the filming of CHOPPED. Hopefully we can reschedule for another day.

Thank you, weather gods!

About the weather forecast, I mean. The weatherman is crying wolf again. Or is he? Honestly, this is getting a bit old. They are using the “B” word for our weather tonight and tomorrow. Up to 11 inches of snow possible for us. Sure, sure. As if I believe them! Show me the snow; go ahead, I dare you.

How unfair though. Tomorrow was our day to go in to the city to watch CHOPPED being filmed. Doesn’t it just figure that we wait so long to get a really good storm and it has to do it on the one day we have something important planned? We can reschedule for another day, but still.

So we wait. But, I’m telling you—I won’t believe it until I see it.

but NOT HERE! We saw not one flake of the white stuff here in case you are all thinking we are as snowed in as southern NJ. No such luck. Just a grey and gloomy day. pooh.

I hope if you watch the SuperBowl tomorrow you will notice the Super Vision icon in the upper corner of the picture. This denotes the use of the Phantom cameras from the company Rick works for. They have nine cameras covering the footage tomorrow for anything in super slow motion.

Exciting stuff! Rick was actually interviewed on our local NJ12 news the other day. Even our beloved Sailor was used in a slow motion clip on television. Here is the link to watch but you need to turn up your sound really high to hear it:

http://gallery.me.com/bmtndog#100294/VRI_trimmed_compressed&bgcolor=black

An employee of VRI is on site in Miami and running a blog on her adventures with the cameras. If you want to follow along with Toni, go to this link:

http://focus.visionresearch.com/

Go Toni!

According to Phil we’re in for six more weeks of winter. That’s okay by me since what we’ve had so far hasn’t seemed like much of a winter. We’ve had plenty of cold and wind, but not much in the way of snow. All the storms are tracking south of us, allowing those folks in Dixie to have some snow for themselves. I’m not sure how many of them truly appreciate it. We continue to get “coatings” that don’t even warrant getting Johnny out of his cozy home under the deck. Phil, could you please manage to send us some good snow? Please?

When I went out behind the house over the weekend to see if any good ice had formed on the little stream I found something that makes me question Phil’s prediction. Take a look.

A lonely little skunk cabbage making its way up out of the ice! Could this mean spring is not far behind? Don’t be in such a hurry little swamp cabbage, I think we still have more winter coming our way. At least I hope so. Your turn will come soon enough.

Yesterday Rick and I had a planned dinner date in New York City. He goes in fairly often to meet with a business associate and inevitably ends up in the evening commuter rush which isn’t too much fun. We decided to take advantage of the fact that he needed to be in the city anyway, so why not have me go along and have dinner afterwards, thereby avoiding the rush? Works for me!

It was cold and blustery. (Don’t you just love that word? That’s what the weather guys called it: blustery. Really, they meant downright frigid with a nasty, biting wind!) I thought I would be warm enough with what I had on given that we weren’t planning on doing much walking. (We were taking the train in and cabbing it from place to place.) But I was freezing!

You would think that all those tall buildings would shield the wind from you. Oh, no quite contraire mon amie! Those buildings act like a giant wind funnel, collecting the wind and sending it straight down whatever street you happen to be walking down. Brrrrrrrr!

We arrived at our destination and the sign by the elevator said “Louie auditions, 7th floor.” I don’t know what “Louie” was but we rode up in the elevator with a few hopefuls clutching a piece of paper. We got off before them so I have no idea if the line looked like American Idol try-outs or not. Probably not, although one child looked like he had an instrument with him. I took a book and sat in the employee break room and read while Rick conducted his business. I wasn’t bored since being in the industry there were plenty of issues of Entertainment Weekly laying around. I grabbed the issue with Avatar featured on the front and pretty much read it front to back.

We arrived at our choice of restaurant, craft, right on time for our reservation. craft is one of Tom Colicchio’s restaurants. You know Tom—Mr. Top Chef host? We had eaten here once before but not in the main restaurant (in a private dining room) at a business function. We were considerably impressed with the food, so decided we should go back by ourselves. Here is a somewhat blurry shot taken from our table. I took only the baby camera with me and trying not to look like a tourist, did not use the flash.

Upscale and elegant, yet not stuffy in atmosphere. Food here is served “family style,” meaning your plates don’t arrive with your food on it, but in a serving dish placed on the table. Everyone can help themselves if you care to share. Which we did. We ordered two appetizers and shared them, and one main entree to share with two side vegetable dishes and a shared dessert. We had plenty to eat without feeling stuffed and with our “diet” in place it worked well. We want to keep the momentum going with our weight loss (so far I’ve lost 3 pounds; Rick has lost 10, but men always lose weight faster, don’t they?) so we are still watching our portions and what we eat. I can’t say we ordered the least caloric or fat content of any of the items on the menu though. Let’s just say I am a foie gras fanatic (I know! Not very PC, is it?) and their roasted foie gras was just to die for! Probably one of the best I’ve ever had, and I’ve had my fair share in its country of origin. It was a lovely dinner. And sadly, Tom did not make an appearance. Probably out filming the next Top Chef or visiting his restaurants in other parts of the country.

I snapped these photos in the Seacaucus train station on our way home as we had some time to kill to catch our NJ Transit connection. This sculpture is new since the last time I was through here.

Since Seacaucus is located in what they call the Meadowlands, this cattail sculpture is very fitting I think. To me the surrounding terrain looks more like marsh land than meadow land, but what the heck. Going in to Seacaucus from the North the train runs alongside a canal where herons can usually been seen looking for something to catch. A little further along, the land is marshy with lots of little tributaries winding around hummocks of grass, and more herons and water fowl.

The cattails changed color. Very soothing.

I happened to catch a fellow traveler in one of the mirrored bits of the fronds. See him? You can also see part of my coat and scarf in the bottom one.

The bottom of the sculputre was just how it should be, and kind of like I described the terrain above. A winding rivulet of water around the base of the cattails. A very cool sculputure.

Alas we missed the express train and it took forever (or at least it seemed like it) to arrive home. I was worried about the dogs a bit since they were alone for about eight hours straight at a time of day when they are not used to being left, but they did great. It’s probably not something we’ll do all that often, but we hope to take advantage of the city more than we have been. It’s still unreal to me to step off that train in front of Madison Square Garden and have the whole of New York City spread out before me. It’s a heady experience!

Addendum: I almost forgot! They gave us these delicious looking muffins as we left the restaurant for our breakfast. Of course, we forgot to eat them today!