Ginny's

 A night out with friends at Ginny's....

Escape from the hustle of the city outside and find yourself downstairs in Red Rooster’s best kept secret, Ginny’s Supper Club. Our classic Harlem speakeasy vibe lends itself perfectly to creating memorable days and nights of celebration featuring the legendary music of Harlem and Chef Marcus Samuelsson’s world renowned cuisine.


A bit of a delay in seating us but a restorative champagne did the trick and despite some bad sound mixing we managed to enjoy ourselves.

Bastille Day

Maria invited us to her apartment for dinner for Bastille Day. It was a hot, hot day and our air con was not working so it was good to be in a place with air conditioning.

Everyone contributed something to the meal, pate and cheeses, and wine and little tarts from the patisserie on Fredrick Douglass Boulevard. Maria cooked rack of lamb :).

It was lovely to have a couple of different faces including Kathy and Vassoula.

Thank you Maria for a lovely evening

Holidays...

...this is what they are all about. Leisurely start to the day...coffee...TV and reading, reading, reading.
Absolutely loved this book!

Celebrating Independence Day

 A trip to Greenwood Lake and Ross and Alina's place.
Meeting up with new friends...

 Last time when Alina introduced us to Leslie she described her as "almost on of her best friends"...a joke we continued to refer to again today :).

Michael her husband is English/Australian /US green card holder :) and a great friend of Ross's. Lovely to listen to their stories of their antics teaching in Queensland.

Neighbors called in for the BBQ

 ...and other consultants stayed the weekend.

This beauty has a nest somewhere nearby (in the green tree said Michael) and kept visiting often.

Just a bit excited...

She is determined to ride that lovely new bike with a bottle of wine and a bread stick in the bike basket. Oooh la la!

Memorial Day BBQ

Michael- a friend os Ross's and Sue

Sue drove the gang of us to Greenwood Lake for Ross and Alina's BBQ.
We stopping on the way at a little town and had a coffee and look around the market.

Ross was very happy doing the BBQ and sharing the lovely holiday home that he and Alina have created.

Moving day

 The international packers came in and packed up all the things to go to Australia. Packed them in cardboard.
They then packed all the stuff for Harlem in soft packing and plastic.

Left the place clean and tidy- all these odds and sods gone. Only need to go back for the cable devices.

The household goods and food things for the kitchen and living area soon to be unpacked.

Packing

It's time to move out of the Ritz Plaza. The rents are ridiculous!
Having the movers coming to pack and ship to Australia and Harlem but some stuff seemed a little too tricky to do so I booked Franklin to take some more of the  awkward stuff to pack- the fridge and the freezer and the lamp.

There was still lots for the packers to move.

White

 Such a story to tell from this we saw, fawned over, laughed with and thoroughly enjoyed the talent and humour of Tim Minchin when he innocently went to Marie's Crisis the same night we did. A strange night in all especially how and why Barb has a flower behind her ear.
Tim said we're just like his aunties so I have adopted him as my nephew...:)

The flower survived through to the next day

What represents me...

These snowdomes are all musical snowdomes they play some piece that has significance and connection to the locale they are from. The White House one plays Hail to the Chief, the Broadway one plays There's no people like show people- the tune played by the Actor's Chapel bells... the New York one plays- New York New York.
The keys on the dish have my current apartment keys and the keys to the Harlem apartment so I've managed to capture something about me in terms of travel, theatre and living here.

Magenta

 Heading up Central Park West and there I spotted today's prompt- the blossom is close enough to magenta for me to do a drive by photo and then relax into capturing other parts of the day....
The new apartment living room

The new view from the new apartment

Our new street Manhattan Avenue

Some of the sights in the new neighborhood

S

Then a trip up the Hudson for some lunch and a lovely way to spend a sunny Sunday

Blazing....

... sunshine is what I expected but wasn't expecting wind and more wind. 

I guess I could start a travel blog giving reviews of locales and places to stay...ups and downs but it is so much more fun just to tell it how it is when one gets to a place and finds things that one hadn't expected. 

The journey started early this morning... like 5am and now I am relaxing in Fort Lauderdale in anticipation of a three day Art Fest with the gloriously talented Dina Wakley and Dyan Reavley.

