Museum of Ham

After going to the Museo del Prado, we went to the Museo del Jamon, which was more our speed. Everywhere we looked, there were legs of ham, hanging off the wall. Certainly not for the faint-hearted or the vegetarians. However, while I sort of nurse a dislike for all luncheon meats, Spanish jamon is an entirely different story. It made me want to turn into a raging jamoterian.

Krispy Kremes at the Prado

Hi, welcome to Madrid!

Everyone wants to go to the Museo del Prado on Sundays. Cause it's free.

San Antonio Abad y San Pablo primer ermintaño by Diego Velázquez, 1634-35

Everything in Madrid is closed on Sundays. And since today is a Sunday, we decided to go to the one place that was open and incidentally enough, free. The Museo del Prado. Sigh, this breaks our tradition of walking by museums, but not into museums, while on vacation. But other than eating jamón ibérico, there was really not much to do. So we went to the Prado, and did a very nice walk through.

There was a certain point however, when I realized that I was never meant to be an art history buff. This moment I believe was when I excitedly yelled out to Kenny, "Hey look, that bird has a Krispy Kreme in his beak!" Needless to say, my interpretation of Diego Velázquez's painting is not what I am sure he meant when he painted it: a raven bringing two really hungry guys a doughnut to tide them over.

A Heavenly Bed

Traveling for work has made me really appreciate a few key things when making a hotel my home away from home: most importantly, the requirement for the hotel to have comfy beds, comfy beds with duvet covers on them. Oh, and Q-Tips in the bathroom. But the comfortable bed thing is HUGELY important, and while maybe no one would think a Westin is cool or at all boutique-y, I really am so over boutique hotels with their showbox sized rooms, and lack of real amentities (like I said, Q-Tips take precedence over sex kits, CDs of ambient lounge music, and nice but expensive French candles.) Frankly, give me a Westin Hotel over a 60 Thompson, any day.

Grey's Anatomy, Season Four!

I know Grey's Anatomy has gotten really bad, and super soap operatic by now. However, I could not wait to watch the season opener this evening. I totally rushed through the dinner we had as a group in the Westin's "Japanese" restaurant downstairs. I did not care about rolling my own sushi (they did not have Katsuo so I had to settle for Sawara), nor was I captivated by the Beni-Hana-style chefs slicing and dicing like mad men right before my eyes. The chef next to me threw a piece of celery at me out of nowhere, and I was supposed to catch it in my mouth. It was weird.

All I could think about was what would Christina be like without Burke, and would Meredith and Derek be back together or not?!

The Bent Spoon, redux

Ok, who wants a cupcake? I do!

After a long day spent discussing all things K-Y® related, needed some ice cream. So after dinner at Triumph Brewery, we went our separate ways and headed to The Bent Spoon for some of New Jersey's finest ice cream. I had two scoops: Honey and Jersey Peach, and I was not disappointed. Both were ridiculously delicious, and so I made everyone try a bite.

Besides having the best ice cream I have ever tasted, The Bent Spoon has to be one of the cutest ice cream stores, ever. This sort of store is what Princeton is all about, I guess. Little "yum" signs, and super friendly store staff, and stores with ice cream flavors like ricotta or boysenberry. Princeton is like Preppy married Cute-as-a-button and had they kids.

City bikers are getting some props

I just read in the NY Times that Manhattan is planning on converting part of Ninth Avenue (from 16th Street to 23rd Street) into a more user friendly bike avenue. Modeled after the European bike-friendly cities where they usually have a bike lane separated from car traffic by a cement buffer, the seven-block stretch in Chelsea will have the same sort of configuration. I think it's a much needed reorganization of the city streets, allowing the city's citizens to feel more comfortable riding their bikes without fear of being squashed by a bus or by being doored by a oblivious taxi-rider. However, while I recognize that the city has to start somewhere, I really wish that they could have started this test on a street where there is actually dangerous bike/car traffic interactions, like say on Canal Street — which can only be described as flirting with death every time I ride across it from the Manhattan Bridge to the West Side Highway. However, don't get me wrong — I am looking forward to riding those seven blocks on Ninth Avenue, in the meantime.

Destination: Fort Tryon Park

Stef, Javier and Isabel sold their apartment and are moving to Costa Rica in a few days. Today they hosted a good bye picnic in Fort Tryon Park, for one last get together before they leave for the next chapter of their lives. It was a beautiful afternoon, but I was sad. And when I am sad, I never know the right to say...consequently, I kept saying awkward, abrupt things, making me appear like English is not my native language.

