Tuesday

Does anyone else think of Berger every time you see a playing card on the sidewalk?

You know a la-

Berger: I collect found playing cards. They're all over the city.
Carrie: I never noticed.
Berger: You will now, that's the thing..... I'm hoping to get a full deck. Insert the obvious joke here.

Spotted Tuesday

Midtown was all about transformation this week.  Tuesday I took a walk to get my lunch and found sand volleyball in Times Square.

Thanks Jose Cuervo

Why are the ladies always wearing so much less clothing?

I continued walking over to Bryant Park and spied EA sports people turning the lawn into a football field, complete with yard marks and painted end zones.  Apparently to celebrate the release of the next Madden video game they had celebrities and famous retired NFL players play flag football there today.  Sadly I wasn't invited to play and had to work during the festivities.

They even brought in bleachers!

Then Tuesday night I headed up to Riverbank state park for a softball game.  The skies were clear when I boarded the 1 train in times square, but when I arrived at the park I saw this:

What is Jersey sending us?

Pair that with some lightening and needless to say our game was cancelled.  We barely made it to the subway when the skies opened up.

Williamsburg by bus and ferry

My sister came to visit and one of the many fun & fabulous things we did was explore Williamsburg.  We jumped on the bus and headed across the Pulaski bridge.  We got off in Greenpoint to hit up the Fred Flare store, only to find it was closed and moving to a new location.

So we started to walk towards Williamsburg.  I had heard about the Peter Pan shop and always wanted to stop in, so I decided we needed a snack.  We shared a donut of some sort, it was delicious.

Donuts

Yummm

Once we made it to Williamsburg we shopped in the many boutiques along Bedford Avenue.  Until we were starving.  I was in the mood for Mexican so we looked up a place on our phones, Carino Restaurant and Cantina.  It turned out to be quite a walk away, but very good.

Sights along our walk

The great thing about walking all the way to south Williamsburg was we were near one of the stops on the new East River Ferry.  So we decided to take the Ferry back to LIC.

East River

The Ferry

Domino Sugar

Empire State Building

Approaching LIC

Once we arrived back to LIC we stopped in Gantry State Park for some piano playing and hanging out in hammocks.

Chilling in Gantry State Park

38th Street

While finding some of the simplest things in NYC can be difficult, I love that you can find extremely specialized (and colorful) shops.

SPANDEX

Zippers

National Ice Cream Day!

Today is National Ice Cream Day, which is part of National Ice Cream Month.  I like my ice cream, but for some reason didn't get any while I was out today.  I couldn't not celebrate so I went to my freezer to see what I had.  Luckily I had the last bit of some tahitian vanilla bean ice cream and broke a few cookies on top.  I just finished and am thrilled that I got to celebrate.  I found this article on ice cream factory tours.  I've been to both the ben & jerry's plant in Vermont and the Blue Bell plant in Texas, looks like I have a few more stops to make.

yummmy

I also enjoyed this seltzer and cranberry juice today after playing soccer on one of the hottest days in the hottest part of the day on some of the hottest turf (I thought my shoes were melting).  Don't things taste better in jars?  I think so.

Who wore it better?

Who wore it better? Post #1 was a huge success and friend of the blog (ok sister of the blog) sent me the following text yesterday:

"I saw this in mom's real simple magazine." With a picture of this lady from the July 2011 Issue of Real Simple magazine -

She remembered seeing me wear the $18 H&M dress to our fabulous brunch - 

So who wore it best?

Fishing

We did a lot of fishing.  Well I only fished one day, but the boys fished everyday and even fit in a twilight session.  I like the catching part, but I'm not much for taking them off the hook or cleaning them... just not my thing.  

Some action shots-

Dan with his 4th

my little cousin Nathan just wanted to hug the fish

I got one

my sister Beth held hers

a little perch for my aunt

Baby Wesley Shower

I have another baby cousin on the way.  So we decided while we were all together for the reunion we would throw a baby shower!

cheese ball prep

fruit salad prep

apple basket arranging

all ready

the grandma and great aunts with the beautifully prepared table

me serving watermelon punch to the mom to be

opening gifts

We also played a thrilling game of "name the title and artist of songs with baby in the title from a few lines of lyrics"  I came in thirdish.  I really let Beyonce down with missing "Baby boy" but knew "Ice Ice baby" right off the bat.

Unhappy 7-Eleven on 7/11/11

Today is the 11th of July or 7-11 the convenience store 7-Eleven's unofficial birthday.  The day of free Slurpees!  I looked for a 7-11 near work, but figured they would all be super crowded so I decided to walk to the one kind of near me.  I say kind of because its a mile away.  So I walk a mile in 87 degree muggy heat dreaming of a cherry slurpee.  I get close and see people walking out holding the coveted beverage in their hands.  But as I approach the machines I see with horror that "this store is not participating in free slurpee give away".  What!!!  What did I do?  Did I pay the $2.50 and get one anyway.  No!  I have rules.  Actually I was going to get one as I was hot and sweaty and needed power to walk back home, but the good flavors weren't ready so that gave me the strength to walk back without one.

no!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The walk was worth it as I spotted this tape sign advertising for hipster speed dating on July 16th!  hahhahhaha.... not going, but intrigued

"Hipster Speed Dating"

UPDATE:  If you want to cash in tonight you can find participating locations here.  And if you are curious about the economic impact of a free slurpee read here.

Digging for Union Gold

My dad recently bought a new piece of land with an exciting history.  The road we live on has been a road forever (like the native americans used it (wasn't paved then)).  So the story goes that during the civil war the union payroll was traveling through the area when word of an attack reached the soldiers.  To protect the payroll they buried it, but never returned to retrieve the gold.  Over the past 6 months we've been plotting the retrieval of gold.  Some stories mentioned an orchard so we started near the house.

We rented a metal detector for the day and had all the right tools (including the back hoe).

digging around the house

the backhoe at work

We did make some finds, but no gold.  What did we find?

Enamel bowl (most likely part of a union soldier's mess kit)

Pieces of two large enamel bowls

bottom of a kettle

square nails

branding iron with initials "MP" (military police??? haha)

some of our more fascinating finds

"MP"

Who wore it better?

I bought a fun summer dress to wear while in Texas... soon after I saw the same dress all over the place.  This never happens to me, well I sometimes see my fashion choices on coworkers, but never on famous people.  Let's also note that I bought this dress on sale.  So who wore it best?

If you've seen the previews for Zooey Deschanel's new show then you've seen her in this dress.

 I came across Taylor Swift wearing this dress in my July Glamour magazine.

Unfortunately this is the only picture I could find of me wearing the dress, after a long, hot, fun night.

Baby Smiles

While I was home I got to spend some quality time with my niece Gretchen.  And you know what?  She is really good at smiling.

Chilhowee High School 10 year class reunion

What does a class reunion look like when you only had 16 people in your class?  Well you don't need a ballroom in a hotel and you don't need name tags.  We had our reunion at a nice patio bar in a town 16 miles from where we went to school.  We also invited some other classes to create a party.

class of 2001

class of 2001, 2000, and 1999

Cornfields

Some of the views along BB Hwy