Irene visits NYC

Well, that was exciting. Some of you may have noticed that we had a small weather event run through NYC recently. ;)



I first heard about it on Tuesday when my sailor called and said "Make plans to go to your parents house this weekend." We watched the news as it became more and more likely that NYC was going to really get a whallop, and I did end up clearing out, which was good because my neighborhood ended up with an evacuation order. I brought along my friend who lives in Hoboken - the same friend who sewed her wedding dress last October - and we had a fun weekend in the rain that was like an extended camping trip at times.

Let's see- I baked up chocolate chip cookies for the guys on my sailor's ship and dropped them off at 6 AM on Saturday AM. I hear they were gone before the ship even pulled away from the pier, so next hurricane I'll bake a double batch, I guess. ;)

Then we put my fish into a ziploc bag, packed some snacks and bottled water, drove out to northern NJ. My dad has decided that my fish's name is Anchovy (it's really Horatio, but that's my dad for you!), so the weekend became "Operation Anchovy Extraction" as in "operation rescue the fish from the huge storm!!"

Here's my dad checking on his sailboat before the storm starts:


We lost power early on, and a dam near by broke. And so here I am checking on the sailboat in the rain to make sure the lines are secure:



The lowlight of Operation Anchovy Extraction may have been the 5 AM run to get more ice to put into the fridge and freezer. Nothing like loading massive bags of ice into the back of your subaru in the rain at the crack of dawn. At least the place we got ice from had hot coffee! Our coffee making method this weekend was pretty convoluted: Send someone out into the rain to turn on the gas grill. Fill camping pot up with water, put pot on grill. Ready french press. When we thought the water might be boiling, send someone outside to check. Commiserate when the water wasn't quite there yet. Check in a few minutes. Boiling! Carefully carry water inside and pour into french press. Drink coffee and listen to the radio some more.

The sailor is back on dry land and busy grumping that it was just a large rain storm, to which I've been countering that anything that prevents me from taking a shower for two days is more than just a large storm! I hope you all had a safe & dry weekend!

weddings, earthquakes, and other stuff

I did not finish a dress to wear to my cousin's wedding. Instead I wore a Tahari dress and took a bunch of pictures of family. Can you believe this is only a few of my cousins? We were joking all weekend about how crazy huge our family is.



My parents also celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary the night before my cousin's wedding. Happy Anniversary, mom & dad!



So, did all you East Coasters feel the earthquake this afternoon? I was sitting in our company's cafeteria, eating a late lunch, when I felt the floor and the big wooden table I was at start shaking, and I KNEW what it was. Honestly, it really freaked me out. I was on the 9th floor of a very old brick building in Seattle in the 2001 Nisqually quake (6.9, baby!), and saw the building get trashed around me - broken pipes, air conditioning ducts ripped out of their mounts, collapsed shelves, broken glass, all that fun stuff. My mom called this evening and asked if I had felt the quake, and then asked if I was OK. I had to tell her that I really had hoped to never experience another quake again in my life. This one was pretty tame, though, other than the crazy surge of "oh no not again" it produced in me. ;) In fact, after our building was evacuated, I may have sounded like one of the jaded West Coasters in this NYT article.

shack attack!

The sailor and I headed over to the World Financial Center Shake Shack last night, since he's leaving Monday morning for work & will be gone most of the rest of the month. Nothing to send you on your way like an awesome shack burger, so off we went. We're very lucky, it's just 2 blocks and a ferry ride away from our apartment. The Madison Park location often has 2 hour long lines for burgers, but since the WFC one is newer and still hidden under some construction scaffolding the lines are usually not long at all. They're famous for super tasty cheeseburgers and REALLY good milkshakes and ice cream.

It was PACKED when we got there, since I guess word is getting out about the new location, but we managed to find a small table and had just sat down when Elizabeth, of Sewn Blog walked by! OK, is NYC not the greatest sewing town or what? You go out for a burger and bump into fellow sewing bloggers out doing the same thing. ;)

We ended up eating shack burgers and fries together and subjecting the sailor to talk about Jonathan Embroidery's button hole sewing hours and how lazy we have been on the sewing front. I may have challenged myself to start sewing a dress on Monday to wear to an upcoming wedding at the end of the month!

This morning I was up early so I started sewing up a little quilt for one of the nieces:





Just a small attempt to get ahead of the "OMG I have three quilts to finish on Christmas Eve" sewing rush that happened this past December.

And finally, here's the full moon rising over NYC when we got home:



The city can be so pretty sometimes.

summer

Bonjour blogging world!

What has everyone been up to? Are you all sad that it's August & summer is almost done? I'm not particularly looking forward to chilly weather that's just around the corner.

I'm sad to report that I still haven't done any sewing lately. All the fancy hand sewing for my dress must have burned me out far more than I wanted to admit.

The dust needs to be blown off my sewing machine soon, though, because I have Halloween costume requests from the nieces (Kate would like to be a ninja and Ana would like to be Tinkerbell), a cousin's wedding coming up that I'd like to make a dress for, and in October we have a formal USCG dinner coming up. The sailor will be in his super fancy uniform with a bowtie, so I think that occasion calls for sewing up a Little Black Dress. With that in mind, I've been looking through the new Vogue patterns.

The dress version of V 8755 looks kind of interesting - the lines are kind of neat, and I could see it made up in a black silk faille.



What have I been up to in the last month? LOTS of work. Late summer is the start of our Christmas season gear-up. And we re-did our bedroom, by which I mean we have LAMPS in there that are not $10 halogen torchieres from Target and we no longer sleep on a mattress on the floor! Yeah, we're in our 30s and we were living like college kids. ;) I've been reading a ton, too. The book I'm in the middle of at the moment is How Italian Food Conquered the World. I'm really enjoying it, and as a nice touch it has recipes at the end of every chapter. Mmmm yum.





Would you like another wedding picture or is that too much? This is our favorite, and now hangs in our living room.