Instructional Video

For some insight into life in New York in a quick, convenient package, I can't recommend this video (which I had no part in making) enough; it really captures New Yorkers' borough snobbery, media snobbery, celebrity snobbery, eatery snobbery, and general love of airing snobbish opinions with total conviction:

I love this city.

Into the Wild Blue Yonder

In anticipation of the upcoming three-day weekend, I told Ed we should plan to do something fun. I suggested wine tasting on Long Island or perhaps a day hike somewhere. The next thing I knew, he had booked us two tickets to Vegas and suggested that our activities there include a skydiving trip. Without really thinking, I replied that I'd always wanted to go skydiving. I had, but I'd filed it away in the "someday" category, meaning that I sort of thought it might be fun but hadn't thought much about it. To my delight and horror, Ed took my response as a resounding "yes" and booked us spots on a Sunday morning skydiving trip in the desert outside Vegas. It all happened terrifyingly quickly. I learned, though, that with some things it's best not to have too much time to think.

A van picked us up at the MGM Grand, along with a British guy and two Brazilians, at 10:00 on Sunday morning, and we were off. Our driver put on a video for us to watch during the drive, which gave us very dire warnings about all the ways we could possibly be horribly maimed or killed, then assured us we were going to have a great time anyway. We watched as we copied our initials over and over again at the end of each paragraph of a ridiculously lengthy waiver. Ed grinned at me. "I usually read this stuff really carefully, but I figure that if anything goes wrong I'll be dead anyway and so it won't matter whether I want to sue," he said cheerfully.

Once at the facility next to a tiny airport, we donned jumpsuits and harnesses and were given a one-minute tutorial on what to do by our instructors. (Brian: Cross your arms and bend your knees under the plane when we jump out, when I tap your shoulder, hold your arms out, put your feet up as we land. Questions? No? Good.) Brian was taking another guy up before me, so Ed and I settled on a couch to wait. A TV played a continuous series of parachuting videos, and after watching 15 or 20 of them, it started to look like jumping out of a plane was a pretty normal thing to do. Brian and the rest of the crew returned about half an hour later, everyone looking wind-blown and the customers looking elated. Brian gave a concerned tug at my harness, which was so loose that it kept sliding off my shoulders. "Too bad," he said. "We use a one-size-fits-all harness, so I guess it's going to have to work. I'm just glad mine fits better than that." And he wandered off to collect another chute, leaving me to look bleak while everyone else laughed.

Too soon, he called my name and I joined Ed and the Brazilians in what felt like a death march to the tiny plane. I sat between Brian's knees on the floor at the back, while he alternately made small talk to help me relax and terrifying jokes. When I asked if we were going first, he said, "Yup. See, I'm still kind of new to this, so I have to be supervised at all times." Then, in answer to my silence, "No, just kidding, I have more jumps than everyone in this plane put together, but I'm the lead jumper so I have to figure out where we need to jump out." This was somewhat comforting. To our right was a row of windows, and to the left was a door that slid upwards, much like a garage door, made of some kind of clear plastic. "Does it make you nervous being so close to the door?" Brian wanted to know. "Nope," I said, clinging to the bench next to me. "Good. What about if I do this?" He reached down and yanked the door upward, so there was nothing between us and the sky but air. I said that it didn't really, but the thought that we were about to jump out of it was a little unnerving. He laughed. "We're really high," I observed tentatively. "Yeah, we're about halfway there," he replied. Gulp.

Too soon again, we reached 15,000 feet, and Brian handed me my goggles, tightened my harness to a reassuring strangle-hold, and clipped me to his harness with two clips at the shoulder and two at the hip. Then the door opened, he scooted us forward, and I barely had time to mutter a string of expletives and hear Ed scream "Yeah Beth!" before we were out, free falling. In the video, Brian counts to three before we jump. I don't remember this.

I totally know how this dog feels.