There was guitar playing by Dan and Javier.

Someone brought cupcakes from Cupcake Café:

It's sad to think that the next time I probably see Isabel, she will be a little girl with loads of things to say, and will no longer be a little toddler.

There were a little boy's birthday party happening right next to the picnic. The parents thought it would be a brilliant idea to hire these two party guys who staged a mock medieval battle between all of the little kids.

Breaking fast

For anyone breaking their Yom Kippur fast, you can watch Jin tha MC's hilarious Yom Dom Cha video (from his album, "ABC Jin,") where he raps entirely in Cantonese about dim sum. It's particularly brilliant, because his parents used to own a Chinese restaurant in Miami when he was growing up. In the video, Jin is the maître d, going around from table to table, rapping about things like chicken feet and that you have to be there by 10:30am (in order to get a table), in addition to having the ubiquitous hip hop video women in bikinis, shoving Cha Siu Bao into their mouths.

I heart Succulents

This evening, on the way home from dinner, we stopped at Home Depot so I could pick up some dirt in order to re-pot three of my jade plants — jade plants being the only plants that I can manage to keep alive. For reasons I have yet to determine, I am completely enthralled by succulents, and many evenings before bed you will find me wandering around the apartment checking on all of my jade plants like they are my babies — looking at their new buds, watering them, picking off dead leaves, and in general preening them like we are all gorillas picking lice off of one another.
I also bought another cactus for only $4.99 at Hone Depot — it's the one on the left. There was something very reminiscent of Takashi Murakami's happy little characters with regards to the big red cactus ball with little red cactus balls sticking off of it like pompoms.

Deviled eggs rule the world

Most of you might already know that I pretty much loath anything with mayonnaise in it, as I am sure I have made many a mayonnaise rant on this blog. My one mayonnaise allowance is deviled eggs, which I think have to be up there in the top ten as one of the best foods, ever. I would take deviled eggs over caviar any day. (Although Martha does have a recipe where you put caviar on top of deviled eggs.) Or maybe that's the midwesterner part in me, coming out.

Anyway, we went to Cookshop this evening for dinner, and for an appetizer, they offered deviled eggs. I had been deciding between the beet salad and the pear and blue cheese salad until I saw the deviled eggs offering, which instantly negated any other choice on the menu. And I was not at all disappointed. The deviled egg filling was thick and satisfying, with the requisite crunch of pickle relish (well, I think it might have been cornichons, atually) and a dusting of paprika. And yes, there was mayonnaise — but the star was the egg, with the mayonnaise only playing a very small supporting role. I highly recommend going to Cookshop for the deviled eggs alone. However, I suggest ordering two plates of eggs, since only three come per serving. And one and half deviled eggs per person is really just a tease.

It's Mallomar season!

Mallomars are produced seasonally — because they melt easily in summer temperatures, Mallomars can become difficult to find during the summer: they are generally available from early October through April. Devoted eaters of the cookie have been known to stock up during winter months and keep them refrigerated over the summer. Seventy percent of all Mallomars sold are sold in metropolitan New York.

Oddly enough, the Mallomar's specific combination of ingredients (a circle of biscuit/cookie covered with a puff of extruded marshmallow, then enrobed in a hard dark chocolate shell) is wildly popular all over the world, with each country having their own specific cookie. The most similar is Israel's Creambo (קרמבו).

I really pray that Nabisco does not feel the need to "improve" the Mallomars package (which has probably looked the same since they were invented in 1913) — changing its puffy typeface and bright yellow background for something more "modern" (i.e. something ugly).

AIGA Legends Gala

photo by aprilchild, ©2007.

Tonight, I went to the AIGA Legends Gala together with my creative director. The head of Global Design for J+J had bought a table, and he invited all four of the creative directors, who each brought a design director.

This is the second year that I went — last year I went with Maria from Neenah Paper and for the reception part I was a big wallflower standing in the corner feeling like a freshman at college orientation. In fact, some guy whose name I know forgot, came over to talk to me, specifically because he said I looked like I knew no one. That was not true, exactly (I did know people but that would mean I had to actually walk up to them and start a conversation.), but I was grateful for the pity conversation. At least, to others, it made me look like I was someone.

This year, I was I felt like a sophomore, which means that I no longer cared about whether anyone would talk with me during the cocktail hour. I wore a green dress and was one of like four people who did not wear black. The moment I walked in, I happily bumped into Lara and Yael, and proceeded to end my mingling right there. We spent about 45 minutes catching up (the highlight of my day!), and then had to unfortunately part ways so that we could each sit with our respective organizations.