Trying to keep the costs down has meant getting accommodation for the night before the days begin in order to maximize the experience and arrive on time for the 10:45am start. Accessing accommodation that I can afford, in this case I'm using points. Nice! So is it "biting the hand that feeds one" or something like that, to be critical?

 I kinda expected a hotel called "a beach resort and suites" to be on/next to the beach...it is over the road, a road that is having major road works done to it... at least the road crew is further down the road but the dust isn't...over the road from a number of high rise apartments... the high rise apartments are on the beach front ...

At the beach..there were two dudes dominating the beach one driving an enormous sand moving vehicle and the other in a ride on mower shaped and sized vehicle, racing each other up and down the beach under the pretense of beach beautification! But the coconut shrimp at the Tiki Bar were good.

Daily scene

 ...at last...a coffee shop right in our building's footprint...and it has espresso and latte...and great cookies and cake and on my second visit (it's only been open three days) they welcomed me back. At last my daily scene includes an Italian coffee shop with the most wonderful coffee and charmingly accented staff :)

Another aspect of my daily scene is the trip to work involving multiple subway rides and thousands of commuters many of whom are asleep (despite recent police warnings) and this is at 7am.

Another daily view is out through the subway doorways at a variety of stops :)

Te goal of the travel is to arrive in classrooms and work with kids and teachers.

Dappled?

Well finding a shot that enabled a dappled effect was not going to happen.

Dappled light is produced when sunlight is filtered through the leaves of trees. The dapples result not because tree leaves have
elliptical holes in them but rather because the leaves combine to make many tiny pinhole cameras, which then produce multiple images of the sun's surface on nearby projection surfaces. Thus each dapple is an image of the surface of the sun. If there is a large sunspot on the surface on the sun, that spot will appear within each dapple.

A little research later and given I was inside during a major blizzard finding or creating this kind of effect was impossible...

So just kick back and savour the moments and the fact that I am in the warm and dry... I have plenty of craft tasks and plenty of preparation for work..lots of food and water...time throughout the day to capture the amazing effects of snow.

 I ventured down as far as the revolving door to get a couple of photos... venturing out is only going to happen tomorrow.

The gang got together

Friday nights in our early days in NYC gave Tiina, Sue and I the chance to "debrief"after a week in schools in a place far from Victoria Australia. We'd travel from our different parts of the city Tiina the Upper Eastside, Sue Midtown and me Bay Ridge Brooklyn. We'd try out different places and be absolutely exhausted. Some things don't change- we were still exhausted but the places we used to go have either closed or changed to some other restaurant/bar. 





On Friday night we got together at a new place that Bernadette found for us- Bathtub Gin 

We had a fabulous time and went on to have dinner elsewhere. So that was Friday night done and dusted.










Saturday lunch was spent helping Sheena celebrate her birthday at Stella 34 a restaurant in Macys. Good food, good company and a great view.

Then off to the theatre to see a fantastic piece of theatre.

Wow the staging as well as the acting was brilliant

She's b-a-a-a-ck

Tiina arrived Wednesday night after the Kitchen Tablers had left. Sue and i sat and chatted and waited and finally the front desk buzzed 16P and "Miss Tiina is here!"
And indeed she is. Just like old times.
Tiina, Sue and I arrived in NYC at the same time to be consultants with AUSSIE. We had such great times together, Friday night catch ups- me coming from Bay Ridge- the other end of the R line- Tiina from the Upper Eastside and Sue from Midtown.
Now it is time for us to catch up and enjoy each others' company and this wonderful city. Yee Ha!

A cold month

February was a cold month with snow stories happening.
I wish I had taken this first photo but no I found it via facebook however it is glorious- and horror of horrors i know not who to credit it to ... just not me.

During the storms in February I could watch the snow accumulate on things around me.

I was lucky to escape the cold and the snow a few times thanks to working in the USVI.

I always request a window seat, not necessarily for the views because going to the USVI you get a lot of views of the sea, but because I'd rather climb over people than be climbed over.

Coming back into Newark I was able to get some shot of the snow still around after a week.

The cold weather ensured that that was happening

Then my tank views remain quintessential NYC.