It's hard to say which thought entered my head first. I was thinking that I had really gone through with it and that I had screamed, but not too much (and so maybe I wouldn't look like a total idiot on the camera) and that it was COLD and quite uncomfortable. The wind was absolutely blasting my face, and if I opened my mouth my cheeks filled with air. Ed, a veteran jumper with one successful plummet under his belt, told me that it didn't feel much like falling after the first few seconds. It did to me, not so much because of the physical sensation but because I could see the landscape approaching. Then there was a sudden, upward yank - not too hard but very steady and somehow reassuring. I thought, that must be the parachute opening, and then I realized that the scary part was really over. I looked up and sure enough, the chute had worked and now all that was left was to float to the bottom.

Not so, thankfully. Brian handed me two cords and told me to yank one as hard as I could, and suddenly we were spinning in a tight, fast circle. It was a fantastic feeling, and after a moment he told me to yank on the left cord, which sent us in the other direction. I commented that the whole thing had happened really fast, and he said that they do it that way on purpose so that people don't have time to think, which tends to make them scared. Good technique (although you can hear the Brazilian in Ed's video screaming a blue streak before he jumps, anyway. He was way wussier than I was). Then he pointed out California and I watched the cars on the nearby highway, the mountains growing bigger and bigger, and our landing site, which Brian expertly steered us toward. We touched down into a pit of pea gravel lightly and I hopped up in time to see the other three jumpers land around me.

I learned afterwards that the emergency chute is used only once in every 1,500 jumps, and that while an expert packer can load a chute in about 15 minutes, it takes 2.5 hours to load an emergency chute. All of this would have been comforting to know about before, but it was nice to hear that, counterintuitive as it may seem, I was actually in very little danger. I would absolutely do it again.

Here are three video clips:

1: Me, with the skin on my face rippling like it's hardly attached. 

2: Video Ed found of a girl on YouTube, whose face is WAY worse than mine.

3: Ed, looking ecstatic and totally calm. Hmph.

Living It Up at The Dead Poet

I need to find the owner of The Dead Poet, a bar on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, because s/he is clearly my soul mate. I've walked by this place a bunch of times but had never stopped in until my friend Jeremy suggested we go there after our dinner "date" last night.

The Dead Poet's signature drink, which they describe mysteriously as being made with seven spirits and tasting like grape soda. Jeremy and I decided that it tasted more like grape juice than soda and that it was indeed potent.

 Jeremy is a fan of hole-in-the-wall places and made the accurate observation that the UWS doesn't have many. He felt the Dead Poet qualified, though I'd describe it as a crack-in-the-wall instead; it is tiny, but it's pretty long. Instead of feeling dank, though, its dimness is cozy due to wood paneling and a prominent light fixture shaped like a London street lamp from the days of gas illumination. In addition, framed quotations from great poems cover the walls (along, alas, with TV screens broadcasting sporting events). There is a neon jukebox, modern instead of vintage with a touchscreen, but it is set into shelving lined with cloth bound books of poetry. If I had to criticize the place, I'd say that it's a bit incongruous, and that it needs to decide whether it is a cozy, highbrow joint reminiscent of an era long-gone or whether it is a sports bar. The patrons, at least on a Tuesday night, seemed to be the type who'd inhabit the former, however. No one was really watching the TVs at all (except me, because there happened to be a Vandy basketball game on), and the jukebox remained untouched with only its surrounding books for company; as a result, it played a somewhat jarring mix of Beatles songs interspersed with Tupac and Dr. Dre.

Any questions I may have had about whether or not this place was for me vanished once I began to peruse their drink menu. Of course one can order wine or beer - and their selection is extensive - but their cocktail list was an absolute thrill for a literature geek like me. In many cases, their offerings are standard mixtures, like a sidecar called the Langston Hughes which sounded pretty much like it contained the same ingredients you'd find in any sidecar. But there were house-created offerings too, however, which were creative and tasty. The best part, however, was that the menu described how the ingredients in and flavor of each drink embodied the poet (or, in some cases, author) it was named for.

