very simple

This kid was so enjoying his bagel and cream cheese that he managed to give himself a full handlebar mustache in the process.

By the way, mustache is one of those words that keeps looking wrong even when I’ve double-checked the spelling in the dictionary.

Another morning, another bottle of fancy italian water at my local cafe. My favorite part is when they run out of the medium sized bottles, and just bring me two or three of the little ones to make up for it (and charge me the same price).

Most of the time I walk around my neighborhood, I’m looking at my feet or in front of me, to make sure I don’t step on something unpleasant or walk into someone, but sometimes it’s nice to look up, because we’ve got some beautiful buildings. I particularly love this row of rooftops.

I know that if I keep this up, I run the danger of becoming the dreaded “cat blogger”, but sometimes I’m not going to be able to help myself. Sadie’s now been with me for a full week, and, as you can tell from these pics taken during the week, she seems to be settling in OK. Sure, she spends her mornings impersonating a whirling dervish, and I’ve had to slipcover most of my living room – not due to any intentional damage on her part, but because she gets so rambunctious in the morning that she’s been inadvertently scratching up my leather couch when she’s trying to leap from one piece of furniture to the next. I’m a little disturbed that she figured out how to get to the top of my 6 and a half foot tall chifferobe, since that’s where i was keeping the “stuff to keep out of sadie’s reach”, but mostly, she’s doing things like this – sleeping on top of me in incredibly inconvenient spots, like while trying to edit photos on my computer, and always keeping an eye on where I am.

I spoke to the vet today and confirmed that I think we’ve past the trial stage, and to complete whatever adoption rigamarole was remaining.

I see this guy in my local cafe periodically, and from the sweater to the beard to the book he’s always reading, he just exudes “professor” of…something.

Last week, when it was in the 60s and everyone was sitting outside marveling at the early arrival of spring, I enjoyed myself, but got labeled a pessimist for insisting that winter wasn’t over and we were bound to get at least one more bout of snow before the season was over. I was right.

On Sunday, I went to the Met with some friends to see the Stieglitz, Steichen and Strand photography exhibit. Of course, as with all special exhibits, you can’t really take photographs inside. So here are just a few shots from our wanderings around the permanent collection.

included here are: a restored Lippi Madonna and Child – apparently it was so covered in grime and varnish that they had no idea what it looked like; someone catching me in the act of taking pictures, armor from the (yes, that’s right) Emma and Georgina Bloomberg Arms and Armor Wing, and some Egyptian relics, which always make for good pictures.

For some time now, I’ve been contemplating getting some sort of pet. I’ve been wavering between a dog or a cat – I had both growing up, and loved having both. The “fun” part of my brain wavered toward dog, but the sensible part of my brain, the part that reminds me that I will have a job at some point and will not be home all the time to go on walks, wavered toward cat. I’d been visiting the cat adoption days at the local pet store, and had a few cats that I was keeping my eye on, but then my parents called me this morning from the vet (they were bringing ollie in again for more tests/treatment for the mystery disease he seems to have picked up at the tail end of his stay with me) to say that one of the cats the vet had available for adoption would be great – she was getting along with ollie in the waiting room, and they started sending me pictures. Needless to say, I ran over to meet her…

…And totally fell for her. She’s 9 months old and had been left as a kitten in a box by the clinic’s front door. So she’s been living at the vet the whole time, allowed to roam around and play with all the other animals and people. Which probably explains why she’s been so chill since she got here. I’m still in a trial period for the adoption, but I think we’re going to get along fine. The vets had been calling her Shea, but I nixed that. So now she’s Sadie.

The weather had warmed up a bit last week, but it was combined with some rain, so today was truly the first nice day. And everyone knew it. Random people smiling at each other on the street (none of whom I got photos of), and people just generally, and obviously, enjoying being outside. So I spent the afternoon wandering the upper west side with my super-telephoto zoom (70-300) lens, and tried to pick up some of the details without getting noticed.

In this batch is an assortment of random people enjoying the outdoors, storefronts, flowers, a variety of signs, water towers, fallout shelters, rooftops and random architectural details from around the upper west side.

As always, click on the thumbnail to enlarge.

Ollie started feeling under the weather yesterday (or earlier, but only got lethargic and didn’t eat anything yesterday), so he spent the day sleeping. Which is different from how he usually is because….

well, he was still lethargic.

Thankfully, yesterday was also the last day he was staying with me, so he’s back in the loving arms of my parents now, who are much better equipped to deal with things like taking him to the vet.

But he was still cogent enough to continually attempt to wedge himself between my knee (under the blanket) and the back of the couch, which is his favorite sleeping position. This way he could more easily act annoyed and put upon every time I tried to move even the tiniest bit.