Details, Details

So after my summer courses, I had an entire month of vacation. Though two weeks of it were plagued by migraines, I feel, overall, that it was a good vacation, and a good length, and, aside from the exhaustion that comes from suddenly waking up two hours earlier than I have been, I am feeling okay about going back to work.

Some highlights of this past month include: two weekends at home with the family - for differing values of family, low-key hanging out with small groups of friends, Spamalot, Shakespeare in the Park, Shakespeare on the Run - twice, a Shabbat visit from sen_ichi_rei, a weekday visit from flintknappy and daphster, a trip down to visit rymenhild in her hometown - where flintknappy was also visiting, a trip to the mets game with daphster, flintknappy, and the trip's organizer, lexiefaye - in from her hometown for a wedding - and about ten other people I know from college, in which the Mets lost in the tenth inning after an exciting game, half a shabbat wih lexiefaye, and oh, did I mention that it was free drawstring totebag night at the Mets game? That's right. I ended the summer with a cleaner room, a few more pages scrapbooked, new sneakers, and yet another free totebag.

Anyway, it's been a good one. And now it is done.

Back in the summer, I went into the DMV to get a new license - I do, after all, live in a different state now. My first license, I got the day I passed my driving test, but this time, they told me they had to mail it.

At which point I left the country, short one photo ID. (They made me hand in the old license - oh well.)

When I returned a month later, I found an envelope from the DMV, as expected - but it did not contain a license.

Turns out they had messed up my picture. And I needed to go back in to get a new one taken. And the DMV closes at four.

I generally finish work at 3:30 - too late to get to the DMV on time. But every so often, I have meetings in that general neighborhood (or at least a neighborhood closer than the one I work in).

Two weeks ago, I went from the meeting to the subway, and from the subway to the DMV, and would have arrived around 3:55 - only I walked right past it without seeing it! The place needs much clearer signage. By the time I realized my mistake, they were just locking the doors. I was five minutes too late. I consoled myself by going shopping at H+M and Old Navy - both in the area. (And I actually bought stuff too.)

Today, I had another meeting. And this time, I was at the DMV around 3:40. Miraculously, I think I walked back out around 3:50.

The DMV had messed up, in typical DMV fashion - but they have now corrected the error in a very un-DMV and rather efficient fashion. I got to skip every line in the place! It was a rather pleasant surprise.

And I got to see the photo this time. I think I told the woman that it looked "utterly horrid." Or something like that. She said most people feel that way about their license photos. We both handled it with good humor, I think. But at least now I am forewarned - I don't have to wait two weeks to see how bad my photo came out.

And then, even though I did not really need to console myself, I was in the neighborhood, so I went shopping...

... you go to a baseball game and there is a kosher hot dog stand
... it seems perfectly normal to spend $4.50 for the aforementioned kosher hot dog ($2.50 for a bag of chips, on the other hand...)
... the pre-game entertainment is provided by a chorus from a Jewish high school
... the principal of the aforementioned Jewish high school throws the opening pitch

Yeah, so I went to go to a Mets game last night. Apparently, they won, but I missed that part, since I needed to leave after the sixth inning to get home in time to get a good night's sleep (it didn't work. Still exhausted. Oh well.)

I didn't know people were going until I got a phone message at work from flintknappy, and I didn't know I was going until everyone else was running late and I was able to make it to the meeting place - and decided to ride the train with everyone (yay unlimited metrocard) just to hang out with the people who were going: daphster, flintknappy, and hampsblog. It wasn't until we got there that I actually decided to go to the game.

Anyway, it was fun, so a huge thanks to daphster for thinking of it. This is my first time going to a major league baseball game in NYC - rather impressive when one considers I grew up in NJ, where we didn't have our own teams, so the NY teams were "ours" also.

Thank you to mysticengineer for a wonderful (free!) evening yesterday. Three of us went to a concert at the Cooper-Hewitt design museum thanks to the time and money mysticengineer put into buying Time Out NY and looking through it for ideas for stuff to do last night. We never did make it to museums during the day... (that had been our first plan) but this means my room is also a little cleaner.

Anyway, at the Cooper-Hewitt, they have an exhibit related to Israeli design. After the concert, we got to take a peak at part of the exhibit, even though the rest of the museum was closed. The general idea of the exhibit (not followed by all of the designers) seems to have been to take one useful thing and turn it into another useful thing.For example, the lamps made from plastic tubing - the spots that were shaved down let the light through - and they looked cool too. And many different kinds of chairs. One that was held together by strips of cloth (easily dismantled), one made from melted plastic straws, and one from a sliced up plastic trash can - we liked that one.

But the funniest one there had to be the tiffany lamp (their words, not mine) made from milk jugs. Why? Because not only was the date stamp still there, and not only was it in Hebrew, it also said (in Hebrew, but I don't know how to put Hebrew in my LJ) "kosher for Passover." We all had a good laugh over that one. Did someone drink a little too much milk over Pesach? Or get bored over their Pesach vacation? It was funny.

At some point, I'd like to see the rest of the exhibit - I am curious what we missed.

This museum was, for me, a highlight of the free museum night last June (what do they call that night? I forget) when they had the extreme textile exhibit. It was all about using textiles and textile techniques (such as knitting, weaving and even crocheting) to create new and useful things that might not ordinarily be made that way - like buildings. Well, here, again, was an interesting exhibit. I am really starting to like and appreciate this museum. It makes you think about possibilities.

Oh, and since I haven't posted for a while, some things I didn't get to comment on:

The teaching is a bit better (ask me if you want to here more - I won't say more in a public post). Of course, it helps that I now have this week off...

And last Sunday's snowstorm: the worst part was, it was a Sunday. So we didn't miss any school. But a bunch of us did go to Central Park, including wildblueyonder2 and nuqotw. There were seven of us in all. Afterward, I heard that this was the most snow that fell in Central Park in one day - close to 27 inches. Well, since we went late in the afternoon, we must have been standing in most of it - that's two feet of snow, plus a bit. It didn't feel at all unusual, though. Maybe because this stuff tends to accumulate. Getting one blast and then having it melt without any more falling is not the way things generally go. So it didn't feel so unusual, but the powdery nature of it made it easy to walk in - and an interesting challenge to make snowballs from. we had to really press the snow between our hands. Afterward, mysticengineer suggested we should have breathed on it. Leave it to the engineer to have a different solution.

Anyway, so that was fun.

Today, I am going to see the dentist. Not fun, per se, but I am hoping he won't find anything to worry about.

So that's my update.