Destination: Sugarloaf Mountain

The sign to the Sugarloaf tram.

Looking down on the cable car as it comes up to Sugarloaf.

That is Copacabana beach in the distance, I think.

The Christ the Redeemer statue on the peak of the Corcovado Mountain.

Looking back up at Sugarloaf mountain, from Urca Mountain, which is the tram midway point. Of course, you have to keep your ticket to get back down, and I lost mine promptly. I had to scramble to find it, or else I would have had to hike down the mountain...

Porcão

Tonight, we went to Porcão (which oddly enough, really only served beef, not pork) for dinner with the K-Y® global cross functional team. For those who have never been, Porcão is a churrascaria-style restaurant — and you do not even have to go to travel to Brazil to eat at Porcão, as there is one located on Park Avenue in New York City.

Distinctively Brazilian/Portuguese, a churrascaria is defined by the waiters, who come to you unendingly, with different cuts of meat on rotisserie skewers and giant knives, and will slice off hunks of meat until you either firmly say, "Não, obrigado" or else show them your little Yes/No paper button. There was also an impressively large buffet/salad bar with all sorts of sushi, but I felt that it was sort of odd to eat sushi at a Brazilian barbecue joint. Despite the fact that everyone else had no problems eating a plateful of California rolls before polishing off all sorts of red meat, I wanted to keep it real and save room for the meat. I was stuffed after like three waiters.

Sandwiches at the pool

This is my sandwich, which had the most delicious white cheese on it — queijo minas.

This is the afternoon pool at the Sofitel —
it overlooks a street behind the hotel.
The morning pool overlooks Copacabana Beach.

So I am now in Rio de Janiero for the rest of the week, for work. Our plane landed this afternoon, and now we are at the pool in our swimsuits!, while it's freezing cold back in New York City. It is so nice to eat crustless cheese sandwiches and french fries, while you can hear the waves lapping at the beach (across the street).

Flower in my bag

Tonight when I was getting all situated in my seat on the plane, you know, putting my passport away and getting all of my books, snacks, headphones, sea bands and bottle of water all situated in the seat pocket in front of me, I came across a little paper flower that Kenny had placed in my purse unbeknownst to me. (Which means I failed the test that the air line people ask with regards to "have my bags been out of my sight at any time?") This of course, made me super excited and I wanted to show the flower to someone, or just tell someone about it. I looked at my seatmate, and I was all set to blurt out, "Look what I found in my purse!!" but refrained from looking like the biggest loser this side of the Atlantic.

The flower is very nifty and is produced by a company called Artecnica, whose mission "elevate the purpose and value of everyday objects by using design to enchant, inspire and transform through the powerful tools of art and technology." Nice!

Cashmere animals don't bite.

This morning on my way to the subway, I saw Uniqlo's new postering campaign for their cashmere sweaters — photos of cashmere sweatered stuffed animal-puppets that looked like a cross between the Muppets and Ugly Dolls. And despite being in my 30s, I am still happily sucked in by stuffed, fuzzy toys that have felt eyes and mouths. In Freudian terms, I am sure this means I never played enough with stuffed toys when I was growing up, or perhaps it's that I am still a child, mentally. Whatever the reason, I still like stuffed animals.

For the record, I do not have a collection of them (or even one!) on my bed, or anything like that.

Repeat feature swatch thing in Illustrator

The repeat looks sort of like this, but with an additional element, and then it was made into a more repeat-friendly layout by our production bureau, when I could not get the swatch thingy to work.

For the past few days, weeks, I have no idea how long, I have been tormented with trying to get a pattern to repeat, which will become the repeated pattern on the Carefree® pantiliners release paper — that adhesive backing that keeps the liner's sticky part sticky. The pattern has imprinted itself in my brain, as I have struggled with trying to get it to successfully repeat in a manor like how I presented it to my colleagues. Which has only made me realize that I have become a computer-age dinosaur and will definitely be taking some Illustrator courses in the new year.

However, in the mean time, I am not sure where I have been for the like last like five versions of Illustrator...this afternoon, Susanna taught me about dragging a pattern into the swatch palette in order to create a repeated pattern that you made yourself. Holy shit. I had no idea that this thing even existed, and when I asked some other friends (i.e. Sheri), they all were like, "Yeah, I knew about that." I feel sort of cheated, like everyone knew about this feature while I have been doing my own stupid repeats by hand for the past few years. From now on, I am making patterns for everything, using that swatch tool feature. So when you get a repeat pattern holiday card from me next year, you will now know why.

