very simple

Missed a picture yesterday, but thanks to our new, flexible format, I just took two today (well, more than two, but I’m just posting the two).

On my way home from the torture of fancy-dress shopping at Macy’s (I’ve got a wedding to attend in a few weeks), the bus had to skip a stop due to this…

the aftermath of a lovely van fire on Broadway, right at the bus stop (what is it with bus stops and out-of-control vehicles recently?).

At least it gave me fodder for something interesting to take a picture of. I read something recently that noted that vehicle fires are apparently very common in wintertime in the city, when the salt gets into the already dirty engine and related car parts and proceeds to corrode everything.

Apparently, this is what happens when a taxi jumps the curb and hits a bus stop. Now it just seems like a trip-and-fall lawsuit waiting to happen.

It was announced months ago, but today was the day that the Lincoln Square Barnes and Noble officially went out of business. I was hoping to just get a picture of the “closed” sign in the window, but when I wandered down, they were dismantling the giant signage from the front of the store, so it seemed more fitting to get a shot of the disassembled giant letters.

I can’t even count the number of hours I’ve spent in the cafe and wandering the aisles of this store. Even after getting my nook, I still like to browse the physical bookstore to get ideas of what I’d like to read next, and I was in here at least 2-3 times a week.

Not to mention the fact that, after the closing of the Tower Records across the street a few years ago, this is the last place in the neighborhood that had a decent music department. Sad.

Woohoo!

Two days in a row. I’ll see if I can actually keep this up or if I revert to the “52” part of the project over the “365” part of the project.

I’m normally not one for pet-blogging, largely because I don’t have a pet, but since I’ve been dogsitting for a few weeks, I figured I should get one in before he goes home tomorrow. Here’s Ollie, playing with his stuffed rat.

Some of the 365 folks and I have kept in touch via twitter and flickr, and we decided to try again beginning in 2011. Meaning today! We’re doing things a little differently this time. Rather than having to take a picture every single day, you can take up to 7 pictures a week, but they can all be on the same day, or you can continue to do the one-a-day method. This will hopefully reduce the feelings of failure everyone inevitably got last time around when they missed a single day. It will also reduce the need to “cheat” when seeing something awesome to photograph after you’ve already posted your daily photo (which happened to me once or twice).

So, on that note, Happy New Year everyone!! This was taken in the three seconds between when the fireworks started and my parents’ dog (who I’ve been dogsitting for a few weeks) had a total meltdown at the noise and dragged me bodily (he’s a tiny jack russell terrier, FYI) back to my apartment, even skipping the treat-laden doorman to book it directly into the elevator.

It looks like time for snowpocalypse 2010. Although, given that this seems to be happening with more frequency, I’m not sure “snowpocalypse” is really appropriate anymore. Perhaps just “winter” would suffice.

I was actually looking forward to the snow today, largely because I didn’t need to go anywhere, I don’t celebrate Christmas so I didn’t get caught in today’s travel onslaught/nightmare, and the absolutely best part about snow in New York City is the first few hours, when it’s still white and pretty, before it gets polluted by exhaust fumes and turned into a giant slush pile.

The one downside? I’m watching my parents’ dog, Ollie, so I do have to venture out periodically. Luckily, he’s old and has no interest in playing in the snow, so the biggest struggle is to get him to stay out long enough. Truly a dog after my own heart. I decided to grab my camera to snap a few shots on our afternoon walk today (which consisted of walking to the end of the block and back). Ollie was very determined to get home, but I managed to get a few pics of the beginning of the storm. This is only a few hours in – they’re predicting a total of between 14 and 18 inches by the time it ends tomorrow.

(As always, click on the thumbnails to get the full image)

As I do every year, I decided to take some photos of today’s big event, the ING Marathon. Because I had gone to the same spot in Central Park for the last two years, I wanted to change things up a little bit, so I headed to Columbus Circle. Which was a big clusterf*ck of people and security gates. Next year, it’s back to Central Park. Just as an example of how poorly planned it was at Columbus Circle, they had a whole slew of bleachers set up so that people could watch, except…The police had blocked off all access to them, so they sat empty while we were penned in behind security gates only a few feet away. Even the police officer I said something to agreed that this was remarkably stupid, but they were, of course, powerless to do anything about it in the face of direct orders to keep us penned in.