The dinner was much better this year (for some reason, last year's main course of fish was really terrible — and I am so willing to give leeway at these events where they are serving like a million people.), despite the server telling Chris and I that the main course was habilut. We both were like, "huh?!" (I was thinking, oh man, they are serving some sort of reindeer-y kind of meat?) until I saw the server's cheat sheet and realized that he meant halibut. I had the opportunity to talk with some of my work colleagues whom I don't always get to chat with, and I sat next to Chris (the head of our office), which was the other highlight of my evening.

Oh, and the third highlight was that John Maeda (!!!) was there, to introduce Samsung for one of the two AIGA Corporate Leadership Awards. I find his incredible geekiness rather scintillating, and found his anecdote about the cafeteria at Samsung (mentioning that they only get 10 minutes to eat and no one is allowed water) fascinating in a very irrelevant sort of way. Martha was droll as usual, managing to throw in her "when I was jail,' phrase and also somehow managed to mention her pets, PETA and how her fur coats are now blankets. And Ellen Lupton is just a truly lovely person in every way. Every time I hear her speak, its like I don't want her to stop — I could listen to her talk about design + life (aren't they one and the same) forever. I have considered taking one of her classes so that I can have this opportunity.

My workspace

On my bookshelf at work, I have some things to cheer me up whenever I am feeling a bit stressed. Specifically my Relax Drop, which like my Flip Flap plants, I prefer to keep ensconced in its protective plastic package lest it get dusty. I like to think of it as a terrarium, instead of a blister pack.

Next to my relax drop is my travel size of Hello Kitty Band-Aids®, a gift from my colleague who is the design director for Wound Care (and therefore, Band-Aid®). I think the Hello Kitty bandages are the best cartoon character Band-Aids® ever, perhaps only rivaled by the the actual vintage metal tins. Dora and Sponge Bob Band–Aids® look too flashy and just too commercial.

And then there is my box of Miffy tissues. Words alone cannot express how much happiness a mere box of tissues brings me. I think it's in the way that Miffy's head is cocked, that just makes my heart melt. I was in Boots, and I was like, "I really must have these." (I had like 15 lubricants in my shopping basket, as I was purchasing some competitive products research for K-Y®, and then a solitary box of Miffy tissues. I am sure that the check out person was thinking that I was really quite a freak.)

Your head is in the clouds

The Japanese word for "head" is "atama." It can mean everything from the thing attached to your neck, to brain, mind, intellect, leader, top, idea, hair, point of view, consideration, and its also the counter word for large mammals.

I am such a word nerd, that I am completely fascinated with how these phrases are put together with the root word for head. Particularly the word for telling somebody off without hearing his/her side of story; I mean, I do this like twice a day, at least. I wonder if it really means, "to completely lose your head AND lose your face at the same time?"

atamauchi 頭打ち
reach the peak
(So for example, atamauchi is actually a compound word of head + house. So what does this really mean? From the mountain top, its like your house it on top of the world, and your head is the closest thing to the sky? This could get really deep.)

atamagonashi 頭ごなし
tell somebody off without hearing his/her side of story (unsparingly, categorically)

atamadekkachi 頭でっかち
top-heavy

atama ga agaranai
頭が上がらない
to feel inferior, to lose one's nerve (the head connect: cannot hold up one's head to someone)

atama ga itai
頭が痛い
to be worried (literally means to feel pain in your head)

atama ga ippai 頭がいっぱい
to be occupied with a certain thing

atama ga katai 頭が固い
to be stubborn

atama ga kireru 頭が切れる
to be smart

atama ga sagaru 頭が下がる
to respect, to take one's hat off

atama ga hikui 頭が低い
to be modest

atama ga furui 頭が古い
old-fashioned

atama ni ireru あたまがにいれる
to put into one's head

atama ni kuru 頭に来る
to get mad

atama ni kobiritsuku 頭にこびりつく
not to be able to forget

atama ni chi ga noboru 頭に血が上る
to get excited

atama o kakaeru 頭をかかえる
to be worried

atama o kirikaeru 頭を切り替える
to change one's way of thinking

atama o hiyasu 頭を冷やす
to cool one's head

atama o motageru 頭をもたげる
to raise one's head Atama kasushite shiri kakusazu 頭隠して尻隠さず
Hiding just a part of it, and thinking it hasn't been noticed.