Scarf Hood from Madewell

I was on Madewell's teaser site yesterday afternoon and was lusting after the two different scarf-hood combo that they are currently featuring. It appears to be the season of the scarf hoods, as both Anthropologie AND Red Envelope featured them this year. Which makes me slightly annoyed since I had an idea to knit a scarf hood like four years ago and never got around to actually knitting it, since I think scarves take way too long to knit.

Anyway, Kenny stopped by Madewell this morning and picked up a scarf hood for me. I am very much loving it — it's very Little Red Riding Hood, except in black — however, the scarf part is a little too long. Which necessitates me getting crafty and hemming the scarf part on my sewing machine.

Some Paul Rand love

Paul Rand has been one of my design heroes ever since my brother gave me A Designer's Art — when I was in high school, I think.

Breakfast at Amy's

I am in love with Amy's — a diner in Long Branch, New Jersey, that must have had at least 100 omelette offerings on the menu. Lani's mom suggested that we go there for breakfast and we were slightly skeptical about the place since Lani's mom is really not known for her culinary tastes. However, the place was absolutely off the charts. When we opened the menu, Lani and I both realized that we were done for, and ordered so much food between the two of us that it was like we were feeding a group of starving people who had not eaten in months, as opposed to two women who had probably already snacked on something that morning.

We ordered the pumpkin pancakes, some sort of healthful pancakes, and then an egg white omelette...we both stuffed ourselves, silly. Chris opted for the homemade hash.

Baby of the Day: Inez

Today's baby of the day is Inez. (Oddly enough, her mother is the friend who introduced me to Josh, whose baby I featured yesterday.) Inez Anita Stangler was born in September or maybe the last week of August, I should know this, and this was the first time I finally had the opportunity to meet her. Her mom, my friend Lani, is one of my dearest friends from college and it was so cool to see her as a mom. So many of my friends are parents now, its been like some sort of baby explosion this year.

Thanksgiving with the Prinskys

Baby of the Day: Joe

Josh and Julie had a new baby about three weeks ago, and Thanksgiving dinner was baby Joseph's debut. To me, at least. Joe is awfully tiny looking and it just amazes me that this small little kid A. came out of a person's body, and B. belongs to Josh. I mean, this is the guy who conned me into shoplifting (unknowingly) peanut butter for him, from the Giant Eagle in Squirrel Hill — while in college. And now he has a baby!

I am thankful for cupcakes

Today is Thanksgiving. And we are going over to Josh's house. I wanted to make an apple pie, but that involved way too much work — peeling at least 8 granny smith apples, which we did not even have. So I decided to make the cupcakes from a Sprinkles mix, that Juliana gave me earlier this fall. The cupcakes were pumpkin with cream cheese frosting, so I figured that although untraditional, they were still appropriate, being that they were pumpkin flavored and all.

The mix was pretty easy, although I would not necessarily call them totally made from a mix. For one thing, the frosting is entirely made from scratch. And the mix itself still require two sticks of butter, room-temperature eggs and something else, which I can't remember now. The mix is basically just the dry ingredients in a pouch. And while that is the same with Duncan Hines's mixes, somehow it is just totally different. I think the difference is that grocery store mixes ALWAYS required like 1 cup of oil. Instead of butter.

The cupcakes turned out pretty fabulous looking. Especially since the package even came with its own little signature dots to top them. Which takes them from banal homemade cupcakes to super duper fancy homemade cupcakes.

Statue of Liberty for Thanksgiving

This morning, we decided to beat the mad rush and go to Fairway at like 9am, hoping to beat the crazy Thanksgiving rush. For some reason, we felt that this would be a good time to go grocery shopping, on Thanksgiving Day — I am not sure of this logic, but it worked. The best part of going to the Fairway in Red Hook, is going out on the patio, where you can see the Statue of Liberty.

Where are my Thirtysomething DVDs?!

I honestly laughed so hard, I almost threw up

After doing all of my holiday shopping online in about half an hour this evening, I decided to take some leisure time and actually read my personal email. On Monday, Sheri sent me the link to 15minutelunch, subject titled "snarky post." The blogger, JV, found a 1977 J.C. Penney's catalog in his wife's grandfather's ceiling, and then wrote an incredibly witty post (ok, I laughed so hard that I cried. And then I kept laughing which made me almost throw up. Gross. I never even knew that was possible.) about the sartorial splendors of the late 70's. Which is basically an even worse fashion victim decade than the 80s, if that is possible.

Check it out here, this post made my night.

