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February 19, 2007
Amazing Cookies
It was cold and windy today here in New York, and neither of us felt compelled to do anything. This is rare. Having just moved in, you would think we would be bounding around like jackrabbits hanging mirrors, art, towel racks, etc. No, today was Presidents’ Day. So as good Presidents, we took the day off. We read, surfed the web (Chis bought a new MacBook), and baked chocolate chip cookies.
Our dear friend AJ makes the best cookies in the world, and the second best fruit smoothies (sorry, dollface, but St Barts Café in Fort Lauderdale makes ‘em better). But since she won’t share her cookie recipe, I’ve been on the hunt for a great recipe. I made these today:
In a mixer, or with a hand mixer, cream together ¼ pound unsalted butter, ½ cup of white sugar, ½ cup of brown sugar. Add 1 egg. Mix 1 cup plus 2 Tbsp of flour, ½ tsp baking soda, and ½ tsp salt. Add to the butter mixture. Add 1 cup of chocolate chips. Bake in a 325F oven for about 10 minutes.
Credit to Andrew Zimbel at Amazing Foods, awesome caterers, who some of you may have enjoyed at our parties at the Schoolhouse.
One of AJ’s secrets is to use broken-up chocolate bars instead of chocolate chips. I used a Ghirardelli’s dark chocolate bar today. And I made 6 huge cookies, and baked them 20 minutes.
Chis says they are awesome, but not as good as AJ’s.
Posted by dave at 06:07 PM | Comments (0)
February 18, 2007
Dave & Audrey
Very dear friends of ours, Dave & Audrey, emailed a few weeks ago and asked if we'd be around in February, they had some Aeroplan points to use and were considering a trip to New York. Of course, we'd love to see you. They arrived Friday evening, and I had found a great spot around the corner for them to stay (despite our insistance, they wanted to stay at a B&B). On Friday afternoon, I dropped off a bag full of what I call the New York City Survival Kit: bottle of wine, two MetroPasses for the subway, subway maps, blister bandaids, earplugs, and a few other things.
They popped by for drinks Friday evening, and we went out to the loudest restaurant for dinner. I mean, I thought Balthazar was ridiculously loud, but this was RIDICULOUS. We could barely hear each other. We asked if we could go takeout, and they moved us to the back of the restaurant, where they offered to turn the horrible music down. SAPA on 24th Street. We don't recommend it.
Saturday, we met up for dinner at our standby favourite, Il Corso on 55th Street, and then went to see the Drowsy Chaperone. Cute, but I would skip it. A couple of great lines, like "Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder", and from two gangsters disguised as French bakers "You're in big truffle now. There's muffin you can do". Get the point.
We had a brief visit Sunday morning before they trekked off to the Tenement Museum, and then caught their flight home to Toronto. We miss them already. They are wonderful people who grasp life by the short and curlies. Audrey turns 80 in April, and you wouldn't know it. We had trouble keeping up to her.
See you again soon!
Posted by dave at 06:12 PM | Comments (0)
February 16, 2007
Room with a View
A glance outside our window over the snow-covered cemetery, and a delivery truck covered in graffiti. I love good graffiti, and this was pretty good. This was our first snowfall of the winter.
Posted by dave at 11:28 AM | Comments (0)
February 14, 2007
Oh, Sweet Appliances
It seems my threats and ranting paid off. The washer/dryer arrived today!
Posted by dave at 11:26 AM | Comments (0)
February 13, 2007
Root Canal
It would seem simple, huh? Pay for a washer/dryer, have it delivered. I was horrified this week when I read the user reviews on CitySearch about Bloom and Krup Appliances.
I expected the usual balance of good and bad service experience. But holy crap, Batman, virtually every one of the 14 user reviews mention the same thing we're going through. A few of them go so far as to say they are lying thieves.
The latest entry scared me a bit. "I found out that all these appliance places order from the same warehouses, and that B&K's credit is so bad that none of them will actually release product to them!"
So I called the credit card company, and began a dispute. This will apparently take two to three weeks. In the meantime, I'm reluctant to buy somewhere else until we get the money back. Now, to be fair, "Abe" told me last Thursday that they will deliver the washer/dryer this Wednesday. I said "really, really, Abe?". He admitted that he still didn't have them in stock, but expected to have them in time to deliver. Hmmmm.
So, if they don't appear tomorrow, as he suggests they will, I will file a complaint with the New York State Consumer Protection Board.
The sad thing is, that when "Abe" first told me the appliances were backordered, my short-and-curlies stood straight up. Of course, he already had my money.
