what about the plastic animals?

Become Your Dream

From James De La Vega.

I got nothing else today.  Another post will show up Friday morning and then I'm off to Milwaukee for a week.

Corn

I stepped in to a Japanese market by Columbia yesterday afternoon and picked up this bottle of Korean corn tea.  It is made from "parched corn" and contains no calories or sugar.  I have yet to taste it.

How do you cook your corn-on-the-cob?  Many years ago I was invited to a colleague's house for dinner.  Before eating we all had to hold hands and say grace.  I'm not really a hand-holding, grace-saying sort of person, so I took this as a really bad sign (though, I should also say I don't put much truck in omens either).   I don't remember the rest of the meal but I do recall corn being served.

There are two kinds of people in this world.  Those that like their corn cooked through and through and those that like it heated up just enough to get the kernels hot.  I'm one of the latter.  Be forewarned, if I serve you corn it's going to be dropped in boiling water for a minute.  Two at the most.  The kernels need to burst with the essence of corn when bitten into.  That night at my co-worker's we had thoroughly cooked corn. 

It is interesting how tastes can differ.  Four of the five of us offered effusive praise of the corn.  I recall giving a value-neutral "I've not had corn like that before" assessment.

Fury III

It's not intentionally old car week here.  These pictures were gathering dust on the hard drive so I decided to put them up.  I believe this is a 1966 Plymouth Fury III wagon.

Lights in the Kalahari

There's lights on in the Kalahari!  And is that a TV I spy?  This is the north building.  The south building, where the wall peeled off a couple of months ago, has no nighttime lights.

1941 Oldsmobile

Now that is a beautiful car.  With Hydra-matic transmission.

Stormy Black and Red Sky

We had a high quality thunderstorm blow through town last night.  The camera caught an orangey-red sky whenever lightning flashed.  If these pictures don't appear very sharp it's because the auto focus doesn't work well at night.  Using manual focus has convinced me that it is time for bifocals.

Misleading Label

On a bike ride a couple of weeks ago I stopped at the charming looking Indian Road Cafe and Market in Inwood and bought this tea.  Indian Rd., by the way, is the only street called a road on Manhattan. 

The label on the bottle is misleading.  You have to read the fine print on the back to learn that the tea is sweetened.  Overly sweetened, I may add, by vile tasting honey.  Unlike my mother, who called honey "bee excrement" (she used a shorter word for excrement), I like honey.  I also enjoy a sweet tea on occasion.  This stuff was unpleasing to the palate.  I had a couple of gulps because the tea was cold but I stuck with the warm water in the water bottle for the rest of the ride. 

Today's fun link:  World's dumbest con artist.

Distortion

This was a big glass ball hanging in an art gallery.

For your amusement:  Cake Wrecks.

Carvel

Today we should have a spine-tingling story of passion, despair, redemption and the virtues of a cherry cola poured by a soda jerk.  We should.  Instead we get a story of me getting sweaty on my bicycle.

I volunteered to organize a photo walk of the South Bronx in a few weeks so I've been spending my Sunday mornings trying to piece the walk together.  Greg and I walked the route recently and it looks photogenic enough.  The last couple of rides I've made have been to fine tune a couple of sections.

Even though I left at 7:30 yesterday morning, and I was riding at a slow speed, it was so hot and humid that I was a big sweat ball within a matter of minutes.  After the reconnaissance mission was complete I got some exercise by riding speedily up Park Ave. to Fordham and back. 

Fire hydrants that have the sprayer attachments?  Very, very appreciated.
Fruit stands on Fordham Rd. that sell banana-papaya frosties?  Very, very appreciated.
Carvel on Webster Rd?  Having just finished the frosty I only stopped to take a picture.
More fire hydrants that have sprayer attachments?  Very, very appreciated.

I got home around 10:30.  Exhausted and drenched I take a cool shower.  Then it is up to Morningside Heights for breakfast and to get milk at the farmer's market.  My life would be much simpler if I bought milk at the grocery store downstairs, but the fresh milk from the Milk Thistle Dairy is so much tastier. 

The heat and humidity are oppressive as I walk slowly across town.  I pick up the Sunday paper.  Now for breakfast. 

Too late!  Tom's is packed with Seinfeld tourists.  I've never actually eaten there.  Oh well, I'll try Deluxe, which is not all that good.  I sit down at the counter and the sweat starts pouring off of me.  Buckets of it.  My shirt is totally drenched.  New York in the summer!

Thinking ahead as I type I realize there's no clever, or even satisfying, ending this the story so you might as well click on one of the links to the right and read another blog.

Anyway. For $6.75, which is actually cheap, I get burnt sausages, greasy, almost inedible home fries, four slices of bread that were waved at a toaster, and somewhere between four and six scrambled eggs.  I ordered two eggs but the eggs I received easily filled half a plate. 

Then I got a quart of lowfat and a pint of chocolate milk and went home.

Orange Fungus

I noticed this big, beautiful orange and yellow fungus growing out of a dead tree while on a walk one day.