Since I remember shopping at Penney's in the 70s — Jamestown, NY was not really a mecca for fashion, so we have an excuse — I have to admit, I think some of our family photos reflect outfits very similar to the ones shown in the photos. Thankfully, all of those photos are in a big jumble at home in my mom's photo drawer, and no one will ever see the picture of me, aged five, wearing a royal blue zip front jumpsuit with floods, while standing in front of the Statue of Liberty.

My colleague's pie

photo by aprilcott

As I left work this evening, I put away some leftover apple pie — Comp24 sent the entire office a bunch of apple pies for Thanksgiving — and noticed that Karin had stuck her unopened pie in the fridge and then left for holiday vacation until Monday. Apple pie is my favorite. And while I am really quite picky about my pie (store bought pie is pretty much a sin), I knew that I was supposed to bake an apple pie for Thanksgiving dinner at the Prinsky's and thought that perhaps I could borrow Karin's free pie and save myself some time and perhaps sleep in on Thursday instead. Call me lazy.

So I took Karin's pie and went home. However, in the taxi on the way home, I got to talking with my taxi driver and when I got out of the cab, I impulsively asked him if he liked pie. Apple pie. Yes, he liked pie. So when did he get off his shift? Not until 6 am, he told me a little sadly. Regardless, I shoved my pie box through the little window and told him to take my pie and share it with his family. There was a moment of stunned silence, where I was thinking, crap!, can I take my pie back, is it too late? What did I just do? I forced Karin's pie on a complete stranger! And I wanted that pie! And where he was stunned speechless, thinking, oh my god, some complete stranger (who tipped well, I might add), just gave me a Thanksgiving pie! How weird!

But I smiled then, and so did he. And when I got out of the cab, I thought that I just had a real New York moment. I mean, that shit does not happen in Shaker Heights, ok? There is no thoughtfully shoving of thanksgiving apple pie through a taxi cab pay window. And the feeling was really pure, like, wow...I just did something really nice.

Let's overlook the fact that the nice thing I did involved a pie that was not mine.

Location: Room Studio

Some chairs, waiting for people to come and sit on them.

My dream: a book shelf full of white books. This is heaven on earth.

People snacking in the kitchen.

The Eames Hang it all®, painted black.

Ceiling + wall edge juxtaposition.

Some Marcus Milk in the fridge.

Some pictures from my photo shoot, although they did not even begin to express the feeling of how I wanted to move into Room Studio, and curl up on the couch and live there forever. It was like all of the loveliness of being at TODA (which to me, is my home away from home), but taking that feeling and throwing in a cozy couch, a better kitchen, and full length mirror in the bathroom. What more could one ask for?

Dinner with the neighbors, part 2

Ali and Ladan.

Chicken curry, tomato salad, crispy rice and little spicy potato triangles from Jackson Heights.

Michelle, Ali and I in the kitchen, where I am eating all of the potato triangles before dinner.

My neighbors are awesome.

Ali and Ladan invited us over for dinner this evening, and at first I was feeling crabby and tired and whining that I was too tired to go out. Despite it being 15 feet down the hall. A particularly treacherous pattern for Carefree® needed me to figure out the mathematical repeat and it was putting me in a anti-social mood. But I finally scraped myself off the dining room chair and we walked down the hall to Ladan and Ali's — and it was like I could not figure out what I had been whinging about it. The moment we walked in their door, I was instantly happy and chatty and forgot all about the mathematically repeating daisy freshness that takes over my life when I am not careful. Frederico Aubele was playing on the stereo and I love his music. Within moments, Dwayne and Michelle arrived and we all had such a wonderful evening. Full of teasing one another, family drama stories, and lessons learned about what to do when your niece starts dating your friend who is 17 years her senior. Dwayne had some particularly good advice for that last predicament.

Feeling holiday-sy yet?

We are doing a photo shoot tomorrow for work, and on Thursday, the cross functional team decided that we ought to shoot behind the scenes footage of the photo shoot. The photographer we are working with, Tim Hogan, told me about an intro on the J.Crew site, for the holiday 2007 catalog. Watching the video, confirmed what I thought when I got the catalog — this was was obviously shot in Brooklyn. I wonder if the people receiving the catalog in Boise, Idaho wonder where on earth this magical place of brownstone houses and charming streets is located? And there is just something so right about the music and the way the video is edited that just fills me with a sense of longing for cozy holiday-ness. A place where it is all about hot chocolate by a crackling fire,and thoughtfully purchased gifts are exchanged amongst family members who actually enjoy being with one another. And everyone looks happy, because they actually are.

I heart BRGR

Cost of lunch: $26.
Cost of extremely delicious veggie burger with grilled onions, cheddar and lettuce on a whole wheat bun: priceless.