Atama dekkachi shiri tsubomi 頭でっかち尻つぼみ
To go from the sublime to the ridiculous. The mountains have brought forth a mouse.

Wanted: a Zakka life

I was surfing around on Bloesem's site and came across the website for Shinzi Katoh Design — Art and Zakka, whose motto is "The world of a ZAKKA DESIGNER is the [creation of]things that make people feel happy and exist like a comfortable air. This is what we always keep in our heart when we create new designs."

This is now my new motto as well. Our world needs more happy stuff. And I am not just thinking with regards to cute shoes and Miffy kleenex, but I am making this my motto for working on my brands at work; so expect to see some happy stuff for K-Y® and o.b. I mean, who doesn't want personal care products that take you on an emotionally uplifting journey? Although, perhaps Always' "Have a Happy Period" campaign is an example of Zakka living gone awry.

Everything is cute when small, even eyepads

I came into work this morning and there was a woman sticking miniature replicas of EVERY single Johnson + Johnson product onto the wall in reception. At first I thought that it was an intern and I was impressed by the amount of crazy detail that went into every single product. Later on I learned that Chris had hired this artist (I forgot her name and need to find it out) after seeing her work at a gallery in Chelsea, and she was commissioned to create a piece using J+J products, for our new office space. As we create new products, they will be added each year — so the installation will be continually evolving over time.

Destination: Montreal Airport

I was in Montreal today for quick, in-and-out press check for some packaging. On the way home, I noticed how nice the overall signage system was at the Montreal airport. (They forced the Tie Rack and the Swatch store to use the same typeface and type treatment!) My favorite sign was the outlet sign, above. This should be mandatory in ALL airports...I cannot express my annoyance about how many times I have had to go on an outlet easter egg hunt to find the nearest place where I can plug in my laptop. (Walking around an airport terminal clutching a power cord, my cell phone tucked under my ear with my head cocked at a scary angle, and my incredibly heavy bag, never fails to put me in a crabby mood.) This sign makes it super easy. I should have taken a picture of the wall with the outlet, because the sign points to this wall, and then you look down, and there is this one outlet, right there. It's pretty funny, actually.

Corngasm

Tonight for dinner we had some some corn from the farmer's market. It was the best corn of the entire season, and it was like I was physically eating summer. I think I even made little happy sounds as I was eating it. After eating an entire ear, I was done with dinner, but felt obligated to at least eat some of the other two salads that I had made. In case they felt left out.

Baby of the day: Leela Grace

Meet Leela Grace Gottlieb Ting, Rich and Chloe's new baby girl.

Being a koi at Congee Village

Tonight, we had dinner at Congee Village. While we waited for a table, we had a drink in the bar, where there is a koi pond stuck into the corner of the room. I harbor a small love affair of goldfish, and I wish that there was some way that we could turn the waterfall pond in the courtyard of our building, into a koi pond. I am going to suggest it at the next condo board meeting. I mean, if Congee Village can have one in the bar, surely we could have one outside, right?

Persimmons, shrink wrapped

Uncle Number Three brought us some persimmons from the trees in their yard in California, that they had dried in their fruit dehydrator. I am not sure I had ever had persimmons before we slit open the shrink-wrapped package one evening. And then today in the car on the way back from New Jersey, while stuck in ridiculous traffic jam traffic, I ate like four million persimmon slices. At the time, I thought about how smart I was for snagging the packet on my way out the door that morning. And then I later this evening I read on Wikipedia that:

The raw fruit is used to treat constipation and hemorrhoids, and to stop bleeding. As such, it is not a good idea to consume too many persimmons at once — they can induce diarrhea.

Oh. Well, that certainly explains a lot.

לשנה טובה תכתבו ותחתמו

L'shanah tovah!
Today is the first Rosh Hashanah that I have not celebrated with the Prinskys in eleven years. And while I understand that the tradition of always spending it with them had to end at some point, it was still a bit strange to not be eating apples with honey at their house tonight. I love celebrating all of the Jewish holidays the Prinskys, who for all intents and purposes, are my surrogate family in Brooklyn.
For those of you who don't know, Rosh Hashanah is observed on the first day of the Hebrew month of Tishri, which usually falls in September or October, and marks the beginning of a ten-day period of prayer, self-examination and repentance (aseret yemei teshuvah), which culminates on the fast day of Yom Kippur. These ten days are referred to as Yamim Norai’m, the Days of Awe or the High Holy Days. Rosh Hashanah also remembers the creation of the universe by Adonai.