The sidecar is called the Langston Hughes because of his, and its, popularity during the Harlem Renaissance and Jazz Era. As a fan of both his work and the vanilla vodka and melon liqueur in his dedicated beverage, I ordered the Robert Frost. Jeremy ordered a Mark Twain, reminiscent of Mississippi mud and good times with its espresso vodka and Irish cream. The Tennessee Williams is an ode to the flavors of the south that Williams wrote about so vividly, mixing sweet tea vodka, water, and lemon juice. The W.B. Yeats is green, to echo the Irish landscape he wrote about so lovingly. You get the idea. There are also a variety of signature shots available. The Dante, for example, combines tequila with a shot of Tabasco, evoking the fires of Hell which Dante explored in his Inferno to any daring enough to try it. (We weren't.) If I can't own a place like this, and right now it does not seem to be in the cards, I plan to visit it. Often. I need to get through the whole canon, after all.

The Mark Twain and the Robert Frost (and Jeremy's neck).

Experiences like this make me sorry I always taught kids who were too young to take to bars. Think of the educational value!

Winter Trip to the Union Square Farmers' Market

Last week, I bought two huge, shiny apples from my local produce stand and excitedly bit into one, once home. Ugh. It was the mealiest, softest, least appealing apple I could recall coming across. I started to fantasize about the delicious honeycrisp apples, one of the many varieties available during the right season here in the Northeast, and decided to take action. The following Saturday, I dragged Ed along to the farmers' market that occurs four days a week at Union Square. 

Bean sprouts, galore.

It was an unseasonably warm day, even for our unseasonably warm winter, and so there were lots of people milling around. I expected this, but what I did not expect was the huge variety of produce (and other products) available for purchase. Food is trucked in from local farms, and so while supermarkets carry strawberries from Mexico and oranges from Florida throughout the year, the fare at the farmers' market is heavily dependent on what kinds of crops can be grown in winter weather. I sort of figured there would be a few apple stands and maybe some beets, but I was delighted to be wrong. Ed and I wandered past all sorts fascinating stands, which took up two entire sides of the huge square. I found my much-anticipated honeycrisp apples - just the right texture, though not as sweet as they are during autumn when they're really in season - and bought some onions, parsnips, and other vegetables I'd need for recipes over the next few days.

These bizarre-looking carrots would never sell in a traditional grocery store, but they tasted great and were an adventure to peel and cut!

In addition to lots of root vegetables, we found lots of varieties of apples, spinach, cabbage, jars of pickles, and fresh fish. There was also a stand with coolers full of exotic meats, like pheasant and ground venison. There was ostrich jerky and ostrich bones, roasted and ready for dogs at one stand, and another sold sheep's milk soap, gorgeous wool, and hand-knitted hats. (I spent a lot of time examining the construction and patterns.)  Because a sign told me I could, I sampled some very bizarre looking fruits labelled "ground cherries" that alleged to look like tomatoes but taste like pineapples.  Removal of the papery husk and sampling of said tiny yellow fruit confirmed this to be true.  There were loaves of fresh bread, pies, and cookies, and apple cider, which made the whole place smell deliciously wintery, and tons of potted herbs and ornamental plants, all of which looked tempting.  Ed bought some cat grass, something he's been talking about for a while, for his furry charges.    

One of Ed's cats, the one who needs to lose at least 5 pounds, thank goodness, immediately started  scarfing down the grass once he got it home. His other cat was less enthusiastic.

This is not to say that everything was fantastic.  The apples at one stand all looked quite battered, and at another the carrots were decidedly flexible and the leafy vegetables looked wilted.  For the most part, though, everything looked fresh and, if bizarrely shaped, quite yummy.  Prices were reasonable, if not exactly rock bottom, but I had a great time browsing and will definitely be back. The farmers' market is open Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday all year, so I will have plenty of opportunities.   

Ostrich bones for dogs

Low-Tech Fix

At a recent visit to the optometrist, I learned that my vision has, once again, worsened. I have no trouble up close, but trying to make out far-away signs or facial features of actors onstage, two necessities in New York, was getting to be tricky. My doctor upped my prescription and recommended that I try to look away from my computer monitor frequently to let my eyes refocus on things that are farther away. I confirmed the benefits of this tip while reading a recent article about glaucoma (January is Glaucoma Awareness Month!). Like many resolutions, however, this one is easier made than kept, as my vision is about the last thing on my mind when I'm in the middle of typing or reading something. The reminder I've taped to the corner of my screen, however, is proving to be extremely effective at reminding me to glance around the room or down the hallway from time to time. Take that, technology! Scissors and markers to the rescue!

