Monday, September 20, 2010

Resurrection

Hi folks,
After quite a long hiatus, I am going to start writing again. Apologies for going MIA for so long. NYC is quite a busy place, and hopefully I'll be able to write about interesting things that happen here. I didn't plan ahead when I decided to resurrect this blog this morning, so I don't have a lot of pics or terribly interesting topics to share with you guys this time. So I'll just tell you about my weekend, and we'll go from there.

(Lovely Central Park shot from last summer.)

Last weekend was quintessentially New York. I spent Friday night out in Hell's Kitchen with some friends. Saturday, I hung out in Central Park where my fabulous new profile photo was taken, and then I met a friend in the West Village for a delicious Thai dinner. It was a beautiful, cool night, so after dinner, we walked through Washington Square Park all the way over to the Lower East Side where we had dessert at a lovely Italian place.

Sunday, I relaxed a bit before heading over to the Rubin Museum where I volunteer from time to time. Last night, there was an amazing classical music performance by an artist named Hahn-Bin. He is certainly virtuous, but he worked with the museum's production staff to create a multi-faceted performance with mood lighting. He breathed life into the music with his musical talent, facial expressions, physical movements and even with his costumes. Most notable was a bright red puffy shirt adorned with a black silk rose for the piece based on themes from Bizet's Carmen.

Artists that perform at the Rubin are asked to tour the museum, and then choose their performance pieces based on something at the museum that inspires them. Hahn-Bin chose the five poisons as his theme and broke up his performance into three groupings. (I didn't save the program, so I can't remember what the exact breakdown was.) There were pieces from Ravel, John Cage, and even a very morose, modernist version of "Silent Night" which prompted the moderator to comment that he'd be avoiding Christmas at Hahn-Bin's house this year during the short Q&A at the end of the show.

(This photo has no context other than it features me with the amazing Alan Cumming who stopped by at TWC earlier this year. I normally don't bother CNN guests, but I HAD to meet this one. And this post needed some color. So insert out-of-context photo here. Here's a stretch at making it work - last night I watched Masterpiece Mystery! and AC is the host of that program.)

After my duties at the Rubin concluded, I decided to check out the new Trader Joe's that recently opened in Chelsea. Holy cow. I had forgotten what a treasure trove of delightful goodies exist at TJ's! My eyes grew bigger than my stomach, and I stocked up on everything and vowed to do a very anti-New Yorker thing this week - BRING MY LUNCH TO WORK. Now that I've made that vow public, I plan to live up to it. I'm going to post my lunch ideas on this very blog, so fellow friendly foodies out there, please chime in and give me more ideas for healthy, easy lunches (that are not sandwiches). And, as always, thanks for reading!