I heart Gap jeans

Thank goodness for the Gap, is all I can say. For those points in your life when your regular clothes no longer fit because you have eaten chocolate Smarties for breakfast, Haribo Tangfastics for lunch and Honey-Nut Cheerios for dinner — and jeans with nice pockets can be had for only $58. I have like one pair of fancy jeans (i.e. $200 denim from Scoop), in a size which seems almost delusional in its smallness at this point in time, which are patiently sitting on a hanger in my closet, gathering dust. They were sort of mocking me, until I finally broke down and went to the Gap and bought three pairs of jeans that actually fit my Smartied ass. It was getting bad...I was having to wear skirts, because nothing fit me. There is really nothing nicer than finding a pair of jeans that actually looks good when you put them on — or, in other words, jeans which do not show your backside cleavage every time you bend over to pick something up.

Knitting on the subway season

Summer is officially over. I broke out my knitting for my morning commute and started back on a scarf that I have been knitting since last January. A woman saw me knitting, and motioned for me to sit next to her. She was rather chatty and wanted to share with me how she does not know how to purl, and how she crochets, and so forth. And I am not a super chatty person in the morning, and I also am not really warm and fuzzy with complete strangers unless I am secretly coveting their purse or shoes. But I was feeling kind this morning, and forced myself to chitchat about knitting nonsense for a good ten minutes before the woman got off at Chambers Street. Chatting with her caused me to screw up my pattern though and the remaining five stops were spent unkitting what I had just knitted, to fix my mistake. Thankfully, I am finally at a place in my kitting skills where I can actually find knitting to be relaxing, so even unknitting is enjoyable.

Eating orange Smarties

I broke out the box of reserve Smarties today before 10am (The above is not the actual photo, since I ate the entire box in greedy bliss, before I even noticed that I had thrown it away, empty, into the recycle bin beneath my desk.) and proceeded to eat the entire box for breakfast. A 160g box, which is pretty freaking large. And this is why I am growing larger, too. At least I did not wash them down with a Diet Coke — I drank water.

Framing Ikea

I decided, rather spur of the momently, to drive to Ikea to buy picture frames. I have been putting this off for about six months now, and for some reason, the stars were aligned properly and I actually felt inclined to drive to New Jersey when I did not even have to.

You might remember Grace's post on Design Sponge back in February about Wayne Pate's silk screened bird prints. I fell in love with both (I have a special, and sort of unmentioned, fondness for birds.) and ordered the set and finally got around to framing them, via Ikea's simple and cheap frames. The prints were only like $30 a piece, which meant I could not bear to spend like $300 to frame each one. I know that lovely art is priceless and deserves a great frame, but I am on a budget. For some things, at least. I did use acid-free tape to mount them, at least. However, cheap frames aside, I think that they look splendid and I am super pleased with the results. Our house has been missing something in the cozy factor and I had thought that I would need to buy a Saarinen womb chair to solve the problem. Turns out that we just needed some art work on the walls. I just saved about $2600.

Yo! Sushi

I wonder how many people expressly do not want to eat lunch or even too much breakfast, because they are looking forward to eating at the airport? (I think that there also might be many people who are not as picky as I am.)

Anyway, I was really looking forward to having lunch at Heathrow Airport this afternoon. My options included coffee the way the Italians drink it in Costa Coffee or a pint of ale in the Tap & Spile pub, to a classic French meal in Chez Gerard or the raw bar at the Caviar House Seafood Bars. There were sandwiches in those delightful containers at EAT, muffins from Starbucks, in addition to conveyor belt sushi at Yo!Sushi.

I chose conveyor belt sushi, and totally stuffed myself on salmon sashimi, bean spout salad, an eel roll with wasabi roe, and pancakes stuffed with custard for dessert.

And at the checkout, I was completely seduced into buying the YoSushi! cookbook. Even the staff person, was like, "Really?! You want to BUY it?!" I wondered if they got some sort of commission off of each sale, or if I as the first person to ever buy the cookbook at their branch. She was just a little too excited. I have to admit, the sign said that it would make a lovely Christmas gift, and to myself I was like, "Wow, great idea for ____!" But then I decided to keep it for myself, after flipping through the cookbook and saw some things I wanted to make. I know, that is technically against the whole idea of buying a gift for someone. But, if you also want one for yourself, you can buy the cookbook here on Amazon UK.