Thursday, January 29, 2009

Winter

Cold morning, hot coffee, snow in the trees, Dinah Washington singing about how she doesn't hurt anymore. Winter is wearing out it's welcome, I'm ready for Spring.

We re-booked our trip to Florida (where I'm sure it's warm and sunny) for next week because the airline advised us of the possibility of cancelled and heavily delayed flights yesterday, and offered fee-free re-booking. Of course the storm that caused so many problems in other areas didn't do much at all here but snow and rain a little. 

Last Sunday evening was Lunar New-Year's eve, we went out for dinner with some people from Nam's Kung Fu class to a sichuan joint on St. Mark's Place in the village; it wasn't bad, but I miss the real thing. On Monday evening Tae came down from Hartford and we went out to Blue Ribbon for dinner. The three of us shared two appetizers, a whole grilled pompano, and a nice bottle of white wine from Trentino (I really love wines from the alto adige/trentino/oltreppo pavese region if you ever need to buy me a gift) after which we decided that we were still hungry, so we went next door for sushi (and sake). I love living in Brooklyn!

I'm not running much these days although I'm still eating like I'm in training, the results of which are not pretty! Anyway, in February I am planning on resuming a much stricter training regimen. I'll also be resuming my formal Mandarin Chinese classes at NYU in less than two weeks, so I'm reviewing all of my lessons and notes from my previous semesters and drilling flash-cards today. I've also been uploading video clips of various concerts that I've done to my youtube page. You can't see me too much in most of these unless you look closely, but I'm there. The quality of the video and audio is pretty varied. Some of them are board mixes and others are from handheld cameras in the audience. The clips from the Mohegan Sun are great because they're directly from the video feed for the big-screens in the arena. I'll be posting more in the near future. 


Thursday, January 22, 2009

Catching Up

Last weekend we drove up to Hartford to hear Nam's dad sing with the Silk City Chorus. I had to sneak this shot with my phone, so the resolution isn't that great. We hit some nasty weather on the way back but we made it home just fine. It's been really cold here all week but we're heading down to sunny Florida next week to visit my family and hopefully get a reprieve from the winter for a while.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

brrrrr....

Wow, it's really cold in NY. We're going up to Connecticut for the day to finally visit Nam's family. (xmas got axed 'cause we we both so sick). I'm feeling the need for warmer climes so I think a FLA trip is in the works as well. 


Saturday, January 10, 2009

a funny thing happened on the way to the garbage chute

i must have made 10 trips down to our storage space this afternoon. We bought a steel shelving unit for it so we could finally organize the second bedroom closet which has been full of boxes since we moved in. So around 7:15 I decide I'm done for the day but before I make myself a self-congratulatory drink for a good day's work, I decide to make one last trip to the garbage chute in the hallway to take out some remaining trash. I'm 3 feet from the door as i hear it close behind me. I instinctively reach down to make sure I have my keys with me. Guess what .... So now I'm at Loki (the corner bar) waiting for Nam to get back from an audition and rescue me. Oh well.... Could be a lot worse. :)

Certificate

This came in the mail just before we left for Stowe. I emailed it to most of you, but in case you didn't see it.....

Back Home

We were planning on driving back Friday afternoon so we could have another day on the mountain. However, Nam got a call on Thursday about being seen Friday afternoon for a major print-ad casting. We got up REALLY early Friday morning and drove back allowing an extra two hours for traffic. The drive was easy until we got to the last 5 miles of I95 in Connecticut. An accident had traffic backed up for miles so we tried to take a detour which wasn't so effective. My decision to take the cross-bronx to the Henry Hudson instead of taking the Tri-Borough (I guess they're calling it the RFK now) wasn't so good either. We wound up in midtown with exactly 3 minutes to spare! Later we went to Sushi Samba for lunch and had mojitos with our sushi. I took this shot of the Brooklyn bridge and lower Manhattan from the B train on the way home. 

Friday, January 9, 2009

Family

Met up with Amy and kids in Waterbury for lunch on Wednesday.

Powder!

Day one was mostly frozen granular and packed powder. Wednesday night a huge snowstorm dumped over a foot of powder on the mountains so we woke up to fantastic conditions Thursday morning.

Taking A Break

Nam in the Gondola

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

in the gondola

day 1 in the gondola going to the top of Mt. Mansfield.

Stowe

Our flight to Vermont was cancelled last night so we drove up here. Got in around midnight, just ahead of a snowstorm. Woke up to what looks like great conditions. We are very excited!

Monday, January 5, 2009

Forgive Me Readers

It's been more than a week since my last post. The show last weekend went well but the long hours of rehearsal, sound-check, more rehearsal and then the late show really knocked us out. The night we got home Nam started to get violently ill with a nasty stomach virus. I got it a few days later and we both spent the better part of last week resting and trying to recover. We're 100% better now and are looking forward to hitting the slopes in Vermont this week at Stowe. I'm going to try to take my phone with me at least once so I can try mobile blogging from the mountain.