very simple

another week, another cat picture. I know I should be posting pictures of the absolutely ridiculous snowstorm we’re currently getting hit with, but that can wait until tomorrow morning when i have time to go to the park. if the snow has buried the first floor of my building, of course.

Recently I decided to do some living room revamping. It’s slow-going, mainly because I decided to actually plan out where I wanted to move all of the furniture rather than simply moving everything on a whim and hoping for the best. But as part of that plan, I decided to get a new sound system. my old stereo was finally in its death throes, with the not responding to remotes anymore, and only two of the inputs actually still working, and one of the speakers being dead. Not to mention the ridiculous amount of space a 6 speaker plus receiver system takes up in a small apartment. so i went with a sound bar. two pieces. as a bonus, the one I got actually acts has a subwoofer that as a receiver for all of my HDMI tv inputs, switching between them, and only requires me to have one HDMI input into the television. This solves my other lingering “older technology” problem of having an 8-year old TV (state of the art when purchased!) with only one HDMI input.

of course, in order to ship an oddly shaped sound bar, they filled the remainder of the shipment box with oddly sized empty other boxes. so Sadie is in cat/cardboard box heaven.

One of the newer buildings that has gone up in recent years. I like the sign.

My neighborhood has gotten significantly swankier in recent years, with our wine bars and apple stores, but this corner remains the same as ever.

Some new folks bought the apartment across the hall from me. I haven’t actually gotten to meet them yet, but strangely, they seem friendly already.

(I do think it’s a little odd to stick this on the outside of your front door in an otherwise boring, staid, pre-war condo, but it brightens up the place considerably so, hola!)

For some reason (probably because they’re short trains) they only do this on the shuttle between Grand Central and Times Square – they wrap the entire train in an advertisement for something. usually it’s some sort of product like the Microsoft Surface tablet or Tropicana Orange Juice, but today we got an advertisement to entice us to go golfing in scottsdale, arizona. It wasn’t particularly tempting, but if these seats had actually been tufted, rather than just the disappointing image of tufting, I might have been intrigued.

Wandered around the upper west side greenmarket today with my parents. I didn’t buy anything, but I did take a picture of this really odd-looking mushroom so that’s…something.

Yesterday, there was a giant watermain break right in front of the flatiron building. This is the aftermath.

Tomorrow (saturday) is the 100th anniversary of the actual opening of Grand Central Terminal. However, in their infinite wisdom, the powers that control events at the station decided that today (friday) would be a much better day to screw up the commutes of as many people as possible by having all of their events, including store and line-clogging 1913 prices at the restaurants (if only that held true for the apple store) and setting up a roped off stage (and seating that you can’t see here due to the crowd) in the middle of the concourse. during morning and evening rush hour.

(Today is the 100th anniversary of the day that the builders gave the stationmaster the key – but they didn’t actually open the doors until February 2nd).

In any event, it’s still one of my favorite places in the world, so despite the crowds, I still enjoy the fact that every one of my days for the past two years has involved passing through here at least once.

another week, another picture of the cat.

pretty tin of lip balm. almost impossible to open. I’ve also noticed a distinct theme running through photos so far of circular objects. Now that I’ve noticed it, the question is whether I will trend towards the theme or start trying to avoid it. Only time will tell.