The Samantha Files

First opera of the season!

NPR - The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck!

Tent City - Child’s Urban Adventure in the NYC Parks

Tent City - Child’s Urban Adventure in the New York City Parks - NYTimes.com.

Lately

Loving:

Ravelry

Knitting:

Brea Bag using 2 skeins of beautiful dark green Cascade 220

Buying:

Ling Glass stained glass pendants.  I just bought 3 GORGEOUS pendants (pictures to follow), and of course now I see more I must have.  :)

Boden clothes... Susann, I hold you responsible!  ;)

Eating:

The BEST granola ever, thanks to Melissa at the Traveler's Lunchbox.  Rush right home and make some!  I will admit I used less butter, and substituted 1 cup of rolled oats for 1 cup of nuts, but otherwise followed the recipe.  YUM! 

Kool Aid Pickles  Dave shuns them, but I'll get him to try one.  I'm going to have a tasting at work at the end of the week.  I'm a fan of the Tropical Punch pickles, and Susann favors the Lemonade. 

Green Tomato and Lemon Marmalade thanks to Melissa Clark and the NY Times (recipe after the jump).  Next time I'll add more lemons and lemon juice.

Watching:

Monarch of the Glen, season 1.  Note to self - do not read BBC site for fear of spoilers.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in Imax 3D!  Can't wait to see the last 2 movies on an Imax screen... AWESOME!

Mourning:

The cancellation of the Dresden Files.  Come on Sci-Fi, this show was amazing!!

Awaiting:

John Williams and the New York Philharmonic

Mets game on September 8th - Fleece Blanket Day!

2 weddings in October, one local (Theresa and Sean) and one in MA (Kerry and Mark)... yay!

Reading:

Harry Potter Book 1 (starting over after finishing Book 7)

Charmed Knits and looking for knit patterns from Phoenix (the twin's christmas scarves and Ginny's vest from the last scene)

The Flexitarian Table

What are you up to lately?

What I've Been Up to Lately

Boy oh boy, sometimes there is so much going on that while I really should be blogging, I let it slide.  Then where do I start?  Well, I figured I'd sum up with a nice little list in no particular order, just to recap.

• Going to baseball games this summer has been great... though I wish we started earlier in the season.  A few games at Shea, and a game at Fenway have given me a chance to work on my scorecard-keeping skills.  And of course I'm thrilled that the Mets clinched the division.  Subway series anyone? 
• Another relaxing trip to Cambridge, staying at the always fabulous Charles Hotel.  The weather was a little rainy, but we made the best of it.  And hey, the Fenway game wasn't rained out (thank goodness!).  We also met up with friends, had a great meal in Little Italy, and saw family.  And yes, as usual the trip threw us right back into the 'Why don't we live here' saga.  Sigh.  We love it there, without a doubt, and I know we would be very happy settling down there for awhile.  But we love NYC, and have many dear friends in the area.  I'll tell ya, being a grown-up is hard sometimes!
• Just this past weekend, a quick trip to Philly to see Dave's family, then spent Sunday afternoon getting my hair cut and having dinner with our friend Susann (hi Susann!) at Ditch Plains.
• I've been working on 3 knitting projects.  A flared capelet from Wrap Style in chocolate brown Cotton Fleece.  A cropped long-sleeved cardigan (based on the Anthropologie-inspired capelet from Crafster) in blue Cotton Fleece.  And finally, a vertical striped scarf using 3 shades of green Classic Elite wool bamboo.  UPDATE: I started this post a few days ago and now I have 3 more projects!  I'm halfway through Sugar on Snow with KnitPicks Merino in similar colors to the original pattern.  And I just bought the pattern for Arianna (amazing, right?) and am going to knit that with KnitPicks Shine Worsted in Ebony.  Plus, I bought some KnitPicks Swish Superwash in Truffle to make a Ribbi Cardi.

More to come later, I should post this now before I start another 4 million knitting projects!

Scenes of Summer: Shea revisited

Scenes of Summer - My first game at Shea

Checking out the Shack

Brilliant  - Shake Shack Camera.  Of course, this doesn't reduce the line, but it is informative.  The line is reasonable now, just wish I could get there in less than 45 minutes!

Weekend Roundup

Hello everyone,

Besides being rainy here in the NYC area over the weekend, I had a great, relaxing and productive weekend.  Yup, great, relaxing and productive - wow!  That's a tall order to fill. 

Friday night Dave and I worked a little late, then threw together some fettuccine alfredo with zucchini and spinach for dinner (Thanks Trader Joe's!).

Saturday morning we had planned a quick trip to Costco for plastic wrap, paper towels, and a few other items.  We're really not big fans of weekend errands, preferring to spend our time in NYC relaxing.  But no more big roll of plastic wrap called for desperate measures.  It took awhile to drive to Costco, then we needed to find a parking spot.  We were both still resigned to this trip.  But once we got in the elevator to go upstairs, we discovered the elevator was broken and we figured "Well, that's a sign, no Costco for us!".  We also skipped picking up the dry cleaning, driving straight to NYC.  Ahhh, much better.

Looking for a little snack, we decided to try Olives at the W in Union Square.  Olives is part of the Todd English family of restaurants, predominately located in the Boston area.  Now, we love his pizza places, Figs (try the spinach salad with warm bacon, parmesan and lemon dressing... mmmmmm).  Olives in Boston was a bit of a let-down, some of the food was exceptional and some was just ordinary.  The open kitchen was pretty loud, and we ended up smelling like grease when we left.  That's never a good thing.  But we figured we might as well try the Olives in NY.... what's there to lose?

We ordered drinks (mine was tasty - watermelon juice, muddled limes and light rum), a classic flatbread with tomato sauce and fresh mozzarella, and arancini (crispy risotto balls stuffed with cheese, served over roasted tomato sauce).  Both the flatbread and the arancini were ok, lacking a bit in the flavor department but the flatbread did have an amazingly tender crust.  Check totaled $50 for 2 drinks and the 2 snacks, a little high.  We could have gone to pie though, and paid alot less for much better pizza.  Live and learn.  At least the scene at the W didn't disappoint.

While we were at the W, I got a call from a good friend who wanted to meet for drinks at the Ritz Battery Park then dinner at Porto Bello on Thompson.  Sign me up!  Dave and I decided to catch a movie first, so we saw 'Thank You for Smoking'.... which I highly recommend.

Drinks and dinner was fun.  Good company and good food.  After dinner, we walked over to Cones where Dave and I had corn gelato.  Yup, you read that right, corn!  The sign said it's Brazil's favorite flavor... who knew.  The taste was just like vanilla ice cream blended with a can of Green Giant niblets corn.  Without a doubt the best flavor I've ever gotten from there.  Growing up, my mom would make pancakes with niblets, served with maple syrup, so this corn gelato was pure comfort food.  My friend C also got dark chocolate and white chocolate gelato, and I suffered through a few tastes.  :)

Sunday Dave and I went futon shopping, and we think we found a new one.  Yay!  Just in time to throw the old futons into the dumpster we're renting at the end of the week (we've been sleeping on three futons, just like the princess and the pea).  Then we drove to Ikea to check out bed frames, and to pick up some lamps and picture frames.  Dave made dinner, roasted fingerling potatoes with feta and sauteed swish chard and kale, and we watched Entourage.

All in all a great weekend.  Hope you all had a nice weekend as well! 

Oh, and the picture?  That's T-Bone, my friend Susann bought him at Renegade.  You can find him and his friends hanging with Mr. Pickles.

Renegade Craft Fair