Next, I will squat outside their door with a sandwich board that reads "LIAR, LIAR, WHERE'S MY F@&^$%G DRYER?".
I'd rather have a root canal.
Posted by dave at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)
February 08, 2007
Drama
I got back from yoga last night around 6 and there was an NYPD van and a squad car in front of the building. I figured maybe it was shoplifting at the retail stores on the main floor. No, the property manager had terminated our superintendent, and he flipped. He grabbed all the keys for the apartments and all the doors in the building, plus the residents' phone numbers, and ran. They called his cell, and when he wouldn't tell them where he was, they called the police. The police issued a “no-trespass order”, locked the side entrance, and added extra security guards. When I walked into the building, George the concierge, called one of the police officers to escort me to our apartment. They checked everything, and he wasn't hiding in our place. It had crossed my mind that he would choose our place as a hide-out. Here’s why.
The building was being neglected, and I found out that he was doing finishing carpentry, painting, and doing lots of other work in apartments. He's not allowed to do more than unstop a toilet, or change some light bulbs. It’s an obvious conflict of interest. But he's been so involved doing larger projects that he was neglecting his duties. I thought this was a little inappropriate, so I brought it to the attention of the management company. Turns out so did a bunch of other owners.
The property manager appeared yesterday after lunch, and knocked on the door. We had a nice visit, and she told me what was about to happen. The super found out she was in the building, and freaked. Later, she had obviously confronted him about some of the complaints, because he cornered me when I walked into the lobby. He was yelling at me, telling me that I was a liar, and that he wasn’t “installing” quarter-round in three apartments, he had only “recommended” the concept. Funny, because when he asked me if we wanted to “jump on the bandwagon”, and bragged about his purchase of a brand new pneumatic nail gun, I declined, and told him at the time that I thought those were projects well beyond his scope as our super. I didn’t want to get involved until one morning I tried to toss our garbage down the chute, and I couldn’t get through the door because the garbage room was jammed full. I popped down to the lobby to see Bridgette, and asked if she could get the super to clean it up, and she informed me that he was not in the building, but she would point it out. In less than 12 hours, he had gone from trying to be my best friend, to be my worst enemy.
Apparently, there were lots of other shenanigans going on in the building. Like, he wouldn’t let in brokers who refused to pay an “access fee”, and kick-back deals with appliance distributors, closet organizers, and even Home Depot. The property manager found all his little agreements.
At 9:01 yesterday morning, the phone rang, and it was him. Accusing me of lying, etc, etc. Said his attorney will be in touch with me. Whatever.
Last night, I had the locks changed.
Yikes. Life in New York!
Posted by dave at 11:49 AM | Comments (0)
February 07, 2007
Progress
Well, we finally got a little paint on our whitey white walls. For some reason which we can't explain, we are drawn to red in this space. Not too much red, but just enough to be warm and inviting. I will say that it was a challenge to cut in along the crown molding, despite having a 10-foot step ladder, I felt like I was going to fall off. It's a long way up there. And from the top of the ladder, looking down into the cemetery below, it seems like a VERY long way to fall.
We have not painted red since our dining room on Leuty Ave. in the Toronto nabe "The Beaches" (or "The Beach" to the snobbies in the nabe). We did a burnt orange textured wall in Uxbridge, but when we bought Platina, our tastes had numbed to beige and dark wood. Apparently life in New York has brought out our more brazen side, with a slightly more contemporary bent to our decorating.
It has been fun settling in, opening boxes of stuff that survived the massive purge two years ago when we sold the Schoolhouse. We had decided to keep only those things that were really precious to us. These were difficult decisions, but the process was very liberating.
Apparently not liberating enough, with 12 boxes that went off to our self-store locker over by the Hudson River. To put this in perspective, this is the total number of boxes we moved off the boat.
We are pretty much settled now, with all of the boxes gone (but one), and some of the art making its way onto the walls. Our 14-foot ceilings have provided a new inspiration for hanging our art, as you can see in the photo.
Posted by dave at 01:43 PM | Comments (0)
Holy Spam!
Sorry gang. Phishing and spam has completely overwhelmed the www.platina.ca site so I have had to shut down the Comments. It's a drag that bottom feeding hackers out there are so anxious to sell me Viagra and titty websites that it interferes in our good clean honest fun. This morning, I logged in to do some website management stuff, and there were 1,099 messages. The program we use, called Movable Type, can actually block IP addresses. But you have to add each IP address for each message, and the nerdowells have figured out how to send the same message with multiple IP addresses. And so it goes.
Posted by dave at 01:28 PM | Comments (0)