NYE in NYC

The loft, pre-party

When I decided to spend my first-ever New Year's Eve in New York, I vowed to stay as far away from Times Square as possible.  The ball drop did not interest me so much as warmth, available bathrooms, and personal space did.  What to do, though? Plenty of bars host parties which promise entertainment, bottomless drinks, etc., but the reality is that they're often overcrowded, understaffed (making it difficult to access those bottomless drinks) and overpriced. It sounded as bad as Times Square, and I had some serious responsibilities to consider: my friends Mark and Shelly were going to be in the city and I had to find a great way for us to ring in the new year. Luckily, Maggie and Leonard came to the rescue with a rented loft in midtown. They invited Ed and me to buy some of a limited number of tickets to help control crowds and cover expenses, and we were relieved to accept.

Before heading to the party, Mark, Shelly, Ed, and I went to one of my favorite restaurants in the city for some tapas. Socarrat, the name of the place, is almost next door to Ed's apartment. I'm not the only one who loves it, and so we weren't able to get a reservation (on New Year's Eve in New York City? Yeah, right.) but luckily they had a spot for us at the bar. The restaurant is a paella place, but they have lots of great tapas to pick from, too. We'd consumed more wings and fried pickles than any cardiologist would be comfortable hearing about while watching part of the Vanderbilt football game that afternoon, but we found room somehow for the stuffed dates, grilled zucchini, fried artichoke hearts, and other tasty plates we ordered.

Wall of Veuve boxes

The loft was designed for parties and was not residential - apparently it is a hot spot for bar mitzvahs - and Maggie and Co. outfitted it with a light-up bar, a beer pong table, and lots of beverages. Ed picked up a bottle of Veuve champagne to contribute, but when we got there, we saw that our hosts had beat us to it. In fact, there was literally a wall of the stuff - more than enough for midnight toasts, plus general drunkenness all evening long and morning-after hangovers. Liquor and mixers, wine, and even cheap beer (mostly for beer pong, but available to those with less refined tastes) were also on hand and all included in the ticket price; we just bellied up to the bar and helped ourselves. Also included was a hired doorman, who checked our names off the list, handed us each personalized sunglasses, and told us to enjoy ourselves when we arrived. 

Looking down from the second level

Beer pong champs

And we did. I learned that in addition to Ed's many talents, he is a fine beer pong player, and he and Mark enjoyed beating the pants off several times in a row before they threw in the towel and came to hang out with us girls. The sound system was on the blink and so while we had music, it was not loud enough (and we were not drunk enough) for dancing, alas. We all toasted, blew noisemakers, and hugged and kissed each other at midnight. And when it was finally time to go home, we stepped out into a remarkably warm night (for New York in January anyway) and went back to Ed's apartment, which was so close we didn't even need to fight the crowds of people on the sidewalks for a cab.

All in all, it was a pretty great start to what I hope will be a fantastic year!

How to Make a Superb Gin Fizz

My grandparents gave me some nice gifts this Christmas, but my favorite was the lesson my grandfather gave me on the art of gin fizzes! In the spirit of the holidays, which I am not ready to let go of, I share his secrets with you.

You will need all of this stuff: 

1) Fill a blender about halfway with ice.  Then add 6 oz. frozen lemonade concentrate.

2) Add a minimum of 6 oz. gin.

3) Though it is not traditional, my grandfather suggests 6 oz. of apricot juice as well. He uses Kern's.

4) Add 6 oz. half and half (I never said it was health food)

5) Now for the egg. You can use the whole thing, or just the yolk (for a Golden Fizz) or the white (for a Ramos fizz). Bonus points if your eggs are freshly laid by chickens in your own backyard.

6) Top off with about 2 tablespoons Cointreau.

7) Blend until nice and frothy. Be warned that the level of fizz may rise alarmingly, requiring emergency action from onlookers.

8) Serve to your friends and get going right away on the next batch – they'll be ready for it.

Hope your holidays were as fun and fizzy as mine!