what about the plastic animals?

Serious

When it came time for school pictures I was a serious, if dirty-faced, child.

Blue Sky

The sky turned a lovely shade of blue this afternoon.  If you stare too long you'll see an X in the middle of the photo.  It's some sort of lens flare.

Crossing 116th Street at Broadway this evening I saw this guy.  A couple of years ago he won a prize for his glow-in-the-dark nematodes.  The weird thing is that at the same intersection several years ago I saw this lady, who won a similar prize, but for writing.

The Vema Eagle

The figurehead of the Vema dominates the entrance to our building at work.  The Vema was christened the Hussar in 1923.  It was E. F. Hutton's schooner, complete with gold faucets.  The ship changed hands a couple of times before coming into the possession of Columbia in the early 1950s.  The Vema was the first research vessel to sail for over a million miles.  Cores of the ocean floor gathered by scientists aboard the Vema were instrumental in detecting the mid-ocean ridge system, confirming sea floor spreading, and thus the theory of plate tectonics.  One or two of my plastic animals is resting, out of reach, on top of the eagle.

A Dinner Story

This picture doesn't have anything to do with the story below.  Consider yourself lucky.

I had dinner this evening at Lolita's, an excellent Mexican restaurant that's just a couple of blocks away from my apartment.  For a few minutes I was the only person in the dining room, which was odd because Lolita's is a good place to eat.

After a while two women came in and were seated not that far from me.  I was busy eating a salad and reading the paper but I looked up to see that one of the women had taken off her shoes and was alternately rubbing her feet and enjoying the tasty chips and salsa with, it goes without saying, the same hand that was rubbing the foot.

Now, four inches of rain cleansed the city's sidewalks this weekend but the idea of touching food with a hand that had just been rubbing a foot, that was inside a shoe that's just walked who-knows-how-many wet blocks of Harlem, didn't seem too sanitary.  I return to my salad and eventually start on the enchiladas poblanas. 

A few minutes later the entrees arrive for my toe-rubbing neighbor.  She has ordered enchiladas suizas, with a layer of stringy Swiss cheese on top.  How do you eat stringy, melted, Swiss cheese in a restaurant?  The toe-rubbing lady slices a chunk of enchilada, lifts it her fork and proceeds to wrap the Swiss cheese strings around her fork using the hand that had been rubbing her toes.  Bite after bite after bite.

And that's the story of tonight's dining experience.

Paint it Black

Why, in this time of fiscal restraint, is the city painting its traffic poles black?

Neighborhood Map

This map recently appeared on 117th Street.  It will come in handy should I ever get lost on the way home.

Be Prepared to See More Than You Expect

Beginning in his teens Laurence Gieringer began constructing a model village.  Over the next 60 years Gieringer built houses, barns, churches, stores, gradually adding streets, railroads, bridges, a coal mine and much more to his village.  In all there are 400 buildings in the 6000 square-foot Roadside America.  Dora Gieringer, Laurence's wife, hand made 10,000 trees and shrubs, including a garden of corn stalks.

Mr. Gieringer died in the early 1960s but Roadside America lives on almost unchanged (you can see new model cars in front of the church!).  The display is interactive!  You can operate the trains, twirl couples in a Saturday night barn dance, run a steam roller and much, much more.  Every half-hour the sun sets and a not-to-be-missed patriotic and religious slideshow begins, complete with Kate Smith singing "God Bless America".

Roadside America is located in Shartlesville, Pennsylvania, just off I-78.  If you look left and see the giant Amish couple you've gone too far.  Take the next exit and go back, as it is one of the most amazing sights you'll ever see.

Voted Best In Harrisburg

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that Harrisburg isn't a big pizza eatin' kind of town.

A Cup of Revelations

Impaled on a fence in the West Village.  The handwriting is immaculate.

Best Yet Grand Opening

There's a new grocery store in the neighborhood.  The Best Yet Market opened a few weeks ago and they are having a grand opening sale starting tomorrow.  My walk home in the evening sometimes takes me past the store so I've already shopped there several times.

They have a small, but good, selection of fresh breads.  Prepared foods are a work in progress.  Produce selection is limited but mostly good.  There's lots of meats and a very long frozen food section but I rarely buy either.  The cheese section was disappointing.  The bakery is open in the morning.  I don't recommend the overly sweet bagels but the apple danish I had was tasty.  Prices seem reasonable. 

Overall "Best Yet" is a misnomer, but the store is far better than the nearby C-Town and is a more pleasant place to shop than Fine Fare.