As a bonus, a supremely inconsiderate gentlemen, who was at least 6’5″, decided to push his way directly in front of me. I am, of course, 5’4″. This led me to have to contort myself and hang over the barrier in a really uncomfortable way to get any decent pictures at all. Quite a change from Central Park, where people take one look at the short girl with the big camera and pretty much just make room for me at the front, since they can see over my head anyway! Silly me, I thought the crowd would be less obnoxious further away from the finish. I’ve learned my lesson, and I’m planning on heading back to Central Park next year. Either that, or I’ll be really adventurous and head out to Brooklyn or Queens.

As far as pics, I got most of the front-runners (except for the women’s winner, because the one pic I did get of her had a motorcycle cutting off her head), and some silly costumes, and a few pics even came out decently. Once I got worn out from contorting myself (and, because of the way I was standing, cutting off all the circulation to my left leg), I headed to the Time Warner Center to get an aerial shot. Here are the pics (as always, click to see the full picture):

I’ve got a nasty head cold at the moment, so I was very tempted to just melt into my couch and watch netflix streaming all day. But it’s Halloween, and the 69th street block association always puts together a pretty cool Halloween block party, and I wanted to go down there for at least a little while and see the decorations and costumes. And the aerial performers – Last year they did star wars, and this year they put together a disney medley. It started with Aladdin, then Peter Pan, and I stuck around for the beginning of Toy Story but, at that point I was ready to go home. It was supremely crowded, and the fact that I feel like someone poured cement into my sinus cavity was putting me in not such a great mood. But I’m still glad I got out for a little while.

Enjoy some pics from the evening below (as always, click to get the full view):

It’s incredibly dreary and rainy today, which is the perfect excuse for an unemployed person such as myself to not leave my apartment for the entire day. Except, lucky me, I had jury duty down at the federal courthouse. Again. So I had to pack myself onto a rush hour train downtown this morning with everyone and their dripping umbrellas.

You know what happens next. 15 minutes after the start time, the clerk comes in, thanks all of us for our service, and informs us that the case we were supposed to be in the pool for settled late last night, so we can all go home. And, as a bonus, we’re done with jury service, even though they could have kept us on the hook for another week of pool-sitting waiting for another trial.

This was actually great, in that (as I heard on NPR this morning) they’re apparently picking a jury for a large terrorism case next week. So, all-in-all, not a terrible way to do jury service – a half-day on Monday and 15 minutes on Thursday. and I’m done for 4-6 years. It just would have been nice to have not had Monday and Thursday be the rainiest days of the week.

But I got a cool picture as I was leaving so…that’s something.

Labor day weekend, we took a break from our normal routine of doing as little as possible, and spent an afternoon at the Norman Rockwell Museum and the Berkshire Botanical Garden. Pictures aren’t allowed inside the Museum, so I don’t have anything except the sign below, but it was the first time I had been to the museum and was really struck by how much more…well-rounded…Rockwell was as an artist than his most well-known Saturday Evening Post americana would suggest. I (of course) had seen some of his civil-rights era art before, most notably, The Problem We All Live With, but “Southern Justice” stopped me in my tracks.

I was really shocked by it. Of course, even without looking at the title, I knew exactly what it was in reference to, but more than that, both in content and in style, it’s incredibly different from anything we “expect” when we think about Rockwell. I’m pretty sure I stared at it for about 10 minutes, just devastated. I also took a brief tour that was given, and the guide (who clearly loved his work), talked about the fact that Rockwell chafed for years against the Saturday Evening Post edict that people of color were only ever to be depicted in positions of servitude toward whites. Which explains why this painting was done for Look magazine.

Changing subjects, the following are the photos that I actually took, at the Berkshire Botanical Garden. They had three specific exhibits going on – one dealing with chairs, one dealing with dogs, and one where these little cabins were decorated extravagantly. That should make these photos pretty self-explanatory.